But she knew she had to have advice. Who should she speak to? If she made a mistake, it could prove disastrous. She could not speak to the Empress’s niece: giving First wife a weapon against the Second could prove poisonous and actually evil, especially if her fears were groundless. The husband? She could not speak to the Wakil. He was unapproachable, terrifying. Then to the slave council? No. They debated endlessly and were afraid to do anything.
What she needed was to pass her information on to someone who was wise. Who was impartial. And most importantly, who would remember that a girl named Tata had attempted to do the correct thing.
Who then? There was only one person whom everyone in the household seemed to trust, who was considered a man of spirit and wisdom.
If the little shaykh could not be trusted, then Tata feared she would be back in a whorehouse, trapped beneath nameless, grunting men, earning her bread with her soul. Dar Kush might have been prison, but at least it was not hell itself.
She thought for another ten minutes before tiptoeing to Babatunde’s study. She balled her little fist and rapped upon the door.
“Yes?”
“Sayyid, may I enter?”
“Certainly,” said Babatunde without correction. “What can I do for you?”
Nervously at first and then with growing assurance, the child began to speak.
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
26 Safar A.H. 1295
(Friday, March 1, 1878)
A few scraggly chickens ran in the spaces between houses in Ghost Town. The old village dog chased one of them, void of malice or harmful intent, merely for the sport.
Aidan listened to their cries as he lay in his old bed; the first rays of dawn brushed his cheeks. He groaned, rolled over, and his eyes opened wide. For a long moment he blinked and stared at the ceiling, waiting for his vision to clear. For an instant he wondered if everything he had experienced in the last three years had been a dream. Had he ever left Ghost Town at all?
Then he sat up.
In a weary blur, he washed his face, dressed, packed. All of this was in a muzzy-headed fog, slowly lifting as action cleared the sleep from his mind.
Finally he stood in the center of his old home.
Had he ever left Dar Kush? Did Sophia exist? Was there any evidence at all that his mother Deirdre had ever lived? And if he didn’t return from this insane adventure, what would that prove he, Aidan, had ever lived at all?
Aidan took his knife and carved the following on the wooden door: On this day Friday 26 Sajar 1295, Aidan O’Dere left Ghost Town for New Alexandria, on a mission of mercy. He paused, wondering what else he should write. What else mattered? Nothing came to mind. He slipped his knife back into his belt and stepped out of his door—
And was shocked speechless at the sight of Ghost Town’s entire population standing just outside, waiting to bid him farewell.
“We know where yer goin’ and why ye do it, Aidan,” said Maeve.
“We just wanted to wish ye luck.” Olaf said “Come back whole, with yer sister.”
His mouth opened and then closed, any possible words drowned in the tide of emotions swelling within him. “I’ll do my damnedest.”
He picked up Conair. “Thanks for the help, lad,” he said. To his surprise, the boy wrapped his arms around Aidan’s neck.
“You coming back?” Conair said.
“I come back. Then I’ll leave again, for home.”
“Take me with you?”
Conair said it, and then grinned as if it were a joke. All a joke. Then he couldn’t meet Aidan’s eyes. Turning without another word, he ran away toward the chicken coops.
With the villagers singing Aidan on his way, he emerged from Ghost Town. Kai awaited him just beyond the gates, holding two sets of reins. “Quite a send-off.”
“I need another favor,” Aidan said.
“That being?”
“There is a boy. Named Conair. About twelve. The same age I was when I came here. His mother died of the fever. His father died at the mosque. He has no one—”
“He has now. He will join my orphans.”
“And when my work for you is done, I will take him home to the crannog.”
“Of course.”
Aidan grinned at him. He opened his mouth to speak, and then could not.
They were greeted by Lamiya, Babatunde, and Bitta, whose fingers fluttered fluidly.
“What is she saying?” asked Aidan.
Kai pursed his lips and seemed to study her movements carefully. “Something about another massage….”
