He broke off, staring. So did Shea, for their captors had let go of their arms, and the street was suddenly empty again, except for the dead body — three dead bodies, now that he saw the view without the swarm of thieves. He could still hear them, but their voices seemed muted, distant.
Then, suddenly, a thief was there, crouching as he rubbed oil over his shoulders. He recited an incantation, and Shea and Chalmers stared, fascinated, recognizing only a few words here and there; obviously, the man was speaking in an old language, probably Sanskrit; Shea was mildly surprised that he didn’t hear it as Latin.
Then the man disappeared.
Hard hands fell on their shoulders again, and the noise of the crowd was back in full force — and so was the gang many of whom were now watching Shea and Chalmers, laughing with glee at their looks of surprise. “Do you understand now?” their captor asked from behind.
“Yes, I think so,” Chalmers said slowly. “You have incantations to make yourselves invisible, but the effect does not last long.”
“Yes, even as we have incantations to enable us to see in the darkness. Do you not have such?”
“No,” Shea said, “but we’d love to learn them.” He pointed at a group of men who seemed to be practicing some sort of martial art, except that Shea could very clearly make out some movements that seemed to be those of cutting purse strings. “What are they doing?”
Chankoor seemed to puff himself up, grinning with self-importance. “They practice the lessons of the god with the golden spear.”
“What god is that?” Chalmers asked.
Chankoor stared in surprise. “You are thieves, and do not know?”
“Thieves from lands far to the west, remember,” Shea said quickly, “very far to the west.”
Chankoor muttered something about ignorant barbarians, but explained. “He is Kartikeya, the god of thieves, who revealed to the master Yugacharya the Chauriya Vidya, the Thieves’ Manual. Any who wish to succeed in theft must know its precepts by heart. Regard those men, now . . .” He pointed at two men who labored at the base of a wall, “. . . and those, those, and those!” He pointed out three other groups who were also at work on the walls of three other shops. “They carry out the four modes of breaching a house.”
Shea peered through the darkness, and saw that the first pair were picking bricks out piece by piece. Shoddy, material, no doubt — and Chankoor confirmed it. “Burnt bricks,” he explained, but didn’t say who had burned them. Another pair were at work with a cold chisel, cutting through. “Those bricks are unbaked, and old,” Chankoor explained “The monsoon winds softened them quite nicely — but exposure to sun or salt will do as well.” The third pair needed no explanation — they were splashing a mud wall with bucketfuls of water. Shea shuddered, feeling that he had never fully appreciated modem construction methods before. He also didn’t need much explanation for the fourth pair — all he needed to see was the huge augur with which they were boring into the wall of a wooden house. “They’re going to have to drill a lot of holes before they can make one big enough to crawl through.”
“Not so many as you would think,” Chankoor said offhandedly. “They have saws with slender blades with which they can join the holes. See with what artistry they practice their craft! These sons of Skanda make breaches in the shape of lotus blossoms, of the sun, the new moon, the lake, and the water jar!”
“They do seem to be enjoying their work,” Chalmers said diplomatically. “I find it hard to believe that a group of such, ah, ‘rugged individualists’ would be willing to take orders from anyone.”
“Ah, but you have not seen the captain yet!” Chankoor said with a grin. “Come, let us find him!”
Moonlight or not they were caught in a maze of single-story mud-brick houses that was a tribute to a lack of city planning. Shea found himself growing dizzy with the turns and twists. He did notice that they seemed to avoid the big stone buildings carefully. As they went, other bands of three and four came out of side sheets to Join them, clanking bags on their backs, laughing and joking over their good luck. It made Shea’s flesh crawl, especially since he was soon surrounded by them. Looking up, he happened to notice the disguised rajah only a few feet away; he had apparently been taken up by one of the other squadrons, just as Shea and Chalmers had. Shea nudged Chalmers and nodded at the rajah, ever so slightly; Chalmers looked, and his eyes widened. He exchanged a quick worried glance with Shea before they both turned back to the front, marching onward in the midst of a mob of muggers, feeling as though they walked under the Sword of Damocles.
