Jack headed purposefully towards Ellini's tent. He didn't have much hope of getting there before Brandt caught up with him and drew a thousand matters of business to his attention, but the important thing was to try. Three weeks spent wading through a swamp, with mosquitoes hovering like storm clouds above your head, really concentrated your mind on what was important to you.

He had taken to happiness in the same cheerful, pragmatic way he took to everything. True, it had been a bit wobbly at first—but then, that happened with everything he turned his hand to as well. For the first few months, he had been so needy—always wanting to know what she was thinking, never liking to let her out of his sight. He would get jealous whenever she picked up a book and started reading.

But he didn't worry about many things now. The only remnant of the needy old days was that, whenever he came back to the camp after a long time away, he couldn't suppress the feeling that he was going to come home to find something terrible. His imagination wasn't specific about exactly what he was going to find, but he was sure it centred around Ellini, because most of his anxieties did.

He had always known his time with her was going to end—not just because of the warnings Robin had given him in Paris, but because he was a killer, and she deserved better. It was just that, recently, the idea that it was going to end had become unacceptable to him. The thought that he would have happy memories no longer provided much consolation. In fact, he was pretty sure that—when the time came—they would make him even angrier.

Brandt caught up with him when he was still five paces away from Ellini's tent. He didn't look happy.

"The Lieutenant-governor isn't going to like this business with the guns," he said, falling into step beside Jack, since Jack didn't show any signs of slowing down. "It doesn't matter that you haven't killed anyone. He will come after you. You're costing them money, and money is something they're going to need in very large amounts if the new-breeds in the prison colonies rebel."

"We'll move on soon," said Jack vaguely, keeping his eyes on Ellini's tent.

Brandt had been one of Jack's most ecstatic discoveries. He was tough but gentle-spirited, ruthless but high-minded. And, most importantly, he was strong enough to wrestle a bear, but he wasn't in the least bit tempted by Ellini.

Brandt preferred men. He had grown up being persecuted for this, so he had trained hard and learned to fight—not just so that he could defend himself, but so that nobody could tell him he wasn't a man, whoever he chose to share his bed with.

"There are still seventeen people waiting to see you in the mess tent, General."

"Seventeen?" said Jack, momentarily distracted. "What the hell kind of secret hideaway is this, Brandt?"

"You keep inviting people to join us, sir, remember? The Croatian strangler? Those two Datura poisoners we met in Delhi?"

"Oh, they've turned up, have they?"

"Within ten minutes of their arrival, they asked me where the camp's food was prepared!"

"That's good," said Jack soothingly. "It means they're planning to stay. If you were a Datura poisoner, you'd be careful to find out exactly where your food was prepared too." He reached the entrance to Ellini's tent and turned round, his eyes bright with impatience. "Look, don't bother me with Datura poisoners, Brandt. I've been away for three weeks. Three weeks. Sleeping on the ground and eating swamp deer. Fighting off half-starved new-breeds who think I'm dinner, and mosquitoes who know I'm dinner. I am going to bed."

Of course, this was all code for 'I haven't slept with the Sahiba in three weeks', and they both knew it.

Brandt sighed. "Will you at least tell me what to do with all the people who're waiting to speak with you?"

"Is one of them Khan-Sahib?" said Jack, hating himself for the note of hopefulness that crept into his voice.

He cared for Azimullah Khan's opinion much more than he liked to admit. The man was so learned—he spoke English and French, as well as Persian and Hindustani—but so jaded. He had survived the 1857 rebellion, fled into the terai, diced with death again when he caught malarial fever in the swamplands, and been nursed back to health by the prison colonists. He never talked about what he'd seen there, but he had not been the same when he came out. The men still followed him—they were outlaws everywhere else—but he seldom spoke to them, seldom even left his tent.

He used Jack to run the camp, and Jack used him to add legitimacy to his authority. You couldn't be an Englishman and a rebel, even if you were descended from demons. Nobody would have followed him without Azimullah Khan. They had a kind of symbiotic relationship, but they seldom met. There were rumours that Azimullah Khan had died months ago, and that Cade-Sahib hadn't seen fit to tell anybody.

"No," said Brandt, looking down at his feet. "General Khan hasn't asked for you."

"Then throw the rest out," said Jack. "Or anyway, at least half of them."

"Which half?" Brandt wailed. He looked so dejected that Jack made an effort to step back from the tent and touch him reassuringly on the shoulder.

"OK. Tell me who they are, and I'll tell you whether or not I want to see them."

Brandt brought a crumpled piece of paper out of his pockets and consulted it. "Sadhu Vishwamitra, the holy sage of Awadh?"

"No."

"The Reverend—"

"No," said Jack.

Brandt went back to his list, looking as though some of the wind had been knocked out of his sails. "Um... Joel Parish, from the New-breed Liberation Army?"

Jack gave a short, humourless laugh. "Oh, good god, no."

"He says he's getting a lot of support."

"Good. Then he can do without ours."

Brandt turned back to the list, but it was immediately snatched from his fingers by Jack, who was starting to feel the bite of impatience. "OK, you know what? This is taking too long."

