by Oden, Scott
Assad snorted. “It well and truly worked for Daoud. When he would take the wool, he would become an Arab holy man to his very soul, a Bedouin son of the desert who was as pious as he was mad. For myself, I trust that whomever I’m speaking with understands his life hinges on my good will. I remember a time in Basra…”
Basra. After a decade, Assad recalled only fragments of it—narrow lanes of whitewashed mudbrick that reflected the too-hot sun; palm trees rustling in the constant breeze off the Persian Gulf; he recalled sitting in the bazaar, under a striped awning, where he sipped icy sharabs with the local cleric while the man’s green-furred monkey bedeviled his neighbor’s cats.
He recalled, too, the cleric’s mosque: a small structure, rustic, built of gypsum-plastered brick and sandstone tiles. Despite its size, however, the cleric roared and thundered as vociferously as if he preached from the great pulpits of Baghdad. In almost every sermon he made a point of reviling and refuting the “murderous fanatics of Alamut.” It was only a matter of time before his voice reached the ears of the Hidden Master. Rather than kill him, which would perhaps lend credence to the cleric’s words, the Lord of Alamut sent Assad, posing as Ibn al-Teymani, to reason with him.
After days of getting to know the man, of learning his peculiarities and his passions, Assad came to his home one night with an irrefutable offer. Catching the cleric unawares, he hurled him to the ground and put a heel to his throat. He drew a knife with one hand and a bag of gold with the other. “A martyr or a man of means,” Assad spat. “Choose now!”
Zaynab’s hazel eyes widened. “Which did he choose?”
“The gold, of course. The man was no fool.” Assad chuckled. “Some time later, his people asked him why the sudden change of heart, why had he softened his stance against the devils of Alamut; I’m told the cleric replied—and, mind you, without the slightest pause—that though our arguments were brief, they had great weight.”
The sound of Zaynab’s laughter caught Assad off guard; it had a bright quality, like chimes tinkling on a cool breeze. He almost smiled; instead, he turned away, a frown creasing his brow. What was it that round-faced tailor had said? Beware, she is enchanting. The man had not lied …
Lapsing into silence, Zaynab stood and walked to the window, drawn by the gleam of watered steel. “Is it true what men say about you? That you journeyed to the Roof of the World and destroyed a prince of the djinn over this knife?”
“Is that what men say?” The Assassin picked the empty sheath up off the bed and joined her by the window. He stood on one side, Zaynab on the other; between them, his salawar protruded from the sill, the silver wire in its hilt sparkling.
Zaynab raised her shoulders in a half-apologetic shrug. “It is, but surely it must be an exaggeration.”
“No, there is a kernel of truth to it, but just a kernel. I did journey to the Roof of the World, into the peaks and passes of the high Afghan Mountains, but it was no djinn I fought. He was a chieftain of the Afridis, a madman who had waylaid emissaries of Alamut on their return from Cathay the year before. I was the fedayee sent to avenge them.”
She shuddered as a chill passed through her. “Alone?”
Assad leaned against the window frame, arms folded across his chest. “Some tasks are best suited to a single man. I was a soldier before Daoud recruited me into al-Hashishiyya, but rather than sacrifice myself to kill a single man I instead took a different path. I killed them one by one, always leaving the bodies where others of the tribe could find them. Finally, when he had no more warriors left to sacrifice, the chief came for me. Armed with this. As you can see”—he tapped the scar bisecting the left side of his face with the tip of the leather-bound sheath—“I did not escape unscathed.”
“And thus the Emir of the Knife was born,” she said. He watched as she extended her hand toward the leering pommel; he made no move to stop her as her fingers brushed the cool ivory, as her flesh made contact. The response was immediate. Zaynab gasped and recoiled, snatching her hand back as though the hilt were white-hot. She stared at Assad with terror in her eyes. “Merciful Allah! What kind of deviltry…?”
“Whoever forged it bound an insatiable hate into the steel.” Assad tugged it free, oblivious to the galvanizing rush of emotion, and held it up before his eyes to study the pattern of light and dark whorls running through the blade. “It wants revenge.”
“Revenge against whom?”
“Only Allah can say for sure. Not even the Afghans recall for what reason their ancestors created it, only that it’s a relic of the Time of Ignorance. The Afridis found it in the safekeeping of a prince of Kabul when they sacked that city. Their chief took the blade back into the high mountains and made it his own, an heirloom of power. But his sons, and the sons of his sons, were weak-willed and indolent. Whatever sorcery the ancients imprisoned in the steel had no trouble sowing madness among them. It needs a stern master, I’ve found.”
