A bombastic voice boomed forth from the new group. “Leave the man be, Master Dervish! He has brought you here to speak with me, so let us start speaking!”
Pharaad Az Hammaz, the Falcon Prince, stepped into the center of the room. He moved like liquid in a man’s shape, though he was well over six feet tall and had the thick, sinewy arms of a blacksmith. His hand was on the black-and-gold handguard of his saber. Raseed let go of the big guard who had struck Zamia and the man collapsed, clutching his neck and desperately sucking in breath.
Dawoud found himself fumbling for his thoughts like a boy playing Beat the Blind Man. “You…you…” he turned to the long-faced minister, “you work for him?”
The minister scowled and said nothing, but the Prince sketched a half-bow to Dawoud and his friends. He put one of his massive hands on Adoulla’s shoulder. “What are the chances, Uncle, that we should meet again like this?” the bandit asked. “That, in surveying the crooked gatekeepers of the palace, my men should see your bright white kaftan cutting through the crowd? And with such a strange assortment of friends about you? ‘Az,’ I said to myself, ‘What are the chances? There must be something to this. Let’s have a talk with the Doctor and find out what that something is.’”
One of the men wearing the falcon livery—a burly fellow with only one ear—spoke up. “Aye, sire, there be little enough chance of it. Little enough chance that it’s a-makin’ me suspicious. Something here be smelling of the Khalif’s shitty finger, and this ain’t a day for surprises. All of your work, sire, for all of them years, leadin’ to today. They’ve already harmed one of ours.” He gestured at the still half-choking guardsman. “Ask me, the only safe thing now would be to kill ’em.” The matter-of-factness in the man’s voice chilled Dawoud.
For a long, moustache-stroking moment, the Falcon Prince seemed to consider his lieutenant’s suggestion. But the Prince’s brown face split in a broad smile as he spoke. “No. No, Headknocker, that would be a dreadfully poor repayment to the Doctor here, who, mere days ago, nobly misdirected the watch to save my hide. And it would be a rotten foundation for our new order. Besides, this man earned his own throttling. Striking an unarmed girl like that!” The Prince tsk-tsked at the big guardsman even as he helped the man to his feet.
Misdirected? What is he talking about? Dawoud wondered. He could not imagine his old friend had become an agent of the Falcon Prince without his knowing it. And though he’d half expect Adoulla’s assistant to leap at the chance to confront the most wanted criminal in the city, the boy was strangely still—as if paralyzed by some internal anguish.
“I’m afraid, however,” the Prince continued, “that you are all my prisoners. And if you are agents of the new Khalif, that no-good son of a half-good man, I must warn you: I am not foolish enough to underestimate you. Even you, girl,” he said, turning to Zamia and eyeing her rudely from head to toe, “are perhaps more than you seem, eh?” The Prince turned back to Adoulla. “So why are you here?”
What do we do now? Dawoud found himself wondering again. What to tell, and what not to?
“We are here,” Adoulla said, “because we have read the same scroll as you. Because we know, as you do, that the Throne of the Crescent Moon was once the Cobra Throne.”
Well, that decides that.
The Falcon Prince’s dark eyes went wide. “Remarkable. I am not often surprised, Uncle, but you have managed to surprise me. Yet this knowledge is all the more reason that I must detain you until this business is done with.” The bandit spread his empty hands before him and grimaced apologetically.
Adoulla’s look was dark enough that even the imperturbable Prince took a step back. “Pharaad Az Hammaz, listen to me. We are not the only ones who know of the throne’s powers. You have heard the people speak of me and of the dangers I have saved them from over the decades. I tell you now that there is another after the throne’s power. Another who will strike the palace on this shortest day of the year. A man who is both more and less than a man. A man whose powers are greater and crueler than any of the magi and ghul-makers I have ever faced. He is called Orshado, and if he and his creatures beat you to the throne, I swear before God that the bat-winged shadow of the Traitorous Angel shall fall over all of us for all our days, and for all days to come.”
For a moment, the Prince looked genuinely concerned. But the smile swiftly returned. “The Traitorous Angel, eh, Uncle? I am sorry, but I have little time for such grandiose mysteries! I am a foe of the traitorous man! Of the traitorous Khalif!”
