In the Palace of the Khans (34 page)

“Uh?”

“It means Greek. Byzantine. All the great Khans had baizhani. Didn't have to be human. Morval had an eagle and Diraki had a white mule, but the first one was Agran Alk's favourite Greek slave-boy. Nothing special about him till the battle at Lake Ingru. Boy begged to be let fight. Alk laughed at him and put him under guard, but the boy slipped his guards. Slaves didn't get to use swords but he took one off a dead man and got to Alk's side somehow.

“Battle going badly till then—Chinese archers had 'em pinned against the lake and were picking 'em off one by one—but the moment the boy showed up the clouds broke and the sun shone dazzling off the water straight in the archers' eyes so Alk could storm their position and win the battle.”

“You mean I'm a sort of mascot! Taeela's teddy bear?”

“'Fraid so, Nick. You shouldn't have brought that helicopter down. Just the sort of stupid bit of luck sets something like this off. And you'd breathed darm. That'd open you up to this sort of thing People can get a share of the luck if they touch you, but it's the Khan's luck they're stealing. When Alk caught them trying it he had their hand cut off. So they mustn't let you see who's taken it. And you can't just let them touch you because the luck isn't yours to give, it's the Khan's.”

“That's really stupid. How do I resign …? What's the problem?”

“Sorry. Just thought. Better take this seriously, because people do here. You know how the Chinese try to get their babies born in the year of the ox? They know it's a superstition, but that doesn't stop them acting on it.”

“Darzha wouldn't even let us ask her about it.”

“That figures. Unlucky to talk about, specially to you. Even me—now I'm telling you, well, I'd sooner it was someone else. Anyway, no, you can't resign, Nick. Point is, if the Khanazhana's got her own baizhan, that shows she really is the Khan. That's how we think in Dirzhan. The guys I've been talking to about are keen to go, but they've all told me they're going to need something extra to bring enough of their mates in. This might be it. Or part of it”

“The crash was an accident, Mike! I didn't make it happen. If anyone did, it was you, dodging round that rock!”

“I don't suppose Alk's baizhan struck a single blow at Ingru. Luck's like that.”

“Well, if you think I'm going to show up at the palace with somebody's sword in my hand, you're wrong.”

That night they sent their e-mails from the ridge under a starry sky, and Nigel made his call. As it turned out his father wanted to know anything he could tell him about Varaki attitudes to the constitution and mentioned the date in passing. They had eight days.

CHAPTER 20

Back in the library next morning Nigel carried on where he'd left off, until Mizhael turned up with fresh outline plans of the different floors of the palace, including the stuff he and Lily-Jo had worked out yesterday. He drew in what he'd just done and carried on. Images of the passages, their darkness, their stillness, formed unwilled in his mind as he drew them in.

He was working on the area round the President's offices when Mizhael came back with Taeela, Rahdan, two men about his own age and one greybeard. Janey was on her way to Dara Dahn, so Taeela's companion was a veiled woman called Satila who waited in the background, not uttering a word.

Rahdan, it turned out, couldn't read or write, and the greybeard was there to do it for him. But he got what was wanted of him almost at once and took it seriously, sucking his pencil as he frowned at the plan, and then deliberately and neatly drawing in a line or two and sucking his pencil again. They had been right in their guess about the barracks, which was encouraging.

The two younger men were the Akhlaval brothers. Urvan asked most of the questions. He was taller and skinnier than Mizhael, quick-eyed, with a hard, intelligent face. Izhvan was the younger one, a couple of inches shorter, his face broader and flatter, with prominent cheek-bones. He greeted Nigel with a mutter and an unsettling stare.

Urvan spoke almost entirely to Mizhael, though it was usually Taeela who knew the answers. He would look at her without expression while she told him what he wanted to know and immediately turn back to Mizhael. Taeela gave no sign that she noticed this treatment, but Nigel minded for her, so as soon as he could he moved across to the other table.

