Read In the Palace of the Khans for Free Online Page A

handset.
    â€œMrs. Rizhouell? No. It is Nigel you must not believe. I tell the truth, always. When he come home he’ll say terrible things about me. They are not true. Can he come again tomorrow, please, so I tell him how bad he is?”
    He heard his mother laugh as she answered, and took the phone back.
    â€œThat sounds all right,” she said. “Enjoy your chess, darling. I’ll see you later. They’re driving you home, apparently.”
    The President’s office was right round the gallery on the other side of the Great Hall. Once again Nigel had to have a body-search before he was let through. Inside, the layout was the same as that in the private apartments, with an almost identical inner lobby. The cigar smell was stronger, and the walls were hung with photographs of the President doing things like watching a parade or coming down the steps from a neat little jet with a group of bigwigs waiting to greet him.
    Another door, and beyond it an office like any old office apart from the panelled walls and the vaulted ceiling. Desks, filing cabinets, a man and a woman using desk-top PCs, another man talking on the telephone. They glanced up from their work as Nigel was led through. One of the men raised his thumb and grinned at him. Another door …
    Nigel halted, startled by the shock of change. It wasn’t the office itself. That was much as he’d expected, with the President sitting at a big desk under the window, and behind him, seen through another of the stone lattices, the vista of the river with the steep-piled houses of Dahn. What stopped him was the wall of cigar-smoke that billowed through the doorway.
    The President noticed. He shrugged and stubbed out the thin black cigar he’d been smoking.
    â€œI will spare you,” he said. “I cannot work without it, but we will eat and play in my study with the windows open. You said you play for your school, Nigel. Are the others in your team about your age?”
    â€œNo, sir. They’re all older than me.”
    â€œSo you play bottom board?”
    â€œNo, sir. Second.”
    â€œAn experienced player, then. You do not think I need to give you a piece by way of a handicap?”
    â€œUh … Let’s see how it goes, sir.”
    The study was a fair-sized room, also looking out over the river. There were bookshelves, easy chairs, a music centre and TV. At the back of the room was a table set out with plates, cutlery, glasses, a jug of juice and a beer-bottle, and several little dishes of food.
    â€œHelp yourself,” said the President. “The food is all local. These are little fish from our lake, pickled in sweet vinegar, and those are the eggs of our mountain quail …”
    Nigel did as he was told, taking a little of anything the President recommended. He was too nervous to feel hungry. The air in here was mercifully fresher, though the President himself still reeked. The chess table was set up under the window, with low tables beside each chair for the trays. The President took his over and sat, then waited for Nigel to do the same. He picked up a couple of pawns, juggled them between his hands and held out his closed fists. Nigel chose the left. Black.
    â€œI can spare forty minutes,” said the President said, putting a stopwatch down beside the board. “We will play two minutes a move, maximum, but faster if possible.”
    He advanced his queen’s knight’s pawn one square and clicked the watch. Nigel pushed a centre pawn two squares and did the same. The President shifted his bishop onto the empty pawn square to threaten it. Nigel was surprised. It was a flashy sort of opening, Mr Harries had told him, but schoolboys are always trying that sort of thing, so he’d met it before. He merely supported the pawn, then continued to occupy the centre, developing his pieces and at the same time blocking the President’s attack down the diagonal. They castled on opposite