Throne of the Crescent Moon

by Saladin Ahmed

  Even when civil war had wracked the city two hundred years earlier, Angels’ Square had been a sanctuary of sorts. All sides had agreed to shed no blood on its stones. Though crowded cheek-by-jowl with refuge-seekers, one could taste the peace of the place in the air, or so the historians and passed-down stories said. Today, aside from the pack of sightseekers, the square was largely quiet. If there weren’t such grim work before him, Adoulla thought he might have felt some of the old peace. Instead, his thoughts were on tracking spells and a child’s bloodied clothing.

  He and Raseed left Angels’ Square behind for grimy Gruel Lane. On the Khalif’s maps, the narrow, dirty street that led from the Square to Adoulla’s neighborhood bore the name of some long-dead ruler. But for centuries Dhamsawaatis had called it Gruel Lane for its poverty and its inhospitable inns. Avoiding the occasional puddle of piss, Adoulla made it to the corner that marked the border of his rough neighborhood, the ironically named Scholars’ Quarter.

  Pious old Munesh, with his wisps of white hair and his roasted-nut stall, stood on the corner agitating fire-heated trays of sugared almonds and salted pistachios. The aroma made Adoulla’s mouth water. He stopped to buy a handful of roasted pistachios.

  “Doctor!” Raseed had been silent for much of their walk home, and Adoulla had almost forgotten he was there. The dervish was clearly scandalized by the delay. Adoulla wished he were young enough to believe that zeal and an urge to combat monsters were enough to fill one’s stomach. But the years had taught him otherwise, and he had a long day ahead of him.

  “I’ve had only half a breakfast, boy. I need sustenance to think clearly, and a handful of moments here will matter little enough. The Heavenly Chapters say ‘A starving man builds no palaces.’”

  “They also say ‘For the starving man, prayer is better than food.’”

  Adoulla gave up. He grunted to Raseed, thanked Munesh and walked on, cracking shells and munching noisily.

  His assistant was a true dervish of the Order, truer than most of the hypocritical peacocks who wore the blue silks. He had spent years hardening his diminutive body, his only purpose to be a fitter and fitter weapon of God. To Adoulla’s mind, it was an unhealthy approach to life for a boy of seven and ten. True, God had granted Raseed more than human powers; armed with the forked sword of his order, he was nearly invincible. Even without the sword the boy could take on half a dozen men at once. Adoulla had seen him do it. But the fact that he had never so much as kissed a girl lessened Adoulla’s respect for him considerably.

  Still, it was Raseed’s pious discipline that made him such a good battle companion. A man’s character was most clearly displayed in the uses he put his gifts to. In his forty years as a ghul hunter, Adoulla had seen a man jump twenty feet into the air and had watched a girl turn water into fire. He had seen a warrior split himself into two warriors, then four. He had watched as an old lady made trees walk.

  What he had seen people do with such powers varied as much, or as little, as people themselves. Their motivations covered the same range of reasons all men and women did things. Occasionally they helped other people and made sacrifices. More often, they acted selfishly and did wrong to their fellow children of God. Raseed, for his part, always went the first route.

  A neighbor’s child hollered Adoulla’s name and waved in greeting from across the packed-dirt street. Clearing his mind of extraneous thoughts and slurping the last bits of salt and pistachio from his fingers, Adoulla waved back and stepped onto his own block.

  He passed the small sandstone shop that belonged to his friends and ex-traveling companions, Dawoud and Litaz, a Soo couple who had lived in the city for decades. Apparently they were not home—the shop’s cedar shutters were drawn tight. Too bad. Adoulla would never have asked his retired friends to accompany him on this ghul hunt, but Litaz had kept up with her alkhemy, and it would have been nice to borrow one of her remarkable freezing solutions or explosive preparations to aid in his work.

  But it was Idesday, so Adoulla guessed that the couple would be spending the day and perhaps the night with friends at the Western Market, where traders from the Soo Republic swept in once a month with ivory, gold, and the yam candies that Litaz always had on hand to remind herself of home.

  Finally, he and Raseed reached the pale stone townhouse that had been Adoulla’s thin slice of Dhamsawaat for twenty-odd years. Adoulla opened the white-painted wood door of the townhouse and stepped through the gently arched doorway, the dervish following.

