by Melanie Rawn
Azzad, squinting into the distance, thought about joining Abb Shagara, then gave a start as he realized that the man astride the donkey had come from Sihabbah. Bazir al-Gallidh often sent messengers back and forth to his brother in Hazganni; these men dressed in white robes with a thick stripe of black down each sleeve. The visitor wore such a garment. As he neared, Azzad even recognized him: Annif, younger brother of Mazzud who worked with him in the stables.
Striding swiftly to where Chal Kabir and Fadhil stood, Azzad said, “I know this boy. He comes from al-Gallidh, my employer.”
Fadhil shook his head. “It can be no good thing that brings him so far.”
And so it proved.
“Al-Gallidh is ill. He may be dead even now,” Annif reported, gulping water between sentences. “I have had a time of it, probably too long a time, finding you, Azzad—even after Mou’ammi Zellim made a map from what you told him of your route. He sent me to bring you back to Sihabbah.”
Azzad sucked in a breath, worry for Bazir clenching his chest. But before he could ask any questions, Chal Kabir spoke.
“What is the nature of his illness?”
Annif shook his head. “The tabbib doesn’t know. Al-Gallidh was well in the morning, but by afternoon his breathing was bad and there was pain.”
“What kind of pain?”
“In one arm.”
Kabir sighed impatiently. “Which arm? The left? And don’t ask if it matters, because it matters a great deal.”
Azzad said, “Chal Kabir is more accomplished than any tabbib you’ve ever heard of, Annif. Now, which arm was it?”
“The left, I think.” The boy glanced around the empty camp beyond, his eyes widening. “Is this all there is to the Shagara?”
Kabir ignored him in favor of Azzad. “You have said that Sihabbah is high in the mountains. Has he trouble breathing sometimes? Must he climb stairs slowly or grow dizzy?”
“This I do not know,” Azzad admitted. “I have never been above the ground floor of his house.”
“Is his bedchamber there?”
“I believe so—yes, right next to his maqtabba.”
“He has hundreds of books—” the boy bragged, only to be ignored once again.
“Then on purpose he does not climb stairs. How old is al-Gallidh?”
“About your age.” With the customary politeness and respect for the elderly, Azzad lopped ten years off his truest estimate. “Fifty-five or thereabouts.”
Kabir’s lips thinned—with annoyance, Azzad thought in bewilderment—and Fadhil coughed behind his hand for no reason Azzad could discern.
“It is his heart,” announced Kabir. “If you leave at once, you may be in time. I will give you certain things that will help al-Gallidh.”
Annif blinked. “You can, when our own tabbib cannot?”
“Your tabbib must be a very great fool not to know the signs,” Kabir snapped and turned for the dawa’an sheymma.
When Annif was settled with food and drink in Fadhil’s tent, Fadhil drew Azzad aside. “Would you like me to come with you? I could ask Abb Shagara for permission. I might be able to help al-Gallidh.”
“I would be very grateful,” Azzad said, surprised. “But surely the Shagara do not leave the tribe?”
“There’s a first time for everything,” the young man said blithely. As they passed Leyliah’s tent, Fadhil paused. “Besides, I have a wish to see this place in the clouds.”
Abb Shagara gave his consent to the expedition. Khamsin was saddled, and Azzad reasoned that as slim as Fadhil was, Khamsin would not be very much slowed by carrying double. Annif would follow on the donkey, leading the other two donkeys and the Shagara-bred fillies, which Abb Shagara insisted Azzad take.
“Not as payment for Haddid and the charming Farrasha,” he said, “but because I have listened to what you’ve said about breeding. If Khamsin’s foals are so much smaller within the mares, it is more than likely that our studs would sire foals too big for his get to carry. The two colts will service our best mares when they’re old enough, but I have decided that Farrasha will be my riding horse only and never bred. I am already most passionately in love with her, and it would pierce my heart to lose her.”
“In truth,” Azzad replied, “that is a wise decision. Only if you were to find another of Khamsin’s breed could you be certain that Farrasha would survive. I’ll send more saddles back with Fadhil, but you must promise not to ride any of them until they’re full grown. And now I think we must leave. Fadhil, are you ready?”
