The Game

continent, but it would do for the moment. Holmes blew out the candle, and we slipped away into the city.

Chapter Nine

For two days, we camped in a tiny room in the back of a spice- seller’s in a small bazaar to the south of Delhi. The warring fragrances were a mixed blessing, becoming at times so powerful as to make one dizzy, but even when sealed up for the night they succeeded in overriding the less appealing odours of our surroundings.

I should say, rather, that I camped there, for Holmes spent the entire first day scavenging through the city for what we should need; on the second day, he abandoned the shack well before dawn, leaving me with a jug of a particularly disgusting and considerably more permanent skin dye. He was away until the afternoon, and returned to find me black of hair and brown of skin, to say nothing of bored to tears. He rapped on the sheet of metal that was the door, and I removed the prop to let him in.

I had to admit, Holmes dressed down better than I did. Apart from being far too tall, he was every inch a native labourer, and even his height he could disguise by rearranging his spine to drop a full six inches. He set a frayed flour sack onto the dirt floor and dropped to his heels by my side, pulling a dripping leaf-wrapped parcel from his breast and laying a slab of fried puri on top. I eagerly peeled back the leaf and mashed the rice and lentils into manageable little balls, a technique I had perfected in Palestine.

“Did you get everything you needed?” I asked around a mouthful.

Holmes chuckled. “Nesbit nearly rode me down. It would appear that beggars are not welcome along the British rides, and he sits a high-strung horse. But yes, his sources are better than my own, and even if the wrong person hears of his purchases, little will be thought of it—the man is forever acquiring odd objects for his own purposes.”

Most of what Holmes required for the next stage in our campaign he had found in the bazaars, but it would appear that revolvers were not generally available on the open market, and to ingratiate himself into the underworld of Delhi in pursuit of firearms would have taken time. So he had set off that morning with the intention of asking Nesbit for one, and had clearly returned successful. I swallowed the last of the rice, scrubbed the inside of the banana leaf with the stub of bread, and pulled the flour sack over to see what he had found.

I raised my eyebrow at the revolver. It was a pretty thing—almost ridiculously pretty, with mother-of-pearl inlay on the grip and a curlicue of flowers up the barrel. Was this Nesbit’s idea of a lady’s gun, or his idea of a joke? Remembering the quiet amusement in his eyes, I thought it might be both.

“He assures me it is more authoritative than it appears,” Holmes said, answering my dubious look. “And it takes .450 bullets, which are readily available. I should think it all right.”

I balanced it in my hand, feeling its weight—it was indeed more substantial than it looked. When I cracked it to look at the chambers, I found its mechanism smooth, the surfaces well cared for, so I shrugged and laid it by my side: I have no objection to decoration, if it does not interfere with function.

Further in the sack I uncovered a change of raiment—and, more important, a change in identity. This was the garb of a Moslem, instead of the Hindu clothes I wore now, subtly different to English eyes but a clear statement to natives. The itinerant trader in northern India is more often a Mussalman than a Hindu, and that identity possessed the singular advantage that I was already able to recite all the important prayers and a good portion of the Koran in near-flawless Arabic. As Moslems moving through a mixed countryside, we would be both apart and identifiable, an ideal compromise. Best of all, Holmes had included a more satisfactory pair of native boots of some soft, thick leather. I pulled them on and stretched my toes in pleasure. I wouldn’t have put it past my husband and partner to indulge his occasionally twisted sense of humour by presenting me with an all-over chador in which to stumble the roads, but it seemed I was to be allowed my oft-assumed identity as a young male, younger brother to the identity Holmes was now assuming, although his was unrelieved black, for some reason, and he wore a Moslem cap instead of a turban like mine.

As I bound my hair tightly to my head and prepared to wrap the ten yards of light cloth over it, I mused aloud, “How long do you suppose it will be before a woman in these parts of the world won’t have to disguise herself as a man to be allowed some degree of freedom?”

“I can’t see the Pankhursts making much head-way in this country,” Holmes said absently.

“No, you’re right. Perhaps by the time this generation’s grandchildren are grown, freedom will have grown as well.”

“I shouldn’t hold my breath, Russell. Here, you’ll need to change the shape of that puggaree.”

My hands had automatically shaped the thing as if I were moving among Bedu Arabs, but Holmes tweaked it from my head and unrolled it with a snap of his wrist before demonstrating on himself. He went through the motions twice, then handed the cloth back to me and watched as I attempted to copy his motions. His had looked as if he’d worn the garment his entire life, while mine felt as if a faint breeze would send it trailing to the dust, but I told myself that the sensation would pass, and tried to move naturally while I put my new belongings into some kind of order.

“You’ll be pleased to know we have a donkey awaiting us, Russell,” Holmes said cheerfully.

“Oh Lord, not again!”

“It was mules last time.”

“And they were bad enough.”

“Better than carrying everything ourselves.”

“You can be in charge of the beast.”

“That would be most inappropriate,” he said, and curse it, he was right. If I was to be the younger partner on the road—apprentice, servant, son, what have you—then the four-legged member of our troupe would have to be my responsibility. As well as the cooking pot. Cursing under my breath, I thrust my spare garments into the cloth bag and tied my turban once again. This time it felt more secure, which improved my temper somewhat. It was never easy, partnering a man with as much experience as Holmes had—I truly detest the sensation of incompetence.

We spent the night hours practising with the equipment Holmes had conjured out of the bazaar. A set of linking rings, larger relatives of the linked silver bracelets he had bought in Aden, appeared welded in place, awaiting only the magician’s touch before the metal miraculously gave way and allowed the rings to part. A long knife that collapsed into itself at the press of a button; a light frame with a pneumatic pump to lift me in levitation; a small laboratory of lethal chemicals whose reactions would give clouds or sparks or other useful effects. And, when we were ready for it, torches wrapped for flaming, for the ever-impressive juggling of fire.

In the hour before dawn, when only the chowkidars were awake at their posts, we shouldered our cloth bags and in silence left the spice-seller’s shop. The air was still fresh, without the dust raised by a quarter of a million tramping feet, the stars still dimly visible before fifty thousand cook-fires threw their pall over the heavens. Holmes made his way as one who was intimate with the place, ducking past godowns and crossing over deserted boulevards, until the smell of livestock rose up around us and we entered a sort of livestock market, horses in one area, large pale bullocks in the other. Magnificently oblivious of the dung heaps, Holmes strode forward to a shed with a tight-shut door. He banged the side of his fist against the shed’s side, but answer came there none. He drew back his hand to hammer again, when a voice piped up from behind us, speaking Hindi.

“If you are wanting the horse-seller Ram Bachadur, he has gone away to see his mother.”

It was a child, a small person of perhaps nine or ten in Hindu dress, perched atop the low stable wall eating peanuts. Even in the half-light of early dawn it was clear that there was something curious about him, some slightly Mongolian angle to his features, so that one expected him to be slow, his natural development retarded by nature. It took but one brief exchange to begin to question the assumption.

“Do you know where he has gone?” Holmes asked, his arm still raised.

“But of course I know; how else would I have agreed to await your coming?” the boy retorted, the scorn in his voice perfectly modulated to place us a step below him. He spat a shell on the ground by way of punctuation.

Holmes lowered his hand, his head tipped to one side as he, too, re-evaluated the urchin. “Are we to take delivery of the donkey and cart from you, Young Prince?”