In the Palace of the Khans Read online

  Shading her torch with her free hand she searched a section of the brickwork, found the place she wanted and switched off her torch. He did the same. He heard the grate of a brick being removed, the clink of a key ring, the dull double click of a big lock. By the time a gate in the grating swung open his eyes had adjusted and the darkness beyond it was no longer absolute. Taeela waited for them to follow her through, closed and locked the grating and put the key in her pocket. A dozen paces on they were standing under the first arch of the fancy bridge.

  On either side two more massive iron gratings reached from pillar to pillar, closing off the whole section under the arch, the upstream one with a bank of driftwood piled against it. Between their bars Nigel could see the moonlit roofs of Dahn climbing the hill, and the river itself with the lights of the embankment reflected from the greasy water.

  At the light touch of Taeela’s hand he felt for it and held it.

  “My father is dead,” she whispered. “Fofo is dying …”

  “He may still be all right. When he’s had a bit of a rest …”

  “No. He gave me his map of the secret passages. That means it is finished for him. He has cut his wrists. When eunuchs cannot serve their masters more … any more … they cut their wrists. It is how eunuchs die.”

  She let go of his hand and drew herself up.

  “Now we go,” she said, and led the way back into the tunnel.

  CHAPTER 13

  Using the bars of the grating for hand-holds and footholds they crossed the stream to a ledge like the one they’d been on, and Taeela led the way out under the bridge and round the corner to where the next grating barred the archway. She knelt and Nigel held and shaded the torch while she searched the masonry beside it and found the slot, but it took several trials to get the key to engage. The catch clicked, but the iron had rusted and it needed Rahdan’s strength to swing a rectangular section of the bars outwards, leaving an opening large enough for a man to crawl through.

  The uproar from the bridge rose as they emerged from the sheltering archway. Ahead the ledge seemed to end at the wall of a large building. Taeela disappeared into its moon-shadow and Nigel groped his way after her. Keys clinked, followed by the scrape of a lock, and the creak of hinges, and he found himself looking up a narrow slot, visible only by the strip of night sky above it, between the blank wall of the building and the approach to the bridge. Half way along it Taeela halted.

  “Now you must wear your dahl and be a girl, Nigel,” she whispered. “Fohdrahko tells me the boats bring in the fish to a near place. A man is there, waiting for them to come. Rahdan will say to him we are afraid to go over the bridge, so he we will pay him thirty dzhin to row us across the river. I have only big money.”

  “I’ve got thirty, I think.”

  It sounded a bit iffy, but it went fine. Beyond the door at the top of the alley a narrow, dark street ran left and right. Their noses led them to the fish quay, a few turnings on along it, and then, by the sweet reek of whatever it was he was smoking, to the man in charge in a shed close to the water’s edge. Rahdan was in his element bargaining for the crossing, no longer the blubbering wreck who had crept out of his cell, but the big, manly man, protecting his timid little females from the trouble on the bridge.

  It was a warm, still night. Nigel was streaming with sweat under his heavy dahl. His incongruous European sneakers poked out below, so he kept behind Taeela until they settled into the boat and he could hide them under her duffel-bag. She sat silent beside him, staring straight ahead, dry-eyed.

  The boatman rowed upstream for a while, keeping in the shadow of the buildings that lined the shore, and then slantwise across the dark, silky water. Once they were well under way Nigel counted the money out and passed it to Rahdan. They were half way across when the racket on the bridge was interrupted by a heavy boom. A moment of silence, then uproar. Yells, screams and another boom. Tank gun, he guessed.

  The boatman hesitated and rowed on, urgently now. The gunwale grated on a stone wharf, the boatman grabbed at a ring and muttered whatever was Dirzhani for “Get on with it.” Rahdan was gave him the money and they scrambled out. He pushed off and rowed away without bothering to count it.

  Stone steps led up to the avenue that ran along the embankment. People were already streaming past, away from the bridge. Taeela asked Rahdan a question, but he shrugged and spread his hands, miming ignorance.