“My things are already in Khamsin’s saddlebags.” Swallowing the last of his qawah, he rose and said, “I must say farewell to Meryem and Leyliah.”
When he was gone, Azzad watched Abb Shagara over the rim of his cup. The fey, expressive golden face was solemn, almost sad, and one could see the old man he would one day be. He reached underneath the piled pillows and brought out a small, thin gold ring set with a chip of green emerald.
“It would please me if you would give this to Fadhil. I cannot do it myself.”
Azzad took the ring, knowing enough now to look on the inside, where a tiny swallow and an even smaller butterfly were engraved. “Beautiful. May I ask—?”
“I want him to find a woman he can love,” was the forthright reply. “Leyliah is lost to him, but in Sihabbah—you understand, don’t you, Aqq Azzad?”
“Yes.” At least, he understood that Abb Shagara believed this ring would help Fadhil find a suitable young woman. Fadhil would believe it, too—and perhaps that was all that counted. “I’ll tell him I asked you for something of the kind, because he is my friend and I worry about him.”
“Thank you. And now I think you must leave us again.” His smile returned. “If I am not too much mistaken, your Khamsin has left us with another remembrance or two.”
“If I’m not careful, you’ll set yourselves up as rivals to my horse-breeding scheme,” Azzad teased.
“’Scheme’? I thought it all happened because of a mistake!”
“That’s just what Jemilha said,” Azzad complained.
“Ayia, so you have met a girl!”
Bazir al-Gallidh did not die. Azzad and Fadhil arrived in Sihabbah in time to help the nobleman. Within two handfuls of days, alGallidh was strong enough to stand at his windows to inspect Khamsin’s two Shagara half-breed fillies. At the end of two months, he announced himself cured.
But Fadhil warned Azzad in private that while Shagara healing was powerful, it was not invincible. Al-Gallidh was advised to leave the mountains, where the air was too thin. After much resistance, he went from Sihabbah to his house in Hazganni. Azzad was charged with overseeing all the al-Gallidh possessions. Fadhil, who had commanded himself to resignation regarding Leyliah’s marriage to Razhid Harirri, discovered an alternative: Rather than remain with the Shagara and witness daily her happiness with another man, he remained with his friend Azzad.
Every third month they traveled down to Hazganni together, to visit the al-Gallidh brothers and report on the Sihabbah holdings and horses. Fadhil was not the first Shagara to visit the great city, but he was the first to become familiar to its citizens. He gained a reputation as a noteworthy tabbib, though his healing was of medicine only, for it would be dangerous to practice the craft of the hazziri outside the secrecy of the Shagara encampment—or the Sihabbah house of alGallidh.
—FERRHAN MUALEEF, Deeds of Il-Kadiri, 654
7
Azzad al-Ma’aliq slouched in his chair, glaring at the ledger on his desk. The rulers of Hazganni, that celebrated city on the plain, had managed to kill every single one of the trees he’d sent from Sihabbah. Now they were demanding either repayment or a hundred more trees to replace those dead of their neglect.
“We sent them instructions,” Azzad muttered aloud. “We sent them the correct fertilizer. We even sent them hazziri to plant with the trees, Acuyib witness it! Ayia, I want to see these dead trees for myself, to see if they really are dead—and to prove that stupidity killed th
em.”
Fadhil looked up from a book. “So we go to Hazganni again? That’s three times in two moons. Perhaps it’s not the trees that draw you there.”
The entrance of an al-Gallidh servant to light the lamps kept Azzad silent. Bazir’s maqtabba gradually began to glow with a golden shimmer, the paper-thin alabaster shades diffusing the tiny flames. When the servant had departed, Azzad said, “It’s a pretty journey—as well as much faster, now that you’ve mastered riding.”
“I speak of your eagerness to visit Hazganni, not your enjoyment of the trip.”
He shrugged. “I grew up in a large city, so naturally I feel comfortable there. Especially in the zouqs—my aunts and sisters were dedicated shoppers, Acuyib delight their souls!”
“Ah, now we come to it.”
“Come to what?”
“It.”
Azzad eyed his friend. “Make sense, Fadhil, I beg. What ‘it’ have we arrived at, and why did I not know we were going there?”
