The Brahmin gave him an astute look. Behind his eyes, Adam saw a sharp intelligence.

  ‘I will keep your secrets for now,’ the Brahmin decided. ‘Say nothing.’

  He turned around to meet their fellow travellers, trudging back from chasing away the murderers. They gathered, chattering excitedly. The Brahmin spoke, remarkably composed after what he had been through. He explained how Adam had stumbled upon the gang and effected a brave rescue. No one asked how a deaf man had overheard the attempted murder.

  The Brahmin thanked his companions for their help driving off his attackers. One of his servants appeared and began distributing coins from a purse. One by one, the travellers took their reward and drifted towards the camp.

  Adam went last.

  ‘Come to my tent,’ the Brahmin murmured.

  Adam waited until the camp was quiet. It took a long time for his fellow travellers to settle; they were elated from their victory, and anxious in case the enemy returned. But at last Adam managed to creep up unnoticed to the Brahmin’s tent.

  The Brahmin sat on a cushion with two small cups of raki set before him. A chessboard was laid on the floor beside him. He had washed off the mud and blood and changed into a fresh silk robe. It was hard to believe that an hour earlier he had been fighting for his life – if not for the livid weal circling his throat.

  Adam had not looked at him closely before. Studying him now, he saw a narrow face with high cheekbones, a trim beard, a straight back and stern eyes. He wore so many rings on his fingers that his hands clattered when they moved.

  He offered one of the cups to Adam. The burning liquor nearly made Adam choke.

  The Brahmin dismissed his servants with a wave of his hand.

  ‘Since we know you are not deaf, and speak as clearly as I do, we can dispense with the dumbshow,’ he said drily. ‘Who are you?’

  ‘Nahgees,’ said Adam.

  It meant ‘nobody’. It was an obvious evasion, but the Brahmin let it pass.

  ‘So. I am Chaudhury. A simple merchant travelling to my home in Holkar. You are Nahgees, a deaf peasant perhaps seeking work in the diamond mines. I was attacked by thieves – by chance you happened upon me and saved me. How many lies did I just tell?’

  Adam stiffened. He glanced towards the tent door. An enormous pair of feet showed under the canvas flap where someone was standing behind it.

  ‘I saved your life,’ Adam said. ‘Is that not enough?’

  ‘Did you save my life?’ Chaudhury sipped his drink and fixed Adam with those shrewd eyes. ‘The men you saved me from were your travelling companions.’

  ‘I did not know who they were. I still don’t,’ Adam added honestly. ‘They deceived me as much as you.’

  He thought back to what had happened.

  ‘I think they adopted me into their company for just this moment. They meant to make it look as if I was the murderer. They hid a cup under my pillow, something precious. When it was found, and you were missing or dead, everyone would draw the same conclusion.’

  Chaudhury’s gaze bored into him – but Adam had nothing to hide. His voice grew hot with indignation.

  ‘Did I fight like a man who was pretending? There are two bodies down by the neem tree that will tell you I fought in deadly earnest.’

  ‘They could tell me indeed – if they were not dead. But they are insignificant. I have many enemies, and they would happily sacrifice two pawns in a greater game.’

  ‘You are not a merchant.’

  It was a statement as much as a question. The way Chaudhury spoke; the way he held himself; the command in his eyes: all said this was a man who held real power.

  ‘It seems nobody is what he appears to be tonight,’ Chaudhury said.

  ‘Then how do I know I can trust you?’

  ‘The very question I would ask you.’

  ‘It is a stalemate.’

  ‘Indeed.’

  The two men regarded each other: Chaudhury in his pale silk robe, Adam in his tattered shift, crusted with dirt and other men’s blood. Yet beneath the surface, an outsider looking in would have seen certain similarities between them: a strength of character; a nobility of bearing; a refusal to compromise.

  Adam rose. He drew himself to his full height.

  ‘My name is Adam Courtney,’ he said in English, then switched to Hindustani. ‘I am travelling to Holkar to find the man who murdered my family.’

