by Melanie Rawn
Cheeks soot-streaked and eyes frenzied, his fine blue cloak singed, Azzad was unrecognizable as his family’s most elegant wastrel. Riding along the avenue of plane trees and oleander hedges that led to the reservoir and the Qoundi Ammar barracks that guarded it, he saw in the near distance a small troop on horseback. Melting into the shadows, whispering a silencing word to Khamsin, he waited for them to pass.
There were fifteen of them, all in dark crimson tunics, riding the white stallions of the Qoundi Ammar that looked like ghost horses by moonlight. One of the men wore a gold-and-ruby armband. Another repeatedly tossed into the air a long dagger, catching it neatly by the jewel-studded hilt. A third flourished a white silk cloak, embroidered around the edges with autumnbronze leaves.
The armband belonged to his uncle and the dagger to his older brother. And the cloak—he’d watched his sisters stitch the complicated patterns on the great frame in their workroom, hurrying to finish it in time for their father’s birthday.
“Do you realize what the launderers will charge to get the vomit out of this?” complained the man wearing the cloak.
“Puke soaks out,” said another man, who had a length of bronze silk draped across his saddle. “This one will have a bloodstain even if it’s washed a hundred times!”
“At least we got the best pickings,” advised the one wearing the armband. “Pity the poor menials who’ll have to clean up half the palace, with not even a ring left on any of the bodies! Poisoned vomit on the banqueting floor, blood flowing all over the courtyard, every cushion ruined—”
His companions jeered at him for worrying like a house-proud eunuch. Then they rode past the place where Azzad sat trembling in his saddle, and he could hear their voices no more.
“Eminent Majesty,” said the eunuch, concluding his report, “Beit Ma’aliq will be gutted by morning. All within the house are dead. Regrettably—”
“What?” snapped the Sheyqa, glancing up from cooing to newborn Sayyida, who lay sleeping on her knees. She truly was a pretty little thing, and looked just like her grandmother—but for the unfortunate chin.
“Regret, Esteemed Lady, for the houses nearby that caught fire,” he said quickly. “Eleven, before those flames were extinguished.”
“And how did this happen?”
“Unknown, Majesty. But may I humbly suggest that part of the confiscated funds be used to rebuild those houses and repair damage to the others? After all, it was an al-Ma’aliq servant who tipped over a lamp and started the fire.” An unnecessary reminder of the official reason for the conflagration; the explanation would fool no one and was not intended to do so. “Thus it would be a magnanimous gesture on Your Illustrious Majesty’s part—”
“How much will it cost me to be magnanimous?”
“Not more than a tenth part of the whole, Beloved Lady.”
“Oh, very well. It seems I can afford it. What else? It grows late, and my darling little girl wants her nurse.” She glanced over to the bronze-draped bed, where a beautiful young woman lay in the tangle of her hip-length black hair. She was perfectly still and perfectly silent. At long last, silent.
“I expect word by tomorrow evening of the extermination of everyone at the other al-Ma’aliq holdings by the . . .” He paused delicately. “. . . the relatives of Your Exaltedness.”
“My orders were clear—spare no one, not even the lowliest kitchen boy.”
“So it shall be, Majesty,” Arrif replied with a bow. “I have prepared a list of candidates to replace the managers and most skilled crafters at all the estates.” After a thoughtful pause, he continued, “The fallahin in their villages will also be killed. I surmised that Your Majesty would not wish any alMa’aliq supporters to survive. Listeners in the city will inform us of who expresses sympathy here.”
“Do what you must,” Sheyqa Nizzira replied. “Just so the castle is kept in perfect order for someone to inherit one day. I think it shall be Reihan. For all he is but seven years old, he pleases me more every day. So manly, so clever!”
“As Your Exaltedness wishes, so shall it be done.”
The Sheyqa looked up when the eunuch didn’t leave. “Ayia, what else?”
“Only one thing, Majesty,” Arrif admitted reluctantly. “The count has been made five times. One hundred twenty-six dead of poison, two hundred sixty-nine of sword or axe.”
The Sheyqa swore luridly. The baby started to cry.
