In the Palace of the Khans (15 page)

Next time something like tonight happened, if it did (please not!), would he be able to think about anything except getting himself out of it? The way he hadn't even noticed causing his mother to hurt her leg? Or his father hadn't really wanted to help carry the wounded guard? He was pretty sure of that now, looking back at the moment, though again he hadn't noticed it at the time. Too wrapped up in his private terror. But the moment the wounded guard had reached the woods his mother had stopped looking at her own leg and gone to help.

Why couldn't he be like that? He was her son as well. OK, he didn't look like her, the way Libby did and Cath didn't, but something of her had got to be there inside him, hidden away, secret even from himself.

I'll find it, he told himself. I'll bring it into the open. And next time …

No. No next time. Please.

When the meal was ready he ate without noticing. Taeela was sitting beside him, apparently as withdrawn into herself as he was. With an effort he roused himself try what his father had told him.

“Do you want to talk?” he muttered.

She shook her head.

After all that, the seating for the return journey worked out without Nigel or his father needing to do anything about it. Herr Fettler had found a mattress for the wounded guard to lie on. With the rear bench seats folded flat it fitted lengthwise along one side of a Humvee, leaving room for a couple of small individual seats to be unfolded from the other side.

“I will sit there and look after Annalin,” said Taeela decisively. “It is too small for Lucy. She can go in front. Nigel can be with me.”

Her father shrugged, his face expressionless, then whispered in her ear. Frowning, she climbed into her seat, and Nigel followed.

They headed off into the dark, with all the men in the President's car and Nigel the only male in the second one. They drove on sidelights only until they were over the ridge, when the President's car switched on its powerful headlights, allowing them to swoop down the curves of the new road to the valley beyond, and then on more joltingly along the road they'd come by.

One of the jolts caused something to brush against the back of Nigel's hand where it was dangling beside his seat. He felt around and touched Taeela's hand. She hadn't snatched it back into her lap, as any decent Dirzhani girl should have done. Instead she moved it to brush against his again.

He knew why, too. She wasn't breaking the rules for the fun of it, while she had the chance. Carefully as a pickpocket he found the edge of her hand and slid his fingers round it. Her fingers closed on his palm.

“Oh, Nigel,” she whispered. “I was so scared.”

“Me too. I threw up in the woods. Before you came.”

“It is not the same for you. You are not ready. You don't expect it. But for me, all my life I get ready for it. I learn to shoot my gun. I learn how to fight a man who is attacking me, how to hit him with a knife, how to tear out his eye with my thumb, how to kick him with my knee. I learn how to jump from a window, how to walk with no sound, how to hide myself in a forest, how to leave no mark where I go—all this. I tell myself, when it happens, I'll be brave. I am ready.

“It happens, and I am not ready.”

“There wasn't anything you could have done. A guy was taking pot-shots at us from the other side of the lake. None of the stuff you've been talking about would …”

“No, Nigel. I was not ready inside. I wasn't brave. I hid myself behind Nilzha. I wanted to scream, to run …”

“Me too.”

“It is different for you,” she said. “You do not need to be ready. England is a safe place.”

She shifted her hand in his, but didn't let go. Fat lot of help he'd been, he thought. There must have been something he could have said. Too late now.

They drove on through dark woods, through an unlit village, up over a pass, visible only by the mountainous skyline seen through the opposite window against ten thousand stars.

Taeela's hand moved—squirmed—in his, and he discovered how tightly he'd been holding it.

“Sorry,” he murmured, relaxing his grip. “Thinking too hard.”

“Thinking is hard,” she said. “These thinkings.”

“Listen. I want to tell you something. When we were coming along the walkway my guard had to grab hold of me to stop me bolting. That's how bad it was. And we got into the trees and I turned round and saw you coming along behind us and I thought you were terrific. You were moving like a princess. No, listen. You felt like that inside because you couldn't do any of the things you'd been taught, but you didn't panic like I did. Suppose you'd needed to do some of that stuff, you'd have done it. And you'd have got it right. There was this grizzled old guy in a war movie I saw once talking about fighting to a rookie. ‘If you aren't scared inside,' he said, ‘you aren't going to live long.' Makes sense to me.”

She nodded slowly, thinking about it.

They sat in silence, still holding hands, for an hour or more, until the cars drew to a halt and switched off their headlights. One of the guards got out of the leading car and disappeared. Nothing but forested darkness showed in the windows opposite, but twisting his head round Nigel caught glimpses of moonlit water beyond the trees. The President came back and opened the front passenger door.

“We are almost home,” he said, “and no later than we would have been if we had stayed to watch the fish-owls uninterrupted. It will be difficult for you, but will you try to talk and act as if nothing unexpected had occurred at Lake Vamar? It is only natural that you should seem too tired for much conversation.”

They waited till the guard came back and then drove on.

The windows of the hunting lodge were ablaze with lights. Servants came down the lit steps to greet them and take their baggage up to their rooms, all indeed behaving as if nothing unexpected had happened at Lake Vamar.

Nigel was woken by the telephone. Still druggy with the sleeping pill his mother had made him take, he was struggling to sit up when Drogo came in and brought the handset over to him.

“Uh?” he grunted.

It was his father.

“Niggles? Sleep all right? 'Fraid you're going to have to wake up and have some breakfast. We're leaving in an hour. They've managed to repair one of the helicopters. The President has arrangements to make for this ceremony on Thursday, so he's leaving for Dara-Dahn in that, any minute now. He's taking the injured pilot and the guard who got accidentally shot yesterday, with a medical team to look after them. No room for anyone else. So Taeela's coming with us by road. Company for you, eh? Get down as soon as you can, old man. Your room servant will pack for you.”

He sounded smug as hell, as if he'd managed to arrange the whole thing himself. Nigel registered that officially now the guard had been shot by accident. There was going to be a lot of stuff like that.

Day 9

Came back to Dara Dahn. Took pretty well all day. Dead boring. Long way better than the journey up, though
…

Taeela took charge when they came to board the Humvee.

“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
…