The Crystal Empire

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The Crystal Empire Page 12

by L. Neil Smith


  Universe as artichoke. You are a poet, Rabbi Shulieman, or a madman. Perhaps both: a Jewish Sufi.

  “Do you think thoughts too deep for me, David, or can you share them with a humble nursemaid?”

  Shulieman took off his spectacles, polished them upon his robe, replaced them, then looked up with annoyance. It was Marya, Ayesha’s companion, dressed for warmth, veiled more against dampness than against the lustful eyes of men.

  “I ramble in my thoughts as if overnight I had become an old man. What in the name of the Merciful and Compassionate are you doing out here in this drizzle, Marya?”

  She curtsied. “It was my intention, sir, to ask the same of you.”

  She came closer. Unfastening the veil at one side of her face, she let it drop. The years had given to the corners of her eyes a faint network of fine lines.

  “There is a fire upon the hearth in my quarters, also sweet tea laid, hot and thick. Will you not join me?”

  Within himself, Shulieman smiled a rueful smile. This was not the first time, over the years he had known Marya, that she had approached him thus. Always he’d had better things to do, and insufficient time to do them in: his own studies, his duties to the Caliph, to Ayesha. Always he had rebuffed Marya, as he made a habit of rejecting others, in gentleness, and not because she was unattractive—she was not, even now—nor even owing to any sort of scandal he might fear. At heart, he thought, he was a romantic. The fear of scandal would not have stopped him had he been so inclined.

  In plain truth—he cursed himself for a foolish pickishness which had cost him many another such opportunity he might well regret when he really had become an old man—she appeared to be rather stupid, and this spoiled her for him, although what the quality of her intellect might have to do with casual flirtation, something less causal, or even a hot cup of tea before a blazing fire upon a cold, rainy afternoon, he was himself uncertain. Was it her fault she could not measure up to a standard he had set, despite himself, long ago and far too high?

  Resolving that he could not be a fool all the time, he rose. “Yes, thank you, Marya, I believe I shall.”

  2

  She invited Shulieman to sit upon a low, cushioned divan before the fire. Marya stirred coals in the small grate, poured them each a colorful porcelain cup from the matching pot which sat upon a worked-brass end-table, then reclined upon a silken cushion at his feet.

  She looked up at him.

  “Scholar Shulieman, always thinking. What are you thinking about this miserable morning, Scholar Shulieman?”

  Shulieman sipped at the tea she had given him. Even just beneath his nose, its aroma was overmatched by her perfume. Much like his hostess, it was too sweet, yet promising of a bitter aftertaste. He considered long before replying.

  “I was thinking about the war, Marya, for the most part. How it seems to have grown while we were not looking, from a brief holiday excursion of splendid, gay-uniformed young Moslems and Jews into a nightmarish grind of muddy bloodshed.”

  She smiled, as he thought she might have done at any answer he offered. She had removed her veil, and with it, it seemed, at least half of her clothing. From this vantage she had contrived, he could peer down into the heavy-scented abyss between her ample, tautly rounded breasts, if he wished it, to her jewel-bedecked navel.

  He found, as usual, that he did not wish it.

  She folded her white arms across her belly, ripening what was to him already overripe. “Do you not worry, David, about not being in the fighting?”

  He laughed, tapping the nosepiece of his spectacles, “Saying I was nigh unto being blind, they would not take me. Nor am I much interested in great adventures, Marya, save those purely of the intellect. I believe that, if enough individuals thought about the problem long enough, we would not now be threatened by destruction in this war or any other. That would be adventure enough for me.”

  Still, like many another man, he wondered privately how he would acquit himself challenged thus. Would he be brave? Could he kill another man? These were not thoughts which he could share with someone like Marya, nor, for different reasons, with anyone else. Bespectacled and sedentary scholar that he was, too fast approaching middle age, something wild within him did yearn for physical adventure.

