Throne of the Crescent Moon

by Saladin Ahmed

  The crowd grew bolder, and shouts of “No, no!” and “May God forbid it!” erupted from all corners.

  The Falcon Prince stood, hands on hips, drinking it in. “I am guilty, good people! I freed the boy. I hit the headsman with a honey pie before I killed him! Only a hungry, hungry man would chop off a child’s head for a few filthy coins. So I fed him! Honey and steel, good people!” The crowd laughed loudly now at the Falcon’s cheerful, casual tone, and he went on.

  “The old Khalif and I were enemies. He was no hero, but he spent fifty years watching over this city, which he loved. But for three years now, his fool of a son has bled Dhamsawaat. He has tried to find me and kill me. He! Has! Failed!” With the help of the address-spell, the Falcon boomed each word with a great drum’s rumble.

  The crowd sent up a boisterous cheer, and a small knot of men took up a chant:

  Fly, fly, O falcon!

  Thy wing no dart can pierce!

  Fly, fly, O falcon!

  Thy heart and eye so fierce!

  The old-as-sand song—in which a noble falcon gouges out the eyes of a cruel king—had become associated with the Falcon Prince, and the new Khalif had made the singing of it punishable by flogging.

  There’s going to be real trouble here. A dozen watchmen in riveted jerkins shoved their way through the packed crowd toward the gate. They brandished slender steel maces and tried to keep their eyes on the alcove and the crowd at the same time.

  As the Khalif’s men moved toward the knot of singers the song died down. At once, though, a fresh round of “Fly, O Falcon” went up on the opposite side of the crowd. The watchmen’s heads all whipped toward the sound in unison, but they let the singers be and tried to reach the Prince himself, who had stopped speechifying to caper to the tune as best he could in the small alcove. The bandit’s jollity only caused the singers in the crowd to sing more boisterously. This time, men did not stop chanting when the knot of watchmen passed. And Adoulla saw the Khalif’s men were scanning the crowd more anxiously as they made their way toward the gate. A dozen against hundreds.

  Beside him, Adoulla sensed a sudden battle tension in his protégé. Raseed drew his sword soundlessly, and everyone around him took a step back. The blade was two-pronged, according to the Traditions of the Order, “in order to cleave right from wrong.” Adoulla feared that Raseed was about to try to do so now.

  “What are you doing?” Adoulla whispered.

  “I’m going to help the watchmen, Doctor.”

  “The Falcon Prince is not our enemy, boy.”

  “With apologies, Doctor, he is not a prince. He uses magic to commit crimes. Exactly the sort of thing that we are obligated to fight!”

  Raseed started to move again, but Adoulla grabbed his slender shoulder. He could hardly restrain Raseed if the dervish chose to interfere, but Adoulla hoped his age and authority would prevail.

  “We are obligated to fight the servants of the Traitorous Angel. Pharaad Az Hammaz may be a criminal, but he feeds the poor and chastens the proud. Surely even your zealous eyes can see the virtue in that!”

  The boy said nothing. He frowned hard at Adoulla. Then he sheathed his sword.

  In the alcove, the Falcon Prince spread his huge hands wide as if welcoming the approaching watchmen to a banquet. “The Khalif’s dogs come for me, my friends! If you hear their yappy mouths a-cursing, it is because some scoundrel has sabotaged their crossbows! But this is only the beginning, dear Dhamsawaatis! Stand ready! The day comes soon when we take back what is ours! There will be choices before us all, though some would have us believe that they are meant by God to do our choosing for us! But are we of Dhamsawaat bound by chains forged by the tyrants of past days? Does a man rule us without limit or wisdom just because his father ruled?”

  A booming “NO!” went up from the crowd, and a dozen different voices shouted support.

  “Let the Falcon rule!”

  “God grant us a wise Khalif!”

  “No chains here, O Falcon!”

  Adoulla would wager money that the flamboyant thief had placed these men and women in the crowd himself. The watchmen were nearly at the gate now, but they had to push through an increasingly hostile crowd. The Prince continued.

  “We of the Jewel of Abassen love a Khalif who does his duty. Who helps feed his people. Who steals not their coin. But a Khalif who dooms us with his greed and his cruelty? Well—” menace edged into the bandit’s voice “— well, even a Khalif is but a man, and better a bad man should die than our good city!” Due to the address-spell everyone in the crowd saw the infectious gleam in the Falcon Prince’s eye.

