“Why bid me throw it to them, then?” he asked her, and he was aware of her scorn before the words had left his lips.
She leaned back again and looked at him through lowered eyes, as if she must study him all anew. She seemed to find it hard to believe that he really thought so in the commonplace.
“What is a head to me, or to you--a head with no life in it--carrion!--compared to what shall be? Would you have known it was his head if you had thrown it to them when I ordered you?”
He understood. Some of her blood was Russian, some Indian.
“A friend is a friend, but a brother is a rival,” says the East, out of world-old experience, and in some ways Russia is more eastern than the East itself.
“Muhammad Anim shall answer to you for your brother's head!” she said with a little nod, as if she were making concessions to a child. “At present we need him. Let him preach his jihad, and loose it at the right time. After that he will be in the way! You shall name his death--Earth's Drink--slow torture--fire! Will that content you?”
“No,” he said, with a dry laugh.
“What more can you ask?”
“Less! My brother died at the head of his men. He couldn't ask more. Let Bull-with-a-beard alone.”
She set both elbows on her knees and laid her chin on both hands to stare at him again. He began to remember long-forgotten schoolboy lore about chemical reagents, that dissolve materials into their component parts, such was the magic of her eyes. There were no eyes like hers that he had ever seen, although Rewa Gunga's had been something like them. Only Rewa Gunga's had not changed so. Thought of the Rangar no sooner crossed his mind than she was speaking of him.