“I’m also a friend,” I call out. “I’m here for Peter.”
“Odd,” replies the voice. “Considering our shared friend is so much the worse for wear. What have you done to him?”
Through the brass ring, the room looks exactly the same so far.
“I shot him.”
A chuckle floats down from somewhere. “You are truthful, at least.”
Then I spot the man.
Walking toward the railing, I see he is sitting up high on the wooden catwalk that rings the entire room. Below him, the rows of disembodied arms, legs, and feet hang from the railing like macabre sausages. The man is round, older, his head shaved bald. Wearing a light brown monk’s robe, he sits with his bare legs dangling over the side, like a kid. On his feet are a pair of incongruous high-top basketball sneakers, bright white.
“Ah,” he says, smiling at me. “You have Peter’s toys.”
Click. Click. The robot’s feet scratch the floor as it moves closer.
The metal door behind me has locked. I have no place to run.
“You must be strong to be here,” says the man. “Now let us find out how strong.”
And he leaps off the catwalk.
26
INDIA, 1751
With the call of pravda beating in my ears, I seek battle in the name of my adopted sovereign, King George II—and I quickly find it. Established on the Thames, the frigates of John Company, otherwise known as the Honorable East India Company, are systematically deploying wave after wave of young soldiers to the shores of India.
Few questions are asked of new recruits.
A year later, I am perched in the winding parapets of a hastily fortified garrison, watching the sun ease itself over the low crooked buildings of a town in eastern India. The fragrant breeze washing up from the nearby river smells of lilac and mud. No water is visible from here, just heavy, vein-laced palm fronds that rustle gently. Frogs have begun their nightly mating songs, loud and hidden.
This meandering wall is all that defends a motley collection of damaged buildings and a hundred or so remaining British soldiers, nestled together in the heart of an occupied town called Arcot.
Wrapped in soiled white lengths of cotton, turbaned soldiers have swarmed the outer city, pikes and antique muskets bristling from their positions like river reeds. Among the broken faces of plaster buildings, shadow-drenched snipers lie waiting. I can feel their unseen eyes in the city, watching. The enemy army serves the Nawab of the Carnatic, Chanda Sahib. Draped over their weapons, the brown-skinned troopers seem unaffected by the heavy, alien heat that scours the land.
With the blade of my dagger, I carve another line into the stucco wall beside my position. One of our few cannons was placed here early on, promptly destroyed by enemy artillery, leaving only this crooked crow’s nest.
The visible light blushes to crimson, then fades away entirely with dusk, leaving the walls glowing gently in my eyes, radiating the accumulated heat of the day into a warm darkness. Each line in the stucco gleams like a pale scar. Fifty-one marks, representing the days John Company has been held under siege.
A proud man, the sahib threw his lot in with the French after some slight to his honor. As our captain took the men of the Bengal Army west from Bombay, the nawab laid siege to us here.
My khanjali was already old when I claimed it from Peter the Great’s armory nearly fifty years ago. Now the dagger has earned me a nickname. My English comrades simply call me the Russian. With no need for my whiskey or tobacco rations, I leveraged my share of supplies to earn allies among the troopers and quash any suspicions. Although nobody regards me with particular fondness, at least I am afforded respect.
Or I was, when my comrades were still living.
The last battle took place weeks ago, and since then our numbers have dwindled. Survivors have grown gaunt and wasted. Still wearing their once proud uniforms, the boys look like scarecrows stuffed into the clothes of other men. Although water is plentiful, there is precious little food.
The tedious expanse of time between fights has afforded me too much opportunity for contemplation. As streaks of starlight wink down at the parapets, my thoughts wander the contours of my Word.
Being here in service to my adopted monarch should have quelled the burning of pravda in my heart, but it has only cooled it to hateful ashes. Things were never so simple as they were in Favorini’s workshop. I fight and live with a thorn buried in my side, always staggering toward the illusion of true purpose.
The sun has gone, and it is time for my nightly foray. I sheathe my dagger and leave my flintlock musket leaning against the wall, my red coat draped over it. Donning a black riding cape over a loose cotton shirt, I kneel beside the edge of the parapet. The evening breeze is picking up, kissed with river scent, pushing the cape over my shoulder.
Under my gaze, the dark city animates, alive with the residual heat of the day, simmering camp smoke, and the furtive movements of troops.
I slide over the edge of the wall and drop to the outer street, boots scraping the rubble. Palms slicing the air, I pump my arms and dash across the starlit gravel of the no-man’s-land surrounding the garrison.
No rifle shots crack in the night.
Pressing my back against the remains of a building, I pause and listen. Out here, among the moon shadows of the outer city, my dagger has earned me a different nickname. Night after night, I am the thing that prowls the alleys. I take soldiers, one by one, each fatality adding to a mounting terror.
In hushed whispers, the nawab’s men call me the man-eater of the Carnatic.
The enemy sepoys—Indian soldiers allied with the French—have begun to sleep closer to their campfires and in larger groups. Their European commanders have claimed the houses, barricading their doors against the night, deaf to the occasional panicked screams of their native allies. The legend of the man-eater has grown quickly and taken a firm hold in the minds of the locals—in their whispered tales the man-eater is an evil ghost, as tall as an ashoka tree, who transforms into a prowling tiger every night to savage the unwary.
The wounds inflicted by my dagger are a near-enough approximation of tiger bites. And with the mind of a man, I can fan the flames of horror. Creeping beside an abandoned building, I pause when I smell smoke from a nearby campfire. Quiet murmurs and the soldiers’ perfume permeates the newborn evening.
This night will yield many lives to me, and in the gray morning I will place armfuls of food in a place where my besieged companions will find it—perhaps the only sustenance that keeps our hundred souls alive.
Blade drawn, I stalk toward the sounds and smells.
Hours swim past in the murky night, until the chilly scent of dew stings my nostrils and I notice the first tinge of silver dawn. On my way back, toting a bread-stuffed satchel, I notice the spy. Though I catch only a flash of a robe as he slips away, I charge.
Rounding the corner, I see nothing.
“Hello?” I call. “Reveal yourself.”