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By Root 2802 0

to find out anything about the background and history of the state whose princesses he was to escort to their wedding, while the authorities in Rawalpindi, for their part, had given him no information on that head because they assumed that Mr Carter, the District Officer, would deal fully with it; and they could hardly have been expected to know that an attack of malaria would prevent the District Officer from doing anything of the sort. But as a result, Ash had entered on his command in a blithe state of ignorance and wholly unaware of the pitfalls that lay ahead. Even the information that a young brother of the Maharajah's had elected to join the camp at the last possible moment, and would be travelling with them, had not struck him as particularly interesting. After all, why shouldn't the child accompany his sisters to their wedding? He had dismissed young Jhoti's presence as something of no importance, and beyond sending a polite inquiry as to his health, gave the matter no more thought. But that evening, as darkness fell, a servant brought him a message to say that the little prince was now fully recovered from his indisposition and would like to see him.

The rain had stopped some hours before and the sky was clear again as Ash, wearing mess dress in honour of the occasion, was once more conducted through the roaring, lamp-lit camp to a tent near that of the princesses, where a sentry armed with an ancient tulwar provided a token guard and a yawning servant waited to usher him into the Presence. A solitary hurricane lamp hung on an iron pole outside, but passing in under the tent-flap Ash was met by a blaze of light that momentarily dazzled him, for the interior of the tent was lit by half-a-dozen European-style lamps that had been designed to carry shades of silk or velvet, but that now stood, unshaded, on low tables set in a half-circle about a pile of cushions on which sat a plump, pallid little boy.

He was a handsome child, despite his plumpness and his pasty complexion, and Ash, blinking in the glare, was suddenly reminded of Lalji as he had seen him on that first day in the Hawa Mahal. This child must be about the same age as Lalji had been then, and was sufficiently like Ash's memory of the Yuveraj for the two to be brothers, though Lalji, thought Ash, had been a far less personable child than this one, and he would certainly not have risen to his feet to greet his visitor, as Jhoti was doing. The resemblance was mainly a matter of dress and expression, for Lalji had worn similar clothes and he too had looked sour and cross – and very frightened.

It occurred to Ash, bowing in acknowledgement of the boy's greeting, that if (as Wally maintained) all princesses were beautiful, it was a pity that all young princes should be plump and cross and frightened. Or, at least, all the ones that he himself had met so far.

The absurdity of this reflection made him grin and he was still smiling when he straightened up… to find himself looking directly at a face that even after all these years he recognized instantly and with a paralysing sensation of shock – the face of a man who stood immediately behind the little prince and less than three paces away, and whose narrow eyes held the same slyness, the same chilling look of calculation and malice that had been so familiar in the days when their owner had been Lalji's favourite courtier and the Nautch-girl's spy.

It was Biju Ram.

The smile on Ash's face stiffened into a fixed grimace and he felt his heart jerk and miss a beat. It was not possible – he must be mistaken. Yet he knew that he was not. And in the same instant he knew too, and without any shadow of doubt, why the boy Jhoti reminded him of Lalji. Because Jhoti was either Lalji's brother or his first cousin.

He could not be Nandu: he was too young for that. But there had been at least two more children, and for all he knew the Nautch-girl might have borne many others later on. Or could this be Lalji's son…? No, that was not likely. A cousin, then? – a child or grandchild of one of the brothers of the old Rajah