by Glen Cook
He had Bruda explain to them, then explain again when Colonel bel-Abek and his wife arrived, guarded by a dozen soldiers. He watched the interplay, or lack thereof, between the bereaved mothers. Bel-Abek’s wife, a drab thing he’d never before seen, seemed to be melting from shame. The other woman ignored her existence.
Colonel bel-Abek asked, “Can I talk to Taglio?” He seemed excited.
“Are you on to something?”
“I think the kidnapping may have interrupted a meeting of the ruling council of the Living. The man who headed the movement lived right there on Char Street. I learned that just today.”
A man came in to report his inability to make contact with Rose. He had left a message. Cado thanked him and dismissed him. “Go on, Colonel.”
Puffing up, bel-Abek said. “He was murdered last night. Whoever he was.”
“Hanno bel-Karba,” Bruda said.
“Sir?”
“General Hanno bel-Karba was the mastermind of the Living. We knew who had been killed, but not where or when.”
Cado saw Fa’tad, alone, looking like a great black crow, standing in a shadowed doorway, listening, studying everyone. Cado listened with only half an ear as bel-Abek reported what he had learned about the leading men of the Living. Fa’tad would be interesting tonight. He’d always held a grudge against Herod because of the assassination of Hanno bel-Karba.
He saw he had been noticed. He came across the room like he was some great lord and they his house servants. He stopped in front of Cado. “I’m here,” he said in Herodian without a trace of accent.
“Did you overhear enough to understand the situation? Or should Colonel Bruda brief you?”
“I’d better hear it all.”
While Bruda told it yet again Cado visited Sullo and asked if he would have his witch see what she could do for the old woman. The physician looked like he did not have much hope.
He stepped back to Bruda and Fa’tad as Bruda finished. Bruda said, “I want to send a squad to that house. They’ll be too late to catch anybody but they might find something useful.”
“Go ahead. Fa’tad, why would your men think these child-stealings a Herodian scheme?”
Fa’tad looked him in the eye for five seconds, then said, “Yoseh, come here,” in the Dartar dialect.
Yoseh was sitting two feet from Tamisa, not looking at her, she not looking at him, yet he felt they were somehow in closer communion than ever they had been on Char Street. He was frightened. So was she. All that gobbling in Herodian did not help.
Then Fa’tad came and he was three times as frightened as before.
Fa’tad chattered with Cado awhile. Then, like a hammer blow to the heart, he said, “Yoseh, come here.”
Panicky, he looked at Nogah and Medjhah. No help there. They just nodded.
He rose stiffly, went to stand at Fa’tad’s left hand. He looked down at the shine atop Cado’s head and wondered that these hairless runts had been able to conquer everyone who stood against them.
Fa’tad said, “Yoseh, tell the General everything you know about the man you caught in the alley the other day.”
“The child-stealer? Everything?”
“Yes. Go ahead.”
“But I don’t have any Herodian.”
“He’ll understand you.”
Yoseh closed his eyes, took a deep breath, told it all, right up to the moment the man had gotten away from him and Aaron with Arif. When he finished and opened his eyes he saw that the General’s sidekick had returned. The two Herodians exchanged glances. Cado said, “Rose.”
“Has to be Rose,” the other said, in Dartar dialect. “That explains why he’s been such a mystery. He isn’t our man at all. But whose is he?”
“We talked of an unknown dark force earlier,” Cado said.
“That will be all, Yoseh,” Fa’tad said. “Thank you. You did well.”
Yoseh retreated hastily.
Cado watched the Dartar boy go. He was angry with himself. Plainly, Rose had been using and manipulating him all along. Possibly he had been doing the same with the Living. He had made no secret of the fact that he was a member. The massacre of the Moretians almost certainly was his fault. The alacrity with which the Living had moved meant he had access to people in the movement at the same level as he had had here in Government House.
“Colonel Bruda, send men to that place where we make contact with Rose. Have them arrest everyone they find there.”
“Yes sir.”
