The Lion of Cairo
Page 26
Bent nearly double, Assad loped along the perimeter of the wall, looking for some sign of where the Templar had entered the courtyard. He spotted the latticed entrance to the Caliph’s bedchamber, faintly illuminated by a lamp burning within, and a tinkling fountain of cold marble. The wall itself was blank save for a single scalloped niche, like the mihrab of a mosque. He slowed to a walk as he came abreast of this niche. Assad discerned no ropes. Perhaps the Templar planned to climb one of the potted poplars? But, no. They were flimsy and decorative, and none of them reached the level of the wall’s summit. How, then? How—
“Is it done?”
Assad whirled, stifling a curse. Beside him, stone grated on stone as the interior of the niche, partially blocked by one of the ornamental trees, swung inward. He took a step back, inverting his salawar so that it ran unseen along his forearm.
“Is it done?” The speaker repeated the question, harsher this time. He was expecting the Templar; similar in height and breadth, cast in silhouette by the distant lamp, Assad and the dead Nazarene could have been one and the same.
“Aye.” Assad mimicked as best he could the Templar’s guttural voice. “Done.”
“Praise be to Allah!” To the Assassin’s surprise, a shaven-headed eunuch clad in the robes of a high chamberlain stepped out and gestured impatiently at him. “Come, we must get you back to your chambers ere anyone grows suspicious. Make haste, lord Kni—”
The eunuch apprehended his mistake even as Assad struck. Before he drew another breath, the Assassin ripped the edge of his salawar across the eunuch’s throat; quickly, he bore the thrashing chamberlain to the ground and held him still while his life’s blood gushed over dry grass and soil. No others followed him, and the eunuch’s twitching legs kept the secret door ajar.
“What the Devil—” he muttered, peering into the dark passageway beyond the cunningly hidden entrance.
Assad did not waste time with idle speculation over who built the passage or why, nor did he let where it might lead to trouble him. It was enough that it existed, and that it would carry them away from what the vizier meant as a death trap.
With a grim smile, he went to fetch the Caliph …
7
An army moved through the streets of Cairo.
Hundreds of shuffling feet raised a pall of dust invisible against the night sky. Steel rustled and clashed; moonlight reflected off helmets and mail hauberks like the play of distant lightning on a hot summer evening. The rattle of war harness set dogs to barking; their masters, roused from slumber by the sudden clamor, threw open shuttered windows. They were poised to bellow curses when the source of the disturbance revealed itself.
Parysatis heard windows banging shut as she advanced with Massoud and his Circassians through the neighborhood of Barqiyya. She wrung her hands at the noise and dust raised by the movement of so many men. Surely someone would hear them and sound an alarm? Yet Massoud appeared indifferent as he walked beside her, silent but making no pretense at stealth.
She understood his lack of concern when they came across the first body. The corpse of a thickly muscled Sudanese soldier sprawled faceup in the middle of the street, a pair of arrows standing out from his bull neck. Already, the spilled blood attracted a swarm of flies. Beyond were more bodies, the remains of an ambushed patrol. Parysatis stepped around the arrow-riddled corpses and tried not to stare at their slack faces, gray and frozen in death.
“Gokbori sent his scouts out ahead of us,” Massoud whispered. “His Turks have eyes like owls in the dark.”
She nodded and said nothing, still numb from the news of the Gazelle’s murder, from Yasmina’s flight from the Inn of the Three Apples. She glanced at the armed men flanking her. Merciful Allah, I pray we’re doing the right thing. Yet, whether they were in the right or not, it was too late to second-guess their decision; it was far too late to seek other alternatives. By shedding blood in opposition to the vizier they had sealed their fates. Now, a new terror crept into the pit of her stomach, edging aside her fear of detection: What if we fail? What then? Parysatis shuddered and had no answer.
The domes and minarets of the East Palace gleamed against the star-flecked heavens. Ahead, the alley they followed debouched into a wider avenue that ran alongside the palace. She could barely make out the low wall of the herb garden with its old bronze gate, a lamp burning in a niche beside it.
Parysatis stiffened at the sight of a pair of Jandariyah loitering outside the gate. “T-there were no guards posted when we left!” she said, clutching Massoud’s arm. “You m-must believe me!”
