Keziah had no idea what to say.
Aunt Sofia turned out to be a much better liar than Keziah had realized. Cleverer, too. Aunt Sofia clasped her hands together in a pose of terrified supplication, fixed her wide dark eyes submissively on the bloody tiles, and swore she had seen everything, every detail of the fight between Uncle Rayan and Uncle Youssef that had left both black wolf men dead. Keziah knelt with her hand resting lightly on Amira’s shivering back and listened in amazement.
“Rayan wanted the little one, the one the women call Amira, but she is so little, only recently has she turned seven,” whispered Aunt Sofia. “But what could I do? Rayan said I must bring her here. So I brought her, but first I cut her, I borrowed Youssef’s knife and cut her so he would not want her. He was so angry. But Youssef found out why I had taken his knife. He came here also. He was very angry also, but not with me. I am only a weak and foolish woman, so what could I do but what I did? He was angry with Rayan. He quarreled with him, and they fought.”
“You cut the girl?” said Keziah’s father. He studied Amira. He had returned to human form, all the men had, but he looked hardly less dangerous for that. Keziah didn’t know whether he had ever looked at his younger daughter before, but he stared at her now. Amira cowered, seeming tiny and even younger than her seven years.
Aunt Sofia looked anxiously from the girls to the black wolf men and wrung her hands, trembling. “I did not know what else to do, Rayiysi. Rayan said I must bring her. But it would have been wrong to let him so use your own daughter.”
“And then he and Youssef fought?” Keziah’s father surveyed the scene again, grimly, this time never quite looking at Amira. He was frowning, angry and perhaps suspicious. “Over the girl?”
“Oh, no, not just because of the child.” Aunt Sofia answered as though surprised by the suggestion. “Youssef was angry because he said Rayan was foolish to unsettle the household in times of trouble, and he was angry because it was his knife that had cut your daughter, and the—the smell of black wolf blood, even a girl’s, he said it was not wise to shed blood when there might be khafash nearby watching for signs of weakness. And Rayan said the child was not good for anything else and it was all very well for a man who had his own woman, even a heavy pale overblown woman. That is what he said. I knew then they would fight, Rayiysi, and so I—I tried to keep the girls away. I pushed them in the pool and—and I tried to stop your brothers, truly, but what could I do? I am only a woman.”
Keziah found this account perfectly unbelievable, but Aunt Sofia told it with total conviction, just as though it was entirely true. Keziah could see, peering covertly up through her lashes, that the male black wolves believed it. Her father looked back and forth between the two bodies with heavy scorn. Then he stared once more across the pool toward the girls. Then he said to Aunt Sofia, “You should not have cut my daughter with a silver knife. Look at her. That will scar badly. She is completely useless to me now.”
“I—I did not know what else to do,” whispered Aunt Sofia. “If he had taken her, she would have been likewise ruined for any proper marriage. What man would want her after Rayan had her?”
“Stupid woman,” Keziah’s father said contemptuously. “Nothing he did to her would have marked her. Now this daughter of mine is marked forever. You should have come to me.”
“I—I didn’t think you—he was your brother—he ordered me –” Aunt Sofia wrung her hands again, sounding for all the world like she was truly devastated over what had happened, and half-witted besides.
Keziah’s father swept the sword he still held up and around and cut off Aunt Sofia’s head. The blow was so fast and so unexpected that at first Keziah didn’t understand what he had done, what she had seen him do. It seemed to take a long time for Aunt Sofia’s head to strike the tiles and roll grotesquely away into the oleander, for her body to crumple, for the blood to pour out. Next to Keziah, Amira stopped shivering, holding perfectly still, and after an instant Keziah understood her little sister was waiting to see whether their father would kill her, too. Aunt Sofia for the crime of marking her, Amira for the crime of bearing a disfiguring scar that would render her not only utterly useless but also unsightly.
