by Oden, Scott
Assad shook his head. “My lord—”
“No! We’re wasting precious time!”
Parysatis took a hesitant step forward. In a quiet voice, she said: “I … I could guide you to him along the hidden ways, Exalted One. They riddle the palace walls, and though the path might take you as near to your enemies as I am to you, none will ever see you.”
Rashid’s anger evaporated. “An excellent idea! What say you, my councillors?”
Massoud raised an eyebrow at the scarred and dour stranger, Assad, who gave the barest hint of a shrug in return.
“It’s settled, then. We are in your care, Lady. Show us these secret paths, and quickly.”
Parysatis’s heart soared as the Prince of the Faithful clasped her hand again and motioned for her to lead the way …
14
Yasmina cleaved to the shadows like a creature born of Night. She made barely a sound as she trailed Musa and the leper, Djuha, down refuse-strewn alleys that reeked of despair and across dim courts hedged in by walls of age-gnawed mudbrick, each step taking them deeper into the labyrinthine heart of the Foreign Quarter. With practiced care, Djuha led them around the places where men gathered for their evening’s sport, the wine shops and pleasure houses with their guttering cressets and copper censers and drunken laughter. Places where one with his affliction would not be welcome.
Yet, Allah must have been smiling upon Yasmina, for at every turn—when habit caused Musa to glance behind them for any sign of pursuit—chance obstructions hid her from the beggar’s glowering eye. She kept just within earshot and just out of sight.
“How much farther?” Yasmina heard the one-eyed beggar snap. They paused near the juncture of two narrow streets; beneath veneers of flaking plaster, the ancient buildings on either hand still bore blackened scars of a long-forgotten conflagration, an inferno that likely gutted the whole neighborhood. Not a stone’s throw away, the Egyptian girl crouched in the lee of a jutting façade, in a well of gloom cast by crude mashrafiyya hanging precariously over her head. From these, faint voices chattered in a tongue Yasmina found incomprehensible while strains of alien music drifted on the still air. “How much farther, damn you?”
The rotting pander, who purred a constant litany of endearments to the filthy urchin serving as his crutch, was slow to answer. “Not far, now.” Even at a distance the sight of Djuha fawning over the boy, stroking his hair and caressing his cheek, sent waves of disgust shuddering through Yasmina; it must have been worse for Musa, who cursed under his breath as each obscene delay forced his hand closer to the hilt of his knife.
“So you’ve said before! Merciful Allah! If this is your idea of a jest—”
“Don’t be a fool, beggar,” she heard Djuha wheeze. “We might have taken a more direct approach, but all that would accomplish is to alert your mistress’s killer that we are watching. No, we must instead come upon him crabwise, to a spot where we might survey his lair from relative safety—which is, I presume, what you want.”
“You’re not even certain it truly is her killer.”
“The man I saw matched his description down to the slightest detail. Surely that must account for something?”
“Perhaps,” the beggar growled, his voice fading as they continued on down the street. Quietly, Yasmina emerged from her hiding place and followed.
“When did you see this man?”
“I have glimpsed him on occasion over many months, coming and going from his lair. I saw him last this evening, after sunset, returning from some errand. He had six other men with him, and between them they looked to be carrying—Allah smite me if I lie!—they looked to be carrying corpses.”
“Corpses?”
“Aye. Three of them. They—” Musa stopped abruptly. The leper paused as well, his head cocked to one side. “What goes, beggar?”
Yasmina froze, certain that Musa had gotten wind of her—perhaps he had heard something, or simply felt the intensity of her gaze. Regardless, she steeled herself, her mind already spooling convenient lies for questions he had yet to ask. But, rather than whirl about and confront her, the one-eyed beggar simply stood in the middle of the street, nodding from side to side and tugging his beard as though trying to work something out on his own. Yasmina took advantage of this pause, quickly sidestepping into the shelter of an open doorway.
“Three, you say? Allah! This cannot be coincidence!” Musa’s hand shot out, iron fingers digging into the leper’s arm without regard to his affliction. Djuha hissed and tried to pull free, but the one-eyed beggar dragged him closer. “Forget stealth, man! Get me to this lair, and swiftly!”
