The Serpent's Shadow

Chapter Eight

SHADOWS moved in the corners of the room, but Kali Durga’s priestess knew that there could be no one present here but herself. Her servants were afraid to come into the temple when the priestess was present, fearing, no doubt, that if a sacrifice was required and nothing appropriate was at hand, one of them would be taken. Silly creatures; Shivani would never sacrifice a servant, not unless the servant became intractable and disobedient, for where would she get a trained replacement? And no servant of Shivani’s ever became disobedient. She never gave them the reason or the freedom to disobey. She never terrified them enough so that they felt pushed into an inescapable corner by their fears, and she never gave them enough leisure to contemplate any other life but this.

As for her followers, the thugees and the dacoits, they worshiped Shivani with a fervor second only to that which they very properly accorded the Goddess. She had told them never to enter while she was in meditation. Therefore, unless the temple was burning down around her ears, or the wretched English invaded it, they never would. It was quite that simple.

Incense smoke, heavy and sweet, with a faint hint in its odor that called up a memory of spilled blood, hung in uneven striations across the length of the room. The smoke diffused and dimmed the uncertain light of many candles ranged in pottery lanterns made to resemble carved stone. It overpowered the stink of boiled cabbage and sausages, (a hideous, ancient smell of poverty and despair that permeated the entire building) and managed at last to sweep it away.

Shivani hated that smell. She hated everything about the English, it was true, but that smell—it was impossible to escape, a constant reminder of where she was. But she needed a place large enough to contain her, the temple, and her followers and servants, yet a place where she and hers would not attract undue attention. There was no Indian quarter; the immigrants from home here in London were either servants and had their own places in an English master’s house, or the wealthy offspring of the Brahmin caste and were invariably male and attending Cambridge or Oxford. Although price had not played a factor in where Shivani settled her flock, the requirement for invisibility had. That meant there was only one place where she and Kali Durga’s people could go; the East End, where immigrants of darker complexions than her, stranger languages than Urdu, and religions equally as alien to the English swarmed in their thousands. Shivani had commandeered a kind of warehouse with apartments attached, paying the asked-for price without bargaining, and the former owner had not asked questions. He had simply thrown out the current tenants at her request, clearing the way for her people.

But the stink of them remained, and the same smells penetrated the cleansed building at every meal.

At least the incense was able to chase it out of the temple. Blue wisps of the heavy smoke curled around the altar at the northern end of the room, garlanding the painted statue of Kali Durga, with Her blue tongue protruding, Her heavy, round breasts obscured by Her necklace and Her garlands, Her hands red, and not with henna or paint. The source of the smoke, charcoal braziers in each corner, kept the room at a properly elevated temperature, so that here in Her place, Shivani was warm enough without resorting to piles of wrappings.

Garlands of marigolds bedecked the statue, partly concealing the necklaces of skulls that were Kali Durga’s only clothing above the waist. More of them draped over Her several arms, Her hands holding severed heads, daggers, or making sacred gestures. Kali Durga’s altar, gilded and most gloriously carved, with demons of every description writhing about the skulls at each corner, was as magnificent as her statue, and just as newly created. Both, in fact, had been made in this very room, once the room had been cleansed and consecrated. Shivani knew that the wretched British sahibs, warned about the cult of thugee, were apt to poke their inquisitive noses into cargoes sent out of the country by natives rather than the trading companies of other sahibs. Unfortunately, the Colonial Police were perfectly capable of recognizing a statue of the Goddess of the cult when they saw it. So Shivani had emigrated with no statues, no altars, nothing to furnish a temple. She brought instead a skilled and devout woodcarver, an artist of the first rank, a maker of holy images with more talent in his littlest finger than most men could ever dream of commanding. Shivani truly believed that had his hands been amputated he could carve with his feet. Take them, and he would carve with a knife held in his teeth.

Only the altar and the statue needed to be made on the spot, for all the rest of the furnishings of a temple were to be had in the marketplaces of London. From the braziers to the incense burners, from the carved screens adorning the walls to the offering bowl at Kali’s feet, everything in this room had been bought openly of dealers in exotic goods or in the myriad street markets. Often enough, Shivani’s minions had purchased articles stolen from other temples to furnish Kali’s place of worship. It gave her an ironic sense of satisfaction to beautify the temple of Kali Durga with holy things recleansed and redeemed from those who valued them not—except as trophies they did not understand.

