Just at that moment Afandi came back from the toilet. He sat down on his cushion, looked at me, and asked, “Decided to take a rest, did you? It’s too soon for resting, we’ll have a rest after the pilaf.”
“I’m not so sure,” I muttered as I sat down.
“Ah, what a fine thing civilization is!” Afandi went on, as if he hadn’t heard me. “You’re both young, you don’t know what blessings civilization has brought to the world.”
“Was the lightbulb in there actually working, then?” I murmured. “Alisher, ask that waiter to get a move on with the pilaf, will you?”
Alisher frowned. “You’re in a hurry…”
He got up, but just at that moment a young man appeared with a large dish. Naturally, one plate for everyone, just as it should be…reddish, crumbly rice, orange carrots, a generous amount of meat, a whole head of garlic on the top.
“I told you the food here was good,” Alisher said delightedly.
But I looked at the man who had brought the pilaf and wondered where the young boy had gone. And why this waiter was acting so nervous.
I took a handful of rice and raised it to my face. Then I looked at the waiter. He started nodding and smiling eagerly.
“Mutton in garlic sauce,” I said.
“What sauce?” Alisher asked in amazement.
“I was just remembering the wise Holmes and the naive Watson,” I replied, no longer concerned that my Russian might seem out of place. “The garlic is to cover the smell of the arsenic. You told me yourself-in the East you have to trust your nose, not your eyes. My dear fellow, have a little pilaf with us!”
The waiter shook his head and slowly backed away. Out of curiosity I took a look at him through the Twilight. The predominant colors in his aura were yellow and green. Fear. He was no professional killer. And he had brought the poisoned pilaf himself, instead of his younger brother, because he was afraid for him. It’s amazing what abominable things people will do out of love for their nearest and dearest.
Basically, it was all pure improvisation. Some filthy substance with arsenic had been found in the chaikhana, some kind of rat poison. And someone had given the order to feed us poisoned pilaf. It’s not possible to kill a powerful Other that way, but they could easily have weakened and distracted us.
“I’ll make lagman noodles out of you,” I promised the waiter. “And feed them to your little brother. Is the chaikhana being watched?”
“I…I don’t know…” The waiter had realized that, despite the way I looked, he ought to speak Russian. “I don’t know. They ordered me to do it!”
“Get out!” I said, standing up. “There won’t be any tip.”
The waiter dashed for the door of the kitchen. And the customers started leaving the chaikhana, deciding to take the opportunity not to pay. What had frightened him so badly? What I said, or the way I said it?
“Anton, don’t burn a hole in your trousers,” said Alisher.
I looked down-there was a hissing Fireball spinning in my hand. I had gotten so furious that the spell had slipped off the tips of my fingers into the launch stage.
“I ought to burn down this nest of vipers, just to teach them a lesson,” I hissed through my teeth.
Alisher didn’t say anything. He smiled awkwardly and frowned by turns. I understood exactly what he wanted to say. That these people were not to blame. They had been ordered to do it, and they couldn’t refuse. That this modest chaikhana was all that they had. That it fed two or three large families with little children and old grandparents. But he didn’t say anything, because in this case I had a right to start a little fire. A man who tries to poison three Light Magicians deserves to be shown what’s what, to teach him and other people a lesson. We’re Light Ones, not saints…
“The shurpa was good…,” Alisher said quietly.
“Let’s leave via the Twilight,” I said, transforming the Fireball into a thin plume of flame and directing it at the dish of pilaf. The rice and meat were reduced to glowing ashes, together with the arsenic. “I don’t want to show myself in the doorway. These bastards work too quickly.”
Alisher nodded gratefully and got up, stamped on the embers in the dish, and emptied two teapots on it just to be sure.
“The green tea was good too,” I said. “Listen, the tea looks pretty ordinary. Pretty poor stuff, to be honest. But it tastes really good!”
“The important thing is to brew it right,” Alisher replied, relieved by the change of subject. “When a teapot is fifty years old and it hasn’t ever been washed…” He paused, but when he didn’t see an expression of disgust on my face, he went on. “That’s the ingenious part! This clever crust forms on the inside-tannins, essential oils, flavonoids…”
“Are there really flavonoids in tea?” I asked in surprise, hanging my bag over my shoulder again. I’d almost forgotten it. The underwear wouldn’t have mattered, but the bag also contained the selection of battle amulets that Gesar had given me, not to mention five thick wads of dollars!
“Well, maybe I’m confusing things…” Alisher admitted. “But it’s the crust that does it; it’s like brewing tea inside a shell of tea…”
Taking Afandi under the arms in the way that was already a habit, we entered the Twilight. The cunning old man didn’t argue. On the contrary, he pulled up his legs and dangled between us, giggling repulsively and crying out, “Hup! Hup!” I thought that if, despite what Gesar’s memories told me, Afandi really was Rustam, I wouldn’t let his age prevent me from giving him an earful of good old vernacular.
TO BE QUITE HONEST, I WOULD HAVE PREFERRED A RUSSIAN UAZ OR Niva. Not out of patriotic considerations, but because the Toyota jeep was by no means the most common car in Uzbekistan, and disguising it with magic would have been like unfurling a flag over my head and howling, “Here we are! Come and get us!”
However, Afandi had told me very definitely that the road ahead was bad. Very bad. And the only Niva we came across near the chaikhana was in such terrible condition that it would have been shameful to subject the old lady to such mockery and humiliation.
But the Toyota was new, and tricked out with all the gear, the way they do things in Asia -if you can afford to buy an expensive car, then let it have the works! A sports silencer, a bicycle rack (although the potbellied owner hadn’t been on a bike since he was a child), a CD-changer, a tow-bar, and facings on the doorsills-pretty much all the glittering trash that the manufacturers invent to hike up the basic price by an extra fifty percent.
The owner of the car was apparently also the owner of the local market. He looked like a standard Uzbek bey, the way they’re always shown in the cartoons. In other words, about as credible as the fat capitalist with the eternal cigar clutched in his teeth. The irony of the situation was that this guy had probably derived all his ideas about how a rich man ought to look from children’s cartoons and fashionable European magazines. He was fat. He had an Uzbek skullcap embroidered with gold thread on his head. He was wearing a very expensive suit that was clearly too tight. And an equally expensive tie that had definitely been splattered with fatty food more than once and then run through the washing machine. He had a pair of polished shoes that were quite out of place in the dusty street. And gold rings with huge artificial gemstones or “dopealines” as the jewelry traders spitefully refer to them. The skullcap was supposed to symbolize his closeness to the people, and all the rest symbolized his European gloss. He was clutching a cell phone in one hand-an expensive one, but the kind that ought to belong to a rich young dope, not a respectable businessman.