Under the Burning Clouds

  Under the Burning Clouds

  Maliha Anderson, Volume 6

  Steve Turnbull

  Published by Tau Press Ltd, 2017.

  Under the Burning Clouds by Steve Turnbull. Second edition July 2016

  Copyright © 2015, 2016 Tau Press Ltd. All rights reserved.

  ISBN 978-1-910342-53-4

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the authors' imaginations or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. No part of this book shall be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information retrieval system without permission of the publisher. The moral right of the contributors to be identified as the authors of their work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act 1988.

  Published by Tau Press Ltd.

  Cover by Jane Dixon-Smith (jdsmith-design.com).

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Under the Burning Clouds (Maliha Anderson, #6)

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  To my readers.

  Chapter 1

  i

  The thunder was so loud and so close Maliha came awake with the idea that the world was exploding. She had dreamt she was falling forever through rain and the black of night.

  It was night. The room was scented with jasmine, Amita always made sure of that wherever they went. Maliha rolled over onto her back. The night sounds were not India. She opened her eyes and stared up at a ceiling that she could not see. The night was very black. Rain hammered against the window. She sat up and discovered she was wearing a simple nightgown. The sheets were only linen but, from their feel, of the best quality and crisp with cleanliness.

  Lightning flashed, illuminating the room in stark whites and thick black shadows. She took in the image and examined the memory of it as the light died. She did not know this room, though the furniture declared it to be British. There were windows on the walls opposite and to the right, so she was in a corner room.

  The third wall, to her left, had two doors. The one furthest from her would lead out to an ante-chamber, perhaps a corridor. The other would be a dressing room. The ceiling had a rose with electric bulbs; there was a switch by the window and there would probably be another on the wall beside the bed.

  There was no timepiece that she had seen.

  Where was here? How had she come to be here? Where was Amita? Valentine?

  The thought of her fiancé brought the previous few days crashing back and the events of last night in particular. She felt sick, as the memory of him tossing her from the slavers’ Voidship returned to her.

  Her hand went to her throat and she felt her skin almost as if it were not her own. He had dropped her from an open hatch hundreds of feet from the ground in the middle of a lightning storm. She had fallen for such a terribly long time and then nothing.

  Was that last night? Or had more time passed? Just because there was a storm now did not mean it was the same night.

  She pulled back the covers and slipped out onto the carpeted floor. She found that her muscles ached, as if she had been engaging in unaccustomed exercise. She ran her hands across her legs, searching for cuts and contusions. Her left side seemed a little tender; the ache intensified when she pressed the skin where it was swollen. She felt the scar on her thigh.

  Her feet made no sound as she padded across to the window, dimly outlined by some light source outside. The curtain had not been drawn closed and she looked out into the black.

  Some of the building’s other windows had light behind them and cast their yellow glow into the night. She appeared to be on the third floor. Directly below her window a gravel path marked the edge of the house and the light revealed tidily kept borders and beds.

  The interiors of the clouds above were intermittently illuminated from within by lightning. She waited. Her patience was finally rewarded as daggers of white crawled across the clouds in repeating sequences, casting their light on the lands below.

  They were remarkably unrevealing. Beyond the gravel path were neat gardens—the inclusion of an acacia tree suggested she was still in South Africa. A wooded area began about two hundred yards away and blocked all further view. Just in front of the trees was a long lake, which extended as far in each direction as she could see, in a curve that implied it encircled the house like a moat.

  She crept across to the window on her right. She did not have long to wait before the next burst of lightning. This side of the house must be the front as an avenue led away from the building to a bridge crossing the moat and thence into the trees.

  There were British soldiers on the roadway. If she was still in Johannesburg then this must be the Consulate. She could not imagine how she had come to be here.

  Maliha turned around and faced the interior once more. She took a seat in the chair by the window. The sound of the wind hissing through the trees filtered through the glass. Every now and then there was a shift in the wind direction and the panes were assaulted by the rain, driving it in rivulets across the glass.

  When the next burst of lightning filled the room with light, she saw the tallboy with a clock perched on it. Three-forty. Next to it was a third door, which would lead to a bathroom and water closet.

  It also revealed, draped across a carved wooden chest at the end of the bed, a dressing gown. She rose from the chair and put it on. She would feel more comfortable walking the corridors in this, rather than just the nightgown like some mad woman.

  She went to the door she had decided was the way out and turned the handle. It was locked, which confirmed her thought. She was not surprised, though somewhat disappointed. This was a cage, gilded or not. She had hoped she might have been among friends.

  Lacking any further purpose, she went to the next door. On the next flash she determined it was indeed the dressing room. It had no windows, but it did possess a dressing table with its own light. She returned briefly to the main room and drew the curtains; they had been made heavy enough to block the early morning sun, so would suffice for hiding a small electric lamp.

