In the Palace of the Khans Read online

  “I will sit by Nigel, Lucy,” she said. “So we can talk to each other.”

  “Wait a mo,” said Nigel’s father. “I’m not sure we can …”

  “Nonsense, Nick,” said Nigel’s mother. “Provided this lady doesn’t object.”

  Taeela laughed and spoke in Dirzhani to the guard, who grinned and covered her eyes with her hands, like the third wise monkey.

  “Four to one,” said Nigel’s father. “But perhaps when we’re getting to Dara …”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Nick! The windows are one-way glass. And can’t you see they need each other?”

  (No he couldn’t. She could. That was something Nigel was going to have to live with.)

  They settled in, a male guard beside the driver in front, Nigel’s parents behind them, then Nigel, Taeela and the female guard, and then the baggage right in the back. All the guards who were fit to travel and most of the medical team followed in two more cars.

  The guard kept her promise by looking out of the window all the way. That was her job anyway, Nigel supposed. The bench seat was wide enough to leave plenty of room for Taeela and Nigel to sit with a bit of space between them, keeping the Dirzhani proprieties as best they could.

  Taeela sat brooding for a while with her chin on her fist. There was a bruised look around her eyes that wasn’t eye-shadow. Nigel’s thoughts were still a jumble: stuff about the attack on the viewing-point at Lake Vamar; stuff about what sort of man the President really was; stuff about his own family, and himself, and whether he was as like his father inside as he was outside. At length Taeela turned to him and spoke in an almost-whisper.

  “‘I have after all been forced to choose, my queen.’ What does this mean, Nigel?”

  “Uh … Something your father said?” he said, ambushed, playing for time.

  “At Lake Vamar. When I am getting into the car. He makes it a joke, like it is important … No, you must tell me.”

  “Suppose it’s got to be something to do with that time I was showing you about the queen sacrifice,” he said slowly. “What was best for you and what was best for Dirzhan, remember? Best for you to sit with me, maybe, but not best for Dirzhan, because people mightn’t like it.”

  Even to him it didn’t sound very convincing. She shook her head, dissatisfied, then turned and sat staring at the back of the seat in front of her. Nigel watched the landscape slide by, but barely noticed it.

  Beside him Taeela sighed.

  “It is hard being a khan, Nigel,” she whispered shakily. “It is hard.”

  She’d worked it out for herself.

  “Take it easy,” he said. “I don’t think it was like that—I really don’t. I was pretty scared when Dad told me to watch out for something—as if I wasn’t scared enough already—and try and fix it that you came in the car with us. But now I’ve had time to …

  “Look, Taeela, maybe your dad thought about it, but he’s got to think of everything. He’d’ve known it was a crazy risk. It’d’ve been bound to come out. And you’d’ve been shattered, wouldn’t you? He’d know that too.

  “So I think he’d already decided against it, and you saying you were going to come in the car with us let him turn it into a sort of joke. A joke with himself. He’s like that.”

  She sat for a while, brooding, obviously deeply troubled. Perhaps, like him, this was the first time she had ever needed to think about what kind of a man her father was. It was worse for her, far worse.

  “Yes,” she whispered at last. “He must think about it, think for Dirzhan. It is hard being a khan, Nigel.”

  They stopped up in the mountains for a picnic lunch. The guards insisted on finding a place where they could park without the cars being visible for miles, but they let them eat out in the open, with a spectacular view over the next valley. Somebody must have stayed up all night preparing the meal, a dozen different kinds of finger food, beautifully packed, very Dirzhani. While they were eating, five large military helicopters clattered north through the enormous emptiness. As the sound faded Nigel realised that he had stopped eating to watch them go by, and then that the others had done the same.

  “Those poor villagers,” muttered his mother. “It wasn’t their fault.”

  “No!” said Taeela, instantly furious. “They …”

  She stopped herself and swallowed her face working.

  “I’m sorry, Taeela,” said Nigel’s mother. “Perhaps I shouldn’t have said that in front of you.”

  “I tell Nigel it is hard being a khan, Lucy. This is true.”

