The Game - Laurie R. King [73]
“Fine,” Holmes said. “Russell will change back into an Englishwoman and observe the palace from within. Bindra and I will take the more circuitous route, and we shall meet in Khanpur.”
This time it was Nesbit and I who spoke at the same instant.
“I don’t think—” he began.
“Look at me!” I demanded. “I’m dark as a native—I even blacked my eyelashes, for pity’s sake. And my arms have burn scars all over them from the cursed fire-toss.”
“—that it’s a good idea for you to . . . Fire-toss?”
“The dye will come off, Russell.”
“Yes, along with most of my skin.”
“Suffering for the sake of enlightenment, Russell?”
“And who is Bindra?” Nesbit asked, to no effect.
“I never asked for enlightenment. Apart from which, it’s my skin that needs enlightening, not my soul.”
Nesbit finally decided to return to his original objection, and inserted firmly into our bickering, “I don’t know that it’s the best idea for the two of you to divide up. It might not be entirely safe.”
“Holmes,” I said, distracted by his remark, “have we ever had a case in which you and I did not go our separate ways at one point or another?”
He paused to reflect. “I believe we spent most of the Colonel Barker spy investigation in each other’s company.”
“A minor investigation, nine years ago,” I said. “No, Captain Nesbit, we generally work separately at some point in an investigation.”
“But this is India, and I shouldn’t like to think of a woman—”
I froze the words on his tongue with a gaze as flat and icy as the Simla Skating Club rink. Holmes threaded his fingers together over his stomach and studied the ceiling. Nesbit cleared his throat and tried again.
“I am sure you are remarkably competent, Miss Russell, but were anything to happen to you—”
“Captain Nesbit, what sort of demonstration would satisfy you?”
Holmes murmured sotto voce, “Swords, or pistols at dawn?” but Nesbit did not hear him.
“I do not require—”
“Oh, I think you do,” I said, and in the blink of an eye the slim little knife I wore in my boot whipped past him and thunked into the bad painting on the wall, parting Nesbit’s hair in its passing. He whirled around, stared at the slip of the throwing handle where it quivered between the eyebrows of the man in the portrait, then turned to look at Holmes for explanation. Holmes was now studying his fingernails.
Nesbit glanced at me, stood up, and went to look at the knife. After a minute, he pulled it out, rubbed at the canvas as if to heal the scar, and brought my blade over to lay it beside my glass on the table. I returned it to its boot-top sheath, and we looked at each other.
“Very well,” he said. “I stand corrected.”
“I still don’t want to go with the Goodhearts,” I told him.
Holmes spoke up. “I think you should.”
“Oh God, Holmes. Why don’t you go with Sunny and her mama? I’ll stay behind and teach Bindra the fire-toss.”
“Who the deuce is this Bindra chap?” Nesbit demanded.
“Our general factotum,” I told him.
“Sorcerer’s apprentice,” Holmes amplified. “No, if one or the other of us needs go with the Goodhearts, it should be you. Even if it was not Goodheart who tried to kill me, he would be more closely guarded around me than he would be with you. If,” he added, “you can refrain from demonstrating your extreme competence with him as well.”
I thought about it. If O’Hara had been killed or was being held prisoner inside Khanpur, evidence would be somewhere within the palace. And having one set of ears inside, the other in the town outside the walls, I had to admit, greatly increased our chances of hearing something. I should much rather be with Holmes than with the Goodhearts, but my own preferences could not be of primary consideration here. And it need only be for a few days, before