by Donald Tyson
“How many does he bring with him?”
We could not hear him. He raised a hand with four fingers extended.
“I know who he will bring,” Martala said. “He will bring the best he has.”
The beggar died before we could question him further. I searched his body and took the few bronze fils he wore in a purse at his waist, then did the same for the other three corpses. None of them carried enough money to have made killing them for it worth the effort. I regarded the beggar’s sword, which was superior to the others, and wondered if I should take it for my own. Reluctantly, I decided to leave it on the rocks. It might be recognized in Memphis.
I retrieved my boots, and we spent a few minutes gathering the horses. The violence had terrified them, but their hobbles prevented them from running far. I collected the water skins and slung them over the saddles of the two strongest mounts. Everything else I left where it lay. Eventually the corpses would be discovered. It would probably be assumed that they had killed each other in a drunken brawl, though how their presence in the desert would be explained, I could not imagine.
“We can’t be seen with the horses. We’ll ride them back to the outskirts of Memphis, then release them. Someone will find them.”
The girl nodded agreement.
“When did you learn to speak Coptic?”
“When I ate the wizard’s finger.”
“So it wasn’t a lie,” she mused. “I wonder what other skills you acquired?”
I shrugged. Time would reveal whether the potent flesh had changed me in any other way. It was not of immediate concern. Mounting the horse I had chosen, I indicated for Martala to do the same. She stared at me in outrage.
“What about the mule?”
“What of it?”
“Alhazred, you can’t leave it here in the desert. It will die of thirst.”
The impulse to cow her into silence with curses was replaced by amusement. She had just killed a man by running her knife through his heart, and she was concerned over the health of a beast. I had almost forgotten the capriciousness of a woman’s favor.
“Very well. You take the other horses and lead them back toward Memphis. I will search for the mule.”
“You promise,” she said with the expression of a wounded child.
I laughed shortly and nodded. The sound of my laughter made her smile. It sounded strange in my ear-holes.
The moon rose higher in the sky and cast a good light on the sand. It was enough to see the serpentine track winding its way southward between the dunes. There was little breeze, and the hoof prints were still sharply defined. I watched Martala start back with the three horses toward the range of low hills, then turned the head of my own mount and went after the mule.
Its prints told the tale of its flight. At first it had run, but after a short distance its weakness and thirst had compelled it to slow to a walk. It had wandered aimlessly, picking the easiest path around the hills and between the low dunes. The further it went, the less steady the line of prints became, until they staggered like those of a drunkard. I expected at any moment to come upon its body, but when at last I reached the end of the trail, what I saw surprised me.
The mule lay upon its belly, its legs folded under it, watching me with tranquil eyes as I rode around the shoulder of a dune. It gave no expression of alarm at my approach, nor did it make a sound. As I drew near I saw that the corners of its muzzle were flecked with white foam, and that it breathed quick pants of air. Dismounting, I stepped forward and laid my hand on its neck, still sticky with dried sweat. The flesh was hot. Under my touch the mule turned its head to look at me.
Perhaps it was not too late to revive the beast, I thought. Fetching one of the water skins from the horse, I opened it and poured it into my cupped palm under the mule’s nose. It sniffed the water but did not attempt to lap it up. I let a little of the stream flow over its muzzle, and it began to weakly lick at it with its tongue. After a few moments, its interest became more demanding. I let it have its fill, pouring the water into my hand so that it could draw it in with its soft lips, taking care that the beast did not nip off one of my fingers. At last I pulled the skin away, evoking a bray of protest, and poured some of the water over the mule’s head and ears. With my hand I spread it across the neck of the creature, hoping to cool its blood.
“You have a strong heart,” I muttered in my own tongue. “You carried the two of us well. Now you must stand up.”
The animal rolled its brown eye at me. Horses are fabled to comprehend Arabic, but I have heard no opinion on this matter regarding mules. I picked the reins up from the sand and gently tugged at its head. After a few seconds, it lurched to its feet and stood on trembling legs. I gave it more water and watched it drink eagerly. It was a good sign, and I had reason to hope that it would be strong enough to walk back to the city through the cool night air.
The girl had not ridden far. I saw her outlined against the horizon, sitting on her horse and waiting. When she turned at the sound of my approach, she gave a cry of delight.
“All the beasts have been rescued from the desert.”
“Except for the one you killed,” she reminded me with reproach, running her fingers over the rough mane of the mule.
“That one would have died anyway,” I said, but in my heart I was not sure it was the truth.
It was mid-morning before we reached the road leading to the western gate of Memphis. I did not dare ride my horse nearer, but dismounted and had Martala do the same. I gestured for her to get onto the back of the mule, which had become stronger on the walk back to the city. Taking the reins in my hand, I led it along the road. The horses tried to follow at our heels, but a few shouts and claps of my hands made them shy away. We left them nibbling a clump of grass that grew at the base of a hill, for as we approached the Nile the ground became fertile and alive with growing things.
“Are you sure they will be found?” the girl asked.
“This is a well-traveled road. They will be found before noon.”