For a long moment, their father stared across the pool at them. Then, perhaps judging that it would be too much trouble to stride around the pool to kill Amira, he turned away and began to give orders to other men: to clean up the pool enclosure and to see to his brothers’ bodies. As far as Keziah could tell, he had completely dismissed both his daughters from his attention. If he had ever wondered about her own presence here, utterly ignored by Aunt Sofia, he did not care enough to demand answers. Lest he might yet think of questions to ask, she touched Amira lightly on the arm and drew her little sister after her, away. Out of sight and away.
After that the household seemed different. Quieter. Grimmer. In the women’s quarters, Youssef’s Russian woman wept, and her daughters wept with her. Keziah wanted to command them to be quiet. But she felt oddly like she almost understood them, and even, more strangely, she felt as though she owed those women tolerance. Uncle Youssef had been their protector, as much as any woman had a protector in Riyadh. Now the girls of his blood had no male who cared whether they lived or died, and though neither Keziah’s father nor Uncle Ahmed was likely to notice them, neither would trouble to protect them from the male cousins.
Their father sent for Amira and examined her face, so Keziah had to wait in fear to see whether her sister would return to the woman’s quarters. Keziah had done everything wrong; she saw this now. She should have forgotten vengeance and vows, she should have taken Amira and fled as soon as her little sister was old enough....Only it would have been impossible. Their father would never have permitted his possessions to escape him.
So then she thought she should have planned to kill their father first of all, before even Uncle Hamsa.
Only then Uncle Ahmed would have been lord of the household, and he was clever and disciplined; more clever and disciplined than her father, the most dangerous of all the uncles.
So then Keziah did not know what else she should have done. Except be cleverer and plan better and not let things go wrong. She saw she had not thought enough about what to do after taking vengeance; about how to flee and survive. Aunt Sofia might have thought more on these things. Now Keziah must think and be clever, or in the end she and Amira would surely both die. If they survived this night.
Zara had stitched up Amira’s wound with black silk, the way a human’s wound might be stitched. Aunt Sofia would have done a better job, Keziah was certain. Zara’s work was neat enough, but she said the wound would scar. There was nothing any of them could do about that.
Even with the black silk stitches vivid across her face, their father did not kill Amira. Keziah’s little sister returned, pale and silent, but safe. As safe as any of them. Keziah touched her hand and wished she could take her little sister hunting in the desert. But with the household wary and upset and without Aunt Sofia to keep watch, even that was impossible.
So Keziah began to spend much time drifting softly through the men’s part of the villa, silent and listening. She tried to be very careful, but she knew she had to find things out. Without Aunt Sofia, how would she ever know what the men were thinking and saying and planning? She had not realized before how much information Aunt Sofia had collected and shared, or how much all the women had depended on her to tell them what was happening in the men’s part of the villa. So Keziah learned to hide, and sneak, and draw up shadows to hide herself. It was like hunting, but different. It pleased her to think of her father and Uncle Ahmed as her prey, though it also frightened her to think of them that way.
The cousins were less frightening and noisier and more foolish, and Keziah listened more to them. Malik and Saad were the leaders among the young men, and Saleh sometimes. Atif was quieter than the others. Keziah thought he would eventually become the master of the household, for all Malik strutted and reminded the other
s he was the elder son of the eldest brother of her father. But even he did not look closely enough into the shadows to find Keziah listening there.
As her face healed and the blood smell faded, Amira began to follow her on these forays. Keziah taught her little sister all that she had learned. She taught her to give her weight into her shadow so she could walk in total silence; to make herself into a hollow place in the air; to pretend she was emptiness, was dust, was nothing. Amira practiced on the human women until she learned to make even a quick, fearful eye look past her; and then she practiced on Keziah because the senses of a black wolf were harder to confuse than those of a human. Then she began to venture into the men’s part of the villa.
“Softly. Softly,” Keziah cautioned her little sister. “Patience is hard, I know. But above everything we must rule impatience, for it can kill us as surely as—more surely than—any other foolishness. We have seen now how careful we must be, and how patient. We must practice being quiet, being nothing, for in the end we must cross the empty lands unseen so that we may escape.”
