by Melanie Rawn
“War? Over what?” He gestured to the stony desert beyond the open tent flap.
Fadhil mimicked his outswept arm. “Water.”
“Of course. That was stupid of me. My people make war over other things.” He considered Sheyqa Nizzira. “Power. Envy. Money. Land. Greed.”
“Here, water is all. It is power over death. I can understand envy,” he mused, “for those who have little water must desire more. Money I do not understand, and land even less so.”
“Money to buy people—and land to feed them.”
“Every man has his price, but a man who can be bought for mere money is no man at all.”
“There we agree perfectly,” Azzad smiled.
“But who can own the land?”
“If it’s got your troops all over it—”
“That is not ownership,” Fadhil said severely. “That is occupancy. Greed—do you mean in the way a child is greedy for sweets?”
“Very like that, yes.”
“But what use is more of everything beyond the sufficiency for living?”
“What use, indeed,” Azzad sighed.
“Did you leave your country—this Rimmal Madar—because you tired of war?”
“No. It would take too long to explain.” And because Fadhil was obviously about to ask him for that explanation, he said, “Did you never go to war with the barbarians?”
“Forgive me, but everyone not Shagara is a barbarian.” Fadhil laughed suddenly. “But you have the makings of a civilized man—if you try very hard.”
“My thanks, Fadhil! I meant the barbarians who believe in a Mother and a Son as their deities. They invade and demand that the people abandon Acuyib and swear to their faith.”
“Oh, them.” Fadhil sounded bored. “There are stories of their coming in great carts that floated on the sea. They were stopped at the fishing villages on the coast. It was a long time ago, and nothing to do with us.” He paused, then added thoughtfully, “They rode astride their horses, as well. Is this something your people learned from them?”
“Certainly not!” Azzad had studied history and tactics in futile preparation for joining the Qoundi Ammar—though, in truth, he had been more interested in how fine a figure he would cut in the elegant robes, riding a gorgeous white horse. That had been before Khamsin, naturally. But he recalled the treatises very well, and said, “Their horses weren’t as good as Khamsin. One reason they invaded Rimmal Madar was to steal our horses to improve their own cavalry—troops of riders,” he explained when Fadhil looked blank. “With swords and axes and—”
“What matter this ‘cavalry’ against the Shagara?”
“You mean your good luck charms?” Azzad laughed. He stopped laughing when Fadhil gave him a sidelong look.
“I have discovered,” the boy said, “that you often speak at great length of things you know nothing about. Now I believe you should sleep. You are not accustomed to such exercise. Chal Kabir will not thank me for allowing you to lose what strength you have regained.”
Azzad had to agree with him, and lay back on his carpets. He dreamed of the al-Ma’aliq castle in the northern mountains, where hundreds of swift, long-limbed horses galloped free through the pastures. He woke, hot and sweating, with a curse on his lips for the magnificent animals that now belonged to Sheyqa Nizzira.
Idling around these tents set his feet not one step on his path to revenge. There was no money to be made here, no influence to be gained. Two days, three at the most, and he would thank the Shagara as profoundly as he knew how, ask directions to the nearest substantial town, and leave.
That evening Chal Kabir and Fadhil came in supporting a limp, travel-worn man. Azzad watched in fascination as the man was stripped, washed, and examined, for it was his first chance to observe the brisk efficiency of the Shagara healers.
“What’s wrong with him?”
His question was ignored. Azzad hoped the man had nothing infectious. He wasn’t a Shagara; his skin was darkly tanned, his hair was straight and brown with a reddish sheen by lamplight, and his filthy robe might once have been red.
Kabir mumbled irritably to himself, then sent Fadhil out of the tent. The boy returned a little while later with two clay jugs. One of them he placed on the low table near the sick man’s bedding, and the other he gave to Azzad.
“Qawah?” Azzad asked, trying not to sound dismayed.
“Wine, to strengthen the blood.”
As Kabir and Fadhil bent over the new arrival, Azzad leaned back into his pillows and drank. It was surprisingly good, sharp and dry just as he liked it, with a hint of berries.