The gate was already standing wide when the city wall came into view. I drew the mule back along the road before we were seen by someone on the wall.
“Why have you stopped?” the girl asked.
Spreading my arms, I showed her my thawb. She regarded the blood that spattered its front as though seeing it for the first time.
“You must ride to the marketplace and buy me something to wear. I cannot enter the city looking like a butcher. When Farri’s assassins are discovered, some quick-minded guard may connect the two events.”
“What do you wish me to buy?”
“It doesn’t matter. Wait, get something with pockets.”
“Egyptian tunics don’t have pockets,” she said, as though explaining something to a child.
“Just buy clothing that will pass without notice.”
I took out my purse and dug around in it until I found a gold dinar. Martala accepted the coin when I pressed it into her hand and closed her fingers over it.
From the crest of a low hill, I watched her ride slowly through the gate. No one challenged her passage. While I waited with growing impatience, several riders left the city along the road, forcing me to crouch from sight. Flies attracted to the blood on my thawb buzzed around my face. After what must have been nearly an hour, I heard the slow clop of the mule’s hooves on the road. I clapped my hands to draw the girl’s attention to the top of the hill, and gestured for her to lead the animal behind its shelter.
She appeared refreshed and happy. I saw that she had taken the time to wash her face, and guessed that she had already eaten breakfast. My stomach rumbled at the thought. Lifting down a tied bundle from the saddle of the mule, she tossed it toward me. I caught it to keep it from landing in the dust at my feet, and held it on my raised knee to untie it.
“Since you are Muslim, I brought what Muslims usually wear in this land.”
Upon a slope of rock I laid out a tastefully embroidered white shirt with narrow sleeves and a long tail, a loose white surwal the cuffs of which hung below my knees at the length approved by the Prophet, and a long blue Persian coat of the kind that close by wrapping one side over the other. The flaps were held shut both by buttons and a leather belt, which seemed a needless degree of security. To my delight I discovered that the coat had pockets inside each breast.
“I had the tailor put them in,” the girl said with satisfaction when she observed my expression. “That’s why I took so long.”
It was the work of a few minutes to cast off the stained thawb, which stuck to my skin in places with dried blood, and put on my new garments. The girl took my water skin from her saddle, and used it to wash a crust of dried blood from my forehead. I saw that she had refilled it. The weight of the water on my right hip reassured me. I slipped the baldric of my dagger over my head and shoulder, and tied Gor’s skull to my belt next to my purse, then concealed the thawb beneath loose stones and walked alongside the mule toward the gate of Memphis, with the girl riding.
Just in time I remembered to renew the glamour that concealed my face. The gatekeeper watched us enter the city with evident curiosity, but made no remark. I could feel his eyes on my back as we passed, probably wondering about Martala’s comings and goings, and why we had ridden out the day before with two mules and returned with only one. I reflected that it would be best to be away from this place before the corpses in the desert were discovered. Memphis seemed none the worse for being four ruffians fewer. Already the streets thronged with women carrying water pots of baked clay on their heads and merchants pushing their wares toward the market square in two-wheeled carts.
We were making our way toward the stables from which we had hired the mules when I caught a glimpse of familiar features in the corner of my eye. I stopped and looked after the man I had recognized, debating with myself what course to take. The contest was brief. Curiosity alone would never have allowed me to lose sight of the figure that moved so swiftly down the street. I gave the girl another dinar.
“Pay for the dead mule. Make up some plausible tale. I have other business.”
She glanced down the street at the man I had recognized, and I saw by her expression that she would know him if she ever encountered him again.
“How will I find you?”
“Return to the inn. I will meet you there later.”
Without waiting for her agreement, I hurried after the familiar figure. Sliding my body between the colorful mass of humanity that filled the street, while keeping my hand pressed over my purse, I drew nearer to my prey. He moved with quick but relaxed steps, unaware that he was being watched. I had not been mistaken. He had changed from his black monk’s robe to a more common unbelted Egyptian tunic of white linen trimmed with red and blue wool, and wore a white turban in the modest style of a scribe, but his heavy eyebrows made him easy to recognize. It was the young servant of the dark man, whom I had seen in my dream enter through the secret door beneath the tail of the Sphinx.
Chapter 20
The young man continued through the twisted streets of the merchant district with a relaxed stride, completely at his ease. Several times he paused to exchange words with prosperous-looking sellers he chanced to encounter outside the doorways of their shops. I judged him to be either a scholar or a priest not only from the wrap of his turban, but from the pallor of his complexion and the smoothness of his hands, which bore no calluses that I could see at a distance. His clean and polished fingernails were rounded in the usual fashion, proving that he was no worshipper of Bast. I followed and watched all he did, puzzling to myself over his purpose.
He gave a cloth purse of coins to a sunburned Greek seaman with a harsh countenance who loitered in the shadow beneath an archway as though he had been waiting for the scholar. It was no small purse. The Greek wore a costly vest of red silk embroidered with flowers of gold thread over a white shirt, and a billowing white silk surwal, the cuffs of which were tucked into the tops of high boots of soft yellow leather, so I knew he must be the captain or mate of a trading vessel, since no ordinary seaman could afford such apparel.