“And are you not troubled by the strange deaths of your men and of the beggars you have sworn to protect?” Adoulla asked.
Suddenly the Prince’s sword was out of its scabbard. “What had you to do with that, old man? If you had a hand in those foul murders, we will not go easy on you.”
“I swear before God that I did not. In fact, we seek to slay the foul beings who did.”
The master thief stared hard at Adoulla then sheathed his sword. “Well, then, Uncle, we must speak.” He looked around the windowless house cautiously. “But not here. You and your group will accompany us.”
The Prince’s men marched them down the stairway in the center of the room. They entered a stone cellar, and here the long-faced minister again stepped to the center of the room. The man produced a thin wand from his sleeve and traced a series of symbols in the dust on the floor. Dawoud recognized magic at work, and he was only half-surprised when, without a sound, the seemingly solid stone of the floor slid open to reveal a tunnel that sloped sharply downward. The minister then said a familiar-seeming farewell to the Prince and went back up the stairs, two of the guardsmen following.
Dawoud and his friends were, in turn, marched wordlessly down through the tunnel, which quickly leveled off. A few minutes later they found themselves in a chamber the size of a small tavern’s greeting room, with another tunnel leading out of its opposite end. The Prince’s men produced clean-burning torches—the expensive sort treated by alkhemists—and took up positions along the walls.
“Here our words will not be heard by any ears above,” the Prince said, bringing the group to a halt at last. “We shall wait here for word from my men in the palace. And you, Uncle, will tell me a story.”
As they waited for some signal from the Prince’s agents, Adoulla and Litaz told the bandit the little they had learned of Mouw Awa and Orshado. Dawoud stayed to the back of the group with Zamia and a still strangely silent Raseed, and he did not catch all of their urgent-sounding words, but he heard his wife ask, “Do you understand what a true servant of the Traitorous Angel could do with the same power you seek?”
He had never been able to effect the shifts in manner that Litaz could—from steel to honey and back again, as the occasion called for it. In this strange life they shared, she tended to do the talking unless what was called for was to frighten someone with dire prognostications. In those cases, Dawoud would screw his face up into an ominous scowl and roll his eyes back
“You’ll need our help,” Adoulla said finally. “Hunting ghuls is not your province, Pharaad Az Hammaz.”
Figuring that the pleading and sugar talk was done, Dawoud stepped to the front of the group. The Prince spared him a glance, but spoke to Adoulla. “You speak to me of ghuls, Uncle. But truth be told, such things are no scarier than watching your children die slowly on a dirty pallet from rat bites. No more frightening than having to smother your old Da-Da in his sleep to end the pain of a disease that could be cured, if only you had the coin. No worse than having your hand chopped off for filching a loaf of bread because the hunger was making you stark raving mad.”
“Your theatrics are not—” Dawoud began.
“Not theatrics!” the big man boomed. “The truth! Life in Dhamsawaat! I could take you to meet the boy right now! Ten years old and he has one hand. The wound would have killed him, had my people not treated it. The stinking watchmen didn’t even let him keep the heel of bread!”
A vicious gleam lit the
man’s ebonwood eyes. “It took some work to find the names of the watchmen that did it, but find them, we did.”
Dawoud shuddered at the bandit’s smile.
“These villains,” the Falcon Prince continued, “these monsters are before you every day. But unless it hisses and has fangs made of vermin, it is not worth fighting, eh? Pain-magic, death-magic—these cull power from torture and fear, yes? Starvation. Beatings. Making men live in little boxes. How is the Khalif different? Because he takes his time in sacrificing lives for his power? Because the workers’ boxes by the tannery are a little bit bigger?”
Adoulla made an annoyed noise. “Don’t pretend to be as thick-headed as that son-of-a-whore Khalif who you claim is a fool! The same servant of the Traitorous Angel that murdered your people is seeking that which you seek. He may be here already. And only my friends and I can stop him.”
