Red, White and Blue (Book Two of The Powder Trail)

Chapter One: Curtains

Lucknow, India, 1876: 

In the days after Ellini left, Jack devoted himself whole-heartedly to the pursuit of oblivion. 

At first, it had been a necessary tactic. He knew, as he watched Ellini's retreating back on the road out of Lucknow, that he couldn't go after her. He stood there, his mind on fire with all the things he could do now – right now, before it was too late – to make her sorry. He pictured it all so clearly. His hand even started towards the throwing-knives he kept in his belt, before he was able to snatch it back.

But, in the end, he beat down every instinct in his body, and stayed exactly where he was.

He knew he couldn't go after her. If he went after her, he would kill her. And he knew he mustn't think about it – because, if he thought about it, he would want to kill her. 

So he walked, as if in a trance, to the main guard building, where the off-duty soldiers held an eternal drinking contest, with reinforcements arriving all the time to replace the men who'd fallen over.

They had overturned a crate of rifle-cartridges, and were using it as a kind of gaming table. Poker and dice were the usual games, but there were other, more exciting, diversions, like hiding a heap of gunpowder under one of three cups, and asking your comrade to shoot at whichever cup he thought didn't have gunpowder underneath it. If the table didn't explode in your face, you won – which was a definition of winning that Jack thought everyone could agree with.

There was a ring hammered into the wall – probably from the days when the main guard building had been used as a prison. It was positioned about six inches above Jack's head when he sat down at the table, so it was at perfect height to be gripped firmly while he endeavoured not to go after Ellini and drank himself into oblivion.

Oblivion wasn't easy for someone like Jack, whose mind was always wandering. He needed a lot of distractions to keep his thoughts from straying. The whisky drew a dark curtain over all the pain, but it kept fluttering, giving him momentary glimpses of the stark, horrible view outside.

After a blurry stretch of time, he prized his hand off the iron ring, staggered up to the suite, and fell into bed. 

He was only on top of the covers – he might have only been half-way on the bed – but, still, in the split second between landing and passing out, he caught the scent of her perfume on the sheets, and felt a sickening jolt from his Adam's apple to his crotch, as though all his internal organs had been yanked forward by a few of inches, causing some serious internal bleeding.

Suddenly, the dark curtain fell away, to reveal a whole, gruesome vista of pain. He saw all the hours he would have to fill without her – weeks and months and years of trying with every fibre of his being not to think about it.

He leapt off the bed, hatred burning a hole in his throat. The humiliation of wanting someone who had left you for Robin Crake – who was probably in bed with him right now, with her eyes closed, and her nails dug in –

Oh god, OK, no thinking, he told himself, trying to keep the hatred down. It was rising up in his throat like vomit. 

To try and keep himself from picturing Ellini and Robin, he made himself focus on the things in front of him, but they were all hers – all those jewels and bangles and books.

He launched himself at the dressing table and swiped his arm across it, causing the bottles arrayed on top to smash and clatter to the floor.

He picked up a candle-stick and smashed it into the mirror – he pulled down the bed-curtains and ripped her saris till they slithered in tatters to the floor – but he reserved a special venom for the books. Oh, he had been wanting to tear them for centuries. They were snatched down from their shelves and disembowelled with all the righteous enthusiasm of the Spanish Inquisition. He tore off covers, ripped out pages, and rent the spines in a fever of destruction, with sweat trickling down his bare back, and the breath hissing between his teeth.