Djuha tore his arm from Musa’s grasp and staggered against the cowering urchin. “Do not touch me!” The leper glared at Musa. Slowly, he regained his balance, his composure, and gestured for the beggar to follow. “Come, then. It is not far.”
Nor was it. The winding street emptied into a ragged square, a hollow where moonlight picked out sparse detail in a faint wash of silver—the tall weeds and shattered chunks of masonry, the drifts of refuse like sand dunes piled against the foundations of a pair of ramshackle tenements. These jutted from the earth, misshapen fingers of crumbling brick and age-blackened timber, with crude keel arches and windows hacked into the walls almost as an afterthought. Both looked abandoned to Yasmina. Abandoned and ominous.
Djuha slunk to the right-hand side of the street and dared go no farther. “This place is called the Maydan al-Iskander, after an old Greek king. Do you see it?” he hissed, pointing. “There, between those two buildings…”
Yasmina sidled closer, cognizant of her every footfall, and tried to follow the leper’s gesture. A few hundred yards to the east—beyond the tangled streets—lay Cairo’s walls and the crenellated towers of the Bab al-Rum, the Foreign Gate. Its relative proximity afforded her little in the way of solace.
Musa leaned out. “I don’t … Wait! What is that?”
From her vantage Yasmina saw it, too, though just barely: a long black cleft in the ground between the two tenements, still showing raw earth and fresh growths of weeds around its edges.
“A cellar entrance, perhaps,” Djuha said.
“That’s where they took the bodies?”
“It is, and that’s where I have seen the one you seek—coming and going into the earth like a djinn.”
Musa raised a hand as though to grab on to the leper, then thought better of it. “I would ask a favor, Djuha … return to Abu’l-Qasim’s caravanserai by the quickest road possible. Tell him what we—what you—found here! By Allah! Bid him gather his Berbers and come with all haste!”
Cloth rustled. Djuha shook his diseased head. “No, no. I have done all I set out to do, beggar. Now, I must see to my own business as you must see to yours.”
“Goddamn you, man! Forget your cursed business! Abu’l-Qasim will make this worth your while!”
Yasmina, though, had heard enough. Even before Djuha could answer, she left the relative shelter of the open doorway and glided in the direction of the two men, her movements as silent and deadly as an emir of al-Hashishiyya. She was within arm’s reach before either man noticed her.
“Leper,” she said, in a voice harder than stone. Both men whirled; the urchin squeaked, clutching at Djuha’s legs. Musa had his knife half drawn before he recognized the slender figure.
“Yasmina? What the devil…?”
She ignored him. “You, leper. This man you say you saw so often—what manner of weapon did he carry?”
“What goes?” Djuha glared at the one-eyed beggar, who shrugged and eased his blade back into its sheath. “Who is she?”
“One of Mistress Zaynab’s companions.”
Yasmina stopped in front of the Bedouin, her head barely reaching the level of his sternum. “Answer me, damn you!”
Djuha frowned. “He … He sported a knife—long and straight with a Frankish hilt. Why do you ask?”
Yasmina nodded. “Leave us,” she said, turning to Musa. “He is the man w
e seek.”
Musa glanced at the leper, indicating with a sharp jerk of his chin that he should take the urchin and go. Djuha, his eyes burning slits of suspicion, draped an arm around his boy and did as he was told.
“You were right to trust him,” Yasmina said, returning her attention to the square that lay before them. “Wait here. I’m going in to flush our quarry out.”
“I’ll decide what we will and won’t do, girl! You shouldn’t even be abroad this time of night. It’s—”
Yasmina turned to face the beggar. “We failed her, Musa. You and I. Her father. We let him take her from us. It’s time to settle accounts.”
“Don’t be a fool, girl.” Musa exhaled. His voice was heavy, pained; the voice of a man forced to confront a harsh reality. “We didn’t fail her. She fell victim to her own ridiculous pride. She should have known her enemies would try and use that against her! No, girl. By not thinking her actions through properly—as her father damn well taught her—Zaynab failed us, not the other way around. We can talk about this later. You wait here and keep an eye out. I’m going back to fetch Abu’l Qasim—”
Yasmina cracked the back of her slim hand across the beggar’s jaw. “Hold your tongue!”