“Well, you know of things I don’t, Uncle. Very well, do a little dance. But your spies—whoever they may be, and we shall have to discuss that one day—have not told you everything. The power of the Cobra Throne is terrible. But there is another way here. Just as the blood of a throne-coronated man’s heir can grant great but cruel powers, the same heir can, of his own power, pass on the mastery of the throne’s kind magics willingly. And those magics are just as great. The power to heal hundreds of lepers in a heartbeat’s time. To feed a thousand men with bread and fishes. Some sources say the throne can even raise the dead. The Heir need only sit upon the throne, clasp another man’s hand, and say that he wishes to pass on the throne’s powers. Now imagine what a man with this power in his hands, and an honorable and wise group of ministers at his side, might do for our city. He could—”
Dawoud could not listen to any more of this. “Even if what you say is true, this is madness. No doubt you have agents within the palace ready to act on your command. But while the guardsmen are fighting with your men, Orshado and his creature will make their move—and all quarrels between men will become meaningless.”
Adoulla ran a hand over his beard and stared at the bandit. He was actually weighing the Falcon Prince’s traitorous plot!
“Adoulla—” Dawoud started to say, but his old friend cut him off with an upraised hand.
“Dawoud Son-of-Wajeed is right,” Adoulla said. “This is the life of the world you play with here, Pharaad Az Hammaz. When I helped you dodge the watch the other day, you said you owed me. Now I ask—”
The big bandit let out a booming laugh. “Uncle, do you truly believe that I needed you to save me? I could have fled from those men were I asleep and one-legged! I saw you in that alley, knowing who you were, and decided to take a moment to test which way the wind blew with you.”
“The wind blows out of my ass, man! But unlike you I am not deluded enough to call it perfume. This plan of yours is mad, and you are risking this city you claim to love for it. I ask you to call it off.”
“I owe you a debt for your intentions if not your assistance, Uncle. But I’m not so foolish as to repay a dirham with a dinar! Besides, as your assistant will attest, I have repaid that debt already—or has this paragon of honesty withheld that fact from you?” He made a tsk-tsk-ing sound at the dervish, though Dawoud had no idea what the man was alluding to. “Well, Pride can pickle even an honest man’s tongue, so no matter. But even if what you say is true, Uncle—and one-half my heart thinks it so—there’s no damned-by-God way you’d be able to get into the throne room without my aid.”
“So it would seem that we have need of one another,” Dawoud heard his friend say. He opened his own mouth again to object but found that he had no better course of action to offer.
Adoulla turned to him, his bushy gray brows drawn down with his frown. “It is either this or we allow these men to bind or kill us. Need I remind you the price if we fail?”
“So we go to rescue the Khalif, only to help his greatest enemy,” Raseed interjected, finally breaking his silence.
Adoulla waved away the boy’s words. “I was never here to save the Khalif, boy. He can choke on bones for all I care! I am here to save my city and the world it sits in.”
“Well, then.” The Prince clapped his hands together and smiled pleasantly at Adoulla, as if they had agreed on a tea date. “It shall be so: you and yours may join us—for if this Orshado proves to be real, your powers may indeed be useful. But I warn you now that if you cross me, I will kill you all.”
The steel in Raseed’s gaze could cut a man. “And if you try to harm these people, thief, I will kill you.”
Around them Dawoud heard the clatter and grumble of the Prince’s men making their displeasure known. But the Falcon Prince himself seemed more offended than afraid.
“No one has harmed anyone yet, young man,” the Prince said. “We are merely conversing. But threatening to kill me just might be enough to bring you to harm, if you are not more careful.”
The dervish cast a long look at the armed men surrounding them. “I would duel you, then,” he said at last to the Prince, “in single combat before God the Judge of All Things, for the fates of—”
“Duel me?” the Prince broke in. “You can’t be serious? What fireside tale did you crawl out of, boy?”
This from a man who calls himself the “Falcon Prince!” Dawoud thought.
“You refuse?” the boy fumed. “But a duel is the right of all–”
Thankfully, Adoulla calmed his protégé, rolling his eyes behind the boy’s back. He stepped between the two swordsmen and addressed the Falcon Prince. “Forgive him, Pharaad Az Hammaz, for he is young.”
