In the Palace of the Khans (4 page)

With a shaking hand Nigel held out his pass. The right sleeve rose like the wavering fin of a tropical fish, thin fingers reached out from its folds, took the pass and held it up for the eye to peer at and gave it back, then beckoned Nigel to follow him across the room to where a man and a girl were sitting on a sofa. He was reading some documents and she was watching
The Simpsons
.

The man pressed the mute button but the girl snatched the remote from him and pressed it again. He slapped her hand and took it back, turned the volume way down and handed it back to her, then rose. He was the President.

He was wearing a black open-necked shirt, slacks and sandals. He was shorter than he'd seemed on the video. He looked at Nigel, unsmiling. Nigel met his gaze for a moment, and looked down.

Apart from the force of that gaze there didn't seem to be anything special about him. Pass him in the street, and you mightn't have noticed him. But standing there facing him for only a couple of seconds Nigel became strongly aware of something else. Nothing tangible, but there all the same. Like the hum of a PC on stand-by, so faint that you notice it only if the room is utterly silent. The purr of the monster in its lair.

The monster held out his hand to be shaken.

“G-good morning, sir,” said Nigel as he took it and let go. “Er … It's good of you to ask me to meet your daughter.”

“You know who I am?”

“Yes, sir. You're the President-Khan of Dirzhan.”

Now the man smiled.

“Merely the President, internationally,” he said. “The Khan is for local consumption.”

“It sounds good, sir.”

“Ah, a diplomat's son, evidently. So you are Nigel Ridgwell—a tongue-twister for us Dirzhaki.”

He was obviously proud of his English, and had made a much better shot at the name than Mr. Dikhtar, but he still spoke with a definite accent.

“I bet there's a lot of Dirzhaki names I'd make a mess of, sir.”

“Dirzhani names. Dirzhak is the noun, Dirzhaki its plural. Yes, of course. But you have been here only one day. How did you spend it?”

“I watched the video of your ibex hunt in the morning, sir. That was a cool trick you played.”

“It was more than a trick, Nigel. It was a necessity.”

(Nigel knew that already. His father had spent most of supper last night filling him in on stuff he might need to know when he met the President. Like the Greens making a lot of fuss about the dam internationally because there was some kind of fish-owl that lived in the gorge and the new dam would drown out its habitat. The President had made the video to help get them on his side.)

“‘Cool'? That is still current?”

“Yes, sir. People say ‘wicked' too.”

“Do you?”

“Sometimes, sir.”

“Not to my daughter, please. And then, after the video?”

He couldn't possibly want to know—just wants to get me talking, Nigel thought. Some kind of test, heaven knows what.

“My mother took me to the East market,” he said. “Then in the afternoon we went and visited a falconer who's said he'll give me lessons …”

“I have eagles in my falconry, Nigel.”

“Wow! That's because you're the Khan? Like the snow ibex?”

The President didn't reply at once, then nodded. It wasn't an answer to what Nigel had said. It meant that he had passed the test, whatever it was.

“You know the actress Helena Bonham Carter?” said the President.

“I've seen something she was in, sir. I can't remember what.”

“I have a CD of
The Wings of a Dove
, but it is unsuitable. Do you remember the manner in which she speaks?”

“Very upper-class, lady-of-the-manor, isn't it?”

“That is how I wish my daughter to speak English. I learnt the language in too much of a hurry. I did not have the patience to acquire a good accent. I do not wish to have my daughter's English corrupted by this sort of thing.”

He flicked a hand towards
The Simpsons
chattering away on the vast TV.

“I get teased at school for having a nobby accent, sir.”

“Excellent. That is exactly how I wish my daughter to speak. With a nobby accent. This idiot programme is almost finished, and then I will introduce you. Forgive me. I have work to do.”

He returned to the sofa, picked up his file of papers and started to read.

Nigel gazed round the room while he waited. He had a bit more control of himself now. He thought he'd coped OK with the monster. The weird old man—it must be a man, he'd decided—who'd met him at the door had returned to his post beside it and was sitting motionless on a sort of high stool with his one good eye gazing directly at Nigel. It made him feel uncomfortable, so he looked elsewhere.