As I watched the exchange from a street corner, while trying to appear as though I had merely paused to rest my legs, an elderly Egyptian with a white beard who sat beside the threshold of a tailor’s shop pushed himself up with the aid of a walking staff and gestured to the stone block upon which he had been sitting.
“Why did you stand?” I asked in Coptic.
He grinned, showing a gap where several teeth were missing from his mouth.
“You are a follower of the way of the Prophet, are you not?”
I nodded, though in truth I cared nothing for either the Prophet or his teachings.
“It is required that we stand and offer you our seats.”
“Required? Who requires it?”
He looked at me with a faint confusion, as though I were testing him.
“The Amir of Egypt, Alquama al-Azdi, enforces the law of the Caliph at Damascus, Yazid the Great.”
I had heard the Caliph called many things while passing the council chambers of the palace at Sana’a, but great had not been among them. He was more usually referred to as Yazid of the Wines, for he had given up his former love of rose sherbet in favor of the blood of the grape since rising to power three years ago in the place of his father, Mu’awiyya. He was reputed to be cruel and debauched, but could not be all bad, for like the ancient Roman emperor Nero he was also a musician.
“Forgive me,” I said with a smile. “I am new in Egypt, and unfamiliar with its laws.”
Gesturing for him to return to his seat, I continued to follow my quarry as both he and the Greek captain made their way north.
Most of the houses and public buildings were abandoned in the northern section of Memphis, and the stone temples had been pulled down to their foundations, their stones dragged away, so that only their outlines remained on the ground. I stayed well back to avoid being seen, but the pair remained deep in conversation and took no precaution. There were more people, and more signs of industry, as we approached the river where a dozen ships rode the current on their moorings. I judged their cargos of questionable legality. Why else tie up so far from the heart of the city?
They walked onto a stone quay where a ship with a single tall mast and two banks of oars was tied up close to the dock. The Greek barked orders to the seamen who labored to unload numerous oblong crates of wood over the side. Each box was about four cubits in length, and broader than it was deep. It seemed a perfect size to conceal a corpse. Also being unloaded were large-bellied jars of glazed gray clay, similar to the jar I had seen the young scholar carry beneath his arm in my dream, and slender cylinders of polished copper. Whatever the latter held, it must be in the form of a liquid or powder since the mouths of the cylinders were quite narrow.
For a few minutes the two stood together on the dock and watched the work. The scholar, if such he was, spoke a few parting words to the Greek seaman and left him to supervise the unloading. As he made his way back into the street that ran along the riverside and turned his face again to the north, I fell into step behind him.
He pulled aside the dirty linen flap of a door cover and ducked his head to pass beneath the wood lintel of the entrance. Approaching the portal with caution, I guessed from the sound of drunken conversation and the sour smells that drifted out of the interior of the red clay building that it was a wine shop. I took a deep breath, wishing for a nose that I might plug it, and ducked through the doorway. Inside was dark, but cooler than outside. The only light shone through a tiny window in the rear wall. The long and narrow room had a ceiling so low that my short hair, still scarcely more than the fuzz on a peach, brushed one of the rough wooden
beams. Straw lay strewn across the floor, but I saw that it was clean straw, probably scattered on the clay that very morning.
A score of seamen and laborers sat at square tables, lost in drink and talk. They turned when I entered, the scholar among them, but soon resumed their muttered conversations. A few were Egyptians, the rest Greeks. None of them offered me his seat. Since there were several empty places, this was of no concern. The young man left the wooden counter at which he stood with a tin cup in his hand that almost overflowed with red wine, and made his careful way toward the tables, so intent on preserving his drink that he took no further notice of me. I caught the eye of the owner across the room and pointed at the cup the scholar held, indicating with gestures that I wished the same. The owner nodded.
The scholar sat himself at an empty table and sipped his wine. He raised his thick eyebrows with curiosity when I approached. I was reasonably sure from his guileless expression that he had not noticed me follow him through the streets.
“You look like a man of rank and learning,” I said in Greek. “May I sit with you? I have no wish to talk about bilge buckets and sail mending.”
He shrugged his narrow shoulders with a faint smile.
“Hardly a man of rank, but I am a seeker after wisdom.”
I lowered myself onto a rough stool and regarded him across the table with what I hoped was a disarming expression.
“I myself am a traveler from the city of Sana’a, but newly arrived on the Nile. My father wished me to view the world before I took up my duties in the palace administration of King Huban ibn Abd Allah, the ruler of Yemen, so I have no purpose here other than to watch and learn.”
“Your father is a wise man. I can imagine no better preparation for life than a journey to distant nations. Are you alone?”
“Yes, apart from a single servant I acquired in Bubastis.”
“My name is Drunellu,” he said. “Everyone calls me Dru.”
“I am called Alhazred.”
The owner of the shop brought a tall tin cup filled to the brim with red wine and set it before me. I took out my purse and gave him one of the bronze fils I had stolen from the corpses of the assassins, taking care that Dru saw the weight of the purse before I put it away.