  “I know somewhere we can try,” said Nigel. “Up near the market. I think I can find it. I’ve got a street map.”

  Another boom reverberated, nearer now. Then another, and another. The fugitives broke into a run. Rahdan turned to follow, but Taeela snapped at him and grabbed his hand.

  “Where, Nigel, where?”

  He pointed across the road and to the right, then, playing his part as a girl, took Taeela’s other hand. Linked together, they fought their way through the torrent of people and back towards the bridge. The first alley on the left was jammed solid. They struggled on. In the reflected floodlighting of a grand building close ahead they could see the tops of the approaching tanks. Again Rahdan hesitated, but Taeela dragged him into the driveway of the building and ducked behind the low wall that separated it from the roadway.

  The curve of the drive had left room for a bed of ornamental shrubs, letting them crawl right in under the rough tunnel between their lower branches and the wall and lie there while the tanks rumbled past. Some soldiers came scrunching along the gravel of the driveway and took a whack or two at the bushes as if they were trying to drive birds out, but didn’t do any serious poking around. They moved on, grumbling about something as they went. Nigel let out the breath he wasn’t aware he’d been holding. Now desperately hot, he clawed the hood of his dahl off and lay there, panting like a dog.

  Fresh shouts arose from behind them. An ambulance went past with blue lights flashing and sirens squealing. Then silence.

  “They have gone,” said Taeela, starting to get to her knees.

  “Wait a mo,” said Nigel. “I’d better check where we’re going.”

  He wriggled himself over to a patch of brighter light coming through a gap in the branches and got out his street map. There was the palace; that was the fancy bridge; that must be the fish-quay; they’d crossed the river on a slant, so that must be the wharf where they’d landed. The map was for tourists, so he didn’t have to try and read Dirzhani script.

  “We want Galadny Sixteenth Street,” he said. “Whatever that means. There can’t be that many Galadnys.”

  “August sixteenth,” said Taeela bleakly. “My birthday. Last year my father gives … gave it to me.”

  He didn’t know what to say. How do you mourn for a monster? A monster who happened to be nice to you, and named streets after his daughter’s birthday, but who kept ordinary people who’d got it wrong somehow in a place like the one where they’d found Rahdan?

  “Perhaps it is a sign,” said Taeela in the same dead voice. “I think we go now.”

  On hands and knees she led them to the far end of the bed, where the driveway curved back into the avenue. She peered round the gatepost and beckoned them on. The avenue was deserted. Galadny Sixteenth was a well-lit modern street climbing the hill, part of a simple grid pattern, so all they had to do for the moment was make a series of right-and-lefts up towards the old city. The soldiers must already have swept these streets clear and moved on, apart from a place below a crossroads where some of them had cornered a couple of men breaking the curfew and were hammering them with their gun butts. Luckily they were too busy with that to notice three more curfew-breakers dashing across the street higher up the slope.

  The change to the old city was as sharp as moving from open fields into ancient woodland. The narrow lanes wound every which way. The occasional street lamps cast only small pools of light. Nigel used them to check the map as briefly as he could. A few other people scuttled through the shadows

  He remembered that Rick lived in a street off the one that ra
n directly up from the fancy bridge—the Iskan Bridge, according to the map, so the street was Novodzhan. It was a main thoroughfare, likely to be better lit and patrolled than elsewhere, so they didn’t want to be in it longer than they needed to find the big poster of the President with the ibex.

  Well down from that point they struck Digvan Ildzhu, narrow and dark and twisty, climbing the slope only a variable block away from Novodzhan. From then on it was just a matter of working their way uphill and looking down every opening for the poster. They reached it sooner than he expected, where the twists of the two streets brought them only a dozen houses apart. If they’d come much later the poster wouldn’t have been there. A soldier at the top of a ladder had started to tear it down. A couple more lounged at the bottom, one of whom happened to be looking along the side street when Nigel and the others darted across. Almost the only lamp in Digvan Ildzhu lit the junction.

