Reave the Just and Other Tales

by Donaldson, Stephen R.

  He did indeed appear pitiable as he huddled upon the verge of the swamp. Though I knew it to be a false kindness, I granted him silence.

  In fact, he could have died. He was ignorant of any roads—and little able to care for himself. After a long and rancid night, he took to his feet with the dawn and walked out into the desert as though intending to exhaust himself and thereby hasten the end of his sufferings. Soon he was thirsty. And soon thereafter he was hungry. He had come away from Niswan without sandals, and the pressure of the sand began to wear sores on his feet. The sun blistered him. His needs took on the strength of rage. They expanded until they filled the horizons. Under the weight of the desert sun, his misery increased until it became as great as his self-pity. Then he collapsed into the sand.

  Nevertheless a great journey lay ahead of him, which he must not shirk. It was not my task to make him comfortable. I did not permit his thirst to kill him, however. I kept his hunger within limits his flesh could bear. I did not allow the sores on his feet to become infected enough to threaten his life. And when he lay himself down with the avowed intention of not rising again, I reached into his mind and found enough fears to goad him back to his feet.

  Gradually, his physical distress ground his self-pity and his revulsion and even his pride away: he had no strength for them. He had only his pain, his fear of death, and me.

  After a number of days which he could not have counted—and which I had no interest in counting for him—he came to the River Kalabras. Falling on his face among the reeds at the riverbank, he drank enough of the muddy water to ensure himself a fever.

  While he drank, I observed a large felucca riding the current nearby. Confident that he would be rescued, I permitted him to lose consciousness.

  The craft, called Horizon’s Daughter by its master, proved to be a vessel of commerce which plied the River Kalabras, carrying trade and passengers wherever they wished to go. As soon as the felucca’s master, Mohan Gopal, saw Fetim fall among the reeds, he put about, anchored Horizon’s Daughter against the current, and commanded two of his men into the river to bring Fetim aboard.

  By this time, Fetim’s condition would have aroused pity in a heart of stone. Far from having a heart of stone, however, Mohan Gopal was a man of such kindness that he would willingly have accepted a diminution of his profits in exchange for an opportunity to do a good deed. And on this voyage he was accompanied by his only child, Saliandra, a woman whose instincts of compassion exceeded his own. When Fetim had been dragged from the Kalabras, Mohan and Saliandra were so struck by his tattered garments and mangled feet, his emaciation and his look of madness, that they at once vacated their cabin under the felucca’s stern for his use and devoted all the resources of Horizon’s Daughter to his care.

  As it chanced, Saliandra was not a beautiful woman. For that reason—and because her father loved her extremely—she was unwed. On the other hand, she was not ill-favored. Though her features were plain, her form was comely. When Fetim first opened his eyes and turned on Saliandra a gaze bright with illness, he believed that he had at last been lifted out of perdition into the realm of the houris.

  “Be at rest,” she cautioned him gently. “You are among friends.”

  Prostrate and feverish, he replied, “You are the only friend I will ever desire.”

  Had I been mortal, I would have gnashed my teeth and torn my hair.

  Unable to do otherwise, however, I watched as Horizon’s Daughter slid down the River Kalabras, and Saliandra tended the young man’s broken health, and Mohan Gopal and his men made Fetim of the lost al-Hetal welcome among them as though he were an honored comrade.

  The felucca was on its way downriver to great Qatiis, the storied and corrupt city of the Padisha, bearing a nearly priceless cargo of saffron—a cargo which had been entrusted to Mohan Gopal rather than to a flotilla of defencers by reason of his honesty, and also in hopes that Horizon’s Daughter would not attract the notice of the river pirates.

  Of this Fetim knew nothing, of course. To do him justice, it must be admitted that he had never felt an unreasonable interest in wealth. And now he was simply an invalid, scarcely able to hold his head up unassisted—deaf and blind to other considerations. His experiences in Niswan had taught him a deferential manner; his days in the desert had taught him gratitude. These qualities made him a satisfying invalid for whom to care. By the time he became able to sit up on his pallet and sip a bit of soup, he was so well regarded aboard the felucca that Mohan Gopal had begun to consider offering him a share of the cargo’s profits to help set him on his feet when Horizon’s Daughter reached Qatiis.