“A total,” Arrif concluded, staring at the carpet, “of three hundred ninety-five. One is missing.”
“Which?”
“The qabda’an believes it is the young man who had the temerity to apply to the Qoundi Ammar. Azzad, younger son of Yuzuf.”
“Cease this uproar at once!” the Sheyqa ordered Sayyida, who only bawled more lustily.
“A voice to be heard commanding a battle, Majesty,” Arrif observed.
“Are you trying to be funny? Call a servant and get this brat out of here. My sweet little Reihan never screamed so. I vow to Acuyib, if Sayyida is as noisy as her mother, she’ll end up silenced the same way.”
He summoned the nurse, who was so terrified she actually cast a glance at the bed rather than keeping her eyes strictly on her charge. The Sheyqa glanced at the eunuch, who nodded; a new nurse would be found by morning. When they were alone with Ammineh’s corpse, Nizzira said quietly, “Find Azzad. Find him, and kill him.”
“As Your Glorious Majesty wills it, so shall it be done.”
He could stay, and die. He could flee, and live.
If he stayed, he could accuse the Sheyqa in public and have all know what had been done to the al-Ma’aliq.
Which everybody would know anyway. And nothing would be done about it. The Sheyqa was the Sheyqa.
If he fled, he could establish himself—somewhere, somehow—and one day take his vengeance.
Which was precisely what the Sheyqa feared and why he would be hunted.
He had nothing. With the deaths of the al-Ma’aliq, he was nothing.
But the thought of Nizzira wondering—wondering for years, never safe, never at rest, always wondering when and where and how Azzad al-Ma’aliq would strike—filled him with hot, vicious glee. He must survive.
Khamsin snorted softly, as if to remind him that they were still in the capital city of Rimmal Madar and within easy reach of the Sheyqa. Revenge was for the future—if Azzad lived that long.
And if living required money, vengeance required a fortune.
In pearls, perhaps?
Two hours later, so covered in midden filth that Khamsin’s nostrils flared in disgust, Azzad had the pearl necklace tucked once more in his sash.
It lacked several hours till dawn, and in those hours he could be halfway to the western coast. Instead, he turned south. South, to The Steeps that marked the border of Rimmal Madar and the Gabannah Chaydann—the Devil’s Graveyard. No one would ever look for him there.
In the city of Dayira Azreyq, dawn was stained red-brown. All that morning people muffled their coughing, shuttered windows in vain against thick drifting smoke, and thanked Acuyib that the only fires in their own homes were in ovens and lamps. Anyone who had cut himself anytime in the past week sent up similar praise that the wound was not a sword or an axe through the chest. And those with sicknesses of the belly or bowels paused in their misery to be grateful that only spoiled meat or too much wine afflicted them, and not the Sheyqa’s poison.
In the way of great cities, small words traveled quickly. A servant, a day laborer, a lover sneaking out a back door, a cook venturing early to the markets—small words, they were, fire and swords and poison, connected to the once-great name of al-Ma’aliq.
Dayira Azreyq came alive more slowly than usual, but it did come alive; and for all that nearly a thousand al-Ma’aliq had died the night before, it was a day like any other—all its inhabitants furtively thankful for another day of life.
Thus the evil was accomplished. For a jealous Sheyqa’s obsession, the al-Ma’aliq were exterminated, f
rom the aged patriarch Kallad to the real ruler of the family, Za’avedra el-Ibrafidia, to Kallad’s infant great-great granddaughter, only five days old.
The el-Ma’aliq who had married outside the family were also killed, and their children with them, and their husbands as well for safety’s sake. From the mountain castle’s fastness to the broad estates in the lowlands, from Beit Ma’aliq’s splendor to the small stone huts of the workers, those connected to the al-Ma’aliq by blood or loyalty or employment were obliterated. Within a handful of days, the dead numbered more than four thousand. No one spoke a word against the slaughter.
The Sheyqa’s servants who were not the Sheyqa’s servants vanished hence they had come, with no one the wiser to their true identities.
Yet for all her triumph, Sheyqa Nizzira al-Ammarizzad could not rest.