“But how can you stand to touch it? It’s unclean!”
A grim smile curled Assad’s lips. Carefully, he slid the blade home into its sheath. “It brings me good fortune.”
The Assassin turned away from the window as Abu’l-Qasim shouldered through the door, gold glittering on his fingers, and his robes of cream and white rustling. Farouk followed in his wake, looking as though something had scared him from his bed. Assad grinned at the Persian. “I see you’ve met our new host.”
“Yes, yes,” Farouk snapped. “The mighty King of Thieves! Bismillah! Now that we are allies, he owes me for a shipment of incense his swine stole from me last year!”
“That was yours?” Abu’l-Qasim smiled broadly. “You move a fine product, my friend. Perhaps we should speak of a joint business venture. Your wares, my guards … we split the profits equally. What say you?”
“And give you the opportunity to rob me twice?”
Abu’l-Qasim roared with laughter. “By God! Persians are the shrewdest of men! This one saw right through me!” He clapped a hand on Farouk’s shoulder, gave him a good-natured shake. “I like you, Persian. Mayhap I’ll even pay you what you’re owed.”
“Allah’s blessings upon you, O generous King of Thieves.”
“Indeed.” Abu’l-Qasim glanced sidelong at his daughter. Zaynab remained by the window, her hand clasped to her breast as though it still pained her. Tension crinkled the corners of her eyes; her gaze drifted back to the weapon clutched in Assad’s fist. “Is aught amiss?”
His question drew from her a terse rebuff. “No. The morning grows late. We should be about our business.”
“And what is our business, eh?” Abu’l-Qasim turned to Assad. The Assassin, however, appeared lost in thought. He stared at his salawar, weighing it in the palms of his hands, eyes slitted in concentration. “Assad. What goes?”
He glanced up. “You have a network of spies. Send them out to hunt down the dog who escaped me last night.”
“You marked him well enough, I gather?”
“Well enough that he’ll need a surgeon.”
Abu’l-Qasim nodded. “I know a good many of them. I’ll make the inquiries myself.”
“What of the bodies that were left behind?”
“I sent men last night to collect the corpses and feed them to the Nile. They recognized one of them, the Ethiopian. His name was Akeeba.”
Assad’s eyes narrowed. “Was he a rival of yours?”
The question brought a wide smile to the King of Thieves’ face. “Him? Y’Allah! He was a pig, a two-copper thug who terrorized the derelicts and degenerates of the Foreign Quarter. A rival? Bah!”
“Have your men ask around. See if this Akeeba might have boasted about his new employer. What of the urban militia?”
“What of them? They won’t interfere, but we have a different problem in that regard.” He glanced back at Zaynab. “Their new captain, Massoud, has noticed the Gazelle’s absence. He’s a Circassian, one of the White Slaves of the River. He also thinks himself a rakish cavalier. He’s heard ru
mors and has now decided to make finding her his priority. The man is a fool, but a dangerous fool.”
“Can your people deal with him?”
Abu’l-Qasim deferred to his daughter.
“Massoud is more than a good man and an ardent admirer,” Zaynab said. She walked away from the window. “When he served in the palace he was a conduit of information, though he did not know it. His concern is touching. I will handle him myself. I assume it’s not safe for me to return home?”
“Not yet,” Assad said. “Not until we have some idea who is behind this.”
Zaynab chewed her lip. “Then you make it difficult for me to allay Massoud’s concerns. I doubt, Father, that you’d allow him to pay me a visit in your den of thieves?”
“Y’Allah! Why not throw me to the jackals?” Abu’l-Qasim waved the suggestion away, scowling. Despite paying for their silence, the King of Thieves did not trust the militia or their new captain—the man’s admiration for Zaynab be damned.
“Of course not. I will need some time to devise a way of contacting Massoud. Speaking with him in person would be best, but regardless I will concoct a tale to answer his most pressing concerns. Perhaps we can even use him to deflect rumors.”
Assad nodded, turned to Farouk. “I want everything you can gather regarding the Templars—names, how many guards the vizier assigned to them, what portion of the palace they’re housed in, where their horses are stabled, everything.”
