In the Palace of the Khans (38 page)

He stopped dead and looked back. Three. The rungs Lily-Jo had marked with a query should have been above the third slab. He checked the map. Yes, three. He shone the torch ahead, along the passage. No sign of any rungs. But there must be something here, roughly opposite the wall of the antechamber, where he'd seen it through the last spy-hole.

A seemingly solid wall

“What happens?” whispered Benni.

“Wait. Keep your fingers crossed.”

All the mortar around the third slab had the same rough texture, no sign of a slot in it. Lily-Jo had known there was a wall between the spy-holes either side of where he was standing because they had to look into two different rooms, but, misled by the different sizes of the rooms, probably, she'd printed it further to the left, in blue to show she couldn't be sure of its position.

But if it was exactly behind slab three there was something else that made sense. Course by course, Nigel ran his finger-tips over the mortar. Four courses up he found a few inches with a smoother texture.

He pressed his key against the left end and the strip grated round. It can't have been used for years, centuries even, but when he engaged the key and levered the catch clicked sweetly.

He pulled, using the key as a handle. Nothing happened, not even when he threw as much of his weight on it as his grip would stand. Still nothing. In desperation he shoved and felt the stonework shift.

Benni joined him and they shifted it another half inch. A crack, not straight like the edge of a normal door but following the lines of mortar, had opened all the way up from the floor to a bit above Nigel's height. He stood clear to let two of the others join Benni. Under their full weight the door gave with a rush and they tumbled on top of each other through the gap.

Surely someone had heard the flurry of thumps. No alarm sounded. They rose and turned to see what they had found.

A single straight passage, without any visible opening on either side, ran towards a glimmer of light at the far end. The spy-hole was too high for Nigel. Close by, his fingers found a strip of smoother mortar. The key slid easily in.

“It's another door,” he whispered. “The lock's here,”

Benni edged past and peered through the spy-hole.

“Is the big room,” he said. “Too many people now. We come again tonight.”

The men all took their turn at the spy-hole while Nigel waited further back, leaning against the wall. Why on earth? What was it for, this place? It was almost as if the men who had built the palace four centuries ago had put it here, ready for them to use. No. Tomorrow wouldn't be the first time, anything like. Many times before this the mosaics of the grand stairs must have been soaked in blood—a rebellious chieftain, trusting in his safe conduct, while armed eunuchs mustered in this passage, ready to rush out and slaughter him in the middle of his bodyguard. There'd been a lot of that sort of stuff in the history of Dirzhan, according to Google. The chill of the stones he was leaning against seemed to seep into his body. He shuddered.

The men returned towards him. He could hear in the tone of their whispers, in the lightness of their movements, how their mood had changed. Their confidence had returned. They were a team once more, agreeing with each other, working together. Yet again, against all the apparent odds, something had gone dead right. Their baizhan had come up with the goods and they would succeed. Benni even said as much, good as.

“This is very OK. This is what we look for. Thank you, Nick.”

“No problem,” he muttered balefully.

They explored the rest of that floor almost light-heartedly. A muffled murmur of angry voices greeted them as they stole back the way they had come. In the old antechamber two army officers and a tribesman wearing the black and orange of Adzhar Taerzha were having some kind of a conference with two of the television people. It wasn't going well. The men crowded round the spy-hole, listening intently. Nigel settled onto the floor and waited.

The voices stilled as a newcomer came into the room, then rose as all three tried to put their cases at the same time. The newcomer answered calmly, ignoring grumbles of interruption. The argument dwindled into discussion.

“Nick, who this man?” Benni whispered.

He didn't need to look. The voice was unmistakable.

“Avron Dikhtar. He was the President's secretary. What's their problem?”

“They fight for who come first down stair for to sign constitution—Adzhar Taerzha, Sesslizh, Madzhalid. This man fix it.”

“They're doing it like the Tribute of the Chieftains? That's useful.”

“Yes. Is good, Nick.”

(Bastards. Deliberately going through their stupid ceremony on the very spot where the President's blood had stained the stairs.)

