Heart of Flame

by Janine Ashbless

  He grimaced, but did not draw. “You know, that is the last time I do business with your family,” he said through bared teeth.

  “It’s the last time you’ll do business with anyone,” said the other, and spat.

  Taqla understood Rafiq’s problem—to keep the civil peace the amir’s law said that although swords could be carried in the city, drawing one against someone was a capital offense. And they were surrounded by witnesses here, where the narrow street was lined with the shops of furniture makers. Already people were turning to stare, watching even as they edged away to a safe distance. Rafiq stood little chance against two knifemen, she thought. She cast about for options and saw at the side of the alley, within arm’s reach, a broken wooden strut protruding from a drift of wood shavings and sawdust.

  Grabbing the splintered end, she hauled it out and without even trying to stand, whipped it round into the backs of one of the strangers’ knees. The man crumpled with a cry, landing on top of her. As his companion turned to see what had happened, Rafiq took his chance and kicked his second assailant hard in the guts, punching him in the face as he doubled up.

  The first man had fallen partially over Taqla’s legs, pinning her. As he rolled, lifting his knife, she tried to swing the length of wood again but it was unwieldy and he managed to get his knife arm up to parry the blow. She was quite surprised when the knife flew from his cracked hand—she never quite got used to how strong she was as Zahir. He grunted with pain and grabbed her by the ear, hauling her to within an inch of his face.

  “Not your fight, you pizzle of a goat!” he roared.

  The grip on her ear was horribly painful, but he was trying to stop her pulling away from him. He was taken entirely by surprise when she lunged forward and clamped her teeth as hard as she could on his nose, grinding into the gristle. This time he screamed. She felt a punch glance off her head and then the stranger pulled away, his face streaming with blood, and gave her enough room to kick him in the crotch with all her strength. He went down and lay there retching.

  Taqla looked up to see Rafiq staring at her. “You bit him?” he blurted. But then his gaze was wrenched away. “Get up,” he snapped. “Hurry.”

  A glance showed her what was worrying him—other men in similar robes were pushing up the souk in their direction. Taqla scrambled to her feet and followed as Rafiq dived into one of the shops, spitting to clear her mouth. They bumped their way through the dark constricted space full of painfully angular furniture, and emerged into a tiny yard full of lumber at the back. The shopkeeper followed them out, showering them with imprecations. The wall at the back was of crumbling brick and tall enough that Taqla would never have dreamed of tackling it in her own shape. But Rafiq went straight over it with a leap and a scramble, and she had no choice but to follow. She was glad of the strength in her arms and shoulders, easily capable of hauling her own bodyweight. She couldn’t help grinning even as they jumped down the rubble slope beyond. Her ear was burning as if it were on fire and her head was throbbing, but she was hardly conscious of the pain or the fear of the men behind her because she was exulting so much. She’d always tried to keep out of trouble and out of public notice, but she was coming to realize that Zahir’s body liked a bit of a fight.

  They’d come out into an open space hemmed in by buildings, and it was obvious from the stench that this was the area of the leather dyers. A honeycomb of limestone pits lay before them, each filled with a different colored slurry and each more caustic and stinking than the last, so Rafiq set off along the narrow stone kerbs between the pools, leaping the heaps of slimy hides, and she teetered in his wake. Her sense of balance was worse in a male body, she thought—or perhaps it was the blows to her head that were making her unsteady.

  “You didn’t have to join in the fight!” Rafiq called back. The dyers, nearly naked and painted to the thighs in the colors of their trade, had paused in their labors to stare.

  “We hadn’t finished our conversation.”

  “Ah—of course. Well, I am grateful. My business with those sons of donkeys might have distracted me permanently.”

  “Who were they?” she asked.

  “Sons of the household of Hava.” Rafiq skidded on a nameless lump of slime and wobbled dangerously over a vat of crimson. “They have a dispute of honor with me—I shouldn’t have gone out into the city without guards.”

  “What did you do?” The Hava family was well known in the city.

  “Nothing! Well, their mother—”

  “Their mother? Sitt Khadiga? She’s fifty if she’s a day!”

  “She’s a handmaiden of Iblis!” Rafiq had clearly decided that there was no rescuing his good reputation as far as the household of Hava was concerned. “She came to my warehouse to buy silver plates and offered only the most ridiculous prices. When I wouldn’t sell, she began to berate me, so I called a servant girl to usher her out, and the harridan tore off her own veil and swore that Bekla had done it.”

