The Serpent's Shadow em-2

by Mercedes Lackey

  "Yes, but—" Peter began just as stubbornly.

  "But me no buts. There never has been a woman in the Exeter Club, nor a foreigner, and there never will be." Alderscroft stared at Peter as though daring him to attempt a contradiction, but Peter was not about to fight a battle against a windmill, and changed the subject.

  "How many victims were there last night?" he asked.

  "Eh?" Alderscroft said, surprised. Clearly he'd expected an argument, and when Peter had declined to give him one, was taken a little aback. "Ah—seven, I believe. At least that's the count this morning. All of 'em, bar the missing one, retired Army. None mages. All smothered, the breath squeezed out of 'em." He shook his head. "Can't link the missing man in with that set, but Owlswick swears he's getting the same sort of taint on the fellow when he tries to scry out what's happened to him, and I suppose he could be linked into Hindus in some other way—" his gaze sharpened, "—if he offered some insult to that Hindu doctor of yours. Did he?"

  "I gather that he made some improper advances, yes," Peter said reluctantly. When Alderscroft pinned a person with that direct gaze, it was damnably hard not to give him what he wanted out of you.

  "Huh. So that would be where your information came from. No reason for the girl to lie, I suppose. No, of course not, she's a doctor, she'd have more reason to cover it up to preserve her reputation. What happened, exactly?" Alderscroft's glacial gaze pried every last detail out of Peter, including the little plot that he and Almsley had made up to free Maya from the unwanted attentions.

  "Ha!" the old man barked, amused, when Peter was finished. "Clever enough, all of you! Good trick of hers, callin' what she did to the fellow 'heatstroke.' Ha!" He pondered the tale, stabbing bites of his luncheon and chewing them with deliberation while he did so.

  At least I've managed to restore his appetite.

  "Well played," he said at last. "Nothing to connect us, or magic in general, with what went on. Managing to hush the fellow up. Perfectly allowable use of magic in self-defense, especially considering the situation. Though—someone should have noticed when she struck him."

  "It was a very transitory phenomenon, my lord," Peter said cautiously. "It didn't take place at night, nor in one of the venues we've been watching. Under such circumstances, I can see how it would not be caught by a watcher."

  "True, true. But still." Alderscroft frowned. "Someone should have noticed, use of power like that, and unshielded. I'll have a word with Owlswick. He's supposed to be watching by daylight, whether or not anyone else is, and he's supposed to report things like that to me."

  Aha—so that's why Lord Owlswick never leaves the dub! "She is a doctor, my lord. It might not have been as great a use of power as you are assuming. A doctor would know better than anyone else how and

  where to strike to incapacitate someone." Peter had more in mind than merely helping Lord Owlswick out of a reprimand by pointing that out. He hoped that— after later consideration at least—giving evidence of Maya's multiple talents might yet pave the way for her entry into the Club and Lodge, if only Lord Alderscroft could be made to see past his Old School Tie prejudices.

  "Hmm. A point. Well, there's the link from the missing man to the killer—the cad laid hands on a Hindu wench, and with intentions, to boot." Alderscroft nodded. "Don't matter if she never told anyone but you and her servants, or even if she didn't tell the servants. Servants overhear everything, and they gossip. Wouldn't be long before it was all over, at least with the Hindu population." He brooded over his potatoes. "Wish we had some sort of hook into the ranks of Hindu servants in London. If anyone knows anything that might lead us to the killer, it'll be with them."

  "You surely don't suspect them of helping the killer?" Peter exclaimed, appalled. He hadn't thought Alderscroft to be that insular!

  But Alderscroft shook his head. "No, no, not a bit of it. For one thing, there wasn't a victim that still had Indian servants. No, I'm just thinking that there may be rumors in the bazaar, so to speak, rumors that would be damned useful to us, and of no use to the police, and I wish we were in a position to hear 'em."

  Peter thought of Gupta and Gopal, and wondered just how open they would be with him. Well, what could it hurt to ask? And that might be yet one more reason for Club and Lodge to feel obligated to Maya. The more obligations that piled up, the less resistance there would be to bringing her into the fold.

  After all, that was one reason why they brought me in.

  "Doctor Witherspoon's servants might be willing to talk to me," he said cautiously. "Especially if she asked them to. She treats them less as servants and more as family, from what I've seen."

  Alderscroft cleared his throat, and looked a little embarrassed. "It's not my place to criticize how a woman runs her own household," he said, "But in most cases, that's a mistake—"

  "But not in all—and anyway, this just means they're more likely to talk to me to oblige her," Peter said firmly. "I take it you'd like me to have a word, then?"

  Alderscroft nodded. "I'd be obliged to the doctor," he responded, much to Peter's pleasure. "Especially if they can tell us anything interesting."

  "Then I'll see to it immediately," Peter promised. "I'll be happy to."

  And if ever there was an understatement, that was surely a mammoth.

  IN the end, Peter decided to approach Gupta privately, rather than going through Maya first. If Maya's chief servant and oldest friend did know something regarding Maya's safety, he might be more willing, rather than less, to talk to Peter about it without Maya present. If this ploy didn't work, he could always backtrack and go through Maya anyway.