He minded for himself too, feeling left out, on the fringe of things, though he'd have been useless in the palace, except for knowing his way around a few of the secret passages. And scared stiff. Still, it was hard to become absorbed in the task again. Taeela's presence and the voices at the other table disturbed his concentration. He glanced across and saw the Akhlaval brothers, their heads close together, frowning down at one of the outline plans. Izhvan looked up and caught his eye and didn't look away. When he returned to the passages Izhvan was there, leading his comrades through the maze in secrecy and darkness, peering about him with that unnerving gaze.

Mizhael's voice scattered the vision.

“They're going to need a base, Nick. A room where the advance party can hole up, find their way around, check if the opposition have got into the passages beyond the bit we know about, etcetera, etcetera. Khanazhana says there are rooms on this side like the one you call the Hare Room over that side, but she doesn't know which …”

“We've done that bit—I've got it here,” said Nigel and waited for them to come over. “Look. Here it is on Fohdrahko's map—this one. The beetle means there's a room there. That's its entrance, and that's a spy-hole into it. You reach it by this shaft. So here it is on the plan we're doing. There's the corner of the palace. There's the shaft. There's that bit of passage. There's the entrance and the spy-hole. So the Beetle Room's got to be in here, but we haven't worked out how big it is yet. We're doing the passages first.”

Muttering doubtfully to each other, the brothers stared to and fro between the two plans. Eventually Urvan's frown cleared. He looked directly at Nigel and nodded: If you say so.

“OK,” said Mizhael. “You go and have lunch now, and we'll see what Lily-Jo can make of it. Tell her you've got three days. Think you can do it, Nick?”

Three days?

“Guess we'll have to,” he said.

Lily-Jo seemed able to carry whole stretches of a plan in her head, as if she'd lifted the roof off a doll's-house. Nigel worked with her all afternoon, sorting out the rest of the level he'd started on. Taeela had already roughed in the Khan's private apartments and offices. On the top three floors a single basic passage ran along either side of the palace, hidden in the outer walls of the building, with occasional short side-branches. The only passage across the front of the building was the one on the hidden level which they had used in their escape.

The section between the great hall and the courtyard was much deeper and more complicated. The main passage twisted to and fro through it, with side branches right and left, several times converting into crawl-ways to get past some obstacle. Taeela had sketched in a few of the rooms, but the puzzle would have been insoluble without the Google Earth image, which showed three small courtyards acting as light-wells for internal rooms that otherwise would have been windowless. Fohdrahko's map gave no hint of their existence.

They had worked steadily for over three hours when Lily-Jo pushed her chair back, yawned and stretched.

“Time for a break,” she said. “My brain's dead. Yours too, I guess.”

“Yeah. Bad as chess, almost.”

“OK, we'll take Doglu out shopping. If there's anything you want, just tell me. If you try to buy it yourself, looks like they'll give it to you.”

That didn't work. They wandered round Sodalka for almost an hour in the golden, dusty late afternoon. Not one of the stallholders would accept any payment. Some of them even darted out as Nigel approached and thrust a gift into his hands. All he could do was thank them and smile and wish them luck. Five times he felt the light touch of fingers on the side of his neck, but after the first start of surprise he walked on as if he hadn't noticed. In a shady little square the owner of a stall with a few tables in front of it pulled out chairs as they approached, imploringly inviting them to sit.

“Better had,” said Lily-Jo. “Treat for Doglu. I don't usually let him.”

The stall-holder brought them tall, strange-shaped blue tumblers—made from melted-down medicine-bottles, Lily-Jo said—of an ice-cold bittersweet fruit drink, and a mound of sticky little cakes, which Doglu studied intently for at least a minute, as if the fate of the world depended on his choice, before delicately picking one out.

There had been only two other customers when they arrived, but by the time they rose to go every chair was full and a dozen people were standing around sipping their drinks and looking away the moment Nigel turned in their direction. He did his best to hide his discomfort and wished the stall-holder good luck, as usual.

“You've brought him that already,” whispered Lily-Jo as they left. “That's got to be his best afternoon for months. Are you up for another stint on the maps?”

“I suppose so if you are. And if you've got the time.”