  It was no palace. But it was much better than the hovels that were his origin and likely inheritance as an orphan on Dead Donkey Lane. That he’d been able to buy the building at all had been due to the vagaries of his calling, which for once had worked to his advantage. Many years ago he had, with Dawoud and Litaz, fought a golden snake forty feet long, with huge rubies for eyes—an ancient monster created in the days of the Faroes of Kem and awakened by a greedy man’s digging. Just looking at the glittering serpent caused magical fear in even a stout heart, and it had already slain a squadron of the old Khalif’s watchmen. But Adoulla and his friends had ambushed the creature and drained its animating magic.

  The serpent had collapsed as they’d watched, crumbling into huge piles of gold dust. Near thirty years later, Adoulla could still smilingly recall the sound of those fist-sized rubies falling to the ground. I am now a rich man, he remembered thinking as he and his friends had gleefully scooped gold dust into their pouches and sacks, doing little dances of celebration all the while.

  It had been a treasure to rival those of Dhamsawaat’s great merchants. And though, over the past twenty-odd years, his calling had forced him to undertake several expensive journeys to distant places, he still had a respectable sum. He had no wife or children to keep, after all. His expenses had increased two years ago when Raseed, who had aided Adoulla admirably in a ghul hunt, had asked to stay on as an assistant. But even that had not cost him much, as the boy ate such simple fare.

  Adoulla set to gathering his things. The marshes were less than a day’s ride west by mule, so they’d need little in the way of traveling supplies. But there were preparations to be made for any ghul hunt. He slung a large, worn satchel of brown calfskin over his shoulder and moved about the townhouse’s book-and box-cluttered rooms. As he went, he stuffed the bag with things collected from shelves, tabletops and undusted corners. A punk of aloewood. A box of scripture-engraved needles. A vial of dried mint leaves. Pouches and packets, scraps of paper and bright little bottles wrapped in cloth.

  In a quarter hour’s time he was ready to go, and Raseed was already standing by the door, cleaning his sword. The dervish’s own possessions were few: the sword, his blue silks, his turban made from a length of strong silk that could double for climbing or binding. He toted a square pack on his back that held their foodstuffs, a half-tent, and a small cookpot.

  The boy ran his gaze up and down his sword’s blade and slid it carefully into its ornate sheath of blue leather and lapis lazuli. Adoulla had watched him clean the blade just yesterday, and he doubted that the boy’s sword had grown dirty since then. But he had come to understand that this ritual of Raseed’s was about more than maintaining a cherished weapon. It was about focus. About reminding himself, each and every day, what truly mattered to him.

  Taking a last long look around the bookshelves and bureaus of his townhouse, Adoulla himself felt something similar.

  Chapter 3

  MEN AND WOMEN PACKED the stone Mainway and the sidestreets, inching along and shouting in competition for the few sedan chairs and mule rides available. From what Adoulla could see, those on foot were actually moving faster. Which meant that they would be walking to the stables at the edge of the city. Wonderful. He ought to have been born a Badawi tribesman, for all the walking he had done in his life. But on they walked, moving westward for half an hour.

  “So here we are again,” he grunted at Raseed, tired of the silence between them. “Leaving behind safety and comfort to kill
monsters. Maybe to be killed. Almighty God knows I don’t have much more of this left in me. You’ll soon have to do this without a mentor, you know.”

  “You don’t really mean that, Doctor.” The boy crinkled his fine featured face in distaste as they passed a refuse cart, broken down in the middle of the street and stinking in the morning sun.

  “I don’t mean it? Hmph. Need I remind you of our last excursion? I was nearly beheaded, boy! This is how an old man should be living?”

  “We saved lives, Doctor. Children’s lives.”

  Adoulla managed to half-smile at the dervish. I wish the knowledge of that still kept my feet from aching, the way it did when I was your age, he thought. I wish it could keep me from freezing up and accepting death. But what he said was, “Yes, I suppose we did.”

