Ever since that first meeting, Joel had watched the Sahiba closely whenever he happened to quote from Shakespeare, or Rousseau, or Thomas Paine. Her lips would sometimes move in time with the words, although she didn't seem to be aware she was doing it.

He forced himself to look away from her now, because the General had already grabbed his arm, and was dragging him through the crowd, pointing out a new warlord with every other step. They ended up at the edge of the throng around the chaiwallah's stall, at the slightly removed spot where the Indian warriors had gathered.

"That's the Rani of Travancore," said the General, nodding to a stately woman in the uniform of a sepoy officer. Joel had never seen a woman dressed in men's clothes before, and his eyes lingered with a kind of awe-filled terror on the long boots, the smart military jacket, the sabre, and the white turban. The Rani must have been about forty, but her dark, sparkling eyes were much younger.

"She's amazing, isn't she?" said the General. "Eight children, all dead. Fostered a son, but the British said he couldn't inherit her kingdom because he wasn't a natural heir. Took up arms in defence of her adopted son's rights and then lost him on the battlefield. Now the British are just waiting for her to die so they can seize her kingdom with some semblance of legality. And yet look at her! You couldn't break her spirit with a hammer! She's like twenty martyrs combined, with the added bonus of a sense of humour. Her people are devoted to her. They say a life with that much misery has to be a holy one." His smile faded for a second. "I've often wished they could talk to the Sahiba about that."

Joel glanced at the Sahiba again—although he was trying to ration the number of times he did this, because he was quite sure the General had noticed.

"Is it—uh—safe for her to be here?" he asked.

The General slapped him on the back again—a little harder this time. "You know, Mr Shakespeare, I'd be surprised if you've put as much thought into that question as I have."

"Um," said Joel, feeling wretched for bringing it up. "Azimullah-Sahib is sick, isn't he?"

The General's smile vanished. "Yes. What of it?"

"Is he... dying?"

"Almost certainly." The General gave Joel an expectant look, as though waiting for his point.

"You, uh... You wouldn't be helping me without him, would you?" Joel ventured.

"Probably not."

"Then what guarantee do I have—?"

"Beggars don't ask for guarantees, Joel," said the General. He seemed to be angry at the mention of Azimullah's illness. Perhaps he'd never allowed himself to put it into words before. Joel could see him half-closing his eyes, making an effort to calm down.

"Look," said Jack, gesturing round at the bazaar, the dancing girls, the red-haired Lord Huth in the ram-skull helmet, "you may not consider all this a profession, but I do. It's what I'm good at. I like to do it well. And what I start, I finish."

Suddenly, he stopped dead. Someone new—a thin, tidy-looking Arab, with a scimitar strapped to each hip—had rounded the corner and joined the crowd in front of the chaiwallah's stall. A slow smile spread over the General's face at the sight of him.

"And this," he said, heading for the new arrival, but still addressing Joel, "is Alim. Great organizer of men, roller of eyes, wettener of blankets." He slapped a hand on the man's shoulder, but Alim looked at him with a kind of dry amusement and didn't return his smile. "Leader of a thoroughly disreputable band of brigands in Egypt."

"I like to think we've gone a bit more up-market since you left," said Alim.

The General turned back to Joel, grinning. "You know, this is auspicious, Mr Parish. I was just thinking to myself last night: if Alim turns up, we're going to win this thing."

"And I was just thinking to myself last month," said Alim calmly, "if the General decides to take leave of his senses and attack the entire British Empire, I'm going to have to come and see it with my own eyes."

"Oh, you've seen me take leave of my senses hundreds of times before."

"Not on quite so grand a scale, I think." Alim glanced around the room. "And yet look at all these people. It seems you've made money out of an insane idea so often that everyone's prepared to give you the benefit of the doubt."

"Most of them are here for the dancing girls," said the General modestly. "I'm relying on Joel to inspire them."

Alim gave Joel a look of wary disbelief but didn't comment.

"Which reminds me," said the General, putting both his hands on Joel's shoulders, and beginning to steer him in the direction of the upturned crates. "They're waiting for us. Have something to drink my friend," he called out, over his shoulder. "Chai, if you're still not touching the strong stuff. We'll talk later."

The General pushed Joel through the crowd again. Joel's heart sank by half an inch with every step they took.

"I'm, uh... worried about this," he managed, as they bowed their way back past the Rani of Travancore.

"I can tell."

"Do you think they'll see the sense in your plan?"

"It doesn't matter. The plan isn't going to be the decisive factor—you are. These are emotional people—well, except for Alim. They need a cause to believe in, not a plan that will work. They know I can give them a plan that'll work. But if I started talking about injustice and new-breed rights, they'd laugh at me. That's what I need you for, Joel," he added, increasing the pressure on Joel's shoulder very slightly. "You get them on board, and I'll make sure we don't sink."

They stopped beside the Sahiba, who looked up from her book for just long enough to give Joel an encouraging smile, before her eyes were sucked back down to the page again.

"Make sure he doesn't run away, angel," said the General.

Joel's heart sank to the level of his knees when he realized he was going to be left alone with the Sahiba. So far, he hadn't been able to say one coherent word to this poor, beautiful woman who read Ralph Waldo Emerson—and the more he struggled, the more suspicious the General was bound to become.

Joel noticed her glancing at his shaking hands, and hurriedly hid them behind his back.

"Does public speaking make you nervous?" she asked.

"Yes, Sahiba."

"Ellini," she insisted.

Joel gave her a look that somehow managed to be terrified and dubious at the same time.

"It makes me nervous too," she went on. "You'll be fine, though. You've got a gift. Jack's never wrong about these things."

