“We?” echoed Aziza Nurmahal.
She flared up. Her nostrils quivered. A light like a slow-eddying flame came into her black eyes.
A woman she was, young, tender, unable to cope with the tortuous, shifting undercurrents of palace and bazaar and mosque; not yet weaned from the silken, scented harem peace; alone. But in her veins raced the stormy, conquering blood of the Gengizkhani, the descendants of that Genghiz Khan who, the son of a rough Central Asian shepherd, clouted an empire together with brain and brawn; and, abruptly, her flaming pride of race burnt away the soft dross of her youth.
“I am the ruler of this land,” she said, in a voice as dry and keen as a new-ground sword. “My word is law. My gesture is a code. My whim is a decree. No decision shall be made about the matter of the concessions until the return of the Itizad el-Dowleh. Such is my command.”
“Thy—command?” Koom Khan guffawed. “And how then wilt thou enforce thy—command?”
“Thus,” cried Aziza Nurmahal.
And, with utter, dramatic suddenness, she jerked out the ancient, straight sword, and brought it down on the wrist of the commander-in-chief.
“Allah! Allah!” Koom Khan screamed in pain.
Blood squirted like a thick, crimson whip. He fell, fainting, to the ground.
Came silence; silence that bloated like a balloon of evil anticipations, while the crowd rose, like one man, shifted forward, intense, venomous, holding its breath like a beast of prey about to pounce and tear …