  The master’s regard was reciprocated. The comradely feelings of the crew were shared—a bit shyly, perhaps, but not insincerely. And Saliandra’s attentive concern was welcomed. To all appearances, Fetim was not the man he had been.

  Now he noticed that Saliandra was not indeed a houri. Recovering enough strength to stand on his legs and converse, he also recovered enough clarity of vision to perceive that she was plain. But, oddly, this did not disconcert him. For the first time in his life, he considered that a woman’s virtues might be of more importance than her face. And he was flattered by the fact that she was unmistakably smitten with him. Because of her great kindness, she thought highly of all things that needed her. Additionally, his sufferings had given his handsomeness a pensive and poetic cast, which she found impossible to resist. She would willingly have laid down her life for him. This was not lust; it was love. It was not surprising that she soon went to his bed. The surprise lay in the tenderness with which he accepted the sweets of her body.

  Yet even that was not as surprising as his approach to Mohan Gopal the next morning, asking for permission to wed Saliandra.

  The felucca’s master considered that his daughter’s acquaintance with Fetim was too brief to support a decision of marriage. And he went farther: he ousted Fetim from the cabin, so that he and Saliandra could resume their normal sleeping arrangements—in other words, so that Saliandra’s nights would be properly chaperoned. Nevertheless, he did these things with such obvious benevolence, with such a distinct intention to relent in a reasonable time, that his decrees caused no offense. Having once slept with Fetim, Saliandra was secretly amused by her father’s unnecessary protectiveness. And Fetim only looked on his prospective father-in-law with more respect.

  My task was unchanged, however, and I prepared myself for battle.

  When it came, the attack of the pirates was perplexing. On the one hand, it appeared to be founded on general principles, rather than on any specific awareness of Horizon’s Daughter’s cargo. On the other, it lacked the usual ferocity of the curse. Indeed, it was beaten off with relative ease. Fetim himself flailed a cutlass, drew some blood, and suffered a minor cut. And Mohan Gopal’s men were sturdy and determined, familiar with the perils and exigencies of trade: they defended their vessel with both stubbornness and skill. The pirates were soon daunted and withdrew.

  In consequence, Fetim raised his estimation of himself. He also dismissed any lingering qualms he may have felt concerning his fate.

  To celebrate the victory, Mohan Gopal exercised a master’s prerogative by commanding his men to broach a consignment of wine destined for a merchant in Qatiis—Haroon el-Temud, a man of great wealth and unsavory reputation. “Let his count be short a cask or two,” pronounced Mohan Gopal with a certain unworthy satisfaction: he had accepted el-Temud’s consignment to disguise his more serious cargo; but he disliked carrying goods for a man whose honesty he did not trust. “If he complains, I will pay for the difference.”

  The crew cheered heartily and obeyed.

  During the afternoon and the early evening, the mood aboard Horizon’s Daughter became convivial. Having sampled good wines in Niswan, Fetim was not impressed by Haroon el-Temud’s taste. Nevertheless, he drank a comfortable excess among his comrades. Mohan Gopal did not refuse a cup or two. Accust
omed to the company of men, Saliandra also enjoyed a modest libation.

  But as night closed over the River Kalabras, and the stars shone coldly from the heavens, first one and then another of the felucca’s men began to scream.

  For numerous excellent reasons, Haroon el-Temud had enemies; and his enemies had poisoned his wine. A slow acid ate at the vitals of all who consumed it. Clutching his stomach, the first victim fell overboard. The river seemed to swallow him without a sound. Howling in agony, the second flung himself at Fetim.

  Taken by surprise, and inspired by his elevated opinion of himself—as well as by wine—Fetim snatched up his cutlass and cleft his shipmate from shoulder to breastbone. Then he heard Saliandra’s wail and realized what he had done.

