The Far Pavilions - Mary Margaret Kaye [58]
Twilight was gathering under the dome of the Queen's balcony, and Kairi had wept herself into exhaustion and now lay still and silent, soothed by the monotonous motion as Ash rocked to and fro and stared above her head at the far-away snows. The breeze was cold with the coming of winter, for October was nearly over and the days were drawing in. The sun had almost vanished and the distant peaks of the Dur Khaima made a frieze of fading rose and amber against an opal sky in which a single star shimmered like one of Janoo-Rani's diamonds.
Ash shivered, and releasing Kairi said abruptly: ‘We must go. It will soon be too dark to see, and – and they may be looking for me.’ But he did not go until the snows had turned from pink to violet and only the top-most peak of the Far Pavilions – Tarakalas, the ‘Star Turret’ – still held the last of the sunset.
He had brought no rice with him today, but Kairi wore a little bracelet of late rosebuds around one wrist, and he stripped it off and scattered the buds at the edge of the balcony, hoping that the Dur Khaima would understand the emergency and forgive him for not bringing an offering of his own: ‘Help me,’ prayed Ash to his personal deity. ‘Please help me! I don't want to die…’
The light faded from the peak and now the whole range was no more than a lilac silhouette against the darkening sky, and there was not one star, but a thousand. As the night wind strengthened it blew the rosebuds away, and Ash was comforted, for it seemed to him that the Dur Khaima had accepted his offering. The two children turned together and groped their way down through the ruined tower and back to Sita's courtyard, hand clutched in hand and eyes and ears strained to catch the smallest sound or movement that would betray a lurker in the shadows.
Sita had been cooking the evening meal, and Ash left Kairi with her and fled back to the Yuveraj's rooms through the maze of corridors and court-yards that formed a third of the Hawa Mahal, his heart thumping wildly and a queer cold feeling between his shoulder-blades at that spot where a knife might most easily be driven in. It was an enormous relief to find that he had not been missed because Lalji had received a set of jewelled chessmen from the Rani, and was engaged in a game with Biju Ram.
Half-a-dozen sycophantic courtiers surrounded the chess players and applauded their young master's every move, and at the far end of the room a solitary figure sat cross-legged under a hanging lamp, absorbed in a book and paying no attention to the game. Ash tiptoed over to him and begged in a whisper for a word in private, and Hira Lal's lazy eyes scanned the boy's face for a brief moment before returning to the book.
‘No. Tell me here,’ said Hira Lal in an unhurried undertone that did not carry to the group of courtiers. ‘If it is important, it is better not to go apart, for then someone might follow to find out what it is that you do not wish overheard. Turn your back to them so that they cannot see your face, and do not speak in a whisper. They will never believe that you would talk secrets in so public a place, so you may say what you will.’
Ash obeyed him. He had to have advice, and of all the Yuveraj's household only Hira Lal had befriended him. He would have to trust him now because there was the night to be got through, and he did not know how many of the household were in the Nautch-girl's pay: perhaps half of them – or all of them. But not Hira Lal. Instinct told him that he could rely on Hira Lal, and instinct was right. Hira Lal listened without comment, his slim fingers absently toying with his dangling earring while his gaze strayed about the room in a manner calculated to suggest to the group by the chess players that he was bored and paying very little attention. But when Ash had finished, he said quietly: ‘You did. well to tell me. I will see to it that you come to no harm tonight. But the Rani is a dangerous woman and she can afford to pay highly to achieve