In the Palace of the Khans (43 page)

“It was nothing like cold blood. She's not like her father that way. He'd've killed them straight off, no problem, but she was really upset after. Crying and shaking. OK?”

“How can you be sure that he would actually have pulled the trigger?” said a voice with some sort of an accent.

“I couldn't, not then. But I can now. Look, we found the guys' van the other side of the orchard. There were two girls tied up in the back. We found their parents' bodies in the orchard. They'd both been shot in the back of the head. That's what Dad means about traumatic experiences. Can we talk about something else, please?”

A chair scraped. A hand started to go up and came down. Nigel waited a little and went on. Sodalka. Taeela at the roadblock. And at the Baladzhin palace. Laying it on what a star she was among the Varaki, so that they'd all get it what a big deal her marriage promise was. That stirred them up all right. Pencils raced over note-pads, fingers rattled away at lap-tops. He didn't bother with his chess match against Zhiordzhio Baladzhin. He hadn't done anything himself, just watched things happen.

He'd been worried about the next bit. How much had he known about the attack on the palace? Why hadn't he told his father? And so on. He'd got the answers ready but he didn't need them. He hadn't seen much of Taeela and they weren't interested in anything else. The conference fizzled out with a few stupid questions. Was he in love with the Khanazhana? Did she have a boy-friend? That sort of thing. It was a relief when it ended and he could go.

“What was that about the dam, Dad?” he said.

“It's a bit of a worry. A lot of the money behind the consortium comes from Brunfeld's, who seem to be pretty heavily involved in this property mess. We'll just have to see. If the worst comes to the worst I may be out of a job.”

Outwardly Nigel's final visit to the palace began exactly like his first, with the Rover drawing up at the foot of the steps, his driver opening the door for him and saluting as he got out, and an official waiting for him beside the guards at the top. Inwardly it was totally different. This time he was in control.

The official introduced himself as the Khanazhana's private secretary, and the guard would have waved Nigel through if he hadn't opened his bag and shoved it under the man's nose, and then opened the box he was carrying and shown him its contents. The guard looked up, startled, as the contents cheeped pitifully in the sudden blaze of sunlight.

“It's for the Khanazhana,” explained Nigel.

The guard caught the name, guessed the meaning, frowned briefly, then nodded and hurriedly closed the box.

How many people does it take to start a rumour without you actually talking about it, Nigel wondered as they crossed the great hall. One, if you're lucky, and the guard had obviously got it. The one outside the private apartments would make two, the secretary three, and Satila four, except that she might keep it to herself.

The mosaics of the stairs had been so fiercely scoured that they looked brand new. Otherwise little had changed. Only that background tension had gone out of the air. In the dimmer light of the gallery the contents of the box didn't protest at the inspection, but blinked in a bewildered way and then mewed when the lid was closed, as if it had been expecting something better.

The inner door, forced open by Colonel Sesslizh's soldiers, had been replaced and still smelt of fresh paint. The secretary was about to knock when Nigel stopped him.

“Wait a moment,” he whispered, and laid the box gently down beside the door. “It's for later. Will you tell the guard it's meant to be there, and not to let anyone touch it? Thanks.”

Satila must have been close inside the door, all set to swing it dramatically open the moment the secretary knocked and reveal Taeela standing in a fashion-plate pose a few paces into the room. She was wearing a pale green dress with a pattern of gold threads, long loose sleeves and high collar, wide gold belt with huge jewelled clasp—amethysts he guessed—with matching necklace and bracelet, and a purple headscarf. Also lipstick, eye-shadow, the lot. She looked terrific, and knew it. She also looked at least two years older than she was.

“Wow!” he said. “What's this in aid of?”

“Am I hot?”

“Wicked hot, and dead cool with it. That's some trick, Taeela. You've got the Dalai Lama coming to tea, then?”

“I have you coming to tea, Nigel. I want you to remember like I used to be, before all this. I told Satila Make me a little bit pretty, so my friend Nigel won't forget me. But she is an artist. She doesn't know ‘a little.' We had good fun, Nigel.”

“Fun for me too. Thanks. How've things been, then? Got to ride your horses yet.”