  He had hoped the confidence would earn him a measure of trust. Instead, Chaudhury sprang to his feet, his face wide with shock.

  ‘Courtney?’ he said. ‘What witchcraft is this? Do you mock me? Or is this a conspiracy of all my enemies at once?’

  Adam didn’t know what to say.

  ‘I have come alone.’

  ‘You expect me to believe that? A Courtney in disguise, stalking me on my journey?’

  Adam wondered if there was any corner of the earth where the name of Courtney was not known, and cursed.

  ‘How do you know my family?’

  ‘I am Panjit Rao, chief minister to the Maharajah of Holkar.’

  Adam began to understand.

  ‘That is where Hugo Courtney is stationed as the East India Company’s ambassador.’

  Panjit’s face darkened at Hugo’s name.

  ‘So you confess you know him?’

  Adam had to laugh at the fate that had brought him, through so many dangers and adventures, to this place. Perhaps he sounded slightly deranged. Panjit’s hand went to the dagger in his belt; the feet behind the tent flap shuffled closer.

  ‘You think this is funny?’ Panjit demanded.

  At last Adam managed to speak.

  ‘I am laughing because we share a common purpose.’

  ‘Do we?’

  ‘Hugo Courtney is the man I have come to kill.’

  A silence gripped the tent. The two men searched each other’s faces for signs of deceit.

  At last Panjit sat down. Adam did the same. Panjit snapped his fingers, and a servant came to refill the cups.

  ‘I do not see how I can trust you,’ said Panjit at last. ‘But . . . your story is so incredible, it persuades me no man would ever expect it to be believed. Also, there is the small matter that you saved my life.’

  ‘Who were those men who tried to kill you?’

  ‘They were t’uggee,’ said Panjit. ‘A cult of thieves and murderers. They fall in with travellers on the road and lure them to their deaths. Thousands die every year. If they had succeeded, they would have buried me in the pit they dug and I would have vanished from this earth.’

  ‘You knew about them?’

  Adam was surprised a man as astute as Panjit would have let himself be led into that kind of trap.

  ‘I know their kind,’ the Brahmin explained. ‘I was so vigilant, I thought you might be one of them. I could tell you were hiding a secret. But they came to me in the night, half asleep – and they knew my weakness.’

  ‘What is that?’

  ‘Greed.’

  It was an unlikely answer. Everything in the tent was valuable and finely made, but none of it was ostentatious. Panjit had an austere air, almost like a monk. Adam’s surprise must have shown.

  ‘Not for myself,’ said Panjit. ‘For my mistress, the Maharani.’

  ‘I heard she sits on the richest diamond mines in the world.’

  ‘That is true. But it is not enough for the East India Company. They are an insatiable python, swallowing down every rupee they can acquire.’

  Adam remembered what Cornish had told him.

  ‘In Calcutta, I heard that Hugo Courtney has now been sent to win the company a monopoly over all the diamond trade of Holkar.’

  Panjit steepled his fingers. His face registered surprise, but it was a weary sort of surprise: the acceptance of something long expected finally coming to pass.

  ‘So.’

  He looked up at Adam. For the first time that evening, his gaze was clear and without suspicion.

  ‘You are a miraculous man, Adam Courtney. A deaf man who hears everything, a ryot who fights, an Englishman who would betray the East India Company.’

  ‘Not betray,’ Adam corrected him. ‘I never owed them any loyalty.’

  Panjit nodded, accepting the point. ‘I do not know why the gods have sent you here, but I am glad of it. I will keep your secrets. More than that, I will give you the reward you deserve for saving my life.’

  He drained his cup.

  ‘I will take you to Holkar.’

  ABYSSINIA, 1800

  T

  he hyena prowled the hills of the kingdom of Gondar. This was her hunting ground, and she knew the land by the kills she had made. She sniffed the night air and smelled blood on the wind. Blood might mean lions, and they were to be avoided – but it also meant food, and she had not eaten for three days.

  She padded closer, slinking through the long grass. The scent brought her to a rise, looking down into a shallow depression. There were men. One lay on the ground – he was the source of the blood she had smelled – while four more stood over him, laughing and jeering as they kicked the body.