They waited for the discussion to end in case they learnt anything else useful, then made their way back to their new base in the Beetle Room.

For Nigel the evening became a time of waiting. They ate together in friendship, like a hunting party home from the field. They were all in this thing together, and on a roll, and they were going to pull it off. Even Nigel found himself infected with the same crazy optimism, at least to the extent that though he didn't think they were right he was no longer sure they were wrong.

The men finished their meal and left to prepare the slave room for overflow sleepers, but they wouldn't let Nigel come with them. He thought of sneaking off down to the dungeons to see if Rick was there, but it wasn't worth the risk. He was far more likely being held in a barracks somewhere. Besides, suppose the men came back and found him gone … On the way out, perhaps, when it was all over … If they came this way … If he was still alive …

His last thought as he drifted off to sleep was that by the time he woke Taeela would be here. He hadn't seen her for four days, and wouldn't much tomorrow, but at least they'd be under the same roof.

CHAPTER 22

He slept erratically. The room seemed to be filled with stirrings and whisperings. His worries faded into dreams which roused back into worries. He'd be planning an imaginary escape with Taeela … and he'd be scuttling through a series of crawl-ways and panting up shafts, looking for the room where two veiled women were holding her pinioned by the arms while a man he couldn't see through the spy-hole stalked towards her … and then awake and rehearsing a conversation with his father about why he'd broken his promise … The window was pallid with dawn when Benni woke him.

Achingly he rose, sorted himself out and made his way down to the Lizard Room. Rahdan was sleeping across the entrance, with the slabs slightly ajar and his gun on the floor beside him. He woke groaning and rolled onto his knees, swung a slab open and spoke to somebody inside the room. Still groaning under his breath, he stumbled off towards the slave room. Time passed, and Taeela crawled out of the entrance. Her mourning dress was all smeared with the dust of the passages. She rose and flung her arms round Nigel all in one smooth movement. Gratefully he hugged her back. This was the first time ever, a real hug of pure affection. And probably the last.

“Oh, Nigel!” she whispered. “I have been so worried for you! You are all right?”

“Fine. A bit short on sleep. Otherwise it's gone pretty well.”

“Last night the men tell … told me everything. You have been wonderful.”

“Wasn't me. Everything's just gone dead right for us, that's all. What about you?”

She must have been up half the short night and it was now barely dawn. There were dark patches beneath her eyes, made darker yet by the shadow-casting torchlight, but the eyes themselves glittered with energy. Before she could answer she was interrupted by a soft cough from the passage behind him. He dropped his arms to let her stand clear but she didn't let go.

“You will be there with me, Nigel? We will watch together, two sisters. I have brought a dahl for you.”

“When it happens …? Uh … I'd thought …”

He couldn't say it, not to her face. OK, he'd promised his father … but that was only an excuse. He'd already broken that promise. The truth was he couldn't bear to stay and watch the whole thing come unstuck, with Taeela struggling in the grip of her captors and an ash-blond patch among the blood-soaked bodies on the floor of the hall.

“Two good men will go straight to your father and keep him safe,” she said. “It is arranged.”

He stared at her, shaking his head.

“You will stay, Nigel? I will not make you.”

She already had. Behind him Rahdan coughed again. Time was racing away.

“Uh … I guess I'll stay,” he muttered. “I've got to go. See you later.”

“Be careful, Nigel.”

Through a gap between two jars on a set of open shelves Nigel watched Rahdan stroll towards the stove. A raucous sort of Dirzharii rockabilly on a tinny little radio drowned the sound of his footsteps. Despite what must have been a rough night he looked pretty good. The uniform the tailor in Sodalka had made for him fitted him as well as an officer's. The butt of his AK dangled comfortably beside his hip. The bald cook stirring a pot at the enormous stove never heard him coming and when Rahdan tapped him on the shoulder jumped like startled frog, almost dropping his spoon.