One such piece was the throne that Shivani herself now occupied, set against the southern wall of the room, directly opposite the statue. From here she could sit and contemplate her Goddess and plan the next move in the chess game of power and death she was playing so far from her homeland.

It was a dangerous game, and one with high stakes. If she succeeded, she would bring the war to wrest India away from her conquerors right to the usurpers’ very door—no, more than that. It would allow her to destroy the usurpers in their own soft, safe beds. She would bring terror to the streets of London, which would in turn infect the rest of the country with its contagion. Her task was to make it clear to those here who made the decisions about the Empire that they were no longer safe, that they could no longer hide behind distance and the never-ending ranks of their soldiers. She must send that same unreasoning fear into the home of every ordinary shopkeeper and clerk as well. Only when the common man and sahib alike clamored that it was too expensive to hold India would the High and the Mighty consent to release it.

If she failed—

But she would not fail. Not she, not with all her cunning and knowledge. She could not fail.

Those carved screens fanned out to the rear of the statue in a semicircle; behind them, the walls and ceiling, for now, were swathed in silk. Beneath the silk, hidden until they were ready to be shown, were the mural-paintings that Rakesh was currently working on. These would not be unveiled until he had completed them, and even Shivani did not know what they would look like. Not that she was worried at all what they would show or even if they would be suitable, for Rakesh belonged to the Goddess, heart and soul, and as his statue and altar showed, he was the finest of all the artists of his own generation, finer than many of the previous generations.

The priestess smiled up into the eyes of her Goddess; for the first time since she had arrived in this wretched, cold country, Shivani was content. She sighed, and inhaled a deeper breath of the incense, reveling in the flat, sweet taste in the back of her throat that purged away the everlasting reek of garlic and cabbage. The compounding of the incense, one of her many tasks as Kali’s servant, was accomplished from a recipe only Her priests and priestesses knew. Shivani made it herself, in a room in which she kept the myriad ingredients for her many, many purposes. The knife and the strangling scarf were not Kali’s only weapons.

The shrine was not complete, but it was at last ready for ritual use. At this very moment, out there in the fog-wreathed streets, Shivani’s minions were at work, harvesting lives for the Goddess. For now, those lives were petty ones, true, the sacrifices confined to those who probably would have come to a bad end before the year was out anyway. In places with strange names, like Cheapside and Whitechapel, life was of little worth, the coin quickly spent, and few of those who wandered the streets of a night had any who cared enough to look for former acquaintances when they vanished. No one of any real importance would notice these people missing, and no one in authority would bother to look for them even if they were missed. And why should they? Distasteful as it was, the creatures that Shivani’s servants extinguished were nothings, nameless, the Untouchables of the sahibs’ world. The power to be derived from these pitiful creatures was minimal, but each death sent strength and magic back to the shrine and to Shivani, and tiny sacrifices at this point were not to be despised.

Soon enough there would be more meaningful deaths, victims with longer lives ahead of them, perhaps even a hint of magic in their veins. Those would be more acceptable, and more useful to Shivani; fat, foolish, complacent English, harvested like their fat, foolish sheep. The thugee would be happier too, for there was no challenge in slipping the silk scarf about the neck of a drunken tramp sprawled in the street in a stupor, nor in tightening the cord about the neck of a worn-out, gin-steeped whore or a fallen fool dreaming over a pipe of the Black Smoke. Shivani didn’t blame them for being disappointed at seeking such petty prey, but she needed more information before she could send them after richer game. They dared not chance discovery, not yet, so victims of a better class had to be selected with great care. There should be no relations to raise an alarm, no employers to seek for an errant employee. And most importantly, no police.

She already knew what class she would select for her first real blow of vengeance. Retired soldiers were what she needed, men who had once served in the Raj and so deserved death. Men, officers in particular, who were to be found frugally spending their pensions in little bed-sitters; those were the prey she wanted. Men who had never married or had lost their wives—men with no siblings, no parents. Later, of course, when her power was greater, she would take those she had rejected as too risky; she would take them, and their families, down to the least and littlest. Then the campaign of terror would begin. But for now, she must take her victims quietly, and that meant that the victims themselves must be nearly invisible.

She had another criterion as well; these, preferably, would be men who had shed Indian blood in the course of their careers, or equally well, had left deserted, weeping Indian girls behind them, betraying them with promises of love and marriage. Or both. Revenge on men such as these would be pleasing to Kali Durga, and the power derived from their deaths would be pleasing to Her priestess. Shivani caressed the carved arms of her throne, knowing that it was only a matter of time before her intelligence gatherers brought her a list of such men.