“Next week I will ride. Come and sit, and we will have tea and talk, like we used to.”

Deliberately, he thought, she curled herself into the corner of the sofa, as if she was trying to fit herself into the part of the child she'd been a couple of weeks ago and wasn't any longer. The classy get-up only added to the effect, and Satila made it odder still by pinning a starched linen napkin down her front like a child's bib.

She started to chat away, just as she used to do.

“Yes, next week I will ride my horses, and then it is my birthday when I must be smiley for everyone …”

“You don't have to be smiley for me, you know … I mean, if you want to talk about your dad …”

He'd got it wrong. She stared at him, open mouthed. The patches of rouge stood out suddenly as the blood left her cheeks. She seemed to shrink even further among the cushions and to lose the imaginary years.

“I cannot,” she said. “I must not. I would do nothing, only weep. I must be strong. Strong for Dirzhan. On Sunday is his state funeral. Then I am allowed to weep. And at night, when I am alone … Not now, Nigel. Soon I must take you to meet my regents.”

“OK, I get it. I'm sorry. But you can't keep bottling it up, you know. I'll … No, why don't you call Mum tonight? It doesn't matter how late—she sits up till all hours, reading. She'll be much more use than I would, anyway. And she's your friend, just as much as I am. OK? You'll do that? Promise?”

She nodded twice, her face blank, withdrawn.

He took things slowly, giving her time to recover. Gradually animation came back into her responses as he told her about the press conference. Satila wheeled the tea-trolley over, filled their cups and left them to help themselves to the same kind of little sweet cakes the cafes served in Sodalka.

“What is ‘crap'?” she said.

“Rubbish. Nonsense. It really means, er, dung, I suppose.”

She actually laughed.

“We say ardh,” she said. “It is rude.”

“Yeah, I guess so. Not F.O.-speak, anyway. Whole point was that this was me telling it my way, not what Dad had put me up to.”

“But you did not … didn't tell them how you fought the man so he couldn't kill Rahdan?”

“Not you too! I wish people would stop yakking on about that. It wasn't like that, honestly. More like a horse bolting and barging into whatever's in its way. OK, I hammed it up a bit. Said I'd just panicked and started to run, only I'd tripped over the hem of my dahl and hung onto the guy to stop myself falling. I'd rather look like a total idiot than any kind of a hero. BRIT HERO NIGEL SAVES THE DAY! I've got to go back to school, for God's sake!”

She laughed again.

“Nigel, you are hopeless! You forget, girls like heroes. How will you get yourself a girl?”

“Trouble is, I like girls who don't give a toss for heroes.”

“They do not exist.”

“Bet you.”

“Nigel! You cheat me! You know this girl! You have a photograph, but you don't show me!”

“Not to say know. Fact is, I've hardly spoken to her. She's same age as me but she's very bright, so they've bumped her up a year. Her name's Ronnie—short for Veronique—she's half French. Not ordinary pretty—bit of a monkey face, but interesting. She plays soccer, got a lovely run, same kind Mum has—that's why I noticed her. Anyway, I thought I'd try and get alongside her next term. I haven't had the nerve before, but … I suppose I owe you that. I'll send you a photograph if I get anywhere.”

They chatted on easily enough, about nothing much, drank tea, nibbled a couple of cakes. He kept an eye on the time and when they'd got half an hour to go he stood up and brushed the crumbs off.

“OK,” he said. “It's your birthday in a couple of weeks, right? I've got a present for you, only we'll need the curtains closed, if that's all right. Tell Satila I haven't gone crazy. No, it's a surprise. I'm not going to tell you.”

He crossed to the window and worked the cords of the huge curtains until there was only a strip of daylight showing, leaving the room in twilight. Then he fetched the box from outside the door, dropped on one knee in front of the sofa like a courtier in El Cid and offered it to her to open. Cautiously, as if it might be a jack-in-the-box or something, she raised the lid and peered inside, frowned for a moment and then laughed.

“A baby bird!” she said. “Oh …! A fish-owl?”

