"Of an owl?" one of the guests asked in bemusement.
"They had little reason to fear me. The sthaga don't fail once they close in for a kill. But they live in dread of their goddess's omens—and the soft cry of an owl is the darkest of all. Not that they're stupid. They don't let victims free to prattle; they can't afford it. They'd have talked themselves out of worrying about hell itself if I'd given 'em the time." He shrugged and smiled. "So I said it meant I was to join their band."
Yes…Olympia well remembered his account of the secret society of stranglers who murdered for Kali, the goddess of destruction. She'd listened in horror to all he'd learned of their ways in the year he'd spent with Feringheea, wandering lost in the vast Indian plains and jungles, driven by their omens from one place to another in search of victims to befriend and kill, forced to play a character in their deceptions—always a just-recovered Englishman accompanying the party for protection in order to encourage other travelers to trust them.
He'd had to pretend he was fully one of them, wishing to participate in all the rituals and training. But they were always suspicious. He was watched so closely he was unable to leave or betray the band, never knew when he lay down if he would be strangled in his sleep, until finally he escaped and managed to reach an English magistrate. When he'd testified against the gang, the magistrate and everyone else had called him overwrought from his illness and ordeals—no one would believe him, or admit that they did—and Feringheea and his followers had gone free to murder again.
And she remembered, too, the question neither she nor any of the other listeners had found the nerve to ask—whether he had passed his apprenticeship in that year and used the yellow rumal himself. Of course, she was sure he hadn't, so there was no need to ask. Or for him to tell…which he did not.
He merely drew a vivid picture of the thugs' superstition-ruled life and laws. They must never kill a woman; they must bury their victims with proper rituals and never allow a drop of blood to touch the ground. He translated the haunting words of the hymn to terrible blood-drinking Kali: "Because You love the Burning-Ground, I have made a burning-ground of my heart—that You, the Dark One, may haunt it in eternal dance…"
He explained some of the signals: bajeed meant all was well, and was the order to strangle, just as tombako ka lo, bring tobacco, was also a signal to murder as the befriended travelers sat singing around the fire. Sir Sheridan, with his placid account, had everyone starting at shadows before the evening was over.
Now, in the island night, Olympia was equally nervous. She had a difficult time keeping herself from pressing up against Sir Sheridan in a most craven fashion.
"Really," he said mildly, loosening her taut fingers on his arm again. "I'm sorry I even mentioned it. I had no idea you'd be overset. I told you that they swore to avenge themselves if I escaped and betrayed them, but it's been ten years, after all, and half a world away. I've heard that fellow Sleeman's nearly wiped them out in India anyway. I imagine the signs are a coincidence."
"Oh, yes," she said. "No doubt."
He looked down at her as they walked, smiling. "You aren't convinced. But think—how could they have found me?"
"They might have followed us from Wisbeach."
He chuckled. "How? On the same two ships? I think I would have noticed."
"You said that they're masters of disguise."
"They aren't that good. They never take off their turbans, for one thing. They might be inconspicuous in Bengal, but I'm afraid they'd have stood out a bit in a milliner's ship in Ramsgate."
It did begin to seem unlikely there were thugs about, what with ten years and turbans. Olympia relaxed her grip a little.
"Good girl," he said. "I shouldn't have brought up such nonsense. Here's our naval escort to greet us in style."
Sheridan sat at table in Terrier's cabin, feeling rather like a piece of worn leather, poorly kept and getting stiff at the joints in comparison to these two fair flowers of youthful fanaticism.
Captain Fitzhugh was hardly older than Princess Olympia herself—not a complete fool but managing to conceal the fact, torn between the dignity of his first command and eagerness to impress Captain Sir Sheridan Drake and his sister. He talked too loud and gave his opinion on every possible subject. His only redeeming quality was a modicum of sense: his opinions weren't hopelessly stupid as long as he kept off religion, which he generally didn't. But even Sheridan would admit he was a good sailor and an exacting hydrographer, attributes to be earnestly respected in all circumstances. Well, in all circumstances except court-martial over running one of His Majesty's precious ships aground, in which case an inaccurate navigational chart was a convenient document to possess. Sheridan had always kept several on hand.
