--Jami.
Auntie Rosebody's face showed pale above her wadded pink wrapper in the light of the little cresset that was set upon the floor. Her small hand shook as she reached it out mechanically and took something that was held out to her by one of the two women who, close-wrapped in their burka veils, squatted opposite to her. She did not look at this something, she simply held it fast in her closed palm.
What else could she do at two o'clock in the morning, when she had been aroused from innocent slumber to decide, in an instant, the part she would play in a conspiracy to preserve her nephew the King's Luck, and increase that of her beloved grand-nephew the Prince Salîm.
Decide it! When she could scarcely gather her senses together sufficiently to understand what the woman told her: the woman with the polished Persian periods, the persuasive voice, which stamped her, what she was, courtesan. The other voice she vaguely recognised, so, after a time she challenged it.
"Thou art Âtma Devi, the mad fortune teller," she said, catching at any straw of reality in this whirlpool of dreams.
"I am the King's Châran" came the reply. "Therefore, as the Most Beneficent knows, his honour stands for my life."
True! There was reassurance in the thought, besides that which came from the glib list of respected and respectable names that fell from the other glib mouth. Khodadâd's was not amongst them, neither was Mirza Ibrahîm's; for Siyah Yamin knew her company. She was too wise even to betray her own identity and strove to keep the polish from her periods as much as she could as she talked on and on of the safety of the King, of bewitchments, of the immense value it might be to the Prince in the coming Audience of Nobility if luck and favour might be assured to him by the secret wearing of the talisman.
Even so much she protested, should be sufficient reason for the Most Benificent assuming custody of the great diamond, even if she returned it afterward. It would be as easy to replace the false gem with the true one, as it had been to replace the true with the false. But once the bewitchment of the foreigner was broken, the King himself would likely give thanks to God and to his great-aunt. Here was her opportunity!
Poor Auntie Rosebody's eyes wandered helplessly from one burka-ed form to the other. She could not even think what "Dearest Lady" would have said. Her mind held nothing but the fact that she, the Lady Hamida, and the whole harem had, but that very afternoon, discussed with tears the question of this cutting of the King's Luck, and that even Hamida had applauded her impulsive assertion that to steal the gem would be allowable under the circumstances. And now, here it was stolen, and in her very hand. It was like the Day of Resurrection!
"And the Prince will need fortune," came the glib voice, "since for these two nights passed, he hath undoubtedly been in Satanstown with Siyah Yamin. And that angers the King. So, those who send us, say 'twere better if the King, his Royal Father, were to give him some distant post of honour--as indeed is but his right. But this can be compassed but by favour, and for this purpose the wearing of such a talisman is potent."