  “There’s no way you can have power without problems,” said Nigel’s father, as if that solved anything.

  They stopped again when they were almost home, with Dara Dahn and the river valley spread out below them. The driver took a handset from under the dashboard, keyed in a number, waited, spoke briefly, pressed the off button and passed the handset to Nigel’s father. It rang almost at once.

  “Hello. British ambassador speaking … Certainly, sir. We’d be delighted. No problem at all … Yes, we can arrange that. One moment. Khanazhana, your father would like to speak to you.”

  She almost snatched the handset from him, clapped it to her ear and spoke eagerly. Nigel could just hear the characteristically level tone of the reply. She answered pouting, teasing. He heard the name Fofo. A brief answer, a goodbye, and she rang off.

  “I’m staying at your embassy tonight, Nigel,” she chortled. “I’ll see where you live.”

  She’d got her grammar back, he noticed. She’d managed to put her doubts aside. Things were OK now. She thought.

  Before the car pulled up at the embassy steps Taeela rearranged her headscarf so that it covered the lower part of her face. Apart from that, it was almost a repeat of the previous evening: stressed out travellers, weary with much more than their journey, reaching at last a large, luxurious dwelling, to be greeted by servants who knew nothing of the dangers they’d been through, and who still mustn’t be told; the late supper, the desultory, pointless chat; the silences; the glances. Even Taeela was subdued.

  As soon as they’d eaten Nigel’s father took his coffee up to his office to start drafting his report, so that he could call during the London working day. A few minutes later his mother said “It’s been a long couple of days. I expect you two would like to get to bed. There’s no problem keeping to the rules, Taeela. We’ve told your father that Nick’s moving into one of the spare rooms for the night. That means you can sleep in his dressing room, which leads off my bedroom.”

  “You are very kind, Lucy,” said Taeela.

  “Got to keep Fofo happy,” said Nigel.

  Taeela managed a smile.

  CHAPTER 9

  Day 11

  Another nothing-much day. Spent some of it sorting out that stuff you’ve just been reading, and talking about family stuff you don’t want to know about, so I’m going to give myself a rest. Big day coming tomorrow, though. Tell you about it when it’s over …

  Nightmare woke Nigel early, with nowhere for his mind to go but the real nightmare stuff of the last four days. No point lying there letting it go on churning, so he got up, had a shower, dressed and went to look for a CD that might take his mind off it. He found Taeela at the living-room window in her dressing gown, staring out at Dara Dahn.

  “Hi,” he said. “Great view, isn’t it?”

  She turned, and he saw the bruised look around her eyes. But the eyes themselves sparkled.

  “When I am Khan, I will have this for my house,” she said. “In the morning I will ride down to the palace on one of my horses and rule over Dirzhan. Then in the afternoon I will come home to my children.”

  “Sounds good to me. How many kids?”

  She thought about it.

  “Three girls and one boy,” she decided. “Not two boys, or they’ll fight who will be Khan when I am dead. I’ll choose good strong young men to marry my daughters, and they will give me nineteen grandchildren. No. I change my mind. My oldest daughter w
ill marry the son of the President of America. My second daughter will marry the son of the President of Russia, and my youngest daughter will be very, very beautiful—hot—so she will marry the son of your Prince William. They will give me nineteen grandchildren still.”

  “That’ll keep the photographers busy. Is it OK for us to be alone together in here?”

  She shrugged.

  “Lucy was asleep. Her light was lit and her glasses were on her face.”

  “She must have had as bad a night as I did. You too, I guess.”

  “Before this I never sleep not in my own bed.”

  “Wow! Then we are honoured, like Dad said. Nobody’s told me why.”

  Her tone changed.

  “There are not enough guards in the palace. Some are hurt in the helicopter, some have gone to Vamar to question the villagers. So they must teach new guards.”

  The call came on the private line while they were having breakfast. Nigel’s mother took it.

  “Hello … Oh, good morning … I don’t think any of us slept that well. It’s a bit difficult to settle down after all that … Not at all. It’s been a real pleasure having her.… Of course. She’ll be ready … Yes, here she is.”