  “She didn’t, then?”

  “No—she did not! And no judge would have found in Khadiga’s favor. It was only the word of her people against mine. But the damage was done because I was there. And because I can bear witness that she’s uglier than the back end of a camel.”

  Taqla snorted. If Sitt Khadiga al-Hava had been unveiled in front of Rafiq, then regardless of whose fault it was, the insult to her honor would be avenged by the men of her family. “You could have given up the servant girl,” she suggested.

  Rafiq paused midstride to give her a hard look. “She was innocent.” His glance drifted past her face. “And we’re still being followed.”

  Three men were scrambling over the wall into the dyers’ yard. Taqla, who was just beginning to think she might stop and catch her breath, hissed between her teeth. They hurried on, aiming for the buildings beyond the far wall. A mud-brick stair led up onto the roof of a house and they scrambled up, ducking beneath a palm-frond shade and running straight across the dyed hides that had been spread out to dry there. An old woman busy turning the skins shrieked abuse at them for that.

  “We need to get down to the street,” Taqla suggested, panting.

  “Soon. First—jump!” Rafiq put on a burst of speed and launched himself off the edge of the roof, right over the narrow lane to the rooftop opposite. Taqla cursed him silently, hoped that this was a perfectly reasonable distance for a fit young man to cover, and threw herself after him. She hit the flat surface jarringly, stumbled but recovered, and vowed not to try that again—her toes had barely found the edge. She staggered clear of the two-storey drop.

  “Where—where now?” A glance told her that this was a big building they were on, square in form but hollowed around a central courtyard. There was no obvious stair down. And their pursuers had not given up. The head of their leader bobbed into view over the first roof.

  Rafiq didn’t answer. He just went to the edge overlooking the central courtyard, squinted down, then turned and dropped to his belly and slid his legs over into the void. He hung there for a moment, lurched down until he was hanging by his hands then disappeared from sight.

  What? Taqla mouthed, aghast. Is this normal? she wanted to demand—Did every Dimashqan man take to scrambling over the rooftops like an ape at the slightest provocation? Was she just supposed to follow him?

  She didn’t have much choice. Gritting her teeth, she did as Rafiq had done—and found, below the roofline, complex decorative piercework in wood, which allowed her to swing down onto the upper-storey balcony below. She nearly pulled her arms from their sockets doing it, and she cursed her sheltered upbringing.

  “Quick.” Rafiq signalled her into a doorway and they plunged into the building’s interior. The shuttered rooms were in darkness and filled with sagging baskets and dusty bales, the finely tiled walls not making up for the reek of rat urine. Taqla knew what was going on—there were many grand old houses like this in the city nowadays. When the seat of the caliphate was moved from Dimashq to Baghdad, many of th
e wealthiest families had abandoned the city, locking up their houses and leaving them to decay under the care of a lone watchman. Squatters had moved into some buildings, others were used as storage spaces or stables. This one looked and smelled like it was full of sheep’s fleeces all quietly rotting away in the gloom.

  Voices and scuffling suggested their pursuers were not far behind. Rafiq drew his scimitar.

  “No!” breathed Taqla warningly.

  “No witnesses here,” he whispered. But he relented with a shrug and pushed her into the angle behind a cupboard door in a dark corner, backing in after her as the voices grew louder. It was almost pitch-black, to Taqla’s discomfort, and a shelf dug into her spine. Worse, it was an extremely confined space. As Rafiq squeezed in after her with his scimitar held at the ready, his back pressed up against her chest, radiating heat. She could smell his skin and his sweat over the general miasma of dry rot, and it smelled good in a way she was not ready for—hauntingly, disconcertingly good. She could feel the movement of his muscles through his clothes and it made her own muscles quiver and clench. She shrank away desperately, trying to minimise contact, but it was too late, her panicked mental efforts were not enough. Even as they both held their breath and as footfalls echoed in the chamber outside, the spell of shaping cracked into a thousand pieces and the form of Zahir abd-Umar dissolved into her own. The pain in her ear vanished. Bones shortened. Male muscle softened to feminine curves. Her bare nipples pressed against his shirt and she felt them pucker and harden at the contact.

