Lucknow, India, 1876: 

In the days after Ellini left, Jack devoted himself whole-heartedly to the pursuit of oblivion. 

At first, it had been a necessary tactic. He knew, as he watched Ellini's retreating back on the road out of Lucknow, that he couldn't go after her. He stood there, his mind on fire with all the things he could do now – right now, before it was too late – to make her sorry. He pictured it all so clearly. His hand even started towards the throwing-knives he kept in his belt, before he was able to snatch it back.

But, in the end, he beat down every instinct in his body, and stayed exactly where he was.

He knew he couldn't go after her. If he went after her, he would kill her. And he knew he mustn't think about it – because, if he thought about it, he would want to kill her. 

So he walked, as if in a trance, to the main guard building, where the off-duty soldiers held an eternal drinking contest, with reinforcements arriving all the time to replace the men who'd fallen over.

They had overturned a crate of rifle-cartridges, and were using it as a kind of gaming table. Poker and dice were the usual games, but there were other, more exciting, diversions, like hiding a heap of gunpowder under one of three cups, and asking your comrade to shoot at whichever cup he thought didn't have gunpowder underneath it. If the table didn't explode in your face, you won – which was a definition of winning that Jack thought everyone could agree with.

There was a ring hammered into the wall – probably from the days when the main guard building had been used as a prison. It was positioned about six inches above Jack's head when he sat down at the table, so it was at perfect height to be gripped firmly while he endeavoured not to go after Ellini and drank himself into oblivion.

Oblivion wasn't easy for someone like Jack, whose mind was always wandering. He needed a lot of distractions to keep his thoughts from straying. The whisky drew a dark curtain over all the pain, but it kept fluttering, giving him momentary glimpses of the stark, horrible view outside.

After a blurry stretch of time, he prized his hand off the iron ring, staggered up to the suite, and fell into bed. 

He was only on top of the covers – he might have only been half-way on the bed – but, still, in the split second between landing and passing out, he caught the scent of her perfume on the sheets, and felt a sickening jolt from his Adam's apple to his crotch, as though all his internal organs had been yanked forward by a few of inches, causing some serious internal bleeding.

Suddenly, the dark curtain fell away, to reveal a whole, gruesome vista of pain. He saw all the hours he would have to fill without her – weeks and months and years of trying with every fibre of his being not to think about it.

He leapt off the bed, hatred burning a hole in his throat. The humiliation of wanting someone who had left you for Robin Crake – who was probably in bed with him right now, with her eyes closed, and her nails dug in –

Oh god, OK, no thinking, he told himself, trying to keep the hatred down. It was rising up in his throat like vomit. 

To try and keep himself from picturing Ellini and Robin, he made himself focus on the things in front of him, but they were all hers – all those jewels and bangles and books.

He launched himself at the dressing table and swiped his arm across it, causing the bottles arrayed on top to smash and clatter to the floor.

He picked up a candle-stick and smashed it into the mirror – he pulled down the bed-curtains and ripped her saris till they slithered in tatters to the floor – but he reserved a special venom for the books. Oh, he had been wanting to tear them for centuries. They were snatched down from their shelves and disembowelled with all the righteous enthusiasm of the Spanish Inquisition. He tore off covers, ripped out pages, and rent the spines in a fever of destruction, with sweat trickling down his bare back, and the breath hissing between his teeth.

It was wonderful, in a dark, heady, shameful way – probably the only way that things would ever be wonderful from this moment on.

At some point, Violet came in, and stood in the middle of the carnage, bewailing her own unhappy fate – saying things like: "I knew it would be like this – she never spared a thought for what was going to happen to me – I wish I'd never seen her."

Jack found all these feminine pronouns very off-putting, so he whipped round to face her, becoming suddenly, chillingly calm.

"Violet," he said, as if he had only just noticed her come in. "I want all this stuff out of here – I don't want anything kept except what's mine." He looked around, and spotted his rifle, underneath the snow-storm of paper. "Which is this," he added, slinging it over his shoulder. "I don't care what you do with the rest. Sell it, burn it, bury it – but, if I see anyone in this city wearing something that once belonged to her – and I have an extremely good eye for detail, Violet – I will kill you. It'll probably be quick, because I don't have the patience for anything Crake-like at the moment, but I'll make it nasty – I think you won't have any difficulty believing that."

Violet just stood there and blubbered at him, which was the most infuriating reaction of all.

