The beverage proved to be a tea unlike any Rue had sampled before. Someone had actually thought it necessary to spice the sacred drink with ginger, cardamom, cinnamon and a few other things that had absolutely no place in tea. It was sweetened as well. Rue grimaced but sipped it for the sake of politeness. She found if she imagined it were a liquid pudding instead of tea it went down easier.

Rue took a deep breath. She liked this odd woman. She wanted to be liked in return. “Your pardon but I believe we may be at cross-purposes. I mean no artifice at all, I swear it. You see, I had understood our earlier conversation to be on the subject of some very valuable tea.”

“Tea?”

“Yes, tea.”

The guide’s eyes crinkled in confusion. “But it was not.”

Rue nodded. “I am realising that now. So what have we been discussing? I’m afraid you must think me very thick, but I cannot seem to get a straight word out of anyone since I was jumped by a lioness in a tower teahouse.”

Miss Sekhmet seemed to sink into depression at that. She muttered, “Then the muhjah is not aware of the nature of our activities?”

Rue sighed, frustrated. “I am not privy to the workings of my dear mother’s brain, thank goodness. She knows more than most, but she told me nothing significant about my travels here to India before I left. Did you send her a message hoping for a response from me? Or perhaps you represent a local political body?”

Miss Sekhmet seemed only more inclined to obtuseness by Rue’s revelation of ignorance. “Why are the British always so against locals?”

“I don’t follow. Have I offended in some way?”

The woman merely sipped her funny tea, deep in some moral quandary. “I thought you might be supportive. Or at least scientifically interested. But if they are once again denied? What point is there in my urging them to try? Everything is in confusion.”

“You’re telling me,” said Rue with feeling.

“It’s too sunny and I have a headache,” Sekhmet complained.

“You do look knackered. Should you even be out playing our guide?” Rue resisted pressing Miss Sekhmet’s hand in sympathy. “If you could articulate what is happening? The nature of the trade? The specifics of your demands? I might be able to help, even without my mother. I do have my own particular set of talents.” She tried to be modest.

It was all lost on Miss Sekhmet, who was working herself up into an exhausted frenzy. “You know that your relationship is with the wrong ones, don’t you?”

Rue was exhausted by the continued mystery and was starting to get a headache too. Finally she took a stab. “Do you represent the dissidents? The ones who stole the taxes and the brigadier’s wife?”

“Is that what they are claiming has occurred?”

“Isn’t it?”