“Oh, I think you do,” I said, and in the blink of an eye the slim little knife I wore in my boot whipped past him and thunked into the bad painting on the wall, parting Nesbit’s hair in its passing. He whirled around, stared at the slip of the throwing handle where it quivered between the eyebrows of the man in the portrait, then turned to look at Holmes for explanation. Holmes was now studying his fingernails.

Nesbit glanced at me, stood up, and went to look at the knife. After a minute, he pulled it out, rubbed at the canvas as if to heal the scar, and brought my blade over to lay it beside my glass on the table. I returned it to its boot-top sheath, and we looked at each other.

“Very well,” he said. “I stand corrected.”

“I still don’t want to go with the Goodhearts,” I told him.

Holmes spoke up. “I think you should.”

“Oh God, Holmes. Why don’t you go with Sunny and her mama? I’ll stay behind and teach Bindra the fire-toss.”

“Who the deuce is this Bindra chap?” Nesbit demanded.

“Our general factotum,” I told him.

“Sorcerer’s apprentice,” Holmes amplified. “No, if one or the other of us needs go with the Goodhearts, it should be you. Even if it was not Goodheart who tried to kill me, he would be more closely guarded around me than he would be with you. If,” he added, “you can refrain from demonstrating your extreme competence with him as well.”

I thought about it. If O’Hara had been killed or was being held prisoner inside Khanpur, evidence would be somewhere within the palace. And having one set of ears inside, the other in the town outside the walls, I had to admit, greatly increased our chances of hearing something. I should much rather be with Holmes than with the Goodhearts, but my own preferences could not be of primary consideration here. And it need only be for a few days, before I rejoined Holmes.

I looked down at my arms, trying not to think too closely about the coming ordeal. “What can we do about my colour?” I asked. “And I shall have to have something other than homespun salwaar kameez to wear.”

“I brought with me the things you left at the hotel,” Nesbit told me. “And I have the necessary bleaching materials for your skin and hair.”

“Very sure of yourself, weren’t you?” I said, but he was not about to repeat his mistake.

“Merely relying upon your professionalism, Miss Russell.” His boyish grin was irresistible.

Chapter Fourteen