“Not with me, doctor.” He was still apologetic. Were he a sterner man, she thought, he would now close the door upon them and tell them to come back when Zabira was in residence.
“Well then,” Jehane tried, “if she left no—”
“But doctor, I do know you, and I know she trusts you. It must have been an oversight. The boys are making mischief, I’m afraid, but please come in.” The steward smiled ingratiatingly. One of the men with her gave him a kindly glance and a silver coin. Too much money, in fact; it ought to have warned a good servant something was amiss. The steward palmed it and bowed them in. Jehane would have happily dissected him.
“Go right upstairs, doctor,” he murmured to Jehane. “Shall I have hot drinks prepared? It is bitter this morning.”
“That would be wonderful,” the smaller assassin said, removing his cloak and then, courteously, Jehane’s. The knife was nowhere to be seen for a moment but then, as the steward hastily claimed all three outer garments, Jehane felt the blade against her side.
From upstairs the sound of laughing children could now be heard, and the protests of an evidently overmatched servant. Something fell with a reverberating crash. There was a moment of silence, then renewed high-pitched laughter.
The steward looked anxious again.
“Sedatives may be called for,” one of her abductors murmured suavely, and smiled to let the man see it was a jest.
They moved to the stairway and started up. The steward watched for a moment, then turned away to give his orders for their refreshments.
“They are only children,” Jehane said softly. There was a hammering in her breast and a growing fear, colder than anything outside. She was becoming aware that it was not going to be possible for her to do this.
At the top of the stairs, she thought. Last chance. She prayed there might be someone there.
“Children die all the time,” the man with the knife beside her murmured. “You are a physician, you know this. One of them ought never to have been born. You know this too. They will not suffer pain.”
They reached the top of the stairs.
Corridors in two directions, ahead and to the right; the hallways wrapped around the inner courtyard of the house. She saw elaborate, glass-paned doors opening out to the ambulatory overlooking the garden. Other doorways led into the rooms. The laughter had ceased now. It was very quiet. Jehane looked both ways, a little frantically. Death was here, in this house, and she was not ready for it.
No aid, though, no answers to anything. Only one young servant, little more than a boy himself, could be seen, hurriedly sweeping with a broom at the shards of what had evidently been a large display urn.
He looked up, saw them. Dropped the broom in dismay.
“Doctors! Holy Ashar, forgive us! An accident . . . the children.” He nervously picked up and then laid aside the broom. He hurried anxiously forward. “May I assist you? The steward—”
“We are here to see the children,” the bigger man with her said. His tone was crisp, but again with its inflection of tension. “Take us to them.”
“Of course!” the young servant smiled, eagerly. Why were they all so eager here? Jehane’s heart was a drum in her breast. She could stand here, walk with them, let this happen, probably live.
She could not do that.
The boy stepped forward, one hand extended. “May I take your satchels for you, doctors?”
“No, no, that is fine. Just lead on.” The nearer man withdrew his bag slightly.
It will take them time to find the boys, Jehane thought. There are many rooms. Help might come in time. She drew breath to scream, knowing it meant her death.
In that same moment she thought, absurdly, that she recognized this servant. But before the memory could coalesce into something more, he had continued his reaching motion, stumbled slightly, and bumped into the small man who was holding the blade against her side. The assassin grunted; a surprised sound. The boy straightened, withdrawing his right hand, and shoving Jehane hard with his left.
Jehane stumbled, falling—and cried out then, at the top of her voice: “Help! They are killers! Help us!”
She dropped to her knees, heard something shatter. She turned back, expecting a blade, her death, the soft dark presence of the sisters of the god.
Tardily, she saw the stiletto that had materialized in the boy’s hand. The smaller assassin was on the floor, clutching with both hands at his belly. Jehane saw blood welling between his fingers, and then much more of it. The bigger man had turned, snarling, balancing his own drawn blade. The boy stepped back a little, ready for him.
Jehane screamed again, at the top of her voice.
Someone had already appeared down the corridor straight ahead. Someone, unbelievably, carrying a bow. The big man saw this, turned swiftly back towards the stairway.
