The Confusion

“I didn’t think the Hindoos were seafarin’ folk,” Jimmy said, “other than wee fishin’ boats and such.”

“Most of these kolis will go to their graves, or to be precise, their funeral-pyres, without ever having laid eyes on salt water. They have been roaming the hills forever, going where they find work, supplying timbers for buildings, palanquins, and whatnot. When I became king they started coming here from all over Hindoostan.”

“You must pay ’em summat. I thought you had no revenue.”

“But this comes from a different purse. I am not paying these folk with tax money.”

“Where is the friggin’ money comin’ from, then?” Jimmy demanded.

“More than one source. You’ll learn in good time.”

“He an’ that Banyan must’ve made a shite-load of money when they brought that caravan home to Shahjahanabad,” Danny observed.

“It wasn’t just me and the Banyan, but the whole Cabal-or rather the half of it that had not fallen into the snares of Kottakkal, the Malabar pirate-queen.”

“Hah! Now, there is your Oriental decadence!” Danny exclaimed to Jimmy, who was momentarily speechless.

“You have no idea,” Jack muttered.

IT TOOK THEM ALMOST TWO hours to track down Enoch and Surendranath, who had wandered quite beyond the frontier of Jack’s kingdom and into a sort of lawless zone between it and a Maratha stronghold. Through the center of that no-man’s-land ran a small river in a large gulley-a steep-sided channel that the water had cut down through black earth every bit as slowly and patiently as the kolis whittling their beams.

“I should’ve predicted that we would find Enoch in the Black Vale of Vhanatiya,” Jack said, when he finally caught sight of the alchemist down below.

“Who’s that bloke in the turban?” Jimmy demanded, peering down over the lip of the gulley. Ten fathoms below them, in the bottom of the gorge, Enoch was standing in knee-deep water, conversing with a Hindoo who squatted in the shallows nearby.

“I have seen men like him once or twice before,” Jack said. “He is a Carnaya, which I realize means nothing to you.”

“Obviously he is a gold-miner,” Danny said. The Carnaya was holding a round pan between his hands and swirling it around, causing a foamy surge of black river-sand to gyrate around its rim.

“If this were Christendom, where everything is obvious, he would be a gold-miner,” Jack said. “But there is no gold, and naught is simple, in these parts.”

“He must be panning for agates then,” Jimmy said.

“An excellent guess. But there are no agates here.” Jack cupped his hands around his mouth and hollered: “Enoch! It is a long ride to Dalicot, and we do not want to be caught in this country after dark!”

Enoch paid him only the slightest notice. Jimmy and Danny pounded down into the gulley, following their own avalanches into the river, which became cloudy-to the exasperation of the Carnaya. Enoch wound up his conversation. There was much significant pointing, and Jack got the impression that directions were being given out. Jimmy and Danny peered at the Carnaya’s pan, and at the heavy bags that he had filled with the results of his panning.

In time the whole caravan got re-assembled up above, and made ready for a forced march to Dalicot. “Be sure to check your pocket-compass,” Enoch suggested before they set out.

“I know where we are,” Jack said. But Enoch prevailed on him to check the compass anyway. Jack got it out and removed the cover: It was just a magnetized needle coated with wax and set afloat in a dish of water, and to get a reading, it was necessary to set it down on something solid and wait for a minute or two. Jack put it on a rock at the lip of the Black Vale of Vhanatiya, and waited for two minutes, then five. But the needle pointed in a direction that obviously was not north. And when Jack moved it to another rock, it pointed in a different direction that was not north.

“If you are trying to spook me, it has worked. Let’s get the hell out of here,” Jack said.

Their inspection of the Carnaya’s equipment had left Danny and Jimmy baffled and suspicious respectively. “’Twas nought more’n some dark matter, as dull and gross as anything I’ve ever seeyen,” Danny reported.

“Certain gemstones look thus, before they have been cut and polished,” Jack said.

“It was all sand and grit, nothing bigger’n a pin-head,” Jimmy said. “But Jayzus! Those sacks were heavy.”

Enoch was as close to being excited as Jack had ever seen him. “All right, Enoch-let’s have it!” Jack demanded. “I’m king in these parts-stand and deliver!”

“You are not king there,” Enoch said, nodding in the direction of the Black Vale, “nor in the place we will visit tomorrow.”

Jimmy and Danny rolled their eyes in unison, and made guttural scoffing noises. They had been traveling in the company of Enoch the Red for half a year.