Worm Winds of Zanzibar (The Alex Trueman Chronicles Book 2)

by Martin Dukes

  “I bid you good morning,” said the young man, bowing. Shazad was the son of one of the richest nobles in the land. Tall, lithe and muscular, he would have been very handsome were it not for his immoderately sized nose, a feature that Henry had not been the first to bring into ridicule, a feature that had brought about a number of such dawn encounters. He removed his jacket to reveal a pristine white shirt. A supporter passed him a glittering sabre with a jewelled hilt.

  “I trust you mean to give me satisfaction,” he said, trying the edge with his thumb, and then glancing up at Henry with a meaningful look in his eye.

  “Yeah, whatever,” said Henry, a noticeable catch in his voice.

  Shazad’s supporters stepped back. Will and Alex slapped Henry on the back.

  “Go for it mate,” said Will encouragingly. “You’ve only got to nick him a bit and we can call it a day.”

  “You’ll be fine,” said Alex, looking around with increasing desperation to see if anyone was going to intervene.

  It was not until Henry and Shazad were actually circling, ready to meet steel with steel, that the sound of hoof beats could be heard approaching.

  “Stop!” called Alex rushing forward, hands raised.

  Henry dropped his guard, and after a moment in which Shazad might have been considering getting in a sneak shot, he lowered his weapon, too.

  “What now?” he enquired in irritated tones.

  To Alex and Henry’s immense relief it was the Sultan’s herald, who reigned up sharply within a few yards and tossed a scroll of paper onto the grass between the combatants. The Sultan’s seal, blood-red in the grass, secured the ribbon that held it.

  “My master forbids this,” he said simply. “You must compose your differences without recourse to arms.”

  Alex’s heart leapt within him. Kelly and Tanya hugged each other gleefully and Will punched the air.

  “Ha!” said Henry, evidently much relieved, stepping back and throwing his sabre on the ground. “Damn, I was going to give him such a thrashing.”

  Shazad bit his lip. He looked like someone whose dinner has been snatched from in front of them.

  “Well… if the Sultan commands it, I must submit to his will.”

  “There is no reflection on your honour,” the herald assured him, with a sidelong glance at Alex that implored him to get Henry to shut up.

  “Very well,” said Shazad inclining his head. “But this dog must learn to curb his tongue or someday I will surely part him from it.”

  So saying, he turned on his heel and stalked off towards his friends, who stood looking downcast like a group of theatregoers who have been told the main event has just been cancelled.

  “Yeah, big nose idiot,” called Henry, and would have added more to this had Will and Alex not both jumped on him and clasped hands over his mouth.

  “Are you insane?” demanded Kelly, kicking him in the shin.

  “Another day,” said Shazad ominously, turning in his saddle.

  Preparations for the Sultan’s expedition against the slavers and the pirates continued. The more elderly vessels in his fleet were brought into the dockyard and overhauled. Great quantities of stores of all kinds were assembled in the warehouses at the military end of Zanzibar’s harbour. The parade ground rang to the sound of marching troops, the bark of drill sergeants and the clash of steel. A whiff of gunpowder drifted across the city as soldiers with muskets practised their marksmanship in the field behind the barracks. The city was alive with rumours. Everyone knew that the Sultan was planning an expedition against the pirate havens, but its precise point of attack was a closely guarded secret. The talk in the streets and the taverns was that the mission would set sail before midsummer, and the Sultan’s spies were kept busy looking out for anyone likely to pass intelligence to their enemies. Alex was kept busy on the planning side of things, always at the Sultan’s side, as in conference after conference the details were discussed and brought to action. Henry continued to work on his fencing skills and the finer points of horsemanship until the grizzled veteran Ahmed conceded he would make a warrior of him yet. Will continued his education with Zoroaster, gradually becoming a little better at maths and a great deal more expert at identifying the stars in the firmament. Kelly felt out of sorts, though, as she explained to Alex one night after dinner when they were walking atop a stretch of the palace wall that offered views southward over the harbour.