The Circassian amir turned to her. “I believe you. Now, keep quiet and play along,” he hissed, motioning one of his men forward—a red-bearded soldier clad in silk and steel. “Throw her over your shoulder and follow my lead.” The fellow nodded; Parysatis gasped as he did his amir’s bidding: none too gently, he caught her up and flung her over his mailed shoulder like a sack of grain.
The man swaggered in Massoud’s wake. Parysatis faced the narrow alley they had just quit; though she could not see ahead of them, the sound of Massoud muttering under his breath reached her: “That’s it. That’s it. We’re two fellow soldiers on an errand to the palace.” She felt tense knots of muscle in the Circassian’s shoulder despite his best efforts to appear nonchalant.
After a few more steps, a harsh challenge sent chills down her spine.
“Who goes?”
“Returning a bit of property, brother,” she heard Massoud say, his tone jovial. “This one here belongs to the palace, or so she says. I expect she’s lying, but by Allah! She’s comely enough to be a harem flower … though, if you ask me, she could do with a proper bit of fertilizing.”
The soldiers laughed along with Massoud. “Put her down, then, and let’s get a look at her.”
The Circassian dumped Parysatis unceremoniously off his shoulder. She squeaked in alarm, but somehow managed to keep her footing. Callused hands spun her around to face the two Jandariyah—Syrians in spired helmets and gilded mail, their white khalats embroidered in silver and black thread. They leaned on tall spears, their shields propped against the stone wall. Her cheeks flushed at their brazen scrutiny.
Massoud stepped past the soldiers and peered through the bars of the gate. “Allah, but this is a lonely post. What did you do to deserve it?”
“Got the short shrift,” one of the Jandariyah replied; the other leered at Parysatis and licked his lips. Lust gleamed in his eyes. “Why, you can barely tell there’s a woman under there. You’d best leave her with us. We’ll take—”
Massoud struck without warning. He snatched the spire of the Jandariyah’s helmet, wrenching the soldier’s head back. A cry of alarm turned to a bloody gurgle as the amir’s dagger tore open his throat. The remaining Jandariyah spun. Yet, before Massoud or the red-bearded Circassian could raise a hand against him, Parysatis heard a soft hiss followed by a meaty thunk. The Syrian’s head snapped back and he pitched against the wall, his spear clattering from his hands; slowly, to the accompaniment of metal scraping stone, he slid to the ground. An arrow stood out from his left eye socket.
At close range, driven by the powerful Turkish bow, it had pierced not only the flesh and bone of the Jandariyah’s skull, but the steel of his helmet, as well.
Stunned, Parysatis glanced across the avenue. Gokbori stepped into the wan moonlight. The Turkish amir grinned like a madman as he tossed his bow to another and drew his curved saber. Massoud nodded his thanks. The Circassian knelt and wiped his dagger on the dead soldier’s khalat before returning it to its sheath. Quickly, he stripped a knife from the corpse’s sash, stood, and held it out for Parysatis to take.
The Persian woman stared at the curved blade, with its delicate inlay of silver leaves; her hand flinched from its worn ebony grip as she finally accepted it from him. “I … I am no fighter, my lord.”
“I know,” Massoud said, “but if things go badly for us, do not let them take you alive. Do you understand?”
/> Parysatis did. All too well.
Satisfied, Massoud turned away. The amir’s sword rang from its sheath. He held it aloft for his men to see, silver light gleaming from its edge. “White Slaves of the River! With me! Allahu akbar! For the Caliph! For Cairo!”
Hundreds of swords thrust at the sky; their owners, be they Circassian or Turk, added their voices to his: “Allahu akbar!”
And Parysatis, standing forgotten in Massoud’s shadow, cradled a dead man’s knife in her hands. “For Rashid al-Hasan,” she whispered.
8
Yasmina had only dim recollections of her flight from the inn—tear-streaked memories of a voice calling her name, of faces blurred by grief, and of the blood-warm darkness beyond, its embrace alive with whispers of self-recrimination.
It’s your fault! You left her to die!