  Marya, ignoring her own cup, which she had left unsipped upon the ornate table, flowed closer to him, placing one white, freckled, ring-laden hand upon his knee.

  “Still, I sometimes try imagining what it would be like, fighting for the greater glory of God against the heretic.”

  She fluttered her long eyelashes at him.

  “I fear that the place of women in the scheme of things precludes their playing at being soldiers, rulers, or even advisers to the rulers of the world.”

  Her index finger began making tiny circles upon his knee.

  “Men always make the rules,” she murmured, her voice now a husky whisper. “They play their glorious games with warnings posted, No Girls Allowed. There are times—not now, though, dearest David—when I would that it were different.”

  Understanding well that he lacked any charms which were not resistible, Shulieman began to worry about what Marya was after. Concealing any alarm he felt, he answered with caution. “Women play at different games, Marya, games which seem to have no rules at all.”

  She sat up, brushed long, dark auburn hair back from her eyes, but did not take her hand from his body. Her movement raised one rounded breast until he thought it would erupt from its covering. Fine hairs prickled along the back of his neck.

  “Yes, David, there are indeed those women who find their own way in the world, rules or not.”

  “Women such as?”

  She purred, her tone belying the content of her words. “Such as our mutual charge, the Princess Ayesha, who feels no qualm intruding upon the councils of men.”

  “So that is it,” he answered, somewhat relieved. “Marya, a thousand axes are ground each day in this court of our enlightened sovereign Abu Bakr Mohammed VII...”

  In Ayesha’s case, it was a choice among four current stepmothers, more than a dozen “honorably” retired wives (including Ayesha’s mother) proven incapable of providing the Caliph with male heirs, her only brother Ali, sisters, numberless grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins, nephews, nieces, all struggling for a tiny share of prominence. Uninterested in power, Ayesha might become a pawn in such struggling, and he, uninterested in power himself, had likely slighted her in failing to prepare her against such a contingency. He looked down at Marya’s exploring fingers.

  “Whose whetstone are you cranking at this moment?”

  “I?” the woman protested, placing her free hand in a modest pose across her bosom. Her other hand slid from Shulieman’s knee halfway along inside his thigh. “You are asking such a question of Ayesha’s dearest lifelong friend?”

  In defense, he placed a hand over hers, a gesture which made him feel silly, like a reluctant virgin. She responded by taking his cup, placing it upon the bright-polished table, then rising a little to face him, one hand upon each of his legs.

  She looked into his eyes, sliding her soft hands higher. “But of what earthly worth can her counsel be, when she herself borders each night upon raving madness?”

  She passed a pink tongue across her lips.

  He cleared his throat.

  Become somewhat the pedant, he heard himself replying, “Marya, we both know that, despite the unreliability of her dubious gift—which her father, in an exercise of his own considerable intelligence, rightly distinguishes from the rational operations of her mind—he finds her easy to communicate with. He has come to rely upon the calm wisdom behind those night-tortured eyes of hers.”

  To the rest of her “family,” all but her father—also her favorite teacher (she had few other friends at court)—she was something of an embarrassment, regarded with increasing awe, even fear, by her own otherwise sophisticated people.

  Marya had moved forward again, so that her breasts were bet
ween his knees, her hands as high as they could go without leaving his thighs. “Perhaps you are right, David darling, perhaps there is wisdom to be gained from pain. Do you like pain, David darling, do you, too, find wisdom in it—or do you prefer inflicting it?”

  Again she licked her lips as one of her hands moved for his waistband. He seized them both, holding them in one of his.

  “And you, Marya,” he said hoarsely, “inconspicuous little mouse in the wainscoting that you pretend to be, have always and ever acted as an all-around snoop and outright spy against full half Ayesha’s family, in service of the other.”

  She rocked back, eyes wide, eyebrows arched in astonished outrage.

  “In our complicated social, political, and religious situation—very like an artichoke I seem to have been thinking about all morning—with countless groups of individuals playing every side of every issue out of every conceivable motivation, which particular half of the family you serve seems somewhat inconstant.”