  “It’s alright for you,” she said, leaning on the parapet and looking out past the harbour wall to the sea beyond. “You’ve got plenty to keep you busy. All I’ve got is faffing about with walks and lunch parties and gossip about who’s going to get hitched to who and who’s having affairs and stuff like that. There’s no point to it.”

  “You’re doing great,” Alex told her, standing at her side. “We’ve just got to blend in and keep a low profile until Malcolm comes back for us. You know that.”

  She shrugged, without meeting his eye. “Yeah, I guess. I don’t like the way it is for women here, though. They’re just like ornaments. They don’t get to do anything. Not really. Not like home. It’s just kind of empty.”

  “That’s how it used to be in our world, too,” said Alex. “For upper-class women, anyway.”

  “I know, I’m not stupid,” said Kelly with an edge to her voice that alarmed Alex. “I’m just saying I don’t like it. I want out of here.”

  “We all want out of here,” said Alex earnestly. “I’d just like to have my ordinary life back. I never thought I’d miss school. Jesus, there’s loads of stuff I miss.”

  “I miss my mum and my proper mates,” said Kelly turning to him suddenly. “How did I even get sucked into all this? It’s crazy.”

  “It’s a pity those guys showed up in the park that day and Malcolm had to whisk us out of there. I felt we might have been getting somewhere then. You know, like a normal life… like…” he tailed off, meeting her eye for a moment and then glancing away, groping for words that would not come.

  She regarded him seriously, moonlight caressing her cheek, whilst a feeling of the deepest affection swelled in Alex’s breast, bringing with it a sensation of strange helplessness and a paralysing dryness in the mouth. He looked away.

  “Yeah, well,” she said eventually.

  The normal things that Alex might have mentioned, like parties with mutual friends, visits to the cinema, days at the mall, the simple staples of teenage boy/girls relationships, remained unsaid. He hung his head, chewing his lip, and looked out to the shipping in the harbour, lights winking amongst the taverns and warehouses, shimmering on the calm waters. A light breeze ruffled Kelly’s hair and she brushed it away from her face.

  “It’s not fair,” he said. “Is it?”

  She sighed. “What’s weird is I feel like there’re two of me. There’s me here now, with you and with the others downstairs, and there’s a different me who spends all day with Nusrat and Kashifah and all that lot.”

  “It’s because we’re from different worlds,” said Alex. “It’d be fine if we could be together more, but the way things have worked out we get split up all the time. I know exactly what you’re saying.”

  He told her about his day with the Sultan, the meeting he had been obliged to sit through about the bad meat that had been provided for the ships, the complaint from the Admiral’s clerks, the earnest protestations of innocence from the victualler’s yard, the enquiry to be held next week with the possible trial for fraud of the official responsible.

  “Sounds boring,” said Kelly with a frown.

  “It’s worse than boring,” said Alex. “It’s deadly dangerous, too. Because I know full well that everyone there hates my guts. The Sultan’s only seventeen, they’re thinking. What’s he doin’ taking advice from this random white kid who knows nothing when there’s all these grey-bearded old councillors who’ve been running the country since before I was even born. I tell you, if anything ever happens to the Sultan I’m for the chop before he’s so much as cold.”r />
  “Better look out for his back then,” said Kelly dryly. “At least you get to do stuff – I mean proper useful stuff.”

  “You are doing useful stuff,” Alex told her, taking her hand in his and turning her towards him. “You really are. I only get to see and hear what people say to the Sultan’s face. You get to hear all the gossip. That’s important, what people are talking about. We need to know that, don’t we? That’s intelligence gathering, that is. It’s like you’re the one of us with her finger on the pulse of the palace. If anything’s going on I bet you’ll pick up on it first.”

  “I guess,” she conceded with a wry smile and a playful glint in her eye he had not seen for some days. “You’re so full of bullshit, you know.”

  “So maybe that’s my special gift,” he said with a grin.

