“Then what’s the answer?”Neil demanded.
“So far?”Subhas’s eyes glinted in the near darkness.“Making ourselves hard to kill.”
Neil thought of how easily the men around him had snatched up their weapons to come out here.How silently they could move through the forest.
Was that the answer?Would it always come down to war?
“I’m no good at fighting,” Neil confessed uncomfortably.“Connie’s better at it than I am.”
Subhas nodded at Constance’s sleeping figure.“Your wife?”
Neil realized that they had never bothered to clarify the nature of their relationship to Subhas.It hadn’t seemed important.It wasn’t, really.
There were so many answers he could give—that they were engaged.That they were friends.
That Constance was the girl who had tormented him for fun as a child.
The woman who haunted his heated, guilty dreams.
“I don’t know what we are,” Neil admitted.
Subhas’s mouth quirked with a hint of mirth.“Don’t you?”
Neil blinked, thrown by his response.
Across the cavern, one of the sentries hissed for Subhas’s attention.Subhas rose to his feet in a breath, drawing his Enfield up with him, his eyes locked on the slowly shifting shadows under the trees through the shimmering rain.
Instinct lowered Neil’s words to a whisper.“What is it?”
Subhas held the musket steady.“Tiger.”
A silent message moved swiftly through the cavern.Men woke, gathering weapons and shifting to their feet.
Constance sat up, her hair tumbling loose around her shoulders.She frowned across the cavern at Neil and Subhas.
“Might it just go on its way?”Neil suggested hopefully.
“It might.”
Subhas’s tone did not inspire confidence.
Out in the forest, a glimmering shadow darted between a pair of thick-trunked trees.
Jignesh was poised on the far side of the cavern with his bow in his hand.He clicked his tongue warningly, gesturing at Subhas’s Enfield.
Subhas muttered a curse and lowered the weapon.
“What’s wrong?”Neil pressed in a whisper.
“We can’t use the guns,” Subhas bit out.“We don’t know where Borthwick is.The sound could lead him right to us.”
Constance watched their exchange from her bedroll with furious curiosity.She stood, clearly intending to cross the camp to Neil and Subhas.
Jignesh stopped her, dropping his hand from the bow just long enough to tug her back against the wall of the cavern behind the row of focused archers.
Constance’s eyes flashed with irritation, but she stayed in place.Neil felt a pang of fervent relief.
He pulled his attention back to Subhas.“What about the fire?Aren’t tigers supposed to be afraid of flames?”