  They did not see the hyena, but they must have sensed her presence. One looked up, but his eyes were feeble in the dark compared with hers, and the grass made her invisible. She kept still, and he did not see her.

  He muttered something to his companions. With a final flurry of kicks at the man on the ground, they turned and walked away.

  The hyena slunk out into the clearing, towards the man they had left behind.

  Blood was pouring from his mouth, but the body was twitching. Contrary to what some of the local villagers believed, the hyena was not a scavenger. She would chase her prey until it collapsed from exhaustion, then dismember it and devour it alive. This time, someone had saved her the effort of the chase. The man’s hands and feet were bound.

  His eyes flickered open, white in the darkness. He tried to shout, but no sound came out – only more blood.

  The rest of the hyena’s pack were closing in, and she wanted the choicest meat for herself. Her claws rattled on the stones as she picked up her pace, trotting forward with open jaws.

  The man’s eyes widened as the hyena came closer. He writhed on the ground, struggling with the bonds that tied his wrists and ankles. He groaned and gasped, spraying blood which only sharpened the hyena’s appetite. She could smell the fear coming off him, that unique musk that every animal secretes when it knows it is about to die.

  The hyena snapped her jaws. The man rolled away, so that her long teeth grazed his skin. She pounced on him, digging her claws into his flesh while she sank her teeth deep into his shoulder. She bit again to tear a hunk off him.

  A stone flew out of the darkness and struck her on the side of her head. Another hit her on the leg, so hard it almost broke the bone. The hyena howled with pain.

  A girl walked out of the long grass into the clearing. She had two more rocks in her hands. Before she could hurl them, the hyena turned tail and bounded away, robbed of her prey. She would go hungry that night – but she would live to eat another day.

  As many kills as you might make, there was always a more ferocious predator.

  *

  Sana watched the hyena run off. More animals were gathering on the edge of the clearing, drawn by the smell of blood. She could not hit them all. Instead, she walked towards them, banging the rocks together loudly and shouting at the top of her lungs, showing no fear. One by one, the animals slunk off.

  Sana kneeled beside Paul and rolled him over. He had spat out so much blood it was smeared over his face, black in the moonlight. More blood was welling from the puncture wounds in his shoulder where the hyena had torn the flesh.

  She found a sharp rock and sawed through his bonds. Paul moaned.

  ‘Keep your mouth shut,’ she hissed. She cut a strip off her tunic and balled it into his mouth. She tied another strip around his shoulder. ‘You are bleeding too much. And there are more dangerous animals in the bush tonight.’

  She took his arm to pull him to his feet. Paul rolled away, hugging himself like a baby.

  ‘We must go,’ Sana insisted.

  She prised his hand free and hauled him up. She wrapped his arm around her shoulder to support him, then began to hobble away.

  After a few paces, Paul stopped. Sana tried to drag him forward, but he stood his ground. He swung his arm in a broad circle, then made an empty gesture.

  Where are we going?

  Sana considered it. She knew they would not get far. They were in a hostile country and enemies of the king. There was nowhere they could find shelter, no one who would dare give them food. Paul’s wounds would probably kill him, either quickly through blood loss or slowly through infection. The only advantage they had was that their enemies thought they were dead.

  She could see in Paul’s face he thought the same. She had to keep him moving, but he would not do that without hope.

  ‘In the desert, you said there is water.’ She spread her arms wide. ‘Big water that takes you home.’

  Paul nodded.

  The ocean.

  ‘Which way?’

  The night was still dark, but the stars were fading. Far off in the east, a line of purple was starting to shade the horizon. Paul pointed to it.

  ‘That is where we go.’

  *

  Paul never really knew how Sana kept him alive. Those first agonising days, he was so weak they barely travelled any distance. After three days, he could still hear the drums and horns of Goshu’s army in the distance. They travelled by night and hid by day. Sana had an instinct for finding crevices and hollows they could crawl into. She raided farms and villages for food; every time she left him, Paul lived in terror she wouldn’t return. But she always did, bringing eggs rustled from under hens, meat snatched from drying racks, and grain that had fallen out of the mill. She made Paul eat, though he choked and every mouthful was an ordeal. Chewing and swallowing had become alien movements, motions he had to learn again. He tasted nothing.