Aidan managed a sickly smile.
“No. I jest. She says she will watch over my family while I am gone.”
“So will we all, Kai,” said Babatunde.
Aidan heard the horseman before he saw him. He turned to see a familiar figure galloping through the main gate. Fodjour. He had never shown Aidan either affection or regard, and the past weeks the Irishman had seen a greater deterioration of what little relationship there might ever have been.
If Aidan had thought deeply about Fodjour’s attitude toward him, the word jealousy might have come swiftly to mind, but been just as swiftly dismissed.
Fodjour rode up. “Aidan,” he said. “I hear you have suffered well.”
“I hadn’t thought of it in those terms.”
Fodjour laughed mirthlessly, and turned to Kai.
“Old friend,” Kai said. “Watch over my family while I am gone.”
Fodjour smiled. “As if they, and all you possess, were my own.”
Kai and Fodjour exchanged smiles. Aidan watched them both, wondering if Kai had noticed that Fodjour’s smile was just a bit too hard and bright.
By the steam-screw Kabîr Haram from Djibouti Harbor, Kai and Aidan began their journey to New Alexandria.
Aidan leaned against the rail, watching the water churning beneath him. “The last time I took a boat … I left my homeland forever.” The boat’s chimneys belched smoke, and occasionally steam. He watched them for a bit, shaking his head in amazement. “I have never understood how these things move.”
“Water expands when it is heated,” Kai said, reciting an ancient lesson. “You can use this expansion to turn an engine, the force transferred to the water with the screws.”
“And this makes the ship move?”
“Yes. When you push against an object, it pushes back as well.”
“It is wonderful,” said Aidan. “Who discovered such magic?”
“We all know it. If you apply a paddle to water, doesn’t the water push you forward?”
“I suppose. I had just never thought of it.”
“The trick is in taking things that we have all understood, and turning them into laws and principles which help define Allah’s universe.” He paused, then added idly, “It was a woman who first wrote many of these things down.”
“A woman?”
“Yes. Her name was Kyanfuma.”
“A woman. Black?”
Kai chuckled. “Of course.”
Aidan gritted his teeth. “Just asking.”
As the sun reached the western horizon the steam-screw passed the mouth of the Brown Nile. As it did, it skirted a flotilla of warships anchored loosely in the bay. Most were the ubiquitous steam-screws, but triple-masters with triangular, billowing sails and cannon ports along the sides also graced the waters, simultaneously beautiful and menacing.
Kai squinted against the glare. “Hovering,” he said.
“Warships, bound for Azteca?”
Kai shook his head. “Even now New Alexandria forces the Aztecs to a treaty. I suppose these could be reserves, but I don’t know….”
As their first night fell more fully upon them, Kai retreated to his cabin for the evening prayers, and then settled in for the night in his luxurious bed. Aidan had made a place for himself on a straw mat on the floor. Kai gazed down on his friend. “I trust you’ll be comfortable?”
“Better than sleeping in the hold, I’ll wager. Still, I’d
rather have a bed.”
Kai handed Aidan one of his blankets. “You’ll be warmer with this, I think. I would provide you with more, but the cabin stewards would talk.”
Aidan chuckled. “A likely story.”
They settled down, and Kai dimmed the lantern.
“Kai?” Aidan said.
“Yes?”
“Thank you for the blanket.”
Just as Aidan was nestling his head on his arm, Kai threw down his pillow as well.
PART IV
New Alexandria
“Today a strange thing happened,” said the student. “While running to the market, it felt as if I stood still, while the world revolved around me.”
“Ah,” said the teacher. “You experienced a moment of sayalin.”
“What is this?” the student asked. “What is sayalin?”
“It is infinite abundance, the gift of Allah. You move, but your inner world does not. Men search for such moments, struggle for them. Sayalin allow us to travel without leaving home. To enter new worlds, and yet not be a stranger.”
“How do I find this sayalin again?” the student asked.