Amira listened to her and nodded earnestly. “Where will we go?”
“Oh…France,” Keziah said almost at random. She knew that beautiful clothing and jewelry came from France. “We will cross the empty lands and the seas and go to Paris. That is the city that is the heart of France. There is no sand there, no desert. It is a cold land where there are no kings and black wolves must be cautious. That is what the slaves say. Even if our cousins seek us there, they must be cautious. We will be clever and quiet and they will never find us.”
“Is Paris very far away?”
Keziah hardly knew. She said, “We will find maps and look. We will plan how to go. We will take jewelry and money so we can buy everything we need.” As she said this, she realized how little she had prepared and how much more clever she must be, and the realization almost overwhelmed her. But she said confidently, “We will have time. First we must kill Uncle Ahmed and our father. And Malik as well, and perhaps some of the other cousins. While we plan that, we shall also plan the rest.”
Amira listened to her and tried to do everything she said. Keziah tried hard to be right in everything lest she mislead her sister into disaster a second time. She feared discovery for her sister’s sake more than for her own, for she could not believe their father would forgive Amira anything now that she was scarred. It dawned on her gradually that this fierce protectiveness must be what a human meant by fondness. It was a strange realization. It made her feel a little more familiar with the human slaves of the household; a little more mindful. A little more kind.
In their quiet listening, in their discreet search for maps and papers, both Keziah and Amira learned more about the Quiet War and about the khafash. The other women heard a word here and there, and they murmured together of what they heard, and to this gossip as well Keziah listened carefully. Keziah began to put together an idea of people of blood and of the Quiet War. She had not managed to blame Rayan’s death on the khafash as she had originally planned, but it had not been a stupid idea. A black wolf cartel in Yemen was known to have lost several sons to the people of blood; likewise a cartel in the Emirates. So, closer to home, had a family in Jeddah and a cartel in Medina.
The khafash were a little like black wolves. They did not touch silver. They made ordinary humans into their slaves and their cattle, but worse than black wolves, for they made their slaves into creatures less than human. Keziah did not know exactly what this meant; frustratingly, nothing she heard or read explained it. But she understood that the khafash would not suffer rivals. They killed any that opposed them. They killed by spilling blood; they killed by corrupting flesh; they killed in ways that Keziah did not understand. But she thought about ways to make death look like it came from the hands of the people of blood. She thought about this all the time.
The Quiet War had begun some time before; Keziah could not tell how long, for no one spoke of that. It had not touched Saudi Arabia at all, not for a long time. Neither Saudi Arabia nor Jordan nor Iraq, nor Oman nor Yemen nor Egypt nor any important country. It had been a war far away, on the other side of the world, in America. The black wolves there had begun it. Then the war had spread to Europe, even to France. In a way this was useful, for the black wolves of Europe were in disarray and surely had little attention to spare for hunting two Saudi girls—if she and Amira could get so far. She knew better now how far France was, and how many lands lay between, and she feared the khafash might have very much attention bent toward hunting black wolves. Even girls.
Now the war had come here, too. Only a little so far, but her father and remaining uncle thought it would get worse. Again Keziah thought that in one way this might be useful and in another way dangerous.
“Dimilioc’s war,” her father declared in disgust, speaking to Uncle Ahmed, one evening when Keziah was concealed and listening. She did not know the word, Dimilioc, and tucked it away to remember. “It’s bad for us all. Did the vampires trouble us here?” He used an English word Keziah did not know, but plainly he meant the khafash. “No,” he continued. “The desert lands have always been ours. Now there is all...this.”
Keziah heard the heavy thump as her father struck a table or wall on that last word. She was always listening these days, while Amira guarded the way back into the woman’s part of the villa. Or Amira listened and Keziah guarded her little sister’s retreat. Sometimes one and sometimes the other. That was fair.