“I'll send out for a take-away. I want to get this done. It's for Mike. So that he doesn't feel guilty about not going along with the others. That makes two of us, I guess.”

“Sort of.”

“Doglu's perfectly happy with Darzha. Besides it's good for me to practise. I'm hot stuff at this kind of thing, and I don't want to lose that.”

They worked on until Mizhael brought Taeela and Satila, her silent companion, in for supper, but in fact nobody spoke much more than she did. There was only one subject on everyone's mind, but none of them seemed to want to talk about it.

“What did you two do this afternoon?” said Mizhael.

“We got on with the plans for a bit,” said Lily-Jo. “Then we took Doglu out and did a bit of shopping; only people kept trying to give poor Nick stuff. Old Dahdbu in Olzha Square stood us primh and a mountain of seed-cakes. Doglu thought he'd hit heaven. Then we came back and got on some more. We'll show you after supper.”

“People seem to have decided Nick is your baizhan, Khanazhana,” said Mizhael.

Taeela turned slowly to Nigel and looked him in the eye.

“I knew this before we came to Sodalka,” she said.

“No you didn't,” said Nigel. “It's nonsense. It makes me feel a total phoney. Can't you tell them to stop, Mike?”

“Inside my father's house, maybe. In Sodalka, no.”

“It is not good to talk about it,” said Taeela, in an almost-whisper.

Nigel stared at her. She nodded seriously.

“OK, forget it,” he said. “It's only a few more days, I guess.”

They ate on in silence.

Next day Lily-Jo and Nigel worked steadily on the plans all morning, broke off to have lunch and play with Doglu for a while, and did another solid stint through the heat of the afternoon. Then Lily-Jo drove him, with Doglu and Darzha, several miles out across the plain to a solitary reed-fringed pool fed by some underground spring. Two boys were watering a flock of goats along its further edge. Birds came and went. The reeds were noisy with their strange calls. Meanwhile Doglu crouched at the water's edge with Darzha gripping his collar while he tickled the water with the tip of a reed Lily-Jo had cut for him and watched the ripples move.

Driving back to Sodalka it struck Nigel that it had been the first normal peaceful, stress-free time he'd known since those shots had cracked across the Great Hall of the palace and the President had crumpled onto the stairs.

After supper Mizhael drove Nigel up the hill to call the embassy. His father was out, so Roger and put the call through to his mother.

“Hi, Mum. How's things?”

“Oh, darling! Are you all right?”

“I'm fine. They're looking after me very well. It's just a bit boring being stuck here, not seeing you, and worrying about you worrying about me. Any news about the girls?”

For several minutes they managed to talk family stuff, but even that seemed forced and strained.

“I think that's enough, don't you, darling?” she said after a while. “Give my love to Taeela. I'll tell Nick you called and you're all right.”

“What's he up to?”

“It's a sort of get-together with some of the other ambassadors to agree a common front about the famous constitution. They've twisted the brutes' arms to get them to sign one at all. It'll be a complete sham, of course, but …”

“I hope you're not going, Mum.”

“No, of course not! Sit in the room where I saw him murdered and watch the men who did it preening and posturing! I'd sooner die!”

“Good for you. I suppose Dad's got to go.”

“He thinks so. It's all about the stupid dam, of course. It's sickening!”

“Right.”

They said goodbye and signed off. Nigel's sigh as he gave Mizhael back the handset was a mixture of worry and relief. How to get the Akhlavals and their wild followers to understand that they mustn't go loosing off their guns at random in the Great Hall?

“OK,” said Lily-Jo next morning. “We're not going to get it all done. Let's see how long it takes us to finish the lower floor. I've had a couple of ideas about that. If there's any time left we'll have a go at the top storey, and then that's it. They shouldn't need anything else, and it'd take another day to finish the lot.”

In fact it took them all morning and two hours into the afternoon to sort out the maze of outer rooms and windowless cells below the Great Hall, and the corridors and secret passages threading their way among them. By the time they broke off they had a complete floor-plan of the palace apart from the top floor, where the old khans' wives and children had lived, and the palace servants' quarters running along the western wing of the courtyard.