It was a strange room, a kind of mix between the amazing entrance hall below and the boring lobby just outside. Two large windows in the far wall looked out through the stone lattice towards the river and the embankment beyond. The other three walls were covered with pale green and gold carved panelling, obviously old. Each of them was framed by a painted climbing creeper, twisting around itself, with small bright birds here and there among the leaves. The vaulted ceiling was pale blue, ribbed with gold. But the furniture was almost all modern, comfortable but dull. One exception was an ornate chess table, with the pieces arranged on it ready to be played. Nigel went over and looked at it. The squares were black marble and mother -of-pearl. The pawns were fierce-looking warriors, the rooks were elephants with men in little turrets on their backs, the knights were horsemen, and so on.

The President looked up.

“You like it?” he said.

“Oh, it's awesome, sir! But it would be difficult to play with. You have to be able to recognise …”

“Of course, for serious chess. You play?”

“Yes, sir. I'm in the school team.”

“Excellent. I like to relax during my luncheon. We will play then.”

“I think my mother's expecting me back for lunch, sir.”

“Not ‘luncheon'?”

“Only if you're very old-fashioned, sir.”

“I am. My secretary will call your mother. You may speak to her yourself, if you wish.”

“I'm sure it will be all right, sir.”

(“The President of Dirzhan is a monster. I played chess with him.” Wow! Except that Dad wouldn't let it through.)

“My secretary will let you know. Ah. Now, Taeela, pull yourself together and behave as your mother would wish. You have a guest to welcome. Nigel, this is my daughter Taeela. And this, my dear, is Nigel Ridgwell.”

The girl had uncurled from the sofa, deliberately unwilling, like a cat disturbed from its slumbers. She pouted and snarled at her father in Dirzhani.

“Say it in English, please, my dear,” said the President, unperturbed. “You must not cut our guest out of the conversation.”

“I tell him he choose you for your name because it is difficult to say,” she said, still pouting theatrically.

“I hate my name, if you want to know,” Nigel said, speaking a little slower than usual. “I look like a Nigel, I sound like a Nigel, I am a Nigel. And Ridgwell only makes it worse. I wish I'd been called Terry or Wayne or Darren or something. I'm Nick at school, but I can't be at home because that's what everyone calls my dad. Actually he's even more of a Nigel than I am.”

She'd stopped pouting, and was just looking at him now, almost in the same way her father had done, but without the purr of power. She had a green headscarf framing a face that wasn't exactly pretty, but interesting, slightly pudgy and browner than her father's, with heavy jet-black eyebrows and long eyelashes. Her eyes were dark and lively. She was wearing a loose, patterned green dress with a skirt that reached to her ankles.

“Terry is nice name,” she said thoughtfully.

“OK. Terry it is. Terry and Taeela. We sound like a circus act. It's all right, sir. I shan't ask her to wear spangled tights.”

The President actually chuckled.

“The eunuch would certainly disapprove,” he said.

There seemed to be a sort of relief in his tone, as if he'd been waiting to see what his daughter would make of this new toy he'd given her. It took Nigel a moment to realize what he'd actually said.

“Eunuch, sir? I thought …”

“There are still a few eunuchs in isolated parts of the Middle East and Islamic Africa. Here the last khan was not deposed by the Russians until nineteen thirty-seven. Fohdrahko was born in nineteen twenty-six, he believes. He will be with you all the time you are with my daughter. Do not pity or patronize him, Nigel. It is the custom. It gives him purpose. He is also, by the way, highly intelligent. Now I must go. Someone will come to fetch you to my office at twelve fifteen.”

He turned and left.

Nigel half expected Taeela instantly to turn the TV back on. He must have glanced towards it, because she shook her head and pointed up over his right shoulder. He turned and saw a closed circuit camera mounted up in a shadowy corner of the ceiling.

“My father see me all the time,” she said with an exaggerated sigh. “You make him laugh. What do you say to him? A circus, yes? I know circus. Elephants and tigers, yes?”

“And acrobats and clowns and trapeze artists.”