The steward was standing there, holding a sword, no longer smiling or innocuous.
The assassin pivoted again, ducked, and without warning sprang at Jehane. The young servant shouted with alarm, lifting his blade to intervene.
Before the knives engaged there came a clear sound, a note of music almost, and then Jehane saw an arrow in the assassin’s throat, and blood. His hands flew upwards, the knife falling away. He clattered to the floor. His flask shattered on the tiles.
There was a stillness, as after thunder has come and rolled away.
Struggling for self-control, Jehane looked back down the hall. The man with the bow, walking forward now, was Idar ibn Tarif, whose brother she had saved and then tended. He was smiling in calm reassurance.
Jehane, still on her knees, began to tremble. She looked at the boy beside her. He had sheathed his knife; she couldn’t tell where. The first assassin made a sudden rattling sound in his throat and slid sideways beside the larger one. She knew that sound. She was a doctor. He had just died.
There was broken glass all around them, and blood staining the sand-colored tiles of the floor. A trickle of it ran towards her. She rose to her feet and stepped aside.
Broken glass.
Jehane turned and looked behind her. Her father’s flask lay shattered on the floor. She swallowed hard. Closed her eyes.
“Are you all right, doctor?” It was the boy. He could be no more than fifteen. He had saved her life.
She nodded her head. Opened her eyes again. And then she knew him.
“Ziri?” she said, incredulously. “Ziri, from Orvilla?”
“I am honored, doctor,” he said, bowing. “I am honored that you remember me.”
“What are you doing here?”
She had last seen this boy killing a Jaddite with Alvar de Pellino’s sword amid the burning of his village. Nothing made any sense at all.
“He’s been guarding you,” said a voice she knew. She looked quickly over. In an open doorway, a little distance down the hall, stood Alvar himself, that same sword in his hand.
“Come,” he said. “See if you can quiet two impossible children.” He sheathed the sword, walked forward, took both her hands. His grip was steady and strong.
As if in a trance, surrounded by these calm, smiling men, Jehane went down the corridor and entered the indicated room.
The two boys, one seven, the other almost five years old, as she knew very well, weren’t being particularly loud, in fact. There was a fire burning in the hearth, but the windows above each of the two beds had been shuttered so the room was mostly dark. Candles had been lit opposite the fire and using those for light Ammar ibn Khairan, dressed in black and gold, his earring gleaming palely, was energetically making shadow-figures on the far wall for the boys’ entertainment. Jehane saw his sword, unsheathed, on a pillow by his side.
“What do you think?” he said over his shoulder. “I’m proud of my wolf, actually.”
“It is a magnificent achievement,” Jehane said.
The two boys evidently thought so too; they were raptly attentive. The wolf, even as she watched, stalked and then devoured what was presuma
bly meant to be a chicken.
“I’m not impressed by the fowl,” Jehane managed to say.
“It’s a pig!” ibn Khairan protested. “Anyone should be able to see that.”
“May I sit down?” Jehane said. Her legs seemed to be failing her.
A stool materialized. Idar ibn Tarif smilingly motioned for her to sit.
She did, then sprang to her feet again.
“Velaz! We have to free him!”
“It is done,” said Alvar from the doorway. “Ziri told us where the courtyard is. Husari and two others have gone to release him. He’ll be safe by now, Jehane.”
“It is over,” said Idar gently. “Sit, doctor. You are all safe now.”
Jehane sat. Odd, how the worst reactions seemed to occur after the danger had passed.
“More!” the elder of Zabira’s boys cried. The younger one simply sat cross-legged on the floor, staring at the shadow-figures on the wall, his eyes wide.
“There is no more, I’m afraid,” said the lord Ammar ibn Khairan. “Once the wolf eats the pig, or the fowl, whichever, there is no more to see.”
“Later?” the older child asked, with some deference.
“Later, indeed,” said ibn Khairan. “I will come back. I must practice my pigs, and I’ll need your help. The doctor thought it was a chicken, which is a bad sign. But for now, go with the steward. I believe he has chocolate for you?”
