It was true: even the Mongol Horde did not wander about perpetually, aimlessly, like leaves blowing in the wind. The Gungal Emir, Timur the Lame, Lord of the Fortunate Conjunction, was turning towards Samarqand, capital city of his Empire and a place of fabled magnificence. There had to be some spot on the rolling earth where ambassadors could seek audience with him; somewhere to house the chronicles of his daring exploits; somewhere for him to display the works of art he had looted and the presents he had been given by captured cities begging for mercy. There had to be somewhere for his Royal Zoo. Somewhere to sell captives to slavers, or put them to work building endless walls or canals. Somewhere to share out the Empire among his sons.
The Horde headed eagerly for Samarqand as if, like tajiks, they would be happy to get home where they belonged. In fact it was more like a holiday destination, where they would spend a season trading, drinking, bragging, sleeping and getting bored enough to leave again. But after the hardships of this particular campaign, no one was complaining as the Horde flocked northwards towards Samarqand.
Rusti had been there just three times in his short life. He remembered its marvels – squares and streets and brick buildings three storeys high – its mosques and mosaics and the white horses who grazed the peculiarly perfect meadows outside its walls. Best among his memories were the sweet-sellers in the market, their wares set out at eye level (well, it had been a while now), all crawling in flies and a perfume that set his spit running. Worst among his memories was watching his father Baliq die in bed – somewhere indoors – of a rat bite that had turned gangrenous. His last words to Cokas and Borte had been a simple instruction, easily obeyed he supposed: “Keep your oath to me,” Baliq had said. But his words to Rusti had left the little boy weeping, powerless to obey. “Take off the ceiling, son. I want to see the stars.” Even standing on a chair, the four-year-old Rusti had not been able to perform his father’s dying wish. So Rusti had mixed feelings about Samarqand. It spoke to him of failure and ghosts.
And the route home did take them through Zubihat.
Well, they could have skirted by it, of course: taken a different route. But Tamburlaine liked to revisit the scenes of his victories. He liked to make sure that the cities he had captured remembered who had spared their miserable lives, who had broken their pride and rubbed their noses in the dirt. Twelve years was a long time, but Timur had made certain the people of Zubihat would never forget him.
Sitting one night eating his dinner, Rusti heard two old men talking outside the kibitki:
“Two days to Zubihat, by my reckoning.”
“…remember that name…forget why.”
“The place where we built that tower, yes? For the women, yes? Waste of women, to my way of thinking.”
Rusti’s ribs closed up tight around his heart so that it did not quite have room to beat. He was about to see the place where he was born. His home. His native valley. Ah but no! That was nonsense! The Chronicler’s story had been about some other boy, some other baby. Unable to breathe, Rusti shouldered his way out of doors, stumbling over Borte, who slapped angrily at his legs. “Clumsy fool! What did I do to deserve such a camel for a husband?”
Outside, he shook his head hard, trying to dislodge all thought of Zubihat from his skull. It only made him dizzy. And the thoughts came back, black as crows. His shadow lay along the ground, slim and slight, jeering at him for ever thinking he might be a Mongol by birth, might one day become a warrior or even a proper man. Rusti kicked dust over his own shadow. “I won’t go. They can’t make me.” He breathed in the comforting smells of the Horde: filth and food and animals. He was the Great Emir’s elephant boy. That was all. That was quite enough! Shidurghu had been lying, or mistaken. Or his story had been about some other boy. “I’ll go around. I’ll take the elephants round another way. Don’t need to go there. Nothing to do with me. I won’t go.”
“Go? Where go?” said Kavita, emerging from the tent with an empty bucket, on his way to fetch water. He flicked his shawl over his head with a gesture unknowingly learned from the female slaves.
“It’s a story,” said Rusti, and pursed shut his mouth.
“I like story,” said Kavita. “Tell.”
Rusti looked nervously over his shoulder: the Mongols were a race of spies. “Not here,” he said.
So the story was told within the shelter of lazing elephants. In the grey leathery ravine between their knobbly spines, great grey ears fanning away the evening flies, Rusti told Kavi the story of the tower at Zubihat – though of course he did not mention the baby boy. Kavi did not need to know everything. It was just a story, after all.