Her body moved of its own accord down the narrow alleys of the Soldier’s Quarter; as she ran ever southward, instinct guided her around obstacles, from an oxcart loaded with stone blocks to knots of grim-eyed Sudanese mercenaries. She skirted plazas where lamplight and mocking laughter seeped out from behind the closed doors of pleasure houses.
You left her to die!
Yasmina increased her pace. Her lungs worked like a forge’s bellows, drawing in the dusty air in great racking gasps; she ran on, heedless of what lay in her path, as though her guilt were a living thing that gave chase. It hounded her through the Glassblowers’ Bazaar and across the Qasaba, where men met to discuss the day’s events. And amid the laughter and babble of tongues, she heard the echo of Zaynab’s voice.
Why did you leave me to die?
The young woman’s endurance gave out. She stumbled and pitched off to one side, old wicker crunching as she collided with a small pyramid of empty cages and dovecotes outside a fowler’s shop. She lay there a moment and listened to the pounding of her heart, the ground beneath her still hot from the baking sun. Sweat stung her eyes and mingled with the tears cascading down her cheeks.
The fowler, a wiry-muscled Egyptian in a filthy galabiya and turban, came barging into the street, shaking his fists and gesticulating wildly; he screeched at Yasmina in a voice not unlike that of the birds he trapped in the reeds and marshes of the Nile. The girl ignored him. She shoved aside a mud-crusted dovecote and scrabbled to her feet, one hand braced against the shop’s mudbrick wall, her eyes fixed on a point down the street, on her destination.
The caravanserai of Ali Abu’l-Qasim.
Why had she come here? The caravanserai was as dark and lifeless as the House of the Gazelle; no lights gleamed from its upper windows, nor did any spill out through the tall doors, closed now and likely barred. All of Abu’l-Qasim’s followers must have traveled with the funeral cortege to al-Karafa cemetery, beyond the Zuwayla Gate. Still, the girl staggered on, knowing only that the caravanserai was the last place she had seen Zaynab, the last place she had known happiness.
The fowler’s curses fading behind her, Yasmina allowed grief to guide her footsteps. She avoided the tall doors of the caravanserai, where men of all sorts had gathered to await the return of the King of Thieves. Instead, she slipped unseen into an alley between neighboring buildings where, hidden by broken stone and cast-off debris, she came to the flight of crude sandstone steps leading down into darkness, to the bronze-barred fissure in the wall of the old underground bath.
Yasmina descended slowly. Moonlight gave a faint sheen of silver to each step; the air wafting up from the fissure was moist and cool, though tainted with the coppery stench of blood.
Zaynab’s blood.
Yasmina sobbed. Tremors racked her body as she stopped short of the bottom step. Here, she sat, staring at the faint glimmer of bronze as though it were a gate to the underworld, as though Zaynab’s soul waited beyond. You’re dead because of me, because I left you alone! Her fingers groped in the darkness beside her, searching. I won’t leave you alone again! I promise! She came up with a thin wedge of sandstone, its edge flaked and serrated. I promise!
Yasmina blinked back tears and bared her left arm to the elbow. She understood what she had to do; she understood why. I won’t leave you alone again! Gripping the stone in her right hand, the young woman scraped its edge across the soft flesh of her wrist, teeth clenched against the pain. It would take some time, but she was certain she could rip a gash large enough to empty her arteries. What’s more, the agony of it would serve as an act of atonement, penance for abandoning Zaynab when she needed her most.
Her features set in a mask of grim resolve, Yasmina prepared herself. She bore down on the stone, ready to grind and saw and rip, ready to gouge her flesh until hot blood slicked her fingertips. She was ready to follow Zaynab into the afterlife. Yasmina sucked her lower lip between her teeth. She was ready. By God, she was ready …
A sound, though, caused the girl to fumble and nearly drop the instrument of her sacrifice. In the alley above, voices grew near—one voice was raspy and wet; the other she recognized. It belonged to the one-eyed beggar, Musa. “What do you want, wretch?”
At first, the other’s reply was indistinct, then: “… true you’re seeking our poor Gazelle’s murderer in the Foreign Quarter? That he is a tall man, clean-shaven but not a eunuch. Perhaps a Frank…?”
“It’s true,” Musa murmured. “What of it?”
