“No doubt you’ve heard about this city back home,” Crosby drawled at her side.
“Once or twice.” She glanced at Partha, who kept his gaze fixed straight ahead. She cleared her throat. “It was besieged during the uprising.”
“Yes, indeed. The infamous Siege of Lucknow. After that annoying business with the Enfield rifles, the Oudh and Bengal troops broke into open rebellion. The British troops had to defend the residency here in the city for quite some time, enduring all manner of attacks until the rebels could be driven out. They even had to fight underground through months of sickness and dwindling supplies. Since then, we’ve not had a problem.” He glanced pointedly at the sepoy, who caught his look. “Disgraceful, isn’t it, Partha?”
Partha bowed his head. “A vile time for your countrymen, sahib.”
“Too right.”
Daphne remained silent. She was painfully aware of standing between these two men—two sides of a war, two sides of her birth. There was a strangeness to her skin just then, as if it weren’t actually hers. She wanted to scratch at it, see if it would flake off and reveal something truer. Something in-between, something like a mark, that would determine what to say, what to think, what she was.
In streets clogged with both people and animals, vendors hawked eggs and chickens and milk. Soldiers wearing hats or turbans meandered through the crowds, their hands on rifles and swords. They passed impressive mosques and shrines, the products of both Indian and European architecture. Urchins ran up to the tonga with palms held flat, begging for money. Daphne tried not to meet their eyes.
In a more deserted area of the city, they came upon a structure of red sandstone in what Crosby called the British quarter. Although Daphne saw laundry lines stretching between buildings and chimney smoke rising from roofs, the place felt abandoned.
Again, Crosby attempted to help her down, and again she ignored his hand. He moved his jaw like he was chewing his bad mood and pointed at the building before them. “These are our residences for the next several days. You are not to leave unless escorted by at least one soldier, and you must seek my permission first.”
She tried to mask her irritation. “Is Mr. Kapoor staying here as well?”
“Who?”
“The pilot.”
“Who knows.” Crosby waved away the question. “Though the city has undergone quite the transformation since the Mutiny, there have been incidents in the past few months. Hostility toward our soldiers, a brief altercation at a mosque, what have you. This is why you need an escort, Miss Richards. The city may look inviting, but even behind a well-adorned wall you may still find mold. Partha, take her to her rooms.”
The sepoy made to take her pack, but she shook her head. “I can carry it,” she insisted.
He blinked at her, but silently allowed her to follow him into the building. Inside, the soldiers had carelessly left their doors open. Daphne saw men arguing, laughing, eating, sleeping. They passed an open sitting area where soldiers’ wives drank tea near a balcony. A few noticed her and gave her outfit a disapproving glare.
Partha spoke to a servant in Urdu, who pointed him in the right direction. A minute later, they stopped before a red door. “This is your room, Miss Richards. Do you require anything?”
“I’m fine, thank you. I’ll just wait until the lieutenant comes.”
Inside she found a plain room with off-white walls and a chair so pouffed it looked like it was making up for the rigidness of the bed. A window faced the street, offering a view of flat rooftops. A shirtless boy crouched on one of them, whittling a block of wood as a monkey watched nearby.
Daphne stood at the window, unaware she was tapping her fingers against her thigh until she looked down. It was a habit she hadn’t fallen into for some time, but she knew what it meant.
She opened the door and peered outside, starting when she saw Partha standing guard at the door. He seemed equally startled, his brown eyes large and almost doe-like.
“Yes, Miss Richards?”
“I, um. Never mind.”
She made to draw back inside when he took a step forward. “Do you need something?”
Daphne studied his face. There was a sadness in his eyes, in the set of his mouth, that felt familiar. It reminded her of the way Danny looked when he thought he went unnoticed, when his gaze turned west, toward the boy he was missing.
“Do you … happen to have a cigarette on you?” she asked.
If he thought this was an odd request, he did a good job of hiding it. He darted a glance down the hall in both directions, then slipped a metal cigarette holder from his breast pocket. “Please do not tell anyone,” he murmured. “I’d hate to be on the receiving end of those new words you learned.”
So he’d overheard Akash teaching her swears in Hindi. Her face heated as she said, “I won’t. Thank you.”
She plucked a thinly rolled cigarette from the holder and silently handed it back to him. In the privacy of her room, she struck a match—she always carried them with her, on the off chance—and lit the end. The first inhalation made her cough, but the second was smoother and, almost at once, settled her nerves.
Daphne did not smoke often, but she’d taken it up shortly after her father’s death. Her mother had screeched about the smoke and the smell, making it a rare indulgence. But every once in a while she felt the need, like when she was stranded in an unfamiliar city, the threat of a riot or kidnapping around every corner.
By the time Crosby came to her door with supper, the sun was completely hidden beyond the horizon. She had opened the window to let the air inside, hoping it would carry away some of the lingering scent of smoke.
“We’ve been planning out an itinerary,” Crosby said. “We have all your visits to the clock tower scheduled. The first one is tomorrow morning, so mind you get some sleep.”
“Excuse me,” she said when Crosby turned to leave, “but what am I to do when I’m not at the tower?”
He looked vaguely uncomfortable, and she wondered if he had a wife, or even sisters. Her guess was probably not. Female company seemed a foreign concept to him.
“You’ll be here, I imagine.”
“Does that mean I’m confined to my quarters?”
“You may certainly leave with an escort if you wish, but as I said before, you must inform me first.” At her frown, his voice grew colder. “Is that clear, Miss Richards?”
“Yes.”
He left her to a lonely meal of rice, beans, and some potato dish in a brown broth. She only picked at it. Her mind was back on the Silver Hawk with Akash, in that open space between earth and sky where she didn’t have to hide.