by Glen Cook
Meryel said, “This Azel learned his trade working for Nakar. He may have committed as many as a hundred murders on Nakar’s behalf. He survived the conquest. A year later he seems to have gone into business for himself, but doing only the biggest jobs. Some people think he killed most of the civil governors. But since nobody knows who he is and he seems to have no associates to talk, nobody knows who paid him. Opinion divides up between Cado and the Living. Except for the thing in the Hahr the other day, which may have been an imitation of his style, he’s been quiet for the past six months.”
Bel-Sidek sat quietly, thinking, for so long she finally snapped, “Well? Don’t you have anything to say?” “Yes. I want to go out on the balcony.” He did not notice her exasperated shrug, just followed her outside, stood above the fog staring at the black hulk of the citadel of Nakar the Abomination. After ten minutes of silence, he said, “The murder was no imitation. The man was working for the General. I actually met him this morning.” He related the circumstances.
“Why are you so troubled?”
“Because now I think I see the General’s great secret plan for delivering Qushmarrah. And it’s a plan with both feet firmly planted in insanity. He meant to conjure Nakar, and restore him, so he could unleash his evil wrath upon the forces of Herod.”
He saw Meryel looking at him like he was more than a little crazy himself.
“What do you know about sorcery?” he asked.
“Nothing. And I want to keep it that way.”
“I’m no sorcerer. Never wanted to be one. But I’ve heard things here and there.” He jerked off onto a different tack. “I knew the boy who was carried off tonight. He was born the day Nakar was killed. His mother always mentions that when she talks about him. Not coincidentally, the traitor’s son was born the same day. I’d wager most of the children taken this summer were born that day.”
Her look had not grown more understanding. “They’re looking for the traveling soul.”
“The what?”
“In the agony of death the soul forgets and flees the dying flesh. After a time it seeks out flesh in the agony of birth and attaches itself to a baby being bom. It has forgotten its past life, yet it carries within it memories of all previous lives forever. A skilled sorcerer can reawaken those memories and restore someone who has died.”
Meryel shuddered. Her expression now was one of doubt.
“They’re looking for the traveling soul of Nakar the Abomination up there.”
“Who is?”
“His wife. The Witch. And Azel the Destroyer. They’re stirring through the souls of children, looking for Nakar. And judging from the effort they mounted tonight they think they’ve found him. She must have had a bitter falling out with the General if it was enough to make her come out and kill him.”
“I’ll trust you, Sisu. I’ll do what you think needs doing. But I don’t believe all that.”
“But don’t you see? It’s the only way it all hangs together.”
“They’re all dead up there, Sisu. And they have been for a long time.”
“We don’t know that at all. We don’t know what happened that day except that Nakar and Ala-eh-din Beyh killed each other. I think the Witch survived. I think she’s been biding her time till the moment was ripe.”
“You may be right.” She was going to humor him. “But you have more practical problems right now. You’re going to war in eighteen hours. Remember?”
He remembered. He went inside and began composing messages. But his thoughts remained on Nakar and the General’s mad scheme for freeing Qushmarrah.
And as he thought, he gradually became aware that he had come face-to-face with the great moral choice of his life.
The General had loved Qushmarrah completely, unreservedly, blindly, and no price had been too great to pay to rid its streets of the tread of foreign soldiers. Bel-Sidek had loved that old man as blindly, but did he love him so much that he would allow his nightmare dream to come true?
Aaron stood at General Cado’s right on a balcony high on the face of Government House. Cado stared through the drizzle at the citadel. Naszif stood at Cado’s left. No one else was there. Aaron was not sure why the Herodian had brought them up, into the rain.
“Are you a courageous man, Mr. Habid?”
Aaron had had that question in his own mind often since the attack on his household. “No. Not usually.”
“Can you be brave for the sake of your son?”
“I’ll do whatever I have to do.” If he could, he thought. He was not sure he would not freeze when it mattered most. Even the Seven Towers had been no true test of his mettle. He’d never had any options there.
“You don’t sound sure of yourself.”
“I’m a carpenter, General.”
“Yes. That’s right. You see that over there, Mr. Carpenter? The citadel? Your son is in there. I have no idea how much time he has, but you can bet they won’t wait any longer than they have to. We have to do whatever we can as fast as we can. Or we all lose. I, a city. You, a son. I’ve already put in motion all the machinery at my command.”
Aaron wished Cado would get to the point. The more the man danced around it the more nervous he became.
“There’s one avenue yet to be pursued. The Living.”
“What?”
“I want to appeal to Colonel bel-Sidek directly.”
Aaron stared at the man. He was mad!
“I want you to go home and wait. I’m confident bel-Sidek will try to contact you. He’ll want to know what went on here tonight and how much you told us. We’ll make it easy for him. We’ll hang you out there without anybody watching or protecting you so there’s the best chance you can deliver my message. Your only resource will be Colonel bel-Abek, who will accompany you as my representative. Because he has as much at stake as you do.”
This was Naszif s first hint of what his role was to be. Aaron noted that he did not seem thrilled. But he did not protest, either.