The closer they came to Zubihat, the more certain Rusti was that he had never been there. Proof! If he had been born in these parts, he would surely recognize the curve of the hills, the stones on the ground, the clouds in the sky.
At night he dreamed he was walking into the place, and that people came running out of their homes, waving and smiling, calling him by name. “Look who’s here! Look who it is!” And their dogs wanted to lick him, and the women wanted to cook him supper, but he kept trying to point to Kavi somewhere behind him, and to say, “No, not me. It’s him. He’s the tajik! Not me, him!” When he woke, he told himself there was no truth in dreams.
He was right.
There were no people in Zubihat.
Oh, there were a few settlements nearby. Even some of the houses they passed were built of stone carried away from the demolished town. But Zubihat itself had not been rebuilt after its defeat at the hands of Tamburlaine. It had been abandoned: a place of ghosts; a place poisoned by memories, as a waterhole can be poisoned by the body of a dead dog. The air was dank with sorrow, and people do not choose to raise their children where the air is bad.
As Tamburlaine’s elephants passed by the ruins, Mahamati twitched her ears and stepped anxiously from foot to foot: her rider was sitting so rigid in the crease of her neck, that she could not understand what the boy wanted of her. Her trunk reached back and kissed his arm, his kneecaps, questioning. But Rusti simply sat and looked around him. Kavita sat alongside, riding Gaurang, whose pale hide made her look ashen with fear or sorrow. It is frightening, after all, to ride across the pages of a story, especially a true one.
Within sight of the tower, they pitched camp, eating supper under a rosy evening sky. The old men settled to telling stories of their heroism during the fall of Zubihat. There was a festive mood; laughter flittered overhead amid the bats. Everything made for laughter among the veteran warriors and their bloodthirsty children: the cowardice of the citizens of Zubihat, the weakness of the defending soldiers, the way the tajiks had pleaded for their lives…
How is that funny? thought Rusti. But looking across the campfire at his wife, he saw her laughing with all the rest. Once, her eyes turned in his direction, and her expression changed to loathing. Was she comparing him with his dead brother Cokas? Or was she recalling how, twelve years before, Cokas and his father had helped to build that tower yonder, and had taken away with them a couple of souvenirs: a gold bracelet and a baby boy? All he had to do was ask her – call out to her now through the smoke of the bonfire; whisper the question in her ear before they went to sleep. “That tower over there: is that why you call me a tajik? Is that where I came from?” But the question stuck in his throat. It seemed to have been walled up inside him, and could not break out.
He needed to know!
Unable to eat, unable to sleep, Rusti went looking for the Royal Chronicler, Shidurghu – rode Arrow recklessly fast, towards the fluttering bannerettes of the Royal Encampment. He would ask the man straight out: was it true? But the tent of the Royal Chronicler was not pitched alongside the others of the Royal Court. Like a white chess piece, it had been removed from the board.
The guards waved Rusti away: no chess-playing boys needed this evening: Shidurghu had gone upcountry with the Gungal Emir, to act as his interpreter. After all: this was his native district, they said. The Chronicler was a Zubihat man himself.
“Of course. I forgot,” said Rusti as if he had known all along. He did not let his face register any of the things hammering at his heart.
Back by the campfire, Borte had begun to dance, flirting with a neighbour whose wife had died in childbirth that day; vowing to put a smile back on his face… Rusti could see the shape of her big body, flabby and smooth through the cloth of her robe. She was clearly not wearing her chain mail of loot.
Ducking inside the family tent, Rusti began to search. There was no lamp, and it was very dark. Something moved in the shadows, and he reared up guiltily from his hands and knees. Only Kavita.
“Where is it?” Rusti hissed. “She’s not wearing it. Help me find her loot! I have to find it!”
With silent footfall, Kavita crossed the rug, unlaced a bedroll and unrolled it, loosing its sour, sweaty smell. There was a tinkling of metal, as Borte’s spoils of war spilled out of it. Rusti had never before examined his wife’s booty, never even touched any of the bridle-rings and belt buckles, the helmet spikes, or strings of foreign coins.
