The Lion of Cairo

by Oden, Scott

  “Why? Who are you? Who is your master?”

  “Have you not guessed? My master is a young shaykh of storied lineage who dwells on a mountaintop by the shores of the Caspian Sea…”

  3

  In the shadow-clotted alleys of the Rub al-Maiyit—the Abode of the Dead—the Heretic crouched and studied the fly-blown corpses of Gamal and his brother fedayeen. The thin light of the rising moon revealed that Gamal had been tortured, the fingers of one hand hacked off, before a thrust to the heart ended his life; though milky-eyed and waxen, his features yet bore the stamp of abject terror. The Heretic looked up from the bodies and stared at the silent mausoleums, at the faceless alley wall. Whoever Gamal and his men followed from the caravanserai had lured them into a trap—one Gamal either could not or would not bluff his way out of.

  “What have you done, you fool? What did you tell him?”

  Cloth rustled at the Heretic’s back; he shivered as a distinct chill rippled through the warm night air. He glanced over his shoulder. Around him, veteran fedayeen—men who had proven themselves hard as iron many times over—grew suddenly anxious, tense and afraid. As well they should.

  Ibn Sharr had come.

  Swathed in black from toe to crown as the sorcerer was, all that could be seen of his face as he emerged into a shaft of pale moonlight were his eyes—dark and hypnotic, agleam with mysterious fervor. Badr al-Mulahid rose to his feet and bowed.

  “You take an unnecessary risk in coming here, my lord.”

  “Sometimes,” Ibn Sharr replied, “it is not enough to examine a newly made corpse. One must also examine the place in which it was made.” He raised his head and inhaled, snuffling the air like a hound scenting blood. “The Emir of the Knife did this?”

  The Heretic’s gaze shifted to the bodies. “I’m certain of it. And, before I martyred the Gazelle, I overheard one of her confederates speak the Emir’s name. It is Assad.”

  “The Lion. How appropriate.” Ibn Sharr gathered his robes around him and crouched next to Gamal’s body. “What witnesses were there to this slaughter?”

  “None that we have found.”

  Ibn Sharr nodded. Dipping a hand into his robes, he brought forth a small, flat box of polished ebony, its hinged lid inlaid with silver filigree. The sorcerer opened it with exaggerated care. Inside, a fine gray dust gleamed like powdered moonlight. Muttering an invocation under his breath, Ibn Sharr took a pinch of dust and sprinkled it over Gamal’s bloodless lips. “Itkallim!” he said. “Itkallim!” He rocked back on his heels and waited, eyes flaring bright in the darkness.

  Nothing happened.

  “Useless,” the sorcerer said, half to himself. Swiftly, Ibn Sharr repeated the ritual, first over the disemboweled fedayeen and then over the one with the gaping wound to his neck; each time, nothing materialized. Ibn Sharr grew agitated. “All of them, useless!”

  “What is it, my lord?”

  Ibn Sharr’s eyes narrowed as he snapped the lid of the box shut and returned it to his robes. “Perhaps our enemy is far craftier than even I imagined.”

  “How so?” The Heretic looked closer, trying to discern what he must have missed.

  “A soul is like the flame of a candle, Badr. Though you extinguish it, a tiny ember—the sharara—remains within the body. This, in time, will burn itself out. But, until then, one well versed in the necromantic arts can agitate this spiritual cinder, fan it temporarily to life; the dust should have induced the sharara to reveal the last thing the dead man witnessed.”

  “Are we too late, you think?” The Heretic glanced from body to body. “Could this dying spark not have dissipated already?”

  “Perhaps for one, mayhap even two, but for all three? No, we have underestimated the Emir of the Knife. Whatever else he may be, it is clear to me that he has sufficient knowledge to undertake the destruction of the sharara, lest I use it to see through Gamal’s eyes at the moment of his death.”

  “Could it be true, then, what they say about him? That he is a slayer of djinn? Would not such a man know something of sorcery?”

  Ibn Sharr said nothing for a moment, his eyes ablaze. Suddenly, in a swirl of fabric, he stood and spun about. “Bring them! I require further study before I can discern the nature of his art.”

  The Heretic gestured to his men, who between them unfurled a length of heavy canvas—sailcloth, likely scavenged from the wreck of a Nile felucca. “I will find this Assad, my lord, as I found Alamut’s other dogs.”