  The soldier shouted and started to run, unslinging his gun as he came. They hared up the slope, turned into the first possible opening, right again, and into the small courtyard with the curious old tree, its bare, twisting branches now silhouetted against the night sky.

  “This way,” Nigel panted and ducked under the archway into the courtyard behind Rick’s house. The door was unlocked, so Rick must still be stuck in the embassy. He led them in and locked it behind them.

  They stood and listened in the dimness of the hallway. There was light coming from the top of the stairs, and the drone of a TV newsreader.

  “I’ll call if it’s safe to come up,” he whispered, and pulled the hood of his dahl back.

  As he climbed the stairs he realized for the first time how exhausted he was. His legs seemed barely able to do their job. He dragged himself up by the banister. Please, please let Janey understand, or at least let them rest here for a couple of hours before she threw them out. His normally pale face must be scarlet. She’d have to recognize him by his hair.

  “Janey,” he called just loud enough to be heard above the TV.

  In an instant she was on the landing with the girls in the doorway behind her. She halted and stared.

  “Nidzhell! Where’s Rick? I been calling and calling but their phone ain’t working.”

  “In the embassy, I think. They aren’t letting anyone in or out. We can’t go there. We were hoping …”

  “But your dad—he’s the ambassador!”

  “He’s still in the palace. So’s Mum. We got out by, er, back ways. That’s why I’m dressed like this.”

  She stood there, taking it in.

  “It’s true, then,” she said at last. “He’s dead.”

  “We saw it happen. Look, Janey, we were wondering …”

  “Who’s we? You got someone with you? British, I suppose?”

  “No, Dirzhani. A man and a girl. Can I bring them up? We need your help.”

  “Suppose you better.”

  He turned and called softly, and Taeela appeared on the stairs, followed by Rahdan. Janey moved back to the doorway and stopped there, clearly with no intention of allowing anyone any further for the moment. Nigel stood aside to make room for the other two on the landing. Taeela looked OK in her dahl, the sort of girl Janey might approve of, but Rahdan was another matter. Even his new jacket was smeared with dirt from crawling under the bushes. The rest of his clothes were filthy and torn, and his face haggard under his beard—like a druggie begging in a gutter. In the close quarters of the landing he stank.

  Nigel couldn’t think where to begin. His mind didn’t seem to be working. He turned to Taeela. “You better explain,” he said. “This is Rick’s wife, Janey Constantine. You’ll have to explain to her about Rahdan …”

  Taking her time about it, Taeela moved to the centre of the landing, unhooked her veil and pulled her hood back. She looked at least as exhausted as he felt, and she had been through far worse, but you wouldn’t have known it from the way she held herself. There couldn’t have been more than a dozen people in Dirzhan who wouldn’t have recognized her.

  There were gasps from Lisa and Natalie. Janey’s face changed. She started to make an involuntary movement with her hands but changed it to a gesture of welcome, bowed her head stiffly and said something in Dirzhani.

  Taeela answered in a low, even voice, obviously picking her words. Nigel heard Rahdan’s name. When she finished Janey stood aside, gesturing to her to come through into the room. Nigel followed, but Janey stopped Rahdan in the doorway. She introduced the girls, who both managed curtseys of a sort, and led him away, leaving Nigel alone with the three girls. Dirzhani proprieties seemed not to apply in a crisis.

  They stood there for bit, Lisa and Natalie looking at their feet and Taeela and Nigel waiting for them to say something.

  “Can we sit down,” said Nigel at last. “We’re dead beat.”

  “Uh … uh …” said Lisa. “Puh … please sit down, your … uh …”

  “Great,” said Nigel, and proceeded to get into a tangle unhooking his dahl. By the time he’d sorted it out Taeela was sitting stiffly upright in one of the easy chairs and Natalie and Lisa were still where they’d been, looking unhappily to and fro between him and Taeela and the door, but refusing to catch his eye, obviously wishing they were anywhere else in the world. He flopped into a chair, acting as relaxed as he could.

  “Do you think you could find us something to eat?” he said.

