She shook her head in disbelief. “Are there others like you?”
“Yes. In a place where we practice pleasures none would dare bring to the palace.”
She stretched hugely, joints crackling as she twisted and bent. “Show me these pleasures,” Nefriti said. Her eyes gleamed with unnamed hungers. “Or I will be displeased.”
“I’m not sure. I would have to bind you.”
“Bind?” She looked at him more sharply.
“I am sorry,” he said. “Please forget my words. To be strong, to own oneself so completely that external fetters have no hold on the ka …” And here he very deliberately used the Egyptian word for “soul,” one learned long ago at Babatunde’s feet. “This is what I know, the greatest gift I could offer. It may not be suitable. Perhaps some smaller step would be more appropriate.”
She stared at him intently. He barely dared breathe. “Tell me more. Do slaves do this to each other?”
“Yes,” he said. “It is one of the few secrets we keep from our masters. The master is responsible for the safety, care, and welfare of his servants. Who is master? The servant knows the ultimate freedom of surrender. Who is slave?”
Her own breathing had quickened, her lips slightly parted.
“Think of it,” he continued softly. “Every limb still, so that no wriggling or jounce can dispel a kite of the pleasure. It overflows, until the eye is blind and the ear deaf. It makes even the pleasure we just experienced seem like … a virgin’s dry-lipped kisses.” Mother Mary. Is she buying this shyte?
Her eyes gleamed in the darkness. Apparently so. “Then proceed. But I warn you—this is not my first experience with fetters. Show me things I have not experienced, or I shall be displeased with you.”
Aidan reached down to the pants so recently discarded. A braided leather cord threaded the waist loops, courtesy of an amused Rhino.
He began slowly and gently enough, stretching Nefriti’s arm back for binding to the bedpost.
“Wait,” she began. “There is a better way—”
Before she could say another word or take a breath, Aidan spun Nefriti over on her belly.
“No, I—wait!” she sputtered. “How dare—!”
Using her own discarded clothing Aidan gagged her and tied her, hands and feet, then flipped her onto her back again. Her eyes spat poisoned daggers.
“I’ll only ask you this once,” he whispered. “Are there guards outside?”
She nodded her head.
“That’s too bad. Because that means I have to kill you.”
“Mmmph!”
He gripped her throat then loosened the gag just enough to allow her to whisper. “No,” she said frantically. “No guards. I have my privacy. But they will check come the dawn.”
“Fine. I mean you no harm. Stay quiet, and all will be well.”
He slipped the gag back in. “I hate to bruise that mouth. It has done so many wonderful things for me this night.”
Her eyes blazed with both hatred and fear. Moved by a sudden impulse to charity, he threw a blanket over her. Whoever discovered her … well, there was no reason to increase the Calipha’s shame. If his efforts were unsuccessful, such a gesture might make the difference between … not life and death, but torture and extremely slow torture.
What was done could not be undone. For Aidan, there would be no turning back.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-THREE
The cool night air dried the sweat upon Aidan’s neck and back so suddenly that he fought the urge to sneeze. Marshaling every physical and emotional resource he possessed, Aidan left the cabana and began his efforts to sneak past the guards.
“Thought I heard a squeak a few minutes past?” the stouter of the two said.
“She must be wringing him dry,” laughed the other. “Royals. Who can understand ’em?”
By keeping low to the ground and in the shadows, Aidan was able to remain out of their sight. Testing every step to avoid crunching a dry leaf, he made it all the way to the manse’s back door.
Slowly, every digit of motion taking nearly a minute, he tested the door. If it was locked, he could try another route, but any additional complication cost him precious time. The latch opened, and he exhaled relief. Apparently, bars were not required to ensure the Caliph’s sleep; armed guards were sufficient. Aidan gradually put his weight against the door, praying that the hinges would not betray him. Fortune remained his ally: it was well oiled as well as unlocked. Aidan slipped inside.
Aidan pulled Kai’s map of the interior back to consciousness.