  Examining her at arm’s length, he sighed to himself. Yet another missed opportunity.

  It was going to be a long, rueful, bitter old age.

  He continued. “Perhaps you are not so stupid after all, my dear, as I believed, but simply preoccupied, keeping track of all your lies, all your deceptions, all your trickeries, all your betrayals, each layered upon a contradictory predecessor. Now, what have you to say to that? Nothing? Well, then...”

  Tossing her hands back at her, he levered himself from her over-upholstered divan, leaving her upon the floor, balanced upon her heels. As he opened an ornate, carven door into the family-quarters hallway outside, he turned once more.

  “My thanks for the tea, Marya. Your life must be bewildering.”

  XIV: A Suitable Token

  “Hast thou not regarded those who were forbidden to converse secretly together,

  then they return to that they were forbidden, and they converse secretly together

  in sin and enmity...?”—The Koran, Sura LVIII

  The instant that her door shut with a soft whoosh behind David Shulieman’s back, Marya hurled herself to her feet, breathing harshly. No oath came to her lips. She was incoherent with insulted rage, frustrated, desperate to fight back tears.

  Behind her, a door opened. A woman, rich-clad, subtly perfumed, and perhaps ten years older, stepped from a nearby room.

  “Well, Marya, are your charms beginning to fail you—and me?”

  The younger woman whirled toward the voice behind her, a scorching epithet at last upon her lips, but one which, under the circumstances, might well have cost her her life.

  “Lady Jamela! A person that hairy could not be celibate, could he, ma’am? Perhaps he prefers boys.”

  Abu Bakr Mohammed’s current senior wife chuckled. “Perhaps he prefers Princess Ayesha. I marked the color in his face when you were working your, er, magic upon him—or attempting to. He is no celibate, I assure you, and he prefers girls.”

  Forgetting courtesy, Marya sank to the divan, feet and knees together, her face buried in her hands. Jamela let it pass. She might have suffered this indignity herself, had she not been wiser at an earlier age and begun employing surrogates like Marya.

  “The trouble, my dear, is that you are no longer a girl.”

  Jamela sighed, more to herself than to her servant. Turning to a nearby window, she pulled back its heavy drapings to look out upon a gray fogbound landscape. Idly she played with one of the many rings upon her long-nailed fingers.

  “Nor am I, I am afraid. We have reached a point in our lives when we shall have to depend upon something other than our looks. If you cannot extract information one way, I shall have to do it another. I go now, to wait upon my husband and his guest.”

  Turning, Jamela walked toward the door. “Upon occasion I have made you lavish promises, Marya, which none has power to abrogate as long as I am here in Rome, and you to be rewarded.”

  Marya looked up, sudden fear written into her eyes.

  Jamela raised a hand. “Laa, laa. Read no irony into my words, child, for, unlike some others, I am ever faithful to them, believing it good business.

  “I suggest, for sake of your confidence and self-esteem, that you test your wiles upon some other victim, for practice. Try Lady Shaabbah’s new lover, the guard-lieutenant Kabeer. I may require your abilities again in future—I do not wish them blunted by any uncertainty.”

  2

  When Jamela arrived, voices were raised in her husband’s study.

  “Bu, you are an optimist,” one of them was saying, “and a bloody fool! Just look at this!”

  As she entered, Jamela gasped. A small, shiny gun was out, being pointed straight at the undefended belly of Abu Bakr Mohammed VII, Sword of God, Defender of the Faith, the Caliph of Rome, by the elderly—and equally fat—merchant, Mochamet al Rotshild. Yet it was this latter who appeared indignant.

  “Your guard did not search me so much as once upon my way up here!”

  Grinning, the Caliph sat forward in his chair, put a hand out, palm up, to receive the weapon. Jamela relaxed, turned to a tea service already laid out, listening.