They would die—oh, yes, they would die most satisfactorily, and then their bodies would slide soundlessly into the river, weighted down by bags of stones about their necks. Perhaps, weeks or months from now, what was left would rise sluggishly to the surface and be discovered, but Shivani thought that unlikely. There were too many hungry creatures in the Thames, and the waters ran swiftly to the ocean. Even with stones about the neck, the bodies swept on to feed the creatures of the sea.

This was, of course, by no means the limit of Shivani’s plans for the immediate future. There were other possible victims as well, victims who could be lured here or would even come of their own free will. Once again, she would not take any who could be traced here, but there was an abundance of fools in this city, as demonstrated by the number of “mystic societies.” Why was it that the English were such idiots about magic? No wise person meddled with magicians; the ignorant villager might seek out a guru to take off a curse or remove a demon, but he did so with great care, and did not run to discover the magician’s power or claim it for himself. Not so the English, who prided themselves upon their bravery. One whiff of magic in the air, and the moths came swarming around, greedy, ineffectual aesthetes who longed for power but wanted it given them rather than putting in the effort to earn it. The chela of even the least offensive and meekest of gurus knew he must serve and serve diligently before the secrets would be unfolded to him; these arrogant ignoramuses demanded secrets they did not have the faintest hope of mastering.

It was unbelievable, how these arrogant, brainless peacocks came strutting to her, offering their throats for the knife if they but knew it! She had a guise in the world outside this basement room. There was a small apartment just above where Shivani held forth in the person of a dispenser of arcane knowledge of the shadow-shrouded sort. To her came the seekers who had no patience for study, who had rather they could achieve mastery over Fate and Men by overmastering demons and that by the quickest means possible. They thought themselves greatly daring, these chattering apes. They did not see the serpent gliding silently behind them.

Some would not be missed. Those, she would gather unto Kali, strengthen the Goddess with their blood, and thus increase her own strength.

One, she already had taken.

It had been a temptation she had not been able to resist, for the fool so courted his own death. Disowned by family, despised by those who knew him, even by his own fellows in the arts of darkness, he was overripe for the taking. Believing the tales she told him of his potential prowess and future bliss, he had drunk Shivani’s potions, smoked her Black Smoke, and laid himself down on her altar without a qualm, so certain was he in his arrogance that she, a mere Hindu female, could never harm him. She was no more than the common vessel who brought him his just rewards, a bearer, a servant of a power far greater than she. He was Man, he was White, and he was destined to command Unseen Powers.

He was stupid, he was a fool, and his Powers answered him not when he commanded them. On her altar he died, the scarlet silk cord about his neck, tongue protruding, eyes bulging, face blackened. Shivani herself had twisted the cord tight, taking the greatest of satisfaction in it.

Shivani dedicated his death to Kali Durga, but she drank his strength herself, imprisoning his spirit in a little, round mirror she had found in a street market. The stall keeper had not known what he had got, but few would have recognized the plate of black glass set in a carved wooden frame for what it was. She bought it for less than a shilling, and straightaway took it to her sanctuary.

The mystery of it delighted her; it was as if some unknown hand had made it and placed it in the market for her to find. A Black Mirror! Who in all this benighted country had the wit and the knowledge to create a Black Mirror? And mystery piled upon mystery—why had it never been used? For it was virgin, empty of the least hint of magic, when she discovered it.

One guess was that perhaps the Black Mirror was not used in this land as Shivani was wont to use it. That was the only answer she had for the puzzle.

Now the Mirror slept in the basket beside her throne, swathed in a shroud of black silk, waiting only until she was ready to make use of her newest servant.

She had made use of him already, in several smaller trials—ordering him to show her where her thugees were at work, or having him find the strongholds of other practitioners of magic, who could presumably see her as a rival or as a threat. She knew now where the strongest resided, and had added them to her long-term plans, but now it was time to put her servant to work on something nearer to home.

She sprinkled powder of a different kind on the charcoal in the brazier at her feet, breathed in the drug-laden air, and felt at last the moment of disorientation that she had been waiting for. She did not drift off, she merely felt as if she hovered just a little above her body.

That was all she wanted. Any more, and she would lose her grip on her awareness and drift free. That could be useful, but it was not what she wanted to do at this moment; she needed only to be relieved of the distractions of a physical form, not to escape altogether. Her hand reached, seemingly of its own volition, into the basket beside her, and brought out the little, round mirror of black glass.

