The Diviner

1

The city of Dayira Azreyq breathed softly that night. No one wished to be caught inhaling a particle of the Sheyqa’s air more than was strictly required for survival. Within the shops and houses served by the great reservoir that gave the city its name—Circle of Blue—lovers muffled their sighs, fretful babies were swiftly hushed by nervous fathers, murmurs became whispers as shadows deepened. Those few persons out on the streets walked furtively and said nothing. Those brave enough to speak aloud did so only in their own homes, with faces lowered and eyes downcast. Do not notice me, I am of no importance, I do not exist—and one more night of reprieve was begun.

But the city was not entirely quiet, at least not in the precincts of the palace. The Sheyqa was in a mood for celebrating, and her guests acceded to the royal requirement for music and laughter and merriment of all kinds.

Preparations had begun early that morning. In the banqueting hall, with its splendid domed-and-tiled ceiling, white draperies were taken from red silken couches, and massive trays of beaten gold were set on tripods. In the east wing, with its floor-to-ceiling windows shuttered against the scorching sun, musicians tuned their instruments, and dancers were instructed regarding the Sheyqa’s preferences for the evening. In the kitchen, with its vast hearths and staggering array of copper pots, cooks sweated and swore, cajoling the roasts to cook and the breads to rise. In the cellar, with its low stone archways and maze of shelves and cabinets, stewards selected the wines, and servants polished the priceless blue glassware seized more than a century ago from barbarian invaders by the armies of Rimmal Madar. If anyone remembered that those armies had been under the personal command not of Sheyqa Ammara Izzad, the present ruler’s great-grandmother, but of an alMa’aliq, no one mentioned it. Ever.

By sundown the guests had arrived, and the palace echoed with laughter and music. For all that the city breathed softly, carefully, the Sheyqa was in an excellent mood. Her guests—every adult male of the al-Ma’aliq line—were enjoying themselves. She was enjoying their delusions. She smiled when yet another toast was proclaimed to the power of her eldest son’s loins. Today Acuyib had shown him to be doubly blessed: his sixth wife, Ammineh, and his seventeenth concubine (whose name the Sheyqa could never quite remember) had each given birth, bringing the total number of her children and grandchildren to fifty, her own exact age.

Her smile didn’t waver as one of the al-Ma’aliq raised his wine cup high in salute to his own daughter, Ammineh, mother of the fiftieth. Sheyqa Nizzira joined in the toast and beamed at the girl’s father as if genuinely celebrating the triumph. After a swallow of sharp dry wine—she loathed this too-strong varietal, but serving it was necessary tonight—she soothed the bitterness from her mouth with a confection of chopped dates, honey, and candied rose petals. She sucked stickiness from her fingers, delicately dipping them in a bowl of scented water before reaching again for the sweets.

Manners. Elegance. Refinement. These her father had drilled into her from babyhood. “Make as much war as you wish, Nizzira my daughter—you will be Sheyqa, and it is your right and your duty. But recall that the warrior who is also cultivated and civilized gains not only the respect but the regard of her people.” He’d been a wise man, her father, never doubting that his only child would emerge victorious in the exquisitely brutal struggle for the Moonrise Throne. Sheyqa Nizzira missed him terribly, and in his memory took every opportunity to show that she was not only a mighty ruler but polished in her person.

But her father had been wrong about one thing. The objective of a warrior was to gain not respect but fear. This she had done and would continue to do so long as the northern borders of Rimmal Madar were beset by barbarian tribes—with whom the al-Ma’aliq were conspiring. They would deny it if confronted, but Nizzira knew their protestations would be lies. Had she been in their position—formerly powerful, loathing her, and taxed so heavily that they had not the wherewithal to make war unless allied to others—she would have collaborated with the Dread and Mighty Chaydann Il-Mamnoua’a Himself.

As Nizzira rinsed her fingers yet again, from the corner of her eye she caught an al-Ma’aliq curling his lip. This was one of Ammineh’s brothers, who doubtless had heard her incessant complaints in excruciating detail. The whole family maddened the Sheyqa beyond endurance. Even their name was an arrogance, as if the head of their family—a doddering old imbecile currently lolling on plump cushions and using a dancer’s transparent silk scarf as a bib—could still call himself “king.” The al-Ma’aliq had anciently held a large portion of Rimmal Madar. Ammineh, Nizzira’s eldest son’s sixth wife, not a mere concubine—and she cursed the boy for agreeing to a wedding when a bedding was all he was after—prated endlessly about her ancestry, constantly reminding everyone that her forefathers had been kings back in the days when the title had meant something, when the natural order of women owning and ruling land had been for a shameful time overset by the influence of the western barbarians. To Acuyib’s Glory, that situation had been righted. Men worked, soldiered, farmed, sailed the ships, commanded the caravans, and crafted the goods for which Rimmal Madar was justly famous—but women’s wisdom and women’s logic determined the manner in which such things were done. Women controlled the wealth of the family. And one woman presided over all.

In a way, the Sheyqa reflected, it was a pity that one or two of the abandoned customs did not still obtain. It would be a lovely thing to relegate the wives and concubines—and even those of her daughters and granddaughters she didn’t much like—to the strictures of the arrareem as it used to be in the old, uncivilized days. Locked away, Ammineh and her ceaseless carping could no longer offend the Sheyqa’s eyes and ears.

The al-Ma’aliq still ruled their cities and fields and mountain castle like the kings they hadn’t been for generations. They behaved as if Nizzira’s own great-grandmother hadn’t fielded the army that turned back the western barbarians. Her ancestor had safeguarded the al-Ma’aliq and everyone else in a thousand-mile march from the slaughters that ensued when Believers in Acuyib’s Glory refused to accept that outrageous Mother-and-Son religion. But the trouble Sheyqa Ammara Izzad encountered in expelling the invaders was but a prelude to getting the pretentious, condescending, deceiving al-Ma’aliq to own up to their agreement: fealty in exchange for protection.

Aware that she was frowning, the Sheyqa smoothed her expression and scooped up a handful of candied rose petals. The sugary crunch was satisfying and soothed her as if she were still a child—and she was reminded yet again of her father, and how he had doled out candies to munch on when her multitude of half-sisters and cousins had been plotting against her. When she was a child, the sweets had comforted her; when she grew older, reaching for candies had kept her hand from her knife on more than one occasion, and occupying her mouth with chewing had kept her lips from forming regrettable and possibly fatal words.

Ayia, but she had out-plotted them all. Her mother’s five other husbands and their vile offspring were either dead or rendered so insignificant as to be effectively dead. This was the truest test of a sheyqa: that she should prevail in the end over every other female of her bloodline with any claim to the throne—for what use was a ruler against outside enemies if she could not defeat those inside her own palace? It was a father’s job to keep his daughters safe until they were old enough to put to good use his advice and his years of subtle scheming and the alliances he had carefully nurtured. Nizzira’s father had been a brilliant man, but she had also been a genuinely gifted student. Proof: She was Sheyqa of Rimmal Madar. In her hands was all the power—and all the attendant worries. Most of these worries were named al-Ma’aliq.

Nizzira’s great-grandmother had personally assembled the troops that had subdued the al-Ma’aliq after the invaders were expelled; her grandfather, acting on behalf of his elderly mother, had been compelled to do it again; Nizzira’s mother had been criminally remiss in not setting them back on their silk-covered asses for good and all. Now one of their arrogant, chattering daughters had given Nizzira her fiftieth descendant, and for this she was supposed to be grateful. All the indolent girl had to do was sit around sipping mint tea and gossiping while she swelled up like a hippopotamus and eventually, after a few grunts and groans and a disgusting bloody mess, push out an infant—while all the time Nizzira was managing the dauntingly varied affairs of an entire nation.

And now Ammineh’s male relations lounged near the Sheyqa’s couch, eating the Sheyqa’s food and drinking the Sheyqa’s wine, as if the new baby were in any way of their form or making. The infant looked nothing like the al-Ma’aliq. She had Nizzira’s luxuriant black hair, her long-lidded dark eyes, her noble nose, her clever mouth. The only contamination was in the chin—square and stubborn like Ammineh’s, not rounded and cleft like the Sheyqa’s own. But perhaps that would change in time.

Even if it didn’t, there would be nobody around to compare the child to. The al-Ma’aliq were attending their final banquet, down to the last man. As for their complacent wives . . . and as for their other pestilential daughters . . . and as for every one of their unruly little brats . . .

They would be taken care of, too.

The Sheyqa dipped her fingertips in the bowl of scented water and smiled. Yes, she was in a mood for celebrating, and the proud, stupid alMa’aliq were happy to oblige.

Why, Azzad al-Ma’aliq asked himself for the thousandth time, were women so expensive? And not just in the cost of trinkets, either. They demanded a man’s time and exhausted his patience, not to mention his energy. They required so much attention. And thoughtfulness. And conversation.

And money, he thought ruefully, patting the folds of green and gold silk wound around his waist, where until an hour ago a fabulous pearl necklace had been concealed. It was now somewhere in the rubbish heap behind Ashiyah’s house. Instead of squealing with delight at the gift, she’d thrown it out her bedroom window.

The idea had been for Ashiyah to undress him—slowly if she liked, quickly if that was her mood; he was always generous and accommodating, wasn’t he?—and discover his latest gift, and then—

But that hadn’t happened. She’d come at him spitting and clawing, furious that he was late. A hundred women in Rimmal Madar would have waited years just for a smile from the latest handsome al-Ma’aliq male in a long line of handsome al-Ma’aliq males, and yet Ashiyah had behaved as if a paltry couple of hours was sufficient reason to rip his face to shreds.

He’d backed off, desperately groping for the pearls hidden in his gold-and-green striped sash. For just an instant the ploy succeeded; covetous joy sparked hotter than anger in her magnificent eyes when she saw the jewels.

Then she seized the necklace and tried to strangle him with it.

Between his knees, Khamsin heaved an almost human sigh. Azzad patted the stallion’s arching black neck. “Do you think you need to tell me I’m a fool? Believe me, it’s nothing I haven’t told myself a thousand times. But she is spectacularly beautiful. And it would infuriate her husband spectacularly if he ever caught us!”

The vexing Ozmin had in recent months been Azzad’s guide through the bureaucratic snarl of the Sheyqa’s tax collectors. It was the al-Ma’aliq’s contention that their lands were being singled out for heavier tribute than usual, and Za’avedra el-Ibrafidia al-Ma’aliq—in futile hopes of rousing her second son to anything even vaguely resembling familial responsibility—assigned Azzad the disagreeable duty of untangling (which meant bribing) enough functionaries to support a protest in the law courts. Absurd, of course; everyone knew it was the Sheyqa who had ordered the extra taxes, and only the Sheyqa would have any say in easing them. Not for the first time, Azzad joined his relations in cursing the ancestor who had thought it expedient to make a bond of defense with a woman everyone had fully expected to die in battle against the heathen—or to be murdered by one of her own lethal siblings in their quest for family dominance.

But Sheyqa Nizzira’s great-grandmother had not died, and the oath remained binding, and here they all were: sworn to the descendant of an arrogant bitch from some obscure southern tribe whom Acuyib had inexplicably blessed in war.

“At least I don’t have it as bad as Ammineh,” he muttered. The stallion’s ears twitched, but Azzad’s tone indicated nothing more than the usual complaining, so Khamsin ignored him. “She has to sleep with the son of that miserable barghoutz. For a little while, I slept with Ashiyah.”

Not that Ashiyah’s whisperings on his behalf when she summoned her husband to share her pillows had done the al-Ma’aliq any good. Azzad hadn’t courted Ashiyah only for her usefulness—though had she been skinny and plain instead of sumptuously beautiful, he simply would have closed his eyes or told her that making love in the dark was so much more sensuous. Ayia, memories of her bed would have to sustain him until the next luscious lady presented herself to his fastidious notice. He wondered with a sudden grin who he could bestow his favors on to infuriate Ashiyah most when she heard of it.

He rode through the dark streets toward home, paying no attention to his surroundings. He didn’t need to; Khamsin was familiar with this route. Azzad’s nose identified the streets for him without his being fully aware of it. The stench of tanneries and butcher shops. The softly tantalizing scents from bakeries in Ayyash Sharyah. The tang of dinner spices wafting silently down from upstairs living quarters in Zoqalo Zaffiha, where from dawn until dark the hammers of brass and bronze and tin workers clanged. The long narrow alley where the stink of dye vats and wet wool was bearable only by daylight, and only because of the eyes’ delight in the rainbow shanks hung from balcony to balcony overhead to dry. All workshops were shut up tight now, all streets and squares deserted. No one called out invitations to see or sample various wares, so Azzad was left alone with his thoughts.

Khamsin picked his way along the dirt and cobbles toward home while Azzad dreamed of Beit Ma’aliq’s cool fountains, and fruits plucked ripe from the trees, and an evening spent listening to his sisters sing. The girls were of an age now to be of use to an older brother. Perhaps, he mused, fingers toying with the fine bronze wire tassels on the reins, now that they were almost marriageable, some of their prettier friends might be amenable to a dalliance....

He could see his mother’s face even now: stern, implacable, her dark eyes knowing every wayward thought in his head, and a single word on her lips as sharp as the silver needle that was her family’s name and crest: No. Whatever women he amused himself with, none of them could be of rank or wealth.

Then again, Za’avedra el-Ibrafidia might turn a blind eye to such an association, in the way of mothers who knew their sons. If he compromised a nobleman’s daughter, he would be forced to wed her. The very thought made him shudder. Getting married. Fathering children. Living a settled life. Doing something useful for the family—something unutterably boring. Staying with one woman for the rest of his life, or at least until her parents were dead. No, when he married—if he married—it would be to a girl with no relations whatsoever, not a single woman or man of her family alive anywhere to trouble him on her behalf when he wanted a little variety in his bed. Azzad considered it grossly unfair that only a sheyqa and her immediate family were permitted more than one spouse, the justification being that from them sprang the strength of the nation in the form of strong daughters and sons.

He snorted. Of all the descendants that Sheyqa Nizzira and her sons and daughters had produced so far, Azzad had heard very little to recommend any of them. Fifty of them now; he’d heard this morning that his cousin Ammineh had given birth to a daughter, and—

“Fifty! Acuyib save me! The celebration feast!”

Khamsin didn’t bother to swing an ear around this time, but when Azzad hauled back on the reins, the stallion snorted and pranced a few steps in protest. He wanted his stall and his evening feed, Azzad knew—but all the al-Ma’aliq had been invited to the palace tonight to celebrate Ammineh’s little girl, and in anticipating an evening with Ashiyah, the royal command had completely slipped his mind.

With a groan—he’d never get there in time and would have to think up some plausible excuse for his tardiness—he turned Khamsin toward the palace. A brisk trot and a shortcut or two, and maybe he’d arrive during the dancing or while an especially incredible creation of the Sheyqa’s kitchen staff was being presented, or—well, he’d spent all his twenty years being lucky, and there was no reason to think tonight would be any different.

“Esteemed Majesty,” the eunuch whispered at Sheyqa Nizzira’s shoulder, “not all of them drink enough.”

The Sheyqa smiled, clapping her hands in time to a spirited tune, following the dancers’ swirling silks and exposed flesh with her gaze. The youth on the far left, the one who was dark and muscular and half-naked, he might do for later tonight. She kept her eyes on him, annoyed by the interruption, knowing it was necessary to reply. Without moving her lips, she said, “I never meant them to.”

“But—Revered Majesty—your kinsmen from beyond The Steeps said—”

She saw the concertmaster watching her and gave him the signal that indicated her choice of the beautiful dark boy. He nodded once and turned to give his own instructions. To the eunuch, the Sheyqa said, “All that is required is that most of them are drunk. Go away. All will be as it should.”

“You have commanded it, Exalted One.” Bowing low, he melted away into the shadows.

She returned her attention to the boy, whose new role in the dance now required him to shed almost all his clothes. He was the coveted one, the desired one; all the other young men faded into the corners of the room while concubines belonging to Nizzira’s sons danced to tempt him.

“No difficulties, I trust, Highness?” asked the al-Ma’aliq seated nearest her—father of Ammineh, smug enough to make Nizzira’s palm itch for her knife.

Instead she waved a well-manicured hand, rings sparking a dozen colors by lamplight. “That silly eunuch frets as if he truly were a woman, instead of merely not a man. Do you enjoy yourself, my friend?”

“Truly, Highness, it is a night for jubilation at Acuyib’s great generosity to both our houses. For is it not said,” he added, his smile dazzlingly white below a luxuriant black mustache, “that the fiftieth of a sheyqa’s descendants shall be the joy of her age? My own father finds it so.” He directed a fond glance at the drooling ninety-year-old moron who, determined not to wait for grandchildren to fulfill his ambition, had killed seven successive wives in the getting of his first forty-nine offspring. The fiftieth, sole product of the eighth and final wife, attended the old man so devotedly that he practically chewed his food for him. The Sheyqa found this utterly disgusting, but what offended her more deeply was the reference yet again to the long-gone alMa’aliq power. That senile, toothless old man ruling Rimmal Madar? It didn’t bear contemplation.

What she said, in a mild tone, was, “I hope your daughter has given me a child just as fine for my fiftieth.”

“I am confident that she has, Highness.” Another raising of the wine to his daughter’s accomplishment.

The Sheyqa nodded, smiled, and drank. The exquisite young boy had spurned the attentions of all the girls, no matter what they did to entice him; it was his role to reject them and eventually to prostrate himself at the Sheyqa’s feet. She watched as he began the moves that culminated the dance, reflecting that it really was a fine thing to be past the age of childbearing and not have to limit herself to those men she had married for money or land or political alliance. Carelessness in this regard had been her own mother’s downfall—one did not bear the child of a Hrumman servant, no matter how tempting his golden looks might be, not when there had never been an al-Ammarizzad born with blond hair. Husbands were tedious at times, but not even a sheyqa could mortify them in such fashion. It was said she had died of a fever, and all her husbands were seen to mourn her—none of them less sincerely than Nizzira’s father, who had administered the “fever” in a cup of wine. The act had sealed Nizzira’s accession to the Moonrise Throne, for not only had her father taken on the task and thus the responsibility if caught, but he had not been caught—and that was warning enough. No one in the palace wished to be similarly administered to. The other husbands had been dealt with in Nizzira’s own time, and their offspring as well, and now all of her own husbands were either dead or divorced.

So she could have anyone she wished these days. Truly, it was most liberating. When the boy began his approach, she forgot to wonder whether what was between his thighs was natural or cleverly provoked by drugs. The latter, she thought, rightly judging the glaze in his eyes. But it mattered for nothing; he really was quite the loveliest thing she’d ever seen.

She was just beginning to plan the end of her evening when the first al-Ma’aliq began to vomit.

No one was on the last mile of the palace road. Azzad cursed. No other late arrivals with whom to slide, practically unnoticed, inside the gates. He couldn’t even pretend he’d been there all along, caught up in greeting friends or seeing to the comfort of his older relations. His esteemed father would see through that in a twitch of a lamb’s ear.

Khamsin suddenly froze—ears pricked, head thrown back, the whites showing in his black eyes. Azzad frowned. Usually he had his hands full preventing the stallion from challenging every other stallion on the palace road, for which the Qoundi Ammar on their grand white horses did not thank him.

But there were no Qoundi Ammar lining the palace road tonight.

He was alone.

And on the soft evening breeze his inferior senses finally recognized what Khamsin’s nose had already warned of: fire.

One hundred twenty-six of the almost four hundred al-Ma’aliq had to be helped from the banqueting hall to the outer courtyard, robes stained and bellies churning. The Sheyqa waved aside the mortified apologies of Ammineh’s father.

“Young men will overindulge, you know it is so,” she said as servants hurriedly cleaned up the messes. “Think no more on it, my friend. Come, let’s not ruin the celebration.”

On the expert advice of distant relations whose help she’d sought for this purpose, she’d made sure that all of the “drunks” would be young men, easily excused in their excesses. For their elders, she had something else in mind.

The eunuch approached right on time, bowing, begging Her Glorious Majesty to accede to the Qoundi Ammar’s request that they might demonstrate their joy in her fiftieth descendant. The Sheyqa smiled. “Very thoughtful. My thanks and compliments to the qabda’an, but it can wait until tomorrow. I shall even bring along my little Sayyida to see the salute in her honor.”

“Highness,” said Sayyida’s grandfather, “the disgraceful actions of my kinsmen have soured the atmosphere within. The fresh air of the courtyard would be most welcome, would it not?”

Naturally the al-Ma’aliq would wish to revel in a show of military precision by the elite guard. They thought it a tribute to them. Fifty years ago—at about the time of Nizzira’s birth, in fact—a renegade faction of al-Ma’aliq had been the only troops ever to defeat the proud, invincible Qoundi Ammar. The doddering old fool down the table from Nizzira had been the one to punish his wayward kinsmen, thereby gaining for himself royal assistance in his claim to leadership of the family. But the necessity still galled, all these years later. Had things been just slightly different, one of the al-Ma’aliq women would now occupy the Moonrise Throne. “Never trust them, my daughter—never, never. They were kings once and would be again if they could. Keep them under your eye always.”

Ayia, not her eye—her heel. And even that had not been enough. Who knew but that Ammineh had been dangled before her fool of a son in hopes of precisely these circumstances: an al-Ammarizzad with al-Ma’aliq blood, who one day would seize the throne? Restored to its former glory, the family would make certain that all the mighty deeds of Nizzira’s own forebears were appropriated to their renown.

Never. Never. There were, among her forty-nine other strong, clever, ambitious sons and daughters and grandsons and granddaughters, many now at an age to begin vying for precedence in the succession, which amused her. She intended to live to be at least eighty years old and die in bed with a beautiful boy in her arms—not with a knife in the spine as her grandmother had done. (Not Nizzira’s knife, to be sure, though she had hated the old woman, and she had enjoyed tremendously the execution of the cousin who had done it.) Her plans for the al-Ma’aliq tonight were in part to warn her own offspring that such could just as easily happen to any of them, should she become displeased. Another lesson learned from her esteemed father.

But not a flicker of these thoughts showed in the Sheyqa’s face. She chewed another candy, pretending to consider, then nodded. “Very well. Let us go outside and see what the qabda’an has arranged for our amazement tonight. Something spectacular, I hope, with lots of pretty riding, and that trick they do with their swords and axes. Have you ever seen it? Truly extraordinary.”

Azzad urged Khamsin back toward the city, and the closer he got to home the brighter the sky became. The breeze had died, and smoke billowed straight up into the heavens. Smuts of soot began to drift down onto his blue cloak. People in outlying districts leaned out windows or stood atop the flat roofs of their houses to get a better view, but as he neared home, he had to slow the big stallion to avoid the milling crowd. Only when he turned onto Sharyah Ammar Zaqaf—the Street of the Red Roofs—did he realize that there was no rush toward the flames with buckets of water to fight the fire. The faces he saw, lit crimson by fire glow, were curious and apprehensive at the same time—like dogs confronted by poisonous snakes.