  She returned to the dressing room and switched it on. She blinked against the intense brightness. The dressing room contained no clothes other than those she had been wearing when she was thrown from the ship. The clothes glistened and there was water collecting beneath them. She frowned.

  Every item of clothing, including her underthings, was dripping wet. It might have been raining and she had been out in the storm, but for them all to be so utterly drenched she must have been submerged in water.

  She sat in the chair opposite the mirror and looked at herself. There was nothing there she did not normally see. Skin almost white enough to be European—but not quite—and hair like a black waterfall, in need of brushing.

  For the past year or so Amita had brushed her hair every morning, just as her mother had done until she was twelve when she had been packed off to boarding school on the South Coast of England by her Scottish father. She fetched the brush from the dressing table. She preferred it when someone else brushed her hair.

  The state of her clothes meant two things. First, this was the same night as when she had entered the lion’s den in her invasion of the slavers’ ship—the same night Valentine had thrown her from it.

  Second it meant she had landed in the Consu
late’s moat. That might not be a certainty, but if she had landed in any other water she would not be in the Consulate now.

  Did that mean Valentine had intended for her to survive the fall? Or had she fallen into the water by accident when his intention was to kill her? She stopped brushing and looked at herself.

  “I cannot believe he intended to kill me,” she said out loud. Their parting, only hours before, had been very difficult. He would have to have been a consummate actor to fool her for so long.

  Still, it was curious, since she did not believe survival, at least with nothing more than slight swelling, was possible from such a great height, even into water. She understood that water presented a hard aspect for objects moving at high speed.

  That was a conundrum requiring resolution, but it was not of critical importance. It was clear that, however it had been achieved, she had survived the fall. Still, she did have bruises on one side of her body, so the landing could not have been soft.

  With her hair in a better state she went back into the bedroom and checked the other door. It was a well-appointed bathroom with both hot and cold water. It also contained the water closet.

  Maliha returned to the bedroom. There was little to be done until the morning, so she removed the dressing gown and lay down in bed again, favouring her right side.

  There was a diffident knock on the door.

  ii

  The sun was pushing around the curtains and illuminating the room. The door to the dressing room was still open and the light was on. She must have fallen asleep the moment her head touched the pillow.

  The knock on the door came again, a little stronger.

  “One moment,” she said. She climbed out of bed and slipped on the dressing gown, tying the bow at the front. She moved swiftly across the room, opened the curtain of the window that faced the door and stood beside it. It was not that she expected to be attacked—why go to the trouble of putting her to bed so carefully if they intended her immediate harm? She just wanted an opportunity to examine the person before they saw her.

  “Come in.”

  The door must have already been unlocked while she slept because the handle turned and the door swung open. It was a maid, perhaps in her twenties, white enough that Maliha assumed she was English. She was carrying a quantity of clothes, dresses and undergarments on her arm.

  The girl looked confused when she did not see Maliha, but then her eyes fell on the closed bathroom door. She nodded to herself and must have assumed Maliha was in there. She came in and went directly into the dressing room. Maliha heard her mutter something under her breath and guessed it was dismay at the dripping water.

  She had left the entrance door wide open. Maliha could see out along a corridor. There were more doors off it, probably bedrooms. The sun shone in from the right, leaving alternating patches of brightness and dark. The furnishings were opulent.

  Maliha could have walked out, but to have done so would have been foolish: she was in a state of undress and quite interested in discovering how she had survived such a tremendous fall. She stepped out from the shadow and across to the dressing room.

  The girl was on her knees, mopping up the water, and she jumped when Maliha cleared her throat to attract her attention.

  “God ’elp us—sorry, Miss.”

  “Are you here to help me dress?”

  “Yes, mum,” she said and scrambled to her feet. The front of her dress and pinafore were wet through. She bobbed a curtsy.

  “I see,” said Maliha. “What’s your name?”

  “Nessa, mum.”

  “You can call me Miss Anderson.”

  “Yes, mum.”

  Maliha waited a moment but it became clear that, in the presence of a superior, the girl became incapable of independent thought. She simply waited for the next instruction.

  “Why don’t you draw me a bath, Nessa?” she said. “And I’ll see what I like among the clothes you’ve brought.”

  Nessa looked down at the thin sheen of water on the floor.

  “Just leave that for now,” said Maliha. “You can deal with it when I’ve gone downstairs.”

  “Yes, mum,” said the girl. She curtsied again unnecessarily and hurried past Maliha to the bathroom. Maliha watched her go, wishing Amita was here and not on her way back to India.

  But that part of Maliha’s life was over now. There would be no return to Pondicherry. She felt empty. There was one thing she wished for even more than Amita, but he was even further away and getting more distant by the second.