The steward, in the doorway behind Alvar, nodded his head.
“The bad man have gone?” It was the smaller one, speaking for the first time. The one her father had delivered through his mother’s belly.
“The bad man have gone,” said Ammar ibn Khairan gravely. Jehane was aware that she was close to crying. She didn’t want to cry. “It is as if they never came looking at all,” ibn Khairan added gently, still addressing the smaller child. He looked over then, to Alvar and the steward by the door, eyebrows raised in inquiry.
Alvar said, “Nothing out there. Some stains on the floor. A broken urn.”
“Of course. The urn. I’d forgotten.” Ibn Khairan grinned suddenly. Jehane knew that grin by now.
“I doubt the owner of this house will forget,” Alvar said virtuously. “You chose a destructive way of signaling their arrival.”
“I suppose,” said Ibn Khairan. “But the owner of this house has some answering to do to the king for the absence of any proper security here, wouldn’t you say?”
Alvar’s manner altered. Jehane could see him tracking the thought, and adjusting. She had made that sort of adjustment herself many times, during the campaign to the east. Ammar ibn Khairan almost never did anything randomly.
“Where is Rodrigo?” she asked suddenly.
“Now we are offended,” Ammar said, the blue gaze returning to her. It was brighter in the room; Idar had drawn back the shutters. The two boys had left with the steward. “All these loyal men hastening to your aid, and you ask only about the one who is obviously indifferent to your fate.” He smiled as he said it, though.
“He’s on patrol outside the walls,” Alvar said loyally. “And besides, it was Ser Rodrigo who had Ziri watching you in the first place. That’s how we knew.”
“In the first place? What does that mean?” Jehane, reaching for something normal, tried to grab hold of indignation.
“I came here some time ago,” Ziri said softly. She was trying, unsuccessfully, to glare at him. “After I was certain my sisters were all right with my aunt, I went to your mother in Fezana and learned where you had gone. Then I came through the mountains after you.” He said it with the utmost simplicity, as if it was nothing at all.
It was, though. He had left his home, what was left of his family, all of the world he knew, had crossed the country alone, and . . .
“You went to my . . . you what? Why, Ziri?”
“Because of what you did in my village,” he said, with the same simplicity.
“But I didn’t do anything there.”
“Yes, you did, doctor. You made them allow me to execute the man who killed my mother and my father.” Ziri’s eyes were very dark. “It would not have happened without you. He would have lived, ridden back to Jaddite lands to tell that tale as a boast. I would have had to walk there after him, and I fear I would not have been able to kill him there.”
His expression was grave. The story he was telling her was almost overwhelming.
“You would have gone to Valledo after him?”
“He killed my parents. And the brother I have never had.”
No more than fifteen, Jehane thought. “And you have been following me here in Ragosa?”
“Since I arrived. I found your place in the market. Your mother said you would have a booth there. Then I sought out the Captain, Ser Rod-rigo. And he remembered me, and was pleased that I had come. He gave me a place to sleep, with his company, and instructed me to watch you whenever you were not at court or with his men.”
“I told you all I didn’t want to be watched or followed,” Jehane protested.
Idar ibn Tarif reached down and squeezed her shoulder. He wasn’t much like any outlaw she’d heard about.
“You did, indeed, tell us that,” Ammar said, without levity. He was sitting on one of the small beds now and was regarding her carefully. The candlelight burnished his hair and was reflected in his eyes. “We all apologize, in a measured degree, for not obeying. Rodrigo felt, and I agreed, that there was some chance you were at risk, because of your rescue of Husari from the Muwardis among other things.”
“But how could you know I wouldn’t recognize Ziri? I should have recognized him.”
“We couldn’t know that, of course. He was urged to be cautious in how he followed you, and had a story to tell if you did see him. Your parents approved of this, by the way.”
“How would you know that?”
“I promised your father I would write him. Remember? I try to keep my promises.”
It seemed to have been quite thoroughly worked out. She looked at Ziri. “Where did you learn to use a knife like that?”