  A clamor went up from the crowd. Some of it was outraged muttering. But a good number of folk were clearly emboldened by the Prince’s regicidal words, and they made a lot of noise. At the edge of the crowd Adoulla noticed an extravagantly dressed merchant and a liveried civil servant making their way out of the crowd, frightened looks on their faces.

  Raseed put a hand back to his sword hilt and shifted restlessly.

  “When there is little food to buy and less work to be had, when half our sons have known the gaol and half our daughters have been shamed by watchmen, the people of Dhamsawaat have risen up before! It will happen again, my friends! Stand ready! Stand ready!”

  The watchmen were now climbing to the crier’s alcove. More of them were streaming in from the other side of the gate. But there was another thundercrack, another cloud of orange smoke, and the Prince was gone.

  Almighty God!

  The crowd quickly lost its boldness. Men and women went back to their business, giving the furious watchmen a wide berth. Beside Adoulla, Raseed cleared his throat, and Adoulla remembered the urgency of their task. Movement through the tight-packed crowd had been impossible during the Prince’s appearance, and the crowd moved slowly now.

  “Come, boy, this gate will be gummed up for hours now. Maybe we can cross over to the avenue and hire a sedan. With all the commotion here, the Chair-Bearer’s Gate might actually be quicker than this mess.” Adoulla tried not to dwell on how much time they’d lost already. Lost time meant more men dead beneath the fangs of ghuls.

  They walked a half-dozen long blocks and turned the corner into an uncrowded alley. It felt like a different city. The alleyway was cooler, shaded as it was by tall buildings on either side. A hard-eyed woman sat on her doorstep, and she looked up suspiciously from the basket she was weaving when the pair walked by. She and a bone thin poppy-chewer, who lay sprawled on another doorstep, apparently talking to the clouds, were the only people in the alley. Adoulla’s discerning nose detected stewed goat wafting from a window, and he greedily inhaled the smell.

  “Watch your step, Doctor!” Even as the words left Raseed’s mouth Adoulla felt his sandal sink into a warm pile of camel shit. Adoulla cursed and scraped his foot on the stone. He turned back to curse again at the brownish smear behind him.

  And found himself face-to-face with the Falcon Prince.

  Name of God! Where did he come from? The man was nearly six and a half feet tall. Taller even than Adoulla, and rippling with muscle where Adoulla jiggled with fat. His black moustaches were meticulously groomed, and his handsome brown face split in a grin.

  Out of the corner of his eye Adoulla saw Raseed turn and draw his sword. The Falcon took a wary step back. The thief looked at Raseed as one might a dangerous animal. But he smiled again as he spoke.

  “Well, this is something one doesn’t see in every alley! A dervish of the Order and a ghul hunter—Doctor Adoulla Makhslood, I would guess.” The Prince’s manner was strangely casual, given the situation he had just fled.

  Adoulla said nothing but let his face register surprise at being known outside of his home quarter.

  “Yes, Doctor, I know of you. Had we time, I would repeat all of the praises that I have heard sung of you among the poor of the Scholars’ Quarter. But there are watchmen a few blocks behind me.”

  “Murderer!” Raseed spat the word and took a step for
ward, but Adoulla threw an arm across the boy’s chest.

  The Prince ignored the dervish and spoke to Adoulla. “Will you help me, Uncle? My next steps—and the lives of others—depend on whether the watchmen know my true path.”

  So, a ghul-orphaned boy was not enough for old Adoulla Makhslood today, eh, God? No, You had to involve Your fat old servant in a mad usurper’s plots as well! Wonderful. Adoulla looked up at the Prince.

  He could hem and haw, but there was only one choice here, and this was a matter of moments. “They will not know your true path,” he muttered. Beside him, Raseed made an angry noise.

  The Prince bowed his head. “The Falcon Prince thanks you, Uncle! Mayhap I will have the chance to return the favor someday.” The bandit then leapt up, landing on a second-story balcony.

  Remarkable. Adoulla had seen leaping-spells before, but the way the Prince’s physical grace blended with the obviously magical enhancements was still impressive. With two more quick leaps he was on the building’s roof and lost from sight. Beside Adoulla, the dervish let out what seemed an involuntary grunt of respect.