Then they turned a corner and almost ran into the city wall, Shea jolted to a stop out of sheer surprise, but a knife-point in his back, and a snarl, motivated him to go forward again. “How are we going to get over it?” he whispered to one of his captors, but the man hissed back, “All shall become evident to the enterprising. Forward!”
Shea gulped and marched, Chalmers beside him. He could have sworn they were going to march right into the wall, and Shea found himself wondering if Chankoor were planning to have them grind their faces into it. “Doc, do you think they’ll consider stopping?”
“The question has occurred to me, too,” Chalmers admitted. “Perhaps they believe themselves to be invisible.”
Shea remembered the incantation for invisibility. “But the guards won’t open the gates for invisible men!”
“I do not think it will be the guards who open them,” Chalmers returned. “After all, invisible men can still strike blows.”
Shea remembered the Wells novel, and shuddered; after the random senseless slayings he’d seen for no more than a few pieces of minted metal, he didn’t doubt that the robbers would not hesitate to kill their way out every night. “Maybe they’re just going to loiter around until the gates open at daybreak,” he said hopefully. “They can mutter the spell over and over, after all.” But the look of skepticism Chalmers gave him was all the comment the notion deserved.
Chankoor fooled them both. He simply walked up to the gate and knocked in what sounded like Morse code — three quick knocks, then two slow. For a moment, everything seemed frozen; Shea even held his breath. Then, slowly, the gate opened. “Magic?” he whispered.
“No,” Chalmers said with disgust. “Bribed porters.”
Shea stared, then felt a surge of self-anger at his own gullibility. He risked a glance about — and stared. He found himself gazing at the man with the horsehair over his nose! He couldn’t see the horsehair in this dim light, of course — it was only a stray moonbeam that had showed it to him in the first place — but he certainly recognized the face. It was Rajah Randhir, and his eyes flared with anger at this betrayal by his own gate guards.
Din pricked Chalmers’ neck again; he flinched and said, “I think we had better undertake our own transportation, before these fellows lose patience and leave us by the wayside.”
“With our throats slit,” Shea muttered. He started walking beside Chalmers, following the stocky, moonlighted figure before them.
Out they went, in the midst of a host of thieves and killers. They only walked for about ten minutes before they came to a knot of men milling about in the roadway, talking and laughing, with more joining them from footpaths beside the way every minute, Shea stared. Could the thieves really be so bold, and so busy, that they had worn their own paths? If they were, how could there be anything left in the city worth stealing?
They certainly weren’t worried about the sentries at the gate hearing them. The voices were loud, the laughter louder, and here and there a snatch of song. Their guides led them to the center of the mob, which parted to let them through at a muttered, urgent demand from their captors. Looking about for any possible escape routes, Shea happened to catch the rajah’s eye. Randhir gave a start of recognition, then gave him a furious glare that as much as promised instant death if Shea dared breathe a word about his not being a genuine thief — but Shea knew how he felt; he wasn’t at his most relaxed, himself, surrounded b
y a pack of outlaws who would probably slip a knife between his ribs as easily as they would hiss him to silence. He tried to look reassuring before the thieves behind him hustled him along.
The crowd stopped parting at a man who was taller than the rest, and strikingly handsome, if you liked lots of beard and moustache. He had muscles, anyway, and his style of dress certainly let it show. After all, a loincloth and turban don’t hide all that much,
“Captain Charya,” said Chankoor, “we have here two strangers who stumbled upon us as we were leaving the shop of the goldsmith.”
He didn’t have to be so literal, Shea thought.
“Strangers indeed!” Charya said in a deep, amused voice, “I have never seen stranger!”
“Stranger strangers?” Shea murmured but Chalmers kicked him in the shin, and he pinched his lips shut.
“They claim to be thieves from a foreign land,” Chankoor explained.
“Are you truly?” Charya the captain eyed them keenly, as though he could spot a lie by sight — and maybe he could, if he was good enough at reading posture and attitude. “A high-toper, or a lully-prigger?”