“Templars?” Abu’l-Qasim’s nostrils flared. “What’s this?”
“Two arrived last night, escorted by a detachment of Fatimid cavalry. I want to know their purpose.”
The Persian raised an eyebrow. “Have they become targets?”
“Inshallah.”
“This might be more difficult than you imagine,” Farouk said. “I have only limited resources inside the palace—a lesser steward, a man whose cousin’s cousin is a guard, but no one of particularly high rank…”
“I can be of service in this matter, as well,” Zaynab said. “My acquaintances at the palace run the gamut, from mamelukes to chamberlains to ladies of the harem. Let me try and get word to them. No doubt the appearance of Templars has stirred a hornet’s nest in their midst.”
Farouk inclined his head, a gesture of respect. “That would be most excellent, lady.”
“And while the rest of you are occupied with these tasks, I will see about getting close to the Caliph.”
Abu’l-Qasim shook his head. “I still say you are wasting your time with that notion, Assad. The vizier—Allah’s curse be upon him!—rarely lets the Caliph out of his sight. Like as not, his guards will skewer you before you can get too close.”
“Then perhaps,” Assad began, steel whispering on leather as he slid his salawar free of its sheath, “perhaps I’ll get close to the vizier, instead.” Cold eyes stared past the blade. “Have you a carpenter in your entourage, O King?”
Abu’l-Qasim frowned. “I can find one.”
“Do so, and quickly,” Assad replied. “I have an idea how I can hide this in plain sight…”
4
The old physician summoned to the harem found Parysatis huddled in her bed, damp browed and disheveled, the stink of vomit—of sour wine and cheese—fouling the air of her tiny room. He shuffled to her bedside and sat, a stoop-shouldered man with a bulbous nose whose hair, beneath a blue embroidered skullcap, was silver and sparse. The women of the harem knew him as al-Gid, Grandfather. “What troubles you, child?” he said, placing the rigid leather bag of his profession on the floor beside them.
“I must speak with you,” Parysatis whispered in Persian, a tongue she knew he spoke. “Alone.” She looked past him; he followed her gaze. The Chief Eunuch of the Harem, a native Egyptian called Lu’lu, stood in the doorway of Parysatis’s cell—a tyrant molded of tawny fat who swathed himself in gold, silks, and linens as fine as any worn by the women in his care. Piggish eyes outlined in kohl and green malachite held a glimmer of distress. Though not, Parysatis decided, over her health. No, the Chief Eunuch’s sole concern was decorum: he insisted that his charges be demure, lovely, and, above all else, quiet. Sickness, which was ever the enemy of good order, ruined his equilibrium.
Behind him, several women pressed close along with a gaggle of lesser eunuchs and servants. An illness in their midst was as much a cause for concern as it was for speculation. Had a rival poisoned her? Maybe she had tried to poison herself? Perhaps she wasn’t ill at all, but with child? In hushed voices, like the twittering of so many birds, the women wagered on the outcome, betting bits of jewelry on which vicious rumor would prove true.
The physician frowned. “Leave us. All of you.”
“Go away, my flowers!” The Chief Eunuch waved the gawkers away. “Go! We must have privacy!”
“You, too, my friend,” al-Gid said, his tone sharp.
Lu’lu scowled; fleshy lips writhed, peeling back in a grimace of displeasure. Despite being a slave, the harem’s master wasn’t accustomed to taking orders from anyone less than the vizier himself. For a moment Parysatis thought he might rebuke the physician for his impudence, or worse—summon his guards and have the old man beaten. Ultimately, however, Lu’lu held his tongue. Even he knew better than to trifle with al-Gid.
The old physician watched in silence as the eunuch backed out of the room and pulled the curtain closed with a savage tug. Al-Gid grunted, a dismissive sound, and then turned to Parysatis. “That one has grown too large for his own pantaloons,” he muttered in Persian. Gently, he placed the back of one wrinkled hand against the young woman’s forehead, feeling for a fever. The sleeve of his crisp white galabiya smelled of incense and old herbs. “So, child? We are alone…”
“I … I m-must ask you a delicate question.”
The physician raised a bushy eyebrow. “Must you?”
“Have…” Parysatis flushed, stumbled over her words. “Have you seen him? The Caliph, I mean? Perhaps within the last week?”
“A delicate question, indeed.” Al-Gid propped his elbow on his knee and tugged at the small tuft of hair beneath his lower lip. “What concern is this of yours, child? Did you have a dream?”