A sound to his left froze his heart: when his eyes adjusted to the dark, he was able to make the shape out. His company was a great gray cat, slipping toward him sinuously with luminous, unblinking golden eyes. It meowed up at him challengingly, as if resenting his intrusion into its domain. For a moment Aidan was afraid that it might begin to yowl, bringing the household down upon him, but instead it turned and glided away.
Aidan knew that there were back stairs leading up to the room the Caliph used as his office. There were no lights upstairs, and he hazarded that his luck was holding.
A minute later he was in the office itself. It was far more luxuriant than Kai’s, with overstuffed chairs, deep rug, walls carved in Egyptian glyphs: all huge-eyed men and women of superhuman dimension dominating even groups of tiny, subservient mortals. The tiny mortals were black or brown. Aidan guessed that this was no reference to slavery; it bespoke the Caliph’s attitude toward his subjects.
That brought a grim chuckle to the back of his throat. The Caliph seemed to fancy himself almost divine. Where’s your Muslim piety now?
Stealthily, Aidan searched the office. He knew what he was looking for, how it appeared … but not where it might be found. Where? After half an hour every desk drawer was carefully searched, the bookshelves plundered, rows of carved boxes nestled in the deep rug inspected. Nothing. He reminded himself to keep his breathing steady and calm. He had time, all the time that he needed, but none at all to waste. Where was it?
The first sensation of panic was tugging at him when he glimpsed a deformation in the wall behind the main desk. The human figures stood out from the plaster a bit too starkly. It struck Aidan that that might not have been for artistic effect, but perhaps something more … practical.
As an accomplished carpenter he knew well how joints fitted together, tongue and groove securing woodwork without need for nails or screws. His eye was sharp enough to detect a variation in level that would have tested any Egyptian building inspector.
He pressed his face close to the wall, and gazed straight across … and saw it. One figure, the Caliph’s own, stood out farther from the wall than even the Pharaoh’s. Clever. He pushed it carefully, toggled it this way and that until he felt the wall groan, and the entire section slid a bit farther out.
Barely restraining a euphoric shout, he continued to apply pressure, and the section swung back, revealing a hidden cabinet.
And there, amid a stack of scrolls, lay a black leather pouch twenty digits long and as thick as his wrist. With trembling hands he opened it, revealing a cylinder composed of ivory disks, the rim of each engraved with a series of Egyptian symbols. He could only pray that it wasn’t a decoy, or that he hadn’t made any of a hundred other irreparable errors.
What now? What to do? It occurred to him that his best choice was simply to behave as if everything had gone according to Kai’s original plans.
He returned to a tube of fire paste previously discovered in the Caliph’s desk. Hands shaking as if fevered, he squeezed out half as much black paste as yellow before mixing. In that proportion, it would take almost five minutes to ignite. He smeared the resultant mixture in several choice locations around the office. Babatunde had said that confusion and chaos would be his allies. He had little choice but to trust that that was true. Trust that everything his allies had said was true.
Or else all was lost.
Aidan slipped the code machine back into its leath
er pouch and tucked it into his pants, then crept out the way he had come. The same feline greeted him at the bottom of the stairs. This time it yowled softly, and approached him with surprising boldness, rubbing against his leg and demanding a scratch.
He bent, and scratched the nape of its fuzzy neck. Satisfied, the cat wandered off again.
Clutching his precious burden beneath his cloak, Aidan found his way out into the estate grounds. He had only a few hours at the most to complete his mission, and he wracked his memory for the street plan provided by Kai. He had to find bin Jeffar’s mansion, and without delay.
He held his breath and crouched in shadows. By some miracle he managed to avoid the estate’s roving patrols until he found a section of hedged fence low enough to offer exit. He timed a pair of soldiers, and as soon as they were out of sight he climbed up the bushes and found himself at the top of a wall, shards of broken glass set along the rim. He laid his cloak down to protect his hands, and vaulted over it. Aidan fell two cubits and hit the ground in a crouch. He tugged at the cloak: stuck on the glass. Damn.
