The Far Pavilions - Mary Margaret Kaye [421]
She was standing in front of the unlined chik, so that at first he only saw her as a dark figure outlined against the oblong of light: a faceless figure dressed like the others in the garments of a palace servant. Because of those clothes, a stranger entering the room would have taken her for a man. Yet Ash had known her instantly. He would, he thought, have known her even if he had been blind, because the tie between them was stronger than sight and went deeper than externals.
He pulled away the folds of orange and red muslin that had been wrapped about his face, and they looked at each other across the width of that shadowed room. But though Ash had put aside the loose end of his turban, Anjuli did not follow his example, and her face remained hidden except for her eyes.
The beautiful, gold-flecked eyes that he remembered so well were still beautiful – they could never be anything else. But as his own became accustomed to the subdued light he realized that there was neither gladness nor welcome in them, but such a look as might have belonged to the child Kay in Hans Andersen's fairy-story The Snow Queen, whose heart had been pierced by a sliver of glass: a blank, frozen look that appalled him.
He started forward to go to her, but was prevented by someone who moved quickly between them and laid a restraining hand on his arm: Gobind, unfamiliar in the same disguise as Juli wore, but with his face uncovered.
‘Ashok,’ said Gobind. He had not raised his voice, but both tone and touch conveyed a warning so vividly that Ash checked, remembering just in time that except for Sarji, and Juli herself, no one present knew that there was anything between the widowed Rani and himself – and must not know it; especially at this juncture, since there was not one of them who would not be as shocked by it as Sarji or Kaka-ji had been, and the situation was dangerous enough already without his making it worse by alienating his allies.
He forced his gaze from Anjuli though it was an effort to do so, and looked instead at Gobind, who permitted himself to draw a deep breath of relief – he had feared that the Sahib was about to shame the Rani and embarrass them all by some open demonstration of feeling. That danger at least had been averted, and he withdrew his hand and said: ‘I thank the gods that you have come; there is much to do, and these here will need watching. The woman most of all, for she would scream if she could, and there are a score of guards within hearing – in the pavilion above us, as well as below.’
‘What woman?’ said Ash, who had seen only one.
Gobind gestured with a slim hand and for the first time Ash became aware of the others in the curtained room. There were seven of them, not counting Manilal, and only one of these was a woman – presumably a waiting-woman of Juli's. The obese, slug-like man whose pallid cheeks and numerous chins were as smooth as a baby's could only be one of the Zenana eunuchs, and for the rest, two from their dress were palace servants, another two troopers of the State Forces, and one a member of the Rana's bodyguard. All of them were seated on the floor, and all had been gagged and trussed up like fowls – except the last, who was dead. He had been stabbed through the left eye, and the handle of the stiletto-like knife that had been driven into his brain still protruded from the wound.
Gobind's work, thought Ash. No one else would have known how to strike with such deadly accuracy, and it was the only vulnerable spot. The surcoat of chain-mail and the heavy leather helmet with its deep fringe of linked metal would have deflected any attack on the wearer's head, throat or body. There had been only one chance…
‘Yes,’ said Gobind, answering the unspoken question. ‘We could not stun him with a blow on the head as we had done with