Fadhil grinned over at him. “Women. More particularly, ladies. Most particularly, one lady, who if she isn’t in your thoughts ought to be.”
Azzad searched his mind and memories. In the year and a half since Bazir al-Gallidh and his family had moved permanently to Hazganni, Azzad had visited many lovely ladies, some of them more than once. A few were as beautiful as Ashiyah, but he’d found none he would gift with her pearls. And he’d found none as agreeable in bed—or as interesting to converse with, truth be told—as Bindta Feyrah up on the mountainside.
“Which lady?” he asked Fadhil, genuinely curious.
“If you don’t yet know, I’m not going to tell you.”
“Ayia, I think perhaps you don’t like leaving Sihabbah, for the sake of one lady in particular,” Azzad teased.
“Not one—four,” Fadhil replied serenely.
“Shameless,” Azzad intoned, shaking his head, secretly disappointed that the ring had not done its work.
“On the contrary. Each is so thoroughly in love with me that to choose one above the others would break their hearts.” He paused, then closed his book and went to the window. “What commotion is this?”
Azzad joined him, peering into the dusky gloom. His jaw dropped open; in the next instant he nearly laughed at himself. Had it been so long since he’d left Rimmal Madar that the sight of four men on horseback shocked him so?
“Acuyib’s Glory—that’s Challa Meryem!” Fadhil exclaimed, and raced from the maqtabba. Azzad followed, running out into the courtyard where Meryem had dismounted a young mare. She embraced Fadhil, took off her gloves, and regarded Azzad with a whimsical smile.
“As Challi Dawa’an, I prescribe for myself a long, hot bath! You never said riding would be so difficult on the muscles, Azzad!”
“A bath with soothing salts, as hot as you can stand it,” Azzad told her. “You are welcome to Sihabbah, in the name of al-Gallidh.”
With Meryem had come two young male cousins and Razhid Harirri’s uncle—a dignified man of fifty or so who had a tale to tell. When they were all seated in Bazir’s maqtabba while baths were prepared, Ba’adem began to speak.
“When it was learned that Challa Leyliah would honor the Harirri with marriage to my nephew, there was great rejoicing in our tents. And, in the way of the desert, word carried to other tribes. One of these was the Ammarad.” He scowled, heavy brows darkening his eyes. “They sent four Geysh Dushann! We did not know it at the time, for they presented themselves as members only of their tribe, not of the order to which they belong. They wished to know all about the wedding, and what gifts the Shagara would favor, and suchlike.”
“It was their way of conniving an invitation,” Meryem said. “Evidently they thought that perhaps you would come to the wedding, Azzad.” She gave a shrug. “Perhaps they are more confident, working their wickedness in the desert.”
“And so,” Ba’adem went on, after taking a long swallow of qawah, “to our shame, we told them of the plans. But my nephew—”
He of the subtle eyes, thought Azzad.
“—did not trust them, having learned from Leyliah the facts of the matter. So he followed them with his brothers and myself, and at the first water outside our camp we overheard their plots. They tended to their knives and their potions for poisoning. We knew them then for Geysh Dushann. And we killed them.”
Azzad had the feeling there was much more to the story than this simple statement. “You have courage, Ba’adem Harirri, and I thank you for your good work.”
One hand waved dismissively. “It is surprisingly easy to kill men who think they are better at killing than anyone else. We burned them in the desert and took their horses. Razhid had also learned from Leyliah that your Khamsin had sired foals on Shagara mares, and so we bred the stallions to our own mares, just to see what would happen. Five fine colts, which we ask now if we may keep, to breed riding horses for the Harirri.”
“He asks,” Meryem said, “because Razhid gave the horses to Leyliah as his marriage price, and Leyliah now gives them to you. So the foals are now half yours.”
Azzad sat back, stunned. He had fifteen of Khamsin’s get here in Sihabbah, and now they were telling him there were five more colts sired by studs other than Khamsin, which meant that in time they could be bred to Khamsin’s line—
“We also bred the studs to several of our own mares before we came here,” Meryem added. “So you own half of those foals as well.”
His brain spun within his skull. And all at once he remembered a conversation with Fadhil, when he had first sojourned with the Shagara: “Greed—do you mean in the way a child is greedy for sweets? But what use is more of everything beyond the sufficiency for living?”
