In the Palace of the Khans

by Peter Dickinson

  But in the passages the tension was still unrelenting, as the intruders stole along, the men so silently that Nigel had to fight the urge to look back and check that they were still there. Those idlers had ears, ears that might startle to the knock of a gun-butt against the stone-work or the cough of a throat tickled by the dusty air, and wake the zombie into murderous life.

  It was slow work. They all looked through every spy-hole, then Varat would block it and Benni would mark the entrance, while Ammun made notes about it before they moved on. It took most of the morning to work their way through the complex maze running across the back of the Great Hall to the passage along the further wing of the Palace. Weary through and through, Nigel knelt, worked the entrance-lock and eased the slabs apart. Several pairs of foot-prints were clear in the dust beyond.

  He snapped the torch off and waited, straining for the whisper of any movement nearer than the casual noises from the unseen rooms on either side.

  Nothing.

  He peered out. The faint light seeping through spy-holes only emphasised the darkness. Yes, of course. Once they’d broken into the passage past Taeela’s room there’d been nothing to stop the soldiers exploring back in this direction. It didn’t mean they were still there. No telling.

  He switched on his torch again and edged aside so that the men could see what he had seen, but sat slumped against the wall waited while they worked it out for themselves. He felt utterly done for. He’d had only scraps of sleep last night after an endless-seeming day, and had woken still bone-tired. All morning tension had kept him going. Every step forward had been into possible danger, forcing him alert for each next step, denying him any moment to notice what was happening inside himself. Finding the footprints—that sudden extra demand—had taken all he’d got. His mind filled with a picture of a sodden and exhausted dog paddling in a foul dark stream, searching for a place where it could climb to land. The picture became a dream.

  “Nick?”

  “Uh?”

  “Nick. You hear me? You are ill?”

  “Sorry. Fell asleep. I’m all right … uh …”

  Benni put a hand under his arm and heaved to his feet, then helped him all the way back through the maze, their two shoulders scraping against the passage walls. He was yawning uncontrollably by the time Benni unfastened his torch-strap and helped him onto the bed in the Lizard Room. Someone took off his sneakers. His last thought was that Fohdrahko hadn’t come out alive.

  Benni woke him after a couple of hours and sat him down in front of some food. He’d thought he wasn’t hungry, but after a couple of mouthfuls found he was wrong.

  “Where are the others?” he said.

  “They take guns up to other room,” said Benni. “This room for Khanazhana. Then they look again where we are this morning.”

  “She’s coming tonight?”

  “I hope. When you finish eat, we go look down at below ways. You are strong for that?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Nick, you been here in palace when President is live. These soldiers we see, no good.”

  “You can say that again. No, his guards were a crack lot, and dead loyal to him. The bastards would never have got away with it if they’d been here, but they tricked him into sending a lot them up to Lake Vamar so they could put their own men in. They haven’t got a lot of guys they can trust, and they need them to do other stuff. There’s nothing much to guard in the palace now, so I suppose they thought it doesn’t matter who does it.”

  “Maybe they bring gooder men in tomorrow.”

  “They won’t know their way around.”

  Benni nodded. It didn’t seem to cross his mind to ask how Nigel knew the stuff he came up with. Maybe he didn’t mind if he was just guessing, because his guesses would be right. He was the Khanazhana’s baizhan.

  He was still eating when the Akhlavals came back. They glanced at Nigel and Urvan asked a question which Benni answered briefly. The same thing happened when the other two showed up, and this time round Nigel recognised his own name. He could hear a strain in their voices that hadn’t been there before, as if there’d been some kind of furious, whispered argument out in the passages. The atmosphere in the room had soured. Old animosities had come to the surface. Urvan Akhlaval and Varat Vulnad wouldn’t look at each other.

  Ever since they’d left Sodalka things had been going unbelievably well, but now, suddenly, they weren’t. They couldn’t find a room from which to launch their attack and they couldn’t agree what to do about it. At the crucial moment their baizhan had failed them. The feeble little wimp had flaked out. So now they stood around and waited for him to finish his meal and pull himself together and summon up his non-existent powers and get them out of this.

  If only, he thought, chewing sullenly on because he knew he needed the food, though it no longer seemed to taste of anything. Why had he ever agreed to come on this horrible adventure? If he’d refused the others wouldn’t have come without him and the whole mad plan would have been off.

  Except that it wouldn’t. Somehow or other Taeela would have scraped a gang of even crazier guys together and given it a go and they’d all be dead.

  He shoved the remains of his food away and lurched to his feet.

  “OK,” he said. “Let’s go and see what we can find downstairs.”

  The larger rooms at floor-level with the Great Hall made for a simpler lay-out than on those above and below, and Taeela and Rahdan between them had known what they were used for. The shaft emerged into the main passage between the guard room in the corner of the Great Hall and the rooms down that side, and ran along the outer wall of the palace, ducking below their high-silled windows. Fohdrahko’s map showed a couple of spy-holes and a hidden entrance into each room, and three sets of rungs running up to crawl-ways that led to spy-holes looking out across the Great Hall. The central set came on a fold in the plan and the original markings were illegible, so Lily-Jo had marked it with a query, but she said that was the only thing that made sense.

  The first room was used by the palace officials as a general purpose office, with people coming and going. Even during the signing ceremony it was likely to be occupied. Next came the first set of rungs. Ammun climbed to investigate, and found that the spy-hole was one of the ones that looked as if it was designed to let a gun to be fired through it He sounded excited about it. The Akhlavals were scornful.

  Listlessly Nigel led them on, automatically counting the slabs between each feature. He could hear the men following him, moving less carefully than they had before, as if it didn’t matter. The whole idea was hopeless anyway.

  The next room used to be the old khans’ audience room. It was now used as a council room and looked more promising, with a big central table, chairs, shelves of books, computer consoles and so on. But the entrance was blocked by some large piece of furniture, invisible through the spy-holes.

  Then a smaller room that used to be the antechamber to the audience room. There were people in it, setting up television equipment for the ceremony. No use. Still counting, Nigel crouched along beneath a window, beginning the count again when he reached the hidden entrance just beyond it. One, two, three, four, five …

  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.