“What you look?” asked Kavi.
“A bracelet. A golden bracelet!” Of course, Cokas might have kept the bracelet himself – not given it to his wife when they married. Or Borte might have sold it when times were hard. Anyway, there was no golden bracelet, because the whole thing had happened to someone else, hadn’t it? Or because Shidurghu was lying and the whole thing had never happened at all!
Kavi leaned across and picked up a glittering O from among the other dross; picked it up and handed it to Rusti without a word. His dark, scratched fingers were so slender they could almost have belonged to a woman: a woman reaching through a hole in rough brickwork, to buy mercy with a golden bracelet.
Of course the world has produced a great many golden bracelets. This one might have come from anywhere – from Tiflis or Baghdad. But to Rusti it was proof – absolute proof – of Shidurghu’s story. For a moment he held the warm metal against his cheek. And from that moment he believed.
“Will you come back here with me?” he urged in a whisper. “After the rest move on? Will you come back here with me?”
In the darkness of the tent, nothing showed but the liquid glimmer of Kavi’s big, dark eyes. Then his head tilted slightly to one side and he pushed his long hair clear of his ears to listen.
“Someone come,” he said.
Pure terror went through Rusti, thinking it was Borte returning to the tent. He pushed the bracelet inside his clothes, bundled the loot clumsily back into the mattress and rolled it up. What if she caught him meddling with her warrior hoard? She would break his neck – or take a cleaver to him.
But Kavi had picked up a sound much farther off – beyond the usual rowdy clamour of drunkenness, quarrels and children. He rested the flat of his hand on the floor, feeling vibrations. “Horses,” he said. “Big many horses.”
And all of a sudden, the evening noises of eating, drinking and brawling changed, and the Horde gave a shout, as with one voice. The encampment was under attack…
Women screamed their children’s names. Drinkers cursed. Kibitkis slumped flat with a noise like collapsing camels. Dogs barked. Ponies snorted and whinnied. Kavi looked around for somewhere to hide. With a soft thud, something struck the roof above his head, and an arrowhead pierced the felt and hide, and came sliding through for most of its length. It did not matter that it had lost its momentum, for it came fletched with fire. At once, the burning arrow began to char the fabric of the roof. Quickly Kavi pulled it right through the kibitki wall and plunged it in the cooking pot.
Squirming outside, Rusti was blinded by the last, low rays of the sun, billowing smoke and divots of mud thrown up by a passing rider. His neighbour’s pony lay dying, with an arrow in its throat. His thieving neighbour was kneeling to free Rusti’s pony of its hobble. It took five heartbeats. Rusti waited until the fifth, then leaped onto Arrow’s back and took off at a gallop, toppling the neighbour onto his face in the mud.
There were a million sights to take in, and any one might mean the difference between life and death. Attack out of the sunset. Element of surprise. Who? Few helmets. No banners. Targes – just like his own little shield. What shield? Rusti turned his pony in a circle so tight that its nose touched its rump, and galloped back to the kibitki.
“Kavi! Weapons! Sword! Shield!” Three heartbeats. Four. The weapons flew out of the doorway of the kibitki, thrown as hard as Kavita’s puny arms would allow. Rusti had to lean right down to the ground to pick them up. The targe rolled along on its rim and Rusti had to snatch it up at the gallop. Felt better for succeeding. Felt better for the shape of a sword hilt in his hand, the weight of leather on his arm. Must see everything. Notice everything. Life depends on it. Cavalry streaming down from the Royal Encampment. Defenders. Must tell them apart. How? Poor light. Arrows from where? Horizontal? Or out of the sky? Axes and scimitars. A few halberds. A sickle? Peasants, then. Blacksmith’s wagon, on fire. Riderless camel, mad with panic. Rusti had the impression that he was watching the battle through a long dark tunnel – that he was not somehow a part of it. Strange how the mind becomes detached…
Strange altogether. A minute before, he had been scared – terrified at the thought of Borte catching him. Now they were under attack, and he was hardly scared at all; hardly of anything. Must see everything, notice everything. Three children hand-in-hand, eyes shut, as if told not to look. Pail of milk knocked over.