Aaron himself was rattled and confused. All he could say was, “But I have to work tomorrow.”
Cado looked at him directly, amazed. “I’ll intercede with your employer. Are you going to help or not?”
“What do I have to do?”
“Just go home and wait till you’re contacted. Colonel bel-Abek will make my representation for a personal meeting.”
“What about my family?”
“Take them with you if that makes you more comfortable. Or leave them here if you think that would safer.” Cado turned to Naszif and began giving instructions.
Aaron paid no attention. He stared at the citadel but did not see it. He did not think much, either.
He had frozen, as he’d always feared he would.
“Mr. Habid? What are you going to do?”
“Yes. All right. I’ll do it.”
He felt ashamed. He had said that for no high, holy, or heroic reason but just because he wanted no one, ever, to judge him in comparison with a despicable creature like Naszif.
Azel slept poorly, not just because of his wounds. He had no trust in his own safety, though he had holed up high in the citadel, in a cubicle difficult to approach and easy to defend. Torgo had come once, to report his message delivered and maybe to be seduced a little more. He did not trust the eunuch not to return with a knife.
He wakened to the sort of spine tingle he got when danger was near, but a quick survey showed him it must be his imagination. Unless...
He watched out the small, glassless window for half a minute. A woman came into view, walking slowly, studying the citadel.
Sullo’s witch. No wonder he had the nerves.
They had it figured out. Their countermoves had begun. Those would be animated by total desperation. They were in a race against a deadline they could not determine, so they would come hard and fast, from every angle and with everything they had.
How good was she? Could she find the Postern of Fate? Could she unravel its pattern, traps, and alarms? H
ow lucky was she? Ala-eh-din Beyh had succeeded as much through luck as through talent.
As desperate as they would be, they would make their own luck.
It would be a race against time from this end, too.
***
Arif did not sleep at all. He sat in the great cage and cried, a slave to bewilderment and terror.
The Witch slept a deeper sleep than ever she had slept. She had spent too lavishly of her physical resources. She would be longer than usual coming back.
16
Aaron did nothing but trudge along silently, heading home, head bent in the rain. Rainwater trickled down the back of his neck and carried the salt of nervous sweat into the abrasions on his face. Naszif seemed content to carry on without conversation. They had a job to do, they knew what it was, and there was no need to belabor it with false chatter or to burden it with insincere camaraderie.
This was an alliance of necessity, not of love.
The rainfall was still something short of a full drizzle but it had been falling long enough to wash away the city’s patina of dust and get started on the layers of grime underneath. Char Street was thoroughly wet and slick. Aaron heard the occasional gurgle from the sewer. Some water had begun to accumulate in the channel.
Much more would be needed to cleanse it. This little bit would just stir things up and make the stench riper.
Much more would be needed to fill the reservoirs and rain barrels of Qushmarrah, all of which were low. There was talk about a public works project to recover more of the water from the springs that fed Goat Creek.
Aaron would have said these things to another companion, or another might have said them to him.
Two Herodian soldiers remained on guard inside Aaron’s home. They had not been frugal with his candles, which exasperated him, but neither had they robbed him, so he supposed he could count himself lucky. Naszif dismissed them.
Aaron latched the door, lay down with hopes of getting some rest.
That was impossible, and not just because Naszifs pacing bothered him. Goblins of fear pranced and wrestled and giggled through the caverns of his mind. No matter where he turned his thoughts, he encountered a haunted shadow.
It was like those nights in the pass six years ago when he had not been able to sleep nights for fear of the events of the following day.
Naszifs restlessness did not help.
Aaron gave it up after a while, got up, tried to put some of his nervous energy to work. For years he had been meaning to take the sensible precaution of installing a peephole in the door. Putting one in now seemed an appropriate act of self-flagellation. He was surprised to find that it had started getting light out, that the fog had begun to retreat despite continued rainfall, that Char Street had begun to come to life.
Before he finished his chore a dozen nosy neighbors had dropped by to ask what had happened during the night. The daily incursion of the Dartar horde occurred, and they proceeded with their siege of the Shu maze and the sealing of its exits as if for them there was no higher purpose. Elsewhere, he knew, soldiers and horsemen were marching out to meet the Turoks, and the Herodian war fleet was making preparations to catch the morning tide. And ambitious and evil men were scheming schemes. As always.
He was exhausted when he finished. His eyes burned with fatigue. He lay down again, and this time he slipped off despite the riot in his mind.
***
“I feel like I ought to be doing something more active,” bel-Sidek told Meryel, topping off a belly already overly stuffed. He muttered, “I’ve been eating my own cooking too long,” then reverted to the subject. “I’ve always led from the front.”
“Which explains why you’ve only got one leg that works.”
“Guarantees you won’t see me running from a fight.”
“You done stuffing yourself?”
“Yes. Enough is more than enough.”
“Good. I have news for you. Your neighbor in the Shu is home. You said you wanted to talk to him.”
“I’d like to do a lot more than that. Nobody talks to a khadifa the way he talked to me.”
She laughed at him. “Politics and observation of the proprieties of social status have to take precedence over stress and family and personal relationships. Right?”
