The Game - Laurie R. King [50]
“That much at least he knows correctly,” Holmes said to me, then to the boy, “But you will have to tell me exactly what is owed, before I believe you.”
The child hesitated, caught on dilemma’s horns. If he quoted the amount Holmes clearly had in mind, then we might believe his veracity; if, however, he followed his gut instincts and demanded more—which is the only way to do business in India—then he risked losing all. He sighed, and rolled his eyes to express his disgust for the whole affair.
“Twenty-three rupees,” he admitted. Holmes raised his eyebrows and inclined his head slightly in a nod before turning his attention at last to the beast herself, looking to see if the trick lay with the substitution. But she looked sound beneath the filth, and if she was willing to respond to the blandishments of an urchin, no doubt her affections, or at least her attention, could be bought by owners willing to ply her with plentiful food and the occasional application of a brush to her sides. Holmes reached for his money-pouch, and thumbed the coins into the child’s hand.
The boy accepted the coins with the gravity of a bank manager, bound them up into a rag, and then scampered over the shed and pulled himself up its outside wall, diving headfirst through a small, high window. A minute later he re-emerged, the coin-rag replaced in his hand by a horse-brush and a small sack of grain. His grin told us without words that these were not part of Holmes’ original bargain, but a baksheesh he had appropriated from the horse-dealer’s store. He tossed both sack and brush into the cart beside the armload of hay, gathered up the donkey’s lead, and looked between us expectantly. “Where do we go?”
“Oh no,” Holmes said firmly. “I required a donkey, not a donkey-master. We travel alone.”
“But if you do not take me, I shall be beaten and starve,” the child whined, pitifully. Holmes merely laughed.
“I cannot imagine one such as you starving,” he said. “Give me the lead.”
“Then I shall follow you on the road,” the boy declared. He sounded determined, alarmingly so; Holmes eyed him curiously.
“Why would you do so?”
“Because I had my horoscope cast two days past, and I was told that my path lay with two strangers dressed as Mussalmani.”
I was not certain that I had caught the subtle oddity in his phrasing—not “two Moslems” but “two men dressed as Moslems”—but Holmes’ reaction made it clear that I had heard it correctly. He went very still, his grey eyes probing the child like a pair of scalpels. The boy squirmed, and changed his words.
“I cannot help it, that is what I was told. That there would be two Mussalmani come to buy a donkey, unlike any men I knew from the bazaar. That is all, oah yes.”
Holmes did not believe in the retraction any more than I did. He raised his eyes to mine, consulting; I could only shrug. I did not doubt that the child would follow us, and keeping him close at hand made controlling him, and finding out what he was up to, more likely.
Besides, I was more than happy to have someone else in charge of pack animals and drudgery.
Holmes cast his gaze down at the servant we had just acquired. “And how much will it cost me to have you look after this beast and serve our needs?”
“Oah, next to nothing,” the boy chirped in English, elaborating somewhat more believably, “Five rupees every week.”
Holmes burst into laughter at the effrontery, causing the donkey to snort and tug at the rope. The boy controlled her without a struggle, and said, “Very well then, you will give me my food and drink and whatever small money you think I am worthy of. You see, I am trusting you gentlemen, not to torment and tease a homeless orphan.”
Boy and man gazed at each other for a time. Then Holmes said, “What is your name?”
The urchin wriggled with satisfaction, taking this as it was clearly meant, an acceptance of his proposal. “I am Bindra.”
“Well, Bindraji,” Holmes said, adding a mock honorific, “we are in your hands.”
The deed settled, we dropped our bags into the cart; the boy, after