The runaway camel tripped on a guy rope and crashed down, one of the bristly lumps on its head brushing Rusti’s legs. “Where are the elephants?” he said aloud, and the camel’s teeth burst ajar as if it was about to gasp an answer. The blacksmith ran by with his clothes on fire. The defending cavalry swept past in a blur and collided with the attackers, like waves breaking against rocks. Two ponies fell. Arrow stepped on something soft and broke her stride so sharply that Rusti shot forward and bruised himself on the sharp base of her neck.
“Blind rats!” yelled a familiar voice. It was Borte, and for a moment Rusti assumed she was shouting it at him: another insult. Then someone else shouted. “Fatherless dogs!”
And another: “Grass eaters!”
“Geldings!”
“Black sheep!”
Rusti pictured a flock of silly sheep stampeding closer, chewing as they came, and a shouty, strangled laugh burst out of him, unexpected. Then the attackers emerged out of the brightness of the sun, and he saw they were not animals of any breed, but men on horseback with swords and bows and axes.
Bandits. Not warriors. Hotheads. Don’t they know about the might of Tamburlaine? Idiots. Rusti swung his sword.
Eyesight – all five senses – sharper than in all his life. Seeing everything! Faces, beaded with sweat. Smell of horse – sour breath. Scimitars. Same shape as the moon. Moon in the sky already: watching. Rusti raised his shield; heard a blade hit it: heard it with the marrow of his forearm. Something thumped his back: a limb hacked from some man’s body. Not his though. Check body. Nothing amiss – nothing missing…
Except (he noticed) his blood had all flowed to the core of his body and his face was very cold.
Horses and ponies crowding in. Legs pinched against Arrow’s ribs. Must reach open space. Two camels; riders armed with sharpened poles. Turn Arrow. Use body weight. Yah: can’t catch me!
A jeering satisfaction. Eeeeasy.
Somewhere, a bugle. Different, louder trump close by. Elephants broken loose – milling about, encircled by the fighting. Men wrestling hand-to-hand among their legs. Should have howdahs, and armour, and warriors up top, lobbing javelins and fire! Yowls and shrieks – war whoops and the screaming of men on the ground.
A head rolled to a halt right in his path. No beard. Young, then.
The skirmish was over. A few of the bandits escaped into the encroaching darkness. Most did not.
Returning to the kibitki, its poles skewed, its roof charred, Rusti was greeted by Kavita, who threw his thin arms around Rusti’s neck and hugged him close. A couple of warriors riding by pointed and laughed at the sight of a slave-girl expressing her thanks for the saving of her worthless life.
Rusti, embarrassed, tried to pull free of the wiry, clinging arms, but Kavita was strong. His mouth was close to Rusti’s ear and the admiration burst from him like hot steam, hissing. True, he was trembling, but not with terror. Kavita was quivering with a fierce, triumphant hysteria. His feet began to stamp, and Rusti realized he was dancing, celebrating the victory he had watched from under the folds of the fallen tent.
The inside of Kavi’s head was alive with pictures. Like shadows thrown by a campfire, the pictures flared and flickered – the sweeping turn of those massed ponies, the silver forest of blades, man-and-horse made one, the colour of noise, the noise of bloodletting. All his secret thoughts had found shape. It was as if he had wished the skirmish into being. Now he saw Rusti in a new light – a hero and a warrior who could deal out death, a boy full of power, a boy as full of violence as himself.
As for Rusti, what did he remember of the skirmish? Only that head rolling into his path; the expression on its face, the look in the eyes. A young face, no older than his own. Eastern eyes, but not Mongol eyes. A foreigner – an enemy, therefore, and ripe for killing. Except that Rusti himself had such eyes.
They made the journey by elephant. Dawn was still a way off when they arrived. Kavi was a mahout once more, dress rolled up in a bundle under him and his hair wild. There might have been a joy in prancing through the moonlight, clinging to the dry wrinkles of the elephants’ necks, but there was only one idea filling Rusti’s head to bursting. All day he had barely spoken. All day he had thought about nothing but Zubihat. His home town.
