Jane Steele(114)

“How could you do such a thing if you truly loved Sahjara?”

“To remind them of who we really are.” Her death mask’s face tilted up, challenging. “I was wasting away, misery robbing me of flesh by the pound, and they didn’t even notice. They needed something to fight for, Miss Stone. We all did—it’s in our blood. My friend Karman was eighteen years old when she had her first Khalsa cavalry uniform tailored—we were born to fight, destined by God, and she would have despaired at seeing them so emasculated.”

This account of Karman’s uniform rang like bells; but before I could comprehend why the detail was important, I was being given my marching orders.

“Now, come here, slowly—and walk down the stairs, slowly. If you fail to do exactly as I say, this knife will be in your kidney.”

The slowly portion was easily managed, for I dreaded accompanying her. My limbs moved stiltedly, as if they belonged to Sahjara’s long-lost dolls, but my senses were keenly attuned to the familiar creak of the staircase, the velvety wood of the aged bannister. The only thing to do was to keep her talking—but I could not for my life imagine what to say to a woman who wished I had never been born.

“Why didn’t you tell them about Karman’s fortune after Sahjara was rescued?” I asked.

“At the start of another war?” she sneered from behind me.

“After that war, then?”

“In the midst of transporting an entire household across the continent?”

I stopped, hands visibly limp at my sides, and turned.

“You knew it was wrong,” said I. “You don’t want to find out what Sardar will think.”

“He stole those jewels in the first place, you fool,” she spat, but her lip trembled. “Go on, out the back door and head for the forest.”

“What are you going to do with me?”

“I haven’t decided yet. I am curious, though, how after all you have seen and discovered, that you could dream you mean me no harm.”

I stepped outside. The fresh air was like a slap across the cheek; it warned that, unless I was very fortunate, I was about to die. I would not, I had already determined, fall to my knees and allow the guillotine to fall. If this was to be the end, I would fight with tooth and claw at the edge of the woods; but before those methods were employed, I elected to try persuasion.

“We could invent a story,” I said, and it was not a lie: it was a possibility. “Do you wonder how I came to go armed?”

“No.” The tip of her knife caressed the edge of my cloak. “I was listening outside the dining room. Faster now, towards that copse.”

The woods loomed before me, the thicket from which Edwin and I had burst, all the starkly bare-limbed beeches and the forbidding pines near to the edge of the ravine, and I did not want to die where Edwin had, could not stop my skin from crawling when I felt his unmoving stare pinned to my face.

“Then you know I have faced hardship,” I insisted. “I will tell you more, something I have never deliberately told anyone: I am your equal in infamy. I have murdered—more than once. I can lie for you, only tell me what your reasons were.”

“You suppose a false confession will save you?”

This, of all strokes, was surely deliberately arranged by God to needle me.

“It isn’t fal—”

“Never mind. I will tell you anyhow what my motives were,” Garima Kaur added, and I could sense the gathering snow as the avalanche gained speed, hurtling towards the ravine. “I killed David Lavell because had he never existed, we should all be at peace. I maintained ties with John Clements because thereby I kept my finger on the pulse of the activities of Augustus Sack and Jack Ghosh. I killed John Clements because, imbecile though he was, he knew enough about my movements to grow suspicious after I forged the letter. And I forged the letter because—”

“Garima! And can that possibly be Miss Stone?”

I could have collapsed at the sound of that voice—indeed, I staggered, and Garima Kaur gasped.

We turned as one animal to see Sardar Singh. He seemed puzzled but delighted at the sight of me and said something in Punjabi to Garima Kaur, who had clearly masked the knife in the fold of her skirts upon the instant she heard him call from behind us.

She answered readily enough; but I, much closer to her, could see that her hands shook, and knew that what had previously been a perilous situation was now absolutely a deadly one.

“Miss Stone!” Mr. Singh exclaimed. “What a happy moment I seem to have chosen for a long winter’s walk. I have passed many a frank hour in Charles’s company since you departed, but had hardly hoped you would return after you sent no forwarding address. Welcome home—or so I hope you think of it.”

Garima Kaur aimed a painted puppet’s smile at him even as her eyes flooded with tears.

Not long after my mother’s death I had a nightmare I actually remembered, the screaming sort which led Taylor to single me out in the Reckoning: a creature came to the doorstep of our cottage, and I knew without seeing, as one does in dreams, that it was a rabbit, and I picked up the small animal thinking to pet its fur. Only after I had lifted it did I realise that it had already been skinned by a hunter, and begun to be butchered as well; deep knife marks were scored along the spine, and only half its head remained, as if the brains had been reserved to tan the pelt. Though it moved as if alive, nuzzling my chest, I knew it must be in unfathomable pain, and I awoke shrieking about needing to kill something because in the dream I had no proper weapon.