  They kept walking, making their way past the gaudy storefronts that lined the Lane of Monkeys. Adoulla watched an ancient husband and wife sitting cross-legged on a long reed mat in front of a teahouse ahead of them. They were all dirty gray hair and wrinkled brown skin, playing a fierce game of bakgam. The man moved his token across the board’s painted sword tips and, with a loud clack and a victorious smile, landed on the first sword. The old woman was about to lose. She scowled and spat, the glob nearly hitting Raseed as he and Adoulla walked by.

  Just after they passed the old couple, Adoulla heard the rattle of triangle dice in the bakgam cup, the clatter as they hit the board, and a series of shouts. The old woman cackled and began a taunting, incomprehensible victory song as her husband cursed in disbelief. She’d rolled an eight!

  That should be Miri and me, Adoulla couldn’t help thinking. He should have married Miri a long time ago. He should have left the lunatic life of a ghul hunter. Instead, year after year, he had foolishly decided that fighting fanged things and stopping the spells of wicked men was more important than happiness. Instead of a blissful marriage, he had monstrosities on his mind and a pile of “should haves” pressing down upon his soul.

  He and Raseed finally neared the western gate which would take them out of the city. As they crossed a small alleyway, a doe-eyed girl of an age with Raseed smiled a none-too-shy smile at the dervish. Raseed made a choking noise and kept his eyes on the ground until the girl was a block away.

  Though he knew it was a lost cause, Adoulla couldn’t help himself. “What is wrong with you, boy? Did you not see the way that little flower looked at you? You could have at least smiled back!”

  “Doctor, please!” The boy paused. “This attack. You spoke of the extraordinary powers of this ghul pack’s master. Do you think one of the Thousand and One, rather than a man, made these ghuls?”

  So much focus on duty, so much neglect of what really matters. He doesn’t know the painful end of this road….

  Adoulla abandoned his avuncular attempt to get Raseed to act like a living, breathing young man. The dervish would rather think about monsters than smile at a girl. Very well. But he sounded too eager about the possibility of fighting a djenn. If he’d ever actually faced one of the Thousand and One in battle, he’d feel differently.

  “It wasn’t a djenn, boy. When one of the fire-born strikes, no one escapes, least of all a child.”

  The dervish nodded thoughtfully. Whatever else Adoulla found irritating about Raseed, he was at least deferential to Adoulla’s experience.

  “I wonder—” Adoulla continued as they rounded a corner, but the words twisted into a shouted curse as he saw the massive crowd that lay before them.

  “Ahhh, God’s balls! The Horrible Halt!” Adoulla pronounced the Dhamsawaati term for the complete standstill of traffic with a familiar disgust. Before them, a wall of people seemed to rise up as the blocks-long tangle of carts, camels, and fools slowly pinched its way through the wide western gate. Adoulla collided with an unwashed little man who had been walking in front of him. He barely acknowledged the man’s loud admonition to watch where he put his big feet.

  “Some sort of gate inspection?” Raseed asked.

  Adoulla snorted. “‘Gate inspection,’ ‘tariff-checks,’ ‘watchmen’s business.’ It’s all the same monkeyshit. And there’s more of it every day.” At the rate the line was moving, it would be another hour before they were through.

  A ghul pack was loose, which meant lives were at stake. But Dhamsawaat’s hundred headaches hurried for no man. One did not walk through the gates of Dhamsawaat the way one walked through a townhouse door. There was first the gray stone inner wall, then one passed through Inspector’s Square, and then through the great main wall, a hundred feet thick. Then one crossed a house-lined lane past the last guardwall before taking the Bridge of Yellow Roses over a ditch. The process had never been a quick one, and due to the new Khalif’s poor city management, it took longer than ever.

  The duo cut through the throng as best they could without being truly rude. Adoulla did not want to start a fight, and fights were not uncommon in situations like these. Another quarter-hour and he and Raseed managed to get near the wide gate at the main wall. There the road rose slightly, and Adoulla saw that this was more than a simple traffic tangle.

  An execution! The great gray paving stones of Inspector’s Square had been cleared of carts. At its center lay a worn leather mat. A boy of no more than two and ten kneeled on the mat, his hands and feet bound and his eyes wide with terror. A huge, hooded man with a broad bladed sword stood over him.

