The Serpent's Shadow

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 and 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.

So, so, so. This situation had some promise. She wasn't protected all the time. 'Show me the next portion of her day,' she directed. The slave showed the girl catching the 'bus which took her deeper into the slums, to the place where her clinic lay. Shivani shook her head when the path led there. There was no hope of getting at her in that place. She had already tried to send her dacoits to the neighborhood of the clinic, hoping that among the thieves and bandits, they would be, if not invisible, at least inconspicuous. A vain hope; the thieves and bandits were fiercely territorial, the beggars acting as their eyes and ears, and the dacoits were swiftly driven out of hiding places and sent off with a pack of brats in full cry at their heels. In the teeming warrens where the girl had gone in her foolish quest to help the poor, there were no unclaimed hiding places, and any interloper was assumed to be another bandit trying to cut out a territory for himself. Shivani had not appreciated until that moment how lucky she had been to find this habitation in the quarter where the immigrant Jews had collected; there were few outright thieves here, and one set of foreigners was invisible in the midst of the hordes of villagers uprooted from places like Russia and Belarus, Slovakia and Serbia. Most here were Jews, who were incurious about any other race. Her people were no darker in complexion than some of these, nor were their accents and customs any stranger. So long as they kept to themselves, the neighbors did the same.

But in the realm of that clinic, not only did the bandits drive out anyone perceived as an interloper, they watched over the people who worked at this clinic. Even as Shivani watched, several apparent loafers moved in at the sound of a raised voice, and threw a troublemaker out into the street. No, there was no hope of coming at the girl in her own place. The people there were as fiercely loyal as her own servitors. The very footpads saw to it that she was left unmolested, curse her.

Shivani followed the girl's progress throughout her day, paying careful attention to her surroundings and the people she came into contact with. The hospital? Hopeless; there were far too many English, and not even the lowliest scrubwoman was of any other color than white. Going to and from the hospital, the girl took public conveyances. The dacoits were skilled, but not at driving English cabs, and Shivani's kind were not welcome on English 'buses. She was not going to make even the ghost of an attempt in the presence of the Man.

But the street just outside the girl's own door—now that had promise...

Once more she called upon the mirror-slave. 'I wish to see the girl's street—just the street, as it is now, and continue to show it to me as the day moves on.'

It was not the most fascinating of studies. People came and went, greeting each other, and parting. No hope of blending in among these, for they all knew each other. Children looked up with recognition at their neighbors, or with suspicion at strangers, and if the latter appeared to pause for a moment, ran into their own doors to bring out a mother or an older sister. Sellers of various items called at houses—milk floats, men with blocks of ice, vendors of vegetables and fruit, men with the bits and scraps of meat sold for feeding cats. Women with baskets of bits and pieces; lace and ribbons, needleworking tools, trinkets, apples, strawberries, cherries or pears—

Shivani felt a surge of interest. The men with the pushcarts were all young and vigorous, like her dacoits, and also like her dacoits, they were not native English. Some were Jews like those in her neighborhood, some were Irish, there was even a single Chinaman. And the women with their baskets—

Even more interesting; these were not young, and they also were not all native English—but it was difficult to tell just what nationality they were. Old women, wrinkled of face, weatherbeaten, gray or white-haired, looked very much alike. Bundled in multiple skirts and petticoats as they were, bent with age, they were shapeless, unidentifiable. And their baskets could hold anything, anything at all. A plan began to form in her mind.

But first, she would need something from the hospital after all. Or—wait. Perhaps not the hospital.

Putting the mirror down, she summoned a dacoit with a sharp double clap of her hands. One arrived within moments, abased himself at the doorway, and crawled on hands and knees to her feet.

'You have been among the English as they disport themselves in the places of pleasure?' she asked, intending to have him summon another, if he had not. 'I have, Holy One,' he replied from the floor without looking up. 'As you ordered, seeking there the items you required to make the trace for the Shadow to follow.'