The blow filled Musa’s vision with dancing motes of light. Anger suffused his pox-scarred visage as he shook his head to clear it, wiped at the trickle of blood starting from his split lip. “Damn you!” Musa snatched her up by the scruff of the neck. “You’re just as foolish as she was! I don’t know what will come to pass, if Abu’l-Qasim will send his Berbers to deal with the killer or if he will come himself, but I do know this: you’re going back to the palace where you damn well belong! This is a matter for men, not a scrap of a girl like you!” Musa shook her for emphasis.
Yasmina’s eyes were aglow with the lambent flames of madness, her lips curled in a rictus of hate as she tore free of the beggar’s grasp. The speed of her movement caught Musa wholly off guard. Before he could so much as raise a hand in his own defense, Yasmina’s fingers closed on the knife at his waist. The blade sang free, flashed in the gloom, and then sank hilt-deep into Musa’s abdomen.
The one-eyed beggar howled. He stumbled back, hands clawing at Yasmina’s arm as she sawed the blade upward. Blood spurted over her fingers; it soaked the fabric of her gown as she wrenched the knife free.
Musa staggered and fell, curling his body around the gaping wound in his belly. Hands slick with blood clawed furrows in the hard-packed filth of the street. He glared up at her, tears streaming from his good eye, and tried to curse, to scream, to pray, but waves of white-hot agony allowed for a single gasping plea: “W-why…?”
“Why?” Yasmina hissed. The youthful Egyptian Zaynab had saved from a life of misery was no more; in her place stood a grim and haunted figure, unrecognizable under a patina of gore. Musa flinched as she knelt by his side. “Why? Do you see the blood on your hands, Musa—on my hands? It’s not yours or mine … it is Zaynab’s! You called me a fool for thinking we’d failed her, but I know whereof I speak. We let her die! And as she suffered, so must we … and so must he!” She jerked her chin toward the cleft in the square. “It is Allah’s will.”
“You … you s-stupid little bitch!” Musa gasped. “He’ll k-kill you!”
“Not before I kill him. It is Allah’s will.” And with that, Yasmina rose and stepped over the beggar’s writhing form. She stalked toward the cleft between the tenements. A ribbon of blood drooled from the knife clenched in her fist.
She was a killer. Yasmina wanted that pale-eyed Frank to remember his words. She was a killer …
15
All but invisible in the stygian murk cloaking the foot of the nearest tenement, the black-clad Syrian tasked with guarding the stairs heard a bellow of agony erupt from one of the nearby alleys. Such cries were commonplace amid the dregs of the Foreign Quarter, where a knife in the back remained the preferred method of settling disputes. Still, the Syrian glanced up out of curiosity and saw a young Egyptian woman step from the alley mouth, entering the moonlit square.
His hot stare missed nothing, in particular the moist stain molding the fabric of her gown to the swell of her breasts. He drank in her midnight hair, her narrow waist, her long brown legs; the knife clutched in her right hand he dismissed as a curious affectation, nothing more. Fresh blood spiced the night air.
Closer she came, on an unerring path for the head of the stairs. The Syrian’s lips peeled back in a predatory smile; he dropped his hand to his crotch, feeling the too familiar stirrings of lust. She—
Iron fingers dug into the Syrian’s shoulder; he winced, pain and apprehension dispelling whatever salacious thoughts he entertained. Only one man could move with such utter stealth, unseen and unheard even by a soldier of al-Hashishiyya. The sentry swallowed hard; he glanced to his right and quickly averted his eyes as he received the full measure of the Heretic’s eerie gaze.
“She’s mine,” Badr al-Mulahid hissed …
16
Yasmina reached the cleft and peered over its edge. Moonlight lent a pale luster to the flight of rough-hewn steps leading down into the earth. Apprehension constricted the muscles of her chest. What if the stairs go nowhere? What if that wretched Djuha was lying all along? What if …
But her fears evaporated when a whisper of air—faint and hot—caused fabric to rustle at the bottom of the cleft. For an instant, an oily yellow glow limned the ragged outline of a doorway hacked into the wall. The air stilled again; a curtain of heavy cloth settled back into place to await the next phantom exhalation.