Abruptly furious, he dug his heels into Khamsin, caring nothing for whoever might get in the way. Down the wide avenue he galloped, past shops crammed with silk and silver where his five sisters loved to dawdle of a morning before the heat grew oppressive. At the very end of the double rows of plane trees was the walled magnificence of Beit Ma’aliq, the house of his family. The gate was high and narrow and closely woven, all fanciful curves and bright flowers, like a woman’s embroidered shawl draped shoulder-toshoulder across her slender back—only this embroidery was of iron. Tonight the vivid colors of the painted metal were black against a background of flames.

Someone grabbed at Khamsin’s bridle, a mistake that nearly cost him a hunk of shoulder as the stallion snapped angrily. Azzad kicked the man and wheeled Khamsin around toward the back entrance. The surrounding wall was much too high for him to see over, but through small, iron-barred apertures cut into white-plastered brick he caught glimpses of the blaze. And no people. Not one single person was outside in any of the courtyards.

When he got to the rear gate, he understood why. Through the twisting painted iron he could see the sprawl of the main house and the doors leading out to the stable yard—and the stout planks nailing them shut.

There was yet one more way to get in. Frantic now, he turned Khamsin to the alleyway behind the stables and fumbled in his green and gold sash for the key. The postern gate into the gardens was made of wood. Even as he turned the corner, he saw that it too was ablaze, and as he neared, he smelled the stench of rancid oil.

Beyond the high walls spread the garden with its languid flowers and many fountains. Above was the two-story arrareem, the women’s private chambers that no man dared enter without Za’avedra’s invitation. Azzad coaxed Khamsin nearer, fighting the horse’s terror of fire, standing in his stirrups to see over the wall. All the windows spewed fire through ornamental wooden grilles out onto balconies. Behind those windows lived his mother, sisters, aunts, cousins, the wives and daughters and infant sons. And from within he heard screaming.

He swung one leg over Khamsin’s neck, preparing to dismount. The stallion, wiser than he, sidled away from the postern gate toward the opposite wall. Azzad was too fine a rider to lose his balance, yet neither could he leap down, for Khamsin had trapped his other leg against the bricks. And the instant his rump connected with the saddle again, the horse pivoted neatly on his hind hooves and galloped down the alley.

He could not turn Khamsin back to Beit Ma’aliq. The stallion had had enough of fire and smoke and did not intend to allow his chosen master to commit suicide. Cursing, Azzad lifted his head into the wind of Khamsin’s gallop, feeling the tears dry on his cheeks.

Blazing windows, barred doors, oil-soaked wood—all the women and children of his family would die tonight in an inferno of the Sheyqa’s making. Azzad knew he would hear their screams the rest of his life.

Khamsin finally slowed at the outskirts of the city. Azzad had no notion of where they were or how many people had been trampled to get them there. He understood one thing only: the Sheyqa had murdered helpless women and children in their beds, and she would have no qualms about murdering every man of the al-Ma’aliq at the palace tonight.

His cousin Ammineh too would die and her baby with her—no, Sayyida was the granddaughter of the Sheyqa, she would be spared. And she would be the only al-Ma’aliq left.

Unless Azzad could get to the palace in time.

The Sheyqa’s servants delicately, unobtrusively guided the men in bronze silk robes to walk through the hammered silver doors of the banqueting hall together, and to file into the courtyard together, and to sit on the front two rows of benches together. The al-Ma’aliq were too flush with drink to notice that some of these servants had never been seen before in the palace—indeed, not in Dayira Azreyq, nor even in Rimmal Madar. And after tonight, they would never be seen within the country’s borders again.

The Sheyqa had her own separate platform, with a canopy of crimson. Torches blazed in the courtyard, lighting the vast expanse of hardened earth where every day the Qoundi Ammar practiced drills, most of them showy and all of them lethal. After two hundred and seventy al-Ma’aliq had settled their smugly drunken selves on tapestry cushions, Sheyqa Nizzira signaled for the tribute to begin.

An intricate pattern woven in sleek white horses and crimson tunics and flashing silver trappings delighted the eye, even as the ear marveled at the precision of hooves—one hundred horses moving as one, without a single doubled beat. No horse stepped out of sequence with another. The Sheyqa nodded satisfaction at the preservation of tradition: thus had the Qoundi Ammar fooled barbarian invaders in a famous battle, making them think that a single horse approached through a twisting ravine. The foreigners’ leader was slaughtered, and five hundred soldiers besides, by one hundred men on horseback who sounded like a single rider. At the end of the drill, the audience cheered and whistled. The Sheyqa saw the eunuch Arrif nod to the qabda’an, and she hid a smile.

Turning smartly, the hundred rode back to the other end of the courtyard. At the faint hiss of steel and the sword flashes by torchlight, the Sheyqa leaned back in her throne, eyes narrowed. Slowly, then with increasing speed, long swords circled over the riders’ heads until it seemed each sat beneath a silver whirlwind. Then an ax appeared beside each man, a smaller but even brighter counterpoint to the brilliant spinning cyclones of steel. Light blazed, and the audience gasped, then cheered.

Suddenly one hundred white horses thundered forward shoulder-to-shoulder at a dead gallop, their riders roaring the Sheyqa’s name. A scant armlength from the seats, the horses skidded to a halt, the riders bellowed the Sheyqa’s name once more, and the flame-burnished whirlwinds of swords and axes flew straight into the hearts of the al-Ma’aliq.

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.

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 identify 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.”

And then it occurred to him that the horse was more loyal to him than he had been to his family.

Ayia, what good would it serve if he too had died? Who would be left to avenge the al-Ma’aliq? The new granddaughter? Not even if Nizzira allowed her to live. Indoctrinated from her first breath, taught to despise half her heritage—

No. Azzad had been spared for a reason. And as he rode brashly through the pass in the gathering heat of the day, he thought of his family for what he swore must be the last time until he was ready to exact retribution for their deaths. When word filtered through the city that he was dead, there would be no one to mourn. Never again would he watch with hawk’s eyes as his friends blushed in his sisters’ silked and scented presence. Never again would he see his mother arch a sardonic brow at his latest exploit or listen to his father and uncles recite The Lessons of Acuyib at dawn prayers. And never again would his grandfather peer at him from beneath bristling white brows and bark, “Well, boy? Which pretty charmer have you seduced now? Would I have risked my venerable balls for ten minutes alone with her?”—and then laugh until he choked on his glee.

Azzad arrived at the tents of the Ammarad the next day. The vast mass of the encampment was denied him; he was not allowed past the outermost tents, which were reserved for travelers who had no shelter of their own. As the laws of hospitality required, the wound on his thigh was tended by the tribe’s chief tabbib, a grizzled old man whose treatment seemed to rely more on incantations and the pattern of thrown stones on a carved wooden plate than on any medicines in his satchel. But the chants did no harm, and the wrappings he used on Azzad’s thigh were clean and smelled of a spicy salve. Khamsin was fed and watered, Azzad was shown a corner of a tent to sleep in, and everyone appeared to believe his story of going out to prove his worth to his father by hunting down a sand-tiger—which had so vehemently left its mark on his leg.

It rankled to accept their food and drink, but he did just that for three days. For Khamsin’s sake, he told himself. He could guess what lay ahead of them in the desert.

“And where do you go now?” the elderly tabbib asked as he prepared to leave.

“East,” Azzad lied.

“I know all the tribes who make their camps in the east, Zaqir.” The unspoken question was From which do you come?

Azzad had called himself falcon, for he intended to fly as free and swift as a hawk and kill with utter ruthlessness. But he had not mentioned a family name. “I would not disgrace my tribe by naming them,” he said slowly. “I failed in my quest.”

A shrug of bony shoulders. “That you did not succeed in taking the rimmal nimir’s pelt is no dishonor, Zaqir. You have the marks to prove you faced the beast. And I am certain your mother will be just as glad that you lived to tell of it.”

Azzad gave a nod and a slight smile of thanks. He thought about the tabbib’s words as he rode away to the west. His mother would indeed be glad he had survived, he knew that—but what would she think of his means of survival? He’d paid more heed to an illicit tryst than to a royal command, and then he had run away. Still, he was alive, and to squander that gift would be to dishonor those who had died. Azzad vowed to be worthy of survival—and put back on his finger the al-Ma’aliq ring before turning Khamsin south, to the Devil’s Graveyard.

“But who can he be?”

“Besides a fool, you mean?” A clucking of tongue against teeth. “You tell me, Leyliah. What do you learn from looking at him?”

“Rich, of course—”

“His clothes were ragged.”

“But the ring—”

“Stolen.”

Azzad opened his eyes and denied it strenuously—or thought he did. Leyliah’s voice was young; the other woman’s was older. Both were lilting, liquid voices, oddly accented around the r sounds, but he understood them readily enough.

“The horse was stolen, too?” Leyliah asked shrewdly.

“Sometimes you are my favorite student, and at others you make me despair that you will ever learn how to trim a hangnail! Don’t look at the things, Leyliah. Look at the man.”

There was a pause. Azzad called frantically on every muscle in his body. Not a single one responded.

“His hands,” Leyliah said at last. “There are no old calluses—only new ones, from recent blisters.”

“Very good. What else?”

“His feet are rubbed raw where very soft, very fine boot leather has worn away.”

“Therefore . . .”

“Therefore he must be rich, as I said before!”

“Or he stole the boots as well.”

Sightless, frustrated in his need to move, he was forced to use his other senses. Scents of dry wool and sensuous spices; taste of skin-stored water flavored with an herb he couldn’t identify; and, past the voices of the two women, the faint ring of hammers on metal and a light breeze ruffling wind chimes. Not much information; nothing to comfort him. Except that they hadn’t killed him. Yet.

“You were right,” the older woman admitted, “but using the wrong evidence. The ring and the horse and the boots could have been stolen. The clothes tell us nothing. The things tell us nothing. But the body, this tells us all. We have here a spoiled, wealthy, feckless young fool who tried to cross the Gabannah. He has paid for it with heat sickness, scorched skin, feet that will not carry him for at least fifteen days, and the festering claw-marks of a rimmal nimir, bandaged by either an ignorant fool or someone who wanted him dead. Now, the next thing we ask ourselves is why he would attempt so dangerous a journey. He was not ill before he began it, so he cannot be one of those who seek our healing. Have you any answers?”

“None, Challa Meryem. Unless he truly is crazy—in which case we’d better tie him to the tent poles to prevent his doing us or himself any damage.”

“Pampered men such as this one do not stir themselves to folly without good reason. Deadly reason, I suspect. Even a fool must be aware that the Gabannah is death to those who do not know it intimately. So perhaps there is another death behind him, chasing him—one he feared more than the death that nearly found him here.”

Leyliah’s voice dropped to a whisper. “Do you think he killed someone?”

“Ayia, more likely someone wants to kill him. And by the look of him, for seducing a wife or daughter or sister.”

“I’d wondered if you’d noticed! Long eyelashes, long nose, long legs, long—”

Azzad felt sudden heat in his face; had he been able to, he would have turned away in embarrassment. Not at the words of praise, which he knew he deserved; nor that the words came from a woman, for his mistresses had made similar observations; but that the woman who said these things was unknown to him and had seen him naked.

All at once he wondered if she was pretty.

“Keep your eyes in your head, Leyliah, and your tongue between your teeth—and your fingers inside your qufaz when you salve his skin. Who knows what diseases may slither from him to you at contact with his blood?”

“But the texts all say—”

“The texts are no substitute for practical experience. Now, spoon more medicine down his throat, and we’ll leave him to heal.”

A gentle finger inside a whisper-thin leather glove parted Azzad’s lips. Water slid onto his tongue, tasting sticky-sweet with herbs and honey. Again he tried to move, and again failed. Instinct made him swallow against his conscious will. And within a remarkably short time instinct, consciousness, and will all faded away.

When next he woke, it was to the sound of men’s voices. His eyes opened readily enough, and he could shift his muscles, though sluggishly, legacy of whatever the women had given him. It was dim inside the wool tent, and hellishly hot.

“Chal Kabir, he wakes.”

Shuffling footsteps crossed thick carpeting, then sudden light flared as the tent flap was shoved aside. Azzad blinked and put a hand over his eyes. His fingers encountered sweat-sticky hair tumbling down his brow. Running his hand down his face, he was appalled to discover a thick beard. How long had he lain here?

“Eleven days,” said a young man’s voice from an old man’s gray-bearded face. Azzad blinked again. “The date is the second of Ta’awil Annam.”

He had left Dayira Azreyq nearly sixty days ago. Why did he remember so few of them?

“Bad water,” the ancient continued, as if in answer to the unspoken question. He seated himself on a tripod stool beside the heaped carpets that were Azzad’s bed. “It takes the belly in sickness, and the memory as well. Ayia, city boys are too stupid not to fill their bellies at Ma’ar Yazhrad. Worse, they water their horses. The beast died, you know.”

Azzad’s whole body spasmed, and he moaned. “No! Khamsin—!”

Chal Kabir nodded. “You see, Fadhil,” he said over his shoulder, “he cares more for the horse than himself. A good sign.” Then, to Azzad: “Your Khamsin is safe. I told you otherwise as a test. There will be many more before you are allowed out of this tent.”

“Khamsin—?” Azzad managed, relief and suspicion flooding him simultaneously.

“Safe,” Chal Kabir repeated, settling his sand-colored robes around him. An unusual ring of braided silver and gold and copper flashed from his left thumb.

“I want to see him.”

A black brow arched in a parchment-brittle face. “Truly a lordling, accustomed to command.”

“I want to see him! Now!”

It took all his strength to put force into the order—and by the amusement flickering in Chal Kabir’s eyes, the old man knew it. He gestured with one gnarled hand to young Fadhil, who disappeared out the tent flap, brushing against wind chimes as he did so. “He will bring the horse around. A splendid animal. We will accept him in payment for your life.”

Azzad bit back a hot retort. Fear and relief had followed each other too quickly, leaving him dizzy. He must be cautious. Laws of hospitality aside—those same laws that in theory compelled these people to tend him without requiring recompense—Chal Kabir had mentioned tests. This might be another.

It was.

Chal Kabir snorted a laugh. “Ayia, you can control yourself. Good, good.”

Movement in the triangle of light at the tent flap caught Azzad’s gaze. Khamsin: whole and sleek and fractious, needing three boys to hang onto his halter. A whistle from Azzad calmed him at once, and he followed the boys decorously enough out of Azzad’s sight.

“Interesting,” commented Chal Kabir.

“He obeys no one but me,” Azzad said, sinking wearily back down onto the pillows. “We have been each other’s since the moment of his birth.”

“You claim brotherhood with a horse?”

“With this horse, yes.”

“And he allows you onto his back?”

Azzad peered up at the old man. “I trained him.”

“Is it difficult, this training?”

Outraged: “You don’t think I’d hitch him behind a cart or a plow, do you?”

Chal Kabir had a closed countenance behind his gray-streaked beard, but Azzad suddenly knew that this was precisely what horses were used for here. Wherever here was.

“We will speak more later, when you are stronger. Sururi zoubh.” He touched his fingertips to his brow; Azzad recognized the ancient sign for I mean this with my thoughts, and gulped because the hand had not touched the chest. That would have meant I mean this with my soul. But what the old man said was harmless enough—a simple wish for sweet sleep.

Azzad watched him limp across the sunlit brilliance of the rugs. “Chal Kabir? If it is permitted, please do me the favor of thanking the ladies Meryem and Leyliah for their good care of me.”

Beneath the brown, dusty robe, the bent spine suddenly straightened—and not without pain, to judge by the flinching shoulders. Chal Kabir did not turn as he said flatly, “No women have been inside this tent while you have been within it.” And then he was gone, and the flap closed, and heated darkness shut him in once more.

Azzad folded his arms behind his head. The old man had lied to him. Why?

Ayia, it was improper for a woman to be inside a tent with a man not her husband or brother or son or father—even if the man was drugged to the eyes and incapable of lifting a finger, let alone his male member. Having satisfactorily explained Chal Kabir’s lie, he began puzzling out the truth.

First, who were these people? The tent proclaimed nomads, yet Chal Kabir had implied that they used horses to plow the ground. No meandering tribe he’d ever heard of cultivated crops. The only water was poisonous—he had hazy memories of the water hole, Ma’ar Yazhrad, the old man had called it, and “bitter drinking” it truly had been. But by then he was too stuporous with heat and hunger to have any idea what he was doing. He recalled very well, however, the forbidding land around him: crystalline salt flats, immense sand dunes, ravines dry for a thousand years and littered with sharp stones. What plow could turn this cracked and tainted soil? And even if it could, what could possibly grow?

In retrospect, the look of the desert surprised him. He’d always thought that across The Steeps lay endless sand dunes of the kind that formed the borders of Rimmal Madar beyond the mountain stronghold of the alMa’aliq. Horses could not pull wagons through shifting sand like that, but they could over the hard-baked, unyielding earth he remembered from the time before his collapse.

And remember it he suddenly did—the suffocating heat even at night, the dwindling of his supplies, the pain in his thigh, the blisters suppurating on his feet. What had made him think he could traverse this waste? Sleeping by day in the scanty shade of rock outcroppings, dreaming of a sand-tiger stalking patiently behind him and a screaming hawk flying ahead of him, unsure when he woke which was real, or if either could be real. And then that last day, the churning in his belly, the agony in his gut, the sparks and specks before his eyes, the dizzying loom-and-retreat of the bleak landscape. No growl behind him, no shriek in the sky ahead. There had been no one and nothing in view—or so he’d thought. Where had this tribe come from?

He knew there were at least seven people here—Chal Kabir, Fadhil, Meryem, Leyliah, and the three boys who’d brought Khamsin to the tent. The boys must have parents; the men and women must be married and have children. At least thirty people, and quite likely thirty more. Water and food for so many would be difficult to carry from place to place. They would know the land, of course, and centuries of inbred instinct would detect hidden springs and secret water holes. They would not be here unless they could survive, becoming part of the land themselves. But how did they survive? Perhaps they were shepherds? Ridiculous. Where could sheep graze in such barrenness?

It was a puzzle he wasn’t likely to solve until he was up and about. But had not Chal Kabir said there would be many tests before he was allowed to leave this tent? Wondering what these tests might be, Azzad shrugged, relaxed into the carpets, and slept.

If there were tests, Azzad was unaware of them. Over the next few days he saw Fadhil many times, Chal Kabir twice, and no one else at all. The food was bland but nourishing and plentiful, the water remarkably sweet. He wondered what herbs they put in their storage jars, or what nearby spring they drew it from. He asked Fadhil about it, but the young man merely shrugged and said, “That is women’s business, not men’s.”

Azzad couldn’t decide whether he meant that domestic responsibilities were beneath masculine notice or that fresh water was a thing much too important to be left for men to argue about.

Fadhil was politely curious, asking questions in roundabout ways, but communicated little about the tribe. Azzad answered honestly enough, speaking of the great city and the mighty land of his birth. But Fadhil had never heard of Rimmal Madar, much less of Dayira Azreyq. From this, Azzad deduced in some shock that in the days since he’d fled home, he’d somehow managed to travel beyond the routes of even the most adventurous caravans.

Unless the young man was lying, as Chal Kabir had done.

“Is Chal Kabir really your uncle?” Azzad asked one afternoon as he practiced walking on increasingly steady legs and feet that didn’t hurt too much anymore. “You don’t look very alike.”

Fadhil was tidying medicines on a low table. “’Chal’ is the title given our healers.”

“Ah. Then Lady Meryem is a healer also, for I heard Leyliah call her ‘Challa.’”

Fadhil, being even younger than Azzad, was less guarded than Kabir. “You heard nothing of the kind,” he snapped, much too quickly. “Neither Meryem nor Leyliah has been in this tent.”

Azzad smiled. “Then how do I know their names and the rule of the qufaz?”

Fadhil’s dark eyes went wide in his golden-skinned face. After a struggle to speak, he managed, “You—you know nothing of such things. You may know nothing. Speak of this to no one else, do you understand?”

“It is forbidden for me to know the ladies’ names?”

“Everything is forbidden!”

“Ayia,” Azzad said cheerfully, seating himself on his bed of carpets, “you’d best tell me all about this ‘everything’ of yours, so I don’t offend again.”

Recovering himself, Fadhil stood over Azzad—trying to dominate him physically, which really was rather funny. Even wasted with illness, Azzad was half again the boy’s size. Sternly, in obvious imitation of his teacher, Fadhil intoned, “Do you value your life, gharribeh? If so, comport yourself as befits a guest—and one whose bones would be whitening in the sun even now if not for the Shagara.”

Azzad considered intimidating the boy—easy, with his greater size and al-Ma’aliq arrogance—but decided that the scornful gharribeh indicated Fadhil felt threatened. Not in all the days Azzad had been awake and aware had the boy called him by that term—and with the inflection that meant not just foreigner but unwelcome. It was a deliberate insult and a warning.

Accordingly, Azzad bowed his head. “My life is yours,” he said in the ancient form.

“It is,” Fadhil agreed pointedly, and left the tent.

The Shagara, were they? The word meant tree—a singularly inappropriate name for desert nomads. But upon consideration, Azzad thought he understood. The tree was a sacred thing that meant life and water and growth and greenery, and for people wandering a wasteland, a single tree could mean salvation. By extension, the wounds of the desert could be healed by this Tree of Life.

And they allowed their women to learn the healing arts. That was interesting. In his world, clever highborn women were taught to rule families, not sickrooms. They supervised the concerns of a business or farm, an extended kin network, and sometimes—as in his own mother’s case—a whole tribe. Or, as Sheyqa Nizzira did, an entire country. But healing was a traditionally masculine art in Rimmal Madar. Long years of study and training interfered with a woman’s real work: to choose a husband and bear the children that would establish her dominance, for many daughters and sons ensured the survival of the family and extension of its influence, while managing the household’s wealth. Because the men took care of the children, healing was more naturally their concern.

But that was the world Azzad had left behind, the world he could not think about again until he was ready to exact his revenge.

The next night Fadhil entered the darkened tent just as Azzad was ready to shove the flap aside and go where he pleased, damn the consequences.

“You’re out of bed,” the young healer observed. “Good. Abb Shagara wishes to speak to you.”

“May Acuyib bless him for not coming here to me!” Azzad said, reaching eagerly for the black wool cloak Fadhil had brought. “I was starting to believe there was nothing to the world at all except the inside of this tent!”

“Abb Shagara goes to no one. All come to him.”

“I would have it no other way.” Wrapping himself in the rough garment against the night chill, Azzad gestured to the tent flap. “Lead me, Fadhil, to Abb Shagara.”

He knew why they took him from the tent by darkness. They didn’t trust him—especially now that he’d regained most of his strength. He wondered what they thought he’d do: seize one of their maidens, leap onto Khamsin’s unsaddled back, and gallop off into the desert?

