The Dance of Time

The last sight he would ever have in his life was of that log, whirling through the air and crushing the skull of a Roman soldier standing in its way. What made the thing a nightmare was that Calopodius could not remember the soldier's name, if he had ever known it. So it all seemed very incomplete, in a way that was too horrible for Calopodius to be able to express clearly to anyone, even himself. Grammar and rhetoric simply collapsed under the coarse reality, just as fragile human bone and brain had collapsed under hurtling wood.

The sound of his aide-de-camp clumping about in the bunker awoke him. The warm little courtesy banished the nightmare, and Calopodius returned to life with a smile.

"How does the place look?" he asked.

"It's hardly fit for a Melisseni girl. But I imagine it'll do for your wife."

"Soon, now."

"Yes." Calopodius heard Luke lay something on the small table next to the cot. From the slight rustle, he understood that it was another stack of telegrams. Private ones, addressed to him, not army business.

"Any from Anna?"

"No. Just more bills."

Calopodius laughed. "Well, whatever else, she still spends money like a Melisseni. Before she's done, that banker will be the richest man in India."

Luke said nothing in response. After a moment, Calopodius' humor faded away, replaced by simple wonder.

"Soon, now. I wonder what she'll be like?"

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Framed

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Chapter 15

Lady Damodara's palace

Kausambi

"We should go back," whispered Rajiv's little sister. Nervously, the girl's eyes ranged about the dark cellar. "It's scary down here."

Truth be told, Rajiv found the place fairly creepy himself. The little chamber was one of many they'd found in this long-unused portion of the palace's underground cellars. Rajiv found the maze-like complexity of the cellars fascinating. He could not for the life of him figure out any rhyme or reason to the ancient architectural design, if there had ever been one at all. But that same labyrinthine character of the little grottoes also made them...

Well. A little scary.

But no thirteen-year-old boy will admit as much to his seven-year-old sister. Not even a peasant boy, much less the son of Rajputana's most famous king.

"You go back if you want to," he said, lifting the oil lamp to get a better look at the archway ahead of them. He could see part of another small cellar beyond. "I want to see all of it."

"I'll get lost on my own," Mirabai whined. "And there's only one lamp."

For a moment, Rajiv hesitated. He could, after all, use his sister's fear and the lack of a second lamp as a legitimate justification for going back. No reflection on his courage.

He might have, too, except that his sister's next words irritated him.

"There are ghosts down here," she whispered. "I can hear them talking."

"Oh, don't be silly!" He took a step toward the archway.

"I can hear them," she said. Quietly, but insistently.

Rajiv started to make a sarcastic rejoinder, when he heard something. He froze, half-cocking his head to bring an ear to bear.

She was right! Rajiv could hear voices himself. No words, as such, just murmuring.

"There's more than one of them, too," his sister hissed.

Again, she was right. Rajiv could distinguish at least two separate voices. From their tone, they seemed to be having an argument of some sort.

Would ghosts argue? he wondered.

That half-frightened, half-puzzled question steadied his nerves. With the steadiness, came a more acute sense of what he was hearing.

"Those aren't ghosts," he whispered. "Those are people. Live people."

Mirabai's face was tight with fear. "What would people be doing down here?"

That was... a very good question. And the only answer that came to Rajiv was a bad one.

He thrust the lamp at his sister. "Here. Take it and go back. Then get the Mongoose and Anastasius down here, as quickly as you can. Mother too. And you'd better tell Lady Damodara."

The girl squinted at the lamp, fearfully. "I'll get lost! I don't know the way."

"Just follow the same route I took us on," Rajiv hissed. "Any time I didn't know which way to go, when there was a choice, I turned to the left. So on your way back, you turn to the right."

He reminded himself forcefully that his sister was only seven years old. In a much more kindly tone, he added: "You can do it, Mirabai. You have to do it. I think we're dealing with treachery here."