"Yes, Sa—Ellini," said Joel, trying to make the 'Ellini' as quiet as possible, so the General wouldn't hear.

In fact, he chose this moment to head back to them and touch the Sahiba lightly on the cheek. She had automatically lowered her eyes to her book, but now she raised her head again, as though her skin was magnetized to his hand, and looked straight at him. The General made an impatient sound and snatched his hand away. Then he gave her a stern look, which seemed to suggest that this was not the time for her to be irresistible, and climbed up onto the crates in front of the crowd, waving his hands for silence.

There was no silence, of course. The bells on the dancers' ankles went on jingling, the sitar-players went on plucking, and the traders continued to call out their wares. But amongst the tables in front of the chaiwallah's stall, there was a definite sense of ears pricking up, and grizzled faces turning in the General's direction.

"Ladies and gentlemen," he said. "Maharani," he added, turning courteously to the Rani of Travancore. "Thank you for coming."

"We're only here for the entertainment of hearing your hare-brained scheme," called out Lord Huth, from under his ram-skull helmet. "And the Lieutenant-governor's already one step ahead of you, Sonny Jack. He's offered us all pardons if we fight on his side."

"Pardons?" said the General, as though the idea was deeply impressive to him. "Well, I can see that I'm wasting my time. Although, just out of interest, what's the cash value of a pardon? Is he asking you to fight for free? Because, if I'd been trying ineffectually to capture you for ten years, I'd offer you something more than a promise to stop."

Lord Huth shifted uncomfortably. "Aye, well, we're none of us as young as we used to be. His officers may be inept, but they're everywhere, and you can't outrun them forever. He says we can retire honourably and go back to the old country if we help him out."

"And you believe him, do you?" said the General. "The Eton boy? Born with a silver spoon up his backside? He holds you in only slightly less contempt than the rebels. He'll think nothing of lying to you. Lying to criminals is a public service, as far as he's concerned. You can't trust him. Trust me."

"It's easy for you to scoff," said Garrett, the man with the small, triangular beard. "He never offered you a pardon, did he? He wouldn't forego the pleasure of hanging you for all the rubies in Siam. You've got nothing to lose by joining the rebellion."

"And you've got nothing to gain by staying with him."

"What have we got to gain if we do things your way?" said Lord Huth. "What are you planning?"

Jack shrugged. "Just a few stage-managed scuffles, nothing to speak of. We need a little violence to attract the attention of the newspapermen, so they can see the conditions in the colonies themselves and take lots of photographs to send home. And we have sufficient numbers to march on Lucknow or Agra."

There was silence, even from the ankles of the dancing girls.

"You know," said the General, leaning forward slightly, as if pressing an advantage, "how wealthy those cities are. The banks, the warehouses of the old East India Company, not to mention the Ministry buildings." He stopped and turned to the Rani of Travancore. "We'll only be stealing from the colonists, Maharani, I promise—although fortunately the colonists have seen to it that they're in possession of the only things worth stealing anyway."

The Rani gave him a cautious smile. "When you talk like that, General, one might almost forget that you were born in London."

He nodded sagely. "It's an affliction I've struggled all my life to overcome."

"Damn right," said Lord Huth. "And what next, Sonny Jack? You know you can't possibly win."

"It depends on your definition of winning," said the General. "I can make the situation better than it was before for everyone except the British. I'd call that a good result."

"How?" said Garrett.

"Once we've taken possession of the cities, we'll go too far. We'll organize—" He flashed Garrett a warning glance and said, "Organize, Garrett, not carry out—a massacre of civilians. Or prisoners of war, maybe. Anyone who'll look suitably wretched and helpless in a newspaper engraving. The new-breeds will turn on us in defence of the innocents. They'll drive us out of the cities, surrender to the British, and we'll slip away very quietly with the plunder. We get rich, the new-breeds get publicity—and, most importantly, they get some leverage over the British government. Can't guarantee that it will change anything, but they say they're willing to take the risk. The risks for us are minimal."

There was no further heckling from Lord Huth. The crowd was thoughtfully, uneasily silent. Joel wondered whether this was because the hare-brained scheme had sounded even more hare-brained than they'd expected.

"And these new-breed runaways," said Lord Huth, after a while. "They're worth it, are they? Not just growling, disease-ridden freaks?"

The General smiled and indicated Joel. "I'll refer you to their spokesman. You can make up your own mind. All I ask is that you listen."

He climbed down from the crates, and the babble of conversation around the chaiwallah's stall immediately started up again. It was an excited buzz that even drowned out the sitar-players and the dancers with their jingling ankles.

"They'll sit still for about ten minutes," the General muttered to Joel. "They owe me ten minutes. Think you can win them over in that time?"

Joel pushed his glasses back up the bridge of his nose, which was slippery with sweat. "I'll try," he said. "Um. What happens if I don't?"

"They'll kill us all, I expect."

"Jack!" the Sahiba chided. "Don't listen to him, Joel. Most of these men trained together at Gargotha's halfway house. They're just here to swap stories and show off. They're children really."

"Children!" the General repeated, in a wounded tone. "Have you forgotten about the one who's sworn a blood oath to castrate me?"

"Garrett swears a new blood oath every week," she said, with a dismissive wave of her hand. "And most of them contradict each other. When you first met, didn't he swear he'd never harm a hair of your head?"

"Yes, but that was my head—"

"Um," said Joel, motioning towards the upturned crates. "I'd better..."

With the air of one climbing the steps to the gallows, he got up on the crates and started talking.

They sat still for twenty minutes. And when he had finished, they carried him out on their shoulders.