And here it was again: a few broken walls, some neglected fields and a single tower, sticking up like an old man’s last rotten tooth. Did the spirits of the Dead linger in this awful place, unable to escape their fearful fate, still reaching out imploring fingers? No wonder the locals had abandoned Zubihat. Elephants are sensitive to things invisible. Gajanan and Damini walked now as if the ground was hot, their feet hovering over stone and soil and litter, reading the story of Zubihat from the marks it had left in the earth.
“Help me,” said Rusti, and Kavi gave a start. In this immense, sad silence, the smallest sound was unnerving. “Will you? You will! You have to help me!” demanded Rusti.
“I help.”
The tower was not as tall as Rusti had expected. It was not as tall as in his dreams. Stories grow in the telling. The real thing did not touch the sky or blot out the moon. It was the work of soldiers building in a hurry, anxious to be on their way again. Besides, a great many people can be crammed into quite a small space.
In their long and brutal lives, the elephants of Delhi had been taught to do many things – to run towards men on horseback who were firing arrows, to pick their way through rubble and fire, to kneel and bellow on command. But now, their riders’ commands confused them. Damini and Gajanan rested their broad foreheads against the rough brickwork of the tower, but could not understand what more was being asked of them.
Luckily, nature had planted in their great heads the instinct to uproot trees, and the instinct called to them now, as surely as if it were a voice within the tower. Both elephants leaned forwards, leaned with all their great weight, pushing – just pushing with their foreheads. There was a whispering grate of brittle pottery. The bricks had been baked in a hurry, used too new, not weathered by monsoon or sun. The mortar had been poor stuff, sloppy stuff. The builders had not been bricklayers. No architect had designed this chimney of baked mud. Now its bricks began to shift under the strain. Dust fell onto the elephants’ toes, like dried blood.
With heels and sticks, Rusti and Kavi goaded them forwards again, side by side, to lean and push and strain – to barge over this unnatural, giant, lifeless tree in the dark, dark landscape. Kavi grinned at the thought of destroying something built by the Crooked One. He did not ask questions, ask, “Why?” He was simply glad. Somehow he had managed to infect Rusti with the same hatred as was raging in his own bloodstream.
A hole. A clattering tumble of bricks. The elephants snatched their delicate trunks aside and the boys covered their heads with their arms. Bang! Bang! Sharp corners. Rough edges. The falling bricks grazed their faces and forearms, and Kavi yelped with pain. Rusti gave a cry of both terror and triumph. The tower was breached! He felt a surge of hope, too. Maybe, if he could break down this wall, he would be able to see into the Past, glimpse the Truth, find something he had lost. There was terror, too. What would he let loose from the tower if he broke it open? Bones? Or ghosts? The walking dead? Screams or rats or a flutter of groping hands? Sweat streamed down his face, and his teeth chattered, so that Kavi asked time and again, “You want we stop?”
“Just help me, Kavi. Please. Just help me.”
Scared to look up, in case a brick fell in his face, Rusti felt an odd compulsion, even so, to see the sky. Were those really bats? Those flickers of black? Or were they birds of ill omen? Or… The spirits of the Dead hang in the sky over the soil of their homeland: this much he knew. That meant that his mother’s spirit and his father’s – his real father’s spirit – were watching him now from behind the black fleece clouds, the hangings of moonlight. What would they think of this son of theirs? A warrior in the Great Emir’s army, a rider of elephants, a pretend Mongol boy masquerading as a man?
By sheer force of will, Rusti set Gajanan at the tower once more, and the elephant pressed his great forehead to the brickwork…and stove it in.
A torrent of bricks came thudding down all around, grazing Gajanan’s neck and ears, sending the poor beast stumbling backwards. One brick struck Rusti in the breastbone, another the side of his head, and he fell from the elephant’s shoulders onto the flat of his back. The sky above him was full of flying bricks. Gajanan’s feet, stepping and overstepping him, actually tugged a lock of his hair out of his skull. The clouds milled about the ghastly moon. He could hear the sound of bricks breaking brittle bones, and feared that they were his own…
Kavi saw Rusti fetch down the tower on top of himself. He saw his friend fall, and dismounted in the blink of an eye. Stupid, reckless boy: what was he thinking of? Finding Rusti unconscious, Kavi dragged him by his feet out of the reach of falling masonry.