“Trapeze? I do not know this.”

“Um. Trapezes. They are just bars of wood, swinging from ropes, high up in the air. Taeela holds onto one …”

He raised his arms and gripped an imaginary bar, then mimed the actions with his hands, as if he'd been wearing glove-puppets

“… and Terry holds on to the other with his knees, so he's upside down. They're wearing glittery tights, close to their bodies. They get the swings going. Together, apart. Together, apart …

“Now Taeela lets go of her swing and flies through the air. Terry catches her. And now they are both swinging from Terry's trapeze. I told your father I wouldn't make you wear glittery tights. He said—I don't know his name—Foh-something …” he nodded towards the eunuch sitting on his stool by the door, “… Your father said he would not approve of tights.”

“Fofo!” she said, laughing delightedly. “No, he does not approve!”

She called to the eunuch and he rose from his stool and came over.

“This is my friend Fofo,” she said. “He lives in the palace very long time. He knows many, many secrets.”

Nigel held out his hand and the old man took it, but instead of shaking it he raised it to his lips and kissed it gently. It was a very expressive gesture, formal but at the same time warmly welcoming. The old eunuch was Taeela's guardian. For him she must have been the last of a long line of women and girls he had watched and protected, and so, perhaps, the most precious. The kiss told Nigel that he had passed another test, been judged, and accepted.

Taeela laughed again and flung her arms round the eunuch and hugged him. He stood for a little while nodding his head slowly and smiling at Nigel, then gently released himself and went back to his stool.

Taeela bundled herself up like a puppy into the corner of the sofa and patted the cushion beside her.

“Not close,” she said. “Fofo …”

She laughed and shrugged and rolled her eyes.

Nigel was happy to settle onto the other end of the sofa. He'd never been comfortable with girls and their private language of gestures and glances.

“How do you want to do this?” he said. “I suppose we just talk about stuff and see how we get on. Do you want me to tell you when you get a word wrong? It'll slow things down no end.”

“No, no! This is not lesson. I do so many lessons. No! We … just talk about stuff and see how we get on.”

She got it dead right. He could even hear a whisper of his own voice saying the words.

“Tell me where you are born,” she said.

“In London, but I don't remember anything about it because we moved to Madrid before I was one. I was a mistake, if you want to know. My sisters are much older than me—Libby's grown up and married now, and Cath's at university—and my parents didn't mean to have another one.

“I don't remember much about Madrid either, just one particular smell. There's a sort of magnolia. Most of the year it's big boring bush—almost a tree—but then suddenly in summer it produces these amazing huge white flowers—this big—and absolutely reeking of some kind of lemon syrup. One whiff of the right thing and I'm back in this stifling hot little courtyard full of dusty sunlight and this smell. And that's Madrid.”

“I know this tree, Terry. No, is stupid, this. I call you Nidzhell. You teach me how I say it …”

The morning slid by. At one point a small, dumpy woman brought in a tray with a jug of ice-cold fizzy fruit drink and some crisp little almond biscuits. At another, when he was talking about his time in Santiago, she said “This is good … great! I get … I'm getting two lessons in one time. English, Geography. I tell … I'll tell my father.”

He noticed the self-corrections with satisfaction, and even more so how, by the time she was talking about her own earlier life, she was saying things like “I'm” and “Don't” as smoothly as if she'd done so always. She went to a little school in the palace, with ten other kids, roughly her age. Both girls and boys, which apparently wasn't the custom in Dirzhan. Only the President could have got away with it, Nigel guessed. She loved riding, and had her own ponies both in Dara Dahn and at a hunting lodge in the hills. Nigel was taken by surprise when the eunuch answered a tap on the door and Mr. Dikhtar was standing just outside with a phone handset in one hand and the other beckoning him over.

“The President-Khan is ready to receive you, Mr. Rizhouell,” he said. “I have spoken to your mother. She would like you to call her.”

He dialled a number and handed the telephone over.

“Nigel?”

“Hi, Mum. I'm having a great time. I'm just going off to play chess with the President. Is that scary or is it scary? I like Taeela a lot. I have to say that because she's listening.”