  Taeela was already hovering by her shoulder, but managed not to snatch when the telephone was handed to her. She chattered away in Dirzhani until her father cut her short and she rang off.

  “After lunch I’ll go home,” she announced. “I must stay in this house. My father doesn’t want that that I … want me to be seen. He’s making a speech at eleven o’clock, on the television. I must watch that. I will tell you what he says.”

  The speech was all about tax breaks for farmers to help them increase food production, and how that meant prices in the shops would come down. Not a hint about what had happened at Lake Vamar. Just a lot of good news for your average Dirzhani, and the President showing that he had made it happen. When it was over Taeela chose a Doctor Who to watch. Nigel had already seen it and hated the Doctor’s icky sidekick, so he slipped away to look for Rick. He found him fixing a leak in the downstairs toilet. Nigel had already worked out how to deal with the obvious question.

  “Hi, lad. How are you doing? Interesting weekend?”

  “Amazing. And then some.”

  “Don’t worry. I ain’t going to ask you any more. Do anything for you?”

  “Nothing special. It’s just a feeling. Has anything been happening—anything funny? Everybody seems a bit jumpy.”

  “Who’s everybody?”

  “Well, Dad mostly, I suppose.”

  “You’ll ’ave to ask ’im. ’Part from that, your guess is as good as mine, Nigel … Better, likely.”

  The pause, the deliberate flatness of the last two words, gave them their meaning. Rick knew.

  To make Taeela’s visit as unobtrusive as possible they said goodbye to her in the living-room. She thanked Nigel’s parents and shook hands with his father, but then hugged his mother as if she never wanted to let go. At last she turned to him.

  “Nigel,” she said.

  “Bye, Taeela. Been great having you. See you soon.”

  She took the meaningless phrase straight.

  “Tomorrow? It is the Chiefs’ present-giving … How do I say that, Nick?”

  “Hm. The Tribute of the Chieftains? That sounds sufficiently formal.”

  “That’s still on!” said Nigel’s mother. “In spite of everything?”

  “Of course. Officially there’s no reason to change it.”

  “Am I still supposed to come? What about Nigel?”

  “If you can bear it. A show of confidence on our part would be appreciated.”

  “But you will come to me first, Nigel,” said Taeela.

  Before he could answer her glance shifted sideways and up.

  “Please, Lucy,” she said, speaking at first as if her world depended on it, but then deliberately overdoing it. “Please. My father shows me to the chieftains. Just now he tells me. I shall be so …”

  She mimed her nervousness, comically appealing.

  “I’ll come if I possibly can,” he said. “Promise.”

  “Well …” Nigel’s mother began, but his father interrupted.

  “Let’s talk about it later. We’re holding the Khanazhana up.”

  Taeela sighed, smiled, wrapped the long end of her headscarf round her face and led the way out onto the landing. They watched her departure from the head of the stairs. The front door was open and a man and a woman wearing ordinary Dirzhani dress were waiting just inside it, with Taeela’s suitcase. They bowed their heads briefly to Taeela and the woman slid her right hand in under her jacket—there’d be a gun in there, Nigel guessed—and moved out onto the doorstep. Taeela waited until she had gazed left and right, then joined her. The man picked up the suitcase and followed, closing the door behind him.

  Nigel heard his mother sigh, and turned to her.

  “I’m sorry, darling,” she said. “I’m not happy about you going to this tribute thing. About any of us going, really. Something’s up they aren’t …”

  “Please, Mum. She really …”

  “Not out there, Niggles,” interrupted his father. “We’ll talk about it in here.”

  Reluctantly he followed his mother back into the living-room. He hated family rows. His mother began as soon as he’d closed the door, talking not to him but to his father.

  “Let’s be clear about this, Nick. You’ve got to tell me what’s going on. Something is. All this fuss. Look at how our guards acted on the way back from the lake, checking out the hunting lodge before they’d let us drive up to the front door. And then yesterday not letting us have our picnic where I wanted so they could get the cars out of sight. And the President wanting us to have Taeela here overnight.”