  She was not happy with Valentine. She had gone to a great deal of trouble, and considerable personal risk, to get aboard the slavers’ ship, and he had thrown her off it. But if she could hold him and feel his skin pressed against hers, she would forgive him—at least after making him suffer for a while.

  But he was not here and she was alone again.

  The sound of water splashing into the bath filled the quiet room. Maliha went to the bedroom door, pulled the key from the outside lock and closed it, then locked it from the inside. She placed the key on the dressing table. She was not planning to run away. At least, not yet.

  The bath eased some of her aches. She had Nessa check her skin for abrasions. Perhaps it was because her skin was not as white as it might be, but the girl was embarrassed to look. Maliha had no time for such silliness and insisted.

  Apparently there were none, just the slight bruising.

  Nessa was, however, good with a hairbrush. Maliha had her move a chair so that she could look out of the window while the maid ran the brush through her hair again and again. It was very relaxing for both her and the girl to perform something so commonplace and repetitive.

  “How did I get here?” Maliha asked as she felt the tension in Nessa begin to dissipate. The brush hesitated.

  “Don’t know, mum.”

  Maliha closed her eyes. “Oh, come now, there’s bound to be talk below stairs.”

  “Not sure I should say, mum.”

  Maliha smiled even though Nessa could not see it. “Did they fish me out of the moat?”

  A moment of hesitation told her what she needed to know. “Yes, mum. Late yester-eve. There was a big fuss and all the soldiers were called out. And there was the storm, all the lightning and the terrible thunder. I was a-frighted.”

  “And I fell out of the sky.”

  “Yes, mum. Alfred says there was a splash and there you was.”

  “Alfred?”

  “Oh, he’s my beau, if you don’t mind me sayin’, mum,” she said. Now that the floodgates had been opened it was going to be difficult to close them again. “He’s not so very handsome, but he’s an under-butler and one day he’ll be a proper butler and I can be a housekeeper and we can work together in some nice house—”

  “So they fished me out of the water?”

  “Yes, mum.” The girl did not seem put-out that she had been interrupted. “They didn’t realise it was a person at first. They thought it might be a bomb, like they had last year. I wasn’t here last year but there was all sorts of trouble with people shooting and bombing—that’s what Alfred says. He’s very brave. He says we’ll get engaged very soon too—”

  “But they did realise it was a person and not a bomb?”

  “Yes, mum. They saw you floating there in the water and one of them went in and pulled you out. You were wearing those strange clothes but you were un-con-scious,” she worked hard at the word but made it come out right, “so they brought you up here and put you to bed. But they should have hung those clothes over the bath or brought them downstairs to the kitchen to dry.”

  But this still did not explain how she had escaped with only slight bruising.

  “If you don’t mind me askin’, mum...” she trailed off, waiting for approval.

  “What do you want to know?”

  “Where did you fall from?”

  Maliha considered her answer. “Did Alfred not say?”

  “He reckons you fell from a air-plan
e?”

  Maliha nodded. “That’s right.”

  “But you should be dead then, right mum?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why ain’t ya then? I mean, if you don’t mind me askin’?”

  Maliha did not reply at first; instead she thought about Barbara. She hoped her friend was recovering. But it was almost the last thing Barbara had said to her that Maliha had been unable to rid from her mind: the question of vengeance. She gave herself an internal shake.

  “I don’t know,” she said, responding to the girl’s question, “but I intend to find out.”

  iii

  The clothes they had found for her were not a good fit. Maliha was slimmer than their former occupants, but they would do for now and Nessa had promised she would start on the alterations. Maliha had the girl find a shawl and place it across her shoulders so that it draped across her upper body and hid all manner of crimes against fashion.

  Nessa had not been told that Maliha had to stay in the room—which begged the question as to why the door had been locked, perhaps as just an initial precaution—so, since she was not forbidden, Maliha decided to set out to find her captors.

  Maliha retrieved the key and the girl let herself out. Maliha performed a last-minute check on her apparel and, when she emerged from the room, Nessa had vanished. No doubt she had slipped into the servants’ passages through a hidden door. Maliha studied the inner wall and spied the door, disguised as a section of wooden panelling.

  She locked the bedroom door and slipped the key onto a ribbon attached to the dress, and let it hang. The corridor outside her room ran along one of the wings of the building and ended in a sharp turn to the left. Her feet made no sound on the thick carpet. The place was silent as a mausoleum.

  The rooms beyond the turn might have been more bedrooms, but there was rather more wear in the carpet. It was possible to see the tracks of many feet leading up to these doors. They were more likely to be meeting rooms or perhaps places for socialising. She was not sure whether the Consulate might be like a men’s club. She had not had a great deal of experience with men’s clubs and what little she did have was peppered with misogyny.