To accept all these horses would be sheer greed. It would go a long way toward sinking him to the same level as Sheyqa Nizzira al-Ammarizzad, rapacious and ruthless. So he shook his head. “No. I thank you with all my heart, but the foals are yours. My only caution is that the mares should not be bred to your stallions, for they are too small to carry such large foals. Other than that, all these horses are yours to do with as you please.”
“Just make sure the town of Sihabbah gets all the contracts for making saddles and bridles and riding boots,” Fadhil added with a smile. “And now I think it’s time for those hot baths.” When the two young cousins nodded emphatic agreement, he laughed aloud. “I have a thing or two in my medicine case that will help. Come with me.”
Ba’adem and the two boys left; Meryem lingered with Azzad. “My son told me you might say something of the kind. He will agree to keep one stallion to breed to Shagara and Harirri mares, but he says that you will take the other stallion and the two mares or he will be extremely angry.”
“Challa Meryem—”
“Abb Shagara has said it, and so it shall be.” Her lips twitched in a smile. “Relent, Aqq Azzad. Leyliah says she fully expects to see her sons riding horses when they’re big enough. And at the rate her first son by Razhid is growing—”
“She has a son?”
“A fine little boy with his father’s eyes. His name is Fadhil. And now I will have my bath, if it’s convenient.”
Azzad called for servants to escort Meryem upstairs to Jemilha’s old rooms. He sat a while longer in the maqtabba, planning the next several generations of horses. From Sihabbah to Hazganni and in every town between, people stopped and stared whenever Azzad and Fadhil rode through. In five years he would have horses enough to sell to rich men who wanted to travel swiftly and look like sheyqirs. And then, with the money and the influence . . . he fingered the hazzir at his breast, his thumb caressing the hawk. Retribution. Yes. At last.
Azzad gave Ba’adem Harirri and the Shagara cousins three fat, comfortable donkeys on which to ride home. They had grown familiar enough with horses to be chagrined at the alteration. As they rode away, Azzad hid a smile: they sat the donkeys as they would horses, pretending for their own pride.
Meryem intended to go with Azzad and Fadhil to Hazganni an
d ride back to the Shagara spring encampment from there. Accordingly, they mounted up, with Meryem on a white stallion Azzad knew could only have belonged to one of the executed Qoundi Ammar. He himself rode Khamsin, as always, and Fadhil spent the first miles out of Sihabbah struggling with one of the new mares.
“How did you ever manage these brutes all that way from the camp?” he asked, sweating as he fought the reins.
In answer, she removed the glove from her right hand and showed him a new ring. “All four of us have one of these, made by Abb Shagara personally.”
Turquoise brought luck and protected both horse and rider. Fadhil had been wearing a turquoise armband ever since leaving the Shagara, yet he was having trouble with the mare.
“My son is becoming adept at hazziri for horses and riders,” Meryem added.
Fadhil made a face. “He uses the blood of the horses as well as the riders,” he accused. “Is that not so? It’s the only way he could accomplish it.”
“Perhaps. Perhaps not.” She smiled sweetly. “But surely you’ve been riding so long that a little mare like that cannot be too much trouble!”
The residence of the al-Gallidh was in the finest quarter of Hazganni, a district of whitewashed three-story houses and high-walled gardens. Tiled roofs of red and blue and yellow and green—and sometimes wildly patterned with all of these—were shaded by palms and plane trees, and white-flowered oleander bushes that grew almost as tall as the houses. Oranges and lemons were in bloom. Pink and white and scarlet geraniums overflowed window boxes, and jasmine spread fragrance everywhere. Hazganni could almost have been Dayira Azreyq but for two things: There were no horses in the narrow streets, only donkeys; and there was no looming bulk of a palace always on the edge of one’s vision.
Meryem so far forgot her habitual poise as to exclaim in amazement at the variety of foliage, the bustle of the streets, the wares in the zouqs, the bright clothes of the citizenry. Azzad grinned to himself and made a mental promise to have Jemilha take Meryem shopping. The girl was nearly as accomplished as Azzad’s sisters at picking an entire market clean of bargains.