She cradled it in her lap, staring into depths that did not reflect the lazy swirls of smoke, nor her own face, but held a restless, glowing, featureless shape that swam within the glass like a furtive fish among water weeds.

“Mirror-servant in my hand,” she murmured languorously to it, “Answer thou to my command.”

The glowing presence moved to the foreground, fogging the mirror with sickly light. Release me! the prisoner wailed soundlessly. Let me go!

“I thought you wanted to live forever?” she replied with a smile, aloud, although her servant understood her well enough if she only thought what she wanted to say at it. “You begged, you pleaded for magic and immortality, for the ability to understand the Unseen world, for the knowledge to move bodiless through this world and go into the realm of spirits. I gave you immortality, did I not? So long as a single grain of this glass remains intact, you are bound to it; surely you will live forever! I gave you all the rest as well!” Then she laughed, throatily. “You understand the Unseen as no other of your acquaintance, you go into the realm of the spirits, and though you move through the Unseen at my will, and not yours, I never told you that you would have freedom therein. But—still! You show your ingratitude, and how little you deserve any kind of freedom!”

You didn’t tell me what you meant! the shape howled in protest. You didn’t tell me I’d die! You deceived me!

“You deceived yourself,” she retorted severely. “I told you, and promised you exactly the truth. That you put your own interpretation on that truth is hardly my fault. Now, enough of this nonsense. Obey me, else I will force you, and you have had a taste of what I can do to you. Show me the traitor to my people and my land!”

For a fleeting moment, before she lashed it with a spark of pain and punishment, so that the thing trapped within the glass cried out in anguish, the mirror showed her own face.

“No more of that!” she snapped, before regaining control and composure. “Show me the treacherous daughter of my traitoress sister! Show me the thing that claims the power that is mine by right of blood!”

But there was nothing forthcoming. Shivani frowned, and prodded the mirror-servant again with the sharp and punishing goad of her will. I can’t! the servant wailed. I cannot show you!

“Cannot, or will not?” she asked, furious. “You will do what I command!”

Cannot! She is here, somewhere, she is near to you, within the bounds of the city but I cannot find her! There are signs of her everywhere, but not one leads to her!

Shivani cursed her pawn for being a fool, weak, and useless—but did not curse him as a liar. She could command the truth if she wished, but she already knew that her unwilling servant had told the truth in the first place. She had already tried every means at her disposal to find the girl, and had come to the same end as her servant. Surya’s daughter was nowhere to be found, yet traces of her were everywhere. The only possible explanation for this was that she had somehow managed the magic that enabled holy men to walk amid crowds and yet remain unseen—or to be precise, completely ignored and isolated among them. That should not have been possible, with no one to teach her the secrets that Surya had learned in her own temple, but there was no denying the facts. The girl knew, was using her knowledge, and even a mirror-servant, who should have been able to eel his way past any common protections, could not find her.

Shivani ground her teeth and forbore to smash the mirror to pieces there and then. The mirror-servant was still useful, though clearly limited. She confined herself to punishing it with pain until nothing emerged from the depths of the black glass but incoherent whimpers.

Anger temporarily assuaged, she dropped the black mirror back into the cushioning swaths of black silk, and carelessly dropped a fold over the top of it. Let it rest and recover from its punishment. At least next time it would be more eager to placate and serve her.

Magic had failed her; no matter. Those who lived by magic often neglected to guard themselves in other ways. The girl could not possibly hide herself forever. Shivani grew stronger every day, and as she grew stronger, her small army of followers multiplied. At some point, she would have even English servants under her control. Granted, she would not trust them if they were not utterly under her power, but once she had them, she could loose them and let them do her hunting for her, in circles where her thugee could not go.

And that reminded her; she had an appointment.

With a grimace, she rose from her throne in a rustle of silk and a rasping of gold embroideries. It was time to dress; the idiot sahibs expected yards of white silk gauze and flowers, or black gauze and heavy gold jewelry, depending on whether she was feigning to be the dispenser of light or shadow. In either case, they would only have been confused by her embroidered red sari. They liked their symbols clear and simple to read.

She put herself into the hands of her waiting-woman, indicating with a nod of her head that she would be the mysterious “Lady of Night” for this meeting and not the innocent “Lady of the Moon.” When she emerged from the secret passage that connected the apartments she used for the cult and the tiny flat she used for her English assignations, she was swathed in a cloud of darkness that merely hinted at the trim body beneath, and veiled with black silk as well. She found it easier to be in the same room as the English when she wore a veil; they were mesmerized by the thing, unable to read her eyes, and she didn’t feel as if she was forced to breathe their tainted exhalations.

