questioned later.
They slunk past like dogs, unable to believe he couldn’t see them. They desperately wanted to know what I’d done, how I’d done it, if they could learn to do it, too, but they dared not say a word.
I parted the tent flap an inch, saw no one on the other side. The interior was compartmented by hangings. I slipped into what must have been the audience area. It constituted the majority of the interior. It was well appointed, further evidence that Jah had put his own comfort before the welfare of his men and the safety of his homeland.
I had learned better as a child. You win more loyalty and respect if you share the hardships.
Eyes still big, Narayan gestured, reminding me of the layout as he had it from his spies. I nodded. This late Jah should be asleep. We moved toward his sleeping area. I moved the hanging with a dagger. Narayan and Sindhu got their rumels out.
I know I made no noise. I’m sure they didn’t. But as we went in Jah boiled up off his cushions, flung himself between Narayan and Sindhu, bowling them aside. He charged me. There was a lamp burning. He saw us well enough to recognize us.
Ever a fool, Jahamaraj Jah. He never yelled. He just tried to get away.
My hand dipped to the triangle of saffron at my waist, yanked, flipped. My rumel moved as if alive, snaked around his throat. I seized the flying end, yanked the loop tight, rolled my wrists and held on.
Luck, fate, or unconscious skill, none of that would have mattered had I been alone. Jah was a powerful man. He could have carried me outside. He could have shaken me off.
But Narayan and Sindhu grabbed his arms and held them extended, twisted them, forced him down. Sindhu’s bull strength counted most. Narayan concentrated on keeping Jah’s arms extended.
I got my knees into Jah’s back and concentrated on keeping him from breathing.
It takes a while for a man to strangle. The skilled strangler is supposed to move so quickly and decisively that the victim’s neck breaks and death comes instantly. I did not yet have the wrist roll perfected. So I had to hang on while Jah went the hard way. My arms and shoulders ached before he shuddered his last.
Narayan lifted me away. I was shaking with the intensity of it, the almost orgasmic elation that coursed through me. I’d never done anything like that, with my own two hands, without steel or sorcery. He grinned. He knew what I was feeling. He and Sindhu seemed unnaturally calm. Sindhu was listening, trying to judge if we’d made too much noise. It had seemed a ferocious uproar to me, there in the middle of it, but evidently we’d made less racket than I’d thought. Nobody came. Nobody asked questions.
Sindhu muttered something in cant. Narayan thought a moment, glanced at me, grinned again. He nodded.
Sindhu pawed through Jah’s clutter, looking for the ground. He cleared a small area, looked around some more.
While I watched him, trying to figure out what he was doing, Narayan produced an odd tool he’d carried under the dark robe he’d donned for the adventure. The tool had a head that was half hammer, half pick, that weighed at least two pounds. Maybe more if it was the silver and gold it appeared to be. Its handle was ebony inlaid with ivory and a few rubies that caught the lamplight and gleamed like fresh blood. He began pounding the earth with the pick side, but quietly, unrhythmically.
That wasn’t a tool that would be used that way ordinarily. I know a cult object when I see one, even if it’s unfamiliar.
Narayan broke up the earth. Sindhu used a tin pan to scoop it onto a carpet he’d turned face down, careful not to scatter any. I had no idea what they intended. They were too intent on what they were doing to explain. A litany of sorts, in cant, passed between them. I heard something about auspices and the promise of the crows, more about the Daughter of Night and those people-or whatever they were.
All I could do was keep watch.
Time passed. I had a tense few minutes when the guard changed outside. But those men had little to say to one another. The new men didn’t check inside the tent.
I heard a meaty whack and muted crunch, turned to see what they were doing now.
They’d gotten a hole dug. It was barely three feet deep and not that far across. I couldn’t guess what they meant to do with it.
They showed me.
Narayan used the hammer face of his tool to break Jah’s bones. Just as Ram had been doing with a rock that morning in that draw. He whispered, “It’s been a long time but I still have the touch.”
It’s amazing how small a bundle a big man makes once you pulverize his joints and fold him up.
They cut open Jah’s belly and deposited him in the hole. Narayan’s final stroke buried the pick in the corpse’s skull. He cleaned the tool, then they filled the hole around the remains, tamping the earth as they went. Half an hour later you couldn’t tell where they’d dug.
They put the carpets back, bundled up the excess dirt, looked at me for the first time since they’d begun.
They were surprised to find me impassive. They wanted me to be outraged or disgusted. Or something. Anything that betrayed a feminine weakness.
“I’ve seen men mutilated before.”
Narayan nodded. Maybe he was pleased. Hard to tell. “We still have to get out.”
The firelight outside betrayed the positions of the guards. They were where they were supposed to be. If my spell worked a second time we’d only need a little luck to get out unseen.
Narayan and Sindhu scattered dirt as we walked toward our camp. “Good rumel work, Mistress,” Narayan said. And something more, in cant, to Sindhu, who agreed reluctantly.
I asked, “Why did you bury him? No one will know what happened to him. I wanted him to become an object lesson.”
“Leaving him lie would have told everyone who was responsible. Innuendo is more frightening than fact. Better you’re guilty in rumor.”
Maybe. “Why did you break him up and cut him open?”
“A smaller grave is harder to find. We cut him open so he wouldn’t bloat. If you don’t they sometimes bloat so much they come up out of the ground. Or they explode and loose off enough gas so the grave can be found by the smell. Especially by jackals, who dig them up and scatter them all over.”
Practical. Logical. Obvious, once he explained it. I’d never had occasion to conceal a body before. I’d surrounded myself with very practical-and clearly very experienced-murderers.
“We have to talk soon, Narayan.”
He grinned that grin. He’d tell me some truth when he did.
We slipped back into camp and parted company.
I slept well. There were dreams but they weren’t filled with gloom and doom. In one a beautiful black woman came and held me and caressed me and called me her daughter and told me I’d done well. I wakened feeling refreshed and as vigorous as if I’d had a full night’s sleep. It was a beautiful morning. The world seemed painted in especially vivid colors.
My exercises with my talent went very well.
Chapter Nineteen
The disappearance, without trace, of the high priest Jahamaraj Jah, so trivial an opponent that I recall him only as a faded caricature of a man, stunned the thousands cluttering the region around the Ghoja ford. A whisper went around saying he had schemed against the Radisha and myself and that had sealed his fate. I wasn’t responsible for the rumor. Narayan denied having said anything to anybody. Two days after we buried Jah everybody was convinced I’d eliminated him. Nobody knew how.
They were scared.
The possibility had a big impact on Blade. I got the feeling he thought I’d gone through some rite of passage and he could now devote himself to my cause. I was pleased but had to wonder about a man so devoutly