  “Mo,” the Caliph replied, “you have carried this lethal trinket with you for as long as We have known you. I must say, We would enjoy watching any ten guardsmen trying to take it away from you.”

  He turned Mochamet al Rotshild’s weapon over in his hand.

  “My, my, such a tiny thing—with such great big holes at the front! Here, take it back before We hurt Ourselves.”

  He handed the gun back to his friend.

  “Besides,” he continued, “—Sghuhran, thank you, my dear, why do you not pour yourself a cup, sit down, you look tired—what good would searching a determined assassin do? We have seen you deliver lectures upon how to kill a man with nothing more than the binding of a book.”

  He waved a hand about a room which, save for its windows and doors, was lined in nothing but books.

  “Laa, a hundred bodyguards could not stay your hand, Mo, if you could not be trusted.”

  Unsatisfied, the merchant frowned. His friend the Caliph observed this and laughed.

  Jamela found a place to sit, discomfited at being required to listen to a conversation openly.

  Still, there was always something to be learned. Looking at the two men, one might almost think them brothers, identical in some ways, twin-opposites in others. Both were heavy and bearded, somewhere between fifty-five and sixty-five years of age, although neither showed it. The Caliph’s ebon hair and beard were close-trimmed and thick, the merchant’s fiery red, long and unruly. Abu Bakr Mohammed spoke with the cultured accent of a Roman, Mochamet al Rotshild with the glottal burr of his native Iskutlan. The Caliph wore no jewelry save the sunburst upon his breast which marked him Supreme Commander of the military. The merchant wore many rings, bracelets, the crossband and hanger for a cutlass which he had surrendered at the palace gate, and a piratical single earring. He was an enormous man. The Caliph was enormous-minded.

  The latter continued. “As for those such as Marya and others you have been keeping an eye upon, We want them left where they are. They can be trusted, too, in their own way. Better a spy you know...”

  Jamela suppressed an astonished gasp, recovering her cup before it spilled in her lap. So this was why the old bastard had forced her to be here, acting like a servant wench for this...this tradesman. Her husband put a hand up, stifling Mochamet al Rotshild’s protest before it could be uttered.

  “That is Our best security, Mo, friends—and enemies—who can be trusted.”

  Had he turned his gaze upon her for a moment when speaking the word “enemies”?

  “Venerable as you are—Our age, almost to the day, as We recall—you are much like the best of Our personal guard, but better. Yet, for all that, ‘merely’ a merchant.”

  Mochamet al Rotshild grumbled, “Mine was a rough upbringing, Bu. Good preparation. A merchant learns to defend himself, in places where every other hand may be tu
rned against him. He has motivation; no one will do it for him half so well as he himself.”

  “Indeed. A life of far-reaching voyages, rising from forecastle to quarterdeck, thence to owner of a trading fleet with business and political connections around the globe. Success. A testament not alone to self-defense but to many skills. We hope you will retain them all where We are about to send you.”

  Mochamet al Rotshild subsided, resigned to a change of subject. “We have spoken of this before. Yet, Bu, in all that time, I never before landed upon the western coast of the Savage Continent. Nothing crosses into that land or ever seems to come out of it. One hears fascinating, horrible tales.”

  “And sees, We gather, fascinating, horrible things?”

  The merchant nodded. “Bu, let me tell you a story. I was offshore upon one occasion when...

  “But I should explain. As a youth, I sailed upon many vessels, practicing at many positions. A merchantman I had signed upon was captured by a squadron of Mughal corsairs, those of us who survived their shelling and subsequent boarding pressed into service for a time until we died or could escape.

  “Upon this voyage, a cooper’s apprentice had already died, of some pox he had picked up from a dancing-girl in Hindi, so they told me—charjooh, I beg your pardon, Lady Jamela, for a rough old sailor’s anecdote. Little good it did him, for he was a Mughal, with no need of death as an alternative to escape!”

  The merchant laughed, as if this were a great joke. The Caliph motioned for him to go on.

 

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