Yasmina’s lips curled in a predatory sneer. She tightened her grip on the bloodstained knife as she hurried down the stairs, left arm thrust out to the side for support. Her fingers brushed deep furrows scored into the sandstone wall, crumbling and uneven, abraded by time and the elements. Curiosity drew her gaze to these carvings. After a moment’s study she apprehended a monstrous figure in the moonlight: a falcon-headed devil hewn of stone and shadow. It emerged from the rock with axe upraised, in defiance of the Prophet’s admonition against graven images. Yasmina flinched away from it. Here was a thing of Old Egypt, a relic of the Time of Ignorance; she had seen its like before, smaller and more careworn, hacked deep into the ancient columns the Gazelle scavenged for the courtyard of her home. Abu’l-Saqr, she had called it, Father of the Falcon. Shivering, the young woman averted her eyes and made her way down to the curtain-hung fissure.
Another breath of air sent fingers of light escaping into the cleft, and with it the mingled smells of dust and old resins, natron and cerecloth, hashish and dried blood. The soles of Yasmina’s bare feet rasped on stone as she shifted her weight. In one hand she clutched her knife, blade angled up and ready to strike; in the other she gripped the edge of the heavy curtain.
The young woman paused. She exhaled, her every nerve tingling. Death lay beyond the curtain. Death and Vengeance—the pair entwined like desperate lovers awaiting the release only consummation could bring. Yasmina’s slim brown fingers grew white-knuckled tight around the haft of Musa’s knife. Death and Vengeance waited for her. It is Allah’s will. Strike quickly. Don’t hesitate. Anything less would give the pale-eyed Heretic a chance to gain the upper hand. To hesitate is to fail.
To hesitate is to fail. This awareness steeled her to action. Yasmina ripped the curtain aside …
… and swore under her breath as she beheld not the covey of killers she had expected, but rather a deserted anteroom, its pitted sandstone walls lit by a pair of small clay lamps. Cobwebs fluttered in the corners; the stones underfoot were dusty and irregular, cracked with age and marred by dark splotches of what may have been dried blood. Yasmina took a hesitant step over the threshold, her eyes searching from side to side. A dozen paces ahead a yawning doorway led deeper into the silent edifice.
No, she realized, her head cocked to the left, not silent. Sound reached her, faint yet unmistakable: a singsong voice chanting in a tongue she could not understand, accompanied by the
sharp pulse of a drum—a rhythmic throb that sent chills down her spine. It reminded Yasmina of the beating of her own heart.
The Egyptian crossed the anteroom on cats’ feet, pausing in the open doorway beneath a lintel carved with the likeness of a winged dung beetle. Of the chamber beyond, Yasmina could make out precious few details. A forest of thick columns stretched off into darkness, their immense stone trunks covered in a veneer of symbols; vertical registers of deeply etched glyphs surrounded images of men in tall headdresses and falcon-headed devils. The otherworldly figures flickered and danced in the feeble lamplight.
How the Heretic and his men could live underground like this, amid the djinn and the ghuls, was a mystery to Yasmina—and not a mystery she cared to plumb. It was unnatural, but Allah had set this task before her and she gave thanks for the gift of opportunity. Lips set in a grim slash, the young Egyptian padded through the doorway and bore left, creeping between columns, skirting the rare pools of light as she let the murmur of the drum guide her.
For an instant Yasmina’s eyes flicked to the ceiling. Despite the oppressive gloom, she could yet see traces of pigment glittering on stone architraves and roofing slabs, swirling constellations of silver and copper oxide blending to form a picture of the ancient firmament, the heavens frozen in time. The girl’s pace faltered. She was accustomed to the spectacle of extravagance, to the jeweled gardens and gilded arcades of the Fatimid palace, but nothing in the short span of Yasmina’s years had prepared her for the awesome antiquity of this place. Its witchery was breathtaking, its mystique infectious. How many such crypts—how many statues and colossi, obelisks and columns—lay beneath the streets of Cairo, buried and forgotten? Who had built them and for what purpose? What—
The eerie harmony of voice and drum reached a shuddering climax, which gave way to heavy, pregnant silence. Its ominous weight smothered the questions smoldering in the forefront of Yasmina’s mind. Mouthing a litany of curses, she shook off her lethargy and resumed her path through the stone forest, her attention fixed firmly on the task at hand.