  Taqla prayed that Rafiq would not notice.

  Feet passed up and down the hallways, in and out of rooms. Voices barked threats and complaints. Something clattered as it was thrown across a tiled floor. But the building was dark and big and the room layout complex. The noises passed back and forth, growing gradually fainter. Taqla tilted her head to heaven and bit her lip and tried to cross her arms in front of her breasts despite there being no space, hoping that her body scent, her stifled breathing, her reduced stature would not give her away.

  “I think we’re clear.”

  “Umm,” she grunted, dropping her voice by an octave.

  Rafiq slid cautiously out around the door. She gave it a moment then slipped out after him, leaving her too-large sandals behind and moving on silent feet. He was still looking intently up a corridor when she fled in the opposite direction.

  She didn’t go far. She had no idea where to go. She dived into a room and plunged toward the window in the wall opposite, throwing open the shutter with frantic hands. Daylight poured in, making her eyes water. Below her seethed a busy livestock market, the perfect place to get lost in. It was two storeys down but there was a shack of some sort built up against the wall and it would be simple enough to drop onto its roof and scramble down to the earth.

  But she couldn’t get out that way. An unveiled, bare-breasted woman running through the market would start a riot. She whirled, dizzy with fear. She needed time to recast the spell, she needed to get her mind under control and visualise Zahir once more—but it couldn’t be done instantly. In the meantime, she could not be found in Zahir’s clothes, she realized. If Rafiq walked in on her—and she had no doubt he would have glimpsed her retreat—then he would know. Her mask would be revealed for the fiction it was. And if Zahir became known as a sorceress in disguise, then Umar would be no safer. All her years of meticulously constructing his persona would be wasted in a day.

  She didn’t know what she’d have to do to silence Rafiq if he saw her like this.

  She looked round the room, which was full of sacking and mounded fleeces, and made her decision. She flung off the rope coil and her clothes and stuffed them out of sight, then dived in the opposite direction onto a heap of wool, which sagged unpleasantly beneath her and released a waft of sheep’s grease. Not a moment too soon, because Rafiq pushed open the door just then, sword in hand.

  He saw the open window first and stepped toward it. Then he saw her and stopped dead, his eyes widening. Taqla clenched her forearm across her bare breasts and held the other hand over her lower face as a makeshift veil, scrunching up as much as possible. She knew he had an excellent view of her bare flanks and thighs, but that didn’t matter. Or so she told herself—even as her skin heated with shame under his gaze.

  “Ah.” Rafiq’s expression softened, a smile warming his eyes. “Forgive me.”

  She glared. Let him try anything and she would summon the snakes out of the walls, she promised herself, ignoring the treacherous gush of warmth to her sex.

  “You are?”

  “The watchman lets me sleep here,” she whispered. “In exchange for…”

  “Of course.” He seemed to become aware that he was staring and made some effort to look away, laying his right hand on his breastbone in that Dimashqan gesture that had many subtle shades of meaning but in general expressed good intentions. “Have you…ah…did a youngish man come past here? Alone?”

  She tilted her head, indicating the window. “Out that way.”

  “I see.” He raised an eyebrow. “I thought he might wait for me. Never mind.” He took a few steps toward the window, but then hesitated, his gaze caught once more upon her nakedness. “There are some men who’ve just broken into this house—I don’t know where they’ve headed. You should get dressed and find the watchman.”

  She nodded warily.

  “Good.” With a last appreciative glance he climbed through the window frame, and she heard him drop to the roof below. Taqla let out a pent-up breath.

  That had been far too close, she thought. And now she needed to get dressed and focus her will upon becoming Zahir once more. Strong, practical, invisible Zahir. But with Rafiq’s smile burning in her mind’s eye and the memory of his body imprinted on hers, it took her a surprisingly long time to make herself male again.

  Chapter Three

  In which the most beautiful woman in the land is rather taken by her portrait.

  “Fah! I hate poetry!” said Ahleme bint-Jamil, daughter of the Amir of Dimashq, throwing her book down upon a cushion. The white doves that had been pecking at the flagstones nearby flew off in a panic.

  Nura, who had been plucking the strings of an oud softly while her mistress read, looked up, unimpressed by Ahleme’s vehemence. “Really, mistress?”