This was as much a staged setting as the temple, but here she was the focus of the room. A deep-pile, figured carpet laid over a padding of more carpets so worn as to be worthless created a floor that didn’t even squeak when she walked over it. In this room, all the walls were swathed in dark maroon fabric that was gathered together at the midpoint of the ceiling, like a tent. From that point depended a pierced-metal lantern fitted with colored glass panels. This was the sole source of light in the room, and the colored light, red and blue, served to confuse more than it revealed. At the back, she had made use of a little alcove, pulling aside the fabric and creating a canopy above it. Creating a platform within the alcove and piling it with pillows gave her a kind of dais on which she sat. Petitioners standing before her were at her eye level. If they chose to sit, they had to do so on one of the several flat cushions placed in front of her, and so would be much below her. On either side of the platform were incense holders.

Shivani arranged herself in full lotus position on her platform, and gestured to the servant who had followed her to light the incense burners on either side of it. The drugs she had inhaled earlier had worn off, leaving her mind clear, making everything sharp-edged. She made a pattern in the air, whispered a few words as the smoke from the braziers rose about her. There was more hashish mixed in with the strong incense; not enough to bother her, bolstered as she now was against its effects by the subtle spell, but enough to fuddle her visitors.

She used every weapon she could get against the English sahibs, especially when she had one in her view that could prove more than merely useful.

Such a one was this, who stepped into the room with all the arrogant confidence of one who felt he had the right to anything that met his eye.

This man was not the sort—outwardly—to be expected in this place. His type was of the sort that figured in advertisements and tales of “manly men.” Tall, with hair of short-cropped, new-minted gold, the body of a warrior of sorts, with ruddy cheeks, a small mustache, and a perfectly pressed suit, he was the very epitome of everything Shivani hated.

He was used to his steps sounding firmly on the floor, and was slightly nonplussed when they made not a whisper on the soft carpets. He was accustomed to having someone meeting him when he entered a room. It took him aback to be forced to scan a darkened chamber for the person he had come to see, and then have the disadvantage that she could see him clearly, but he could not see very much of her. He didn’t even notice the drug taking hold of him, making him a little more clumsy (and self-conscious) when he stood before her and had to decide between the indignity of facing her on his feet, like a child about to be chastised, or sitting uncomfortably on the ground.

He finally chose the ground, and she was much amused, watching him folding his long legs as he tried to find something like a position he could hold for any length of time.

All this time, she had not said a word to him. Only when he was seated did she acknowledge his presence.

“Speak,” she said. Nothing more. No questions, no greetings, only the barest of beginnings. And an order—not a request, nor the expected query of “How may I serve you?” He was here as the petitioner; it was she who would be served, and she would drive that home to him with even the tiniest of gestures.

Nothing loath—and aided, no doubt, by the drugs in his brain—he carried on for some time. He began with his importance (largely existing only in his own eyes, although the one claim to status he had, he did not mention), his occult prowess (minimal), his knowledge (surface), and ended in a demand that she add to his enlightenment (as she had expected).

But this man was not quite such a fool as others of his sort had been, and Shivani gave him a different answer than she had the rest. He had seen through to the heart of the group headed by one called “Crawly” (or something like it), and had found it rotten. He had gone to the woman Blatsky and discovered that the only things she had to offer were stolen and discarded bits of true wisdom, overlaid with a tinsel-dross of half-truth, flattery, and lies to make it pretty and palatable. He did have enough native talent in the occult to see that she had real power. So instead of giving him half-truth herself, and implying she could grant him things she had no intention of granting, she gave him a less embroidered version than the one she had caught her mirror-servant with.

But first, she laughed scornfully.

“So, the novice seeks to be Archbishop before he has even made his first vows!” she taunted him in flawless English, which probably startled him the more. “Either you are a fool, or you take me for one. So which is it, O Lord of the World? Are you the fool, or do you think you can deceive one who can see into your empty head and heart?” She tilted her head mockingly, and waited for his answer.

He gritted his teeth, but did not get up and walk out, nor snap back an immediate insult.