Now! If Rusti was dead, Kavi could go – simply ride – away from the Horde, away from Borte and captivity – away from Kavita. Good! Good, then! Let Rusti be dead!
Except that panic and grief and hope and fright kept hitting Kavi in the head like falling bricks. Why? Rusti was just a Mongol, wasn’t he? Just one of the Crooked One’s dogs busy eating up the world. No loss.
There again, if Kavi rode away, he would never achieve his ambition, never keep the promise he had made to himself.
Suddenly: hoof beats. Kavi felt them through the soles of his feet, long before he heard them. Horsemen! And coming his way. Mongol outriders? Or the bandits who had attacked earlier? It did not matter much either way, if they found him here, alone but for two elephants and a dead warrior.
“Rusti! Rusti, wake! Get up! Men comes!” Of course he did not want Rusti to be dead! Who else did he have in the world? Who else came to the rescue every time Death opened its jaws to eat Kavi? “Rusti up! Up!” he hissed, prodding his friend, grabbing his shirt, lifting his shoulders off the ground. Ha! Kavi could get an elephant to its feet with a word and a push, but he had no idea how to do the same with a boy! Closer and closer came the drumming hoofs.
The elephants! How could they miss seeing the elephants? Kavi ran to Gajanan and Damini and drew them coaxingly, tenderly behind the base of the tower. He had them kneel down, coiling their trunks away as if he were tucking them into bed. At night, from a distance – with luck – they might just look like an outcrop of rocks, their silhouettes broken up by fallen rubble. Then he ran back and dragged Rusti by his heels into the only hiding place he could think of – into the base of the ruined tower.
He was greeted by a smell of decay, moss and bat lime. The wall still stood to a height higher then his head, shutting out the moonlight. His groping fingers told him that the floor was piled high with smooth sticks and bricks and litter. The horsemen must be within sight of the tower by now. Kavi curled up on his knees, folding himself down till his forehead touched the ground, letting his shoulders droop.
Back in Delhi – a thousand years before (or so it seemed) – he had seen the wise men – the swamis and yogis – fold themselves away like this, to rest their souls and bodies, curled up like children in the womb. In fact Kavi could almost hear a mother’s voice whispering to him now: Lie still, child. Peace, child. All’s well…
The bandits slowed their ponies to let them breathe, and to take swigs from a pigskin flagon. They noted the tower silhouetted against the moon, and, being local men, saw that it had shrunk to a stump since the day before. Had the detested Timur-the-Lame ordered it to be pulled down? Should they take a look inside? Should they see if the stories were true? See what twelve years could do to a hundred old men, women and… They shuddered superstitiously and shared the flagon again, to get up more nerve. Then they dug their heels into their ponies’ sides and trotted towards the ruin.
All of a sudden, with a soughing roar, a blue glow engulfed the broken tower. Ice-blue fire. It flared high into the sky, loosing streamers like shot silk; flapping, fluttering, luminous vapour – sapphire tongues that licked at the underside of the moon.
Superstitious dread seized the riders and spooked their ponies. The man holding the flagon dropped it, but they were far too scared to go back for it. They rode as if the ghosts of all their enemies were after them.
When Rusti came round, he found himself in a charnel house of bones. But he had dreamed it so many times before that it seemed like just another nightmare. For a long time he lay looking up at the sky, wondering how much damage the bricks had done to him. Beside him, Kavi unfolded like an exotic flower. It seemed time to tell the truth. This was no place fit for lies.
“My mother was walled up in this tower,” Rusti told him. “The Chronicler told me. She pushed me out through a hole in the wall. I am a tajik like you.”
A long silence greeted his confession. At last Kavi held up a long thighbone and studied it, frowning. “Your mother? She is here?”
Rusti thought about this. “No. Not now,” he said. “She is here now.” And he laid one hand over his heart.