  Adoulla heard the shout and clatter of approaching watchmen. “We saw him go the other way, yes?” he said tersely.

  Fury filled the boy’s tilted eyes. “I will not lie to protect that villain, Doctor!”

  “Then conceal yourself, boy, and let me talk!” But the dervish did not move. “Please!” Adoulla urged.

  The boy shook his turbaned head, but he stepped into the alley shadows, where he seemed to disappear.

  Two watchmen rounded the corner running. From the noise I’d have guessed it was a whole squadron. Belligerent fools. Adoulla kept himself from darting his eyes about the alley’s shadows. He prayed that the boy would stay hidden.

  “You there, old man! Halt! Halt if you value your life!” The watchmen were both tall, fresh-faced young men. Again they shouted at Adoulla to halt, though he was standing still.

  The pair thundered up and Adoulla could smell their sweat. “You! Did you see—”

  “That way!” Adoulla shouted, pointing in the wrong direction. He put on his best irked-uncle face. “He ran down that turn-off! That dirty, damned-by-God bandit! He nearly knocked me over! What in God’s name are you men doing to stop this, I ask? Why, when I was your age, the watchmen would never let—”

  The two men shoved past Adoulla, running in the direction of his pointing finger. When they were out of sight, Raseed stepped from the shadows.

  It was Adoulla’s turn to shake his head. “We’ve lost a lot of time, boy. Looks like we’ll be doing some night riding.”

  Raseed nodded with a grim relish. “Ghul hunting in the dark.”

  Adoulla smiled in spite of himself, feeling buoyed just a bit by his assistant’s indefatigability. “Aye. And only a sword-for-brains little madman like yourself would be excited by the prospect.”

  Not quite wanting to know what Almighty God had in store for him next, Adoulla gestured to his assistant and walked on.

  Chapter 4

  ON THE DUSTY WESTERN OUTSKIRTS of Dhamsawaat, Raseed bas Raseed watched the Doctor huffing as he clambered down from the sedan chair they had hired. Foul tannery smells pierced the air, mixing strangely with birdsong. The buildings here were fewer and farther between than they were within the walls. Hut-like homes of sun-baked mud and small, prosperous-looking houses of burnt brick lined the road. Even here, where the crowds were much thinner, a motley assortment of people filled the street. Some part of Raseed, intensely aware of his surroundings, as always, noticed all of this. But his uppermost thoughts were on the brief encounter with the Falcon Prince, and his own conduct during it.

  Hiding from men of authority to protect a miscreant! You should have captured him, the dervish chided himself. You should have insisted, no matter the Doctor’s words. Pharaad Az Hammaz was a criminal, after all. And a traitor to the Throne of the Crescent Moon, though the Doctor insisted that the bandit’s cause was just.

  The Doctor. Raseed had helped a seditious thief escape justice, and why? Because the Doctor had asked it. The wrongness of it struck him anew. It was true, Raseed had put himself into a sort of apprenticeship, and thus he owed the Doctor loyalty, but this business with the Falcon Prince…Raseed wondered what his Shaykhs at the Lodge of God would say if they could see him now. And he worried—as he did every day—that his actions had displeased Almighty God. How could he know, after all? Every night his meditation exercises helped him to settle his restless soul enough that he could sleep, but it was never easy.

  A long-haired girl in a tight-fitting tunic walked by, and Raseed knew that Almighty God was testing him yet again. He averted his eyes and smothered the shameful ache that began to fill his body.

  Life had been less confusing at the Lodge of God. But in the two years since High Shaykh Aalli—the most venerated and also the most permissive of his teachers—had sent him to train with the Doctor, Raseed had learned that the world was complex. When you meet Adoulla Makhslood, little sparrow, you will see that there are truths greater than all you’ve learned in this Lodge. You will learn that virtue lives in strange places.

  Raseed had spent two years learning just how true his old master’s words were. He thought back on the first ghul-hunt he had undertaken with the Doctor, when they had rescued the wife of Hafi the bookbinder from the magus Zoud and his water ghuls. Raseed had begun that hunt amazed that this impious, unkempt man was in fact the great and virtuous ghul hunter whom High Shaykh Aalli had praised so lavishly. But by the time the wicked Zoud lay dead, Raseed had been forced to see the truth of the Doctor’s powers—and of his devotion to duty.