In the middle of his dreaming he remembered that he didn’t remember falling asleep. He couldn’t move, not even in his dream. But he could hear, and the voices were feminine and familiar. Something in the wine, he thought, and knew he wasn’t dreaming at all.
“And so, Leyliah, what is your judgment of this man’s sickness?”
“It is of the circulation of the blood,” the younger woman replied with confidence.
“Exactly,” said Challa Meryem. “Very good. Were we to look inside, we would find his blood paths thickened and in some places nearly shut. Now, what is the appropriate treatment for his condition?”
Azzad listened, immobile and mute with the drugged wine. Women as healers. And the Shagara didn’t want him to know. Fadhil had thus far protected him. But if the others thought he knew, they would never let him leave. They would kill him.
There was something basically illogical about that: Why heal a man only to kill him if he discovered the tribe’s secret? Then he thought about the women and how valuable they were. A woman with skill beyond a male physician’s would be well worth abducting. Shocking, this thought, but if the Shagara did not allow their women to marry outside the tribe—and Meryem had said that people came to the Shagara for healing. Wherever they made camp, people would come from great distances. Those thorn fences were not portable, so there must be others well-established in other places. Azzad wondered how many and where.
“I approve the treatment, Leyliah,” said Challa Meryem. “Write it down for Kabir and Fadhil and then go to bed.”
One set of soft footsteps left the tent. Then he heard Meryem’s voice directly over his head—so startling that if he’d been able to move, he would have leaped right out of his skin.
“As well you will be leaving us soon, Azzad al-Ma’aliq,” she murmured. “I do not trust you, nor the looks Leyliah gives you—though one cannot blame her for them.”
He wondered once more whether Leyliah was beautiful. If Grandfather would find her worth the trouble . . . .
Azzad woke suddenly some hours later, wondering what had disturbed him. The eastern wall of the tent was pale, hinting of dawn. Lying on his side, keeping his body still and his breathing soft and regular, he listened carefully.
And heard the barest whisper of a footstep on the floor.
Kabir or Fadhil would simply have walked across the carpets. Meryem or Leyliah would be quieter, lighter, but not stealthy. Not like this.
Another step. Azzad risked slitting one eyelid open, peering through the spider-legs of his lashes. The “sick” man was moving with exquisite slowness toward him. And even in the feeble light the sheen of steel was unmistakable.
Thanks be to Acuyib, the wine had worn off. He tensed and relaxed all his muscles in turn. His hearing was acute, his head clear. He tried to guess: heart or throat? Quiet demanded the latter. It was the more difficult attack—not a straight knife-thrust between the ribs but a grab of the hair and a slice from ear to ear, to make sure the windpipe was severed and no sound could be made, or a brutal thrust right into the throat. A chest was a much larger target. He shut his eyelid, risked giving a sigh and a snort as a sleeping man might, and shifted as if in a dream.
A long silence. Then another step, and another. The man was good at his trade. Azzad again wondered what had awakened him earlier. It did not matter. His shifting had let him place one hand on his ches
t to block a knife and the other on his belly to strike at the man’s ribs; his right leg sprawled to the side, ready to dig into the bedding for leverage.
Another step. He could hear the man’s breathing.
And then the whisper: “For the honor of the al-Ammarizzad—die, alMa’aliq—”
The hiss of the blade, the fingers snarling in his hair—the sinewy wrist in his grip, the crunch of his fist against bone—and they were on the floor, rolling, tangled and tumbling like a rapist and a furious virgin, all in silence. It was not a knife the assassin wielded but an axe that skittered away, ringing as it hit a brass tub in the corner. Azzad kicked and struck, overturning a table, and felt liquid splash on his face as a pitcher went flying. He heard clay crack against the central tent pole and shatter. Shaking his eyes clear, he grunted as a knee drove into his belly and knocked the wind from his lungs. Desperately, Azzad pushed off with a foot and rolled the pair of them over and over again until his ribs hit the tent pole.
Suddenly the hands were gone from his throat. Gasping for breath, he staggered to his feet. The man’s lips were parted in a soundless cry, his eyes gaping wide with astonishment, his hands twitching limply—and his legs moved not at all. Azzad kicked him onto his side and saw a thick shard of the pitcher’s broken handle protruding from his spine and a small spreading bloodstain on his white bedshirt.
