I could not have defended Lucknow without Jai Lal; he is sharper than everyone else. Sharp in intellect as well as in his achkan coat fastened with silver studs, and edged with lace. Lots of intelligent courtiers worked in Lucknow but Jai Lal is the most clever commander I could hope for. At the palace, he was a popular courtier my ex-husband respected, and that had everything to do with why he could rally our Awadh Force in the first place. He directed the digging and repairing of entrenchments, the planting of mines, the ordering and stacking of supplies, the management of labourers to build barricades in an effort to keep the English out--all of this was under Jai Lal. He supervised the attacks. His ability had little to do with the fact we were not able to prevent the English from taking over the city. So many of our men came with no military training--simple peasants from the countryside. The English had better fire power, and thousands of men suddenly brought out from England to crush us. The situation was beyond us all. But now Jai Lal is back on his feet. Our minds work together, our hearts, too. Both of us feel compelled to care for Lucknow and its people. We have worked together during the worst of the fighting. I've come to comfort him in the hardest hours and he has done the same for me. I've never known a sibling, but I've had sisters in my friend Amah, in the other Ethiopian bodyguards in the Rose Platoon, in the dancers at the Envy of Paradise. Now I have a twin brother in Jai Lal.

It is good to be here at this wondrous mud-caked fort in the fields. With my son. With Jai Lal. And Jyoti Singh. It is even good to be here with the scowling Mariam who sits on the farthest bed in our room with her flower-shaped bowl and her basket of clothes held close, looking at no one.

Our primary concern is to pay our men. Our camp is becoming the headquarters of activity despite the disarray the English takeover of Lucknow caused. Our army and followers grow to fifteen thousand men. The most effective way to keep these forces intact is to pay them well. We promised months ago to pay double what the English pay Indian soldiers, to help those men to defect.

I have sold a lot of my jewellery for rupees. And fortunately for us, two wealthy men in Lucknow donated five hundred thousand and two hundred thousand rupees each to the resistance. That money has gone far; however, revenue collection is an ongoing task.

Jai Lal calls to one of Jyoti Singh's gardeners in the courtyard. "Are there rich men living nearby?"

"Are there what?" The gardener, a thin man with a face scorched by the sun, laughs. "Not nowadays. You won't find a man with extra rupees around here."

"Are there any country homes belonging to Chief Ministers, to royal accountants?"

The gardener smiles and the wrinkles in the corners of his eyes deepen. "A few. But those men left long ago. Their gardens are used by bandits as shitting grounds."

"Awful! We'll have to make promises of payment to our men and hope they will stay with us." Jai Lal fastens the top silver stud on his achkan coat.

"Jai Lal, where are you going?" I ask.

"To see a little more of the land, Huzoor." He bows his head, and leaves the courtyard.

The gardener smiles. "Plenty of land. But he won't be visiting rich neighbours."

I go into our room and lie down on one of the beds. Birjis snores softly on his back on a bed near me. Mariam continues to sit up on the bed farthest from us. The evening's darkness comes on swiftly. I wait for sleep. Outside in the courtyard, Maher the animal attendant coos to our tiny, guli pigeons in their brass birdcages while he feeds them by the light of a small lantern. He talks to the pigeons, reminding them about their aviaries back home in Lucknow--the wide-open space beneath the wire netting, the soft grass, and plentiful seed soaked in ghee. He tells them about Lucknow's famous trainers who once flew twenty-five thousand birds with great skill, the three hundred rupees those great men received each per month from the King for their services. "And that is not all," he says to the pigeons. "You little birds should know that the elephant trainers and the horse trainers used to receive nine thousand rupees each from His Majesty. And so did I! I did, little pigeons! His Majesty's rupee coins ran through my fingers each month for my dangerous work with the butting rams!"