  “Be cautious, Badr,” Ibn Sharr said. “This quarry is more dangerous than all of the others combined. Never forget: as you search for him, so, too, is he searching for you, and no doubt he now knows more than merely your name.”

  4

  Parysatis tasted freedom. Moving unnoticed through the raucous kitchen and into the low-walled herb garden—where the night air itself seemed spiced with thyme, coriander, and dill—she shivered in delicious anticipation at what lay beyond. Finally, she would breach the walls that had been her prison for the last two years! She would be free! Yet, a sense of gravity tempered her elation. If discovered plotting against the vizier, she would likely trade her sumptuous prison for a shallow grave.

  Yasmina nodded, motioned her forward. No guards patrolled the tiny garden, its rough stone walls easily the height of a tall man; past the old bronze-barred gate was a neighborhood known as Barqiyya, a district of changing houses and moneylenders’ villas interspersed with tall caravanserais and taller warehouses. Yasmina unlatched the gate, ushered her through, and closed it again in their wake.

  So simple! Parysatis glanced up at the star-flecked sky; she felt heat radiating from the paving stones, heard faint music and voices emanating from buildings across the broad street. Shafts of light angled through latticed windows to stain the night with pools of ruby and citron. So beautifully simple! Parysatis laughed aloud.

  Yasmina frowned at her. “Hurry, mistress. Soldiers patrol this street. It’s not safe to tarry.”

  Hand in hand, the pair fled north. Yasmina guided them with unerring instinct through nameless alleys that twined between tenements of dun-colored brick, where the jewel-soft lights of Barqiyya gave way to the more lurid illumination of the Soldiers’ Quarter. Here, by the greasy orange glow of iron cressets, Parysatis saw Fatimid soldiers and foreign mercenaries meet in drunken congress, bellowing songs of past glories in a dozen tongues. Her elation faded to fear. She averted her eyes from the pimps and ragged street thugs, harafisha, who whistled at her from open doorways. Prostitutes leaned out second-story windows and called after her, mistaking her for a would-be client; naked from the waist up, the whores’ veiled faces made mockery of the laws of decency.

  The Inn of the Three Apples stood at the heart of the quarter, in a converted mercantile warehouse some three stories high. The apples that gave it its name, cast from copper, were set into the stone above a tall entry arch whose vaulted passage gave on to a courtyard brimming with low tables, cushions, and bolsters. Clouds of incense and hashish stung tears from Parysatis’s eyes as she glanced around. On tables, women clad as scantily as street whores danced to the discordant music of a sitar and a hide drum. The men watching their gyrations ran the gamut: young and old, laborers and merchants, caravan guards and out-of-work mercenaries; among them were scattered a dozen or so grim-looking Turks and an equal number of Circassians, who wore distinctive green sashes over their white robes.

  Yasmina paused a moment, scanning the courtyard like a huntress seeking her prey. She spotted the proprietor, the old soldier men called Ahmed the Cripple, sitting away to their left. “He can tell us if the Gazelle has arrived yet,” she said, leaning close to Parysatis’s ear.

  Ahmed, a Turk whose bristling mustaches had gone silver with age, massaged the stump of his left leg as he confirmed what Parysatis secretly feared: he had not seen the Gazelle. “Amir Massoud awaits her, though none but Great and Glorious God can say for how much longer.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Up the st
airs. First door to the left.”

  Yasmina nodded to Parysatis; the Persian caught a glimmer of pain in the young woman’s eyes, as if the Gazelle’s absence struck her as a physical blow. “Come, mistress. We … we must speak with Massoud on her behalf.”

  “Are you sure? Should we not wait for her?”

  “She may not come.” Yasmina’s voice was flat, emotionless. “And we can’t afford to squander this opportunity by dawdling.”

  “Lead on, then.” Parysatis exhaled as she followed Yasmina, composing herself for the task at hand—convincing a man she did not know that the Caliph needed his aid. She imagined how their conversation would unfold: he would ask for proof; she would answer with what she had heard from the vizier’s own lips. And he would likely curse her as a gossip and a teller of tales … but she had to try, regardless. The Caliph’s life depended upon it. Upon her.

  Even before they reached the head of the stairs Parysatis heard raised voices.

  “Who, brother?” one man said, his accent the hard gutturals of a Turk. “Who will protect our wives and sons from that whoreson Wahshi and his silk-swaddled master?”

