by Glen Cook
“Al-Akla told them what to do with their charge. So they sent in their own men. And they got murdered just like Fa’tad said they would.”
The column passed through a gap in the rubble flanked by broken columns, a onetime gateway. It entered the narrow streets of the Hahr, climbed the hill to the wide-open plazas around the citadel. Yoseh could not look at that place without shuddering, though he knew Ala-eh-din Beyh had rendered it powerless Still...
Still, the Herodians persisted in trying to figure out how to break in. Maybe just to recover the body of their hero, but maybe for something more. Maybe for the fabled treasure.
Yoseh half suspected that Fa’tad had his eyes on the treasure, too.
The column passed through the spaciousness of the acropolis and entered the Shu, nudging the head of Char Street tentatively at first, like a snake checking the mouth of a gopher hole. Then it surged forward.
Char Street was aboil with humanity already. Like a flyblown carcass, Yoseh thought, feeling the weight of their numbers pressing in on him. They parted before the pressure of the column, then stood at the street sides gawking. How long since they had seen such a force of Dartars in the Shu? Since the days of Qushmarrah’s fall? Maybe not even then. There wasn’t much in the Shu worth fighting for.
Men began dropping off the column’s tail in sixes and eights each time an entryway to the labyrinth appeared. Yoseh soon realized that a hundred eighteen men were not enough to cover just the rat holes on Char Street, let alone all the others around the periphery.
Nogah told Mo’atabar, “This is the place.”
“Go ahead. Peel off.”
Nogah beckoned the rest of them to the side of the street, jostling Qushmarrahans who took that in silence. Yoseh looked into the mouth of that alley and shivered. Superstitious dread, he told himself. That dangerous, wide little man was long gone.
The column moved on. They watched, waiting to dismount. Yoseh glanced down toward the heavenstone blue of the bay. His eyes met those of the same old woman he had seen yesterday afternoon. This morning the iron was missing from her expression. She looked a little puzzled, a little lost.
A girl came to the door behind her. Yoseh’s gaze was drawn to her unveiled face. His eyes bugged. Their gazes met.
The old woman snarled something at the girl.
She retreated, but only a step or two. Just far enough not to be seen from the corner of the crone’s eye. She continued to stare. And so did Yoseh, which gave her away.
Mahdah struck him in the thigh. “Yoseh, you want to come down from there?” And he realized it was the third time he had been told to dismount. Cheeks hot, he made the camel kneel, ‘slid off.
Nogah said, “You and Medjhah stay with the animals, kid.” Yoseh had the feeling his brother was laughing behind his veil. Nogah punched Mahdah’s shoulder as they got their stuff together to go into the alley. “Just yesterday he was asking me why we stay in Qushmarrah.”
Bel-Sidek watched the Dartar column come down the hill, the groups dropping off at each alley, and had to struggle to keep from gaping. “What the hell is going on?” he muttered. He’d never seen anything like it. He counted bodies. Over a hundred of the bastards. What the hell was Fa’tad up to now?
The man was like that wild hare they had out along the marges of the Takes, always zigging just when the wild dogs expected it to zag. It showed a little wiggle of the tail like it was going to go right and when the dogs were set for the move it bounded to the left and gained thirty yards while they were getting their legs untangled.
The Dartars just kept coming. The teams that dropped off began preparing ropes and shields and weapons and torches.
They were serious about invading the labyrinth.
Why? It was an exercise in futility.
Another of Fa’tad’s efforts to please the mob? Another symbolic gesture?
Bel-Sidek was anxious to get across and check on the old man, but there was no pushing through the Dartars. Not without attracting unwanted attention.
“What are they doing, sir?”
Bel-Sidek glanced sideways at the man who had spoken. He was one of the assistants to one of the old man’s lieutenants here in the Shu. Naszif something, a slimy little man bel-Sidek did not like. Almost by chance the man knew he was involved with the movement and more important than he. He had a subtly ingratiating manner that repelled bel-Sidek more than did King’s open ass-kissing.
“I was just wondering that myself. I don’t think I missed anything about what happened here yesterday. It certainly doesn’t deserve this kind of response.”
The man’s face went through amazing contortions.
“Are you all right?”
“Excuse me, sir. It was my son that was taken. That was what started it all.”
“Oh. I’m sorry. Have you had any news?”
“None, sir. Though a man I knew in the army told me about a couple of missing children turning up again. I’ve been checking around this morning and I’ve heard about several others that turned up, too, so I’m hopeful.”
“You have my prayers,” bel-Sidek said. He wished he could get away. But there was no walking off.
“Thank you, sir. Did you hear about the murder, sir?”
Bel-Sidek groaned inwardly. “No. I didn’t.”
“Over in the Hahr. A very rich man. There’re rumors that he was the head of the Living in the Hahr.”
Bel-Sidek became alert and interested. He tried to feign mild curiosity. “What happened?”
“Thieves, the way I heard it. His house was stripped clean. He’d been strangled.”