“As with all true things,” said the teacher, “when the time is right, it will find you.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
New Alexandria
2 Rabi al-Awwal A.H. 1295
(Wednesday, March 6, 1878)
Their steam-screw rounded the Horn and headed north along the eastern coast. On the morning of the sixth day, the Kabîr Haram pulled into Alexandria Bay. The shadow of the Alexandrian odalisque lighthouse shrouded the entrance.
Kai drank in the sights and sounds. He had never been this far north before. He had been warned that New Alexandria was Egyptian in temperament, but never having been to the Continent, his exposure to such things was limited to newsprints, textbooks, and paintings. He knew that the people were a bit lighter-skinned than Abyssinians, with more Arab and Greek blood flowing in their veins. He knew also that, incredibly, Alexandrians considered that their mixture of bloodlines gave them an advantage over either pure black or ignoble white.
This was a vista of pyramids, odalisques, titanic statuary, and vast Babylonian-style gardens. To Kai’s eyes it was a world of marvels. He half-expected to see teams of men using huge kites to drag blocks of stone for pyramid construction, as he had once seen in a yellow-sheet novel.
Although such a sight escaped him, he saw other marvels almost as daunting: the wheeled machines that moved along parallel tracks, a variety of landlocked steam-screw. Contraptions with two and three wheels powered by human legs and lungs. Wires strung from poles and buildings, said to carry messages as did the heliograph towers of the south. Everywhere were the signs of an exploding new age. He knew that an ancient Pharaohs dictates had kept Egyptian technology frozen for half a thousand years, but it seemed to him that Bilalistan’s capital was making up for lost time with a vengeance, speeding toward its future at breakneck pace.
As they descended the gangplank an Arab was waving well-dressed passengers toward a platform where a light-painting apparatus made images of their families, with steam-screws and sail-ships floating in the background.
Stripped to the waist, sun-bronzed slaves carted goods down the ramps and onto horse-drawn carts. The horses pulled the groaning cars to a platform erected beside a set of iron rails, supporting a wheezing iron monstrosity that belched smoke and steam.
“What in hell is that?” asked Aidan.
“That is what they call a steam dragon,” Kai replied. “They are said to be the coming thing. There are more than a thousand miles of track here in the north—we have only several hundred in the south, but more every month.”
“Steam … like the ship?”
“Yes.”
“Water moving wood across the water … I can almost understand that. But water moving iron across the land? It makes my head hurt.”
Kai laughed, and then whispered, “Mine too.”
The streets were laid out with mathematical precision, like roads in a Dahomy farm commune. Major streets were labeled with the names of ancient cities in the Egyptian world. He noted thoroughfares named Giza, Cairo, Saqqara, Abydos, Denderah, Luxor, Edfu, Kom Ombo, Aswan, and Abu Simbel: the names of ancient cities arrayed along the Nile.
The streets bustled with folk in strange headdresses, perhaps modeled on the attire of ancient royalty. He saw braiding integrated into clothing in a manner than suggested an almost military stratification, as if these people adhered to a far more rigid caste system than the south. Some of the women wore false beards, perhaps as badges of Alexandrian office or position.
Kai hated himself for it, but couldn’t stop gawking, simply staring at the height of the buildings and the complexity of the culture.
There had been talk of war, and it was impossible to avoid one conclusion: the forces of social organization were more powerful in the north, and that promised trouble. Where there was organization, there were also larger surpluses of capital and resources. That implied the ability to afford a larger standing army, which could be dangerous for New Djibouti and her allies.
Army, yes … but what of her navy? More numerous than that of the south, but less experienced, more used to navigating coastal than deep waters, he thought. Egypt’s naval forces had never been the equal of her armies, and Kai hoped that that weakness might have traveled to the New World.
“Have you ever been here before?” Aidan’s words wrenched Kai out of his reverie.