Creeping from shadow to shadow, Aidan headed south.
Aswan Street was marked with a golden pyramid, and there he turned to the right. He knew that New Alexandria’s streets were laid out like the principal cities of ancient Egypt. The wealthiest homes were all clustered in the same section of town, and that was another blessing. Still, he needed landmarks and found them: a sphinx here, a stone obelisk there.
Alarms blossomed in the night as the Caliphate fire was discovered. There were sleepy cries, and the bark of dogs and baboons. With more people running in the streets it actually became easier for him to walk openly, and then run, yelling “Fire!” until he arrived at bin Jeffar’s manor.
Nessa had said she would unlatch the gate at night, and bless her, she had not forgotten.
Which room was hers? Bin Jeffar’s mansion was certainly smaller than the Caliph’s, but in comparison with its neighbors, still an imposing structure, four stories in height, with a dozen windows per floor.
But a golden handkerchief flagged from the edge of a third-floor window, the very same scarf worn by Nessa when she came to see him. That scarf meant that she was alone, and that she was ready.
He threw a tiny stone at the scarfed window. The first missed, almost struck the pane next to it. The next two tinked against glass with greater accuracy. The third brought a ghostly pale face to the darkness behind the pane. A pair of feminine hands pressed hard against the glass. A hesitant wave, and then she disappeared.
Within two minutes, the back door opened, and Nessa appeared.
“It is done?” she asked.
Aidan looked back over his shoulder. In the very distance, he could hear shouts, and wagon wheels clattering on the street. “We don’t have long. Will you come?”
She seemed stunned, perhaps disbelieving that he was actually standing before him, and he sensed that she might have wondered if all he had said to her was some kind of fantasy, a slave’s desperate attempt to bend reality to a more palatable form.
“Aidan! I don’t know. What you’re asking me to do …”
He took her hands in his. “Nessa. A lifetime ago, I promised you I’d come. This is the only chance we have. I’m sorry it took so long, but we have no time to think about this, only time to act. You have to make up your mind, and make it up now.”
Her face was puffy, her eyes spiderwebbed with red. Had she been awake all night, wondering if the rap against her window would ever come? “Tell me again,” she whispered urgently. “Tell me of your home.”
He inhaled, knowing what she was really saying. You ask me to throw this life away, Aidan. It may not be much, but it’s all I have. Convince me that I’m not discarding it for nothing. Convince me that if the slavecatchers drag me back in chains, I will at least have sacrificed for a treasure worth the having.
“It’s on a lake, Nessa,” he said. “It’s a crannog, like O’Dere.”
“Like O’Dere,” she repeated, a wisp of a smile curling her lips.
“Smaller, but still growing,” he amended. “And it’s ours. There’s fishing and hunting. There are only sixty of us, and life is sometimes hard. But we’re building something, and you can be a part of it.”
Nessa closed her eyes. “I dreamed about you every night for years. Wondered what I’d say if and when this moment ever came.”
“And…?”
“And finally I stopped dreaming, and as I told you, I made my peace with the world.”
“I never did,” he said.
She reached out, and brushed her fingers across his cheek fondly. “No, you didn’t, did you?” she said, words tinged with wonder.
“I think sometimes that hoping to keep my promise one day was the only thing that kept me sane.”
She wiped at a tear, this older sister whom he had dreamed of so long, and she shook her head, and he knew that she was going to say no.
But to his surprise, Nessa O’Dere said, “Yes. I will come with you, Aidan.”
Nessa carrying a small dark bundle of personal belongings in her arms, the siblings hurried through the streets, where horse-drawn fire carts rattled toward the Caliph’s mansion.
Aidan and Nessa kept to the alleys, and after almost an hour of dodging police and firefighters finally reached the section of town marked with a Star of David: the Judean neighborhood. Jews, men and women protected by the Treaty of Khibar, were the freest whites in Bilalistan. They traded freely through all four territories, and even provided an economic pore between Bilalistan and Vineland. But even these privileged Europeans had to present papers at checkpoints, were still but second-class citizens. Still, their special status placed them far above any children of Eire or Germany.