He took out a charcoal pencil from behind his ear, circled five of the names on the list, and then handed both list and pencil back to Brandt, with an added shove, to try and urge him away in the opposite direction. "Tell these people to wait. Tell the rest of them to bugger off."

He was halfway into the tent when Brandt's voice sounded behind him. "Um."

Jack closed his eyes. "What?"

"You want me to tell the Sadhu to bugger off?"

"Yes. In those exact words. What does he want, anyway?

"He wouldn't say, sir, but he... well, the men respect him. He seems to know everybody's name, and everybody's mother. I'd advise careful handling. Throwing him out of the camp is the sort of thing the Lieutenant-governor would do."

Jack groaned. "All right. Tell the Sadhu to wait. But I'm not seeing more than six people tonight, Brandt, and I'm bloody well not seeing any of them for at least two hours."

"Thank you, s—"

Jack raised the rifle again, half of him taking careful aim, and the other half marvelling at the light, silvery way the gun moved, as though it was an extension of his arm. Brandt flinched, but the barrel of the gun was turned away from him, and the shot, when it was fired, hit a black-clad figure who'd been hovering around the back entrance to Ellini's tent.

The figure dropped to the ground, and Jack wandered over to investigate. He prodded the unconscious figure with the toe of his boot and frowned. "That's interesting."

"What is?" Brandt asked.

"This isn't one of ours."

Brandt gave the black-clad figure a quizzical look. "An enemy spy, perhaps?"

"I don't think so," said Jack, prodding the man once again with his boot. "I think the Sahiba's been reading again."

***

As soon as he got into the tent, his footsteps slowed. It was strange, but as soon as he saw Ellini, all his urgency got tangled up in shyness and stupidity and an almost paralysing sense of reverence.

Her tent was erratically furnished with the kind of things you could steal on Indian roads. There was a bed, shrouded with a canopy of white nets to keep out the mosquitoes. A few months ago, they'd intercepted a baggage cart delivering furniture to the new Anglican church in Lucknow, so Ellini's tent now had one of those impressive, eagle-shaped lecterns on which the priests would place their Bibles whenever they wanted to read to the congregation. She was standing behind it now, with her back to the tent's entrance, and her book propped open on the eagle's outspread wings.

Jack had often seen her in this pose, and it had the effect of making his heart leap and his stomach sink at the same time. It meant she was still here, and she was still very much Ellini, but, unfortunately, this entailed an awful lot of reading, and not an awful lot of taking her clothes off.

He approached her quietly, and brushed her hair over one shoulder, exposing her neck and collarbone. Then he rested his head there, in a kind of affectionate sulk. For what seemed like the first time in three weeks, he exhaled.

"Hello, you," she said. She didn't look up from the page, but she did at least reach up and bury her fingers in his hair, which was her way of saying that she'd missed him. "When did you get back?"

"Half past fucking ages ago," said Jack sullenly. He kissed her neck and cast an unfriendly glance over the pages in front of her. The book seemed to be called 'The Last Vestiges of Darkness', which was not a title that inspired much confidence in him. "Cricket, where did you get this book?"

It took her a while to respond—presumably because she had to get to the end of her paragraph and then re-scan his sentence for meaning.

"You remember the caravan you robbed last month? Delivering supplies to the garrison at Lucknow? There were three chests of books in one of the wagons. Brandt had them brought in here for me."

"Did he?" said Jack. Such was his fondness for Brandt that he was unable to think of this as an act of war, although he was sorely tempted. Three chests of books! It could be twenty years before she looked up at him again! But his voice was still soft when he continued. "Cricket, could you do me a favour and not start any new books while I'm away? We don't know which ones are going to attract the assassins."

"But you've been away for—" She hesitated, and Jack sighed.

"Three weeks, angel." He lifted his head and rested his cheek against her hair. "It was supposed to be four, but I don't like being away from you for any period of time with the number four in it. Brings back bad memories."

Another pause, and then Ellini said, "What do you do at the four-hour and four-day marks?"

"The same thing I do every hour and day. I worry."

"Well, I wish you wouldn't," said Ellini, touching his hair again, as though she was trying to use his head to haul herself out of her book. "Brandt's more than capable."

"I know what he is," said Jack, thinking of those three chests of books. "Listen, get ready to put the book down, little creature. I'm going to have a bath, but I'll be back here in ten minutes, and I expect to have your full attention." He gripped her shoulders and turned her round very gently, lifting her chin until her eyes met his. "Remember, that book's still going to be there when you get back, but I'm happening in real time. I'm a once-in-a-lifetime experience."

He turned to leave, but she held onto his sleeve, suddenly puzzled. "Wait—what? Where are you going?"

"The bath?" he said patiently. "Remember? I've been wading through the swamps for three weeks?"

"No, don't go," she said, smiling shyly. "You've only just arrived." Jack thought of saying that he had not only just arrived—she had only just looked up from her book. But she went on, biting her lip. "And, besides, I like you sweaty."

"Not this sweaty, little cricket, believe me."

"Well, how about I take a bath with you, then? Would that be acceptable?"

Jack was tempted to laugh out loud, but he managed to stifle it. "Yes," he said, after leaving what he hoped was a decent, dignified pause. "That would be acceptable."