  As a consequence, he shut up his shop during the early afternoon when he knew that Maya would be at the Fleet clinic, and took a 'bus to her home. There had been a dramatic change in the weather at long last, with much lower temperatures and frequent rains. It was now a normal, ordinary English summer in all respects but one. The heat wave had broken, but now thanks to the rains and coolness, fogs marched through the streets at night, and with the fog, came more of the mysterious deaths. Simon Parkening was still missing, and although Peter would have been perfectly pleased if he never appeared again, his continued absence boded little good. And at any rate, although the man was a bounder and a cad, even Peter wouldn't wish him dead.

  The narrow little street in which Maya lived, heavily overshadowed by the buildings on either side with the dome of St. Paul's looming over all in the distance, was remarkably quiet today. The only vehicle on the pavement was a milk float returning empty to the dairy. There were some small children, toddlers, playing together on a doorstep, but other than that, no other people were about. There was traffic and the sounds of people two or three streets away, but not here. Peter rang Maya's bell and it seemed unnaturally loud in such quietude; after a moment, he heard Gupta's footsteps within, and the door opened.

  Maya's chief servitor appeared within, his white tunic and bloused trousers spotlessly correct, even though he must have been working in the kitchen all morning. "The doctor will be—" Gupta began, and stopped, a look of surprise on his weathered face, when he saw who it was, for Peter should have known (as in fact, he did) that Maya was not in this afternoon.

  "I didn't come to see Doctor Maya, Gupta," Peter said, before Gupta could gather his wits. "I came to see you. May I come in and speak with you?"

  "Of course, sahib," Gupta said politely, a mask of calculated indifference dropping over his features. Peter wasn't worried. This was only Gupta's public face. He thought it was likely that once Gupta was in a place where he felt comfortable and in control, the mask would come off again.

  So when Gupta hesitated between going in the direction of Maya's office and her conservatory, Peter smiled disarmingly, and said, "Why don't we go to the kitchen?"

  The mask flickered for a moment. Then Gupta bowed his head and turned to lead the way to his sanctum.

  With the break in the weather, the kitchen was now cozy rather than stifling, and Gupta ac
knowledged Peter's appreciative sniff at the scent of baking bread with a slight smile. The mask was beginning to crack.

  Gupta nodded at a stool, and Peter sat himself down beside the kitchen table, scoured spotless, scored with the knife cuts and marks of the preparation of many, many meals. Gupta poured two cups of tea from the kettle he always had ready, and offered Peter the milk and sugar, though he himself took neither.

  Peter waited until Gupta took a second stool before he spoke; he put his tea down on the table and looked straight into the old man's eyes, and asked, "What enemy is it that has followed Maya from India?"

  Gupta started; the mask shattered. "What is it you know?" the old man demanded harshly—and now Peter saw, thinly veiled, the warrior that hid within the butler and servant—the bodyguard that Peter had always suspected he truly was.

  Peter took a sip of tea, as if he had not seen so much when the mask came off. "I know that when she came here—and I discovered her—she had done her best to create defenses against something. I know that you were certain she needed those defenses. And I know—" he hesitated, then plunged in further. "—I know that there is something in this city now, that kills by night, crushing the breath from men. These are all pukka sahibs, Englishmen, many officers of the Army who once dwelt in your homeland and, I presume, did harm to your people there. Or at least, whoever sent this thing to kill them, thought that they had done harm."

  Gupta's eyes widened at this last intelligence, and he sucked in his breath in a hiss. "And it comes— when?" he asked urgently. "In the hot night?"

  Peter shook his head. "In the fog," he said. "Always with the fog. The fog creeps in, and men die alone, suffocated, as if something had crushed the life from them."

  And that opened the floodgates.

  Within the next hour, Peter got all of Maya's life history, as well as that of her mother and as much of her father's that Gupta knew. He also got the history of the woman he supposed must be regarded as Maya's aunt—the devotee of Kali Durga, the sorceress Shivani, who had sworn eternal enmity with her own sister when she married an Englishman, and presumably was still the enemy of Surya's daughter.

  All of this poured forth in a torrent of mixed English and Urdu that taxed Peter's knowledge of the latter to the limit. Sometimes he had to make Gupta stop and explain himself. But in the end, he knew as much as Gupta did—and had just as much reason to be alarmed.

  And yet—"Do you think our defenses have stopped her?" he asked doubtfully. "I've taught her all I know about shields, and there are some things that she knows that are as good or better than anything I showed her."

  "That—and the little ones—the pets," Gupta added, when Peter looked puzzled. "I think—" He hesitated, then plunged boldly on. "I think that they are more than pets."

  Peter waited, keeping his expression quietly expectant. At this point, he wasn't about to discount anything the old man said. There were long traditions of "familiars" among the families in whom the talent for magic ran deeply, even in this island nation.

  Gupta paused for another moment, then continued. "I do not know what they are. They were Surya's; they were grown when she first obtained them, and I do not know from where they came. So. She was fourteen years then; Maya was born when she was twenty. That is six years. Maya is now more than twenty. So how is it that none, none of these 'pets' look more than three or four years at most?"

