The Far Pavilions - Mary Margaret Kaye [423]
‘– we hope,’ amended Sarji with a curt laugh. ‘But what if they do?’
‘If they do, we die,’ said Gobind unemotionally. ‘But I think that we shall live. Now let us see to these –’ he turned his attention to the bound captives and looked them over critically.
The woman's dark-skinned face was green with fear and the eunuch's pallid one twitched and trembled uncontrollably. Neither expected any mercy (and with good reason, since they themselves would have shown none to the widowed Rani), and having seen their fellow-torturer killed, they probably imagined that the manner of it – the swift upward stab through the eye – had been in retaliation for the injury he himself had intended to inflict on the Junior Rani, and that they, as his partners in guilt, would be dealt with in the same way.
They could well have been had it not been for Gobind – and for something that Manilal found hidden among the women's clothing – for neither Sarji nor Ash would have had the least compunction in putting an end to them by that or any other method, if their continued existence in any way threatened Anjuli's safety, or their own. Both were in agreement with Manilal, who said flatly: ‘We had best kill them all: it is no more than they deserve, and no more than they would do to us if they stood in our place. Let us kill them now and thus make certain that they cannot raise an alarm.’
But Gobind had been trained to save life and not to take it, and he would not agree. He had killed the helmeted guard because there had been no other way of silencing him; it had been necessary and he did not regret it. But to kill the others in cold blood would serve no useful purpose (provided that they were secured so that they could not summon help) and would only rank as murder. At this point Manilal, stooping to tighten the woman's bonds, had discovered that she had something hard and bulky hidden in a fold of cloth wrapped about her waist, and removing it, found it to be a necklace of raw gold set with pearls and carved emeralds: a thing of such magnificence that no waiting-woman could possibly have come by it honestly.
Manilal handed it to Gobind with the comment that the she-devil was clearly also a thief, but the woman shook her head in frantic denial, and Gobind said shortly that it was more likely to be a bribe. ‘Look at her’ – she had cringed in her bonds and was staring at him as though hypnotized – ‘this was blood-money, paid in advance for the foul work she had agreed to do. Pah!’
He dropped the necklace as though it had been a poisonous snake, and Ash stooped quickly and picked it up. Neither Gobind nor Manilal could possibly have recognized that fabulous jewel, but Ash had seen it twice before: once when the more valuable items listed in the dowries of the brides from Karidkote had been checked in his presence, and again when Anjuli had worn it at the formal departure from the Pearl Palace. He said harshly: ‘There should be two bracelets also. See if the eunuch has them. Quickly.’
The eunuch had not (they were found on the two palace servants) but he had something else that Ash had no difficulty in recognizing: a collar of table-cut diamonds fringed with pearls.
He stood looking at it with unseeing eyes. So the vultures were already dividing the spoils! – the Rana had only died last night, but Juli's enemies had wasted no time in seizing her personal possessions, and had actually used some of her own jewels to bribe her would-be torturers. The irony of that would appeal to someone like the Diwan, who had once hoped to retain her dowry while at the same repudiating her bridal contract and having her returned in disgrace to Karidkote. And from his knowledge of the man and his devious mind, Ash did not believe for a moment that the Diwan would pay such lavish bribes in return for something that he could order to be done for nothing.
It was far more likely that the choice of those jewels had been deliberate, for once the appalling deed