Far Pavilions by M. M. Kaye

fallen to a Rajput adventurer, it had been considerably enlarged, and his son, who built the walled city on the plain below and became the first Rajah of Gulkote, had transformed the
Kala Kila
into a vast, ornately decorated royal residence which on account of its lofty position he re-named the Hawa Mahal – the ‘Palace of the Winds’.
    It was here that the present Rajah lived in dilapidated splendour in a maze of rooms furnished with Persian carpets, dusty hangings shimmering with gold embroidery, and ornaments of jade or beaten silver, set with rubies and raw turquoise. Here too, in the Queen's rooms of the Zenana Quarters beyond the pierced wooden screens that separated the Hall of Audience from a garden full of fruit trees and roses, lived Janoo-Bai the Rani – her rival, the
Feringhi
-Rani, having died of a fever (though some said of poison) during the previous summer. And in a rabbit-warren of rooms that took up a whole wing of the palace, the little Yuveraj, known more familiarly by his ‘milk-name’ of Lalji, spent his days among the crowd of attendants, petty officials and hangers-on who had been assigned to his service by his father.
    Led into his presence through a bewildering number of passages and antechambers, Ash found the heir of Gulkote seated cross-legged on a velvet cushion and engaged in teasing a ruffled cockatoo who looked to be as sour and out of temper as its tormentor. The glittering ceremonial dress of the previous day had been exchanged for tight muslin trousers and a plain linen
achkan
, * and in it he looked a good deal younger than he had appeared when mounted on a white stallion in the midst of the procession. Then, he had seemed every inch a prince – and the inches had been considerably increased by a sky-blue turban adorned by a tall aigrette and a flashing clasp of diamonds. But now he was only a small boy. A plump, pasty-faced child who could easily have been taken for two years younger than Ash instead of two years older, and who was not so much cross as frightened.
    It was this last that dispelled Ash's awe and put him at his ease, because he too had on occasions taken refuge from fear in a show of ill-temper, and therefore recognized an emotion that was probably hidden from any of the bored adults in the room. It gave him a sudden fellow-feeling for this boy who would one day be Rajah of Gulkote. And an equally sudden urge to take his part against these undiscerning grown-ups who bowed so deferentially and spoke so soothingly in false, flattering voices, while their faces remained cold and sly.
    They were not, thought Ash, eyeing them warily, a friendly-looking lot. They were all too fat and sleek and too pleased with themselves, and one of them, a richly dressed young dandy with a handsome dissolute face, who wore a single diamond earring dangling from one ear, was ostentatiously holding a scented handkerchief to his nose as though he feared that this brat from the city might have brought an odour of poverty and the stables with him. Ash looked away and made his bow before royalty, bending low with both hands to his forehead as the custom demanded, but now his gaze was both friendly and interested, and seeing this, the face of the Yuveraj lost some of its ill-temper.
    ‘Go away. All of you,’ commanded the Yuveraj, imperiously dismissing his attendants with a wave of the royal hand. ‘I wish to speak to this boy alone.’
    The dandy with the diamond earring leaned down to catch his arm and whisper urgently in his ear, but the Yuveraj pulled away and said loudly and angrily: ‘That is fool's talk, Biju Ram. Why should he do me an injury when he has already saved my life? Besides, he is not armed. Go away and don't be so stupid.’
    The young man stepped back and bowed with a submissiveness that was sharply at variance with the sudden ugliness of his expression, and Ash was startled to receive a scowl of concentrated venom that seemed out of all proportion to the occasion.