Bel-Sidek thought he covered well. The end of the Dartar column was past. “Interesting. Excuse me. I have to check on my father. He’s been alone for several hours.” He pushed across the street.
Sagdet strangled and his house cleaned out by thieves? That sounded remarkably like the doom that had befallen half a dozen prominent men in recent years, among them three civil governors and his own wife’s second husband. It hadn’t occurred to him to see a pattern before. He’d believed that the passing of the governors had been engineered in Government House, with Cado’s connivance, though the Living had not refused to take the blame. The instances not involving governors, though, definitely bore the smell of punitive deathstrokes by the Living.
Bel-Sidek was in a contemplative mood when he entered the house.
“That you, Khadifa?”
“Yes sir.”
“I had begun to fear I was going to have to live off my own fat.”
The old man’s chiding was more teasing than carping. Still, bel-Sidek was vexed. He was feeling touchy.
“I was delayed.”
“So I see. What is that uproar out there?”
Bel-Sidek listened. The street noise was a little louder than usual, but not enough for him to have noticed. “That’s one half of the Shu asking the other half what the hell the Dartars are up to.” He stared down at the frail figure in the bed. The bed was the old man’s only concession to the privilege of rank. “Joab and better than a hundred men are out there. Looks like they’re going to invade the labyrinth. They brought the necessary weapons and tools.”
The General’s husk of a face wrinkled in perplexity. “Why would they do that?”
What sort of viper’s nest seethed behind those cataracted eyes? “I don’t have the foggiest idea. Because Fa’tad told him to. You’re the expert on the mind of Fa’tad al-Akla.”
“Do I detect a note of something sour, Khadifa? Do you have a grievance?”
“Last night you told us the khadifa of the Hahr would be with us for a general policy meeting tonight.”
“So I did. You object?”
“Not at all. But this morning a man on the street-that slimy Naszif creature of Hadribel’s-told me that Sagdet was murdered during the night. By thieves, perhaps. His house had been stripped of everything of value. But the timing strikes me as remarkable and the nature of the death as unusually similar to several
that have been claimed as executions by the movement.”
The old man did not respond for a long time. Bel-Sidek waited him out, half his mind listening for a change in the street noise. There would be no getting out if Joab was up to some elaborate ploy meant to net them. If he was alert there would be time to silence the General and maybe himself while they were breaking down the door and rushing the bedroom.
Morbid thoughts. These days, always the morbid thoughts, always the flexing the muscles in anticipation of the worst.
“There is an operation already begun, Khadifa, that could mean the triumph of the movement. Right now it is young and vulnerable, like a newly hatched chick. It must be nurtured. Exposure, even inadvertent exposure, through the privateering of some of our brethren, could bring on the destruction of the entire movement.”
A blatant grab for his sense of the dramatic. Bel-Sidek allowed himself a deprecatory snort.
“We have been drifting underground for months, to give Fa’tad and Cado the idea we’re fraying around the edges and starting to fall apart. Except in the Hahr, where Ortbal Sagdet decided to go ripping off on adventures of his own.”
Essentially true, bel-Sidek admitted to himself.
“This is a crucial time, Khadifa. Every minute of the next six months will be critical. Ortbal Sagdet was never much of an asset, and lately had become a deadly liability. He was trying to spread the infection.”
He spread it to Salom Edgit, of course. “But to have him killed...”
“Could make of him an asset in death. You analyze the situation, Khadifa. Armed only with the knowledge you possess as khadifa of the harbor. You’re very good at analyses. When you arrive at a superior solution, please inform me.”
“You said he would be here tonight.”
“I said the khadifa of the Hahr would be here. I said nothing about Ortbal Sagdet. See what’s happening out there. Then fix breakfast.”
The old man closed his eyes. Bel-Sidek knew he had been dismissed.
Before he reached the street door bel-Sidek understood that there had been no options with Ortbal. Not if they wanted Sagdet’s organization intact and tame and doing what it was supposed to do.
Sagdet’s death, with its signature, ought to have a salutarily instructional effect throughout the organization.
Necessary or not politically, bel-Sidek did not like them slaying their own.
The Dartars appeared to be doing exactly what it looked like they were doing: invading the maze. He reported that.
The old man said, “Fa’tad is tugging on Cado’s mustache again. He knows they have a new civil governor coming and Cado is all tied up getting ready for that. So the Eagle gives him something big and completely meaningless to drive him crazy while he can’t do anything. And maybe on the side, he’s up to something sneaky. I’d vex Cado some myself if I dared.”
“I see.” Bel-Sidek went to make breakfast. The old man was probably right. Fa’tad spent a lot of energy aggravating Cado. But it had no meaning beyond the fact that they had an unhappy marriage. They still slept in the same bed.
When breakfast was done and cleaned up he took another look into the street. The Dartars were dragging prisoners out now. Amazing.
He reported the development and suggested that it might be wise for him to stay home.
The old man told him to get his butt out of the house and down to the waterfront.