Not in all his time here had Azzad ever sensed that the tent was guarded by night. He’d been a fool to think otherwise, he realized, when a golden-skinned face appeared at the tent flap, wide-eyed. Azzad waved a casual hand at him to indicate he was unharmed, and the boy vanished.
Wearily, he sat on his carpets and worked on catching his breath. It seemed he wasn’t quite as recovered as he’d thought. He kept an eye on his assailant, curious about how long it would take him to die.
A little while later, Fadhil came into the tent at a run. “Azzad! What happened?”
“As you see,” he managed, irked that he was still so exhausted. After this paltry exertion, he was as wrung out and sore as if he were a rug and a servant had just washed and beaten him. He wondered how long the Shagara would give him to sleep it off before they sent him on his way.
“Who is this man?” Fadhil demanded.
“Your other patient. Not just that, of course.” He watched as Fadhil finally noticed the shard sticking out of the man’s spine. “Perhaps Chal Kabir is needed,” he suggested mildly.
“I—yes, of course, you’re right,” the young man stammered. “I’ll find him at once.” He cast one last appalled look at the dying man and fled the tent.
A little while later he was back, with Kabir and two women who could only be Challa Meryem and young Leyliah (both were beautiful, Azzad noted). They scarcely had time to exclaim in horror when Abb Shagara himself burst in.
“What has been done here?” Meryem demanded.
“Ask him,” Azzad advised. “If he can still talk.”
She knelt to examine the wound, the breath hissing in her teeth.“He will live a cripple—”
“If we allow him to live,” said Abb Shagara. Drawing a loose white robe more closely around him, he went on, “Azzad, tell me what happened.”
“He tried to kill me.” He nodded toward the corner. “His axe is right over there.”
Kabir went to pick it up, turning it over and over in his hands before giving it to Abb Shagara with a significant arch of his brows. They all looked grim-faced at the gleaming steel blade set in a haft of carved bone.
“I wish to know,” Akkil Akkem Akkim Akkar intoned, “how did this man enter the dawa’an sheymma with this in his possession? How did a man who is not sick feign illness so well as to fool the most accomplished of the Challi Dawa’an? How did this man outrage our tents by attempting the life of my friend Azzad? And how,” he finished harshly, “did a Geysh Dushann come into the camp of the Shagara undetected?”
“Well?” Meryem asked, slapping the agonized face below her. “Speak!” As his lips drew back in a ghastly grin, she slapped him again. “Speak, and I promise I’ll kill you quickly.” When there was no response, she leaned closer and said with gentle ferocity, “I can make you live. But you will never again walk, never again have strength in your hands, never again enjoy a woman. Speak and die quickly—or stay silent and live to be very, very old.”
Azzad gulped, and blinked, and was very, very glad Abb Shagara liked him.
“This al-Ma’aliq—his death is my honor,” the man rasped. “He lives. I have no honor. Kill me.”
“Why must he die for your honor?” Abb Shagara asked.
“The Sheyqa our sister—” He coughed, and the spasm widened his eyes with fresh agony.
“I know the rest,” Azzad said. “I had better tell you. Sheyqa Nizzira of Rimmal Madar obliterated all my family in a single night. There was a banquet at her palace. The al-Ma’aliq men not killed by poison were slain by sword and axe. As for the women and children—they were burned alive inside Beit Ma’aliq. To my shame and sorrow, I escaped—through no cunning of my own. But now I am the only one left.” He glared at the assassin. “And I will be avenged.”
Kabir caught his breath. “This Sheyqa of your country—she is Geysh Dushann?”
“I’ve never heard ‘dushann’ refer to anything but the smoke from a fire. As for a ‘geysh,’ an army—I can tell you only what I know. Her ancestor came from a tribe called Ammarad and termed herself Ammara Izzad.” He shrugged. “A reminder of the crimson harvest of barbarian blood.”
“The Geysh Dushann,” Kabir said heavily, “are all of the Ammarad.”
Azzad rubbed an aching shoulder and said nothing.