Cado told Fa’tad, “This man Rose has played me for a fool, as he played others for me in my service.” Who did Rose serve? Neither Sullo nor Fa’tad, for sure. The Living seemed just remotely possible, though no one in the movement would have authorized him to give up some of the information he had turned over.
A free agent? Absurd. It offended any sense of the natural order. No one man could have the arrogance to believe he could step between Herod and the Living and play them against one another for his own purposes.
Speaking of which. What might they be? On the information available Rose’s purposes were completely shadowed. The man could not be after wealth. He’d never taken much in the way of pay. Just enough for a man to get by. The power to stand in the middle and exasperate everyone? That did not seem sufficiently sinister.
Bruda was back.
“Are they off?”
Bruda nodded.
Then let’s see how our guests can help us. Let’s all drag chairs or cushions over and chat. Colonel bel-Abek, would you translate for Governor Sullo? We’ll do this in Qushmarrahan. Informally.”
People moved into position. The “guests” looked troubled. Cado spoke directly to the Qushmarrahan family when he shifted to their language. “Our purpose here is to unravel this child-stealing business. I hope we can come up with some valuable clues by pooling what we know. Your motive for participating will be the restoration of your son. Likewise, Colonel bel-Abek. Then, too, you might find you’re grateful for the help given the old woman.”
Sullo’s witch had worked some sort of quiet miracle. The pain lines had fled Raheb’s face and she was sleeping peacefully.
“We from Government House will begin. I’ll go first. Colonel Bruda will follow, then Colonel bel-Abek. I’ll then ask our Dartar friends to reiterate what they know, then we’ll pass on to you. Some little detail somewhere, hopefully, will give us the beginning we need to make before we can take the first step toward understanding what’s going on. If we know that, we’ll probably know what we have to do about it. Colonel Bruda, would you ask Taliga to send in food and drink? We’re going to be here a long time. Tell him to have those corpses removed and searched, too. They’re a distraction.”
Cado waited a moment, then started. He held nothing back, even when it had no apparent bearing on the subject at hand.
Despite what was being discussed Aaron could not concentrate. His mind kept straying to what to say when it came his turn to talk. Or he worried about maybe missing work tomorrow. His employers were not understanding about absences.
He was trying to hide the unbearable now behind fear of the future.
Even so, what the Herodians said was interesting. And so open you could not help wondering what they would do with him after they had divulged so many secrets in his presence.
The Dartars talked, too, even including Fa’tad al-Akla, who did not have much to contribute except the name of a child-stealer who had been killed in the Astan.
“A Dartar outcast?” General Cado asked.
“Yes. A man of no honor, disavowed by his own father.”
“And the one tonight was Qushmarrahan?” General Cado spoke to Colonel Bruda, who was receiving reports from his agents as things went along.
“Yes. A known villain. Reasonably competent. Independent. Very quiet the past six months, apparently. Till this. He was identified by the prisoner, who also told us where he lived. A search turned up a cache of antique gold and nothing else. There was nothing useful on the body.
The prisoner knows nothing else. He was hired for the one job.”
Aaron glanced at the prisoner. The man was numb, sitting there waiting to be executed.
“We’ll deal with him later. So these child-stealers are very careful about giving anything away, are well paid, and were known criminals before becoming involved. Except Rose, who does not fit the pattern. He’s been our agent for five years and the Dartar testimony would suggest he was an occasional visitor to the place in Char Street we now believe to have housed General Hanno bel-Karba and his chief of staff, Colonel Sisu bel-Sidek. We seem to have conflicting possibilities if we look for a connection between the Living and the crimes. Mr. Habid, would you tell us your story?”
Aaron jumped. The inevitable had come and still he was not ready. He sat there like a lump, tongue-tied.
Laella took it for some benighted, romantic, patriotic refusal to betray Qushmarrah and the Living. “Aaron! You tell them what they want to know! You don’t owe the Living anything!” She glanced at her mother.