There certainly weren’t any maidens around—nor matrons, nor men, nor children, nor even a stray sheep. A couple of rangy yellow-brown dogs lay beside a tent, gnawing on bones; a cat was teaching her six brindled kittens to hunt, but these were the only living things he saw. Pale tents and glowing fire pits, at least fifty of them, studded the landscape; presumably everyone had been ordered to hide from him. It was confirmed when a tent flap twitched, and a small, round-eyed face peered out, and a women’s beringed hand grabbed a braid of black hair and tugged the child back inside.

He knew where Khamsin was by the scent on the wind. Good clean horse-smell; they took care of their animals, at any rate, not allowing them to mill around in their own droppings. There was a difference to the aroma, however—something he could only describe as a wildness not found in a civilized stable. Perhaps it was due to diet. He’d demand to see Khamsin tomorrow and get a look at these cart-drawing horses for himself.

Abb Shagara’s tent was no larger than the rest, and it was the same pale sandy color. All that distinguished it from the others was the size of the wind chime hanging from a carved pole outside. The breeze toyed with finger-sized brass and tin plaques hammered with designs. Fadhil bent nearly double as he opened the flap, bowing to whoever was inside. Azzad considered it polite to incline his body the precise degree due his own venerable grandfather—but when his eyes adjusted to the brightness of a score of lamps within, he felt his jaw drop. Abb Shagara was no grandfather. He was scarcely old enough to grow a beard.

Was this some sort of joke? Did they mock him by sending him to this stripling youth rather than the true head of the tribe?

The boy—perhaps eighteen, perhaps not—tilted his head to one side, a smile quirking his full lips. Long-limbed, slender beneath flowing silvery-gray robes, he sat erect and casually self-confident on a high-piled rainbow of cushions. His jewelry was all of gold. A broad cuff caught his long black curls at the left shoulder. His left ear was decorated by an earring in the shape of an ibis holding a sapphire in its beak. At his breast rested a small plaque crowded with a whirl of colored gems. He was more regal, Azzad thought suddenly, than Sheyqa Nizzira el-Ammarizzad had ever looked in full regalia on the Moonrise Throne.

Azzad bowed once more, thinking that this must be Abb Shagara’s favorite son, or his heir, or something of the sort, that this was a preliminary encounter that would lead to a meeting with the real power in this tribe. Certainly the most important of the Shagara would not receive a stranger alone, with no guards but one skinny apprentice healer who carried only his surgical knives. Chal Kabir had said there would be many tests. Perhaps this was one of politeness.

“I am pleased,” the young man said, “to see you recovered.”

“By your graciousness,” Azzad replied, “and the skill of your healers.”

A nod, a graceful gesture to be seated on a plump green pillow. Azzad sat, glancing at Fadhil, who stood with lowered head and folded hands.

“Will you drink?” asked his host. “What is your pleasure? There is wine, qawah, the juice of various fruits. . . .”

“Whatever is most agreeable to yourself.”

“Qawah, then.” The boy leaned forward and confided with a grin, “I must warn you, I prefer it very strong and very sweet and tinged with cardamom.”

Azzad was about to speak a polite lie—that this was how he liked it, too—but what came out of his mouth was, “I am partial to strong qawah but without that flavoring.”

“Ayia, but you must try it this way. Most stimulating.”

Fadhil busied himself preparing what turned out to be a viscous black fluid that tasted like honeyed tar. Azzad sipped the required three times, sternly controlling his expression. Then, resting one elbow on a drawn-up knee, the rim of the silver cup balanced delicately between his thumb and the tip of his middle finger (his father, a stickler for elegant manners in his children, would have been proud of him), he regarded his host with raised brows.

“Ayia, you have many questions,” the boy said. “Before you ask them, I have one of my own. May we know your name?”

He could answer with the “Zaqir” he’d used before, but he suddenly found he had no wish to lie to these people. “Azzad al-Ma’aliq.”

The boy seemed to be waiting for something else. An explanation, perhaps. At length he asked, “Why do you say this as if all should know the name?”

“You have not heard of me?” Ayia, that was rude—there was such a thing as too blatant an honesty.

But the young man only laughed softly and sipped qawah, rocking lightly back and forth on his throne of cushions. “You come from some faraway place where your name is renowned. For what reason, I could not say; you may be a famous musician, or a great warlord, or a notorious criminal. You will find, Azzad al-Ma’aliq, that such things as are vitally significant in other lands have less than no meaning here. Where do you come from?”

“My country is called Rimmal Madar. You have never heard of it?”

“Should I have? A land of sand and rain sounds both dangerous and pleasant.” After a slight pause: “ ‘King of Lions’—that is your name, yes?”

“My mother’s choice,” Azzad replied, embarrassed as he had not been since his first days in the play yard of the madraza, when all the other boys had teased him.

“But it is a noble name,” came the protest. “Mine, on the other hand—” He laughed once more, light as a starling’s flight through clear blue sky. “My own beloved mother afflicted me with—I hope you are ready—‘Akkil Akkem Akkim Akkar,’ by which one assumes she meant ‘intelligent ruler whose wisdom flows like water.’” With a smile, he concluded, “You are invited to laugh, Friend Lion. Luckily, now that I am Abb Shagara, I need hear none of these names anymore—except from my mother when she is furious with me!”

Azzad choked. This child really was the leader of his whole tribe?

“No strangers to us believe it,” mourned Abb Shagara, correctly reading his expression. “They look at me, then look around for my father or elder brother. But I assure you it is true. Perhaps one day you will come to know why a boy of my scant years rules so many. But for now, I see you grow tired. And, as my mother would say, it is long past my own bedtime!”

“If I grow weary, it is not of Abb Shagara’s company.” This, too, was the truth.

The boy nodded approvingly. “Wherever you come from, Friend Lion, you were taught manners.”

“Thus I have hesitated to ask, but I must. When may I see my horse?”

“Ayia, that spindle-legged stud that causes so much trouble? Tomorrow, I think. Yes. And perhaps you can calm him. None of our boys are able to do more than stare at him—and run very fast when he glares right back!”

“Khamsin frets if I am not close by. I regret any difficulties he has caused. I thank Abb Shagara.”

Fadhil came to his side and, after more bowing, they left the tent. When they were inside the healing tent, Fadhil turned a wry look on him.

“I told you that you would go to Abb Shagara. I can’t help it if you didn’t believe me.”

“It’s a strange tribe, your Shagara,” Azzad retorted. “A youth of no more than eighteen leading all your people, women learning the healing arts—”

The humor died in Fadhil’s black eyes. “I also said you were never to speak of that. Do you want to die?”

“It’s that forbidden, is it?” He decided to change directions. “Why does Abb Shagara have no guards?”

This restored Fadhil’s good humor for reasons Azzad didn’t begin to understand. “He needs no guard.”

“Everyone needs protection.”

“Did I say he had none?”

“But there was no guard,” Azzad maintained stubbornly.

“No,” Fadhil agreed. “No guard.”

“Then how—?”

“He wears the ways of the Abb Shagara at his heart. They are all the protection he needs.”

3

The following morning Azzad was allowed outside. He immediately went to see Khamsin. Along the way, he got his first good look at the Shagara. They were a handsome, black-eyed people, slim and long-legged, dressed in various desert shades of fawn and ivory and cream. But not all of them were Shagara by birth, or at least not wholly Shagara; Azzad was able to distinguish outsiders very easily by their skin tone. The merciless sun did not darken the Shagara; they looked as if gilded, and the contrast of black eyes and black hair with golden skin was fascinating.

He seemed to fascinate them as well. Some glanced sidelong, others openly stared, but no one ignored him. When he passed by, children stopped playing, and whispered and giggled and pointed—until the old men watching them scolded their rudeness. The Shagara went about their tasks of fetching water and cooking, braiding new ropes and mending boots and suchlike with quiet efficiency. It was altogether unlike the raucous streets of Dayira Azreyq, where men did nothing without discussion, speculation, argument, and commentary—usually at the top of their lungs.

The one familiarity was unexpected: the sound of hammers working metal, just as in Zoqalo Zaffiha at home. Sure enough, Fadhil led him around a cluster of tents to workshops set up beneath wool awnings. Thirty or so men sat cross-legged in the shade, each whispering under his breath, pounding designs into brass, copper, and tin. Some of the men were as ancient as Chal Kabir; others were Fadhil’s age. The polished metal bowls, goblets, plates, armbands, finger rings, earrings, and pendants—dazzling even in the shadows of the awning—made Azzad blink. Nearby, beneath another pale woolen roof, a group of boys about fourteen years old watched a very old woman trace a symbol into a large clay tablet propped on a stand so all could see.

“Here you see the talishann for ‘wealth of sheep.’ Note its difference from that for ‘wealth of sons’—and remember that a man will not be pleased if his ewes bear dozens of woolly lambs when he is expecting his wife to have lots of little boys!”

The children laughed as they copied the device onto their own clay tablets, which were then held up for the mouallima’s inspection. After a few corrective comments, she moved on to the next talishann.

As they continued past the school session, Azzad said to Fadhil, “That is the most interesting madraza I’ve ever seen. They’re making good luck charms, I take it?”

“For sale at the zouqs. I should mention that one of the master crafters has expressed an interest in making something for your stallion’s saddle.”

“That’s extremely kind, but I have no means of payment.” He thought of the pearls, but they were to provide money for a new start. Come to think of it, he had no idea where the pearls were at the moment, but didn’t suspect for even a fraction of an instant that they were anything other than perfectly safe and waiting for him to claim them. Traditions of hospitality aside, the Shagara would never steal anything so useless to them as a few dozen pearls.

“Ayia, no matter,” Fadhil was saying. “He wants no payment. He says he’s never made anything to protect a riding horse before, and the experience would be worth the work.” He sounded as if he truly believed that a piece of brass or tin or copper could give a man many sons—or many sheep. Azzad hid a smile.

Khamsin was alone in a chest-high pen of thorny rails, with scarcely enough room to turn around. No wonder he was fractious, Azzad thought angrily, reaching through dagger-long spikes to offer a caressing hand.

Khamsin snapped at him.

“Well, yes, I know you’re unhappy,” Azzad soothed. “But I do still have need of those fingers. Fadhil,” he said over his shoulder, “he needs exercise. Where’s my saddle?”

“So beautiful an animal. Why would you wish to put a seat on him and ride him like a donkey?”

“Donkey!” Only children rode donkeys, and then only for their first riding lessons. The picture of a grown man with his legs dangling to the ground was too insulting to contemplate. But he realized something about the Shagara then and perhaps about the rest of the people in this strange country that as yet had no name—and in truth seemed not to be a country at all. Horses were for hauling and donkeys were for riding, no matter how ridiculous one looked. There was an idea in there somewhere, if he could but find it.

Fadhil was eyeing Khamsin warily. “He’s so tall! A donkey is close to the ground, with nowhere much to go if you fall off. Of course, your Khamsin is not so big as our own horses, but still—”

“Show them to me,” Azzad said. When the young man arched a satirical eyebrow, he recognized the peremptory tone—for the first time in his life, it must be said—and added rather gracelessly, “Please.”

A long walk around the perimeter of the camp—much larger than he’d thought, more than a hundred tents—led them to the thorn-guarded pen for the Shagara horses. Azzad saw immediately why no one rode these monstrous beasts. Half again Khamsin’s bulk, at least two hands taller at the shoulder, with backs wide enough for a man to sleep on and legs the size of young tree trunks—he gaped at dozens of mares, colts, and fillies whose muscles shifted powerfully beneath glossy hides. The colors of sand and clouds, they were, with thick white manes and tails. Their eyes, huge and dark with lashes long as a man’s thumb, held a warning glint of dangerous temper. Azzad had to admit these horses were beautiful in their massive way, but his thighs ached at the very thought of riding one.

Again the half-formed idea teased at him. Again Fadhil interrupted his thoughts. “The stallions are kept apart, as Khamsin is. Our wallad izzahni are careful about bloodlines.”

“The boys who tend your horses are to be commended,” Azzad replied, frowning. A good thing this pen was downwind from Khamsin; several of the mares were ready to be bred.

“Perhaps if your stallion requires exercise, you can do as we do—run him at the end of a long rope.”

Khamsin wouldn’t like it—he’d graduated from that training exercise years ago—but it was better than nothing. The rest of the morning was spent thus, with Khamsin galloping in circles and every so often testing the rope’s strength with a lunge. At the end of the exercise session the muscles of Azzad’s back were stretched to breaking, and his arms felt ready to pop out of their shoulder sockets. But he walked Khamsin until the horse cooled, then rubbed him down with handfuls of dry fodder.

On the way back to the dawa’an sheymma, they passed a tent where a very young man dressed for travel stood among a knot of women. Some of them were crying as the youth embraced and kissed them.

Recalling his own spurious excuse for the welts left by the sand-tiger—completely healed now by the Shagara—Azzad asked, “Is he off to prove his manhood?”

“To do what?” Fadhil blinked.

“With a dangerous hunt, or a journey through perilous territory, or something of the sort,” Azzad explained, wondering why he had to clarify. All the wilderness tribes he’d ever heard tales of required some sort of test to initiate a boy into full male status within the group. All the northern tribes, anyway. “Proving his courage and resourcefulness, his ability to survive.”

“We need no such proof that a boy has become a man. Except,” Fadhil added with a shrug, “fathering a child. No, he will marry next month, and today goes to join his wife’s tribe. We keep our women here.”

“And bring husbands from other tribes into the Shagara?” No wonder these people were so poor. With no competition for the smartest, cleverest young girls to marry into a family and become designers and guardians of its wealth—but perhaps such competition occurred over the men instead. In Rimmal Madar, the best of the sons were kept in the family to attract the best of the daughters from other families. One of Za’avedra al-Ibrafidia’s main complaints about Azzad had been his spectacular unwillingness to use his looks and his charm to secure in marriage a brilliant girl who might eventually take her place. The Shagara did things backward, it seemed to Azzad. He worked his mind around this new eccentricity, and at length he asked, “Will you be married outside the Shagara one day?”

“No.”

“Why not?” He paused, then added, “If I may ask.”

“A student of Chal Kabir is of more value than he would bring in a husband-price.”

At least this began to make sense. Of a Shagara kind, anyway. “The other tribes pay to marry your men?”

“Of course. We are Shagara.” As if that explained everything.

The midday meal was waiting. Azzad fell on the food, and when his hunger was satisfied, he returned to his questioning. Fadhil sighed quietly and answered as best he could.

“Will that young man go to his wife’s tribe alone? No servants, no friends?”

“He will go with one of his brothers, who will stay until the wedding—and perhaps longer, if one of the maidens finds him pleasing. There are few tribes who can boast Shagara husbands. The Tallib, the Tariq, the Azwadh, the Tabbor, the Harirri, the Ammal—these are the Za’aba Izim, the Seven Names, the people we marry. There are other tribes—the al-Kassira, who rule that city, for instance—but we do not marry them. They are not allied to us in peace and war.”

“War? Over what?” He gestured to the stony desert beyond the open tent flap.

Fadhil mimicked his outswept arm. “Water.”

“Of course. That was stupid of me. My people make war over other things.” He considered Sheyqa Nizzira. “Power. Envy. Money. Land. Greed.”

“Here, water is all. It is power over death. I can understand envy,” he mused, “for those who have little water must desire more. Money I do not understand, and land even less so.”

“Money to buy people—and land to feed them.”

“Every man has his price, but a man who can be bought for mere money is no man at all.”

“There we agree perfectly,” Azzad smiled.

“But who can own the land?”

“If it’s got your troops all over it—”

“That is not ownership,” Fadhil said severely. “That is occupancy. Greed—do you mean in the way a child is greedy for sweets?”

“Very like that, yes.”

“But what use is more of everything beyond the sufficiency for living?”

“What use, indeed,” Azzad sighed.

“Did you leave your country—this Rimmal Madar—because you tired of war?”

“No. It would take too long to explain.” And because Fadhil was obviously about to ask him for that explanation, he said, “Did you never go to war with the barbarians?”

“Forgive me, but everyone not Shagara is a barbarian.” Fadhil laughed suddenly. “But you have the makings of a civilized man—if you try very hard.”

“My thanks, Fadhil! I meant the barbarians who believe in a Mother and a Son as their deities. They invade and demand that the people abandon Acuyib and swear to their faith.”

“Oh, them.” Fadhil sounded bored. “There are stories of their coming in great carts that floated on the sea. They were stopped at the fishing villages on the coast. It was a long time ago, and nothing to do with us.” He paused, then added thoughtfully, “They rode astride their horses, as well. Is this something your people learned from them?”

“Certainly not!” Azzad had studied history and tactics in futile preparation for joining the Qoundi Ammar—though, in truth, he had been more interested in how fine a figure he would cut in the elegant robes, riding a gorgeous white horse. That had been before Khamsin, naturally. But he recalled the treatises very well, and said, “Their horses weren’t as good as Khamsin. One reason they invaded Rimmal Madar was to steal our horses to improve their own cavalry—troops of riders,” he explained when Fadhil looked blank. “With swords and axes and—”

“What matter this ‘cavalry’ against the Shagara?”

“You mean your good luck charms?” Azzad laughed. He stopped laughing when Fadhil gave him a sidelong look.

“I have discovered,” the boy said, “that you often speak at great length of things you know nothing about. Now I believe you should sleep. You are not accustomed to such exercise. Chal Kabir will not thank me for allowing you to lose what strength you have regained.”

Azzad had to agree with him, and lay back on his carpets. He dreamed of the al-Ma’aliq castle in the northern mountains, where hundreds of swift, long-limbed horses galloped free through the pastures. He woke, hot and sweating, with a curse on his lips for the magnificent animals that now belonged to Sheyqa Nizzira.

Idling around these tents set his feet not one step on his path to revenge. There was no money to be made here, no influence to be gained. Two days, three at the most, and he would thank the Shagara as profoundly as he knew how, ask directions to the nearest substantial town, and leave.

That evening Chal Kabir and Fadhil came in supporting a limp, travel-worn man. Azzad watched in fascination as the man was stripped, washed, and examined, for it was his first chance to observe the brisk efficiency of the Shagara healers.

“What’s wrong with him?”

His question was ignored. Azzad hoped the man had nothing infectious. He wasn’t a Shagara; his skin was darkly tanned, his hair was straight and brown with a reddish sheen by lamplight, and his filthy robe might once have been red.

Kabir mumbled irritably to himself, then sent Fadhil out of the tent. The boy returned a little while later with two clay jugs. One of them he placed on the low table near the sick man’s bedding, and the other he gave to Azzad.

“Qawah?” Azzad asked, trying not to sound dismayed.

“Wine, to strengthen the blood.”

As Kabir and Fadhil bent over the new arrival, Azzad leaned back into his pillows and drank. It was surprisingly good, sharp and dry just as he liked it, with a hint of berries.

In the middle of his dreaming he remembered that he didn’t remember falling asleep. He couldn’t move, not even in his dream. But he could hear, and the voices were feminine and familiar. Something in the wine, he thought, and knew he wasn’t dreaming at all.

“And so, Leyliah, what is your judgment of this man’s sickness?”

“It is of the circulation of the blood,” the younger woman replied with confidence.

“Exactly,” said Challa Meryem. “Very good. Were we to look inside, we would find his blood paths thickened and in some places nearly shut. Now, what is the appropriate treatment for his condition?”

Azzad listened, immobile and mute with the drugged wine. Women as healers. And the Shagara didn’t want him to know. Fadhil had thus far protected him. But if the others thought he knew, they would never let him leave. They would kill him.

There was something basically illogical about that: Why heal a man only to kill him if he discovered the tribe’s secret? Then he thought about the women and how valuable they were. A woman with skill beyond a male physician’s would be well worth abducting. Shocking, this thought, but if the Shagara did not allow their women to marry outside the tribe—and Meryem had said that people came to the Shagara for healing. Wherever they made camp, people would come from great distances. Those thorn fences were not portable, so there must be others well-established in other places. Azzad wondered how many and where.

“I approve the treatment, Leyliah,” said Challa Meryem. “Write it down for Kabir and Fadhil and then go to bed.”

One set of soft footsteps left the tent. Then he heard Meryem’s voice directly over his head—so startling that if he’d been able to move, he would have leaped right out of his skin.

“As well you will be leaving us soon, Azzad al-Ma’aliq,” she murmured. “I do not trust you, nor the looks Leyliah gives you—though one cannot blame her for them.”

He wondered once more whether Leyliah was beautiful. If Grandfather would find her worth the trouble . . . .

Azzad woke suddenly some hours later, wondering what had disturbed him. The eastern wall of the tent was pale, hinting of dawn. Lying on his side, keeping his body still and his breathing soft and regular, he listened carefully.

And heard the barest whisper of a footstep on the floor.

Kabir or Fadhil would simply have walked across the carpets. Meryem or Leyliah would be quieter, lighter, but not stealthy. Not like this.

Another step. Azzad risked slitting one eyelid open, peering through the spider-legs of his lashes. The “sick” man was moving with exquisite slowness toward him. And even in the feeble light the sheen of steel was unmistakable.

Thanks be to Acuyib, the wine had worn off. He tensed and relaxed all his muscles in turn. His hearing was acute, his head clear. He tried to guess: heart or throat? Quiet demanded the latter. It was the more difficult attack—not a straight knife-thrust between the ribs but a grab of the hair and a slice from ear to ear, to make sure the windpipe was severed and no sound could be made, or a brutal thrust right into the throat. A chest was a much larger target. He shut his eyelid, risked giving a sigh and a snort as a sleeping man might, and shifted as if in a dream.

A long silence. Then another step, and another. The man was good at his trade. Azzad again wondered what had awakened him earlier. It did not matter. His shifting had let him place one hand on his chest to block a knife and the other on his belly to strike at the man’s ribs; his right leg sprawled to the side, ready to dig into the bedding for leverage.

Another step. He could hear the man’s breathing.

And then the whisper: “For the honor of the al-Ammarizzad—die, alMa’aliq—”

The hiss of the blade, the fingers snarling in his hair—the sinewy wrist in his grip, the crunch of his fist against bone—and they were on the floor, rolling, tangled and tumbling like a rapist and a furious virgin, all in silence. It was not a knife the assassin wielded but an axe that skittered away, ringing as it hit a brass tub in the corner. Azzad kicked and struck, overturning a table, and felt liquid splash on his face as a pitcher went flying. He heard clay crack against the central tent pole and shatter. Shaking his eyes clear, he grunted as a knee drove into his belly and knocked the wind from his lungs. Desperately, Azzad pushed off with a foot and rolled the pair of them over and over again until his ribs hit the tent pole.