Kavi the Mahout might have covered his own heart and thought of his own mother. Kavita said,“I am not tajik. I am slave.”
Outside, their elephant Gajanan pulled herself to her feet and, in brushing against the tower, dislodged another shower of bricks.
“Why did you drag me in here?” said Rusti, both arms shielding his head. “Safer outside.”
So Kavi told him about the riders, and about the need to hide. And Rusti said that Kavi was not slave at all, but a friend – a good friend. The best.
Once – a thousand years before – Kavi the Mahout might have smiled and pressed his palms together and bowed his thanks. “Kavita the Slave” only threw aside the thighbone, sniffed his fingers and pulled a face. He looked round at the dreadful remains, and mentally added another crime to Tamburlaine’s account. “I help you,” he said. “Now you help me.”
“Help you?” said Rusti. “Help you escape, you mean?”
Kavita shook his head, long hair spilling round his face, wild as madness. “No. No. Help kill Crooked Pig. Soon. One day. We kill him. Yes?”
One week later, the white tent of the Royal Chronicler was pitched once more among the others in the Royal Enclosure. Rusti was sent for once again, to play chess. And yet, when he arrived, there was no sign of the chessboard.
“I have been absent,” said Shidurghu. “My duties took me another way.”
“I know,” said Rusti, feeling clever. “You had to act as the Emir’s interpreter. Because you come from these parts, don’t you?”
The Chronicler’s face twisted into a knot of surprise or irritation. “No! Who says so? Not at all. It is a lie. I know the language, but I know many languages! The Mighty Lord of the Fortunate Conjunction requires it!”
Rusti pulled his lips between his teeth and bit down hard, vowing not to open his mouth ever again and risk saying the wrong thing. He dared not even leave; despite the terrible silence cramming the tent, the old man still seemed on the verge of speaking. Sure enough:
“I must chronicle all that happened while I was gone. Perhaps you can help me. Did anything happen of which I should make note?”
“Me?” Rusti’s face burned. Why would the old man ask him…unless he knew… Unless he suspected. Unless he could read minds.
“You saw the tower? At Zubihat?”
Rusti’s mouth turned dry in the instant. He licked his lips and nodded, but seeing that the old man’s eyelids were closed, had to force himself to do more than nod. “I saw,” he said.
“Are they not magnificent, the works of the Great Emir? Has he not left his mark on the world of men?”
Rusti swallowed. He had no idea what he was supposed to say. He thought it might choke him to agree. So he just repeated: “I saw.” When Shidurghu showed no sign of opening his eyes or of continuing the conversation, Rusti backed towards the door. His hand was on the tent flap when the old man mumbled something:
“They say that at night blue flames rise from its summit. High into the sky. Heatless blue flames. Is this true?”
“Not any more.” It fell out of Rusti’s mouth, unstoppable as an egg from a duck.
The old man’s pale eyes snapped open. They bored into Rusti, prising more words out of him like it or not.
“It fell down. The tower. A bit. Well, quite a lot. Fell down.”
“Truly?” Shidurghu could not disguise his astonishment.
“Lightning I expect!” lied Rusti, on the spur of the moment. “Or maybe a stampede ran into it! Buffalo. Or deer. Or camels! You could write that down in your History.”
Shidurghu closed his eyes again and released Rusti from their alarming gaze. Awkwardly the boy backed out – remembering not to turn his back! – keeping his eye fixed on the unpredictable writer-down of History.
So he saw the old man whisper, in words intended for no one else to hear: “The wonder of elephants!” as a single tear crept down the papery, yellow cheek.
They planned all kinds of ways to murder the Emir. That is to say, Kavita planned and Rusti pointed out why the plans would not work. Kavita thought of pits with sharpened spikes in the bottom.
“A bodyguard always rides in front of him,” said Rusti.
Kavita thought of poison.
“He has a food taster,” said Rusti.
Kavita thought of setting the royal kibitki alight.
“His hounds would bark when you got close,” said Rusti. “Or his leopard would eat you.”
“So I sit on him with elephants!”
And Rusti laughed, because there is something comical about the idea of an elephant sitting down on a king.