Azzad al-Ma’aliq yet lived.
—FERRHAN MUALEEF, Deeds of Il-Kadiri, 654
2
Upon reflection, the Gabannah Chaydann had probably been a stupid idea.
The heat was punishing by day, and it seemed that winter reached out early and greedy this year to grip the night. Azzad traveled from dusk to dawn, shivering; from daybreak to nightfall he sweated in the sparse shade of the rocks, having ejected those with prior claim: snakes, lizards, gazelles, and—once—a sand-tiger, the formidable rimmal nimir. He’d have scars on his thigh for life from that encounter.
The pearls seemed to grow heavier as he traveled. Ridiculous notion, going after jewels to buy food and water in a place that had no food or water, let alone anywhere to buy them. He’d filled his waterskin and his belly at one of the rivulets outside the city that fed the reservoir, and left a pearl in payment for the bread and haunch he stole from an outlying village. But a mere three days into his journey to nowhere, the heat was melting the flesh from his bones. The third night, after the water ran out, he walked beside his tired horse, both of them stumbling with fatigue and thirst across hard, stony ground.
And this wasn’t even the worst of the desert. That lay beyond The Steeps, with only one negotiable pass where caravans plodded from late autumn to early spring. Azzad hoped the first of them was even now crossing the western lands beyond the desert, bound for Rimmal Madar. If he encountered them in the pass and asked nicely enough, they might part with some food and water for another of the pearls.
The fourth evening he was lucky.
So hungry and weary that only instinct and long training kept him in the saddle, he nearly fell out of it when he heard the screeching of a hawk. Within ten paces, as he was still trying to calm his racing heartbeats, came the clattering of stones and a pitiable scream of a different kind. He froze, at first fearing the Qoundi Ammar, then cursed himself for a fool. If they were near, there would be no noise; all he would have heard was his own death rattle.
Trailing the rattle of stones, he soon saw that Acuyib had sent a rock-slide to trap a gazelle near a hidden pool of brackish water, breaking its leg and leaving it to a slow death. Azzad gave profound thanks for the gazelle and the water as he killed the suffering animal. Long experience of the ritual hunt at the mountain castle of the al-Ma’aliq made him swift and sure in slicing up the meat, but as he worked, he fought back renewed grief. He would never again ride out with his father and uncles, brother and cousins, on the annual parody of a barbarian festival of long ago. The leaving of the castle and the returning to it three days later were always comical events, with the men strutting and the women fluttering and everyone giggling as the women pretended to scream in horror at all the trophy heads. His mother was particularly adept at miming a gracefully ornamental faint, right into his father’s waiting arms.
Azzad’s movements were vicious as he stabbed chunks of meat onto a stick for roasting. Never again, never again. He kept telling himself how lucky he was to be alive, but as the tiny fire died out and he stared up at the stars, he wondered if sparing his life had been a mercy or a prank. He had nothing; he was nothing. The wealth and position—and the brilliance and laughter—of the proud al-Ma’aliq were no more.
At dawn of the sixth day he emerged from the pass, and immediately turned Khamsin around again to take shelter in an outcropping of rock, cursing himself yet again for a fool. Down below The Steeps were tents of crimson—the color of the Sheyqa—decorated with a pattern of swords and axes embroidered in white wool. This was the camp of the Ammarad, the tribe from which Sheyqa Nizzira’s line had sprung. He could not elude them. The Ammarad were camped here for the season, exacting the Sheyqa’s taxes and tribute of their own from every caravan. He could hide the ring marking him as al-Ma’aliq, he could tear off every bronze tassel from Khamsin’s bridle and saddle, he could claim any other name in the world—and he might get away with it. But once they learned, as they inevitably would, that their kinswoman Nizzira wanted him dead, they would remember that a stranger had passed by in the wrong direction for this time of year—toward the desert, not toward Dayira Azreyq—and come after him. Their expertise in tracking a man through trackless wastes was legendary.