  Adoulla stopped walking, transfixed with horror. Name of God! What could a child that age have possibly done to deserve such a fate?

  As if in answer, a high-pitched voice assaulted his ears. Turning toward the sound, he saw a liveried crier standing in an alcove carved in the stone archway above the gate. The man shouted shrilly through a metal cone.

  “O fortunate subjects of God’s Regent in the World, the Defender of Virtue, the Most Exalted of Men, His Majesty the Khalif, how God smiles upon you to provide you with such a ruler! See how your benevolent monarch, Jabbari akh-Khaddari, Khalif of Abassen and of all the Crescent Moon Kingdoms, protects you from the grasping hands of thieves! See how he punishes the wicked swiftly and terribly!”

  Traffic still moved at an inchworm’s pace, but most of the folk on the road were now gawking at the square. Adoulla stood still, wanting to stop this wickedness but knowing he could not. Someone behind him pushed past, trying to get forward in the press.

  He looked back to the leather mat. Almighty God, why do you allow this? Why do you send me to fight monsters outside of my city while such monsters live within it?

  God did not answer.

  Raseed, who had also stopped, looked at him with concern. “Doctor, what do you—”

  Without warning, something flew at the hooded executioner’s face, covering it in an amber goop. Then the man’s chest exploded in red.

  A crossbow bolt! Men and women screamed. There was a sound like a thundercrack and a puff of orange smoke suddenly obscured the square. A moment later, the smoke cleared and Adoulla saw only the sprawled form of the dead executioner.

  The bound boy was gone.

  What could—?

  There was another thundercrack, this one from the alcove above the gate. More orange smoke wreathed the recess where the crier had stood. It cleared almost instantly, and Adoulla made out the crier’s liveried form slumped at the feet of a tall, broad-shouldered man. This man wore a costume of calfskin and black silk, emblazoned with falcons. His arms were as thick as some men’s legs, but he moved like a dancer as he stepped to the alcove’s lip.

  It’s him! thought Adoulla, who’d heard much of the man but never seen him. Pharaad Az Hammaz, the—

  “The Falcon Prince!” The words left a dozen mouths around Adoulla.

  More trouble. A confident grin split the famous thief’s moustachioed face. Adoulla shouldn’t have been able to read the man’s facial expression quite so clearly at such a distance. An address-spell was at work, then—the kind that, supposedly, only the Khalif could afford. Every person in the crowd wou
ld have the same clear view of the Falcon Prince, would hear his words as if he stood beside them, and would find themselves…not coerced by the Prince’s magic, but open to hearing what he had to say. It was likely the only reason they weren’t panicking and fleeing.

  Raseed growled. “The criminal!”

  Well, most people would be open to hearing the man, Adoulla corrected himself. Technically, Adoulla could not dispute Raseed’s epithet. Ten years ago, a string of flamboyant robberies of the city’s wealthiest citizens were showily announced to be the work of a single brilliant bandit, who called himself the Falcon Prince. Pharaad Az Hammaz, as he had later revealed his name to be, never himself claimed to be true royalty, but the rumors persisted that he was the last heir of a kingly line from Abassen’s dim past.

  Royalty or not, the Falcon Prince was one of the most powerful men in Dhamsawaat. He and his small army of beggars and thieves had become an almost governmental force, the semiofficial voice of the poor. And while the landowners and merchants who took up the cry of “share the wealth” were few and far between, Adoulla had heard from sound sources that a few of the Khalif’s most powerful ministers, due to personal conviction or bribery, secretly backed the bandit.

  “God’s peace, good people of Dhamsawaat!” The thief boomed, his outstretched arms embracing the crowd. “Our time together is short! Hear the words of a Prince who loves you!” A small, cautious cheer went up from a few corners. “I’ve freed an innocent boy from the Khalif’s headsman. His crime? Being fool enough to think he could pick coins from a watchman’s purse and feed his ailing mother! Now, we grown folk know that watchmen are as attached to their purses as normal men are to their olive sacks.” The bandit grabbed at his crotch and the crowd laughed hesitantly at his bawdiness. “But did the child deserve to die? Do we Dhamsawaatis care more for the ill-earned wealth of bullies than for the life of a child?”