“Uh-h-h-h . . .” The terms caught Shea flat-footed. When in doubt, stall, he thought, and improvised. “Just another cove in the lorst, Captain.”
“Ah! A petty thief!” Charya nodded, satisfied. “How if I told you to mind old Oliver?”
He might have been speaking Hindi, but the spell that gave Shea the ability to understand it, was doing a great job of translating it into English idioms. “Why, I’d keep an eye on the moon, to make sure I was done stealing and gone before it rose — but your coves don’t seem to worry about that.”
“Why should we care?” Charya’s grin gleamed in the moonlight. “There’s not a soldier in the city is not afraid of us — any, even the rajah himself!”
At the moment, Shea thought, that just might have been true. “If you have the town sewed up that tight more power to you.” After all, that was just a statement of fact. “But look sharp, Captain, or the lamb-skin man will have the pull of us, and as sure as eggs are eggs, we shall be scragged as soon as lagged.”
“Then keep your red rag quiet,” grumbled the thief beside him.
“Why should I be the only one?” Shea shot back. Charya laughed. “Why indeed! All the Watch together would not dare accost us within the city — and outside of it, even less! Still, though, my lads are anxious to wet their whistles, so let us be off to the flash ken where the morts are waiting. Come, join us!”
He turned away, beckoning, and what could Shea do but follow?
Chalmers paced beside him, muttering, “What manner of foreign language was that?”
“Thieves’ jargon,” Shea explained.
“And where did you learn it?”
“I’ve been doing some volunteer counselling: Shea explained, “unpaid — down at the county jail.”
“Surely those terms were not American!”
“No, one of the thieves was English,” Shea explained. “Besides, some of the language came over with the colonists and hasn’t changed since. For example, If a pickpocket says a man carries his wallet on his left prat, that means his left hip pocket.”
“Hence the term ‘pratfall’,” Chalmers said thoughtfully. “Yes, I see.”
Someone jostled Shea from the other side. Turning to protest, he found himself staring at an overly flattened nose with a horizontal groove across the tip. He shifted his focus up to the glaring eyes of the incognito rajah. “Do not whisper a word of our earlier meeting,” he hissed, “or I shall see you scragged indeed.”
Shea swallowed heavily, imagining the feel of a hempen noose lightening around his neck. “Don’t worry, Your Ma . . .” In the nick of time, he remembered that he wasn’t supposed to know Randhir’s real identity. “. . . your magic secret is safe with us. After all, if you wanted to drop us, all you’d have to do is tell them about our meeting yourself.”
“You know I cannot do that without compromising myself!”
“Yes,” Shea said, “exactly.” He stared into the rajah’s eyes until comprehension registered, and the royal lips parted in a grin. “Ah, a point well taken? We have both used the same ruse to keep our heads on our necks, have we not? Nonetheless, be sure you say nothing of me, or I shall bring down their wrath upon you!”
“It’s a deal,” Shea promised “You don’t betray us and we won’t betray you.”
“Well enough.” The rajah nodded, satisfied. “See that you keep to it.” He drifted away from them.
“What was that all about?” Chalmers asked.
“Just a little mutual-silence pact,” Shea told him. “Details later.”
Chalmers took the hint, remembering the number of ears available to hear them, and changed the subject. He pointed to a large rodent that scuffled out of sight into a hole in the ground as they approached “Reassuring sight, somehow.”
Shea took his point — it was nice, sometimes to remember who the real rats were — but Charya saw too, and exclaimed with satisfaction. “Ah! You recognize the rat-hole as a good omen! You must indeed be thieves!” He clapped Shea on the back, sending him staggering and strode along, singing a merry tune.
As they went, Shea sneaked the occasional glance at the incognito rajah. The man was constantly glancing about him with an intentness that puzzled Shea. Was he memorizing faces for prosecution? Since that included Shea’s and Chalmers’ faces, the thought gave Shea a cold chill. He tried to ignore the rajah, and hoped he would return the courtesy.