  No one reproached him, however. Instead, his companions sought to kill him. Horizon’s Daughter’s people were being driven mad with pain. Blades flashed; screams beat against the darkness. Having drunk less than his men, Mohan Gopal remained himself long enough to defend Fetim as well as he could. Then he, too, fell prey to the poison. Turning, he knotted his fingers around Fetim’s throat and attacked the young man’s handsomeness with his teeth.

  Saliandra hung from her father’s back, trying to pull him away from her lover. I kept Fetim alive, but did not feel compelled to preserve him from injury. He was bleeding from several wounds when Mohan Gopal finally stumbled into convulsions and died.

  Everyone died. More from malice than from any wish to spare him pain, I did not let the poison touch Fetim: I wanted him to watch the way his friends were taken.

  Saliandra was the last, of course. The wine let her live long enough to experience the ruin of her life and everything she had loved. Although her suffering was extravagant, however, it could not turn her against her lover. She expired in his arms, with his name on her lips.

  For that reason, he felt the loss of her all the more severely.

  Alone on the River Kalabras, covered by darkness, in a vessel peopled by corpses, he rose to his feet and cried out at the stars, “The fault is mine!”

  I peered at him more closely. “Say what?”

  “They were my friends. She would have married me. He would have been proud to call me his son-in-law. And I am the cause of their deaths. There is no one more despicable. Knowing what would befall them, I allowed them to make me the object of their goodness. Truly, I deserve to be accursed.”

  “Well.” This was gratifying. “I was wondering when you were going to see the truth.”

  Instead of answering, he took a fallen dagger from the deck and plunged it toward his breast.

  I turned the blade. He bruised himself, but did not pierce the skin.

  “You are the worst of the curse,” he said brokenly, “the most malefic of all djinn. If you had permitted me to die, only the clan of the al-Hetal would have paid the price of my folly. Because of you, the graveyards of Niswan are crowded with my victims, and the honest and loving people of Horizon’s Daughter have been slaughtered. By preserving my life, you wreak abominable evil.”

  Recognizing the justice of what he said, I demanded nonetheless, “Whose fault is that? It wasn’t me who tried to take advantage of Rashid. It wasn’t me who preferred slavery to resistance. I’m not the one who said, ‘You are the only friend I will ever desire,’ when what he should have done was jump ship as soon as he could stand.”

  Again he did not answer. Rather, he took a length of line and climbed to one of the felucca’s yards. There he bound the line to the yard and also to his neck, then cast himself down.

  I caused one of the knots to fail. Additionally, I adjusted his impact on the deck so that he was not seriously harmed.

  “Help me,” he beseeched. “I must put an end to myself, or I will cover the world with ruin wherever I go.”

  “You know who I am,” I replied. “I’m part of the curse. I can’t help you. If I tried, the great father of djinn would tear me apart and scatter every portion of my being to the four winds.” After a moment, I added foolishly, “You’ve got to stop thinking like a normal man. You’ve got to start thinking like one of the accursed.”

  He drank a large flagon of the tainted wine while he considered what I had said. His bitten features seemed to undergo a number of changes, passing from self-pity and anger to emotions which were more obscure. Then he commanded peremptorily, “Repeat the curse.”

  I complied. “‘In the name of the great father of djinn, let all those he loves be killed. Let him be readily loved—and let all those who love him die in anguish. Let all his seed and all his blood—’”

  “Enough. I have heard enough.” He consumed more of the wine. Now it seemed to have no effect upon him. “I have received both decency and love aboard this vessel, and those who gave it to me have been poisoned. I must ‘start thinking like one of the accursed.’ Very well. Do your work, djinn. I will do mine.”

  He did not speak again that night. The River Kalabras bore the ship of the dead through the dark, and he rode the vessel alone, as though he were its rightful master.