  He put his arm around the smooth slenderness of her waist and they kissed, but there was a reserve there, as though she were holding something back, and after a few moments they drew apart. It seemed there was nothing more to say – or do. Not for now.

  “It’s getting cold,” she said, drawing her shawl around her, and they returned to their quarters, along empty corridors, each lost in their own thoughts.

  That same night, on the other side of the palace, Will was at the Sultan’s library with Zoroaster. The librarian had long gone home, leaving Zoroaster at a table with a big pile of ancient books. Will sat with him, unable to decipher any of the strange, writhing symbols that occupied each yellowed, dog-eared page. He supposed they were written in Arabic. Malcolm’s amazing earpieces had taught him the spoken word, but they had nothing to say about reading and writing.

  “What exactly are you looking for?” asked Will, eating from a bowl of dried fruit. “You’ve been at it all day.”

  “Not sure,” grunted Zoroaster, without looking up from the page he was currently glaring at, as though he bore for it some deep-seated grudge.

  Will gazed absently out of the window, to where Zanzibar’s two moons hung low above the ocean, each painting a shimmering path of light from the clear horizon to the water’s edge. Actaeon, the smaller of the two, hung lower, a dull orange colour compared with his larger silvery sister above. Will occupied himself with studying the unfamiliar pattern of moon seas and craters upon Actaeon’s surface. He had seen it many times by now, but it still reinforced his sense of being a stranger in this place.

  “It almost looks like the moons are closer together tonight,” he observed.

  “They are,” said Zoroaster without looking up from his book. “And they will approach closer still in future weeks.”

  Leaving a distinctly grubby finger on the page to mark his place he looked up.

  “Have you ever seen a lunar eclipse, Will?”

  “What do you mean? When the moon passes in front of the sun, or when the Earth’s shadow goes across the moon?” asked Will, striving to remember what he had learned in Physics. “No. Not that I can remember.”

  “You might have witnessed either of those things,” said Zoroaster. “But what you will never have seen is what we call a bi-lunar eclipse, when Actaeon passes in front of Artemis. No living person has seen that happen.”

  “Really, why’s that then?” asked Will, sensing that he was required to demonstrate curiosity.

  “Because it only comes to pass once in three hundred and thirty-seven years,” said Zoroaster with satisfaction. “And it will come to pass soon – within a few months, if my calculations are correct. We shall be amongst the first human beings to see it since the days of Abd–ur Rahman, in ancient legend. You may imagine that the world’s astronomers are in a ferment about it. It is said to be a time of ill-omen, although how anyone can know this is hard to establish. Superstitious nonsense, some of which has been poured into the Sultan’s ear by that scurvy dog Fajaruddin. The Sultan has so timed his expedition against the pirates that he will be safely back in Zanzibar before the onset of the eclipse.”

  “Do you think anything bad will happen?” asked Will, glancing up at the ominous orange moon.

  “Well, if any five-legged cattle are born you can be sure it will be blamed on the eclipse,” said Zoroaster. “If anyone falls down the stairs and breaks his leg, the eclipse will be at the root of it, you can be sure. Self-fulfilling prophecy, you see.” He laughed. “I suspect unusually low tides will occur as a consequence, but I doubt if doom hangs upon the conjunction of two heavenly bodies uncountable leagues away.”

  “I’ll take that as a no, then,” said Will, somewhat relieved.

  “Did you bring me something to eat?” asked Zoroaster, pushing aside the book.

  “I did,” said Will reaching into a canvas bag. “I made you a sandwich.”

  “Hmm! A what?” muttered the old man, nevertheless reaching out for it.

  Will pressed into his hand a cheese and pickle sandwich. Sliced bread was unheard of in Zanzibar but Will had managed to obtain a suitable knife and cut two reasonably neat slices from one of the large loaves supplied by the baker on the corner close to Zoroaster’s tower. Will seemed somehow to have assumed responsibility for keeping the old man fed and watered and had set up a sort of basic kitchen behind the staircase on the first floor. Here he had assembled various ingredients and made the first of what would be many sandwiches.