“That's right. Herr Fettler was pretty keen after Dad had talked to him. We thought if you took the fish-owls as your special bird, like your dad did with his eagles, it'll show people you're dead serious about them. Not just in Dirzhan, either. It'll help make the Greens ease off a bit over the dam.”

“They will say …”

“No they won't. It's got a damaged wing, so there's no chance of it learning to fish. It'll never survive in the wild.”

“Yes, that is good. Is it a boy or a girl?”

“Too early to say, Herr Fettler says.”

“It is a boy.”

“If you say so. Now, first thing you've got to feed it … him, so he starts getting the idea it's you he belongs to. Herr Fettler says he's too small to wear a hood yet. That's why I left it as long as I could and got it pretty well dark so he thinks it's feeding time.”

“Cake?”

“No, fish of course. I've got some with me. There's a bit more to it than just feeding him. We've got to do this right. Listen. I call him Zhanni, but his real name is Zhan, Taeela. That's a sort of secret name. It's short for something … The second half of something.”

“The second …? Oh …!”

She laughed delightedly.

“Yes, this is really, really cool!” she said. “You give him to me—that is enough?”

“No. We've all three got to feed from the same dish in the right order. Trouble is, Zhanni doesn't do dishes. He'll have to take it out of your mouth, so … No, wait. You'd better ask Satila to come and have a look so she sees and tell her enough to let her guess what it's about, and then maybe she won't want to actually watch while it's happening, if you get me. Maybe if she tucked herself in behind the curtain …”

Taeela nodded and spoke. Nigel took the little jar of fish-scraps out of his bag, unscrewed the lid and put it on the chess table beside them. Satila came silently over and exclaimed in amused surprise when she saw Zhanni, who responded with a bubbling chirrup.

“That's his feed-me noise,” said Nigel. “We've timed it bang on. He's going to have to sit on your shoulder, so maybe she could shift your bib round so he doesn't poop on your dress … That's fine. Ready?”

He eased Zhanni out of the box and settled him onto the bib. The light fluctuated briefly as Satila slid behind the curtain. Zhanni chirruped again and nibbled experimentally at the corner of Taeela's mouth.

“Right,” he said. “The next bit's tricky.”

He took a morsel of fish out of the jar and showed it to her.

“I'm going to hold it between my teeth and you're going to take it with yours and give it to Zhanni the same way. We've got to be careful we don't bang our teeth together and one of us swallows it by accident, so …”

He put his arm round her shoulders as if to steady them both.

“Ready?” he said and nipped the morsel between his front teeth.

Zhanni started to chirrup eagerly. Taeela plucked the fish neatly from between Nigel's teeth and twisted her head to feed it into the gaping beak, then turned back smiling to him. The tip of her tongue licked delicately across her red lips.

“OK?” he whispered.

Still smiling, she tilted her face to be kissed. He could feel her hands moving gently over his back.

Far too soon Zhanni started to chirrup again. They ignored him until the chirrups became urgent, and then repeated the process; but before long he became impatient with this leisurely manner of feeding and started to chirrup furiously the moment he'd swallowed his bit; and finally, when they didn't immediately respond, burrowed urgently between their faces in search of his share of whatever was passing between them.

“Ouch!” mumbled Taeela and pulled her head away. Above the corner of her mouth a bead of blood had appeared on the smudged make-up. She put her fingers to the place and stared at them.

“He bit me!” she whispered. “He has tasted my blood! We are tied.”

“A sort of owl version of the blood oath, you mean?”

“It is a sign, Nigel. I know what I want. Zhanni knows what I must.”

She was dead serious about it, not just playing with the baizhan idea as he had been, working out his moves in advance to get what he wanted, as if it had been a game of chess.

“I guess that's about it, then,” he said. “This one had better be goodbye.”

He chose the largest morsel he could find and they kissed for the last time. Ever, probably.

“You have lipstick on your cheek,” she said as they separated. “You must clean yourself before you see my regents.”

“What will Satila say?”

“Already she knows, Nigel. Of course she knows. She is not a fool. But she is a good friend. Yes, she must go behind the curtain, but she remembers how it was when she was a girl. Go and clean yourself and I'll call to her. I'll tell her that the bird did it. She will pretend she believes me.”