He did so, wondering how he could have acted so positively and violently just a few hours ago, when he’d never committed such a violence in his life, and now he could not open his mouth.
He forced himself to croak, “I owe Herod. And so do you.”
“Damn what happened six years ago! This is about tonight! This is about our son! The Herodians will pay for their crimes when they walk through the Flame.”
He opened his mouth.
“And you tell all of it. Hear?”
The slight sneer on Naszifs face galvanized him.
He started clear back at the Seven Towers. Each time his story touched upon Naszif he spoke with the utmost contempt. Once he invoked a Dartar proverb, “Beware the man who betrays your enemy unto you, for he will betray you unto your enemy,” but the bolt missed its mark entirely and fell among scowling Dartars. He went on through Colonel Bruda’s arrival in his home.
Laella beamed at him, sort of.
General Cado frowned. “That’s an interesting story. As an oral journal. But it sheds very little light on our problem.” He was pensive for a moment. “Colonel Bruda will read you a list of names. Interrupt if you recognize any of them. You and your wife, too, Colonel bel-Abek. Colonel Bruda?”
Bruda read a long list.
Only Reyha interrupted. She mistook one of the women’s names for someone she knew who had the same name.
“I was afraid of that,” General Cado said. “Let me ask you this, Mr. Habid. Do you personally know anyone besides Colonel bel-Abek who has lost a child?”
Aaron shook his head.
“Do you, Colonel bel-Abek?”
“Only Mr. Habid, sir.”
“I thought so. So. We have no obvious common denominator.” He spoke directly to Aaron. “Those were the names of parents who have lost children over the past three months. There is nothing to tie them together. They come from a variety of classes and trades. They live all over the city. None have ever served the Herodian name. Only two have ever been suspected of dealing with the Living. None were at the Seven Towers though most bore arms during the conflict. Our man Rose is the only male Qushmarrahan I know who claims he didn’t, which makes me doubt his veracity. You and your wife, and Colonel bel-Abek and his wife, are the only parents we can find with ties of any kind, however strained. That would seem to argue that the children themselves are indeed what the thing is all about. But we can’t see that they have anything in common, either.”
Aaron felt General Cado was looking at him as though he expected him to have the answer. All he could do was shrug.
A silence set in. Laella finally broke it. “They were born the same day.”
“What?” General Cado asked.
“Arif and Zouki. They were born the same day. They have that in common.” Laella did not look up at the Herodian. “That’s reaching for it. But... When were they born?” “The last day of the fighting. The seventh day of the Moon of Ripening. Malach in the calendar of the Old Gods. I don’t know what your people call it.”
“We use a different calendar. What do you think, Colonel Bruda?”
Bruda was leafing through his documents. “I only have two dates of birth. They didn’t seem much use at the time. But. One is down as seventh Malach, the other as the seventh day of the Moon of Ripening. Both children six years old. I only have four children on the list who aren’t six. Those are all older. Ransom was demanded and paid. No ransom demands were made in any of the other cases though several of the children have been found and restored to their parents.”
Colonel Bruda looked at General Cado. General Cado looked at Colonel Bruda. Everyone else looked at them. Cado said, “Get the dates of birth checked tomorrow. For now we’ll assume they’re the critical connection. But that just sets up a whole new puzzle. Why does being bom that day make them important enough to round up?”
Naszif had been translating everything for Sullo’s benefit. Sullo’s witch had listened but with apparent scant attention.
She rattled a sudden question in Herodian.
General Cado said, “She wants to know what state the restored children were in. Colonel Bruda doesn’t know.”
Aaron recalled what Billygoat had told him. “I heard about a couple who were found wandering along Goat Creek. They had lost their memories of almost everything.”
Fa’tad, in Qushmarrahan dialect, said, “My men found several such children this week. They were as the veydeen says, blank stretches of sand.”
Aaron watched the witch as Naszif translated. She became increasingly agitated. Beads of sweat formed on her forehead. She asked a question when Naszif finished.