It took him another ten minutes to find the proper address, a brown brick building of Numidian design. He knocked hard, desperate to get in out of the street but praying that no neighbors would hear, realize they were fleeing slaves, and flash for the authorities. After an interminable pause, a panel opened at eye level.
An elderly bearded white man stared at them. “Yes?”
As carefully as he had ever said anything in his life, Aidan recited, “‘But indeed if any do help and defend himself after a wrong done—’”
“‘—to him, against such, there is no cause for blame.’” The Jew’s eyes sharpened once the passwords had been exchanged. “Do you have it?”
“Yes.”
He gave the man a glimpse of the leather pouch. When the man still seemed to hesitate, he opened it, and displayed the ivory disks within.
“Hurry,” the Jew said, scratching nervously at his curly sidelocks, eyes scanning the deserted street. “I am Ishmael. Come in, come in!”
Together, they entered.
The old man’s house was smaller than any New Alexandrian dwelling Aidan had seen, but very neat, clean, and every digit of space seemed to be well occupied.
A silver nine-branched candle holder sat above his fireplace, next to a silver cup and a horn of some kind, perhaps bison.
Books and scrolls were everywhere: stacked, leaning, on edge, open on the single desk in a corner.
Aidan looked down at a scroll, and couldn’t read any of the words. “What is this?” he asked.
“The Torah,” Ishmael said. “It is the story of our people, and our God.”
“Is it Allah?” Nessa asked. “The same God of the Muslims?”
“There is but one God.” The Jew smiled. “And if He spoke to us first, well … who am I to question His judgment?”
Aidan peered more carefully at his host, and detected a bit of African blood in the shape of the nose and the curl of the hair. “Are you part black?”
“Abyssinian, yes. Both sides of my family can trace ancestry back to Solomon … the Queen of Sheba was his woman, and bore him children. Now, then. Enough pleasantry. It is my obligation to help the little Sufi, but the longer you stay here, the greater the risk for my people. There are blacks who wo
uld be eager for an excuse to ignore the Treaty of Khibar. So we must be very careful, we must be very smart … and we must get you to your next destination immediately.”
He smiled. “But first, we celebrate.” He took a crystal decanter from the shelf. “Wine, to clear the head and gladden the heart.” He paused. “You are not Muslim?” They shook their heads. “Christian?”
“Once,” said Aidan.
“Never,” Nessa said, fingering her golden tree pendant.
Ishmael poured three glasses and handed two of them to Aidan and Nessa. “L’Chaim,” he said.
“This means…?” asked Nessa.
“‘To life.’”
Aidan sipped, and almost fell. Never had he tasted its like. Its warm golden glow ran down his throat like a healing river. It was smoother and sweeter than any beer he had ever tasted. His knees weakened. “May I sit?” he asked.
Ishmael nodded.
Aidan found a chair and sat in it, for a moment imagining that this was his home. His chair, his walls, his books. His wine. That in a moment Sophia would come from the kitchen, followed by their children. Ishmael watched him, wise brown eyes bright in his wrinkled face.
“Yes,” the old man said. “This was the way it was supposed to be. This is what God intended. For each of us to bend his own back, make his own work, and prosper by the sweat of his brow.”
He pulled a chair out for Nessa, who gratefully accepted it. “Thank you.”
Then Ishmael sat on the couch, sipped at his wine, and fixed Aidan with a gaze of such clarity that he was temporarily stunned.
“Once, we too were slaves,” said the Jew. “And a leader rose, and with the grace of God, Pharaoh was forced to free us, and we built a world of our own.”
“Judeah,” Aidan murmured.
“Yes. And when we supported Muhammad at Khibar, we found a way to protect our children, and our children’s children … and even help the occasional goyim.”
“This is wonderful,” Nessa said. “Never have I tasted its like.”
“Please, serve yourself,” Ishmael said, and turned back to Aidan.
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