  A step creaked under Parysatis’s heel; the voices ceased. At the same instant, a Circassian mameluke in a turban-wrapped helmet, his mail shirt girdled with a green sash, stepped from the gloom at the head of the stairs and lifted his hand in warning. His other hand held a naked saber.

  “State your business!”

  Yasmina answered. “We must see Amir Massoud! The Gazelle sent us! She bade us speak to him!”

  Before the mameluke could respond, the door over his left shoulder opened to reveal a smoldering visage, dark-eyed and fierce. The man who stared out at them was also a Circassian: long of jaw with an aquiline nose and a high forehead; he was clean-shaven but for a goatee and drooping mustaches weighted at the ends with scrimshaw beads. He wore a gold-chased steel cap beneath his black turban and a mail jazerant, its outer layer of fine black linen embroidered with gold thread; a girdle of green silk and leather supported a saber and curved knife. His inscrutable gaze sent chills down Parysatis’s spine.

  “I am Massoud. What of the Gazelle? Where is she? Speak, quickly!”

  “I saw her last at the caravanserai of her father,” Yasmina said. “A man had come to do her harm, but she was confident her father’s soldiers would do away with him. She said to meet her here tonight.”

  The Circassian digested this in silence for a moment. “It is not like her to be late. Sayeed,” he said, gesturing to his officer in the hall. “Go to Abu’l-Qasim’s caravanserai and make an inquiry. Be discreet, but bring me news of her.” The officer bowed and withdrew; Massoud opened the door wide, motioning for Parysatis and Yasmina to enter. From the glint in his eyes he would brook no refusal.

  The room was sparse, with only a table, a short stool, and a divan. The walls were pale stucco, whorled with soot from the guttering oil lamp. In one dim corner, a glowering Turk in full mail paced, his fingers toying with a strand of worry beads. Yasmina turned to the Circassian amir. “We must speak alone.”

  “For all that he’s a Turk, you can trust this one. Gokbori, you’ll keep your tongue between your teeth, won’t you?”

  “Aye,” the Turk growled.

  Massoud closed the door and turned. “Now, what is so important that you would risk a beating or worse to slip from the palace?”

  “The Caliph’s life,” Yasmina replied. The Turk ceased his pacing; Massoud’s manner grew guarded. He stared at them through slitted eyes.

  “How so?”

  The young woman would have spoken further, but a soft touch on her upper arm stilled her. Parysatis stepped forward; she closed her eyes and dug deep, seeking an untapped vein of courage. Do not let al-Gid’s death be in vain! She squared her shoulders, nostrils flaring at the memory of Jalal’s mocking face. When again she opened her eyes they were alight with the flames of vengeance. “First, are the White Slaves of the River creatures of the vizier, or are you true men?”

  “The vizier?” Gokbori growled. “Faugh! Do not insult us, woman! Not a day passes without a prayer to Allah for the gift of a moment alone with that misbegotten spawn of a dozen fathers!”

  Massoud nodded, tugging on his beaded mustache. “What he says is true. The Caliph has always been our master. We would see him safe and in control, as it was in the days of his forefathers.”

  “The time for that grows perilously short, then. Jalal has betrayed the Caliph. He plots to supplant him and make himself Sultan, and he must do it soon, for an army approaches—”

  “Yes. From Damascus,” Massoud interrupted. “If that is your news, lady, then I fear you have wasted your time and mine, for we are well aware of his ambitions. Within the hour, we ride south for Atfih, where we plan to meet Shirkuh’s swine as they come streaming out of the desert.”

  Parysatis shook her head. “A fool’s errand. Jalal knows Atfih will not hold. What’s more, he expects you and your mamelukes will desert to Shirkuh. But even if you don’t, even if you remain loyal to Cairo, Jalal believes the Damascenes will annihilate you. Regardless of the outcome, you will no longer be a thorn in his side.”

  “Allah!” Gokbori lurched forward, slamming his fist down on the table’s top and causing the lamp to jump and waver. “I knew it! But how could you know this, woman? Are you a creature of the vizier? Sent to tempt us into folly?” Beside him, Massoud scowled.

  Parysatis experienced a surge of anger. “Now who hurls insults? I know this because I overheard him plotting! But this is not the worst of it. Surely you’re aware of the two Templars who arrived last night? They are envoys from Amalric of Jerusalem. Jalal has allied himself with the Nazarenes against Damascus. As we speak, their army is on the road here, to Cairo.”