  "Uh—I don't know." He wasn't sure how old Hanuman langurs lived, or parrots—but falcons certainly didn't live to be more than twenty, nor, he thought, did peacocks. Nor did mongooses. Certainly all of the animals should be showing the signs of great maturity by now, if not of old age! So they were not "familiars" as he knew them. What were they?

  "Right. They are not pets, but at the moment, it doesn't matter what they are, since they are our creatures. But what is killing those men?" That was the important question.

  "It must be some thing of Shivani's," Gupta replied. "And I think it must take the form of a snake. One of the great, crushing snakes, perhaps?"

  Peter nodded. "A constrictor—a python—and that makes sense."

  "The cobra is holy," Gupta agreed. "I do not think she would risk invoking the form of a cobra by magic, just to slay a few sahibs. But even a python would not dare to cross paths with Singhe and Sia—for surely they are as magical as it is. If Shivani could have attacked Maya in this way, it would have happened some time ago. So Maya is safe from it."

  "Even if Maya is safe in here," he asked, urgently, "What about when she's out there!"

  Gupta could only shake his head.

  Shivani ground her teeth in anger, and paced back and forth in her room, her bangles and anklets chinking softly with each step, her sari swishing around her feet. She was so enraged she could not have spoken if she had tried. It hadn't worked! All that effort, all the preparation, all the hours spent in extracting the tiniest atom of power from that wretched man Parkening, and it still hadn't allowed her Shadow to penetrate the girl's defenses! Now the Shadow was spent, unable to go forth even to replenish itself from other sources, and still the girl's very existence mocked her! All her carefully laid plans were stalled, because of this one miserable girl!

  She could not get near the girl, either directly or indirectly by means of her dacoits, without alerting her to the peril she lay in and probably causing her to bolt for yet another far country. That would spell the end to all of Shivani's plans; she could hide herself and her men in London, but not in barbaric New York! Who had ever heard of Hindus in New York? No, above all else, the girl must not know how close Shivani was to taking her!

  So close—so agonizingly close, and yet no closer than before. The traitor was protected physically and magically within her dwelling, and she never ventured out of it alone—by day she was in the protection of crowds, and on the rare times when she traveled by night, she was with cab drivers, other doctors, or that man. That man, mostly. And he, he was fully protected by magic she did not understand, and was wary of. It would be one thing, were she to deal with him on her terms; quite another to attempt to take him on his.

  No native could get within striking distance of the girl without her noting and probably reacting before a strike could be made, for she avoided the presence of her own countrymen—other than her personal servants—as if she knew that those of the homeland could be dangerous to her. Oh, perhaps one could simply kill her with an English gun, at a distance— but that was not the point! The point was for Shivani to recover the power this girl had, and to add it to her own, so that she could continue to wreak vengeance on the sahibs! Even more to the point would be to enslave her spirit so that Shivani could force her to help in Shivani's crusade! To merely slay her would be sheer futility and criminal waste!

  She stood up, and paced the floor. If she could get a drop of the girl's blood—or if she could somehow get one of several special potions into her—-the girl could die however she died, and it would still be possible to steal her spirit and power. But how could that be accomplished? Her dacoits had tried, and failed, to invade her home. She guarded every hair that fell from her head with obsessive care, and she never ate or drank anything that was not from the hands of her servants or prepared in English kitchens by English cooks.

  Perhaps—perhaps she was not studying her enemy thoroughly enough.

  She stopped pacing, and strode instead to the table on which her mirror rested. The mirror-slave was so much more tractable now that Shivani kept the mirror completely unshrouded. As tenuous as his grip on sanity was, she deemed it prudent not to push him any nearer to the brink.

  She picked it up and retired with it to her favorite corner. Curled up among her cushions, with insect netting shielding her from flying pests that came in the open windows and a cool breeze to calm her and set the wind chimes singing softly, she spoke to the eager face, changing with the swirling darkness in the glass, that looked up into hers.

  "Show me more of the girl," she commanded. "What has she done today an
d yesterday, outside of her house?"

  She didn't have to be any more specific than that. The slave knew very well who she was, and immediately showed her the girl walking out of her own doorway, perhaps to get a cab or find a 'bus.

  But this time, Shivani paid no attention to the girl herself; now she concentrated on her surroundings. She ordered the slave to show her the street where the girl lived.

  Not a wealthy place, though not quite as impoverished as this slum where Shivani had hidden her people. Narrow buildings of brick and stone, gray and brown, crammed together, three and four and even six stories tall—the girl's little white-stone house seemed shrunken by comparison. The men here wore rough, workingman's clothing, dungarees and flannel shirts and heavy, laced boots. The women, with their aprons and shabby little straw hats, their checked shirtwaists and skirts worn shiny in places, were well enough off to show no visible patches or mends, but clearly did not often see a new garment. Working poor; hoping for better, but not likely to ever see it, and far too foolish-proud to turn to charity or crime to save themselves.