  Even so, in his first days working with Adoulla Makhslood, Raseed had thought of leaving a dozen times, finding the Doctor oafish and irreverent. But High Shaykh Aalli had been clear in his orders, and a newmade dervish did not dare question the High Shaykh.

  And, again and again over the past two years, Raseed had seen proof that somewhere amidst all of the Doctor’s belching and cursing and laxity was a fierce foe of the Traitorous Angel. A man who served God with a soul-deep dedication that was not so terribly different from High Shaykh Aalli’s. A man blessed by the All Merciful, and beloved unto Him.

  Still, Raseed worried about what would happen when, someday, he returned to the Lodge to become a Shaykh himself. Each of his actions in the outside world would be judged, and when he thought on his own laxity in matters such as this business of the Falcon Prince, he feared the judgment would not be kind.

  The Doctor turned from paying the chair-bearer and gave Raseed a piercing stare from beneath bushy gray eyebrows. “You’re worrying about that business with the watchmen, eh?”

  He did not ask the Doctor how he knew. “Yes, Doctor. It is just that—” Upset words burst forth, surprising himself with their intensity. “Whether or not he is a foolish man, we must respect our Khalif and his Heir! We must defend them! If that goes, what else will we lose respect for? The Ministering Angels? God himself?”

  The Doctor rolled his eyes and scratched his big nose. He put his arm around Raseed’s shoulder and steered their steps down a packed-dirt footlane that led to a pair of long, low buildings. “You know,” the Doctor said as they headed for the stables, “there is nothing more upsetting than young people who sound like old people! Do you hear your own hysteria? Do you think that there have always been Khalifs, boy? God and man loved one another before there were palaces and puffed-up rulers. And if the Crescent Moon Palace crumbled tomorrow, God would love us still. ‘For yea, they are the kings of men’s bodies, but God is the King of Men’s Souls.’”

  The Doctor’s quoting of the Heavenly Chapters was punctuated by the smell of animals—mule, horse, and camel—wafting toward them as they approached Sideways Sayeed’s stables. The stablekeeper, an impeccably dressed but deformed man whose spine was bent nearly parallel to the ground, came out to greet them, his fine mother-of-pearl-worked cane thumping in the dirt. The Doctor made the arrangements, as Sidew
ays Sayeed was one of his seemingly countless old friends.

  Even were this not the case, Raseed knew, the Doctor would have insisted on doing the talking, as he considered Raseed too naïve to be trusted with certain tasks. A month after coming to live in Dhamsawaat, Raseed had gone supper-shopping. The Doctor had laughed at the scant bushel of wilted vegetables Raseed had brought home, asserting irritably that he’d have bought twice as much food with half the coins. Though two years had passed since then, Raseed knew his mentor still considered him to be “a genius of the sword but an idiot of the street,” as the Doctor, quoting some poet, had once put it.

  A few minutes later the Doctor cheek-kissed and God’s-peaced Sideways Sayeed goodbye and handed Raseed the reins of a hardy looking mule. Leading his own mount back to the road, the Doctor looked anxious, scratching at his beard and glancing about him as if searching for something. Raseed guessed that it had to do with departing from Dhamsawaat. Leaving the city behind seemed to make the Doctor fidgety and melancholic by turns.

  Raseed did not think he had ever met anyone so attached to a place. The ghul hunter complained about city life often, but Raseed knew that he loved it—perhaps because the King of Cities was a place that the Doctor could complain of familiarly, comfortably, endlessly. Raseed hoped it would please God to bring this good if flawed man back to his city soon. He pledged silently to use his sword arm and his virtue to make it so.

  They reached the road, and the Doctor mounted his mule with a series of grunts and huffs from both him and the beast. Raseed eyed his own mule again. He’d had little need of steeds or pack animals in his solo travels. The true dervish needs no horse, said the Traditions. And his Shaykhs at the Lodge of God said that Raseed was the fastest dervish the Order had ever seen. He could run for miles without tiring. As far as pack animals went, the Traditions were equally clear: The true dervish needs no more than he can carry on his back. Still, the Doctor always traveled by beast, and called it “show-off-ish” when Raseed insisted upon walking beside him. Raseed had taken to hiring mules and sedan chairs along with the Doctor, just to keep from hearing him complain.