  Gokbori spun away, cursing. “A second army? The dog made no mention of a second army!”

  Massoud stroked his jaw; he stared hard at Parysatis, unsure whether to believe her or not. “This is ill news, indeed,” he said finally. “If it’s true. I know the vizier to be a black-hearted rogue, but I don’t think even he is capable of this sort of betrayal. Have you any proof?”

  “Beyond my word, you mean?”

  “A woman’s word is wind,” Gokbori muttered.

  Parysatis gestured. “Look around you! Do not the vizier’s Syrian mercenaries, the Jandariyah, control all the main avenues into the palace? And do not his Sudanese mercenaries have the run of the streets? Jalal has disposed of any who could disrupt his plan, leaving only the Caliph between himself and the Seat of Divine Reason. What more proof do you need?” Parysatis’s eyes glistened in the pale lamplight as she clutched Massoud’s arm. “Whether you believe me or not, Rashid al-Hasan needs your help! You are the White Slaves of the River, charged with the Caliph’s safety! Please! He needs you!”

  Gokbori’s prayer beads ticked together as he ran the strand between callused fingers, unmoved by the woman’s impassioned plea. Massoud stepped back; arms folded across his chest, he studied Parysatis with burning intensity as he weighed her arguments in his mind; he dissected and flayed each word in search of even the slightest hint of fabrication. Finally, he cocked an eyebrow at Gokbori. “My gut tells me she speaks true. We said we were the Caliph’s men, brother. It’s time we proved it.”

  “Y’Allah!” the Turk replied. “It’s not your gut they’ll slice off if it turns out she’s just an adept liar in the vizier’s employ. You’re too trusting.”

  “And so? Does that make the vizier any less of a jackal? He’s all but condemned us to death and promised our wives and daughters to the Sudanese! What do we have left to lose? I say we roll the dice.”

  After a moment’s hesitation, the Turk shrugged. “When you put it like that, I’d rather spit in the Devil’s eye and die tonight than dance on the end of the vizier’s string!”

  “It’s settled, then.” Massoud said. “My men are scattered. I have maybe sixty I can call upon at a moment’s notice. Not enough by far to challenge Jalal’s Sy
rians.”

  Gokbori made a rude sound. “Faugh! I have men enough to handle the cursed Syrians, though we’ll be hard-pressed if they call for help from the Sudanese.”

  “So what do we do?”

  Parysatis blinked at the sudden reversal. “Must … must this be an all-out assault?”

  Massoud turned to her. “Have you another way?”

  “The Jandariyah have reinforced the main gates, but they are not as diligent at some of the lesser gates. If we can show you a way in, as well as a series of passages that would allow you to move unseen, could you not then spirit the Caliph from the vizier’s grasp? Once he is safe, Rashid al-Hasan could appeal to the folk of Cairo, perhaps even to the rank and file of the Sudanese mercenaries, and convince them it would be in the city’s best interest to remove the vizier.”

  “Possibly,” Massoud said, one forefinger tapping the hilt of his saber, “but if we could get in unseen, there’s a chance we might be able to take control of the whole of the East Palace, perhaps even capture Jalal. And if we seize him the rest of his cabal will crumble. Tell me about these passages, lady…”

  And for the better part of an hour, Massoud questioned Parysatis about the way into the palace. She walked him through it step by step—first through the herb garden and the kitchens, and thence to the secret passages. Her revelation that the Mad Caliph’s tunnels were more than just fanciful tales elicited sulfurous curses from Gokbori. “And Jalal—he is unaware of their existence?”

  “No, he knows they exist,” Parysatis replied. “But he only knows the location of the one running from the unused women’s bath to the Caliph’s garden. Of course, this is the one we will need to use if we are to reach the Prince of the Faithful.”

  “It’s guarded?”

  Parysatis nodded. “But not heavily so.”

  “Still, we should expect stiff resistance over it,” Massoud said. The Circassian dispatched runners to the urban militia’s barracks on al-Hujar Street to fetch those men he trusted, his fellow Circassians, while Gokbori himself prepared to depart for the parade field outside the Emerald Gate. Their plan was simple enough: they would meet in the neighborhood of Barqiyya and enter the palace together. Massoud and the Circassians would protect the Caliph and seize control of the Golden Hall while Gokbori and the more numerous Turks would handle the assault against the vizier’s Syrian mercenaries.