“Perhaps I know where this killer is…”
Yasmina stiffened; mention of the Gazelle’s Frankish slayer caused all thoughts of suicide to fade away. Rage boiled out from the dark places in her soul, filling the void Zaynab’s death left behind and turning her heart to stone. By all reckoning, vengeance trumped penance—she could die any time, but she had perhaps one chance to strike back, one chance to avenge the woman who had been as a mother to her.
Hate twisted Yasmina’s lips as she strained to overhear …
9
The funeral cortege returned to the caravanserai of Ali abu’l-Qasim in dolorous silence, each mourner wrapped in his own thoughts. The procession was a polyglot: dour Berbers troubled by the deaths of their companions, merchants and tradesmen who hailed from the same neighborhood as Abu’l-Qasim, old thieves clad like desert shaykhs who recalled Zaynab as a precocious girl, and beggars who wept for their lost patroness. In the midst of it all, half a dozen slaves bore Abu’l-Qasim’s palanquin on their shoulders. The curtains were drawn, and none could see the King of Thieves’ grieving visage—least of all Musa, who brought up the rear of the cortege.
The one-eyed man wiped his face, knuckling at the dull ache which blossomed behind his empty socket. A crushing despair informed his every gesture and made each step more ponderous than the last. Zaynab was dead, and though he had seen the body Musa could barely fathom it. Dead and buried.
Three women, the wives of a neighbor, had done for Abu’l-Qasim what no man might: they had washed the Gazelle’s body, braiding her hair and shrouding her in clean linen, making her ready for prayer and burial—the whole completed before sunset in accordance with the long traditions of Islam. That only a small stone with rough-cut letters marked her resting place seemed insufficient to Musa, an insult. She deserved better.
The one-eyed man sighed. Already, the head of the procession stood at the doors to the caravanserai. Hinges creaked as Abu’l-Qasim’s Berbers levered them open, then stepped aside to allow the cortege entry to the courtyard. Stewards kindled lamps and would soon fetch food and wine for the mourners, but Musa had little in the way of an appetite. No, he decided to pay his respects to Abu’l-Qasim and then slip away, maybe head north to the Mad Caliph’s Mosque and pass the night among his people, among the beggars. He—
Musa flinched as, from his blind side, a small hand tugged at his sleeve. He cocked his head and saw a boy standing there, an unkempt urchin clad in little more than rags yet who smelled strongly of perfumes, rich and cloying. He stared in rude fascination at Musa’s empty socket. “What is it, little brother?”
The boy answered in pidgin Arabic: “What happen your eye?”
The urchin stared, half in disbelief and half in fear. He took a step back before replying: “Djuha want talk to you.”
“Djuha, eh?” The name brought a grimace to Musa’s lips. The man was a pander of the worst sort, a dealer in perversions and aberrations so foul as to render him a pariah to even the most hedonistic of Cairo’s denizens. Thus, he found his custom where he could, mostly in the Foreign Quarter among the dregs and flotsam of a dozen lands. The one-eyed man spat. “What the devil does that swine want with me?”
The boy shrugged. “You come?”
“Where is he?”
The urchin jerked his chin over his shoulder.
Musa looked past the boy and spotted a figure across the street, cloaked in shadow. There was no mistaking the tall and emaciated silhouette. Djuha was Bedouin, an outlaw from the Prophet’s own clan, the Banu Hashim, who had fled to Egypt to escape punishment for his myriad crimes; yet there was no escaping Allah’s wrath. As Musa heard it, the man was dying with agonizing slowness, the victim of divine retribution in the form of leprosy.
“You come?” the boy repeated.
“Why should I?”
“He say it important.” The urchin nodded to the caravanserai. “About her.”
Musa’s eye narrowed. What could he know about the mistress? “Tell him to cross the street and await me in that alley.”
With a nod, the boy darted off. Musa watched carefully as the urchin delivered his message; he saw Djuha glance up and nod. Draping a rotting hand around the boy’s shoulder, the leper stepped into the street. Robes of striped silk and wool hung from his wasted frame. He used a fold of linen from his head scarf to mask his disease-ravaged features. Passersby who had come to pay their respects to Abu’l-Qasim flinched away from Djuha, making signs to ward off evil as he vanished into the alley.