The Serpent's Shadow

Ganesh, and there were many candles burning among the plants. She settled into her usual chair; he sat cross- legged on the floor. She felt a little uncomfortable, looming above his head on her ersatz throne, but there was no way she could join him on a floor cushion, not in her confining Western clothing and corsets.

She waited for him to speak in his own time. There was no point in trying to hurry him, for he would not be hurried. He didn't force her to wait very long, however, just long enough for him to gather his thoughts and begin, as a storyteller would.

'There were, on a time, two sisters,' he said gravely. 'Both were beautiful, both were gifted with more than the common measure of the power to speak and act with the Unseen. The younger, who wept not at all at her birth and had eyes that hinted of hidden things, was named Shivani. The elder, who laughed at her birth and had dancing sparks of happiness in her eyes, they called Surya, the Fire.'

'My mother?' Maya asked, with a feeling that something solid had dropped from beneath her, leaving her dangling in midair. She clutched the arms of her chair and breathed in the incense, a tightness in her chest. 'My mother has a sister? But what happened to her?'

Why was I never told? Why did I never see her? How could she have deserted Mother if she was Mother's twin?

Gupta nodded. 'As sisters should, they loved one another, despite such different natures. Your mother chose to study the powers of the day, her sister studied those of the night, as all expected, and still, despite that they now saw so little of one another, they were as sisters should be. But as time passed, Shivani withdrew into herself, kept her own counsel, and went ever more often to a certain temple and sect of the goddess Kali. At length, she treated Surya as she would a stranger, and your mother gathered about her these seven friends, to ease her loneliness.'

Here Gupta waved his hand around the conservatory, where all seven of Maya's pets, some warring against their own need for slumber, sat watching her, wide-eyed.

'Still, there was no thought of enmity between them—until your mother met Sahib Witherspoon, your father.' Gupta shook his gray head, with an ironic smile. 'He had come to the temple where she served—came humbly, and not as the arrogant sahib of the all-wise English—to ask of the ways of our healing. He would learn, so he said. And he 'did learn; I was there, and I saw it all. He learned—and so did your mother. She taught healing, and she learned to love.'

'So did he,' Maya whispered softly, knowing how very much her father had loved her mother.

Gupta's nostrils flared. 'Did I say he did not?' he demanded with annoyance. 'But he was not my concern. She was my concern; I was her appointed guardian. I cared not what some English sahib felt or thought or did or did not do—not then—not then—'

He sighed deeply. 'I was more than appointed guardian; I was your mother's friend. Never did she treat me as a servant, often did she confide to me her inmost thoughts. So she told me of her love, and of his. Then I feared for her, tried to dissuade her. Yet she would not be moved, and implored my help in convincing her father to allow a marriage.' He shook his head. 'Impossible, of course. There were hard words, then threats, then Surya was locked away. And it was my hand, my hand, that set her free, to fly to your father and make the marriage of his people.' He smiled with great irony. 'She did not go dowerless; she took what was hers by right, the gems and jewelry that formed her marriage portion, her seven friends, and her power. But it was for none of these that Sahib Witherspoon welcomed her into his arms and heart— I had seen that he would have her were she the lowest Untouchable. I, too, loved Surya as a daughter and a friend, and that was why it was my hand that turned the key in the lock that night.'

Although much of this was new information, it was nothing she hadn't already guessed, and Gupta had yet to reveal what he had seen that led to this confession. 'So her family cast her off,' Maya prompted.

'As you know. What you do not know is that Shivani, her sister, was wild with anger. That Shivani, her sister, withdrew from her family into the heart of that temple of Kali. And that Shivani, her sister, vowed that neither the blood she shared with Surya, nor the power that Surya possessed, would remain in the barbarian hands of an unclean English sahib.'

The way that he said this, the tone of his voice, made Maya's blood run cold. 'What did she do?' Maya whispered, not certain she wished to know.

'First, she sent a man who had been as trusted by Surya as I in her father's household. She sent him with death in his heart and a blade in his hand.' Gupta's eyes flashed in the darkness of his face, and he sat a little taller. 'It was I who caught him in the garden, warned of his presence and his intention by Charan. It was I who spoke to him there in the shadows, as warrior to warrior and man to man, beneath the shelter of the drooping jasmine.'

Maya closed her eyes for a moment; it was so easy to picture what had happened, there in her father's garden that near-fatal night. She knew the jasmine that Gupta spoke of; she pictured a shadowy figure concealed by the fragrant boughs, and Gupta (younger, of course) whispering urgently to the half-seen assassin, with Charan in the tree above, cluttering angrily to himself.

'I spoke of the anger of the English should he slay the wife of an officer; of the good heart of Sahib Witherspoon, who healed all who came to him. I then spoke words that were less honest; of the fickle nature of women, the jealousy of a sister who had not won for herself a husband of any sort, of the foolishness of the female nature.' Gupta shrugged as she raised an eyebrow at him. 'I used the weapons that came into my hand, and I did not scruple that some were base. I fought for my lady's life that night, and I would have said any thing that won the day.'

'And it is better to fight with words than knives,' Maya replied. 'You are wise as well as warrior, my friend. In