The rickshaw was stuck in a chaotic snarl of traffic alongside a motorbike with an entire family piled on top, and a cart being pulled by what I could swear were water buffalo, horns painted orange and blue and jingling bells on their collars.
Streetlights showed that there were almost as many colors on these streets as there were people. A salmon doorway in a turquoise wall. Blue buses with a yellow stripe, matching the yellow taxis. One bus had a display of birds painted across its side, and the words Please honk were scrawled across the backs of any large automobiles. The drivers behind them took the request to heart.
“I feel like I’m hallucinating,” I whispered.
“This country can do that.” Jack was staring out his side, too, where a wizened old man cooked up chunks of potato by flashlight in a metal wok as wide as the sidewalk, then handed them out to customers in makeshift newspaper bowls.
We were already late and the traffic was bad, so Jack asked the driver to stop. Just like at the palace, the air here had a scent, but this one wasn’t so nice. We rounded a corner and found three goats eating from a pile of garbage, one wearing a My Little Pony T-shirt around its scrawny rib cage. It butted its head against my bag gently as we walked by, and I shrank against the opposite wall, but they let us pass, and we hurried on. Stellan would be wondering where we were.
The square where we were meeting him was wide and open, and we had to dodge a nighttime flower market to get there. Sari-clad ladies with gold hoops sparkling in their ears squatted on their haunches and strung heaps of bright orange and yellow marigolds into garlands like the ones I’d worn earlier, calling to us as we passed and holding up their wares. Behind them, toddlers climbed on a pile of abandoned cardboard boxes. One little boy looked up at us, and I did a double take. “Is that baby wearing makeup?” I said. He couldn’t have been more than two, and he had kohl liner thicker than mine rimming his eyes.
“It’s common here,” Jack said. “Superstition.”
I took a deep breath. “Where are we meeting Stellan?”
Jack pointed across the square, and I saw him immediately. Unlike us, Stellan was making no effort to disguise himself.
He was leaning against a light post and studying his phone, his worn leather jacket open to expose a black T-shirt, his blond hair glowing in the streetlight above. If pale skin drew looks here, blond hair caused downright gawking. Sure enough, a crowd had gathered a few yards from Stellan, but he appeared unconcerned. When he saw us, he stashed the phone in a pocket. “You didn’t leave me to fend for myself after all.”
“Couldn’t you have put on a hat?” Jack said. The men were now staring at all three of us, whispering to one another. Great.
Stellan smirked and waved to the crowd. “You mean I’m not allowed to enjoy the hundred-percent humidity in my own clothes?”
“No.” I grabbed his arm and pulled him out of the circle of admirers and toward the street.
“If you’ll remember, some of us don’t have the luxury of traipsing about without a care,” Jack said shortly.
“No, some of us have to invent excuses to follow you two around the world.” After the Circle learned about the Saxons’ plan to marry me off to any family but the Dauphins, Stellan told his employers that he would follow us and report back. “Monsieur Dauphin was happy to let me go if it meant spying on you, but it’s not going to be easy to lie to Elodie and Luc.”
Luc and Stellan and Elodie had a strange relationship—it was as if they were a combination of siblings and best friends. Not what you’d expect to see between Circle family and staff. “You’ll figure something out,” I said.
We made our way across the street to the Indian Museum. It was dark and quiet, with a few stray dogs sleeping on its front stoop.
“So you think the other bracelet could be here?” Stellan said, looking up at the looming facade.
“This museum was built in 1814,” I said. “The right time for Napoleon to slip something into their collection. Plus, it’s in a Circle city, and it looks like there are Alexander artifacts in this collection.”
Stellan lit a cigarette. “Have either of you been to this museum?”
Jack shook his head, and obviously I hadn’t.
“I have been here. This collection is curated, but it’s a very haphazard job. If the bracelet was ever here, it might be in the same spot as it was in the eighteen hundreds, or it might have gotten tossed in a cardboard box in the basement, or walked right out of the museum on someone’s arm . . .”