It must have been a while since we had said anything. We had just been sitting in the same spot for at least an hour. However, it was a nice peaceful hour. I had never really stopped to collect my thoughts properly and now I had that chance – though it couldn't be too long as we would have to be leaving this beautiful view of Amber behind to actually enter the city soon. I thought about Farah, wondering briefly about her reaction to me reappearing. It must have been odd for her that night and early morning, to just have some strange Persian enter your room, tell you a fairytale-like story, kill a vizier and then just say bye without mentioning his actual name. I nudged Shirin and asked her how she would react. She pondered over this and quickly a large smile emerged on her face, which had now returned to its ordinary colour and her eyes were now a lively green.
"If you came into my room?" she grinned cheekily. I found myself blushing terribly.
"Shirin!" I cried, but it was accompanied with a smile. My sights turned to the city. "Why don't we try teleporting in there?"
"I can't, not with a whole horse," said Shirin shaking her head. "I can only teleport two people at the most, and even then it is difficult,"
"Hm, well, how about we pass as merchants returning home. That would mean we would need Indian name...I don't know many Indian names," I murmured as I thought about my new identity.
"I know some. Well let me think...do you ever consider yourself a wanderer?" asked Shirin. I shrugged. To go and do something by myself was something I did long to do. For a long time, I felt like I had to just go and find out who I was. However, that was an adventure for another time. "Well you are now. You are Cheveme and like your name suggests, you go where the wind blows. Me, I'll be Dipesh," said Shirin.
"What does Dipesh mean?" I asked.
"Lamp of God, I think. Well maybe it doesn't suit me but still..." She was silent for a while. Maybe she liked the name because of its meaning; it sounded like the sort of meaning that would be given to someone that was important and wanted. Shirin wanted to be wanted; she wanted people to care about her.
"The only problem that I see now is the fact that we don't really look like merchants or Indians for that matter," I said, I got to my feet and looked around in one of the baskets we had brought with us.
"I can see another problem..." murmured Shirin.
"Really? What knot do you see that you cannot untie?" I asked – slightly muffled because my head was delving further into the basket...I never realised it had such depth.
"That's the problem," she replied. A sudden heat came over my ear and pain quickly hit me.
"OW!" I screamed immediately and quickly withdrew my head from the basket clutching my left ear. Shirin hopped to her feet instantly and was immediately examining my ear.
"Oh it's only a small cut," she said, however, the amount of blood that was running on her hand and on the side of my face didn't suggest this. I looked back in the basket to see what I had cut myself on. I removed a long sword, a scimitar with a very jagged serrated edge. It was dark greyish silver and appeared reasonably old. There was another one inside the basket, it looked near enough the same but the edge wasn't so jagged. On the blade, it seemed to have flames and swirls exhaled from some sort of bird, which was the hilt to the sword. "Sarosh probably put those in for you. I guess he wants you to become ambidextrous," murmured Shirin. She was standing akimbo beside me.
"Well it would have been nice if he had warned me before I almost sliced my ear off," I moaned. It would be all right as soon as it stopped bleeding. Shirin delved carefully into the basket and withdrew a dark brownish hooded cloak. It had gotten ripped in the basket.
"I hoped Zenda packed something to fix this up with, you can wear it, that way they won't see your Persian armour," she said. I sat on the ground as she continued to look around in the baskets.
"So what is the problem?" I asked, referring to what she had said before.
"Huh...oh it's the way you speak, I mean, you speak so poshly," she said and removed some thread and a needle from the bottom of the basket. She sat down beside me. "I understand that is the way you have been brought up, but try speaking like me," she explained and began restoring the cloak using a cross-stitch.
"Hm. This is going to take a while isn't it?" I murmured. Shirin smiled.
"Look at the sky," she ordered.
"Huh. Okay, I'm looking," I replied and looked at the blue sky.
"What do you see?" she asked. I shrugged.
"Blue, white clouds," I observed.
"Are all the clouds a perfect white?" she asked. I shook my head.
"No," I said.
"That's what it is like being a commoner, you aren't perfect and then you have the sky, the perfect blue sky. The sky is the royalty, perfect. The sky, when you think about it is a little bit pompous, being everywhere. But the clouds, they drift, do you understand?" she tried to explain. I wasn't sure if I understood this or not. "You may be royalty and think you are perfect; but the only thing perfect is in is imperfection,"
"So...are you saying no one is perfect...that in a way, everyone is a commoner?" I asked. She smiled without looking at me.
