CHAPTER II
Giving an intimate but not indelicate “close-up” of an Oriental princess with eyes as black as grief and lips crimson as a fresh sword wound. There is furthermore mysterious talk of the Mating of Blades.
“Heavenborn!” wheezed the Babu Chandra, squinting through opium-reddened eyes. “Seventy-seven times seventy-seven bundles of indignity, injustice, and evil abuse have been heaped upon my head! A scoundrel of unmentionable ancestry, limited understanding, degenerate soul, and most ungainly body has robbed me of my substance! I appeal to the Heavenborn, the Protector of the Weak and the Pitiful!”—and he bowed before the Princess Aziza Nurmahal, clasping his pudgy hands across his pudgy stomach.
She looked at him, undecided what to say. Then her eyes swept about the audience hall where the dignitaries of the palace, from the commander-in-chief to the executioner, were squatting on mats, attended by servants who fanned them with silver-handled yak tails. Directly at her feet crouched her old nurse, Ayesha Zemzem, a Bakhtiari hill woman from the western wilds; lean she was and angular and brown as a berry, with an uptilted chin that rose defiantly to meet the sardonic lower lip, an immense beak of a nose, and eyes sharp as needle points.
The princess sighed.