He glared. “Don’t you go sensible on me. I’m in no mood for reasonable. What’s the situation?” At that moment it occurred to him he had the solution to his command problem right there. Meryel would make a perfect khadifa of the waterfront. He knew of no one more competent.
Be impossible to get her accepted, though. Not only was she a woman, she was no veteran of Dak-es-Souetta.
How had that come to be so critical a qualification?
He listened with half an ear and plucked salient points out of the report she had gotten from people who worked for her, not for the movement. “He didn’t bring his family home? He didn’t go to work? That’s not like him.”
“He had a family disaster, dolt! You didn’t work yesterday, did you?”
Only yesterday! It seemed like a year already. The General in the ground less than a day. And the whole movement in disarray already. “All right. Call it a basic character flaw. Go on.”
“There is something going on. If I was Cado I’d have an army of spies watching to see if somebody tried to make contact. Best my men can see, the nearest Herodian is in Government House.
I think they want you to have a clean chance at him. I think he has a message.”
Bel-Sidek felt queasy. A message? From Cado? “Send some people to round him up. Drag him up here.”
“Hold your horses, Mr. Khadifa. I’m a sympathizer, not a soldier. My people don’t give a damn one way or the other about the Living. They’ll do some things for me but they have their limits. And I have mine.”
Maybe he should have gone to ground somewhere else.
“Besides,” she said, “Char Street is full of Dartars again. You said Dartars backed him up last night. You try the usual heavy-handed Living move and they’ll eat you up. Right?”
“I suppose. Forget it, then. Let Cado go whistle.”
“You’ve become a living exasperation, you know that? I’m beginning to wonder if the General didn’t pick the wrong man to take over. You don’t want to be bothered thinking, or even with doing much of anything. But you’ve given orders that will start a war in about twelve hours. You need to know what’s going on. You for Aram’s sake need to set up a command headquarters and get lines of communication opened to your khadifas. Or your great rebellion isn’t going to be much more than a glorified riot.”
He glared at her, unaccustomed to take that from anyone but Herodian functionaries on the waterfront. Taking it there was part of the holy mission.
“I’ll go myself, then.”
“No. You don’t think those Dartars will recognize you in the daylight? I’ll go. You’re going to the Hahr with a couple of my men. I own some empty buildings there. Some of the weapons are hidden there. They’ll do you for a hideout and headquarters. My men will run a few messages for you so you can get started. Then they’re out of it.
Bel-Sidek sighed and rose. He wasn’t going to win a point.
Meryel said, “You have to stop nursing hurt feelings because the old man pulled a fast one on you. Get up on your hind legs and let’s go.”
Yoseh was restless. His injuries ached mercilessly but he could not remain still. That doorway down there...
They had managed a few whispered words before Cado had run the Dartar contingent out of Government House, Fa’tad and all. He never said a word about their having been in the city after curfew. Nor had he asked a question about what they were up to in the Shu. Fa’tad seemed disappointed.
The Eagle walked them back to their post in Char Street. Yoseh figured he’d had something to discuss but he’d never said a word. He’d just prowled around in the fog, taking in the site of the excitement, then he had gone off up the hill, still leading the mount he had ridden into the c
ity, like an old man had nothing to fear from the night in this nest of killers and thieves.
Maybe, if you were Fa’tad and favored of the gods, you did have nothing to fear.
Now the old man was back. He was in the alley with Nogah and some of his old cronies, including Mo’atabar. Doing what, Yoseh did not know.
“You’re going to wear your boots out, little brother,” Medjhah said. “Why don’t you plant yourself and take a nap?”
He couldn’t. Despite the night. He shook his head.
“You’ll be sorry you didn’t.”
“Why? What’s up?”
“I don’t know. That’s just the voice of experience. You skip a chance to snooze you’re always sorry.”
Yoseh grunted. “I’m going up to see what’s up there on top.” He had not yet seen anything of the upbuild or the underneath of the Shu. The upbuild was supposed to be a wonder if you saw it from the sea or some eminence where you could view it as a whole. From the cobblestones of Char Street you could not see anything more interesting looking south than you could by looking north.
He lined up behind several mason’s helpers waiting to carry materials up a narrow stair built into what once had be. en a breezeway between buildings. Traffic headed up was waiting for several helpers who were coming down. Once he did get up top all he saw was what looked like more of the same.
The buildings fronting on Char Street were mostly one level high, their roofs a hardened and painted whitish stucco material just like their fronts, slightly sloped and rounded so water would run off. Foot traffic mostly kept to a four-foot-wide pathway of planking. Pathways meandered here and there and more stairways climbed in front of or between places set back about as far as the cross alleyway in which Yoseh had met the child-stealer. Only a very few residents were out in the weather, watching Dartars and masonry people trudge back and forth.
Yoseh went up to the next level. It was much like the one before, except that here and there, there were narrow ways like streets two storeys above the original streets, leading not only to doorways but to some ladders and stairways going down. Some of those were being blocked by the masons, working under tents that kept the rain off. Most legitimate stairs and ladders were inside, where many generations might live in the same vertical stack.