“What did your family do, to incur the wrath of this Sheyqa?” asked Abb Shagara.
Softly, Fadhil said, “Power, envy, money, land, greed.”
Azzad nodded.
“But to murder a whole tribe—” Abb Shagara shook his head. “To poison men inside her own tent, to slay them with swords and axes, to burn women and children in their home—this Sheyqa is a monster.” Pausing, he bowed slightly to Azzad. “I am honored, Azzad al-Ma’aliq, that our enemy is also your enemy. I now accept this Sheyqa Nizzira as the enemy of the Shagara.”
Azzad knew the enormity of this declaration in his own country. It sounded very much as if things were the same here. And he knew what was required of him in return. Rising unsteadily to his feet, he said the words gladly. “I am honored, Abb Shagara, that my enemy is also your enemy. I now accept your enemies as mine own, forever.”
“Wait.” Meryem rose lithely to her feet. “I shall have something to say about this. Or does the Abb Shagara think he rules this tribe alone?”
“Mother—” the boy began.
Azzad stared, but he managed to keep his astonishment unspoken.
“My son, if Azzad has made an enemy of this woman, and if this woman is of the Ammarad, and if we accept all of them as our enemies, and if—”
“Mother! Do you question the righteousness of—”
“And if,” she repeated undaunted, “we all wish to live our lives without constantly looking over our shoulders, then we had best think hard and talk harder about this matter. We Shagara heal anyone who comes to us. We have never denied the dawa’an sheymma to anyone, not even the Geysh Dushann. If you declare the whole of the Ammarad enemy, my son, and not just the Geysh Dushann, you will tear the desert apart.”
“But Ammarad beget Geysh Dushann!”
“Yes, and train them to come and work their evil and then drift away like the smoke they are named for. If it becomes known that we refuse an entire tribe our healing, one of two things will happen: either the Za’aba Izim will accept the Ammarad as their enemies and make war upon them, or they will fear that one day we will deny them, so they will make war upon us.”
“Never,” Kabir stated. “We are their protection.”
“And if they do battle with us wearing our protections around their necks and on their arms and beaten into the grips of their swo
rds?”
The old man shrugged. “Ayia, other tribes will come to our defense.”
“And thus, as I have said, tear the desert apart.” Meryem folded her arms. “Now, should this happen, and I believe it could, think of this Sheyqa who is a sister to the Ammarad. There is a whole nation behind her, not just a tribe. She ordered the butchery of an entire family, and it was done. How many al-Ma’aliq died, Azzad? Hundreds? Thousands? And yet there was no outcry from the people?”
“None.”
“Ayia,” Meryem said heavily, “they did not protest the injustice. They do as they are told. My son, could we withstand a whole nation? Could any of the Za’aba Izim?”
“The Geysh Dushann are our enemies,” Abb Shagara said stubbornly.
“They are everyone’s enemies. Restrict your rejection to them. No one will question it. They are too much hated by all decent people. After word of this night is spread—without reference to Azzad al-Ma’aliq—all will call the decision righteous.”
Azzad breathed a sigh of relief. To attach his name to this would confirm his continued existence. Better to keep Nizzira guessing a little while longer.
If, after this, it was at all in doubt that he lived. It was clear to him now that the hunter’s corpse in The Steeps had not convinced them. Ayia, and he’d thought himself so clever, giving up the armband and the pearls and the key! It was the ring that had done it, he told himself with a sigh, the ring he could not bear to give up. And it would be a lesson to him, he vowed, a warning that he must be prepared to do anything, give anything, in seeking his just vengeance.
Nizzira would never sleep soundly until Azzad was proven dead—but neither would Azzad sleep in peace until he had his revenge upon Nizzira. And he didn’t know what form this could take that would not bring the armies of Rimmal Madar down onto this desert country. It must be something subtle, a mortal wound to the Sheyqa and yet containing a warning that retaliation was useless. He owed the Shagara his life. Nizzira could not be allowed to exterminate them as she had the al-Ma’aliq. By accepting Azzad’s enemies as their own, the Shagara were—as Meryem pointed out—receiving much the worst end of the bargain.