The monks, with all their mystic herbalism, had been unable to cure her of the disease. “The Black Devil,” Brother William had called it, a rare pestilence foreign to the Gautaman mainland but found in abundance among the Mephistine trade ships. It was fever and sweats, “Pox, rash, and death,” William warned. No apothecary in Gautama had ever made a medicine to stave off its awful end. Only in Mephisto was there said to be a cure, “And perhaps in the outposts scattered throughout the Tsaazaar.” That was the final gift from the apostate monk, the last hope that kept Adam going north and north-east, staring eternally into the heat warped horizon. Then it appeared before him.
“Oh God,” the Messah whispered, unsure if he should believe his eyes. It was still early morning, too cool for a mirage. “God,” he uttered again.
Ba’al snorted and swallowed—to spit would be wasteful. “What? What are you babbling about now?”
“Oh God, is that truly…is that real?”
Adnihilo lifted his hanging head and squinted into the distance. His lips cracked and split as he smiled.
“About damn time,” answered the bishop, gruff, yet he too was grinning at the beige blur taking shape as they approached. It bloomed before their eyes, a hundred bright and lively pavilions, a thousand thronging caravanners and their camels, and a dozen high-rising structures: watchtowers, barracks, taverns, hostels, and brothels imagined the pastor’s son—baskets of bread and fruit and barrels of water—a remedy for the Black Devil.
It was more than the Messah dreamed. They arrived by midday and followed a stream of merchants into the outpost, mouths salivating at the sloshing sounds of their cargo. Water, enough to make a king’s fortune there in the desert, and the wealth didn’t end. Adam and his companions passed between a pair of limewashed spires smooth as ivory, peppered with arrow slits, and crowned with twisted, burnished bronze domes. Four sets were visible in all, a pair for each of the cardinal directions. They framed the outpost’s borders, and within lay the maze of canvas canopies—merchants’ tents packed as densely as a Gautaman street and painted so many shades as to put to shame a rainbow. It seemed to the pastor’s son as he traversed the labyrinthine market that there was nothing absent being sold or traded. Gold, jewels, marble and timber, food stuffs and clothing fit for every station, arms, armour, and all manner of carnal escorts advertising their services; it was enough to make his head spin till he entered the heart of the colony.
Four permanent structures made up the whole of the outpost’s center. The largest was the most mundane. Adam guessed it a warehouse by its scarce, barred windows and titanic, iron gates—open as he gazed upon them, guards inspecting each and every of an endless line of caravanners waiting their turn to store their wares. Beside that was a stable, or at least what served as one, though it would have put to shame what was once the south-east of Babylon. It was vaster by half and with as many inhabitants, and from what Adam saw, better conditions than those familiar slums—and better protected. For every ten men securing their animals was a wary patrolman donned in dyed linen coat reinforced by iron plates; long, broad, and flat-pointed sword; and pointed half-helm with a veil of maille hanging over his face. And even more of these Tsaazaari guardsmen crowded around the next edifice. The barracks: limewashed like the watchtowers and dressed with bronze merlons, three floors tall, and adjoined to their own stable outfitted not with camels but lean, white-haired horses.
From the last of the grand structures, Adam averted his eyes. He’d caught a glimpse on his way in of its pink marble walls, and scarlet curtains and banners, and its window display cages and the naked girls within. Girls they were, some of them no older than Magdalynn, and others not women at all but boys or men or aberrations in between. It made Amsah’s brothel back in Babylon look like a Religious Sisters’ abbey.
A sudden tug on the Messah’s arm brought his eyes from the ground littered with feet. It was Adnihilo following Ba’al leading them onto a less congested side street. He stopped in front of a weapons merchant and what looked to be a crowd of patron mercenaries. Under the shade of the pavilion the bishop spoke in whispers, a purse in his hands, open so that only Adam and the half-blood could see. Inside was a paltry pile of Mephistine silver. He handed one to each of them.
“This is all we can spare for now. Use it for water and nothing else.”