Suddenly the hands were gone from his throat. Gasping for breath, he staggered to his feet. The man’s lips were parted in a soundless cry, his eyes gaping wide with astonishment, his hands twitching limply—and his legs moved not at all. Azzad kicked him onto his side and saw a thick shard of the pitcher’s broken handle protruding from his spine and a small spreading bloodstain on his white bedshirt.

Not in all his time here had Azzad ever sensed that the tent was guarded by night. He’d been a fool to think otherwise, he realized, when a golden-skinned face appeared at the tent flap, wide-eyed. Azzad waved a casual hand at him to indicate he was unharmed, and the boy vanished.

Wearily, he sat on his carpets and worked on catching his breath. It seemed he wasn’t quite as recovered as he’d thought. He kept an eye on his assailant, curious about how long it would take him to die.

A little while later, Fadhil came into the tent at a run. “Azzad! What happened?”

“As you see,” he managed, irked that he was still so exhausted. After this paltry exertion, he was as wrung out and sore as if he were a rug and a servant had just washed and beaten him. He wondered how long the Shagara would give him to sleep it off before they sent him on his way.

“Who is this man?” Fadhil demanded.

“Your other patient. Not just that, of course.” He watched as Fadhil finally noticed the shard sticking out of the man’s spine. “Perhaps Chal Kabir is needed,” he suggested mildly.

“I—yes, of course, you’re right,” the young man stammered. “I’ll find him at once.” He cast one last appalled look at the dying man and fled the tent.

A little while later he was back, with Kabir and two women who could only be Challa Meryem and young Leyliah (both were beautiful, Azzad noted). They scarcely had time to exclaim in horror when Abb Shagara himself burst in.

“What has been done here?” Meryem demanded.

“Ask him,” Azzad advised. “If he can still talk.”

She knelt to examine the wound, the breath hissing in her teeth.“He will live a cripple—”

“If we allow him to live,” said Abb Shagara. Drawing a loose white robe more closely around him, he went on, “Azzad, tell me what happened.”

“He tried to kill me.” He nodded toward the corner. “His axe is right over there.”

Kabir went to pick it up, turning it over and over in his hands before giving it to Abb Shagara with a significant arch of his brows. They all looked grim-faced at the gleaming steel blade set in a haft of carved bone.

“I wish to know,” Akkil Akkem Akkim Akkar intoned, “how did this man enter the dawa’an sheymma with this in his possession? How did a man who is not sick feign illness so well as to fool the most accomplished of the Challi Dawa’an? How did this man outrage our tents by attempting the life of my friend Azzad? And how,” he finished harshly, “did a Geysh Dushann come into the camp of the Shagara undetected?”

“Well?” Meryem asked, slapping the agonized face below her. “Speak!” As his lips drew back in a ghastly grin, she slapped him again. “Speak, and I promise I’ll kill you quickly.” When there was no response, she leaned closer and said with gentle ferocity, “I can make you live. But you will never again walk, never again have strength in your hands, never again enjoy a woman. Speak and die quickly—or stay silent and live to be very, very old.”

Azzad gulped, and blinked, and was very, very glad Abb Shagara liked him.

“This al-Ma’aliq—his death is my honor,” the man rasped. “He lives. I have no honor. Kill me.”

“Why must he die for your honor?” Abb Shagara asked.

“The Sheyqa our sister—” He coughed, and the spasm widened his eyes with fresh agony.

“I know the rest,” Azzad said. “I had better tell you. Sheyqa Nizzira of Rimmal Madar obliterated all my family in a single night. There was a banquet at her palace. The al-Ma’aliq men not killed by poison were slain by sword and axe. As for the women and children—they were burned alive inside Beit Ma’aliq. To my shame and sorrow, I escaped—through no cunning of my own. But now I am the only one left.” He glared at the assassin. “And I will be avenged.”

Kabir caught his breath. “This Sheyqa of your country—she is Geysh Dushann?”

“I’ve never heard ‘dushann’ refer to anything but the smoke from a fire. As for a ‘geysh,’ an army—I can tell you only what I know. Her ancestor came from a tribe called Ammarad and termed herself Ammara Izzad.” He shrugged. “A reminder of the crimson harvest of barbarian blood.”

“The Geysh Dushann,” Kabir said heavily, “are all of the Ammarad.”

Azzad rubbed an aching shoulder and said nothing.

“What did your family do, to incur the wrath of this Sheyqa?” asked Abb Shagara.

Softly, Fadhil said, “Power, envy, money, land, greed.”

Azzad nodded.

“But to murder a whole tribe—” Abb Shagara shook his head. “To poison men inside her own tent, to slay them with swords and axes, to burn women and children in their home—this Sheyqa is a monster.” Pausing, he bowed slightly to Azzad. “I am honored, Azzad al-Ma’aliq, that our enemy is also your enemy. I now accept this Sheyqa Nizzira as the enemy of the Shagara.”

Azzad knew the enormity of this declaration in his own country. It sounded very much as if things were the same here. And he knew what was required of him in return. Rising unsteadily to his feet, he said the words gladly. “I am honored, Abb Shagara, that my enemy is also your enemy. I now accept your enemies as mine own, forever.”

“Wait.” Meryem rose lithely to her feet. “I shall have something to say about this. Or does the Abb Shagara think he rules this tribe alone?”

“Mother—” the boy began.

Azzad stared, but he managed to keep his astonishment unspoken.

“My son, if Azzad has made an enemy of this woman, and if this woman is of the Ammarad, and if we accept all of them as our enemies, and if—”

“Mother! Do you question the righteousness of—”

“And if,” she repeated undaunted, “we all wish to live our lives without constantly looking over our shoulders, then we had best think hard and talk harder about this matter. We Shagara heal anyone who comes to us. We have never denied the dawa’an sheymma to anyone, not even the Geysh Dushann. If you declare the whole of the Ammarad enemy, my son, and not just the Geysh Dushann, you will tear the desert apart.”

“But Ammarad beget Geysh Dushann!”

“Yes, and train them to come and work their evil and then drift away like the smoke they are named for. If it becomes known that we refuse an entire tribe our healing, one of two things will happen: either the Za’aba Izim will accept the Ammarad as their enemies and make war upon them, or they will fear that one day we will deny them, so they will make war upon us.”

“Never,” Kabir stated. “We are their protection.”

“And if they do battle with us wearing our protections around their necks and on their arms and beaten into the grips of their swords?”

The old man shrugged. “Ayia, other tribes will come to our defense.”

“And thus, as I have said, tear the desert apart.” Meryem folded her arms. “Now, should this happen, and I believe it could, think of this Sheyqa who is a sister to the Ammarad. There is a whole nation behind her, not just a tribe. She ordered the butchery of an entire family, and it was done. How many al-Ma’aliq died, Azzad? Hundreds? Thousands? And yet there was no outcry from the people?”

“None.”

“Ayia,” Meryem said heavily, “they did not protest the injustice. They do as they are told. My son, could we withstand a whole nation? Could any of the Za’aba Izim?”

“The Geysh Dushann are our enemies,” Abb Shagara said stubbornly.

“They are everyone’s enemies. Restrict your rejection to them. No one will question it. They are too much hated by all decent people. After word of this night is spread—without reference to Azzad al-Ma’aliq—all will call the decision righteous.”

Azzad breathed a sigh of relief. To attach his name to this would confirm his continued existence. Better to keep Nizzira guessing a little while longer.

If, after this, it was at all in doubt that he lived. It was clear to him now that the hunter’s corpse in The Steeps had not convinced them. Ayia, and he’d thought himself so clever, giving up the armband and the pearls and the key! It was the ring that had done it, he told himself with a sigh, the ring he could not bear to give up. And it would be a lesson to him, he vowed, a warning that he must be prepared to do anything, give anything, in seeking his just vengeance.

Nizzira would never sleep soundly until Azzad was proven dead—but neither would Azzad sleep in peace until he had his revenge upon Nizzira. And he didn’t know what form this could take that would not bring the armies of Rimmal Madar down onto this desert country. It must be something subtle, a mortal wound to the Sheyqa and yet containing a warning that retaliation was useless. He owed the Shagara his life. Nizzira could not be allowed to exterminate them as she had the al-Ma’aliq. By accepting Azzad’s enemies as their own, the Shagara were—as Meryem pointed out—receiving much the worst end of the bargain.

Abb Shagara regarded his mother narrowly for a time. Then: “Very well. The Geysh Dushann only. But I shall accept Azzad as our kin.”

“When did you hear me object? You do not listen, my son. Azzad alMa’aliq is indeed kin-worthy. He is civilized and honorable—for a barbarian.”

“And therefore,” Abb Shagara said, “he will be treated as Shagara. In all things.”

There was some significance to this that Azzad didn’t understand, but by now bruises and welts and exhaustion were making his head reel. It must have shown in his face or his eyes, for Leyliah was instantly at his side, helping him to lie down.

“No more drugged wine, I beg of you,” he muttered.

“You’ll sleep the day through without it,” she assured him with a smile in her voice, and added, “Aqq Azzad,” becoming the first of the Shagara to call him brother.

He opened his eyes. She was indeed lovely, with eyes like a fawn and skin like sage honey. “You are Oushta Leyliah now to me, yes?”

“Challa, one day soon.”

“I prefer ‘oushta.’ All my sisters were as beautiful as you—and all my aunts were a million years old.” His eyes squeezed shut, and weakness threatened tears.

“How did you escape death? Ah, I can guess—a woman warned you.”

“No. But it did have to do with a woman.”

“This much is obvious. Sleep now, Aqq Azzad. We will see to everything.”

4

Azzad never found out just how Meryem killed the Geysh Dushann—but that it was Meryem who killed him he had no doubt. Neither did he doubt that her son watched while she did it. When next he saw the two of them, there was something different about the boy’s eyes; he was becoming a man who understood the burdens of responsibility. Za’avedra el-Ibrafidia would have thanked Acuyib on her knees to see such signs in her son Azzad.

A day later, he was invited to Abb Shagara’s tent for the evening meal. The first thing Meryem said was, “I have realized, Aqq Azzad, that it was by my fault that you were attacked. I ask you to forgive me. It was I who spoke your name that night.”

He shrugged away the apology. “You thought him sleeping from the potion given him. There can be no blame upon you, Challa Meryem.”

Fadhil bowed his head. “I must have mixed it wrong.” Then, after a slight hesitation, he added, “I have told them what you know.”

“What I guessed,” Azzad corrected politely.

Meryem shook her head. “No, I have grown careless. And you are not to blame for the potion, Fadhil. I have long worried about the strength of this drug, and lately I have been using less in the mixture for fear of its power. But from now on, it will be as strong as before.”

“I beg you, do not test it on me!” Azzad’s plea won a smile from her at last.

“I regret to say that is impossible,” she replied. “You must leave us tomorrow.”

Ayia, so soon? He had been so anxious to get moving, get on with his life and his vengeance—yet now he was reluctant to abandon these people who had become friends.

“We will give you water and food to last five days,” Abb Shagara said. “The provisions will take you to the first village northwest of here. Continue due north to the coast, and the way will be easy to any number of cities.”

“Which is precisely where the Sheyqa will be looking for me,” Azzad pointed out.

“Have no worries about this Sheyqa. We will give you many protections.”

The charms he’d seen the men making? He tried very hard not to look skeptical. They believed in the power of the tokens, and he could not insult his friends with open doubt. So he asked, “Is there no way to travel directly west? I have seen trade items from that country, brought by caravan and ship to Rimmal Madar.” Not terribly impressive items—blankets and a few spices—but it was trade he could understand and use to his advantage.

“Ayia, north, west, there’s not that much difference,” said Abb Shagara with a shrug. “They are all barbarians, but I thought to spare you the worst of them.”

“In the north,” Meryem explained, “people live in cities that are neither clean nor comfortable, but at least one may walk unhindered by towering walls.”

“In the west,” her son continued, “they live either in small villages perched on mountainsides—and, to my eye, likely to fall off at any minute!—or in huge fortifications with walls that go on forever.”

“The northern cities have walls, do they not?” Azzad had never heard of a city that didn’t. The invaders with their Mother and Son religion had made walls necessary.

Abb Shagara made a dismissive gesture. “Boundary markers, nothing more imposing. There is no need. They are the friends of the Shagara.”

As was Azzad—and they were still speaking of defending his life with a few weights of beaten brass and tin. Acuyib help him.

“But you must go where you wish, of course,” finished Abb Shagara. “Five days will take you to the western villages. Whichever direction you take, you will be protected.” He turned to his mother. “There should be such protections at the dawa’an sheymma, to preclude any more incidents.”

“Abominable,” she muttered. “That the very sanctuary of healing must be defended against malefactors.”

Azzad tried to keep his expression pleasantly neutral. When he saw Fadhil and Leyliah exchanging amused glances, he knew that his face had betrayed him.

The girl said, “Aqq Azzad does not believe.”

“Perhaps he requires a demonstration,” Fadhil suggested.

Abb Shagara sprang to his feet from piled pillows. “Wonderful! Fadhil, attack me!”

“Akkil Akkem Akkim Akkar!” exclaimed Meryem, in the manner of all mothers who desire their offspring’s complete attention.

And, in the manner of all children whose mothers propose to spoil their fun, Abb Shagara pouted. “But Azzad needs to be shown—”

“Don’t be absurd.”

“I believe implicitly,” Azzad told them.

Leyliah knew he lied. “Fadhil?” she said, catching the young man’s eye. And swift as summer lightning the eating-knife in her hand flew across the platters of food, directly at Fadhil’s chest.

He did nothing. The knife struck his bleached wool shirt and tumbled harmlessly to his lap. Then he reached inside his clothing to bring out a silvery rectangular plaque about the size of his thumb. On it were inscribed symbols such as Azzad had seen the boys practicing with the mouallima.

“This means ‘defense,’” he said, pointing to one of the figures—talishann, Azzad recalled. “This is for safety, and this negates iron’s anger.”

“But she wasn’t truly angry with you,” Abb Shagara teased merrily. “How could she be, when—”

“Enough!” snapped Meryem. Fadhil and Leyliah were blushing. “It matters nothing if Azzad believes or does not believe. The fact is that what we shall give him—added to what has been made for his horse—will keep him safe.”

“Can’t I show him?” Abb Shagara begged. “Please, Mother?”

“No. And don’t sulk.”

A look of mischievous cunning appeared on his face. “Surely a very little demonstration will suffice.” And he reached over to a tray, taking a silver cup such as Azzad had used the first time he’d sat in this tent. He tossed it at Azzad, who caught it easily. “Lie to me.”

“Your pardon, Abb Shagara?”

“Tell me a lie. Anything will do. I’ll ask a question, shall I? What is the name of your horse?”

Hiding a smile—and perhaps a tolerant sigh—Azzad opened his mouth to say Barghoutz, silently begging the stallion’s pardon for the insult of calling him a flea.

What came out of his mouth was, “Khamsin.”

Abb Shagara crowed with laughter at the surprise Azzad could feel scrawled all over his face. “You see? You remember the first time we drank qawah together here? You held that cup, and you told no lies.”

“I—” He thought he might say something polite. Instead: “I don’t believe it.”

“I know you don’t,” said Meryem. She rose and took the cup from his hand. “Now that you’ve had your little game, my son, please allow Azzad to get some sleep. He has an early start in the morning.”

“Another few questions, and he would have believed,” the boy complained.

“Enough!” Meryem ordered, and he subsided.

The next morning Azzad went on his way, with the whole tribe to watch. Only Abb Shagara, Meryem, Kabir, Fadhil, and Leyliah spoke to him in farewell, but he saw the smiles and sensed the goodwill—and their chagrin that while in their care he had nearly been assassinated. Curiously, there was no resentment that now, because of him, a stranger, the fearsome Geysh Dushann were their openly declared enemies. Truly, Acuyib had made their hearts more open and generous than the hearts of his own people, whom he had known to betray friends for the price of a basket of bread.

He saddled Khamsin—who behaved himself although he was plainly eager for a long gallop—and took a moment to inspect the new decorations on the saddle. Fadhil stood stroking the stallion’s neck, watching Azzad finger each of thirteen palm-sized tin disks.

“One for each moon of the year,” Fadhil explained. “It is traditional with our own horses. Abb Shagara says we cannot tell you what each means, or you will trust in them too much and not have a care to yourself.”

“I see. If I knew that arrows would glance off Khamsin’s hide, I’d ride right into an army of archers?”

“Something like that. Not even the Shagara can protect against stupidity.”

“I’ve never had a reputation for being wise, but I promise I’ll try not to be foolish.” He smiled and grasped the young man’s arm. “You’ve been a good friend to me, Fadhil, and because we are friends, I’d like to give you some advice. Marry Leyliah.”

His skin paled beneath its golden sheen, and his eyes went wide. “Marry—?”

“Yes. You’re both healers, you have an eye for each other—and no wonder, you’re handsome and she’s exquisite—”

“I cannot,” he whispered, glancing away.

“Whyever not? Surely sometimes you marry within the tribe. You’re not close cousins, are you?”

“In the sixth degree.”

“Well, then—”

“She—will find a husband from another tribe.”

“I tell you she wants you. I’ve seen that look in a woman’s eye often enough to know what it means. It would do my heart good to think of you married and—”

“I cannot. Please do not speak of it ever again.” Fadhil gave him an anguished look, gripped both Azzad’s hands for an instant, and hurried away.

Chal Kabir came forward, clasped his hands briefly, and advised him to be careful. Then Meryem and Abb Shagara approached, the latter with a look of longing in his eyes as he regarded Khamsin—like a little boy who desperately desires to climb a date palm, yet fears that he might fall.

“When I return,” Azzad said, “I’ll teach you to ride him.”

“Me?” The big eyes blinked. “On his back?”

“It’s easy, once you learn how.” Turning to Meryem, he bowed. “Lady, I thank you.”

“Travel safely.” That was all she said before leaving her son alone with Azzad.

“You would truly teach me how to ride?” the young man asked.

“Truly. When there is more time. Abb Shagara—”

“Aqq Akkil. Or Akkem, or whichever of my other names you prefer!”

“Aqq Akkim, then, for I have learned that you are indeed wise.” He hesitated, then said softly, “Teach some of this wisdom to Fadhil, so that he’ll have the courage to ask to marry Leyliah.”

“Marry?” he exclaimed with astonishment identical to Fadhil’s. And his reply was the same, too: “He cannot.”

When a man and woman cared for each other, and there was no impediment in bloodline or wealth or status, why not get married? He frowned at Abb Shagara. “But they obviously—”

The father of his people shook his head. “It is not spoken of. Not even to you, who know some of our secrets. You have the map of where we will be from season to season?”

“Folded in my memory.”

“Good.” Drawing himself up, Abb Shagara said for everyone else to hear, “Acuyib’s blessings upon you and all that you think, all that you say, and all that you do.”

“Acuyib’s Glory be with you and all Shagara forever. And I promise that I’ll be back with wondrous gifts to thank you for my life.” Low-voiced, he added with a wink, “And to teach you how to ride.”

They exchanged bows, and as Azzad straightened up, Abb Shagara placed a chain around his neck. A finger-length brass plaque set with several gemstones rested at the center of his breast.

“This will protect you, so that you return to us.”

Azzad bowed his thanks and told himself that when he ran out of pearls, he’d still have something to sell to keep himself and Khamsin fed. So perhaps the gift was protection of a sort after all.

As the whole tribe called out farewells, he put out a hand to soothe the stallion. He needn’t have bothered: Khamsin thought the praise was for him. He arched his neck and pranced after Azzad mounted, and without being signaled to do so reared to show off the thin streak of white on his belly.

“Flaunt it for the mares some other time,” Azzad advised him, waved to the crowd, and rode away.

It wasn’t until that evening, when he unsaddled Khamsin, that he realized the charms were not tin but silver, and the pectoral about his own neck was not polished brass but solid gold.

The next five days passed placidly enough. There was a trail and a rock shelter the first night, and more trail and a fencing of thorns on the second. The Shagara had even taken into account the time he would make riding a horse rather than sitting in a wagon.

The trail he followed was a double rut in the rocky desert, distinguishable as a trail only because it had slightly fewer stones than the surrounding wasteland. The third night he reached the skirts of some low mountains and camped beside a trickle of water below a cliff, staring up at the extravagant stars. He missed the soft sounds of the Shagara camp, the gentle music of the wind chimes. But on the fourth day, even with the silver on Khamsin’s saddle and the gold on his own breast to remind him, the time spent with the Shagara began to seem dreamlike. An eighteen-year-old boy called “Father” who ruled a whole tribe. Trinkets guaranteed to turn aside arrows and swords.

Absurd.

On the fifth afternoon he caught up with a family returning from a visit to their nomadic relations. Parents, two sons and their wives, an unwed daughter, and six squalling toddlers were all happy to be going home to civilization.

“Bayyid Qarhia is not a great city, not like Beit Za’ara,” said the father, “but it’s certainly better than the squalor of my uncle’s tents! Of course,” he laughed, “my uncle would slit his own throat before he’d set foot in any town.”

Azzad surmised that this Beit Za’ara was the largest community in this man’s experience. Two hundred inhabitants at the most, he decided. In Dayira Azreyq there lived two hundred times that number.

But where there was a town, there was money. Probably not a lot of money, but enough to get him started. Precisely what he intended to start was as yet unclear. But from the way the young men eyed Khamsin with that combination of fascination and wariness that Azzad was coming to expect, it would have something to do with the stallion.

The women and children rode in a large wagon drawn by two of those monstrous horses. Azzad could not believe that there was so little contact with eastern lands that Khamsin’s breed was unknown to them. But the Shagara had never heard of Rimmal Madar, just as Azzad had never heard of the Shagara. Though nothing more formidable than The Steeps lay between the two lands, he had begun to think that there were reasons why the peoples had never mingled. These possible reasons occupied his thoughts for long stretches of the road, and eventually he thought he might have an answer. If the sheyqas had an agreement with their desert-dwelling cousins that The Steeps were the border, none would pass through that were not approved. The Ammarad would keep to their side out of habit, preference, and understanding with their royal kin. And they would keep everyone else out of Rimmal Madar, as well.

Further, Azzad speculated, the sheyqas would not wish the Geysh Dushann generally known—or, indeed, known at all. What better assassins than one’s own blood relations, whom nobody had ever even heard of? And Azzad was abruptly, bitterly certain that just such assassins had advised Nizzira on which poison to use on the al-Ma’aliq men and where to set the fires at Beit Ma’aliq.

Dragging his mind from the past, he patted Khamsin’s neck and compared him point by point with the huge desert horses. They were taller, broader, tougher, stronger. Logic dictated that they must be able to survive long periods without much food or water. Yet when they did feed, they must devour half a man’s monthly earnings. They were hardier than Khamsin, but slower; more powerful, but more expensive; and the evil gleam in their eyes boded ill for those who trained them.