“She wants to know who died that day,” Fa’tad said. “What great man.”
Most everyone knew but no one spoke till Aaron, puzzled, said, “Ala-eh-din Beyh and Nakar the Abomination.”
The witch moaned. For a moment it looked like she would faint. Then she pulled herself together and began rattling away in shaky Herodian.
Bel-Sidek had laid himself down certain he was too tense to sleep, but invidious slumber had slipped up and taken him unawares. The touch of a hand awakened him. He jerked up, flailing around after a weapon.
“Easy. It’s Meryel.”
He relaxed, searched her face in the wan light of the lone candle she had brought into the room. “Bad news?”
“It isn’t good. The Herodians are rushing around everywhere. Colonel Bruda’s men. They’ve been through your place on Char Street. They raided Hadribel’s house. He got out a step ahead. They tore apart a place in Rhatiq Lane that was used by a criminal named Ishabal bel-Shaduk. They hit a hostel operated by a man named Muma and arrested everyone there, but Muma and his family had fled. They’re still very busy in the Shu, rounding up suspected members of the movement.”
“The traitor didn’t stay in line. My fault. I shouldn’t have pressed his wife so hard.”
“They’ve arrested him, too. And everyone involved in the fight in Char Street. A child was stolen.”
“I know.”
“There’s something big going on at Government House. Cado brought in Sullo and Fa’tad.”
Bel-Sidek thought a moment. “It has to be the traitor. He’s given them something to make them think they can break us. We’ll have to fight back. I don’t want to start a bloodbath but we can’t stand still and take it.” Zenobel would launch the counterattack. His men were the best prepared and his quarter held the greatest number of sympathizers ready to spring to arms.
That was the traditional plan. Let Zenobel begin, draw the Herodians, then loose Carza. While those two were embattled the men of the weaker quarters would massacre all Herodians, soldier or civilian, and sympathizers in their quarters before adding their weight to the forces of Zenobel and Carza.
“Did they actually put troops aboard their ships?”
“About twenty-five hundred. Including all their Herodian cavalry. Marco is in command. They sail with the morning tide.”
&nb
sp; Good. That left him facing only one legion and some odds and ends, plus the balance of the Dartars. ‘Til move after the Dartars are back in their compound tonight.”
If the thing was to start at night, as preferred, Zenobel’s first objective would be to seize the Gate of Autumn so the Dartars could not become a factor in the fighting.
His one question was, had the traitor been able to betray the strategy?
Unlikely. Only the khadifas were completely informed. Only Carza and Zenobel had tactical roles so narrowly defined they had had to give their underlings some information about what ought to happen.
“I’ll need writing materials and someone to carry messages. Damn! It has to come now, when the ruling council is in disarray and we’re all on the run.”
He could have Hadribel stay at the reins in the Shu and could cover the waterfront himself. That would leave the Hahr one big piece of unknown territory right in the middle of the city, and he could only hope the organization there would take flame and do its part.
“You’re sure you want to do this?”
“No. I don’t want to. But I don’t see any alternative.”
Meryel went for writing materials. She seemed sad that the hour had come. He got himself up and together. He was sad himself, though he’d always known that only fire and blood would loosen Herod’s chokehold on the city he loved.
Meryel was a long time coming back. He raised a questioning eyebrow. She said, “One of my underworld contacts dropped by. I had to see him.”
“And?”
“He knew of no organized child-stealing operation. But he knew the name Azel.” She shivered.
“And?”
“Azel is a professional killer. The most dreaded in Qushmar-rah. Nobody knows who he is. Azel probably isn’t his real name since Azel is the name of one of the seven demons who spring forth from Gorloch’s navel to work his will in the world. Azel the
Destroyer.”
Bel-Sidek nodded. “Like Nakar the Abomination.” He knew the mythology, though he had been born to a family that followed Aram. By the time of the conquest most of the ruling class had, though they had kept the ancient names awarded them during the primacy of Gorloch to distinguish themselves from the masses.