Adnihilo thrust his coin before the bishop’s face. “This is it?” he rasped. “What happened to those sacks of coins you had in the chapel?”
“Supplies were expensive, Imp. Or would you rather have climbed the mountain without food and warm clothes?” Ba’al wiped the sweat from the stubble below his nose. “That’s what I thought. Now listen closely.” His voice dropped as small as the barb of a feather. “We need food, we need water, and we damned well need camels. Iisah is at least twice as far from here as we are from the Gautaman mountains, and like Hell am I going to try to walk that and back.”
“You’re not saying we’ll be here another month, are you?” blurted Adam, cradling a withered Magdalynn in his arms, remembering how long it took to raise funds in Gautama. “What if they don’t have the medicine Mags needs?”
The bishop paused a long while before he answered, “No. I don’t want to be here more than three days. I’m afraid we are running out of time.” He asked Adnihilo, “Do you remember, Imp, what Mara warned us?”
The half-blood answered a little too loudly, “Something about a black beast and some kind of prophecy.”
A few mercenary heads whipped around at the sound of Adnihilo’s words. Ba’al smiled at them through grimaced teeth till their attention turned back to the merchant’s wares. “Keep your voice down,” the clergyman seethed, “the last thing we need is to draw attention to ourselves.”
“Why?” Adam wondered, “We haven’t done anything to them.”
“Yet,” finished the half-blood.
Ba’al gave him a cocked grin. “You’re getting quick, Imp.”
Then it hit the pastor’s son all at once. “You want us to steal our supplies?” he asked, less a question, more an epithet. “These people haven’t done anything wrong. God couldn’t want us to do that. It wouldn’t be just.”
“It is if they’re Godless heathens. And how else do you expect to get the girl’s medicine in time?” Adam had no answer to that, just Magdalynn’s frail body barely clinging to life. Ba’al glanced toward the sun. “Three days, that’s all we have. After that, I’m getting our mounts, and I guarantee they’ll be on us before we make it a mile east. Until then, try to fill your packs. We meet where we entered at sun fall. I’ll have camp ready and out of sight.”
This isn’t right, thought Adam, watching his companions vanish into the crowd. He might have even shouted, but the drought in his throat hurt too much to dare. Then he remembered the coin in his hand. Water! His instincts drove him toward his basest needs, toward the nearest source he had seen—a fruit stand with bushels of limes, citrons, and tangerines. It’s tarpaulin was split yellow and green, and beneath it had been a man, and in his hand a glazed bowl pressed against his lips shimmering with water.
Any moral impulse to look away from the depravity on that brothel street was forgotten as the pastor’s son hastened back the way he came, clutching his little, silver coin, desperate for the attention of the Tsaazaari fruit vendor: a lanky, curly, burnt-brown man in shiny white silk and a lime-green turban, whose happy tongue sold fruit unflappably to the fifty-odd hands handing him an assortment of currencies Adam had never seen.
“Water!” the Messah screamed, reaching with his Mephistine silver. “Water! Water! Please!” He didn’t expect the man to understand, so when the reply came in broken Messaii, he gaped in surprise like a startled deer.
“Oi, Messah,” the vendor said, never pausing his transactions. “You want water? Come around here.” Adam assumed the man meant under the yellow-green pavilion, behind the bushels from where his business was done—at least, Adam hoped that was what he meant. The man had already taken
his only coin, snatched it faster than the flash of his eyelashes.
It was a cramped space behind the bushels, well shaded, yet bare but for a carpet, stool, lockbox, and ewer of cool, crisp, delicious water. The vendor pointed out a glazed glass bowl set beside an ample gray flagon, full and ugly. “Drink,” the man said, his delighted, hooded eyes holding fast to his customers.
The Messah nodded, bowl already in hand, pouring sips for Magdalynn—each tilt a trickle she could hardly swallow—though Adam thought it a miracle that she didn’t choke. But he struggled to pour steadily while his hands were shaking, so he stole a sip for himself. The taste of honey and citrus chased down his gullet. He tended to the girl until the elixir was gone, poured another bowl from the ewer, then gulped it on his own—felt his strength return—then went back to Magdalynn. Between the two of them, they drained the flagon in the few minutes it took for their host to empty his bushels.