Old ways died hard; even if lighter, swifter, sweeter-tempered horses were available, few would wish to exchange the wagon for the saddle. A horse that could not be placed between shafts was no good as a horse. The idea that Azzad could convince them otherwise was ludicrous, and he knew it. Expert rider though he was, he wouldn’t have tried to sit one of these monsters if his life depended on it. Only think, he told himself wryly, of the insult to Khamsin! And yet he wondered, watching the men watch Khamsin, if he was in danger of losing his only asset to thieves in the night.

The family was not wealthy. They rented a stall in Bayyid Qarhia’s zouq, selling blankets and cloaks woven by their tribal relatives. But something else besides gathering new goods had happened on this trip. To judge by the red-rimmed eyes of the daughter and her mother’s black anger whenever she addressed her—as “La’a-tzawaq,” unwed—there had been an unsuccessful attempt to find her a husband. To Azzad’s exacting eye, the girl’s looks were minimal, her feminine allure negligible, and her intelligence doubtful. Possessing one of these three she might have made a match, even at her age—at least nineteen—but lacking any, her prospects were not good.

That evening they made camp, and from his provisions Azzad shared spices to enliven a bland stew. Afterward they all sat around the fire listening to the young wives sing. Their voices were high and sweet, putting him in mind of his sisters. Half-closing his eyes, he could almost imagine himself back at home . . .

. . . upstairs in the arrareem, lazing on silken cushions and sipping cool fruit drinks after the evening meal. A breeze blew in from the hadiqqa ma’aliqa, scented with citrus and flowers. Alessir—twenty-two, eager to be married, and on the verge of settling things with a beauteous and wealthy girl—blushed furiously as they all teased him without mercy. Grandfather threatened again to marry the girl himself if Alessir didn’t get on with it. Omma, not quite sixteen, played the harp and sang languishing love songs; she looked forward to choosing among dozens of handsome, adoring young men when Mother let it be known that her eldest daughter was ready for marriage. Mairid, a year younger, sighed her envy. Ra’abi and Yasimine, still little girls, tended their menagerie of birds and rabbits and kittens, begging at intervals to ride the big horses like their sisters and brothers. Mother, glancing up from her tallying books, told them yet again that when they were big enough to saddle one, they were big enough to ride one, but until then they must make do with their half-breed ponies. . . .

Azzad rose abruptly to his feet, unable to bear the music any longer. He paced to the rocks where he’d tethered Khamsin, buried his face in the satinsoft neck, and, for the first time since that terrible night in Rimmal Madar, wept.

Late that night, snug in a blanket near the glowing embers of the fire, he woke abruptly, his heart pounding. No dream lingered to disturb his mind, but neither was there any sound in the starlit darkness to alert his ears. A year ago he would have considered it tiresome, all this jolting awake in the middle of the night. But other times he’d woken thus he’d either learned something useful or saved his own life. He paid heed to the night and the desert around him, listening intently and slitting his eyes open.

The mother, father, daughter, wives, and children occupied the wagon; the two sons had curled up in blankets near Azzad by the fire. These blankets were now empty. Azzad eased over onto his back, raising his head slightly. The wagon was still here.

Was Khamsin? The stallion would scream his outrage if anyone came near. But suddenly Azzad could not get it out of his mind that something threatened their freedom.

About to rise and investigate, he suddenly heard what must have awakened him: a feminine giggle, muffled as if in a man’s shoulder. Azzad grinned at his own foolishness and relaxed. Of course; the brothers had gone off with their wives for a little midnight gratification.

A few moments later he heard a soft footstep. Scarce had he opened his eyes when a woman’s voice whispered, “Lie still—I mean you no harm.”

The plain, dull-witted, unalluring daughter nudged aside Azzad’s blanket and slithered down beside him. She was clad only in her waist-length black hair. He scrambled away from her, throwing the wool blanket over her body.

“Lady, what are you doing?” He kept his voice low; if her father and brothers caught them here, he’d be dead.

Or married.

Which, he realized as she smiled nervously up at him, was precisely her intention. He was young, handsome, and though he had no family they knew of and no prospects they could see, any husband was better than no husband. A threat to his freedom, indeed. No wonder the other blankets around the fire were empty.

“Make a baby for me,” she breathed.

Acuyib help him! “Lady,” he said with careful courtesy, “this is wrong, I will not despoil you—”

“Oh, that’s already been done.” She sat up, letting the blanket fall from her shoulders. She had very pretty breasts. “One of my cousins did it, but it was not my time to conceive. If you make a baby for me tonight, then I can say it’s his, and he’ll have to marry me.”

Women! What mere man could comprehend them? It occurred to him to be insulted that her object was not marriage with him—young, handsome, wealthy Azzad al-Ma’aliq. Young and handsome still but wealthy no longer. He really would have to start remembering that.

It was a measure of Azzad’s first twenty years of life that he actually considered her proposal. He’d gone without a woman since early autumn—and it was now full winter. And she did have very pretty breasts....

But it was equally a measure of what had happened to Azzad since the autumn that he shook his head. “Believe me, lady, you are lovely and gracious, and it would be any man’s honor and pleasure to be your husband. But I cannot.”

She was not fooled by the flattery. Her mirror had schooled her to realism. “Cannot, or will not?”

“Both,” he answered honestly. “Any children I father, I will raise and teach.” Raised in full knowledge of their noble heritage as al-Ma’aliq and taught to hate Nizzira al-Ammarizzad. Abruptly he wanted such children with all his heart.

“You will not do this small thing for me?”

“It is a very great thing, and I’m sure you can find a man more worthy than I.”

She sighed. “But it must be tonight. If I wait another moon, I will not be believed.” She reached for his groin with all the seductiveness of a gardener reaching to cull spoiled fruit. “You are a man. I am a woman. Do this for me.”

“No.” He gently took her hand from his body. She examined his face narrowly in the dim light and drew in a long breath as if to sigh once more—but Azzad knew what was coming. He clapped a hand over her mouth and pulled her against his chest. “None of that, now,” he murmured into her lank black hair as she struggled against him. “I will not father your baby, and I will not marry you. But I will tell you how to marry the cousin you love.”

She tensed in his arms, but stopped fighting him.

“Very good. The way to do it is this. Hide your moon-cloths from everyone, especially your mother. This is possible?”

She nodded. In Beit Ma’aliq, with servants everywhere, it would have been hopeless. But this girl probably had to wash all her own clothes.

“Run weeping to your parents and say that you fear you are ill, because your moon-days have not come since you journeyed to your uncle’s tents. When they ask if you were alone with any man, deny it—and then weep harder than ever and let slip your cousin’s name. I guarantee that you and he will be married. When next you bleed, it will be thought that you miscarried of the child. But by then you’ll be married, with plenty of chances for another baby. Do you understand?”

Again she nodded. Azzad cautiously took his hand from her mouth. She stayed quiet, so he let her go.

“I hope you’ll be very happy,” he told her. “Now go back to your bed, and start planning what a fine life you will have with the true father of your children.”

She slipped away without a word of thanks for his clever solution to her problem. Women! Azzad lay back, exhaling to the bottom of his lungs and blessing his luck.

The next day he rode on. Quickly, and alone.

The landscape changed subtly. Azzad paid so little attention, trusting Khamsin and involved in his own thoughts, that before he knew it, he was riding up toward a forest. Above were truly formidable peaks, hidden until now by the clouds wreathing their heights. Azzad reined in, contemplating the magnificence with pleasure—until he realized he would probably have to cross these mountains. By comparison, the castle of the al-Ma’aliq stood on flat ground. Nothing in those hills had prepared him for the summits looming above him now. At least the puzzle of why Rimmal Madar knew nothing of this distant land was solved—for who would dare these peaks and cross the desert unless absolutely necessary?

“Ayia,” he muttered to Khamsin, “we’ve come this far—Acuyib won’t let us die now.”

There was good hunting and forage and plentiful water. Yet as the cold sank into his bones every night, more cruel than the dry chill of the desert, he huddled in his cloak and wished that he believed in the Shagara spells and that such spells included one of warmth. He should have gone to the seacoast after all.

At noon one day he emerged from a narrow tree-lined defile into a bowl-shaped valley. The creek ran full, and the grains and grasses were lush, even in early winter, and the grazing land was strewn with fat brown sheep. A road snaked up the hillside, and stone houses perched along it at intervals. Azzad counted thirty individual structures and a cluster of buildings about halfway up the road—probably markets and workshops. Bayyid Qarhia? he wondered. If so, he’d best stay only tonight and then move on, before his would-be mistress and her family arrived home.

Staying even one night was, however, out of the question. He had barely emerged from the trees when a shepherd whistled shrilly. Within moments a contingent of fiercely bearded men were marching down the road, carrying scythes and axes and other instruments of peaceful agriculture easily turned to murderous intent. The laws of hospitality quite obviously did not apply in this country. Azzad hastily weighed his chances of proving himself harmless to man, woman, and sheep—and pulled Khamsin’s head around.

“Hold!”

A shepherd blocked the path. It would be simple enough to run him down, but for the fact that he held a massive bow with an iron-tipped shaft nocked, aimed, and ready to loose. Azzad sighed, dropped the reins, and held both hands open and away from his body.

“I mean you no wrong,” he said. “I am but a traveler, alone and unarmed.”

He heard the men approach behind him. Pressure of one heel turned Khamsin once more to face them. Too late, he remembered the tempting glint of silver on the stallion’s saddle and gold from the necklace on his own chest.

“Who are you?” the eldest of the men demanded, teeth showing yellow, like an aged wolf’s, through his thick white beard. “Why are you here?”

“My name is Azzad. I am from a faraway land and seek only to pass through your mountains.”

This did not impress. The elder came forward, leather boots soundless on the gravelly road, his iron-headed staff poised. When he was within three paces of Khamsin, the stallion took advantage of the lax reins and stretched his head forward, teeth bared. The old man stopped and glared, but neither flinched nor retreated.

“I apologize,” Azzad said humbly. “He is not kindly disposed to strangers.”

After a moment, the man nodded thoughtfully. Over his shoulder he said, “This one is safe. Let him pass.”

“But—Abb Sharouf—”

Azzad repressed an untimely impulse to laugh. Father of Sheep? Either he had peculiar habits or there was a lack of women—

“I have decided!” snarled the old man. “Further, he may have water for himself and his horse. Further, a loaf of bread and a portion of fresh-cooked meat. Further, a woolen blanket for the nights he will spend in the high country. Further—”

“You are too generous, Abb Sharouf,” Azzad said, wishing nothing more than the furtherance of his journey.

The interruption won him another glare. “Further, a satchel of herbs to ease his breathing in the heights.” He reversed his staff and thunked the metal tip on a rock, striking a spark. Khamsin danced away from it, rolling his eyes. “I have said it, and it will be.”

Azzad was escorted silently up the road to the village. The promised water came from a well. The food he ate hurriedly. The blanket was tied to his saddle; Khamsin snorted a little at its powerful stink of sheep. The small leather sack of herbs was given over with a curt admonition to brew it strong every morning. He felt their eyes on his back as he rode up the slope, and as he passed into a stand of trees, he heard them begin to argue behind him.

Expelling a long sigh, he shook his head, thanked Acuyib for the blessing of survival, and followed the narrowing trail up into the mountains.

5

Angry voices outside in the stable yard made Azzad swing around and squint into the sudden sunlight flooding the stable. Shadows loomed in the doorway, darkening the cobbles and his dazzled eyes. As his vision adjusted, the rake in his hands clattered to the stones.

“He is the one who despoiled my wife’s only daughter! Seize him!”

So startled that he didn’t even have time to think about running, Azzad found his arms wrenched painfully behind his back. His feet were kicked out from under him and his body unceremoniously lugged out into the stable yard. There they were: the father, the brothers, and eleven other men—five old, six young, all furious, all armed with knives, all righteously intent on shedding his blood over the flagstones he himself kept clean. The girl huddled by the water trough, wearing an ugly brown cloak, weeping.

Azzad was deposited ungently on the ground. He lay there, flat on his back, wondering dazedly how this could have happened. This mountainside town was not Bayyid Qarhia—it was nowhere near Bayyid Qarhia. He’d made sure of it before he decided to tarry the winter here. And yet here they were, practically slavering at the mouth now that they’d found him.

The girl had bungled it. He saw it in her reddened eyes when she dared a glance at him. Somehow, despite his excellent instructions, she’d said the wrong thing, and her father had fixed on Azzad as the malefactor. And now Azzad was sprawling in a stable yard like a calf at a gelding party, with all her male relations holding carving knives.

The village elder, Abb Ferrhan, and Azzad’s own employer, Bazir al-Gallidh, respectfully invited the father to explain why the peace of Sihabbah had been invaded by knife-wielding strangers. With every word more and more people crowded around; this was the best entertainment since a vagabond troupe of acrobats and mimes had come through at the last harvest festival.

“And then what did she do,” cried the father, “when her mother asked if she’d been with him, but weep and cry out that she had not?”

“A woman protecting her lover,” said Abb Ferrhan, stroking his scraggly white beard, “as plain as the sun in the sky.”

“Or a woman telling the truth,” mused Bazir al-Gallidh, whose family was the richest in Sihabbah and whose name was a byword for exquisite manners. “If he were the guilty one and if she wanted him for her husband, would she not admit to his name?”

“It could have been no one else, I tell you!” the father raged, unable in his fury to accord the nobleman proper respect.

“You could wait and see if the child looks like him!” someone in the crowd called out, to general laughter and the wronged family’s increased humiliation.

“Better like him than like the mother,” muttered Mazzud, one of the stable hands, who had no manners at all and had never seen the need for any that Azzad could tell.

“Ayia, Azzad?” asked Bazir. “Did you sire this woman’s child?”

“No!” He struggled to sit up and repeated, “No! By my hope for Acuyib’s Light and Glory when I die, I did not.”

“Liar!” shrieked her father. He and his kinsmen had to be physically restrained from slicing into Azzad. Some of them had brought two knives.

“What’s all this?” demanded a new voice. “Brother, what goes on here?”

“Zellim,” said Bazir, “you are come at the right moment, as always. We have need of a legal turn of mind.”

The situation was explained to the eminent mou’ammi, who practiced law in faraway Hazganni. Zellim al-Gallidh listened, eyed Azzad and then the girl, pursed his lips, and shrugged elegant shoulders beneath a snowy white robe.

The father folded his arms across his chest. “Now that you have heard all, you must agree—they will marry at once!”

The girl burst into renewed tears. Zellim—not quite so polite as his brother—winced at the volume. The father, belatedly realizing the foolishness of annoying the most important people he had ever met, snarled at her to be silent.

“Stop that!” Azzad ordered before he could think about it.

“You see? You see? He protects her! Defends her! He is her lover!”

“What I see,” said Zellim in forbidding tones that had resounded in the law courts of Hazganni for thirty years, “is a man objecting to abuse of a woman. This is only right and decent.” Approaching the girl, he bowed his head as if to a noble lady and said, “What is your claim in this matter, Lady?”

She sobbed louder.

“Azzad, stand up,” said Bazir.

He did, with a helping hand from Mazzud, and brushed stable yard debris from his clothing. As he bent to pick straw off his trousers, he reflected sourly that no one would recognize the famously fastidious Azzad al-Ma’aliq in the unkempt, threadbare stable hand he had become. Not only was he reduced to poverty and namelessness, he was about to be forced into marrying a fool of a girl who couldn’t even do what all other women did as easily as they breathed: lie about a lover.

“I ask again,” Bazir al-Gallidh said. “Did you get this lady with child?”

“No, I did not,” he replied, flicking a last bit of goat-dung from his knee. As he straightened, the Shagara charm about his neck swung free of his torn shirt. Bazir’s dark eyes narrowed; this was the only reaction Azzad saw. But within moments murmurs circulated through the crowd.

“He tells the truth—”

“He is not the father—”

“There is a liar here, but it is not Azzad—”

Abb Ferrhan held up a quelling hand. Everyone was silent—Azzad most profoundly of all. He knew he was telling the truth, but why did they think so? They had no reason to believe him—and yet they did.

“I find he speaks truth,” said Abb Ferrhan. “He is not the father of the child.”

“What?” roared the father, rounding on his weeping daughter.

“I tried to tell you!” the girl gasped, flinching back. “It was our cousin, in the tents one night—”

“But how can this be?”

“In the way of a young woman with a young man, I should think,” the lawyer Zellim observed dryly. “Azzad, what have you to say of this?”

Bazir al-Gallidh was still looking at him strangely. Azzad addressed his employer with humility, as was fitting. None except Azzad knew that deference for the nobleman was coupled with profound gratitude for the miraculous ways of Acuyib.

And, he was realizing, the Shagara.

“Al-Gallidh,” he said, “it is as she states. I was not the one to lie with her. It was her cousin, whom she loves, and it is my belief that they ought to marry.”

“Yes, have the lovers marry!” a sentimental woman called out.

“Let the girl marry the one she loves!”

“He must be more beautiful than the dawn for her to prefer him over Azzad!”

“He must be blind,” muttered Azzad’s friend Mazzud.

Once more Abb Ferrhan gestured for silence. “Is this your wish, my child?” he asked the girl. When she wiped her nose, sniffled, and nodded, he lifted both hands in the manner of a pronouncement. “Ayia. It is none of our affair, here in Sihabbah, but my advice to you, good man, is to take your daughter to this cousin and celebrate a wedding as soon as may be.”

The girl, her father, her brothers, her uncles, and her cousins got back into their wagon. Azzad saw her direct a fulminating look at him—not a featherweight of gratitude in her at all—as the family departed. The crowd dispersed. Abb Ferrhan returned to his forge. After trading an arched brow with his younger brother, Bazir al-Gallidh went back to his library and his account books—for in this land, Azzad had found, it was the men who took care of such things, and it was rare to find a woman who could so much as write her own name. Azzad was left alone in the stable yard with Zellim.

“Shagara,” was all the mou’ammi said.

“I had the honor of guesting with that tribe, yes,” Azzad replied carefully.

A slow nod, a long sigh—and a sharp, shrewd glance. “Should I ever be so unfortunate as to stand against you in the courts, I will be certain first that you wear nothing of the Shagara.” Before Azzad could react to this, Zellim said casually, “My brother and I are the only al-Gallidh now living. But I have a daughter. Gayyid zoubh.”

Faint of voice and wide of eye, Azzad returned the wish for a good morning. Then, touching the finger-length gold plaque at his breast, he murmured a line from long-neglected devotions. “The Ways of Acuyib are Wonderful and Strange. Praise the Ways of Acuyib.” And for himself he added, “And the Shagara.”

Azzad had exactly one marketable skill (success with ladies brought expenditures, not earnings): he could ride as if he and his horse were one being. His expertise had almost gotten him into the elite Qoundi Ammar, but not even his singular way with horses had been enough to negate his al-Ma’aliq origins. At the time of his rejection he’d shrugged, and pretended not to care, and soon thereafter he truly had not, for Khamsin had then been born, and black horses were not allowed in the Qoundi Ammar.

Back in the Gabannah Chaydann, during the earliest days of his exile, he had been confident that his mastery of horsemanship would gain him entry to the first families of any country and yield large sums as he taught the finer points of riding. But that had been before he’d seen these enormous horses that no man in his right mind would dare to saddle. Men rode donkeys. They looked ludicrous, but they rode donkeys. Even the sight of Azzad on Khamsin, galloping through the al-Gallidh meadows, did not inspire them. So much for his grand plan. Throughout the winter he worked in the stables of Bazir al-Gallidh, gnawing on his thwarted vengeance.

It was boring work—mucking out stalls and cleaning harness, feeding and currying. He wished it was boring to pick out those cauldron-wide hooves and scrape the yellow from those tremendous teeth; smashed bones and missing fingers did not figure in any of his plans. But as fields soaked by winter rain dried in spring sun, and the mountain heights slowly shed their cloaks of snow, he had worked out no plan that led to wealth, influence, and the slow, suffering demise of Nizzira al-Ammarizzad.

And then one day, when clouds seemed to hover within arm’s reach above Sihabbah, he was summoned to the library of Bazir al-Gallidh. The maqtabba was a large room with a high ceiling, stuffed with leather-bound books of a dozen different sizes and colors, the titles stamped in gold on their spines. The furnishings were both beautiful and comfortable: a couch and chair plump with pillows, a stepladder of dark satinwood inlaid with swirling silver wire, a broad table covered in maps and ledgers, a many-branched bronze lamp with shades of paper-fine alabaster. On a low table was a beautiful chadarang service, the red squares and pieces made of carnelian, the green of jasper.

Bazir al-Gallidh lavished money on his horses and his maqtabba, and that was all. The rest of his house was neither large nor richly decorated, and he dressed more simply than any servant of the al-Ma’aliq, but the stainless purity of his robe made Azzad all too aware of his own threadbare condition—him, the most elegant young blade in Dayira Azreyq.

Ayia, that was another life. He did not regret the clothes or the jewels; indeed, he had come to appreciate Bazir’s quiet elegance. At past fifty years of age, al-Gallidh was a man completely at ease with himself and the little world he ruled, wishing for nothing larger or more powerful or more opulent. Azzad, less that half his age, was yet ambitious—but he had specific uses to which he would put money and influence, should he ever succeed in acquiring them.

Still, from Bazir al-Gallidh he learned that distinction did not require flaunting display. For example, the nobleman wore no jewels but a ring on the first finger of his right hand. Azzad recognized the design from the treasure room back at home: silver clasping a stone, in this case a pearl as white as the snow that was the nobleman’s name. The al-Ma’aliq owned several such rings—had owned, he corrected himself with a renewed surge of bitterness such as he had not felt all this winter of placid, mindless, boring work.

“My ring interests you,” said Bazir al-Gallidh.

Abruptly aware that he was staring—and, considering his thoughts, staring rather fiercely—he smoothed his expression and replied, “Your pardon. I have seen several like it in the past. Taken from the northern barbarians, was it not?”

“Yes.” He held out his hand to regard the pearl. “More than a hundred years ago my great-grandfather came down from the mountains—a place much higher than Sihabbah, whence our family’s name—and fought the barbarians. Eventually they were expelled from the coast. My ancestor returned, his head golden with glory, as the old saying goes, and richer by nothing more than this ring.”

“A truly noble man,” Azzad commented.

“Such rings as these are common where you come from?”

“No. But I have seen three or four. The stones were rubies.”

“Ayia, then they were from the fingers of their nobles. Something about protection against storms and lightning, the perils of a sea voyage.”

“I didn’t know that. Is it written in one of these books?” He gestured to the wealth around them.

“In many of them. Those who dwell on the coast suffered greatly when these barbarians came, and tales of those times are of interest to me. From them, I learned that pearls such as this were worn by those pure of heart—the holy ones, the wise ones. Do you take an interest in the past?”

“Only in the future,” he said, and was unable to keep a twinge of bitterness from his voice.

“Which appears to you rather limited, here in Sihabbah.” Bazir al-Gallidh seated himself on the couch and gestured to the chadarang service. “Do you play?”