  Two days later, the current carried Horizon’s Daughter past the teeming waterfront of Qatiis, the crystal city where the Padisha devoted himself alternately to civic virtue and imaginative perversion. Hailing assistance in the name of Haroon el-Temud, Fetim achieved a berth for his felucca among the wharves of the great merchants. The state of the vessel’s crew—by then as rank as the waters of the city—aroused considerable comment, and there was talk of summoning the Padisha’s civil guard; but Fetim deflected this threat by invoking Haroon el-Temud’s name with alarming freedom. This in turn incurred the rancor of the merchant’s adherents. They made Fetim their prisoner and hauled him up into the rich city, where they threw him at Haroon el-Temud’s feet as a suspected murderer.

  Piqued by Fetim’s fearless manner and his air of knowledge, the merchant allowed the young man to speak. At once, Fetim revealed that Mohan Gopal and his crew had been killed by wine intended for Haroon el-Temud himself.

  “Yet you survive,” the merchant observed. “It might be reasonable to assume, therefore, that the wine was poisoned by none other than yourself.”

  “That assumption would be understandable, but faulty,” replied Fetim. “Your men will tell you that the felucca’s crew has been dead long enough to permit me an easy escape, which would have freed me forever from suspicion. I have risked your distrust because the name of Haroon el-Temud is known as far away as Niswan, and I have that to offer you which can profit us both.”

  “What is it?”

  With an eloquent shrug, Fetim indicated his bonds.

  Haroon el-Temud considered. Surely it would be madness for a poisoner of wine to remain in the company of his victims as Fetim had done. And if Fetim were innocent, he had done the merchant a great service by making him aware of the death his enemies plotted for him. To this service Fetim added an offer of profit. And he was a remarkably handsome young man. The rapidly healing scars on his face, far from marring his features, served to give his appearance piquancy. Even the Padisha, in one of his lascivious phases, might be interested in such a man.

  Nodding approval of his thoughts, Haroon el-Temud commanded Fetim’s release. Then he and Fetim reached a bargain favorable to them both: Fetim was granted a well-remunerated place in the merchant’s service; the merchant was made aware that Horizon’s Daughter carried unprotected saffron, which had not yet been delivered to its rightful buyer.

  The profits which accrued to Haroon el-Temud from so much stolen saffron greatly increased his goodwill toward his new protégé.

  Fetim had no particular aptitude for his work; he had no aptitude for any work. But he was pleasing in manner, at once unafraid and certain, deferential and modest. And he plied his attractiveness to good effect. He soon found himself accepted and busy among the merchant’s many adherents—accountants, clerks, couriers, and guards; odalisques and assassins, op
ium peddlers and spies—whose lives were devoted to taking advantage of the Padisha’s outbreaks of virtue and vice.

  He was watched with suspicion, of course: Haroon el-Temud had not achieved such wealth through a lack of caution. But what was in Fetim’s heart was more convoluted than the malice which the merchant knew and understood. Haroon el-Temud’s spies remarked on the ease with which Fetim accumulated lovers; but neither the spies nor their master feared it.

  Fetim, however, found the opportunity when his lovers were sated and happy to ask them interesting questions. And as more and more people chose to make him the repository of their secrets, he gained more and more knowledge. With a celerity which would have frightened the merchant, had he been aware of it, Fetim learned the names of Haroon el-Temud’s principal enemies, the locations and characters of their strengths, the parts they played in the balance of conflict which preserved the Padisha’s bizarre rule. Then, almost without discernible effort, he began to extend his amorous sphere beyond the circle of Haroon el-Temud’s adherents.

  In fact, he began to extend his amorous sphere into the domains of his patron’s enemies. The knowledge he sought with such diligence was simple: he wished to know who had poisoned Haroon el-Temud’s wine.

  Initially, he was baffled to learn that the merchant knew the name of this particular foe—and declined to act on the information. This seemed improbable to Fetim: Haroon el-Temud was neither forgiving nor forbearant. Nevertheless, persistence brought the young man better understanding.

  In cycles of both virtue and vice, the Padisha enjoyed games of power. He played the strong men of Qatiis against each other, setting one merchant at another, shifting favor between traders, hatching treacheries back and forth. Thus he deflected challenges to the manner in which he reigned over his city.

  Haroon el-Temud’s wine had been poisoned by a trader who by that gambit rose high in the Padisha’s munificence.