In the Palace of the Khans by Peter Dickinson

of giggles, Lisa half-choking on her mouthful, while Natalie unhooked a corner of her veil and, still holding it to cover her face, with her other hand mimed sliding a spoonful of soup behind it.
    â€œMust take a bit of practice,” said Nigel.
    â€œAll right, that’s enough, girls,” said Rick. “You can take ’em off now.”
    â€œCan I try one?” said Nigel.
    Lisa helped him into hers, wrapping it round him like a dressing-gown and fastening it with a couple of hooks at the shoulder. Fussily she adjusted the veil. He found he could see perfectly well, but that there was an interesting feeling of peeping out from a hiding-place.
    â€œNow you can forget about me being a boy,” he said. “I’m Nigella. Hi, Lisa. Hi, Natalie.”
    More laughter, almost hysterical now. Obsessed with the breakthrough he hadn’t noticed what was happening the other side of the table. There’d been an edginess in Rick’s voice when he’d told the girls to take the veils off, and now Janey had half risen from her chair, glowering, clearly about to explode, while Rick was making desperate calming gestures. Not bothering to fiddle with the hooks Nigel pulled the dahl off over his head and gave it back to Lisa.
    â€œI’m terribly sorry” he said. “I …”
    â€œJaney takes that side o’ things dead serious,” said Rick. “You’d been a grown man, she’d’ve been wearing one herself. You couldn’t’ve known.”
    â€œIs serious,” said Janey. “Please, not again.”
    â€œI’ll remember,” said Nigel.
    Mercifully the ice stayed broken. Janey and the girls cleared tea away and Rick got out a box of small coloured hexagonal tiles with different symbols on them, spread them out on the table and explained the rules of the game to Nigel. It looked fairly simple, but it wasn’t. Natalie was a demon at it, and was clearly going to win when the time came for him and Rick to go and collect Nigel’s mother and take her back to the embassy.
    As they crossed the inner courtyard, stifling after the air-conditioning, Nigel said, “I’m sorry about putting my foot in it with Janey over the dahli.”
    â€œForget it,” said Rick. “We’d had a bit of a set to ’bout it, matter o’ fact. She wanted girls to wear ’em for your visit, but I put my foot down. Wasn’t that way when we married, Nigel. OK, I converted to Islam ’cause it made things easier with her family, but neither of us took it that serious back then and I still don’t, but she’s got a lot stricter recent. There’s a bit of that going around.
    â€œNever used to see the full veil in the old days, but there’s all sorts wearing them now, despite the Khan’s dead set against it.”
    At the bottom of the hill and Nigel got out and waited while Rick fetched the guard out of a bar. It was early evening and they were right down by the river but he was streaming with sweat in the thick and breathless heat.
    Fohdrahko had been right. He could smell the thunder in the air.

CHAPTER 5
    Hi there. Sorry about the gap. Mr G invited us up to his hunting lodge in the mountains for a couple of days and there aren’t any internet connections there, We’d flown up in his helicopter and landed in a storm and damaged to chopper so we had to stay on a bit. I could still write the blog but I couldn’t post it till we got back to Dara Dahn .
    So this is Day 6 .
    It thundered amazingly all night …
    The embassy seemed to shudder to the non-stop bellowing explosions. Rain torrented down. It was impossible to sleep, but after a while the rain let up and Nigel got out of bed and watched the storm. He’d never seen anything like it before. Even in the heaviest thunderstorms there’d always been intervals of utter dark before the next dazzling shaft, but here the fierce light flickered and