“Please!” Parysatis’s fingers plucked at the hem of his sleeve. “Please, Grandfather, have you seen him recently?”
“I saw him last week, during Friday prayers at the Gray Mosque, but I was not allowed near.”
“And how did he seem?”
Al-Gid sighed; absently, he patted her hand, his brows knitting together in concern. “Not well, God’s mercy upon him. In truth, his eunuchs and guards have kept him sequestered from me for some time, now. Though for what reason, I cannot say.”
Parysatis squeezed her eyes shut, afraid of what her next words would conjure. Had she misjudged him? Would this kindly old man be her savior, or would he become her executioner? Allah preserve me! “It’s not his eunuchs or his guards who are to blame,” she said in a small voice. “It’s his vizier.”
“Are you addled, girl? What do you mean? Here, look at me.” He grasped her shoulders and gave her a light shake. “Look at me, child. Why would the vizier wish to keep me away from the Caliph? What purpose could…?” But al-Gid did not finish his sentence. In a twinkling, apprehension gave way to cold clarity—while the years may have palsied the old man’s hands, they in no way dulled his mind. It remained as sharp as ever as the cogs and mechanisms of suspicion shuddered into place. He knew of only one reason a vizier might wish to keep the Caliph’s physicians at arm’s length; an age-old reason that did not bode well for young Rashid al-Hasan: Jalal, like his predecessors, had ambitions to rule. All traces of warmth drained from al-Gid’s features; his frown deepened and his eyes narrowed to slits of black fire. He leaned closer. “How do you know this, child?”
“I overheard him talking to the old eunuch who rules over the Caliph’s apartments.”
“Yes, Mustapha,” the physician said, nodding. “And you are sure? You are sure this is what they talked about? What you
accuse them of, child, is an abomination before God! Could you have misunderstood what was said…?”
Parysatis shook her head. “I heard the vizier as clearly as I hear you now, Grandfather. By month’s end, he wants the Caliph on his deathbed! He ordered this Mustapha to see it done. Later, that scoundrel brought the Caliph a goblet of tainted wine. By the grace of God, I was there to pour it out. I replaced the wine with water from the courtyard fountain before—”
Al-Gid cut her off. “You did all this under the noses of his guards and his chamberlains? As Allah is my witness, child, lie to me again and I will hand you over to the Chief Eunuch to be punished!”
Parysatis bolted upright, nostrils flaring. “I have not lied to you, old man! I did these things!”
“How? The Jandariyah allow no one inside the Caliph’s apartments without the vizier’s permission! How did you—”
“You have heard the tale of the False Kaaba, Grandfather? The eunuchs speak of it, but in whispers and then only to frighten us,” Parysatis said. Her anger ebbed, and she sagged back against her pillows. “They say once a mad Caliph ruled over Cairo, and in his madness he ordered passages cut into the walls, into the foundations of this very palace. Where these secret paths intersected, the eunuchs say, he caused his slaves to build a pleasure kiosk, a blasphemous mockery of the most holy Kaaba of Mecca. Those who knew of its existence he had strangled, their bodies buried in a cellar beneath his kiosk. For the remainder of his reign, this Mad Caliph would kidnap his newest concubines from the harem and drag them down into this hell he had created, there to despoil and brutalize them. Those who survived he either handed over to his loyal mamelukes or he drowned them in a marble pool of wine.”
“And it was his own sister who finally ended his madness,” al-Gid said impatiently. “Yes, I know it well. A fabulous legend, like something from the Book of a Thousand Tales. But what does that have to do with anything?”
“The Mad Caliph’s passages exist, Grandfather. The palace is riddled with them. That’s how I overheard the vizier’s plans.” In short order, Parysatis unburdened her soul, relating everything to the dumbstruck physician—from how she’d accidentally discovered the first door over a year ago, in a deserted storeroom, to her nocturnal wanderings through those narrow paths between the walls where men once spied upon their fellows. “At first,” she said, “I sought ways out of the palace, ways to escape Cairo and return to my home in Persia. Later, when flight proved fruitless, I merely sought ways to escape the boredom of the harem.” Further, she told him what she had seen and heard in the Golden Hall, in the Caliph’s apartments, and of the courtyard door that brought her back to the harem. “It exits in an old bathing chamber the women no longer use, not a hundred paces from here.”