“Badly, al-Gallidh. My mother taught me, but despaired of my ever becoming a serious player.”

“This is very, very old. My father always said he could imagine that this was the service on which Acuyib and Chaydann Il-Mamnoua’a played to divide up the world into the green lands and the red.”

Azzad nodded. “My mother used to say that chadarang was part of her devotions—it’s the eternal struggle between the desert and the garden.”

Al-Gallidh picked up one of the towers, fingering a broken crenellation on the jasper. “Your mother sounds a wise woman. But I think there are things more subtle here. There are those of us who live in these, safe and stationary—” He set the tower back on its square and touched the carnelian sheyqa’s crowned head. “—and those who have not the grandest title but who rule in truth by moving among the people.” Sitting back, he regarded Azzad thoughtfully. “I am told that you are a good worker.”

“I have tried to be,” Azzad replied.

“I am further told that you are clean, conscientious, do not drink or gamble or follow women about in the marketplace, and indeed have been exemplary.”

Looking into the older man’s eyes, he felt an absurd desire to shuffle his feet and shrug like a little boy.

“How is it then,” asked the nobleman, “that this superlative servant has done my house such grievous wrong?”

Azzad blinked. “I don’t understand. What wrong have I done?”

“Perhaps I ought to say that the wrong was done not by you but by your horse.” Leaning back, he eyed Azzad with a hint of whimsy. “Five of my best mares are with foal by that spindle-legged stallion of yours.”

“Five—?”

“Yes. At about the time you arrived here, they were coming into season and had just been separated from the herd. They were to be covered by my new stud, who was taken to them as planned. But I did not know until today that Khamsin had gotten there before him.”

“But—how?”

“Our horses do not require high fences,” Bazir replied mildly.

It was true. They could sooner fly than jump anything taller than this couch. But Khamsin—faster, lighter—he’d been trying to fly since he’d tottered to his feet and taken his first steps.

“I know,” Bazir continued, “because by this time the mares should be much bigger than they are. I was afraid that I was mistaken when I bought the new stud, that he had no vigor. But—five mares, all of the best bloodlines, all bearing runtlings at the same time? Then I happened to catch sight of your Khamsin galloping across the meadow. He leaped the stream merely for the fun of it.”

Azzad nodded slowly. “I am sorry, al-Gallidh. What can I do to—”

“—rectify the problem? Nothing. I blame myself, in truth, for not recognizing that he would get to the mares any way he could. We just don’t think about horses leaping fences, you see. And so now we have a difficulty.”

Azzad tried not to gulp. This was an appalling thing Khamsin had done, potentially disastrous to the al-Gallidh horses’ reputation, not to speak of whatever profits had been expected in this year’s crop of foals—

But the nobleman did not look angry; indeed, he seemed almost merry. “I need draft animals, not racehorses. What am I to do with these half-breeds?”

Five foals, not as tall or heavy or powerful as their mothers—

“Mazzud says, and I agree, that judging by their smallness inside the womb, they will be much too frail for harnessing.”

—but as light and swift as their sire, perfect for—

“And so how can I use them?”

“Riding,” he heard himself say, and all at once the blurry idea of what seemed like years ago became as polished crystal in his mind. So did his mother’s face. And the estimable Za’avedra el-Ibrafidia stared at him with disgust for his blindness. “Saddle them and ride them,” he said, excitement rising in him the way his manhood rose at the sight of a beautiful woman.

“We ride donkeys.” A flat statement, admitting no possibility of change.

“And look ridiculous on them!” Azzad exclaimed. “Only see, al-Gallidh, the advantages! They will be bigger than Khamsin, but not so big as your horses. The terrain here demands strength, which they will have—but grace and a sweeter temper as well, and speed—not so fast as he, but much faster than—”

“You speak as if they were already born.”

“I know how they will be, I can see every one of them!” And somehow he could.

“Along with that truth charm about your neck, did the Shagara give you a spell of foreknowledge as well?”

The crystalline images shattered. “A—a spell?”

“My brother Zellim also has interests,” Bazir murmured. “It was he who pointed out to me the charm and deduced its purpose. Through my own reading, I have learned that when our people rode into battle against the barbarians, they wore amulets to protect them—things of gold and silver made by the Shagara.”

“I did not know that, either.”

“And now that you do know, you do not believe?”

Azzad opened his mouth and found he had no words. In the matter of the pregnant girl, the people of Sihabbah had believed him. So, he realized suddenly, had the shepherds in that village, who had been ready to kill him; but after he had told them he meant no harm, Abb Sharouf, standing close to him, had believed him. Believed, and let him go. For no reason whatsoever.

Except the Shagara gold around his neck.

“Al-Gallidh,” he said at last, “I do not know. The Shagara were a peculiarity to me—kind and welcoming, skilled in medicine as everyone knows, but their ways were . . . eccentric.”

“So I have heard. So I have not read—which is curious, if they were so important in driving out the invaders. Their name is mentioned in the books, and that is all. Nothing of their ways, their lands, their customs. They crafted armbands and rings, a few shields for the nobility, necklaces—and that is all anyone knows.”

Azzad had not seen shields being made. Perhaps the Shagara made such things only in times of war. If, as Fadhil had told him, there was no war here—

Bazir sighed and drummed his fingers on a pillow. The pearl glistened with subtle iridescence by lamplight. “We will speak more of the Shagara another time. For now—you know that as owner of the sire, the foals will be half yours.”

This time astonishment completely robbed him of speech.

“In the normal course of things, once they are born, each partner has the right to reject any or all and be compensated.”

Azzad’s mouth was so dry he thought his tongue would stick permanently to his teeth.

“These half-breeds will be of no use to me at the wagon or the plow. One might say that they are worthless, in which case you could buy my share in them for nearly nothing. However, the foals my mares usually produce are worth a great deal indeed, and it would not be unreasonable of me to demand a price from you to match what I lost when your Khamsin leaped that fence.”

Acuyib help him—he would be working off the debt for the rest of his life!

“So it seems the only thing to do is saddle them, as you have said, and I will keep my half-interest until it is clear whether or not these horses are of any value.” All at once he laughed. “It suits me, Azzad, that you will make right this very interesting wrong. And it amuses me greatly that while everyone was looking sidelong at your handsome face and guarding their wives and daughters, it was your horse that was the true stud, siring offspring on females not his own!”

Azzad rose in the little world of Sihabbah. Rather than the straw-lined cubbyhole that had been his dwelling all winter, he now occupied his own private room above the stable, with a window overlooking the fields, a mattress stuffed with horsehair, a table only a little rickety, a three-legged stool, and a covered earthenware chamber pot. It wasn’t opulence—Azzad knew the feel and smell and taste and look of that well enough—but at this point in his life luxury’s definition was leaving the pot outside his door each morning for somebody else to empty.

He was also admitted to Bazir al-Gallidh’s maqtabba for dinner one evening of every eight or nine. As spring became summer, their dinners together occurred every sixth night, then every fifth. They discussed the mares, of course—how they galloped about the meadows, when usually by this time in pregnancy they would be plodding. They talked about training the foals to the saddle and bridle, with Bazir recoiling in comical horror at the notion that he be the first to learn how to ride. They exchanged ideas as well, speaking over games of chadarang about the differences in language, devotion, and tradition between this land and Rimmal Madar. They told each other their family histories—Azzad decided that in honor he could have no secrets from this kind, wise, generous man.

They shared a bond in that each was nearly kinless. Azzad had a cousin left in little Sayyida—nearly a year old now—Ammineh’s daughter; Bazir had his brother and his niece, and that was all. Tragic as the fate of the alMa’aliq had been, the al-Gallidh had been afflicted as well. Bazir’s father, an only child of an only child, died young in a climbing accident high in the mountains; his mother perished of a fever shortly thereafter; he lost his beloved wife in childbed, and his twin sons as well. Zellim’s first wife, Jemilha’s mother, was killed by her jealous sister, who poisoned her food; his second wife succumbed to lung-sickness.

“So,” Bazir said with a tiny shrug, “as you may surmise, we guard little Jemilha zealously.”

It was impolite for a stranger to enquire about a man’s female relations, but Azzad knew he was now considered a friend. “How old is she?”

“Fifteen. Zellim trembles at the thought of her marrying and leaving him.”

“I don’t understand why he doesn’t marry again. You might do the same, for that matter.” This truly was impolite; he grimaced at his own words and said, “Forgive my presumption.”

“I knew perfect happiness,” Bazir said softly. “She was the heart of my heart, the light of my eyes.” After a moment’s pause, he continued, “Zellim had more courage than I. He risked his heart twice. But he cannot do so again.”

“Not even for more children?”

“My friend, I excuse your words because you are young and have never loved.”

The one topic they never discussed was the Shagara. When Azzad attempted to tell Bazir of the time he’d spent with them, the nobleman shook his head and said, “Another day, my friend, after you have considered what is wise to say.”

“But I have no secrets from you. I have told you what happened to my family, and why, and my intentions for the future, and—”

“You have lived with the Shagara. I have only read of them. But those things I do know tell me that they have secrets that are not yours to disclose, even to me.”

Azzad thought about it and could not but agree.

After telling Azzad to design everything their horses would require, Bazir set about preparations of his own. Woodsmen felled trees up the mountain to build a new stable. Weavers set to work on beautiful saddle blankets. Tanners prepared suitable hides for bridles and saddles. Abb Ferrhan experimented at his forge with bits, stirrups, and a new, smaller horseshoe. Azzad was amazed by all this; not until the foals grew would he be able to tell just how to size the tack. But gradually he became aware that Bazir’s wisdom had led him to involve Sihabbah’s people in this curious accidental project. If the five foals were a success, all could take pride in them. And all would eventually profit, for if minds were changed and men began to ride horses instead of donkeys—Azzad hardly dared consider the measuring of his potential wealth.

He acquired a few new things himself. An embroidered cushion appeared one evening on his three-legged stool. Carved shutters of fragrant pine were placed at his window. A new mattress, stuffed with goose feathers, lay under a brightly patterned quilt. When he ventured to thank Bazir for the gifts, the nobleman professed to know nothing of them.

At last, on a morning early in autumn, one of the mares began her labors. She was early, and it happened so quickly and so easily that the first anyone knew of it was the sight of a leggy pewter-gray filly romping about the meadow in the warm afternoon sun. Delivery was just as swift for the other mares, although being forewarned by the first labor, the four were comfortably sheltered in the stable.

“Almost without effort,” sighed Bazir happily, resting his arms atop the stall door as he gazed at a coal-black colt with a white blaze down his face. “I’ve never seen it happen so fast.”

“They’re small,” sniffed Mazzud, eyeing the foal. “Easy it was, al-Gallidh, and quick, but every one of them a runtling.”

“They’ll be bigger than Khamsin, once they’re grown,” Azzad countered. “Will you name them, al-Gallidh?”

The three fillies were called Farrasha, Shammarra, and Shouzama, for the markings of white on their gray hides: a butterfly, a candle, and a tulip. The sturdy black colt was named Ibbir, for he was the color of ink. The second colt—mud-gray, scrawny and tentative—Bazir called Haddid, which meant iron and which he hoped would inspire the little horse to strength.

The day after the last was born, the stables received visitors. Everyone in Sihabbah turned out, it seemed, to view the five half-breed foals. Comments ranged from “Beautiful” and “So sweet” to “They’ll live two moons” and “Those skinny legs will snap”—but Azzad took no offense at the criticism until one young girl, who looked about twelve, peered into Ibbir’s stall and announced, “That’s not a horse, that’s a mistake!”

Bazir began to laugh silently. Zellim, inspecting brindle-gray Shouzama, glanced over with a grin. “You must forgive her the insult,” he said. “A black horse is a rarity in our land. It is said that in times long past, whenever a black foal was born, it was instantly killed.”

“But why?” Azzad was horrified.

“Acuyib in His Wisdom created for the benefit of mankind the brown sheep, the gray goat, the red deer, and the white-spotted cow. Seeing this, Chaydann Il-Mamnoua’a laughed into his beard and created the horse, a vile-tempered and contrary animal, to plague mankind. It is only by the Grace of Acuyib that the horse was tamed. Even now, it serves us reluctantly, and we must always watch for signs of its creator’s influence. And a black horse—”

“Azwadhi izzahn, azwadh qalb,” the girl announced, tossing a long braid over one skinny shoulder. Black horse, black heart.

No wonder everyone looked askance at Khamsin, Azzad thought. “But you see,” he said to Zellim, for in this land one did not address a girl without permission from her male relatives, “Ibbir will be just like his sire—sweetnatured and biddable.” As if understanding this choice mendacity, and resenting the slander, Khamsin snorted from his nearby stall.

“Huh!” Allowing for the different lengths of their noses, the noise from the girl was a fair match for Khamsin’s. “Just wait until you try to hitch him to a wagon or a plow!”

Azzad forgot his manners and glowered. “Not one of these foals—not a single one!—will ever—”

“We shall ride them,” Bazir interrupted smoothly. “I told you that, qarassia. Azzad will show us how.”

“What use is a horse that can’t pull something?” Then she laughed, a surprisingly lovely sound, like sunlight sparkling on a mountain stream. “No matter, Chal Bazir! It will be so funny watching him try to train them!”

Azzad gulped. This little pest must be none other than Jemilha al-Gallidh, who would inherit every stick, stitch, and stone of her family’s vast holdings. Sheltered in her father’s house in Hazganni, educated at her own insistence, she came to Sihabbah rarely. Azzad had in fact never seen her before today; considering his lowly status, this was not surprising. But he would have to get into her good graces, for in a way, she too was his partner in this venture.

Her scorn did not bode well for the future.

By spring, Azzad could see that he had been correct about the advantages of cross-breeding. Many others eyed the five half-breeds with doubt, disgust, or—as in Jemilha’s case—amused scorn. How could such small, spindle-legged, scrawny horses ever be of any use? But these foals when fully grown would indeed combine the strength of the native breed with Khamsin’s grace and speed. As for temperament—at least, unlike their mothers, they didn’t try to kick or bite everyone who came within range.

When the foals were a year old, and four more al-Gallidh mares had delivered Khamsin’s get (all fillies), Azzad asked for permission to visit the Shagara.

“I owe them my life, al-Gallidh,” he explained to Bazir. “In the two years since I left Rimmal Madar, I have prospered, thanks to—”

“—to Khamsin’s efforts!” The older man laughed. “No, I do not devalue your hard work, but were it not for your horse, you would yet be cleaning stalls.”

“I know,” Azzad admitted. “Having nothing to recommend me, I would probably have starved by now.”

“So now you wish to repay your Shagara friends. This is an excellent thing, Azzad. I approve. What will you gift them with?”

“Two of our first horses,” he said forthrightly. “I will cede total ownership of two others to you. The fifth will be ours together.”

“This is agreeable to me—for you shall also be transporting some small gifts from me to the Shagara. How long will you be gone from Sihabbah? One month? Two?”

“Two, I think, possibly a little longer.”

Bazir nodded. “I shall miss you, my friend. Now, tell me, what would the ladies of the Shagara appreciate most from an old man admiring of their beauty?”

And so, nearly two years after Azzad had left Dayira Azreyq, he left Sihabbah of the clouds and descended from the mountains to the wasteland. He rode Khamsin and led two donkeys loaded with gifts. The filly Farrasha lived up to her name by flitting all over the landscape as lightly as if she had wings; Azzad was forever whistling her back from her explorations, and finally had to put her on a lead rein. Her half-brother Haddid, still small but stronger than Azzad had dared to hope, needed no tether and followed placidly in Khamsin’s wake. The colt, tranquil of temperament and soft of gait, would be given to Abb Shagara. Azzad wasn’t sure who would be able to ride Farrasha, but he was betting on Leyliah.

Confident, eager to see his friends, he rode blithely into the wilderness bearing gifts.

6

Farrasha having given early warning of Azzad’s arrival, by the time Fadhil led him into the camp, preparations were underway for a feast. Azzad went around to each tent with bags of pine nuts and exotic spices as well as candied fruit for the children—making sure everyone knew that Bazir al-Gallidh was the source of the gifts. His own presents were given in private. For Chal Kabir there was a new scale to weigh medicines and a bag of mountain lavender for sweetening potions; for Meryem and Leyliah, tooled leather purses; for Fadhil, a set of fine surgical knives; for Abb Shagara, the two horses with all their equipment and a pair of tall leather boots. And finally, also for the ladies, long white silk scarves embroidered at either end with silver snowflakes.

“Bazir al-Gallidh,” Azzad said, smiling as Meryem and Leyliah exclaimed over the beauty of the work, “has read a little and heard a little more about the Shagara.”

“Truly an elegant man,” Meryem replied, running the filmy silk through her hands. “But bold, to send presents to women he has never met.”

“I am sure,” grinned Abb Shagara, “that Azzad spoke so much of you, and in such detail, that the al-Gallidh feels he knows you both!”

“All I ever said was that you were smart and beautiful,” Azzad promised them. “Of the rest, he knows nothing.”

“I never doubted that you would keep our secrets,” Leyliah answered graciously. Swirling the scarf around her shoulders, she admired the snowflakes again while saying, “And I know just when I’ll wear this!”

“Leyliah,” said Fadhil in a cheerful tone, “is getting married next year.”

Before Azzad could find words to express his congratulations, Abb Shagara added, “Her husband is Razhid Harirri, a man of subtle eyes, silken beard, and many fine goats. It’s my opinion that she’s marrying him for the goats.” Leyliah laughed and threw a pillow at him; he tossed it back, grinning. “But they’re very fine goats!”

“You should know,” she retorted. “You bleat like one!”

Turning to Azzad, Abb Shagara asked merrily, “So, have you met any girls?”

“My son,” Meryem said mildly, “you pry into thing that do not concern you.”

“He’s Shagara now, Mother—I can ask him anything I want. Isn’t that right, Azzad?”

Still in shock that Leyliah was marrying someone other than Fadhil, Azzad blinked and nodded mindlessly. Summoning his manners, he addressed Leyliah. “Razhid Harirri is a fortunate man—I hope he knows it?”

“Ayia,” laughed Abb Shagara, “we made certain of that before we accepted him! Now, Azzad, you cannot mean to say you’ve left not even one girl sighing for you in this Sihabbah you now live in?”

His thoughts flew at once to the women in a cottage up the mountain, who saw to the needs of Sihabbah’s unmarried men—and not a few of the married ones. It was a family business like any other, common in every community of any size from Dayira Azhreq to the Great Western Sea. Despite the differences between these lands and his home—which he was startled to find he had stopped thinking of as home—some things didn’t change. Still, he had been surprised to find Bindta Feyrah and Bindta Sabbah interesting company as well as skilled practitioners of their art, neither attribute an expected one in so remote a place as Sihabbah. But had he truly visited them only a few times?

Forcing a smile, he said, “I rise at dawn, eat, work until noon, eat, rest for a time, work some more, eat, and fall into bed. When is there time for women?”

This brought a stern lecture on the damage he was doing to his health. He bore it with good humor, hanging his head in pretended shame—which, after all, was not such a pretense. His mother would have sent instantly for the family tabbib; his grandfather, for his own favorite mistress.

“Enough!” Leyliah finally said, scowling at Abb Shagara. “Leave him alone, cousin. I want to hear about Sihabbah and this charming al-Gallidh, who sends such lovely presents. And so appropriate to my husband’s name!”

“He of the silken beard,” teased Abb Shagara, and Fadhil added slyly, “And many fine goats”—and both yelled as this time she threw pillows at both of them.

That night before the feast, Azzad washed up in Fadhil’s tent. His young friend was now Chal Fadhil, a fully trained healer, entitled to his own tent and the triple-braided ring of authority. Azzad congratulated him sincerely on his new status, wondering—but not quite daring to ask—why this high rank had not earned him marriage with Leyliah.

The feasting went on until well after dark and the dancing until midnight—and the drinking until dawn, as far as Azzad knew. Pleading the tiring length of his journey from Sihabbah, he left the celebrations a little after midnight, replete with excellent food, congenial conversation, some very interesting stories, and quite a bit of wine. He made his carefully studied way back to Fadhil’s tent, didn’t trip on any cats or dogs along the way, and fell onto a pile of carpets in the dark.

The carpets were already occupied.

“Fadhil,” he slurred. “Sorry—”

“No man could have had so much wine,” said a feminine voice, “that he cannot recognize that a woman is in his bed, not a man. Unless you would prefer Fadhil?”

Scrambling back, he toppled over and lay propped awkwardly on one elbow, trying to see into the blackness. “Leyliah?”

“I admit he is quite handsome, and a wonderful friend, but it seemed to me always that your eyes were for women, not men. I might be wrong, though.”

There was the sound of flint and iron, and a candle flame sprang to life. His elbow slipped out from under him with the shock. “Leyliah?” he repeated stupidly.

She wore nothing but her curling black hair and the white silk scarf with silver snowflakes, draped lightly about her slender form. “Ayia, Azzad, if my identity is now established, perhaps you would tell me if I am welcome to sleep with you for what remains of the night—or if I should indeed call Fadhil.”

Fadhil spent what remained of the night elsewhere.

At dawn, Azzad was twining a lock of Leyliah’s hair around one finger, the other hand tickling her breasts with the fringed ends of the scarf. “You still haven’t told me why.”

“Your health, of course.”

“That’s not what I meant,” he said, trying to be severe—difficult, when she stretched languidly and looked up at him through thick black lashes. “Why you?”

“You would prefer someone else?”

Realizing the implied insult, he quickly—and sincerely—said, “No! But you’re to be married—”

“Yet you will have noticed I am not a maiden.”

He had. “I don’t understand.”

“I do as I like, when a man pleases me.”

“But—” But it left a sour taste in his mouth, for he was reminded of Sheyqa Nizzira’s appetites. Why equivalent behavior should be different for a woman than for a man, he was not entirely sure—had never been entirely sure, in fact, although he trotted out the explanation his mother had given. “When a woman has charge and control of a family’s business and fortunes, she owes it to her own honor to be sure her children are her husband’s. Also—”

“Do you think me such an idiot that I do not know when I am fertile?”

“Also,” he repeated, “it doesn’t do, does it, for a woman to admit she made a mistake in her marriage? That she chose the wrong man?” A thing his mother had not done—and was too proud ever to admit if she had. His parents had genuinely loved each other and had been happy. He was certain that Leyliah and Fadhil—

“I have chosen exactly the right man!”

“I meant no disrespect or disparagement,” he said hastily. “I only meant—” He paused. “I’m not sure what I meant. Leyliah, I’m gratified and I’m honored, but I’m also confused. Why me?”

“Very few have pleased me,” she continued. “You, one or two others—”

“Fadhil?”

“He was my first and most cherished—as I was his. You don’t know our ways, Azzad. Perhaps one day you will, but for now—”

“Why don’t you marry him? You love each other.”