"I'm going out," he said, raising his voice to make himself heard over her sobs. "Don't make me angry with you, Violet – I hate getting angry – just do your job."

He went down to the palace's main courtyard. There was always somebody awake at this time of night and, in the main courtyard, you could find a whole gang of them, doing their best to punch each others' lights out.

The men had set up a kind of unofficial sparring club out here – an activity that neatly combined their favourite pursuits of fighting, betting and shouting. They stood around in a circle and clamoured while two of their number tried to knock each other out. Jack had often joined in, for practice, when Ellini was away – or when the incessant talking and negotiations in the council chamber were driving him mad. Now he made his way towards it as though it was the bright light at the end of the tunnel. What a relief it would be to finally punch somebody.

He was allowed to go right to the front of the queue – there was no waiting for the General – and fight the biggest man present. And then the next biggest man, when the biggest had been dealt with. And so on.

It was even better than the combination of whisky and imminent death he'd experienced at the main guard building. It was like being underwater. Pain, adrenaline, and fatigue roared in your ears and made you deaf to everything else.

The only tricky part was remembering that your opponent was not Robin, and pulling away when you saw he could no longer fight back. That was as screamingly wrong as struggling out of those Ellini-scented sheets – but he managed it somehow.

Towards dawn, he saw Violet take up station in a corner of the courtyard, her arms stacked with saris and shawls. She started to burn them, one by one, dropping them into a steel drum in which she'd kindled a fire.

It was an eye-catching sight – all those flames and spangled fabrics. It made Jack lose concentration and get punched in the face half a dozen times, but he was always half-way thankful for it, because it provided some nice, easily-addressed, physical pain, to take his mind off the horrible, creeping, internal stuff.

When she was done with the saris, she started burning the books. Jack noticed that she tried to look at them as little as possible, and dropped them into the fire with a shudder.

He got quite good at keeping one eye on his opponent, and the other on Violet as she worked. He turned it into a game – so that, in addition to ducking blows and landing punches, he was always trying to circle round to keep Violet in view, always trying to stay on his feet so that he could see her over the heads of the clamouring spectators. He even tried more head-kicks than usual, because they allowed him to jump up and get a better view of her.

So his reactions were quick when he saw her drop the last of the books into the fire and pick up a bundle of letters. There was always someone at the front of the crowd holding a weapon of some kind, so he snatched up a crossbow, and fired it across the courtyard. 

He'd barely even been looking. It could have landed anywhere. It could have buried itself in any part of Violet's anatomy. But, as luck would have it – her luck, anyway – it hit her trailing sleeve and pinned it to the soft mortar of the courtyard-walls. She dropped the letters in the mud, but at least they hadn't landed in the fire.

Jack's sparring partners were used to seeing him get distracted and run off to shout at someone else in the middle of a fight. The crowd parted to let him through, and resumed its activities with barely a pause. Another fighter was selected to take his place, and the grappling continued. There was some admiration for the crossbow-shot – although, since most of the men in the camp knew Violet, they were vaguely disappointed that the arrow hadn't buried itself in her chest.

Jack bounded up to her, grabbed her by the throat, and pinned her against the wall. He was eerily calm now, and gave her a bright little smile while she gasped and whimpered.

"I'm sorry, Violet, that was rude of me, wasn't it? I should have explained. You see," he said, stooping down to pick up the letters, and waving them pointedly in her face, "these are not hers. That's my name on the front of the envelopes. And she can fuck whoever she likes – she can fuck the entire Anglo-Indian army – but she can't take this back."

Violet was breathing very heavily. It was hard for her to speak, because his hand was still pressed up against her throat, but she managed to say: "Let me help you forget her, Sahib."

Jack stared at her. The anger was rising up in his throat again, but this time, he made no effort to keep it under. She was enjoying this. She was actually enjoying it. Was this what all women wanted – to be beaten and pushed around by someone who held them in contempt? Was this going on somewhere else tonight? And was she loving every minute of it?

Jack forced the anger into another smile, and let go of her throat. Then he turned to the arrow that was still pinning her sleeve to the wall and pulled it out. "You know, you should keep this arrow, Violet," he said, pressing it into her hands. "This should be your lucky arrow. When you settle down, you should have it framed and mounted on your wall. Because, when I fired this arrow, Violet, I was aiming for your head."

Then he patted her on the shoulder and walked away.

There was only one thing for it. There was only one avenue of revenge open to him. He was going to have to find Myrrha.

***

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