Someone else in the courtyard growls that he will butt the animal attendant's head if he doesn't quiet down. Then all is hushed except for the trill of crickets, the mosquitos that whine. Fireflies wink in the night through our windows. I am almost asleep when there's a muffled noise at the door and Jai Lal appears with some of our men behind him, all of them holding lanterns. When Jai Lal opens one of the heavy, muddy boxes by their feet, he looks up at me and smiles. It is filled with rupee coins.

The old gardener comes and stands near Jai Lal with his mouth open. He touches the money. "Oh dear God, not English rupees either. His Majesty's rupees." Jai Lal and his men carry the muddy boxes of money into our room. We watch in awe, sitting up straight on the beds, shawls wrapped firmly around each of us. That is Jai Lal. Treasure-seeker. If there were only one home in range, he would find that home, and open its garden gate. For months, he found hordes of jewels and money buried for safekeeping in dirty boxes deep in the ground of Lucknow's abandoned homes. His best find was three month's pay for the Awadh Force.

Usually, Jai Lal knows how to make that money last. He moves the boxes further into our room. Outside, he orders his men to stay on guard.

In the morning, Jai Lal and I settle ourselves in the fort's rooftop pavilion. It's warm but the shade is nonetheless lovely. We listen to the men being led through the bamboo forest toward the fort. One by one, they emerge through the small opening in the cactus hedge. Onions are frying in pans on a fire in the courtyard. On the roof, near our pavilion, a young soldier and Birjis are kite-fighting, their blue and red kites sailing high in the air. The strings on their kites are coated with gum and glass, and one of them will bring down the other. I scold Birjis, tell him he is getting too old for kite-fighting.

"Let him play, Huzoor," Jai Lal says. He stands with his hands on the low wall that edges the pavilion. "Birjis wrote to some of our friends outside of Awadh early this morning with me--to ensure everyone knows what has happened, that there has been another annexation. He wrote eloquently about the dethroning of his father, taking everything his father had, and the annexation of Awadh as a further act of treachery. Let him fly kites for a morning."

We hear someone coming up to the roof. Mariam pauses at the top of the stairs with her flower-shaped bowl filled with wet clothes. She does not greet us. She moves to the low wall near Jai Lal and lays out a light shawl to dry. We watch her as she goes downstairs again and returns with cups of green tea with lemon juice that she forcefully puts into our hands. "To get rid of the smell from your kebabs. Even up here garlic and onions are emanating from you both."

Only because she was my teacher does she get away with this sort of behaviour. Jai Lal sips the tea and lays a bet of his last five kebabs on the kite-fight going on. Mariam scowls, and hugs her bowl to herself as she gazes up at the handsome paper kites. "What happened to all our kite fights these last months? Nothing in the sky but the deafening sound of guns. Pop-pop-pop." She flings out a hand in the direction of all the men in the courtyard. "Trying to match English guns with their own. Pop-pop-pop!" She turns to me. "Who gave you permission to take His Majesty's men, and put him in charge," she thumbs Jai Lal. "His Majesty would not like it one bit. He asked his men to put down their arms, and his bodyguards like your friend Amah were supposed to put down their arms, but you supply them all with weapons."

I look past her to the bamboo forest. She's right about the noise that leaked into Lucknow's rose gardens and hung over the river until the pop-pop-pop was so deafening that everyone in Lucknow had to slam their shutters, bar their doors with wood, close up their shops, and bury their jewels in boxes down deep in the soil. Even if you lived, as Mariam did, in the Envy of Paradise, a brick building covered with stucco and hidden away in thick gardens filled with sitar music, you still heard the pop-pop-pop of the guns and the clink-clink of the swords. Mariam moves to the other side of the pavilion, and considers the men behind the fort who sit in the fields. She speaks above the laughter between Birjis and the young soldier whose kites bounce off each other and away. "Indian men copying English men. Men copying men. As if that's going to get you anywhere powerful. There's no doubt about the harm done to the boys who once upon a time only knew how to fly kites!" She turns to the kite-fighters. "Boys like this soldier who squints through a gun barrel, scrunching up his ridiculously young face."