I came to slowly. Someone was shaking me.
"Oh, you shouldn't have!" she sobbed. "You shouldn't have!"
I groaned and opened my eyes. I looked up into the Outsider's swirling, semi-transparent face. She was kneeling on the floor beside me, apparently concerned about me, although it was impossible to see any emotion in her featureless face.
"Hi. Are we prisoners?"
"Yes. You shouldn't have..."
"I saw you in trouble... Oh! My mask!"
I had been unmasked, and my gloves had been removed. Other than that I was still wearing my outfit from the fancy-dress party. I had been dumped on the floor, although there was a bed in the cell.
From the dampness of the cell I deduced that we were in a cellar not far from the River. Just me and the Outsider, cellmates.
"How are you?" she asked. The concern in her voice did not show in those glowing red eyes of hers.
"My head hurts. How about you?'
Oh, me," she stood up and drew her black cloak around herself before sitting down again. "I'm still black and smoky, with glowing red eyes. You don't know what's going on, do you?"
"All I saw was a gang of armed men trying to kidnap you. I don't like kidnapping."
"Even when I'm the victim?"
"I don't really care who the victim is, Outsider. But I am kind of surprised they could catch you."
"They know me better than you do. Better than anyone living does. We're in the cellar of an old shop in Whitechapel, a shop that belongs to a man called Mr. Ramdit Ghul."
"We're back in Whitechapel? I probably know this street."
"You probably do, Grey Girl. But we're locked in. And Mr. Ghul intends to take me back to India."
"To India?" I was surprised. She didn't sound Indian.
"Yes. Look, my name is Emily Fairbairn. I was born in Oxford, and my parents became missionaries to India. As soon as I was old enough I joined them out there, working in a remote area. But four years ago we were attacked by local fanatics. My parents were killed, and I was brought to the palace of Ramdit Ghul, a local prince and a reputed holy man. I hoped Ghul would let me go, but he didn't. He told me that I would be in terrible danger if I ever left the palace without his guards, and I believed him. You do when you're small. He treated me like his own daughter, and I thought he was being generous to an orphan. I was wrong.
"Ghul trained me in mystic, arcane rituals that he and his family had guarded for centuries. Using his occult powers he transformed me from an ordinary kid into the Outsider, the strange creature you see now. I learned how to render myself invisible, and Ghul used his powers to make my body... Like this," I heard her sob. At once I caught the Outsider in my arms.
"Outsider!"
"I... was such a pretty little girl! And now I look like this! I'm all alone!"
"You're not. I'm here too. So why are you here?"
"Ghul... Ghul decided to test me. He took me to England disguised as a Muslim girl, covered from head to toe in black. Apparently someone from his organisation had robbed him and fled to England, thinking that Ghul's magic could not pursue him. Ghul told me that I was to be an assassin for his sect, destroying their enemies. He armed me with a sword, a crossbow and daggers. He said a gun would be too noisy. Ghul ordered me to destroy a blackmailer, and I did what he told me. He said he'd change me back into... me again. But when I got back he told me that it was impossible, and I'd have to spend the rest of my life like this. So I ran away. I tried to continue a campaign against blackmailers, but Ghul's men found me and brought me here."
Ghul sounded distinctly evil, I thought. That meant we had to escape and defeat him.
But how? If he really did have occult powers - and the Outsider was proof of that - he could be almost invincible.
Except that the Outsider had occult powers too.
I took a small device from inside the costume's tail and began to work on the lock.
No comments:
Post a Comment