Her father went on, “And now my household has fewer strong black wolves to face any threat. We should all come together for a great hunt, all of us together, sweep across the desert and through the cities and force all the vampires who have dared come across the sea into the sun to burn. But the king delays and his sons quarrel and every house is left on its own.”
“Ibn Abdel has lost two sons already, and a daughter,” agreed Uncle Ahmed. “He might ally with us in such an effort even if the king will not give the command. I have learned something interesting: he has captured one of the Nurullah women, and set her to laying wards around his palace and lands.”
“Oh, a Naqi woman!” said Keziah’s father with contempt. But then he added, “Still, I cannot say this was unwise. Find out if ibn Abdel will sell her to me when he has done with her. Or if he means to breed her to his black wolf sons, well enough, but perhaps then we might...rent her. Find out what he would demand in return, Ahmed.”
“Too much,” Uncle Ahmed muttered. “We should get one of our own. Probably not from Lebanon. Nurullah will guard their women all the more closely now they have lost one. Israel is hopeless; the families there are far too well-guarded. But we could set our agents moving in...Morocco, perhaps. The black wolves there have been engaged in the Quiet War longer than we. They have lost many of their people. What few remain surely cannot hold their territory secure against a bold move.”
“If they are so weak, they will have no Pure women remaining,” disagreed Keziah’s father. “The vampires hunt those women first among all prey. This woman of ibn Abdel’s is the better choice, however expensive she might be. Inquire, Ahmed, and we shall see whether she may be made available to us.”
Uncle Ahmed complained about the impoverishment of the household, but he did not protest too loudly. Keziah slipped away to find Zara, wanting to ask about these Pure women, who were so important even Uncle Ahmed was willing to spend money to get one.
“Ah, the Pure,” murmured Zara. She was afraid of Keziah in a way Aunt Sofia had never feared her, so she glanced away as she spoke. But she answered willingly enough. “I don’t know about the khafash, but yes, these Pure are said to carry magic in their hands so they may curse a black wolf and weaken his shadow. In Lebanon, yes, and Jordan, and Israel, but also in Tunisia and Morocco and all through Europe. They teach a black wolf to go right when the dark half of his soul urges him to go left—so it is said. Who knows whether that is true? They are also said to weaken black wolves too much, so that men lose their mastery over wome
n.” She glanced warily at Keziah and away again. “I do not know whether that is true either. I think it cannot be true. Everyone knows the Israelis are fierce—and if the black wolves of Lebanon and Jordan were so weak, surely our men would have driven them out and taken their lands and their women long ago. So it cannot be true.”
Keziah also thought this was not likely. But she demanded, “Why did no one tell me of these women before?”
Zara flinched at Keziah’s aggressive tone. She said softly, “Because it does not matter whether those stories are true in those other lands. Pure women are as weak as any others when our men bring them here into the desert.” Zara saw Keziah’s bewilderment and sighed. “Listen, then, and I will tell you. Kalila’s grandmother, your great-grandmother, was of that kind. Your great-grandfather stole her from Lebanon, from the black wolf house called Nurullah, as now ibn Abdel has taken this other woman. Did Sofia not tell you so? Well, it does not matter, because whatever stories women whisper of the Pure, your great-grandmother was no stronger than any other woman. Maybe that is why Sofia did not tell you: because one must seek protection from black wolves and not from the Pure. She died young, your great-grandmother, long before I was born. I remember the old women speaking of her. They said she was wise. If she was, her wisdom did not help her. The black wolves hated her and valued her and got children of her and killed her, as they would do with any woman. She could not protect anyone. Not even herself.”
Keziah nodded as though she did not really care. She didn’t like to show anyone what she was thinking, certainly not Zara. But what she was thinking, for the first time in her life, was that after she and Amira killed their father, if they wanted to live, they must go somewhere. She was thinking that perhaps Lebanon might not be too far. A country where black wolf men had lost their mastery over women! She could not really imagine this. But now she knew she wanted to be able to imagine it.
Black Dog Short Stories II Page 5