“Of course we do.”

“Then—”

“Fadhil, Fadhil!” she exclaimed. “Would you rather talk or have love with me again?”

“Both,” he said frankly. “But if you’re giving me a choice—” And she smiled as he lay beside her again.

All the next day he could barely look at Fadhil.

Waking without a headache, even after the quantities of wine he’d imbibed the night before, Azzad presented himself at Abb Shagara’s tent. Fadhil was already there. Together the three young men inspected Khamsin’s Shagara foals, a colt and two fillies, all healthy and finely grown. A wallad izzahn came along to record Azzad’s advice; full of importance at the privilege, the boy obviously saw himself as the future man-in-charge. Azzad went into great detail for his benefit, quickly boring Abb Shagara.

“But when can I ride one?” he demanded.

“Another year, perhaps a little less. Tomorrow I’ll teach you how—on Khamsin.”

Fadhil grinned. “My thanks for the warning, Azzad. I’ll spend this evening steeping poultices.”

Azzad fought a blush. Was this Fadhil’s way of telling him he would not be in his own tent, so Leyliah could come in again if she wished?

“Ayia,” said Abb Shagara, “if the price of riding is a sore behind, I’ll gladly pay.”

Azzad clapped him on the shoulder. “You’ll be sore in places you never suspected were places.”

After the noon meal, Azzad had a chat with Khamsin about Abb Shagara’s lesson on the morrow. “No tricks, no whims, no wiles, and especially no gait faster than a sedate walk. Disobey me,” Azzad told the stallion, looking into one black eye, “and I’ll not only tie your tail in knots, I’ll think seriously about having you gelded.”

Khamsin snorted.

That night, after a dinner with his new student spent discussing the basics of riding, Azzad returned to Fadhil’s tent and paced, waiting for Leyliah. She never came.

Instead, Meryem entered, carrying a clay pot of qawah and two silver cups. She sat on a pile of carpets, poured for herself and Azzad, and said pleasantly, “If tomorrow this riding foolishness ends up killing my son, I’ll have your tongue, your teeth, your toes, your fingers, and your balls gilded and hung from my tent as wind chimes.”

He didn’t doubt her for an instant. “I’ve already discussed it with Khamsin,” he assured her. “You have my word that no harm will befall Abb Shagara.”

She raised her cup, and he raised his, and they drank to it. The qawah was hot and thick and bitter, with a hint of cinnamon—precisely the way he liked it. He had just taken a large mouthful when Meryem spoke again.

“Do you ever wonder why no more Geysh Dushann have come after you?”

Azzad choked, coughed, and wiped tears from his eyes. He had forgotten them. Truly, he had. He’d been so busy—his days were so full—his nights were spent in exhausted sleep—he had the horses to worry about and so much else besides—

“I see they have escaped your thoughts, much as you have escaped their traps,” she went on. “Ayia, you foolish boy—didn’t you know?”

Numb, he shook his head.

“We have hosted emissaries from the Ammarad in these last two years. They have been perfectly polite, properly respectful, and preposterously eager to agree that if any harm comes to you, they will forfeit Shagara medicine forever.” She paused for a sip of qawah. “Of course, we don’t believe them.”

“But no Geysh Dushann have attempted my life—”

“—that you know of,” she finished for him, nodding to the necklace at his chest. “They’ve given up the use of knives, axes, poison, and the like in favor of creating circumstances that appear accidental. Have you experienced anything interesting since you went to Sihabbah?”

Acuyib help him, was that the reason behind the swarm of snakes in the stables last year? And last summer, the rockslide on a mountain road a few seconds after he passed, and—

She had been watching his face, and now smiled shrewdly. “Doubtless you thought them lucky escapes from random occurrences.”

That was precisely what he had thought. “But they were intentional?”

“Of course. The Geysh Dushann accepted Sheyqa Nizzira’s commission. Acceptance is never canceled. Never. How it must pain them to have failed so often—like bedding down in nettles.” Meyrem’s lips twitched at one corner. “Stop looking as if you believe yourself a walking dead man. You’ve survived thus far, have you not?”

“Yes, but—”

“But nothing. Acuyib has some purpose for you, Azzad—though what it might be I’m sure I can’t imagine! He will protect you—with a little help from the Shagara.” She paused to pour more qawah. “You are too polite to ask me why Leyliah came to your bed last night.”

This time, astonishment nearly made Azzad drop his cup—along with his jaw.

“It is a mystery only to those not Shagara. You are counted a brother, so I will tell you why. It is true she will marry Razhid Harirri of the silken beard and many goats—and the very subtle eyes,” she added with a faint smile. “Of all the young men who came to the Zoqalo Tzawaq last year to find wives, he was the best. She has chosen well. But you know she has always had an eye to you, Azzad.”

He actually felt himself blush. “I am honored.”

“And yet confused. Here is further bewilderment for you. A Shagara woman does not wed until she has proved herself fertile. Yes, Leyliah has a son. A very sweet little boy of four, who has shown himself very bright and clever. He may even become Abb Shagara someday.”

“Does—does Harirri know?”

“Of course. When a man weds a Shagara woman, he knows he will become a father.” She paused to drink, then said, “It is strange to you, I appreciate this. But you must understand how it is with us.”

“Lady,” he said carefully, “I don’t understand the first thing about the Shagara. But if these are your ways, I accept them.”

“How very well-mannered of you,” she observed, arching a brow. “Yet still you do not see. Look at what is in front of your eyes, Azzad. We send our men out to make blood-bonds with other tribes of the Za’aba Izim—but only after they have proven they can sire a child.”

It hit him then, the way the future of Khamsin’s half-breed foals had hit him. And again he could see his mother’s face as she looked upon her idiot son. “You have your father’s height and your grandfather’s nose, and your eyes you inherited from me—but may Acuyib strike me down with a thunderbolt if I know from whom you received your total lack of intelligence!”

“Fadhil—and Abb Shagara—they will never be fathers.”

“Now you begin to understand.”

Abb Shagara’s riding lesson was a success, though for the first little while he sat Khamsin like a sack of grain, reins flapping and boots slipping from the stirrups. Then he straightened his spine, tucked in his elbows, mastered his heels, and kept his backside firmly in the saddle.

“Better than riding a donkey?” Azzad teased. Khamsin had behaved himself perfectly, his steps soft as velvet as he walked at the end of a lead rope.

“Wonderful!” the young man exclaimed, patting Khamsin’s neck. “I can see everything from up here! How do I look?”

“Like a sheyqir,” Fadhil assured him.

As Abb Shagara preened happily, Azzad exhaled a long, satisfied breath. He was going to make a fortune.

“I want to go faster,” said Abb Shagara. “How do I make him go faster?”

“You don’t.” He tried to shorten the lead. Khamsin jerked his head indignantly.

“Azzad, I will go faster! There’s nothing to this riding—see how well I’m doing?”

“Wonderfully well,” Azzad said. “But this is only your first lesson.”

“Speaking of which,” Fadhil murmured, “I hear Challa Meryem lessoned you last night. And you understand a little more about the Shagara.”

“Yes, but—” Azzad wrapped the lead around his hand, scowling at Khamsin’s answering lunge.

“I want to go faster!” cried Abb Shagara, flapping the reins and his heels.

“Stop that!” Azzad exclaimed. “You’re not ready!”

“Yes, I am! And so is the noble Khamsin—see?”

Khamsin danced to one side, tossing his head. The lead snapped taut, staggering Azzad forward. Fadhil called out in alarm as Abb Shagara reached into his sash for his knife and slashed the rope from Khamsin’s bridle. Free, the stallion snorted and gathered himself to obey the commanding heels. The next instant he was running—straight toward a thorn-studded fence.

Azzad’s mouth was so dry he couldn’t whistle the order to stop. Abb Shagara was laughing like a maniac as Khamsin cleared the fence with daylight to spare and raced off into the desert.

“Acuyib have mercy!” Azzad watched in horror as his horse galloped away at full speed into a wasteland of rocks and ratholes and scorpions and snakes and Chaydann only knew what all else. “Meryem will kill me!”

“Azzad, calm yourself. All will be well. No snake will harm them.” He paused. “Though I’ve never done anything quite like this before.”

Azzad peered into the distance, following the dust raised by Khamsin’s hooves, praying that Abb Shagara would stay in the saddle or at least in one relatively uninjured piece, so it took him a minute to grasp Fadhil’s words. When he did, he swung around and stared. “Quite like what?”

“We had to work fast, but I helped by doing the research—”

“Fadhil, what are you talking about?”

The young man sighed. “Abb Shagara will be protected from all injury—and Khamsin, too. You’re worrying for nothing, Azzad. Now, let me see your hand.” He inspected the reddening welts across the palm, probed with his fingertips for breaks. “Nothing salve and a wrapping won’t cure. But if Abb Shagara hadn’t cut the lead—”

“Fadhil!” The breath he drew in hurt his chest. “Do you mean to tell me that—that you trust some charm to keep him safe?”

“More than one charm, and we call them hazziri,” Fadhil replied. “Yours worked, didn’t it?” And he pointed to the plaque around Azzad’s neck. “You made a point of thanking Abb Shagara for this when you arrived.”

“But—”

“But you didn’t mean it? Not seriously?” Fadhil laughed. “Ayia, don’t tell him that! It would break his heart!”

His mind swimming, he turned the hazzir to look at it. Gold, set with four kinds of cabochon stone: a central lapis, three speckled bloodstones, two turquoises, a garnet at each corner. On the back was a stylized hawk, wings and claws outspread.

“I used turquoises for Abb Shagara today,” Fadhil said. “They bring luck and protect the horse.”

When he had held the silver cup in his hand and been unable to tell Abb Shagara a lie, Azzad had not believed.

“We use one jewel for each property we wish to give the hazzir, inscribed on the back with the appropriate symbol, the talishann.”

When Leyliah had thrown a knife at Fadhil and it glanced harmlessly off his chest, Azzad had not believed.

“The lapis is for truth, acting with the bloodstone that causes belief.”

When the shepherds had been ready to kill him despite his protestations, and their leader had come close enough to see the hazzir, Azzad had not believed.

“The four garnets are for Shagara friendship, its power and its constancy, and to protect against wounds.”

When the girl’s family had come to seize him, and no one in Sihabbah had any reason to trust in his word, and the hazzir had fallen free of his torn shirt, Azzad had perhaps begun to believe.

“Bloodstone also eases wrath, and as a nice addition for one traveling through these lands, protects against attacks by scorpions.”

But not until this moment, with Fadhil serenely explaining his art—Acuyib help him, he had not truly believed until now.

“After hearing your story, I decided the hawk would be best for you. It has the qualities of strength, energy, and inspiration, which you will need if you are to fulfill your oath of vengeance. The hawk,” he added musingly, “does not rest until his objective is achieved.”

Acuyib help him, Azzad believed.

As Khamsin cantered toward them, Abb Shagara still securely in the saddle and even laughing, Fadhil glanced sidelong at Azzad. “Abb Shagara wanted to include wealth and many children, but Meryem said that we must leave you something to do on your own.”

Still stunned, Azzad saw Abb Shagara wave gaily at them, a new hazzir around his right wrist: gold, set with turquoises and a large bloodstone.

“And Leyliah said this morning that with your face, which is not even to speak of your other attributes, you were perfectly capable of getting more children than you’d know what to do with.”

Reminded through his shock of what had transpired with Leyliah, Azzad’s head snapped around. “Fadhil—”

“It’s all right. I don’t mind, not really.” He smiled.

Whatever Azzad might have thought to reply was swept away in the wind of Khamsin’s arrival. Abb Shagara was as happy as a kitten in a yarn basket.

“That was splendid! May I do it again tomorrow? Will the half-breeds be as swift as Khamsin? It was like flying!”

Azzad looked at Fadhil and swallowed hard.“I apologize,” he murmured.

“No need. Enjoy the time you have with her. She is an extraordinary woman.”

“Azzad!” Abb Shagara called. “Again tomorrow? Please?”

“Uh—yes, of course,” he said, hardly knowing to whom he spoke.

Fadhil added softly, “You shouldn’t take Meryem’s sternness too much to heart. She and Leyliah drew lots for you.”

And, with a wink and a grin, he went to congratulate Abb Shagara on his first riding lesson, leaving Azzad standing there with a broken lead in his hand and an expression of absolute amazement on his face.

By day, Azzad gave riding lessons and advice on horses. In the evenings, he had dinner with Abb Shagara, Chal Kabir, Fadhil, and the other men, discussing those things men discussed everywhere. At night, he slept with Leyliah.

One afternoon, as Azzad sat with Abb Shagara in an awning’s shade playing chadarang, a rider on a donkey appeared on the horizon. Instantly the Shagara went within their tents, and the wallad izzahni counted horses and took up guard positions around the thorn fences. Abb Shagara, murmuring an apology to Azzad for abandoning their game, vanished inside his tent. Chal Kabir emerged from the dawa’an sheymma in a fresh robe the color of sand, with Fadhil at his side, to wait for the newcomer.

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!”

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 them.”

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 and 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.

They were welcomed into the house of al-Gallidh by Bazir himself. When he learned the identity of his feminine visitor, he called for his niece to come and greet her. Jemilha, who had recently celebrated her eighteenth birthday, was as yet unwed and showed no signs of choosing a husband. Azzad worried sometimes that her husband would think breeding horses too risky a venture and convince her not to continue, but because he could do nothing about her choice, he shrugged his concerns away. Besides, with Abb Shagara’s gift, Azzad would have enough money to buy out her husband, if it came to it.

Bazir led them into his maqtabba. Meryem’s eyes went wide at the sight of so many shelves laden with so many books; seeing this, Bazir offered her anything in his collection. “Azzad has told me the Shagara ladies are learned indeed.”

Meryem shook her head, then gestured to the books. “This is learning, al-Gallidh. I would welcome your guidance on what would most benefit my studies.”

“Tell me your interests, lady, and I will do what I can to advise you. And my daughter will be able to suggest a few books as well. A new shop recently opened, specializing in foreign works. Perhaps you would like to visit this place with her during your stay.”

Thus was Meryem Shagara conquered. Azzad hid a grin as he sorted through messages. Bazir kept one basket for him and one for Fadhil; those waiting for the tabbib were from patients, and the notes for Azzad were from various ladies. He excused himself and went upstairs to his room to read them. Remembering Fadhil’s teasing about “one lady in particular,” he called up faces to go with the names. None stirred his blood beyond a fleeting memory of pleasure, and his heart was completely untouched. Which of them could Fadhil have meant?

The next morning, while Fadhil attended his patients and Jemilha took Meryem shopping, Azzad went to see the dead trees for himself. It had been difficult to convince people that trees were necessary outside the walls. What was obvious to all in Dayira Azreyq had been anything but obvious here. Trees held back the desert. It was that simple. On his first visit to the city, Azzad had been appalled at the nearness of the dunes that surrounded it. Even worse, every year a little more farmland was lost to the encroaching sand. Only the farmers understood the danger. In Hazganni there was water aplenty from several generous springs that supplied the city in a rather sophisticated plumbing arrangement. Because everyone had water in the home for kitchen and garden and bath, no one thought about water at all. As long as trees grew in their own gardens, who cared?

Every child in Dayira Azreyq knew the story of how the foreign barbarians had burned all the trees around the city, thinking to force it to yield. After the gharribeh had been defeated and expelled from Rimmal Madar, their legacy of scorched earth had resulted in torrents of sand and ash blown in by eastern winds to choke the city. The official story was that back then, the ancestor of Sheyqa Nizzira had commanded every man over the age of fifteen to march into the surrounding hills, uproot a tree, and bring it back to replant the devastated ground. But Azzad knew that it had been his own ancestor who had gone to the al-Ma’aliq lands and brought back the first hundred trees.

In time, the desert had been forced back. Trees, always more trees—added to bushes and succulents and herbs and anything that would root and hold and nourish the soil—these had kept Dayira Azreyq safe from the greedy sands. But Hazganni—

“Fools!” Azzad slid off Khamsin’s back and looped the reins around his hand, walking between rows of dead trees. Shameful, a scandal, an affront to Acuyib Himself, who had battled Chaydann Il-Mamnoua’a over a chadarang board to see how much of the land would be green. “I’ll replant these with my own hands if need be,” he vowed, “and stay with them until they’re established—and cut off the fingers, one by one, of anyone who neglects them!”

In his mind he saw a thousand trees, and another thousand, and the desert was forced back, and beneath the trees children played and young people flirted and old people dozed in the shade. There was a reservoir with ditches leading out from it to water the trees, and fountains splashing coolness into the air, and—and—

“And right now,” Azzad muttered, “all I’ve got is a hundred dead trees.” Khamsin tossed his head so the silver on his bridle jingled. Azzad faced him, caressing his ears. “But by next spring, Acuyib witness my oath, a hundred living trees!”

Swinging up into the saddle, he rode back to the house of al-Gallidh, where he was privileged to see Meryem and Jemilha returning from the zouqs. Behind them, at a respectful remove, was a crowd of young men.

Azzad took the greatest pleasure in greeting the two ladies loudly and familiarly. “So few packages? I would have thought you’d buy out every shop, Meryem!”

“I was tempted,” she admitted, and the sparkle in her eyes told him she knew exactly what he was doing.

Azzad glanced at their entourage. Every last one of them showed chagrin that this man could speak freely to such beauties; one or two frowned as if trying desperately to remember if more than a casual acquaintance could be claimed with Azzad. He grinned cheerfully at them, dismounted, and escorted the ladies inside the courtyard.

“How long has this been going on?” he asked as he swung the gates closed.

“All morning,” Meryem said at the same time Jemilha replied, “Almost three years.”

Azzad blinked. Jemilha glared as if daring him to disbelieve, then went into the house, her silks aflutter.

Azzad turned to Meryem. “What did I say?”

“What did you not say?” she countered. “And to think my son admires your way with any and every woman!”

“Jemilha isn’t any woman,” he heard himself say. “She’s Jemilha.” Meaning the leggy little scrap of a girl who had insulted Khamsin’s foals.

“Ayia? Those men outside have a different opinion.” And with that, Meryem followed Jemilha into the house, leaving Azzad to wonder what she meant.

“You did rightly in giving the finest of our donkeys to the esteemed Harirri,” said Bazir. “But it seems poor payment for such magnificent horses.” He smiled, pouring more qawah for Azzad and another cup of herbal chiy for himself. “Moreover, white horses! That will please Jemilha.” Sipping, he arched heavy brows in surprise. “What does the Lady Meryem do that this is so much better than what my cook prepares for me?”

“I’m sure she’ll share her secret, to please you.” He grinned. “Surely you’ve noticed, al-Gallidh, that you’ve made a conquest?”

“And it took nothing more than my books, whereas in years past it needed music, recitations of poetry, languishing glances, and an expedient gift of jewelry.” He sighed dramatically, dark eyes dancing. “If I’d known in my youth that it was so easy, I would have canceled my elocution lessons—and my account at the gem cutter’s.”

Azzad laughed and drank more qawah, and they settled to business again. Fields, orchards, horses, donkeys, timber, mining, fishing, trapping—all the varied enterprises of the al-Gallidh estates that Azzad had been managing were discussed in detail. Bazir declared himself satisfied—and then brought up a different subject entirely.

“Azzad, how old are you now?”

“Twenty-four this summer.”

“Not so great an age, to one of my years,” al-Gallidh sighed. “But to you, it must seem rather advanced.”

“Not at all.” He had no idea where this conversation might be going. “I believe a man grows wiser as he grows older—for in my former home, those who were unwise did not live long enough grow old.”

“What contributes to this wisdom, do you think?”

“Attention to work and responsibility, of course.” Azzad thought for a minute. “Learning from friends and superiors. Studying as his interests take him.”

“Ayia, I quite agree. But you have forgotten marriage to a clever woman.”

“I—I have no opinion on the subject, al-Gallidh.” He could now see the destination of this chat, and did not much like the scenery.

Bazir continued with exquisite casualness, “My own opinion is that a man should marry when he is old enough to have established himself in his work but young enough to need a woman’s brain to help him, so that he is grateful for her presence as well as her person.”

Azzad took a deep breath. “Is it your wish, al-Gallidh, that I look for a wife?”

“By Acuyib’s Glory, no!” He laughed, as if at some private joke.

Confused by the change in direction, Azzad frowned. “If not, then—”

“Have you no wish for a house of your own?”

He thought of Beit Ma’aliq, to which no other home could compare—and wondered which of Nizzira’s progeny lived in it now. If, indeed, it had been rebuilt at all, or still remained as a burned scar in the city. “No, al-Gallidh. I am content.”

“But I am not. It is therefore my intention that you shall live from now on in my house in Sihabbah.”

“Al-Gallidh—I am honored, but—I cannot, it would not be right—”

“Nonsense. That great empty house does nothing but gather dust. The servants are idle, and the town is desolate—for as you know, I used to give entertainments. But my home has been silent, and I do not like to think of it that way.”

“You—you are very generous, but it is not my house, I am not al-Gallidh—”

“Ayia, there is that, I suppose.” The old man eyed him.“But if you became part of my family . . .” He paused.

Azzad abruptly realized that this was all leading to a place he hadn’t envisioned.

“Is the idea so displeasing to you?” ask al-Gallidh.

“No—not at all. She is beautiful, and—and—” He gulped for air. “But she—”

“Do not say she is too far above you, al-Ma’aliq descendant of sheyqirs.”

“Here, she is infinitely my superior,” he said frankly. “Here, I am nothing.”

“Nonsense!” Bazir declared once more. “Your ‘nothing’ is a hundred times any other man’s ‘something.’ You are intelligent, ambitious, clever. You work hard and manage my estates wisely. And through your own efforts—and those of your Khamsin!—you will be a very rich man.”

Azzad heard the list of his virtues with no small perplexity of soul. His parents would not have recognized the description of their rascal son; had he changed so much in the nearly four years since he’d escaped the poison and axes and swords?

“Consider it, Azzad,” murmured Bazir al-Gallidh. “I ask this most humbly of you, my friend. I want you in my family. I want to know that when my brother and I are dead, Jemilha will have the best husband we could wish for her. I want to know that the houses of the al-Gallidh will be filled with my brother’s grandchildren and great-grandchildren, descended from sheyqirs.”

“What about Jemilha?” he blurted. “What does she say about—”

Again Bazir laughed, this time until he nearly choked. “Ayia, did you not know? It was she who demanded that I speak to you!”

“She did?”

“She thinks you will make a very good husband.”

“She does?”

The old man grinned. “And she likes the way you look on a horse.”

“She—” He swallowed the rest. So much for his intelligence and cleverness.

“Go riding, Azzad,” al-Gallidh advised kindly. “It always helps you to think.”

But even miles away from Hazganni, into fields and orchards not yet threatened by sand, where all was lush green life as Acuyib had intended, he had no clear thought beyond the stupefied realization that he was going to have to marry Jemilha al-Gallidh.