"If that is how you interpret it then maybe that is what it means," she murmured. She had completely lost me now.
"Shirin, what the heck are you talking about?" I asked. She jumped up with a giant grin and pointed at me.
"That's how you have to talk!" she cried.
"What?" I asked. She was practically jumping on the spot now with delight at my change of voice; it must have been her speech wearing off on me.
"See! You can speak like a commoner as long as you are confused!" she grinned. She took the cape and wrapped it round me and fastened it with a brooch that had a purple stone in it. "Okay, so we don't have the merchandise to pass as merchants, but you have two swords! You can pass as a wandering warrior, me, well, I'll just be your wife then," shrugged Shirin. I leapt to my feet.
"Uh-uh! No way! I am not letting you pretend to be my wife!" I cried. Shirin mounted the horse and raised an eyebrow. I didn't care, she wouldn't pretend to be my wife!
"Names?" asked the guard. Why couldn't I ever get my own way with Shirin? Actually, no, it didn't just apply to Shirin; it applied to the whole female-half race! In an accentless voice, I gave him the names we had chosen to be our false identities and how we were related. The guard stood with his double-bladed staff, noting our names. He was reasonably short, in battle that probably had its advantages. He wasn't fat though; although he was short he was slim and had very big hands. His nose was slightly upturned and his eyes were dark hazel. His hair was all tucked away under a turban but I could see a few wisps of black hair from the back, also he had thin black eyebrows and the beginnings of a beard. My face, according to Shirin, wasn't seen much - just my left eye that appeared almost bluish in the right light, some of my nose and lips. The guard began to note down all our possessions. I never realised how quiet Shirin could be when she wanted to be, not just in sound but in the way she looked. Her face was usually quite lively, her hair kept back from her face with her bandanna, but now her face was covered a lot by her hair and her eyes seemed a lot darker. I wondered about what she was thinking. Maybe she was thinking about that place...where was it? Why would someone stab or shoot her? Why would they be happy about it? How could she be the same age as she is now then? Questions always had answers, otherwise they wouldn't be questions, but sometimes they weren't always answered. The guard finished checking all our items and gestured that we could enter the city. I made our horse advance, joining the crowd of other travellers that were entering the city.
"So now that we are in Amber, where are we going first?" Shirin whispered; maybe she found it hard to hide her Persian accent so she decided to talk in a hush voice. It was still reasonably early morning; we had been travelling for several days straight.
"We'll find a inn, rest up for a while and then get acquainted with the city," I replied. Shirin yawned.
"Yeah, that is a good idea," she agreed. The journey and everything we had gone through must have taken its toll and her, and yet, she stayed with me, I had expected her to have told me to...well you can probably guess what I expected her to say to me by now, and if you can't, it would consist of several bad profanities and the word 'you' would be at the end. I saw the palace now, towering over the rooftops of Amber. It would take me a while to think up a way of getting in there never mind finding Farah and trying to persuade her to come with me. Maybe I was going to have to kidnap her like Shirin had suggested. Then there was the other problem of the journey north of India, I wasn't so worried for not so much Shirin or myself but I was worried about Farah. She hadn't remembered the day when the sands were in control and how we had had to fight to get things back to normal. That Farah, the one I knew, was a lot stronger than the one I was going to have to kidnap.
We eventually found an inn: a small, drab, sullied, building with only a few rooms and a short fat inn keeper who wasn't pleased with anything. He seemed to take a particular dislike to me (but only because I had got annoyed that he was leering at Shirin) so our room was very small; the walls were lined with stemming cracks and floors creaked with every step taken (even the light ones made by Shirin). In our room was a small rug that was so worn it had a large hole in it, it had once been a rich red but was now a dull tertiary colour. The two low beds in our room were lumpy, with a stifling stench to them. However, that didn't bother Shirin too much; I called her name several times only to find out that she had fallen asleep as soon her head had hit the pillow. I stood at the window, it was midday now and the streets emptied as people went home to rest through the hottest part of the day. I looked at the palace...I wondered; was Farah looking out a window now? If she was, could she see the inn? If so, could she see me?