  “If your mother wouldn’t mind,” he added, as they dashed for the door.

  Taeela hadn’t moved, but was still sitting bolt upright, staring at nothing. Wearily he heaved himself out of his chair, perched on the arm of hers and put his arm round her shoulders. She didn’t respond.

  “Come on, Taeela,” he whispered. “Stop beating up on yourself. You’ve been effing marvellous. Your dad would be proud of you. But you’ve still got stuff to do, stuff he’d want you to do. You’ve got to ease up, instead of wearing yourself out. Top of that, you’re scaring the girls out of their wits. You need them. They’re going to help us. Now come on, curl up the, way you do, come on, you can do it …”

  Still coaxing her as if he’d been talking to a small child he let go of her shoulders, leaned forward, grasped her ankle and made as if to lift it up onto the chair. At last she produced the ghost of a smile and gave in, twisting round and curling herself up in the corner of the chair the way she used to do on her sofa.

  “That’s more like it,” he whispered. “They’re bringing us something to eat. I’ll go and see how they’re doing.”

  He headed for the sound of bustle, along past the stairs towards the back of the house, past a room where Janey was laying out clothes on a bed, and another where Rahdan was taking a shower, by the sound of it. He found Lisa and Natalie arguing in whispers as they loaded a couple of trays out of a gleaming fridge As soon as they realised he was in the room they stopped and stared at him as if he’d been a burglar.

  “That’s great,” he said. “Look, try and ease off a bit with Taeela, like you did with me that time. Forget about her being the Khanazhana. Suppose one of the kids at your school had seen her dad gunned down in front of her eyes, and then she’d been hunted like a rat through Dara Dahn, and she’d got somewhere where she can rest for a bit and pull herself together …

  “See what I mean? She wouldn’t want people staring at her like she was some kind of freak would she? She’d …”

  He saw the girls eyes move, and turned. Janey was standing in the doorway, her face unreadable.

  “I … I was just trying to explain … I hope that’s all right.”

  She nodded.

  “What she want to do?” she said.

  “Head north, I suppose. She’s a Varaki. We haven’t had time to talk about it. When we’ve had a rest and something to eat …”

  She nodded again and held up a hand to stop him.

  “We come too,” she said. “Rick telling me, something bad happen, like today, we clear out. Find a man who go with us, he says. This guy Rahdan, he OK, you thinking?�
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  Nigel started to try to explain. Janey cut him short.

  “Khanazhana telling me,” she said. “I ask, is he brave man?”

  “He’s done OK so far.”

  Janey nodded, unimpressed, and picked up one of the trays. They found Taeela already asleep. She woke when they’d almost finished eating, had a few mouthfuls, and let Janey take her off to her bed.

  Nigel felt that he had barely closed his eyes when Janey was shaking him awake. He was curled up in the two easy chairs pushed end to end in the living room. Rahdan was sitting up yawning on the floor beside him. Taeela had slept in the spare room and Janey and the girls in their own beds—if Janey had gone to bed at all, he later realised; she must have been up most of the short night getting stuff ready.

  They’d talked it through over supper, so there was a lighter dahl for him, one of Lisa’s jackets and a skirt of Janey’s long enough to hide his feet. He’d enough of a suntan to pass for a local, with a pair of sunglasses to hide his blue, northern eyes. Rahdan was wearing some of Rick’s clothes—a bit too small for him but looking like any other Dirzhani. Taeela looked as though she’d hardly slept at all, but you’d still have known she was a princess.

  There were knapsacks or shoulder-bags already packed for all of them. Breakfast was cold, apart from hot chocolate. Last thing before they left Nigel called the embassy. His father’s voice answered, furry with sleep.

  “Ambassador speaking.”

  “Hi, Uncle Nick. Is Nigel there? This is Timmy.”

  There was a kind of echo on the line.

  “My dear Timothy, have you any idea what time it is here?”

  “Oh, I’m terribly sorry. Did I wake you up? Could you just give him a message, then? He’ll know what it means. It’s about Rover.”

  “Some kind of dog?”