With Olympia, Fitzhugh was painfully polite. The color beneath his freckles heightened and he looked quickly away every time she caught his eye. He'd even ordered some poor naturalist away from his dinner in the wardroom to come up and wax poetic over the geological rarity of the heliotrope sapphire at her throat. Judging from the prevailing symptoms, Sheridan had an idea that Captain Fitzhugh actually cherished a notion of becoming his brother-in-law. It seemed deplorably apparent that the fellow had not truly called four separate times and invited Sheridan to dinner just to bask in the light of his charming company—even if he was a hero.
Young pup. Sheridan looked around the plush cabin, fitted out in accordance with Fitzhugh's wealthy background, and indulged in a bit of cordial scorn. He inspected the crystal goblet, hoping to find a chip in lieu of something really sordid, like weevils in the wine or a great-uncle hung for treason and sodomy. He wished he could inform the pink-cheeked, ink-stained upstart captain that there'd be no princess in his marriage bed, in spite of the fact that he'd read all those radical French rabble-rousers she was always prosing on about.
But of course she could get herself leg-shackled to Fitzhugh if she cared to. It would make no difference to Sheridan what the devil she did, thank the gods, once she was off his hands. He knew Fitzhugh's sort, the poor, dull dog, all sermons and chivalry and righteous beds of roses with the ladies. He'd never be bright enough to take improper advantage of her. Really, it was a wonder the human race managed to reproduce itself.
Sheridan watched the two of them talking shyly together in the lamplight, and felt old. His left knee ached. It seemed early days for rheumatism—he was only thirty-six, for God's sake. Then the thought occurred to him that he couldn't be thirty-six, that it was late January…the twentieth, the twenty-first? The twenty-first of January, 1828…and a frowning calculation informed him that he wasn't thirty-six, or even thirty-seven. His birthday had been yesterday. He was thirty-eight.
Old.
"I'll never forget that," Fitzhugh was saying. He suddenly looked toward Sheridan with an expectant expression. "Nor you, sir, I daresay."
Sheridan put down his glass. "Quite a skirmish," he said vaguely, having no idea what Fitzhugh was talking about.
"It was in '22," Fitzhugh said to Princess Olympia. "I was a midshipman of the foretop."
Naturally Fitzhugh would remember his precise station. Sheridan had to count backward underneath his napkin to figure out which ship he'd been commanding.
"Dear old Repulse," Fitzhugh said, supplying the answer with a faraway sigh. "How long ago it seems," he added, as if 1822 had taken place a few decades before the Deluge.
"Six years," Sheridan said peevishly. "And she leaked like the devil on the starboard side."
Fitzhugh turned to Olympia with a confiding air of amusement that made Sheridan want to growl. "Your brother, Miss Drake, never took command of a ship but that the whole of the navy started to call her the Glee Club. We had to sing madrigals and tie off our reef points at the same time."
Sheridan steepled his hands and looked through them at his young host. "Perhaps you should have requested a more dignified berth."
"Never," Fitzhugh declared with unexpected fierceness. "I was proud to serve aboard Repulse. I know
why you insisted on it—if we knew our drill well enough to perform those horrendous tangled melodies at the same time, we knew it well enough to keep our heads in a crisis. We could outsail and outmaneuver anything afloat. Under your command, she was the most disciplined fighting ship I ever saw."
Not that you've seen such a bloody lot of 'em, Sheridan thought. Laying it on a bit thick, old man.
But the princess swallowed it whole, of course, gazing at Sheridan with an enraptured expression. With his calculated campaign of romance, he had her so infatuated with him that she'd probably eat grass if he informed her she was a sheep.
