The Midnight Palace - Carlos Ruiz Zafon [6]
The blazing eyes of his opponent fixed themselves on his and a long black tongue flicked across the man’s lips.
‘You still don’t understand, do you, Lieutenant? Where are the babies?’
It was not a question. It was an order.
Dumb with terror, Peake shook his head.
‘As you wish.’
Jawahal squeezed Peake’s hand. The lieutenant felt the bones in his fingers being crushed under his flesh. The spasm of pain made him fall to his knees, unable to breathe.
‘Where are the babies?’ Jawahal hissed.
Peake tried to say something, but the agony spreading from the bloody stump that had been his hand paralysed his speech.
‘Are you trying to say something, Lieutenant?’ Jawahal whispered, kneeling beside him.
Peake nodded.
‘Good, good.’ His enemy smiled. ‘Frankly, I don’t find your suffering amusing. So help me put an end to it.’
‘The children are dead,’ Peake groaned.
An expression of distaste crept over Jawahal’s face.
‘You were doing so well, Lieutenant. Don’t ruin it now.’
‘They’re dead,’ Peake repeated.
Jawahal shrugged and slowly nodded his head.
‘All right,’ he conceded. ‘You leave me no choice. But before you go, let me remind you that, when Kylian’s life was in your hands, you were incapable of saving her. She died because of men like you. But those men have gone. You are the last one. The future is mine.’
Peake raised his eyes to Jawahal, and as he did so, he noticed the man’s pupils narrowing into thin slits, his golden irises blazing. With painstaking elegance, Jawahal started to remove the glove on his right hand.
‘Unfortunately you won’t live to see it,’ Jawahal added. ‘Don’t think for a second that your heroic act has served any purpose. You’re an idiot, Lieutenant Peake. You always gave me that impression, and now all you have done is confirm it. I hope there is a hell reserved especially for idiots, Peake, because that’s where I’m sending you.’
Peake closed his eyes and listened to the hiss of fire just inches from his face. Then, after a moment that seemed eternal, he felt burning fingers closing round his throat, cutting off his very last breath. In the distance he could hear the sound of that accursed train and the ghostly voices of hundreds of children howling from the flames. After that, only darkness.
ONE BY ONE, ARYAMI Bose blew out the candles that lit up her sanctuary until only the hesitant glow of the fire remained, projecting fleeting haloes of light against the naked walls. The children were now asleep and the silence was broken only by the rain pattering against the closed shutters and the occasional crackling of the fire. Silent tears slid down Aryami’s face as she took the photograph of her daughter Kylian from the small brass and ivory box where she kept her most prized possessions.
A travelling photographer from Bombay had taken that picture some time before the wedding and hadn’t accepted any payment for it. It showed Kylian just as Aryami remembered her, with that uncanny luminosity that seemed to emanate from her. Kylian’s radiance had mesmerised all who knew her, just as it had captivated the expert eye of the photographer, who had given her the nickname by which she was still remembered: the Princess of Light.
Naturally, Kylian never became a true princess and had no kingdom other than the streets she grew up on. The day she left the Bose home to go and live with her husband, the people of Machuabazar had said farewell with tears in their eyes as they watched the white carriage carry away their Black Town princess for ever. She was scarcely more than a child at the time.
Aryami sat down next to the babies, facing the fireplace, and pressed the old photograph against her chest. Outside the storm raged on and Aryami drew on the force of its anger to help her decide what she should do next. Lieutenant Peake’s pursuer would not be content simply with killing him. The young man’s courage had earned her a few valuable minutes, which she could not waste, not even to mourn for her daughter. Experience had taught her that