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Burton smacked his right fist into his left palm. “Yes! That's exactly it! My decisions were made according to context. But have I ever properly understood it? Since the advent of Spring Heeled Jack, I feel like I've not had a firm grip on events at all. It's all slipped away from me. It feels to me as though things that should have occurred over a long stretch of history are all piling up at once-and it's too much! It's too confusing! Bismillah! I can sense time swirling through and around me like some sort of discordant noise. But-”
Burton paused and raised his hands to his head, pushing his fingertips into his scalp and massaging it through the hair, as if to somehow loosen blocked thoughts.
“What is it?”
“I have this feeling that time is-is-like a language! Damn it, Isabel! I have mastered more than thirty tongues. Why does this one elude me? Why can't I make any sense of it?”
Burton's eyes momentarily reflected the moonlight and Isabel saw in them the same torment Swinburne had spotted minutes ago.
He continued: “Tom Bendyshe, Shyamji Bhatti, Thomas Honesty-all dead; and we-we have pushed through pain and fever and discomfort to the point of utter exhaustion. That is the context in which I have to now judge my decisions, but I don't comprehend the significance of it! Surely there has to be one! Why can't I translate the language of these events?”
“I have never before known a man with your depth of intellect, Dick, but you're demanding too much of yourself. You haven't slept. You're overwrought. You're trying to do what no man-or woman-can do. The workings of time are obscure to us all. Your Countess Sabina, who has insight into so much more than the rest of us-does she understand it?”
“No. If anything, the more of it she observes, the more confused she gets.”
“Perhaps, then, it ca
“Who weren't even a part of the events! Are future historians better placed to interpret the life of Al-Manat than you are? Of course not! But will their reading of your life make more sense than anything you can tell me now-or at any other point while you're alive? Yes, almost certainly.”
“Are you afraid of how history will judge you?”
“No. I'm afraid of how I'm judging history!”
Isabel gave a throaty chuckle.
Burton looked at her in surprise and asked, “What's so fu
“Oh, nothing, Dick-except I imagined that perhaps you took me aside to tell me that you love me. How silly of me! Why on earth didn't I realise it was for nothing more than a philosophical discussion!”
Burton looked at her, then looked down and directed a derisive snort at himself.
“I'm an idiot! Of course I love you, Isabel. From the moment I first laid eyes on you. And it gives me a strange kind of comfort to know that there's another history, and in it we are together, and not parted by-” He gestured around them. “This.”
“I always thought that if anything was going to come between us it would be Africa,” she said.
“But it wasn't,” Burton replied. “It was the Spring Heeled Jack business.”
“Yes.” Isabel sighed. “But I suspect that, somehow, those events, just like the River Nile, have their source here.”
The freshly risen sun turned the plain the colour of blood. From the summit of a hill, Burton, Swinburne, Trounce, Spencer, and Sidi Bombay looked down upon it and watched as the expedition divided into three. One group, led by Maneesh Krishnamurthy, was heading back in the direction they'd all come; another-the Daughters of Al-Manat-was riding away, along the base of the hills, intending to set up camp among the trees to the southeast of Kazeh; while the third-Mirambo and his men-was moving into the forest directly east of the town.
Burton, with a savage scowl on his face, muttered, “Come on,” pulled his horse around, and started along a trail that led northward. There were two horses, lightly loaded with baggage, roped behind his mount. Trounce had two more behind his. Swinburne's horse led the eighth animal, upon which Herbert Spencer was rather awkwardly propped, and the ninth horse was tethered behind that. The clockwork man wasn't heavy-his mount could easily carry him-but he'd only thus far ridden a mule sidesaddle, and wasn't used to the bigger beast.
Sidi Bombay's horse led no others, for the African frequently rode ahead to scout the route.
Traversing a long valley, they moved through the trees and, thanks to the scarcity of undergrowth and the canopy sheltering them from the sun, made rapid progress. They didn't stop to rest-nor did they speak-until they reached the edge of a sava
“We'll endure the heat and keep going,” Burton muttered.
They resumed their journey, shading themselves beneath umbrellas, guiding their horses over hard, dusty ground, watching as herds of impala and zebra scattered at their approach.
The rest of the day passed sluggishly, with the interminable landscape hardly changing. The climate had all four men so stupefied that they frequently slipped into a light sleep, only to be awakened by Spencer shouting: “The bloomin' horses are stoppin' again, Boss!”
Shortly before sunset, they erected their one small tent beside a stony outcrop, ate, then crawled under the canvas to sleep. Sidi Bombay wrapped himself in a blanket and slumbered under the stars. Spencer, having had his key inserted and wound, kept guard.
In the few seconds before exhaustion took him, Swinburne remembered the clockwork philosopher's book, and the phrase: Only equivalence can lead to destruction or a final transcendence.
He wondered how he'd come to forget about it; why he hadn't mentioned it to anyone; then he forgot about it again and went to sleep.
Sir Richard Francis Burton dreamt that he was slumbering alone, in the open, with unfamiliar stars wheeling above him. There was a slight scuffing to his left. He opened his eyes and turned his head and saw a tiny man, less than twelve inches high, with delicate lace-like wings growing from his shoulder blades. His forehead was decorated with an Indian bindi.
“I don't believe in fairies,” the explorer said, “and I've already looked upon your true form, K'k'thyima.”
He sat up, and blinked, and suddenly the fairy was much larger, and reptilian, and it had one or five or seven heads.
“Thou art possessed of a remarkable mind, O human. It perceives truth. It is adaptable. That is why we chose thee.”
Burton was suddenly shaken by a horribly familiar sensation: an awareness that his identity was divided, that there were two of him, ever at odds with each other. For the first time, though, he also sensed that some sort of physical truth lay between these opposing forces.
“Good!” the Naga hissed. “Still we sing, but soon it will end, and already thou hears the echo of our song.”
“What are you suggesting? That I'm sensing the future?”
The priest didn't answer. His head was singular. His head was multiple.
Burton tried to focus on the strange presence, but couldn't.
“I dreamt of you before,” he said. “You were in Kumari Kandam. This, though, is Africa, where the Naga are known as the Chitahurior the Shayturay.”
“I am K'k'thyima. I am here, I am in other places. I am nowhere, soft skin, for my people were made extinct by thine.”
“Yet the essence of you was imprinted on one of the Eyes; you lived on in that black diamond until it was shattered.”