“So, you have some self-control, at least,” she said when he made no reply. “That is better than your erstwhile friends who follow the Dawn.” He started, and stared at her, the whites showing momentarily about his eyes. “Oh yes, I know of them, and of you, and all you have said and done with them; why should this surprise you?” she continued. “I have what they only pretend to, as you know. Well. You have ordered me about, and you have seen what that brings you. Now what will you do?”

What he did was the unusual but not entirely unexpected step of humbling himself. He bowed his proud head to her, although the stiffness in his neck was due entirely to pride and not to muscle strain.

“I apologize for my poor manners,” he said at last, after taking himself in hand and subduing his temper and his arrogance.

“That is an improvement.” She nodded, indicating that he should go on.

“I—” He gritted his teeth again; she heard them grinding. “I beg that you should accept me as a disciple.”

“And what will you offer me for the privilege?” she asked, again surprising him. “What, why should you be astonished? What I have is of value. Every Master is entitled to a fee for taking an Apprentice; the difference between me and those you have sought out in the past is that I am honest about requiring that fee, and I have far more to teach you than they have. You have so far given me no indication that you have any intention of making an exchange of value for value.”

His indignation was evident in every movement of his body—but he reached into his pocket for his wallet before she stopped him with an abrupt gesture of rejection.

“Money? I think not, Englishman,” she said sharply. “What need have I of the dross of your money? My Goddess grants anything I need; I need not contaminate myself with your leavings to supply my wants.” She waved her hand around her chamber. “Look about you! I have no hordes of idiot English hangers-on, and you see how I live. That I choose to dwell here and not in some ‘fashionable district’ is a matter of my convenience and privacy, and not because I cannot afford to live there. You must offer me something better than your abominable English pounds and pence.”

Clearly he had never found anyone who so forcefully rejected his money before. Shivani wasn’t at all surprised at that; the Blat woman’s begging habits were a matter of mirth among her dacoits, one or two of whom had penetrated the ranks of her servants before they learned just how empty her promises were. And the Crawly-man regularly milked the largesse of his disciples, though with a little more finesse.

Now the petitioner’s mood shifted from indignation to puzzlement. “Then what do you want?” he asked, so thoroughly discomfited that he had become, had he but known it, as malleable as she could have wished. She leaned forward; he mirrored her action, his ruddy cheeks pale with strain. He wanted what she had, more than wanted it. Under the influence of her manner and the drugs, he craved it. He would not yet do anything to get it, but that would come.

“Nothing small,” she replied in a low voice. “Only what is proper. For the reward of becoming my disciple, I demand no less than your service, your devotion, and your obedience in all things.”

Over the course of the next hour, they bargained, but it was hopeless on his side of the bargain from the moment that he had asked what she wanted. In the end, she had him. He didn’t know she had him, body and soul, but she did. He went away with orders to carry out; only when he had fulfilled them would she teach him anything.

For now his orders were simple things, and so far as he knew, harmless. He was merely to procure a list of addresses from the pension rolls of an importation company—one which imported opium as well as tea, and dealt in jewels which were not always honestly gotten—in which he was a not-so-petty official. When he brought it back to her, she would have a list of men who had worked in one of the many companies that traded in Indian misery, in this case, headquartered in Calcutta. From this, she could choose potential victims.

He protested over her instructions, and blustered, but they both knew it was merely for form’s sake. He had not enough imagination to construe what she wanted with the list, and even if he had known, he probably would not have believed she had the means to carry out her plans. He went away knowing that there is always a price for anything that is genuine. That was the first step in what might become an extensive education, if he returned.

She summoned her handmaiden to escort the man to the street. The girl came with one of the dacoits, which was wise of her, in case the English decided to take out his humiliation on his escort. The dacoit was the one who took the man away; the handmaiden remained with her mistress.

“Come,” Shivani said, and returned to her private rooms to take off her ridiculous guise and assume a more comfortable set of garments.

There was, of course, the chance that the man would get his wits about him and not make a second visit; that was the chance she always had to take. You did not capture an ape with shouting and chasing after it. You caught it by careful planning, tempting it in with things it could not resist, and seducing it with pleasures it was loath to do without. Only when the pleasures had become necessities did you close the door of the trap.

If he did not return, there would be others like him. This one was useful in that he had already tried and tested other groups in this place who purported to have some dealings with the Unseen—and he had access to those “lists.” It would be much easier to choose those who should die first, if she had those lists.

Of course, if all went according to her plans, eventually there would not be an English soul on this island that was not dead or a slave to the shrine of Kali Durga (or both)—but until that bright day dawned, it would be convenient, so very convenient, to have the lists.