  “They’re liars! All of them. All this rubbish they write…”

  Farida, another slave woman, yawned and stretched her hand out to the tray of candied dates that sat between them. Like Nura, she knew that Ahleme was too soft-hearted to beat her slaves for minor impertinences, and they both tended to take liberties. Farida liked her food. “You spend a great deal of money, mistress, on that rubbish as you call it,” she pointed out.

  Ahleme rolled her eyes. She knew that Farida was right, but that didn’t ease her frustration. If she really hated poetry, she wouldn’t send her slaves down to the Souk of Booksellers to buy those precious little volumes, or spend so much time reading their handwritten pages. Nor would she while away so many hours composing her own verses, which she then hid in a secret space beneath her window. “They only have three things they want to write about,” she complained. “They whinge about how much they want to go back to the free desert life, they whinge about the pain of love—and they bleat on like goats about the consolations of wine when the whinging becomes too much even for them.”

  Farida belched softly and smiled.

  “That is poetry,” Nura said. “You might as well protest that birds fly and fish swim.”

  “But I don’t believe any of it! Do you think any of them have ever lived in the desert? Have you seen the desert tribesmen—do they look like they write poetry to you? All the poets are very comfortable here behind city walls, and if a jackal so much as howled nearby they would probably hide beneath their pillows. As for love—it’s just stupid, what they say.”

  Farida glanced at Nura and lifted her eyebrows. “What would you know about that, mistress?”

  Ahleme th
rust her lower lip out. “What real man falls in love like the poets say, all sleepless nights and refusing food and tearing his robes? Can you imagine my father behaving like that? Do you imagine he wrote poetry to my mother and stood below her window weeping?”

  Farida sniggered and Nura frowned.

  “Well, your mother was nobly born, mistress, so of course no man wrote about her.” The fact was that most love poems were paeans to slaves, since respectable women couldn’t be the object of a stranger’s desire without it leading to disaster and bloodshed.

  Ahleme snorted. Her feelings on the subject were confused. “Maybe she wanted him to,” she suggested, knowing she was being daring.

  “Really!” Nura struck an angry chord, like a wasp’s buzz. “Your father is a man of honor, mistress! He would never have disrespected one of his wives so.”

  “I meant after they married, of course,” she amended.

  “Well, what would be the point of that?” asked Nura. “Love is about the wanting, not the having. A man will do anything for you, but only if he cannot have you. That’s why a maiden should never give a man what he is after.”

  “Hah,” said Farida, smugly. “Some things are more rewarding than merely being wanted.”

  Nura wrinkled her nose. “And that is why no man has asked permission to marry you, Farida. You are too accommodating.”

  “What do I need a husband for? My mistress provides for me.”

  “Your mistress does not provide you with sons!”

  “Ah, if God willed me to have children, wouldn’t I have seen it by now?”

  It was an old argument and Ahleme wasn’t interested. Shaking her head, she rose and walked a few paces over to the fig tree in the centre of the courtyard. She stared up into the branches, searching out the green fruit, looking for one ripe enough to pluck. The two slaves carried on their desultory bickering for a few moments before lapsing into a complacent truce.

  Ahleme thought she understood the poets’ nostalgia for open spaces. Though she’d never travelled into the desert, she knew exactly what it was to feel hemmed in by high walls and inactivity. Her own days blended into each other seamlessly without hurry or event or achievement. She would bathe, she would listen to music, she would pray and eat and listen to the gossip of her slaves and maidservants. She would spend hours in the carved mashrabiya balconies that jutted out from the outer walls of the Citadel and allowed the women of the amir’s household to see the world outside without themselves being spied upon, where she would watch the light changing on the wooded slopes of the Jebel Qassioun outcrop to the north, or from another balcony gaze down upon the food market before the Citadel gates. She was fascinated by the smells that wafted up to her, so alien to the perfumed palace—smells of animal dung and rotting vegetables, bubbling oil and melted sugar and fresh bread. She loved the purple of the baskets of figs and mulberries, the pale green mounds of almonds still in their fuzzy shells, the sunset tint of persimmons and even the reds of the butchers’ stalls. She knew by sight the guards and the hawkers and the porters who worked there, knew their routines and their quarrels, and sometimes found herself envying the market women all muffled in their headscarves who chopped cabbage and haggled and sang and conducted arguments at the tops of their voices. At least, she thought, they had a purpose in rising from bed each day.