  Zoroaster regarded the item with surprise, suspicion and, after his first bite, delight.

  “My word,” he said, brushing crumbs out of his beard. “You astonish me. This is a very fine repast indeed. Who would have thought it? Carefully chosen foodstuffs placed between two slices of bread – so toothsome, so easy to handle, so convenient. This is a stroke of genius, my boy.”

  “It’s just a sandwich,” said Will modestly, flushing bright red.

  “A sand witch, you say? A curious title indeed, although I will concede there is something magical about it. And this slight grittiness? This is sand, is it? I should be hard put to detect it. And you have these in your own world? Or is this your invention?”

  “No, everyone eats sandwiches. There’re all sorts...”

  Will went on to describe the various sandwiches available, ranging from hamburgers to toasties, after which he felt suddenly rather homesick.

  Zoroaster, who had been munching industriously during Will’s summary of bread-encased delights, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and leaned back in his chair.

  “That, my boy, was a triumph,” he said. “Your world has many wonders I yearn to behold, but this, this sandwich, is a remarkable invention. I can see it taking Zanzibar by storm. Your name will be celebrated throughout the land.”

  He moved some of the books aside and beckoned Will to come nearer.

  “You asked me what I was looking for,” he said. “The simple answer is that I do not know. But I do have the question now, and without the question there can be no hope of an answer, can there?”

  “No,” said Will cautiously, wondering where on earth Zoroaster was going with this. “I guess.”

  “The question is this,” said Zoroaster, tapping a grimy fingernail on one of the ancient volumes. “Why is there no record of Canopus more recent than three hundred years or so? For Zanzibar itself there are a number of records, but for the coast opposite there is nothing, and yet the land is rich and fertile for miles inland until the fringes of the desert.”

  “So…?” pondered Will.

  “What I’m saying, Will, is that there is no indication of anyone living there.”

  “I’m sorry, I’m not following this,” admitted Will, flicking a crumb off the table top.

  “Very well, let me put it even more simply. A few of us have been studying the area for the last twenty years and there’s evidence to suggest the area around Canopus has been lived in at least four times over the last thousand years or so. It’s as though four civilisations have grown up and been suddenly obliterated, leaving hardly a trace.”

  “You say hardly…”

  “Indeed. There are a few scattered buildings and arte
facts but nothing to show what became of the people who made them. It is a question that has occupied my mind for many years.”

  “Right,” said Will. “So why are you telling me this?”

  “I’m telling you because of this,” said Zoroaster, reaching under the table and bringing out the jar that Will knew contained the wireworm. He set it on the table next to the book he had been studying and turned pages until he found one that showed drawings of what might have been ancient buildings. Above the main door of each building was what looked like a carved plaque with a writhing curving line at its centre.

  “What do you think?” asked Zoroaster.

  Will looked closely at the page. He frowned. “Looks like it could be a worm symbol. We’ve got them here in Zanzibar, haven’t we?”

  “Indeed we have. And these buildings are ones from the western outskirts of Canopus. The oldest one is thought to be over a thousand years old.”

  “So it’s a really old tradition then.”

  “Yes, but why, Will? Why is the worm so important? And why were four civilisations suddenly extinguished, almost without trace?”

  Will regarded the tiny worm in its jar, munching its way through part of a sausage with impressive speed. The jar was quite warm to the touch. Motes of dust danced in the narrow columns of air that rose from the ventilation holes in its top.

  “Do you think the two are connected?” he asked. “And do you think this little sucker’s got something to do with it?”

  “I’m beginning to think so. Everyone thinks the lucky worm we see everywhere is the silkworm, the worm on which this island’s wealth so much depends. We have been weaving silk here time out of mind, and the silkworm is at the very centre of our culture because of it.” He sniffed. “But I think we are deceived. I think this strange and rare foreign worm is at the heart of the mystery. I have a mind to investigate further and I think a visit to Zanjd may be in order. Will you come with me?”