The Ashes of Time by Peter Knyte

Author:Peter Knyte [Knyte, Peter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, action adventure, thriller
Publisher: Clandestine Books Limited
Published: 2019-12-18T00:00:00+00:00

FIRE AND WATER

WE WERE STALKING OUR PREY.

The map provided by Butterworth and Studgeon contained a wealth of locations for us to check, so over the next few days we split up into pairs and started to work our way around the dozens of locations marked in red ink, discounting all those that didn’t seem to have a perimeter of watchful street urchins surrounding them.

And just like that, we started to spot them. They were often enthralling individuals, and all too plausible, plying exaggerated or false information to anyone who would listen, sometimes more than a hundred people at a time. Hindu myth and scripture artfully woven in with criticism of the local Mohammedan or Christian population.

At other times we heard them speak more directly, often of the terrible deeds committed by the British, and the dark days under the brutal and dispassionate gaze of the East India Company. Closely followed by the allegory of India’s benevolent neighbour to the east, the Chinese, who had evicted these same British tyrants from their shores and now lived rich and fulfilling lives by comparison.

The propaganda was by turns subtle and then crude, and in response some of those in the audience simply turned and walked away when the speaker began to talk of things other than the faith. But for every person that walked away, there were more that stayed.

We listened to the lies and half-truths without comment, and baited out traps as we went, taking sweet pastries which hadn’t yet been doctored with the sedative, as offerings to the different holy men we spotted, carrying them in long lidless baskets, so that the nimble fingers of street children could easily dart over the lip to liberate a handful of the tasty morsels.

There was always plenty left in the baskets we carried to donate to both the genuine holy men and the fakes that we passed, and if making such offerings was a little unusual, after the first day it was no doubt attributed to our foreign ways and lack of understanding.

After three days we’d visited all the sites which Butterworth and Studgeon had marked on the map, as well as another dozen locations which had been passed to us since.

Along the way we had identified six different fake holy men operating in the city, aided by local street urchins posted as lookouts.

Butterworth and Studgeon were eager to move in on the fakes we’d identified before they had a chance to once more vanish, but they had learned their lesson, so didn’t even try to pressure us into moving before we were ready.

At the end of the third day though, we’d identified no additional charlatans, which we took as an indication that we’d found all the fake holy men operating in the city.

It was time to make our move.

We notified the constable sent by Studgeon later on that evening that we were ready to make our move, knowing he would report back promptly, and the plan we’d agreed upon would begin to swing into action.

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