Ash Mistry and the Savage Fortress. Sarwat Chadda

opened the rear passenger door and started bouncing on the white leather seats.

      “Ash, what’s wrong?” asked Uncle Vik.

      This wasn’t right. The car. All that money. Savage had bought his uncle. It made him sick. “I just want some breakfast.”

      Back in the kitchen, Ash poured out some cornflakes while Aunt Anita put on the kettle and toast.

      “He’s dying, you know that,” said Uncle Vik.

      Ash paused, the spoon a few millimetres from his mouth. “Who?”

      “Lord Savage. A skin disease. Cancer. One of the guests told me last night.”

      Aunt Anita filled up the white china teapot. “You think this business has something to do with his illness?”

      “He wants to leave a legacy. See something done in his name,” said Uncle Vik, his gaze roaming to the window and the car outside. “He can’t take it with him, can he?”

      “Still, two million pounds, Vikram. It’s not normal.”

      Uncle Vik kissed his wife’s forehead. “Who knows what is normal to a man like him? Lord Savage wants immortality. If these excavations are a success, he’ll have it. He’ll be the one who unlocked the secrets of an entire culture. Two million doesn’t seem much for immortality.”

      “And you’ll be rich and famous too, Uncle,” said Lucky. She shook her head at the toast and picked a banana from the fruit bowl. “Can I have a pony?”

      Uncle Vik laughed. “What’s mine is yours. We’re family.”

      “What about those freaks he has working for him?” asked Ash. “That skinny guy, Jat? Now you can’t tell me he’s normal.”

      “Bodyguards,” said Vik. “Lord Savage is immensely rich, and India is not like London, Ash. He needs protection.”

      That made sense. But things were clearly not right with Savage. Ash chewed his cornflakes as he went over last night in his mind. Memories of rakshasas and men with reptile eyes didn’t last long in the sunlight. If Jat was a bodyguard it was his job to scare intruders, and he’d certainly done that. It didn’t mean he really wanted to eat Ash’s eyeballs. Savage had called Mayar a demon, but that didn’t have to be literally true. Uncle Vik often called Lucky his little monkey, but that didn’t mean she had a tail.

      Perhaps his mum was right and he should cut down on all those computer games. They were giving him an over-active imagination.

      What was real? Believable? That Lord Savage was a terminally ill man with strange servants living in a rundown palace, trying to get his name in the history books – or that he was an evil monster, served by demons?

      Well, put like that…

      Ash was being stupid. If he carried on like this he’d be checking for monsters under his bed next.

      After breakfast, Ash joined Uncle Vik as he prepared to drive over to the Savage Fortress. His uncle popped open the trunk and dropped in his briefcase.

      “Be careful.” Despite everything, Ash couldn’t get rid of the fear he’d felt last night. “You know. Drive carefully.”

      “You think I’m going to risk a dent on this beautiful car?” There was even a pair of leather driving gloves lying on the dashboard. Uncle Vik put them on with a sigh of satisfaction. “Our luck’s changing, Ash.”

      The guard cleared the students away from the gate as Uncle Vik reversed out. Ash waved until the car could no longer be seen.

      Aunt Anita handed Ash some suntan lotion.

      “Put this on.”

      “We’re going out? Where?”

      “We’ve just been given two million pounds.” Anita smiled. “We’re going shopping.”

      While Anita was busy buying up the entire stock of the silk emporium, Ash and Lucky settled in at the Cyber Café to surf the web and catch up on emails.

      The emporium was part of a grand old government office built by the Victorians but now divided up into a thousand private stalls. Ash got himself a booth facing the main street, completely open to the traffic outside and the mass of humanity making its way towards the old city, the temples and the cremation sites, like an endless river of prayers.

      Ash Googled ‘Lord Alexander Savage’ and came up with a long list of charities, foundations, business ventures and offices all over the subcontinent and the Far East. There was a photo of the current Lord Savage having tea with the Dalai Lama up in the Himalayas. Ash had even found a portrait of the first Savage: a pirate, drug dealer, slave dealer and member of the Hellfire Club. The original mad, bad and dangerous to know. The ice-cold blue eyes stared at Ash from all those centuries ago, filled with cruel indifference and contempt.

      Ash logged into his webmail account and found messages from Josh, Sean and Akbar. They’d had an all night multi-gamer and were wondering if he wanted to hook up when he got back. A big fat ‘yes’ to that. If Lucky was getting a pony, then he was getting all the gaming hardware now money was no object. Like Uncle Vik had said, they were family and Ash’s uncle was keen, desperate even, to pay his brother back for all the support he’d given. Uncle Vik seemed a new man, raised by Savage’s patronage. Maybe Uncle Vik was right, their luck was changing.

      Ash could picture his room now. New console. Huge flat-screen. Cinema surround-sound system. The guys would go mental when he told them what he was planning.

      Josh added that he’d bumped into Gemma at the lido pool. Ash should have seen her, he wrote, all tanned and in a flower-patterned bikini. Josh, as his best friend and on his behalf, had admitted to her that Ash totally fancied her. Josh also added that she hadn’t been violently sick when he’d told her. So that was good.

      Gemma. In a bikini. Ash couldn’t think about that without blushing. She was going to the top of his ‘Things I Like’ list. Josh was going on his ‘To be killed as a matter of urgency’ list.

      Ash didn’t venture much near any swimming pools. He was worried some Japanese fisherman might harpoon him.

      Lucky nudged him.

      “What?”

      “That girl. She’s so totally checking you out.” Lucky stuck her tongue out of the side of her mouth, pointing in what she thought was a discreet manner.

      “Shut up.”

      “No, she is. Honestly.”

      Ash looked slowly sideways. “Which one?”

      “Green.”

      Ash made an extravagant motion for the waiter to bring him another Coke. He used the move to scan the other people at the café, looking for someone in green.

      Wow.

      An Indian girl in a green top and trousers sat at the edge of the café – tall, slim and ultra-cool. She was about the same age as him, maybe a year or two older. Her long black hair was loose and hung down over her shoulders, shimmering like oil on water, and her lips glistened with pale gloss. She rested her pointed chin on her fist, and it did seem as if she was looking straight at Ash, but her eyes were hidden behind a pair of big sunglasses so he couldn’t be sure. She could be asleep for all he knew.

      “She’s not looking at me,” Ash said.

      “Go and say something.” Lucky nudged him again. “Go on.”

      “She’s not looking at me,” he repeated.

      “Your loss. She’s going anyway.”

      Ash spun round. The stool was empty. He caught a glimpse of green silk enter the busy crowd, then the girl disappeared into the ever-moving river of people.

      He could have said something.

      Ash turned back