Westphalen didn’t let him begin to plead. It would only delay matters without changing the outcome. He simply couldn’t let the future of his name and his line depend on the discretion of a commoner who would doubtless get himself sotted at the first opportunity upon his return to Bharangpur. He aimed at where he assumed Malleson’s heart would be, and fired. The soldier reeled back with outflung arms and fell flat on his back. He gasped once or twice as a red flower blossomed on the fabric of his tunic, then lay still.

Holstering his pistol, Westphalen went over and gingerly removed the saddlebags from Malleson’s shoulder, then looked around him. All remained still. Foul, oily smoke still poured from the pit; a shaft of sunlight breaking through a vent in the vaulted ceiling pierced the spreading cloud. The remaining lamps flickered on their pedestals. He went to the two nearest oil urns, sliced open their tops, and kicked them over. Their contents spread over the floor and washed up against the nearest wall. He then took one of the remaining lamps and threw it into the center of the puddle. Flame spread quickly to the wall where the wood began to catch.

He was turning to leave when a movement over by the dais caught his eye, frightening him and causing him to drop one of the saddlebags as he clawed for his pistol again.

It was the boy. He had somehow managed to crawl up the dais to where the priest lay. He was reaching for the necklace around the man’s throat. As Westphalen watched, the fingers of the right hand closed around the two yellow stones. Then he lay still. The whole of the boy’s upper back was soaked a deep crimson. He had left a trail of red from where he had fallen to where he now lay. Westphalen returned his pistol to his holster and picked up the fallen saddlebag. There was no one and nothing left in the temple to do him any harm. He remembered that the woman had mentioned “children,” but he could not see any remaining children as a threat, especially with the way the fire was eating up the ebony. Soon the temple would be a smoldering memory.

He strode from the smoke-filled interior into the morning sunlight, already planning where he would bury the saddlebags and plotting the story he would tell of how they had become lost in the hills and were ambushed by a superior force of Sepoy rebels. And how he alone escaped.

After that, he would have to find a way to maneuver himself into a trip back to England as soon as possible. Once home, it would not be too long before he would just happen to find a large cache of uncut gems behind some stonework in the basement level of Westphalen Hall.

Already he was blotting the memory of the events of the morning from his mind. It would do no good to dwell on them. Better to let the curse, the demons, and the dead float away with the black smoke rising from the burning temple that was now a pyre and a tomb for that nameless sect. He had done what he had to do and that was that. He felt good as he rode away from the temple. He did not look back. Not once.