The moon was setting, and Chalmers was beginning to stumble with fatigue, when Charya finally raised a hand to halt his gang. Shea stopped thankfully, leaning against Chalmers, who leaned against him — it had been a long day, starting in 10th Century Russia and finishing past midnight in India, No wonder he was tired, Shea reflected — that was a heck of a long hike. He looked up at the cliff that towered above them, then down at the rain forest at its foot, and shuddered. What else was he going to have to go through before he could rest?
High grass, for one thing; it was up to his knees in this meadow, and they had to hike across to reach the trees on the far side, which was apparently what the robber captain was planning on doing. Through the high grass they went, and Shea was just glad it wasn’t late enough for the dew to have fallen — the grass seemed to drag at him badly enough as it was. He was really tired!
Charya put two fingers in his mouth, for all the world like an American schoolboy, and blew a whistle that Shea could have sworn must have blasted the feathers off every sleeping bird in the forest — but the only one that answered was an owl, who was very unlikely to have been sleeping. Charya shrieked back at it; Shea and Chalmers both jumped, but a voice near them murmured, “Be not afrighted; he imitates the jackal’s cry — and very well, too.”
Shea looked up, startled, and saw that Rajah Randhir had come up just behind them. He wasn’t looking at them, though, but at Charya, and very keenly, too.
Half a dozen silhouettes rose from the long grass about them.
Shea couldn’t help a start of apprehension, and for a minute, he thought he was seeing ghosts — anything could happen in a magical universe, after all — but he recovered from his surprise, and realized they were just men, though big ones, and armed to the teeth — literally; one of them was biting his spare knife, his hands being full with sword and shield. But he took the knife out without letting go of the shield — nice trick, that — and demanded, “What do we offer when Kali demands tribute?”
“A melon,” Charya replied.
Chalmers stared, but behind them, Rajah Randhir hissed, “Ah! The password!”
It must have been, for the guard challenged again, “Then where is your melon?”
Charya tapped the side of his head.
The guard bowed. “Proceed, my captain.” He stepped back, and the guards sank down into the grass again as smoothly as though they were sinking into the earth itself.
“They are cautious indeed
,” Randhir breathed.
“Yes, if they’re going to check the password even with the captain himself,” Shea agreed.
“They aren’t really Thuggee. are they?” Chalmers asked nervously.
“Worshippers of Kali, who offer her human lives?” Randhir shook his head ever so slightly. “I think not. They are thieves, and though they may murder, it is only to gain the gold in their victims’ purses. No, they worship Kartikeya.”
Shea hoped he was right.
“You know a surprising amount, for foreigners,” Randhir said, eyeing Chalmers narrowly — but the psychologist was saved from a reply because, just then, they passed in among the trees, and Randhir had to turn to chop secretly into the bark of a tree as they passed. The action triggered realization in Shea — the rajah was blazing his path! His constant scrutiny of his surroundings wasn’t shiftiness or fear — he was memorizing landmarks! He was planning to escape, then come back with an army!
They walked for another ten minutes then the trail opened out into a large clearing, but the light of the moon was blocked by a huge sheet of rook that reared up at the far side of the glade like a butte in the desert — or like a painter’s canvas, because the bottom ten feet or so were decorated with vermilion handprints. Shea wondered what they signified, but the psychologist in him decided he didn’t want to know.
Charya walked up to it and bowed low, then knelt and pulled up a tuft of grass. He beckoned, saying, “Come, new boy! Aid me here!”
Shea started to step forward, but Rajah Randhir brushed past him and stooped to help the robber captain. They heaved, and Shea saw they were both holding on to an iron ring.
“Replace your divots,” Chalmers muttered.
As they heaved, a trapdoor opened in the ground. A shaft of light poured out, and a hubbub of voices drowned the night noises. Some of the voices were shouting, some singing loudly and off-key, and beneath them, Shea definitely heard the clink of glasses. Some of the voices, he was quite sure, were female.
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