  “She said that was because they were short of guards at the palace,” said Nigel. “A lot of them have gone up to Lake Vamar.”

  “I don’t believe it,” said his mother. “They wouldn’t be acting like this if they thought what happened at Lake Vamar had just been some stroppy villager taking a pot-shot at the President. Something’s up, and I don’t like the feel of it. Is there any way we can get out of this tribute thing, for a start?”

  “Let’s sit down,” said Nigel’s father, and settled into his armchair, putting his finger-tips together in front of his chin, ready to start talking smoothly, reasonably, calmingly.

  “First, let me say that I partially agree with you, darling. It seemed to me from the first that it was unlikely that your stroppy villager would have a night vision sight of sniper quality.

  “On the other hand it is hard to see how anyone in Dara Dahn, bar a very few trusted members of the President’s personal staff, could have known that the helicopter accident meant that there were not enough uninjured guards to patrol the far shore of the lake, and furthermore known the timing of his visit to the fish-owl project. We ourselves didn’t know that until the Saturday.”

  “Somebody at the hunting lodge?” said Nigel’s mother. “I bet some of them are locals. They might be in cahoots with the villagers.”

  “But not with anyone in Dara Dahn. From what we’ve seen of the system I would guarantee that all unauthorised communication between hunting lodge and palace is strictly monitored. What we are discussing is whether the events at Lake Vamar were orchestrated from Dara Dahn, with the implication that it would not be safe for you and/or Nigel to attend the ceremony tomorrow.

  “In fact they make it safer, if anything. It is automatic under any regime that after a serious security breach temporary precautions are put in place. Hence the choice of a picnic site and Taeela’s visit. Security at the palace tomorrow will be even tighter than usual, if that’s possible.

  “For myself, I have every intention of attending the ceremony, and would feel obliged to do so even if I thought it was riskier than I do. But if Nigel were to have a diplomatic illness and you stayed to look after him …”

  “If you’re going I’m
going too. And I suppose Nigel can come and sit with us, where he’s under our eye.”

  “No, Mum. I’ve got to go to Taeela first. I’ve pretty well promised. Please.”

  “I don’t see why he shouldn’t …”

  “No, Nick. I see you’ve got to go because of your job, and it’ll look almost as bad if I don’t go too. That doesn’t apply to Nigel, but if he absolutely insists on coming I won’t say no, but I’m not letting him out of my sight.”

  “But, Mum …”

  “I’m sorry, darling …”

  “Mum! Please listen!”

  “If I may intervene …” said Nigel’s father.

  “Wait, Nick,” said his mother. “I want to hear what Nigel says.”

  Nigel took a deep breath, trying to pull himself together.

  “Taeela’s going to notice, Mum. And she’s going to know why you didn’t let me come. Because you didn’t think it was safe. Mum, she’s really scared.”

  “We were all scared, darling.”

  “You’re not getting it, Mum. She is scared. It’s over for us. It isn’t for her, and it won’t ever be. She told me about it in the car coming back from the lake. All we’ve got to do is go away somewhere and we’ll be out of it. Like waking up from a nightmare. But it’s real for her, ordinary. She’s been waiting for something like Lake Vamar to happen all her life. She gets taught nightmare stuff like we get taught PE—how to gouge someone’s eyes out, what’s the best place to stick a knife into him, all that. She’s got her own pistol she carries around. It isn’t a toy. It’s in case she has to use it.

  “And then the thing happens and it’s real and none of that’s any use and she finds out what it’s like to be really, really scared, and she’s going to be in it for the rest of her life, trying to pretend it’s ordinary all her life. Just now, just for a moment, when she was asking you to let me go and be with her before the tribute thingy, she let us see how it really, really mattered. And then she hammed it up, so as to hide it.

  “No, wait. I haven’t finished. There’s never been anyone in her life before who really cared about her, cared about Taeela for herself, not just because she’s the Khanazhana. Apart from Fohdrahko and her dad, but they don’t count. But now there’s you and me. We don’t just like her, we care about her. She knows she can trust us. And now we’re going to let her down. She’s never going to trust anyone again.