She'd choke on the diet soon enough, he reckoned. She'd marry Fitzhugh or be off home where she belonged with her little sheep's tail between her legs. The best thing for everyone, including himself. The best thing by far, and no reason to get so damned depressed about it, just because he'd gotten old without noticing and hadn't been able to work in a decent farewell tumble with her before he cut line.
He glanced at the chronometer mounted behind Fitzhugh's head and judged it time to take their leave. He said so, and then waited with concealed impatience through Princess Olympia's expression of thanks to their host. She was being overly profuse, he thought; Fitzhugh was young, but hardly all that handsome.
He wasn't even a knight.
The pipes shrilled a salute as they left the deck: a nice courtesy for a retired officer. Sheridan raised his hand and touched his hat, back in charity with Fitzhugh for the gesture. Onshore, he smiled down at his princess and suggested that they walk along the quay a bit before calling for the palanquin.
He felt a small twinge at her bashfully eager reaction to the proposal. She was such a willing dupe—the devil himself would feel an instant of remorse. It was a suitably dark night, he'd made certain of that when laying his plans. The quay was lit only by reflections off the water. The soft illumination made her look exceptionally pretty, with her shining eyes and tremulous smile still aglow in the aftermath of Fitzhugh's admiration. The damned fellow had practically drooled on her, always leaning over in that innocent-confiding way of his to look down her dress when he spoke to her. Maybe he wasn't such a slow-top as he let on. In the cool breeze her ripe, sturdy body was warm and provocative, close enough to brush Sheridan's coat front.
"Perhaps you should take off the sapphire and let me carry it," he suggested. "What a damper it would be for you to lose it out here in the dark."
"That would be vexing, wouldn't it?" She stood still while he unclasped the chain and slipped it beneath his coat. "You think of everything."
"Everything," he said, and hoped to hell he had.
He took her arm and began to walk, humming an old country air and thinking depraved thoughts as they strolled along the silent waterfront. Her fingers moved softly on his sleeve. By degrees, she pressed a little closer to him. Sheridan smiled. He allowed his arm to slip around her waist.
"I like to hear you sing," she said suddenly, keeping her face down.
His step broke for a half instant. He looked down at the top of her head in surprise. "Sing?"
"At night, when you leave your terrace door open."
He cleared his throat uneasily. He hadn't thought it was loud enough for her to hear. "I didn't mean to disturb anyone."
"It doesn't disturb me. I think it's lovely. I lie in bed and listen until I fall asleep."
That image conjured the most peculiar sensation of lust and self-consciousness in him. He nodded at a pair of passersby, the two Jewish men who'd boarded the ship with them at Ramsgate. In the moonless dark, their faces were nothing but dim, pale shapes beneath the broad hats. "'Greensleeves' is my favorite," she murmured. They had reached the end of the quay. Sheridan stopped. No one in his entire life had ever told him that they cared to hear him sing.
She looked up into his face. "Will you sing it for me?"
He just stood there, feeling incredibly awkward, as if he'd just been caught cheating at a penny-point card game. As if part of his heart were on the pavement between their feet.
"Well," he mumbled.
She nestled her cheek into his shoulder, a shy, quick move. In her soft husky voice she began to sing—not entirely on key.
Sheridan closed his eyes. This would bring back his bad dreams, damn it; this kind of thing always did. Why did she have to do it? Curse her, curse her—the little rough quaver of notes, half muffled in his coat, wrenched at him in a way that was preposterous. She turned toward him, sliding her fingers through his.
He swallowed. Really, it was too much; her droning would curdle milk. She ought to be muzzled.
In a whisper he let his voice follow hers. Just to drown her out. But the music caught him up as it always did; he found his own pitch amid her wanderings, and heard her leave off as he sang in quiet notes, with his arms around her, lost in the slow, gentle rhythm of the old, old song.
"Alas, my love, you do me wrong
To cast me off discourteously…"
He hummed another verse, swaying her softly with his forehead pressed to hers. Then he lifted her chin and kissed her, carrying the last hushed note deep in his throat. From the corner of his eye he could see dim figures drifting toward them.