Hiding himself and his horse as best he could, he spent the day wondering what to do. Fitful sleep was interrupted by visions of axes descending on his neck, of Khamsin disemboweled by gleaming swords, of the Sheyqa’s laughing face, all shaded in crimson. And it seemed that every few moments he was jerked awake by the shrieking of a hawk. At dusk he rose, nervous and unrefreshed, and turned Khamsin onto a narrow side trail that took them higher and farther from the pass. He had no idea where he was or where he was going. He only knew he could not descend from The Steeps anywhere near the Ammarad.
Acuyib smiled on Azzad once more, for just as the moon rose to light the rugged rocks, he came upon two bodies: hunters, nondescript in their clothing and wearing no distinguishing jewelry. Identification at this point would have defeated their own mothers; desiccating sun and scavenging animals had obliterated features and flesh. One of the men was a fair match for Azzad in height. Staring down at the corpses, wondering how they had died, he pondered many alternatives before deciding that the thing could be done.
Intending to heft the taller man across Khamsin’s saddle and go stage his scene closer to the main road where it would be more readily discovered, he grappled with the limp body for a moment, then blurted in surprise as he learned rather abruptly what had caused the man’s death. There was a knife stuck in his lower back. Azzad turned the second man over and found that a smaller knife had ripped through his belly. Crouching beside the corpse, wincing at the still painful wound in his thigh, he pondered for a time, then nodded. Definitely the thing could be done.
By sunrise the depiction of his own murder was complete. The taller man was dressed in Azzad’s clothes, the knife stuck through them. Realism demanded bloodstains on the garments; Azzad unwrapped the bandage from his thigh and carefully coaxed fresh blood from the wound. That it was alarmingly easy to do so worried him for only a moment. He’d concern himself with healing later.
“His” corpse also wore a silver armband regretfully donated to the ruse. The golden key of the postern gate lock was tucked into the sash. But a gold ring set with a dark topaz Azzad would not relinquish; carved with the leaf symbol of the al-Ma’aliq, it was a present from his mother. The second man lay on his back this time instead of his belly, with Azzad’s own eminently identifiable knife thrust into his gut.
As dawn glimmered through the deep canyons of The Steeps, the last of the al-Ma’aliq sat in the dust, patiently unknotting the pearls. He stashed most of them in his belt, intending to sacrifice ten to the embellishment of the murder. Cradling them and the flower-petal clasp in his palm, he looked from one body to the other and decided that “his” corpse was the better choice. Accordingly, he dropped the pearls and the clasp near one lifeless hand and then limped back from the scene to evaluate his work.
If the Qoundi Ammar indeed followed him, and he had every reason to think that they would, they would discover the half-eaten corpses. With luck, they would soon identi
fy the personal items—the armband, the key, the knife—and return to tell the Sheyqa that Azzad al-Ma’aliq was dead. They would go no farther; they would not reach the crimson tents and ask about a lone traveler. Azzad would be free to descend, claim the rights of hospitality, and depart for the western desert, knowing no one would ever come after him. They would never know who he was.
But even if a caravan or other hunters found the bodies, it was of no real consequence; when armband and knife were taken to be sold and the key taken to be melted down, someone among the city’s merchants would know. He was—had been, he reminded himself—popular among the crafters of Dayira Azreyq, lavish in his spending on trinkets for himself and his mistresses. The clasp in particular was unique to a certain jeweler, who would certainly remember Azzad. And if there weren’t enough pearls left to make the necklace the clasp had originally adorned—well, it was dusty here, and windy, and there were excuses enough for their absence. There was the key, as well: the most identifiable item of all, for its design incorporated the graceful leaf of the al-Ma’aliq. Someone would recognize it. He was certain.
It seemed his dissolute ways, deplored by his family, might save his life twice. Visiting one woman had spared him on the night of the massacre, and giving jewels to the others could confirm his death. Never had he been so glad—or so ashamed—of his misspent youth.
And how odd it was, he reflected, that at twenty years old, he considered youth irretrievably gone.
Khamsin’s hoofprints to and from this place would lead riders off the main road to discovery of the scene. As he rode away wearing the dead hunter’s clothes, bow and quiver on his shoulder, he apologized to his horse. “I know you’d never leave me, not even if I really was lying there dead. But we have to make it look as if you did.”