He looked both pleased and abashed. “I have been with the Captain’s men, doctor. They have been teaching me. Ser Rodrigo himself gave me my blade. The lord ibn Khairan showed me how to conceal it inside my sleeve and draw it down.”
Jehane looked back at Ammar. “And Velaz? What if he had known him, even if I didn’t?”
“Velaz did know him, Jehane.” Ibn Khairan’s voice was gentle; rather like the tone in which he’d spoken to the younger boy. “He spotted Ziri some time ago and went to Rodrigo. An understanding was achieved. Velaz shared our view that Ziri was a wise precaution. And so he was, my dear. It was Ziri who was on top of the wall of that courtyard this morning and heard the men from Cartada tell you their purpose. He found Alvar, who found me. We had time to be here before you.”
“I feel like a child,” Jehane said. She heard Alvar’s wordless protest behind her.
“Not that,” said ibn Khairan, rising from the bed. “Never that, Jehane. But just as you may have to care for us, if arrow or blade or illness comes, so we must, surely, offer our care to you? If only to set things in balance, as your Kindath moons balance the sun and stars.”
She looked up at him. “Don’t be such a poet,” she said tartly. “I’m not distracted by images. I am going to think about this, and then let you all know exactly how I feel. Especially Rodrigo,” she added. “He was the one who promised I would be left alone.”
“I was afraid you would remember that,” said someone entering from the corridor.
Rodrigo Belmonte, still in boots and winter cloak, with his sword on and the whip in his belt, strode into the room. He had, incongruously, a cup of chocolate in each hand.
He offered one to Jehane. “Drink. I had to promise this was for you and no one else. The older one downstairs is greedy and wanted it all.”
“And what about me?” Ibn Khairan complained. “I did damage to my wrists and fingers making wolves and pigs for them.�
�
Rodrigo laughed. He took a sip from the other cup. “Well, if you must know the truth, this one was for you as a reward, but I didn’t actually promise, and the chocolate is good and I was cold. You’ve been inside and warm for a while.” He lowered the cup and smiled.
“You’ve chocolate on your moustache,” Jehane said. “And you are supposed to be outside the walls. Defending the city. Much good you are to anyone, arriving now.”
“Exactly,” Ammar said with a vigorous nod of his head. “Give me my chocolate.”
Rodrigo did so. He looked at Jehane.
“Martín fetched me. We weren’t far away. Jehane, you’ll have to choose between being angry with me for having you guarded, or for not being here to defend you myself.”
“Why?” she snapped. “Why can’t I be angry for both?”
“Exactly,” said Ammar again, sipping the chocolate. His tone was so smugly pleased it almost made her laugh. He does nothing by chance, she reminded herself, struggling for self-possession. Ziri and Idar were grinning, and so, reluctantly, was Alvar.
Jehane, looking around her, came to accept, finally, that it was over. They had saved her life and Velaz’s, and the lives of the two children. She was being, perhaps, just the least bit ungrateful.
“I am sorry about the broken promise,” Rodrigo said soberly. “I didn’t want to argue with you back then, and Ziri’s arrival seemed a stroke of fortune. You know he came through the pass alone?”
“So I gather.” She was being ungrateful. “What will be done about those two men?” she asked. “Who were they?”
“Two that I know of, as it happens.” It was Ammar. “Almalik used them several times. It seems his son remembered that. They were the best assassins he had.”
“Will this cause a scandal?”
Ammar shook his head and looked at Rodrigo. “I don’t think it has to. I think there is a better way to deal with this.”
“No one knows they came so close but the servants here,” Rodrigo said thoughtfully. “They can be trusted, I think.”
Ammar nodded. “That is my thought. I believe I heard,” he said carefully, “that two merchants from Cartada were unfortunately murdered in a tavern quarrel shortly after they arrived here. I think the appropriate Guild ought to send apologies and condolences to Cartada. Let Almalik believe they were discerned the moment they came. Let him feel that much more anxious.”
The Lions of Al-Rassan Page 33