  Days turned to weeks, then to months. They crawled up mountains, where the wind and the sun were sharp enough to blind them. They slunk across plains. They almost died a hundred times: of hunger, of thirst, landslides, bandits, wild animals and venomous scorpions. Once a cavalry patrol trotted ten paces away from the thorn bush where they were hiding. Other days, Paul thought he could not endure the misery of his existence any longer. In his mute way, gesticulating with his hands and contorting his face, he begged Sana to leave him to die. Every time, she forced him onwards.

  Late in a cloudless afternoon, they crested a low line of desert hills and looked out. The land sloped away and there, in the distance, was the sea. It sparkled blue in the sunshine like a field of cornflowers and camomile.

  Sana clapped her hands and laughed in delight. Paul smiled. He had rarely heard her laugh before.

  ‘Is it real?’ she asked.

  He nodded.

  ‘So much water . . . Where does it end?’

  He shrugged. He only had the vaguest idea where they might be, an ocean he had never seen before.

  From the hilltop, they could see along the coast to a small town. Whitewashed houses with flat roofs clustered around a bay, where dhows with triangular sails flitted about the harbour mole like gulls around a stranded fish.

  ‘Who lives there?’ said Sana.

  Paul had no way of knowing. They had left Gondar far behind. There were neighbouring kingdoms he had sometimes heard mentioned at court, but those did not stretch as far as the sea. A pair of minarets climbed above the town’s low skyline, from which he deduced it was an Arab town. Could they be back in Egypt? What if Bonaparte had conquered this place? They had walked so far, anything was possible. He wished he had a spyglass.

  Avoiding the town, they made towards a promontory further down the coast. Palm trees fringed a white sand beach; gentle waves broke and raced up the shore. Sana dropped her walking stick, pulled off her tunic – by now not much more than rags – and ran naked into the waves. Paul did the same. They dunked their heads under water and shook their wet hair like dogs. They threw themselves into the breaking waves and let the ocean wash off the months of dust, sweat and fear.

  Sana’s wet body glistened in the sunlight. For all their meagre rations, she had grown in the months they had been travelling. Her breasts had started to swell; hair was growing where it had not before. But at that moment, she was still a child.

  ‘It is like you said!’ she exclaimed. ‘A desert of water.’

  When they had exhausted themselves, they lay on the sand at the water’s edge, letting the waves lap over their toes.

  Paul knew they should move. Fishing nets had been strung between the trees at the top of the beach, and he could see smoke rising from a farmstead. If they stayed in the open, someone would find them.

  But months of skulking and hiding had ground down Paul’s fear. He closed his eyes, and let the sun bake him dry. Sana curled against him, her head on his chest and her arm thrown over his waist.

  *

  The sound of whistling woke him. Sana had risen, but it was not her whistling. Paul pushed himself up and looked around. A man in a white robe and sandals was walking down the beach towards them. Paul jumped to his feet – his body was stiff with caked salt – and pulled on his tunic.

  The man was smiling, and apparently unarmed. His belly tended to fatness, and he walked with a bustling motion like a pigeon. But it was his eyes that made the biggest impression: bright, kindly and as blue as the sea.

  Paul gaped. He had seen many faces since he arrived in Gondar: slaves from Juba with skin as black as night; lighter-coloured Amhara with their close-knotted hair; olive-skinned Arabs with hawk-like features – and every shade in between. But he had not seen a pair of blue eyes since he parted company with Sergeant Bastiat.

  The man looked surprised to see Paul.

  ‘Salaam aleikum,’ he said in Arabic, with a small bow.

  Paul returned the bow. He opened his hands, in a gesture that meant both ‘greetings’ and ‘I have nothing’. Once, he could have replied in Arabic, but no longer; and though he had learned to speak it, he had never learned its script.