“No,” he answered. “I must admit that it is somewhat daunting. So many more machines and factories. How can we defeat them?”
“I didn’t know you were so intimidated by appearances. We have conquered impossible goals more than once.”
Kai seemed to snap out of it, and slapped Aidan’s shoulder affectionately. “So we have.”
New Alexandria’s slave markets were vast affairs, covering five or six city blocks. Slavery in the north was said to be different than in the south. Less harsh, perhaps. The slaves were used more for domestic work than crops. It was therefore said to be easier for a slave to buy his way out of bondage here. But there still existed a vast market of menial factory jobs, as well as billets on the docks and in shipping or fishery.
One way or the other, New Alexandria’s luxurious lifestyle rested largely on the labor of bondsmen.
“The slaves here seem better dressed,” Aidan said. “Perhaps even better fed. Why is that?”
“First, this is what we are seeing right now, in our first moments off the ship. Later you will see other servants. Second—you may be right. But that may be because the average northern slave is more skilled, and therefore accorded better conditions.”
Aidan bristled. “What do you mean?”
“When slaves are captured, literate ones are given the chance to demonstrate their ability. Those of capacity are sent to better berths.”
“More of us have ‘capacity’ than you think.”
“I’ll grant you that,” Kai said. “I speak of custom only.”
In Aidan’s memory, he was again in the Andalusian slave market. Aidan, Nessa, and Deirdre stood in a line of miserable captives who were being separated and ranked according to literacy.
“Sign!” barked the trader, holding a piece of paper out. Tentatively, nervously, Deirdre signed her name.
“Yes. I remember,” Aidan said. “My mother signed her name.”
“Yet still you came to Djibouti?”
“I couldn’t write my name. Neither could Nessa. We would have been separated. I think they would have sent my mother to Egypt.”
“Or elsewhere along the Egyptian Sea. There are many places where educated slaves are prized.”
“My mother wouldn’t do it. Wouldn’t leave us.”
He remembered Deirdre jailing to her knees, pleading before a giant, grotesquely corpulent black man.
“She begged them to let us stay together. Swore that she’d work herself to death if they did.”
“Even though they didn’t keep theirs.”
“We will find Nessa,” Kai said, and gripped Aidan’s hand once, hard. Aidan said nothing, but finally nodded.
There were greyhounds and a few other highly trained dogs trotting on their leashes, and several varieties of domesticated apes: small reddish ones sitting on shoulders, long-limbed black ones scampering at the ends of chains. Nowhere, thank goodness, did he see anything resembling the dreaded thoths. There was something obscene about their resemblance to humanity, as if their captivity mirrored his own.
Kai noticed that the streets swarmed with cats: gray, black, spotted. Never in his life had he seen so many strays. He doubted New Alexandria had much of a rat problem.
Kai felt uncomfortable: so many monuments, so many images of the Caliph and Calipha, so many signs of respect for those things the old Egyptians had worshipped. Replicas of the Colossi of Memnon, statues of Sobek, the crocodile-headed god; a painted, raised belief of the demon-god Bes….
Egyptians would claim them merely art, but Kai had to wonder. Did all of this not balance on the thin edge of idolatry? And if so, what of the Prophet’s other teachings might the northerners discount? Those were his thoughts, but what he said was, “Why build them so tall?”
“When I first saw buildings like this,” Aidan said, staring up, “it was in Andalus. When the northerners herded us off the ship, I thought gods must live there.”
“Everywhere I look, I see the works of men. I wonder if it is not easy to forget the hand of Allah in all of this. To believe that men have made the world.”
“You fear they are worshipping their own works.”
A dirigible glided between two of the gleaming towers above them. Steam-powered engines hauled their goods. This was a different world than the one Kai knew. It behooved him to be careful. This world could seduce a righteous man into complacency, and that could be fatal.
It required only a few inquiries for Kai to make contact with a fight booker, a small, bearded man named Mem. “I have a wager!” said Kai.
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