The Game - Laurie R. King [163]
Holmes nodded, albeit hesitantly. “The way we came is slower, but would appear to involve less risk.”
The Buddhist member of our conspiracy summed up the decision, making it sound like a philosophical dictum: “The simple path is best.”
I did not know how simple it was going to be, staggering across the countryside with a royal personage across our backs and the sun fast coming up to the horizon, but I had no wish to spend the day in this dark, cramped, and poorly provisioned place. I folded the last of the chapatis back into my rucksack, and we were ready.
The cold air that washed through the narrow doorway smelt of lions and greenery, alive and reassuring after our long passage through inert stone. We threaded our burden out, not bothering to lock the door, and when our eyes had adjusted from candlelight to moonlight, O’Hara squatted down and slung the maharaja easily over his shoulders. He followed me, with Goodheart behind him and Holmes bringing up the rear, as I picked my way forward, one hand brushing the wall of the lion house, until I saw the white gravel path.
Three more steps and I halted, sharply putting out one hand to keep O’Hara from treading on my heels. There seemed to be someone at the main junction of the paths some fifty feet ahead of us, just after the lion cage. I couldn’t see in detail, but my heart sank at the figure’s size: one of the zoo-keeping dwarfs. And that was the only way past the cage: He couldn’t miss seeing us. I turned to whisper to my companions that we would have to retreat, when the short, sharp whistle of a night bird rang out from behind my shoulder. In a panic, I slapped my hand over the maharaja’s mouth, but it was slack. Goodheart—? But then I looked back at the junction and saw the small figure running in our direction. Oddly silent, but for the quick patter of feet on the gravel.
A voice in my ear murmured, “My son.”
Bindra it was, his black eyes sparkling even in the moonlight, his entire body wriggling like a puppy with his own cleverness.
“What did you do with the horses?” I hissed at him.
“Nesbit sahib loosed himself and came, and said he would watch them. Oah, he is so very angry at the three of you, he says to tell you that he will have you locked into the Umballa cantonment. My father, who is this man?”
“His name is Goodheart,” O’Hara told him in English, then added in Hindi, “It remains to be seen if he lives up to his name.”
“If he does not, I will beat him,” the child declared. “But, my father, I do think we need to be gone from this place. A little time ago, four angry soldiers came running down the road, and three of them went back, then I heard some others on the big road that goes between the two hills. I think maybe they have found that you have carried away their master.”
“Hell,” I said. “That was quick. What now?”
“Which way did the others go on the road?” Holmes asked the boy.
“Down towards the valley, not the hills.”
South, then, towards Khanpur city.
“It’ll have to be the aeroplanes,” Holmes said decisively.
“But we cannot go between the stables and the lake. The ground is open, and there are birds nesting all along the waterfront, just waiting to raise an alarm.”
“Only one guard at the stables.”
“Plus the syces.”
“Russell, we waste time. Goodheart, take the maharaja. And if he makes a sound, you have my permission to bash his royal head in.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
The white gravel guided us from the zoo to the steps leading up to the path encircling the hill. The soldiers Bindra had heard pass were nowhere to be seen, although we expected with every step to come across the one left behind at the stables. Tom Goodheart, accomplished as he might be in amateur dramatics, failed miserably at surreptitious passage, his boots finding every twig and patch of gravel. Well short of the entrance to the compound, O’Hara stopped us.
“Goodheart needs to remain here with the prince. My son and I will