“Of course not. No bubbles in it, for one thing.”
They smiled at each other.
“I’m sorry about the thug last night,” Palewski said.
Yashim yawned, shaking his head.
“I don’t know what you hit him with. He was gentle as a lamb when I got back. Preen and her friend were chatting away with him, you can’t believe. Not that he said much, naturally, but he seemed to be enjoying their company. Preen said she could take him to a doctor. I think she said a horse doctor, but there you are. He seemed very grateful when I explained it to him.”
“In mime?”
“In sign. It’s a language I learned when I was at court.”
“I see.” Palewski frowned. “I didn’t hit him, you know.”
“I know. I’m glad. Will you call for me at six?”
[ 129 ]
Yashim slept deeply until one o’clock, then dozed for another hour, sliding in and out of dreams where he heard only voices speaking to him in tones he knew and languages he didn’t understand. Once he saw the seraskier, talking perfect French with a light Creole accent, and lashed himself awake. Was it a dream that the seraskier had spoken to him in the language of his dreams?
He got up, leaving his cloak on the divan. The room felt warm, the stove was lit: his landlady must have crept up to light it while he was asleep. He picked up the kettle and settled it onto the coals. He took three pinches of black tea and dropped them into the pot. He found a pan by the stove with a few manti inside: Preen seemed to have cooked his supper and eaten it with her friend; and the mute, too, maybe. They’d saved something for him.
He set it on the stove and watched the butter melt, then stirred the manti with a wooden spoon. He thought of making a tomato sauce with the jar of puree, then decided that the manti were ready and he was too hungry, so he simply tipped them onto a plate and ground a few rounds of black pepper over them.
They were not excellent, he had to admit; slightly hard around the edges, in fact, but wonderfully good. He poured the tea, and drank it with sugar and a cigarette leaning back on the divan and watching the raindrops sparkling on the lattice: the rain had stopped and a weak wintry sunlight was making a last appearance before it faded for the night.
Palewski had been almost right, he thought. A dangerous party: always a guest, never a player. Only obliged to stand by, confused and helpless, as the old, grand battle raged, a battle that would never be won between the old and the new, reaction and renovation, memory and hope. Coming in too late, when last night’s manti were already curling at the edges. Until he spoke to the bombardier, who swung the guns in time.
After a time he began to look around the room, not stirring but glancing from one object to the next before he saw what he wanted. He reached out and took it in his hand, half-smiling: a little cloisonne dagger with no pommel, only its beautifully enamelled hilt and scabbard making a single crescent, tapering to a fine point. He slid the dagger halfway out, and admired the gleam of its perfect steel, then pushed it back, hearing the tiny click as it settled into the scabbard again.
Damascus steel, cold drawn, the product of a thousand years’ experience—and the finer it was worked, the less it showed the labour. It was not as they crafted such things now. He wondered if she’d know the difference, not that it mattered. It was a beautiful and satisfying thing. Dangerous, but protective too. Perhaps she’d look at it now and then, and in her white northern world of ice it would bring back some memory to make her smile.
For several minutes he weighed the dagger in his palm, thinking of it; and then he frowned and set it gently aside, and got up and washed in the basin as best he could.
[ 130 ]
We have orders to admit no one until the disturbance has subsided,” the butler intoned, placing his large body in the doorway of the embassy.
“There is no disturbance,” Yashim said. The butler merely pursed his lips.
Yashim sighed, and held out a small package. “Would you see to it that this reaches Her Excellency the Princess?”
The butler glanced down and sniffed. “And from whom shall I say it comes?”