Rahdan laughed and spread his hands in apology. He spoke. The cook shook his head crossly and returned to stirring. Rahdan took a dirzh note out of his wallet and laid it on the stove. The cook looked at it and pointedly went on stirring. Rahdan added another note. The cook picked both notes up, handed him the spoon and strutted away.

Stirring with one hand Rahdan took a glass flask out of his jacket pocket, pulled the cork out with his teeth, tipped some of the contents into the pot, checked the level in the flask, re-corked it and slipped it back into his pocket. He continued stirring until the cook came back with a pewter tankard. Rahdan swapped spoon for drink, took a good long pull, swallowed and sighed with satisfaction, then drank slowly, chatting between mouthfuls.

Nigel should have been twanging with nerves. All this was unrehearsed. He hadn't had a chance to explore the passages along the east wing of the courtyard yesterday and they'd turned out trickier than they'd looked on the plan, mostly under ceilings so low that they were almost crawl-ways. The soldiers in the barrack-rooms were rousing as they'd passed. They'd cut it too fine, but now he waited for Rahdan in a dreamy daze. It was as if the last two days had numbed his capacity for tension.

He'd talked to Taeela, held her in his arms, she'd made him feel he mattered to her as much as everything else put together. That was enough.

Rahdan put the tankard down, wiped his mouth on the back of his hand and came strolling back. He opened the kitchen door, closed it with a bang and followed Nigel into the storeroom from which they'd emerged. The barrack-rooms upstairs were emptying as they crept past.

The next two hours sauntered by, untroubled. Nigel breakfasted slowly and repacked his bag ready for a quick getaway, got out his chess set and explored a variation on the Queen's Indian. Men crawled in, glanced at him, muttered to each other and left. After a bit of this he shifted his chair to face away from the entrance and wasn't surprised when the next visitor seemed to stay longer and before he left something brushed lightly against the nape of his neck.

This time he didn't mind. It seemed to be an expression of their togetherness, like the comradeship among their five leaders that had suddenly renewed itself when they had found their attack-point yesterday. Nigel had never been a natural joiner-in, a foreigner in Santiago and almost that back in England, with his stupid looks and hoity-toity accent. Even in the chess team, with the other players older than he was, he never felt he really belonged. He used to tell himself he was a loner, anyway. Not now.

Only when the men began to muster to their posts, departing a few at a time so as not to clog the shafts, did tension return. He followed the last of them along the passage to the foot of the shaft and waited there, yawning and sighing, until Taeela appeared from below, already in her dahl. She checked over her shoulder that he was there and climbed on, followed by Satila and then Rahdan. Nigel joined himself on at the tail.

When they emerged on the gallery level she took charge and led them to the left, then to Nigel's dismay knelt at an entrance he had tried yesterday and found blocked on the inside. By the time he had pushed past Rahdan and Satila to warn her she had swung the slabs apart and was crawling through. They emerged into what looked like a store-room for office stuff.

“What happened?” he whispered. “I tried this …”

“We came up in the night to see. Me, Satila and Rahdan. This is the best room for us. The women will watch from the gallery, and they will leave their cloaks in the room outside, so we came through Ditta's office to clear the way. Now you put on your woman's clothes and we go through.”

There was a silk undershirt, dark green with lacy white cuffs. The dahl was a classy garment, rich brown, beautifully soft and supple, with a pattern of glittery bits on the shoulders and round the arm-slits, and a little handbag to match. There was even a pair of fancy shoes he could get into.

“You must practise to walk like a girl, Nigel” she said, giggling as he tittupped awkwardly across the room. She seemed to be in terrific spirits, as if she were getting ready for a fancy dress party, preening this way and that while Satila fussed round her brushing away the dust of the passages and picking off invisible scraps of fluff. Her outfit was the same as his with the colours reversed, showing they belonged to some clan or other.

“We're some rich guy's daughters, right?” he said.

“Tahrin Farzhna. West Dirzh. He works in Vladivostok. He has two daughters. They have never been to Dirzhan. No one will speak to you.”

“Bet they haven't got blue eyes.”

“In your bag, Nigel. I think of everything. No, don't put them on. Satila must do your face.”