His last transaction done, the vendor yawned and brought a small key out from inside his sleeve. “Busy day,” he said, squatting in front of the lockbox. He stuck the key inside and gave it a quick twist. The iron chest clicked; it sprung open wide. “I close now. You want more water, you go to Hassan.”
Adam shivered at the sound of silver jingling as the man deposited the contents of his purse. A heavy clangor, coins thicker than the one he had traded away moments before, and there had to be more than a hundred. He thought of the sick girl in his arms, the rumbling of his stomach. He watched the Tsaazaari man slip the key back into his sleeve, said, “I don’t have any more money. But we’re hungry, and my sister is sick. I’m not asking for charity. I’ll work, but I don’t know where to look.”
The Vendor stood and stretched. “Water or work, you go to Hassan.”
“Where is that?”
“Who,” the Vendor said, yet he pointed to a place, one with pink marble walls and naked flesh on display. “Hassan is boss of half Najmah Janoob. His office is there. Come, Janbiya will take you.” He hoisted the lockbox up onto his shoulder and started for the brothel.
Lord, forgive me, Adam prayed. He tried to convince himself that he didn’t have a choice, that it was for the greater good and that God would pardon him, that it was no different from when he and Adnihilo would look upon the whores of Amsah’s place. But that, too, was a sin, wasn’t it? Something in the pastor’s son had changed—something scarred and something awakened—and both rose in him as he followed the vendor into the five-story den of iniquity.
The odor struck him first while his eyes adjusted to the lurid, scarlet lights of the common room. It was the sweet of perfume and the salt of sweat and the tinge of liquor, meat, and sex in the air, thick and humid with banter and music as bawdy as the bare breasts and sheer skirts of the servers. Adam couldn’t help but linger as he passed, his stare as lecherous as the rest of the guests’. A hundred shades of heathens, a dozen different vices. Men, women—even children. They gorged themselves on wine and opium, on pipes of hashish and every kind of flesh. It repulsed him, but they were not the worst of it. What disgusted Adam the most was his own arousal, a sin that only quickened as he and his guide delved to the center of the den where, on the open stairwell, the sounds of deep-throated groans and skin slapping skin grew louder each step of their ascent—every floor an orgy—till they arrived at the summit. This is for Magdalynn, Adam tried to convince himself.
He and the fruit vendor stood on a threshold blocked on all sides by a ring-wall of curtains. Tapestries, the Messah realized, woven with images of the old Tsaazaari kings: Joseph, Victor, Asher, and Solomon. Adam knew them by their crowns and by the scenes in which were depicted. He stared, awestruck. They were just like in the scriptures, just as the pastor’s son imagined them to be painted upon the walls of the Temple Rock. Yet they were in a brothel. He pondered this while the vendor called out. “Hassan,” the man bellowed, then he said some words in the Tsaazaari tongue. Another voice answered, one rich with passion and authority. At the vendor’s signal, they passed under the tapestries.
For the briefest of moments, Adam believed he had stepped into a cathedral. He winced at the light shining silver-gold from stained glass windows—mandalas frost-white, violet, amber, and indigo. They illumed the whole room with an air of sanctity, brought to life statues at each of the four corners. They were busts of women chiseled from precious stone: a Gautaman girl in jade, a Hibernis maid in gray jasper, garnet for a Mephistine woman, and the last a Messah in opal. The man called Hassan must have caught Adam staring, for he rose from his desk—a masterwork of craftsmanship, crystal and amaranth, sadly bestrewn with ledgers.
“Beautiful, are they not? My late wives. May their souls rest gently in the æturnum ætherial.”