Zouki was awake but pretending otherwise. It was morning now. He was all cried out but was still so scared he was numb. All he could think of was his mother. Some of the other kids were talking. He wanted to yell at them to shut up. But he just lay there, being as small as he could, somehow hoping no one would notice him.
The others fell silent. He could not help opening his eyes to see what was happening.
The biggest man he’d ever seen was fumbling with the lock on the cage door. Behind him were two women with a shelved cart about six feet long. The shelves were burdened with deep, covered dishes. He smelled it then. Food. Hot food. It smelled good. He was hungry.
He sat up without considering what he was doing. He looked around. His surroundings surprised him. They were not nearly as awful as he had imagined last night. By the light of day he ‘saw that the cage was huge. The children, while spread out, were all near the entrance. The cage was at least a hundred feet across and fifty feet high. There were all kinds of trees and bushes and stuff in it. And birds in the trees, up high, almost to where the sunlight came in through giant windows.
Down lower, he saw the curious faces of several rock apes peeking out of the bushes. The apes were as big as some of the kids. Maybe they were hungry, too.
The giant man got the door open. He came inside, started pointing his finger around like he was counting kids. When he was satisfied he beckoned the women, who rolled the cart through the entrance. The big man stepped in behind to block the exit.
The women began handing dishes to children. Zouki noted that no one went to them. Also, no one refused to take one of the deep stoneware dishes, or whatever they were. The little girl nearest him whispered shyly, “You have to eat. Or they’ll make you.”
Now there was another cart coming, this one managed by four men. Zouki accepted a dish from one of the women. It was square, a little over a foot to a side, five inches deep, and elaborately decorated in designs in royal blue. It was warm. He raised the heavy cloth covering.
There was a cup of something brown. There were two very small bread loaves, what looked like honey, and some orange segments. He did not recognize anything else, but it all looked good, smelled good, and had to be expensive, the kind of stuff they had at home only on the most important holy days.
He started eating.
He felt better immediately.
The men from the second cart carried a thing like a trunk into the cage and set it down beside another exactly like it. It sloshed. So did the other when the men picked it up to take it away. That one was a kind of giant chamber pot. Zouki had seen the other kids use it and had gone to urinate into it himself once he knew. There was another like it thirty feet along.
The men came back to exchange that. Then they hauled in a taller case and exchanged it for its twin. This one contained fresh drinking water.
The women had finished passing out food. They stepped away from the children and waited. The four men got shovels and bags and went back into the foliage, apparently to clean up after the rock apes. None of the adults said a word.
Some of the children finished quickly. What they did then seemed to depend on the child. Some took their dishes to the women, who scraped the remains of their meals onto one of several metal trays sitting atop their cart. When one of those was full one of the men took it into the foliage for the rock apes. He brought a dirty pan back.
Most of the children were not bold enough to approach the women. They just left their plates where they were and moved away. The men collected them for the women.
The giant man never left the entrance.
The adults all went away.
Zouki spent a long time in a bubble of fear, homesickness, and longing for his mother. But curiosity about the apes slowly intruded upon his misery. He finally went to see what could be seen.
Before he got to the foliage the men and women appeared again, pushing carts that were not the same as those they had brought before. Once more the giant stood guard after the carts had come into the cage.
Each of the women selected a child that she led to a cart. The kids went docilely. The women stripped them naked and lifted them into the carts and began to wash and scrub them.
The carts were tubs on wheels. Part of them, anyway.
Zouki did not like baths. He asked the girl who had spoken to him earlier, “Do we all have to take a bath?”
“You do. You’re new.”
Holy Aram! They were even washing their hair! He hated having his hair washed more than he hated anything else in the world. He thought about running to hide with the apes, b
ut he could not move.
The women removed their victims from the tubs, toweled them off, and dressed them in clean clothing taken from a hamper on the end of the cart. Then they went after more kids.
One headed straight for Zouki!
His muscles refused to act. He could do nothing but shake and start to leak tears.
The woman was not unkind as she took his hand, hoisted him, and led him unresisting to her cart.
He did not fight back till he saw the pitcher rising to dump water over his head. He squealed and batted at it, missed. The water gushed down over his head while a firm hand held him still. He shrieked then, and started pumping his legs up and down, running in place, splashing.
Firm hands sat him down in the water and forced him to lean forward. Water cascaded over him, leaving him sputtering. Hands began rubbing soap into his scalp. But after the indignity of the wash and rinse there was more, something that smelled vile and burned his head.
A woman’s voice asked, “Is this the new one?”
“Yes, ma’am.” Another woman. The one torturing him.
“Is he in good shape?”
“Except for head and body lice, which they all have when they come in, he appears to be in good health and excellent physical condition.”
“Good. Are you about ready to pull him out of there?”
“One more rinse, ma’am.”
Water splashed over Zouki’s head. Then hands hoisted him out of the tub, set him on the floor, began drying his hair with a towel. He opened his eyes.
Facing him was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen.
She reached out and took his face between her hands, her palms against his cheeks, and made him look into her eyes. “Don’t be afraid. Nobody’s going to hurt you.”