“‘A genius of the sword, but an idiot of the street,’ eh, Uncle? I’d sensed as much.”
Adoulla barked a laugh, only belatedly seeming to realize that he was joining a stranger in insulting a friend. The ghul hunter lowered his head and then stepped toward Raseed, placing a hand on the boy’s shoulder and mumbling something apologetic.
“I am impressed by your eyes as you watch over these dangerous young ones, Uncle,” the Prince said. “As though they were your children, even though you bring them into battle. I understand it. Indeed all of these men you see with me are like my sons!” Dawoud was tired of the man’s big mouth, but his gravity as he spoke seemed sincere, if practiced.
A pock-marked man old enough to be the bandit’s father said dryly, “Well, Da-Da, if you ain’t gonna take Headknocker’s advice and kill these people, what’s the plan?”
“We have new allies to aid us, Ramzi, but our plans are unchanged. Speaking of which, I hear—though no doubt none of you can—our man calling me with a silent signal. I must go speak to him. Watch over our new friends with love, now, eh?”
Moving faster than a man ought to be able to move, the Prince disappeared through the room’s far exit. As soon as he did, the old tough called Ramzi stepped up to Dawoud and Adoulla and whispered menacingly, “You’d best learn to watch how you speak to our Prince!”
“Or what?” Dawoud gave the man his best just try it scowl. “You’ll kill an old man for speaking his mind?” He was tired of being ordered about by thugs. If Dhamsawaat was trapped between men like the Khalif and men like this, perhaps Litaz was right. Perhaps, if they lived through this, they should leave this damned-by-God city.
The man gave him a long, hard look, but then his expression softened. “Let me tell you a story, outlander. Five years ago. I’m a one-copper-fals-from-starving rockbreaker. Never gave a God’s peace for Khalifs and Princes and all that. One night I come home from the teahouse to find my youngest girl Shahnta dying of the three-day greenfever. No medicine for it but the tonics made by the Khalif’s physicians, and you know how that goes. I pass two days and nights with my thoughts in the Lake of Flame, working to feed my half-starved unsick child when I should be home helpin’ the wife tend to the dyin’ one.
“Then there’s a rap at our door, and the Prince is there with a handful of silver—not copper, mind you, silver, and one of the palace physicians! And the Khalif’s man is stumbling ove
r himself to take care of our girl! I’ll never forget the look on that man’s face. He wanted to help us so badly. Almost—” here Ramzi smiled wickedly “— almost as if his life depended on it. He wouldn’t have bothered to brush flies from Shahnta’s dead face before the Prince spoke to him, though. Now my clan is the Prince’s clan.”
Dawoud realized the man was a villager originally, by his accent. Villagers took such ties more seriously than city folk.
The Prince reemerged from the tunnel and headed back over to them. Dawoud cleared his throat loudly. “Kidnapping men and forcing them to do your work at swordpoint. Wringing one man’s gain from another’s terror. And what if one of the palace boys had died while this physician was away? He would have deserved it for being the child of a rich man? You are truly a hero, O Falcon Prince!”
Ramzi put his hand on his heavy club. “I told you to watch your tone, outlander!”
The Prince flashed the man a disappointed look. “No, Ramzi. I thank you for your loyalty, but this is not our way. We are not fighting for the strongest or for he with the most armed men on his side. We are fighting for the man with right reason on his side. I have never asked that you follow me because of who I am, but because of what I stand for.”
“Aye, sire, you’ve told me. Principles. I’m a man of principles, myself. But him…” The man flashed a threatening smile and pointed to his club. “He’s an old-fashioned son-of-a-whore. He only cares about his clan.”
The Prince smiled and clapped the man on the back. “You’re a hopeless one, Ramzi. In any case, stand ready—you too, Headknocker—our people say it’s nearly time for us to move.”
Beside Dawoud, Litaz sniffed. “Headknocker! Camelback! Such names you Quarter boys give yourselves!”
Dawoud squeezed her arm. This is not the time for your Niece-of-a-Pasha snoot, my love! he said with his eyes. But she ignored him.
“Really! Are these the names your mothers gave you?” She clucked her tongue.
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