Adam nodded, astonished at the fluency of his Messaii and the candor of his mien, and of course at the affluence of his livery. His tall, plump frame was done up in violet silk woven with amethysts—robe and turban and up-swept boots—and everywhere on him was glimmering with gold. Yet it was him who bowed first to the simple fruit vendor. He spoke some words in Tsaazaari, warm and jovial tones, and the man bowed back to him, set his lockbox by the desk, and left the office smiling, whispering “Solomon’s luck,” to Adam on his way down the stairs.
“Now that we are alone, please allow me to introduce myself.” He bowed now to the pastor’s son. “My name is Hassan Fathi Ghada, owner of this establishment and many of the pavilions you surely saw on your way here. You’ve already met my former ladies; Ai, Ľubica, Ahava, and Maria; but I’d like also for you to meet my flesh and blood beloved.”
“Ashaya,” announced a feminine tenor, and the Messah turned and stepped aside the tapestries. Lounging on a down-feather couch of suede and cashmere was a dark, buxom woman, jeweled, pierced, and robed in maroon, black-brown hair flowing like a landslide from under her headscarf ornamented with gold. She glared at Adam as if she were about to scold him, then rolled onto her side, facing away.
Hassan continued, “You must forgive my weary Ashaya. She is the mistress of the house and has had an arduous time finding the right match for a difficult client.”
“Only because you offer me nothing but greenhorns!” Ashaya shouted, still facing the wall. “No, if they were greenhorns then maybe they could keep it up. They’re soggy lagana, wilting tulips, limb blades of spring grass!”
“Alas,” said Hassan, ignoring her outburst. His cheeks seemed happy, yet his hooded eyes looked exhausted. “I’ve not yet gotten your name, young Messah, nor the name of your companion.”
“Adam. My name is Adam, the son of Pastor David of the parish in Babylon. And this is… this is my sister, Magdalynn. She’s sick, but I’ve been told that the medicine she needs might be here—in the outpost, I mean.” He breathed a deep sigh to recollect his dignity. “What I mean to say is, I don’t have much time but I’m willing to work if you have anything for me.”
The purple merchant nodded and drifted toward his desk, clasped his hands together, then began sifting through his ledgers. “Yes, Janbiya mentioned you were looking for work. How long do you have?”
“Three days, counting today.”
“Not very long,” frowned Hassan. “There aren’t many jobs that’ll pay what you want. Medicine is expensive, and just looking at you, I can see you’ll need extra for food as well.”
“You don’t have anything, then?” Adam’s countenance fell despondent.
“Of course I do. They don’t call me the Man of Six Fingers for nothing. Marble, wood, fruit, glass, whores, and spice—I’m the one supplier in all Najmah Janoob. Ah, see? I’ve found an opening already. We are in need of a server of your kind.”
“And it will pay enough that I can get the medicine?”
Hassan scratched his curly, black beard. “Perhaps. Such things vary wildly in price,” he came out from behind his desk with a book in one hand and a quill in the other, scribbling something in Tsaazaari, “but this I can promise. If you do well serving meat and wine, and entertaining our customer
s, there is another task we need done that I’d be willing to offer you—one that will pay enough in just one night, I am certain.”
“Him?” spat Ashaya. She was sitting up now, straight-backed as if she’d been struck by lightning. “You can’t mean him for Yasmine. Do you want to ruin my reputation, Hassan?”
“I mean him for you, Ashaya. We’ll need some of your girls to clean and clothe him; and do any of them speak Messaii well enough to tell him what to do?”
“You know that they don’t,” the woman answered as she rose and strode before Adam, glaring, critiquing. “Fine, I’ll work with him. I suppose he doesn’t look so bad—but don’t think for a moment I’m going to offer him to Yasmine.”
“We will cross that route when we get there,” smiled Hassan as he held the book for Adam to see and handed him the peacock quill freshly dipped in ink. It was a ledger, all illegible Tsaazaari, with a line drawn in for him to sign. “A record of the contract. It says that you will work for one day and receive one day’s wage, two demidrakes and whatever extra coin you can charm from the patrons. And of course, we shall provide clothing and food for you while you’re working, as is the law under our good King Solomon. I hope you find this arrangement fitting. You won’t find a better deal in all Najmah Janoob.”
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