He held her, once and hard, and let her go. He stepped back, creating a necessary distance.
Olympia gazed up at him. She could barely see his face, but it seemed to her he had a strange expression: ardent and chagrined at once—like a sulky, uncertain angel glowering faintly at her from the shadows, bestower of a forbidden miracle and wary of the response.
As she started to smile, the night burst into chaos.
Nine
* * *
The dark coalesced into something alive, moving fast and brutally. Olympia's scream choked to a squeak, killed by a gag rammed into her mouth as Sheridan's face vanished. She heard his startled grunt, but everything seemed to have gone murky in front of her, blocked by something blacker than the night itself. A merciless grip on her hands held her paralyzed, then just as suddenly let her go. She fell sideways under a hard push, hit the pavement and gasped for wind through the gag and the jolt of pain.
The sounds of scuffle filled the darkness. "Wait," Sheridan exclaimed amid the confusion. Something pale and narrow flashed, catching the dim light. "What the dev—"
His voice ceased in a gargle of sound.
Sthaga.
A shot of terror sent her upright, half strangled by the gag. She lunged toward the sound of Sheridan and the shapeless nightmare attackers, throwing all her weight into the assault. Her hands met rough wool and sent the body beneath it reeling. For an instant she saw Sheridan's face in the shadow, twisted with wild emotion. He whirled, his arm outstretched, his shoulder taking all of them down in a bruising tangle.
Olympia landed on one of the thugs. A gasp whooshed out of him and his black headgear rolled away to reveal a turban and a familiar bearded face. She sobbed for air through the gag, trying to grab at his slithering shape beneath her. But something lifted her bodily from behind, hauling her aside. Sheridan dropped her as if she were a puppy and threw himself after the assassin.
He missed. She heard him hit the pavement and swear at the darkness. "Bloody—bunglers!" He panted hoarsely. His boots scraped on the stone quay and his shape rose above her. "By God—those jokers were trying to kill me!"
Olympia squeaked behind her gag and managed to rise to her knees. She stumbled into him and leaned against his leg, wilting with shock and suffocation.
His hand went around her head. He hissed, and she felt him drop down beside her. "Bastards!" He tore at the gag. "Those stupid bastards! I didn't—I never meant—" He bit off the words and pulled the gag free. "Hell. Jesus Christ. Are you all right?"
She gulped in air. "It was the—Jewish men!" Her voice came out a pathetic little whistle. "Not Jewish—I mean—the disguise—on the ship—you know!"
His hands froze on her shoulders. He looked down at her, and back into the darkness where their attackers had fle
d. "Jewish?"
"No…no. Disguised…their—hats! They were—on the ship—and tonight…on the dock. They've been following you!"
He ran his hand through his hair. "On the ship? That's impossible."
"Their hats!" she insisted. "I fell on one, and his hat came—off." She drew a desperate breath. "He had on a turban!"
Sheridan looked at her sharply. In the very faint light, she could see his expression change as understanding dawned on him. "Oh, God," he groaned, and felt his throat. "Who'd have thought it?"
"You saw the—signs." She still didn't have her breath back. "We should have—taken them more—seriously. Come on, I think we should go instantly—"
A new voice, heavily accented, interrupted her. "Trouble, senhor?" There were footsteps coming toward them from the dark. "You need help?" Sir Sheridan stiffened as if someone had struck him. For a long instant he stared in the direction of the sound.
"Senhor?" It was a second voice. "We see you and the senhora go this direction. It is not safe."
Olympia turned. The newcomers were close, but still almost lost in the darkness. She thought there were several, from the sound of their boots.
Sheridan brushed his palm across her hair. "Here's help," he said. "Just sit and rest, and I'll have them bring the palanquin."
He rose and moved away before she could protest, his dark outline blurring into the night with the others.
"Bajeed," one of the new strangers said in a conversational tone. "Tombako ka lo."