Just why he had to do this was a mystery to be untangled at some later date, when he had his wits about him again. He only knew that marry her he must—and as he rode back to the city through the golden dusky gloom of spring, he decided that perhaps this would not be so bad a thing after all.

“Lady,” Azzad said, “your uncle tells me it would not come amiss with you—that you would not object—that you—Chaydann take it, I don’t know what to say!”

He glared at his own face in the mirror, disgusted that the glib seducer had turned into a tongue-tied imbecile. He was lamentably out of practice. He could excuse himself with the fact that bedding had always been his goal, not wedding. Besides, Jemilha was a lady. He had to find just the right words, just the right tone of voice—

“Lady, it has come to my notice—you have come to my notice—”

Oh, yes, his haughty and august notice, as if he’d inherited all the alMa’aliq land and money. He tried again.

“Lady, your uncle and I have spoken, and he says that marriage—”

He stopped when he saw the expression on his face: that of a man about to recite the devotions at his own funeral. He rearranged his features into serious, gentle lines—or so he hoped—and took a breath.

“Lady, it has been suggested that you and I—”

No, that made it sound like a business proposition—which, after all, it was in a way, but it would never do to say such a thing to a young girl.

“Lady—”

“You could try using my name, you know.”

He pivoted on one heel, horrified to find Jemilha standing in his doorway. She wore a robe of white silk belted over a long crimson tunic, with embroidered gold slippers and a matching gold scarf tying up her hair. Abruptly he did not wonder why all those young men had followed her today—or why they had been doing so for almost three years. The skinny little girl with the unruly braids had been transformed. But how and when had she become beautiful?

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I did not mean you to hear—”

“—until you had perfected your little speech?” She raised a sardonic eyebrow.

Sighing, he rubbed the back of his neck and shrugged. However long she’d been listening, she’d heard more than enough. So he plunged in. “Your uncle and I have spoken of marriage—”

She gave him a sweet smile. “I hope you’ll be very happy together.”

“Jemilha!”

“Good—my name. Now we make a start.” She entered his room, leaving the door open, and sat on the chair beside the window. A breeze through the carved wooden shutters plucked at the scarf and toyed with tendrils of her black hair. “Uncle Bazir told me that you and he talked yesterday. Now you and I will talk. Yes, I have it in mind to marry you. My uncle and my father approve of my choice. I know you do not love me, and neither do I love you—but love is nothing to the point in such matters, don’t you think?”

“I—”

“A moment, Azzad, I’m not finished. Uncle Bazir told you why he and Father approve, but I will tell you two other things. I trust in your capacity for friendship—Fadhil and Meryem are devoted to you, and they are both persons of quality, so there must be something substantial to you after all. And the second thing is that I think you and I will make very interesting children.” She folded her hands in her lap and looked up at him expectantly. “Ayia, I’m done. Your turn.”

His tongue wasn’t just tied, it was tethered. “L-Lady—”

“I thought we had decided that I do indeed have a name.”

He knew how to accomplish a seduction. The self-possessed girl sitting before him now was, to all appearances, not seducible. “Rubbish!” snapped his grandfather’s voice. “Any woman who isn’t dead below the neck—”

But this wasn’t any woman. This was Jemilha of the tart tongue and untidy hair and—and the huge dark eyes and lithe quick body and—

—and a father and an uncle who would do unspeakable things to him—and very slowly, too—if he hurt her in any way.

“Jemilha,” he said at last, “are you certain you want me? You could have any man.”

“You are not just any man, Azzad.”

He crossed to her, holding out both hands. She allowed him one of hers. It was small and warm and dry, and the pulse in her wrist was perfectly steady. He could hear his grandfather’s cackling laughter in the back of his mind: “You’ll soon change that, boy, or you’re not my grandson!”

“Jemilha, it would be a greater honor than I deserve if you would consider taking me for your husband.”

She looked up at him through thick, blunt lashes. “Would you consider taking me for your wife?”

“Did I not just say so?”

“No.”

Up until now, he’d had the uncomfortable feeling she was secretly laughing at him. The expression on his face evidently made keeping the laughter secret impossible. Hers was not a girl’s giggle, but a woman’s full-throated chuckle. For a moment he was annoyed. But as her lips parted to reveal dazzlingly white teeth, fine and even but for a bottom front tooth set slightly askew, he found himself thinking two things. First, that he hoped Jemilha laughed at him often, for she had a lovely laugh; and second, that he wanted nothing more in this world right now than to run his tongue over that slightly crooked tooth.

Ruefully, he smiled back. “I wish very much for you to be my wife.”

All at once her mirth vanished and she bit her lip. “Azzad—”

“Yes, Jemilha?”

“I risk much in telling you this—you may lose all respect for me—”

“Never.”

The dark eyes flashed up at him. “Don’t interrupt me when I’m trying to tell you I’ve thought of nothing but marrying you since I first set eyes on you!”

He gaped at her again. “You have?”

“Yes. And I accept you as my husband.” But as he bent to press his lips to her wrist, as a proper lover ought, she drew her hand away. “Now that it’s settled, there are other things to discuss. What are your plans for the new horses? And what about all those poor dead trees? And—” Here she fixed him with a pair of suddenly fierce dark eyes. “—and I tell you now, Azzad al-Ma’aliq, that if ever you think to amuse yourself with other women—even Bindta Feyrah, whom I rather like—I will have your testicles served to you on a golden plate with white wine sauce.”

He stared; she really meant it. Wordlessly, he nodded.

“Just so we understand each other. Now, sit down, Azzad—no, not so close to me, we’re not yet wed—and tell me about planting trees.”

8

“Husband,”said Jemilha, “I don’tlike this.”

Azzad glanced up from the account books. There were seven large leather-bound volumes, one each for notes and figures on timber, crops, orchards, trapping, mining, fishing, and horses. An eighth book, twice the size of the others, was written in Jemilha’s precise and dainty script, recording trade in all these things. Beside the desk was a carved wooden lectern holding a ninth ledger; this was for the yearly total of profits and losses in all endeavors. In the years that Azzad and Jemilha together had managed the al-Gallidh estates, there had been no entries under Losses.

Jemilha resettled the matron’s silk shawl across her shoulders—a new fashion introduced by traders from Rimmal Madar, with whom Azzad did much business using the al-Gallidh name. At thirty-one, Jemilha was seven times a mother and looked as if she had borne not a single child. Azzad no longer wondered why he had felt compelled to marry her. He would have been a fool not to. She had given him more happiness than he had ever thought to receive and more good advice than he deserved. Something in him that was wiser than his brain had prodded him into marrying her. Now—thirteen years, five strong sons, and two beautiful daughters later—he thanked Acuyib daily for that wordless certainty. She was worthy, and more than worthy, of the pearls he had placed around her slender throat on their wedding day. Back then, the necklace had been his only wealth. But in that instant, his wealth had become Jemilha. He adored her even when she laughed at him . . . but she was not laughing now.

“I don’t like this idea of yours,” said his wife. “And once more I must warn you against it. The Sheyqa has obviously forgotten all about you—why can’t you forget about her?”

Azzad did not tell her the one secret he had kept from her all these years. It would not do to worry her about the Geysh Dushann contrivances he and Fadhil had foiled. Ayia, it had mostly been Fadhil, truth to tell, who was as fiendishly clever as the assassins sent to fulfill the Ammarad contract with Sheyqa Nizzira. Azzad’s houses, horses, and person were firmly protected. Though several times there had been near misses—a rockslide when he was up in the mountains inspecting the mines, a new design of fish trap that had almost redesigned Azzad’s face, for instance—nothing had so much as caused a stubbed toe.

But he wasn’t about to tell Jemilha that.

Azzad leaned back in his chair and sighed. “Do you remember, Jemilha, when your uncle died, and then your father? Do you remember what I said to you then? I had sworn when I was younger that I would not marry unless the girl had no father, uncles, brothers, or cousins to interfere with my freedom. I told you then, wife, when Zellim and Bazir were gone, that I mourned your father and uncle as I mourned my own—and if I could give them back to you, I would gladly give up my freedom and spend the rest of my life in the Sheyqa’s darkest prison.”

“Nothing will bring any of them back to us,” she replied. “You’ve made a new family, a new life. Is it not good? Are you not happy?” It was as close to a plea as this proud woman would ever utter.

“You know that I am.” Rising, he went to where she sat on a tapestry couch, knelt before her, took both her hands. “But Nizzira destroyed my family. All the women, the men, the children, even the babies.”

“What about our babies?”

Resolutely, he went on, “It was not only those of the al-Ma’aliq name. She massacred our servants, and the fallahin who worked on our lands, everyone who had any connection with the al-Ma’aliq. She deserves punishment. Surely you must see that she deserves it. Acuyib in His Wisdom would not have let me live if I were not to be the instrument of that punishment.”

Jemilha shook her head. “That is vanity, Azzad, and you know it. It’s more reasonable that Acuyib spared you to come here and be my husband, and father my children, and—”

“Qarassia,” he said, kissing her wrists, “I believe this, too. But I believe just as strongly that I am meant to make Nizzira pay for the ruin of my family.”

“We are your family now,” she countered stubbornly.

“Our children are al-Ma’aliq,” he pointed out.

“Yes, al-Ma’aliq—of Sihabbah and Hazganni,” she insisted. “Not of Dayira Azreyq.”

He stood, looking down at her with a spark of annoyance. He had heard all this too many times, though the manners instilled in him by his father forbade him to say so. Still, her dark eyes ignited with barely repressed rage as surely as if he’d reprimanded her out loud.

“You know what I think, Azzad, you know how I feel—in every other matter, my thoughts and feelings are important to you. But not in this. In this, I am ignored as if I were any other woman and not your wife!” She took a moment to calm herself, then continued, “Don’t you see? If you do this, if you carry through the plans you have been making this last year—ayia, don’t think I don’t know all about this! If you succeed, the Sheyqa will have no choice but to retaliate. Dearly as I love Fadhil and clever as he is, I don’t think even his most powerful hazziri will protect us—or our children.”

“I understand your will on this, and will consider it most carefully.” It was a standard formula and they both knew it. And because he knew himself to be a breath away from rudeness, he walked out of their maqtabba without speaking another word.

Crossing the courtyard to the stables, he nodded to Mazzud and went to look at the latest foals. As ever, his heart swelled at the sight of them: brown and golden, silvery and white, gray and black, ranging from almost exact copies of Khamsin at that age to the sturdier half-breeds, to quarter-breeds nearly indistinguishable from their purebred cousins. In the years since Khamsin’s first get had come as such a surprise, Azzad had learned how to produce foals with exactly the combination of strength and speed he wanted. More importantly, rich men from cities as far away as the coast wanted them, too, and paid vast sums for the privilege of looking like sheyqirs on horseback. Sihabbah had profited as well, for the finest saddles and bridles were made here, along with boots and blankets and everything else necessary to riding. Azzad had done well by his adopted home.

Not only in Sihabbah but in Hazganni and fifty other towns and villages his name was blessed. The destruction wrought by the hideous tza’ab azzif of 623—during which Jemilha had given birth to Azzifa, named for the storm—had finally taught everyone the wisdom of trees. Twelve days of unrelenting wind, like the breath of every damned soul exhaled from hell, had heaped sand and rubble from one end of the land to the other. A whole new industry had sprung up in the five years since, of foresters and gardeners and other experts in horticulture, and when Azzad rode through the land and saw the green, he gave thanks to Acuyib—and to the al-Ma’aliq who had planted the first hundred trees in Dayira Azhreq.

All these things, and the family he had sired, were reasons why he had been spared on that horrible night long ago. Jemilha was correct in this. He had done well and lived well. She did not understand, though, that his life was as yet incomplete. Riches, lands, respect, renown, family, friends—he had everything any man could desire. But, as his wife had told him the day he’d asked for her hand, Azzad was not just any man.

He watched his horses for a time, picking out which would be sold and which he would keep. The more placid ones were easy to sort; those with the finest conformation he kept for breeding. But the others, the ones who raced about the field, kicking and leaping for no reason at all but sheer joy—care must be taken in their training and sale, for to match a spirited horse with an indifferent rider was to hold out one’s arms to embrace disaster.

But the rider he had in mind these days was an expert—who had learned, undoubtedly, on al-Ma’aliq horses, and may Acuyib curse him and his forever. Azzad left the paddock and crossed behind the stables to the pasture. Of the more than fifty horses grazing there, he picked out the three-year-old colts that might suit his plans. One was dapple gray, one sandy gold, and the third coal-black with a white blaze on his forehead. Beautiful, long-legged, swift and strong, spirited without the unruly and sometimes thoroughly evil streak that plagued some of the half-breeds—his only problem was to decide which horse to use. Which of them would appeal most to an al-Ammarizzad accustomed by now to the finest horses in the world: the al-Ma’aliq horses seized seventeen years ago this autumn?

Annif, Mazzud’s brother, came running up to him from the stables. “Do you have need of anything, al-Ma’aliq?”

“Yes,” he muttered. Then, because Annif would not understand his real need, he said, “Qama’ar, Nihazza, and Najjhi—separate them out this evening, please, and put them in the small enclosure. I will train them myself.”

“As you wish, al-Ma’aliq. Zellim has his eye on Najjhi, I think. And Bazir’s is on Nihazza. They know horseflesh.”

Being Azzad’s sons, they would.

“Alessid, of course, wants Zaqia.”

Azzad laughed. “Does he, by Acuyib’s Beard?” Twelve years old, growing fast toward manhood and brash with it, Alessid was Azzad’s eldest and favorite son. Jemilha preferred the steady, good-hearted Kallad; everyone adored Bazir’s playfulness; earnest Zellim took after his grandfather of the same name, the scholar of the family even at barely six years old; Yuzuf was only a baby with as yet no distinctive personality beyond a winsome smile. Azzad loved them all most devotedly, but in Alessid he saw himself, as most fathers will do with one in particular of their sons.

“He says,” Annif went on, “he’ll have a pureblood of Khamsin’s siring or no horse at all.”

Ayia, that was stubborn, proud Alessid, from thick black curls to muddy boots. “If you find him up on Zaqia, blister his bottom for him at once—don’t wait for me to do it.”

Annif grinned. “As you wish, al-Ma’aliq.”

That evening, Azzad went into the stables to view the three selected colts. He would be sorry to lose any of them—but one horse was not so great a sacrifice, considering what he would do to Sheyqa Nizzira. He went into each stall, running his hands over smooth flanks and powerful muscles, confirming that Qama’ar, Nihazza, and Najjhi were the finest half-breeds Khamsin had ever sired: strength without bulk, spirit without intransigence, speed in short runs and endurance over long. He stroked their sleek necks and fed them carrots from his pocket, and smiled.

There was the faintest odor of fresh paint in each stall. Azzad searched briefly and found what he knew he would: Fadhil had heard about his orders to Annif and correctly deduced their meaning. Sometime this afternoon he had painted griffins on the rafters above each door. Retribution.

There were similar icons and sigils all over the al-Gallidh houses in Sihabbah and Hazganni. Some were cunningly worked into decorative motifs, others were hidden in out-of-the-way places, and a few were right out in the open for all to see—if they understood the language of Shagara magic. No one did. Over the years Azzad had become casual about these protections, for although he believed, his belief made him uncomfortable, and it was easier to forget the talishann symbols were there. For one hazzir, however, he would be eternally grateful: the silver owl clutching an onyx in its claws that perched over Jemilha’s birthing bed. It had watched over her during seven labors now, and she had come through each in perfect safety.

“The owl holding the jazah, these will see her through,” Fadhil had explained. “All our women have such; it is one of Abb Shagara’s primary duties to make them for every woman when she becomes pregnant for the first time.”

“I’ve never seen or heard of one of these before,” Azzad had said, stroking the owl’s silver feathers.

“We keep them for our women only. But even were she not your wife, and therefore part of the Shagara, I would have made one for her.”

“Fadhil,” he said, amused, “I believe you are a little bit in love with Jemilha.”

“I do love her most sincerely, Azzad, but not in the way you imply.” Holding up the hand that wore the emerald ring, he grinned. “And this has nothing to do with it.”

“It was kindly meant, by me and Abb Shagara.”

“I know. I will tell you something, Azzad, that you must not repeat to anyone. If a person who wears a hazzir knows its meaning, he can resist it if his will is strong enough. Meryem can tell you about a patient of hers, brought to the dawa’an sheymma by his daughters after his wife died. Meryem did all she could, but knowing where he was and what she was trying to do, still he died. He wanted to die, you see.”

“As you did not wish to fall in love.”

“Now you understand.”

Gazing at the crimson griffin painted above Nihazza’s stall door—crimson paint, crimson blood—Azzad wondered again how much belief and knowledge, or their lack, played a role in Shagara magic. He had not known what his own hazzir meant and had not believed until multiple demonstrations of its power had convinced him. In the healing tent, people would believe they could be healed. But Fadhil knew what the ring was for and resisted it successfully—or so he said.

It was all very confusing. If one did not know, and even if one did not believe, the hazzir could do its work. If one knew and believed but rejected, it could not. He supposed the most beneficial combination was one of knowledge, belief, and acceptance.

But would it work on a horse?

Glancing one last time up at the griffin, he shook his head, laughed a little, and returned to the house.

Trade with Rimmal Madar was highly lucrative that spring of 628. Azzad had planned it that way. He knew his home country. He knew what would sell and what would be of no interest, which level of functionaries to bribe and which to ignore, and who among the merchants dealt fairly and who would swindle given half a chance. He had created several new markets—roasted pine nuts, for instance, beautifully woven cloth, fine timber, and elegant furniture made of that timber—and by now Dayira Azreyq clamored for the products of faraway Hazganni. It mattered nothing that no one had ever heard of the place before; no one really cared, so long as supply of Hazganni’s goods was steady and not too expensive.

No one knew who was behind the trade. Azzad had made no secret of his name, not in Sihabbah or Hazganni or any of the other towns where he planted trees. For years now the Geysh Dushann had failed to kill him, but failure was not recognized in their code of honor. They wanted to take his head back to their kinswoman the Sheyqa. His head remained firmly on his shoulders. The hazziri had protected him. His association with the Shagara, and their declared enmity for the Geysh Dushann, had not caused the Ammarad to cancel the assassination, but it had limited their methods. The unambiguous trademark of an ax in the spine was not an option if the Ammarad wished to retain the privilege of Shagara medicine. Abb Shagara had let it be known that Azzad’s death would be counted as murder of one of his own tribe. Thus all the attempts had been subtle, seemingly accidents that could have been fatal—but, because of the hazziri, were not.

Fadhil took a sort of solemn delight in practicing his craft, and not only for the safekeeping of the family. One year he made a lampshade for the maqtabba, set with tiny beryls to quicken the intellect; Azzad wasn’t sure how well it worked, but it was beautiful nonetheless, with light gleaming sea green from the brass arabesques of the shade. He was convinced, however, that the silver nibs Fadhil had fashioned for the children’s pens really had helped. From one day to the next, Alessid went from barely forming the characters of his own name to scribbling words like a chief scribe—with a pen bearing the likeness of an ibis, the bird of writing.

There were the more serious hazziri, too. Bazir al-Gallidh had long ago ordered a workshop built for Fadhil, which Azzad had expanded as his needs grew. The children loved to watch while he set a stone into a ring or armband. They didn’t know, of course, what his true craft was; they knew only that sometimes on their birthdays, Chal Fadhil gave them a new piece of jewelry or a wind chime.

He spoiled them, of course. So did Azzad. Discipline came from Jemilha—not only for the children but for Azzad himself. Which would have had his grandfather demanding that he strip and prove his manly parts were still intact. His mother would merely have nodded with supreme satisfaction, well-pleased with Jemilha’s effect on her wayward son. Every time Azzad looked at his wife, he was reminded of his incredible luck in coming to Sihabbah. The wastrel who had shuddered at the thought of marriage and sidestepped responsibility with matchless agility now gazed upon his wife and resolved to redouble his work on her behalf. Occasionally, lying beside her in the dawn light, he wondered why he had ever resisted marriage. Ayia, had he married back in Dayira Azreyq, it would have been to the wrong woman. Jemilha was the right one.

Acuyib had indeed smiled upon him. He had wealth, influence, respect, work he enjoyed, a wife he adored, sons to guide to manhood, daughters to gladden his heart—all that a man could wish. And now at long last it was time to begin the work for which Acuyib had spared him so long ago.

“Reihan,” he murmured, staring down at a report recently arrived from his agent in Rimmal Madar. The beryl-and-brass lamp shone down on the page, dappling it in sea-green and golden light. “Sheyqir Reihan al-Ammarizzad. The Sheyqa’s favorite, most beloved son . . . .”

His agent sent voluminous letters full of events, rumors, descriptions, and speculations. Nizzira, after long, hard years of fighting the northern tribes made unruly by the demise of the al-Ma’aliq, had finally concluded a peace with them in 624. For the last few years she had been rebuilding an economy ravaged by war. Of this, Azzad had taken full advantage—while praying for Nizzira’s continued health. At sixty-seven, she was hale and hearty, though it was reported she was emotionally weary while at the same time restless, which to Azzad meant she was probably bored. Governance was complicated, often tedious, sometimes troublesome; Azzad knew that from ruling his own little realm. That was why he loved to escape the maqtabba, saddle Khamsin, and gallop up into the high hills or down to the fertile valleys. Occasionally he took along Fadhil or his sons for company, but more often he rode alone. The Sheyqa could not do this; there was no escape for her, despite—ayia, because of—all her power. Azzad almost felt sorry for her.

But faint stirrings of pity had not prevented him from laughing when his agent reported that after Sayyida’s birth, not a single additional offspring had been born to any of the Sheyqa’s children. Not the sons, not the daughters—not even the grandsons and granddaughters. It was whispered that the men of the al-Ammarizzad tribe spent their vigor on the battlefield rather than in bed, and the women in scheming instead of breeding. With the arrogance and contempt of a strong young man who had sired seven children and would likely sire more, Azzad laughed and sent his agent many fine gifts in exchange for this delectable information.

The Sheyqa’s only true solace was Reihan. By all accounts beautiful and brilliant, Reihan was more and more at his mother’s side these last years, not only as an advisor but as a comfort. He played twelve instruments, sang exquisitely, wrote his own songs and poetry, and yet had also led troops into battle on several occasions, acquitting himself well as a warrior. The perfect son—so perfect that Nizzira was actually thinking of altering law and tradition by naming him to succeed her. But the eldest of Nizzira’s daughters had married a man with hundreds of powerful relations—too powerful to insult. There were many children of this marriage, including several daughters ruthless enough to contend for the Moonrise Throne. Azzad’s lip curled as he reflected that not even Nizzira would play the assassinate-the-whole-family game more than once. He was willing to bet every foal Khamsin had ever sired that in seventeen years no one had accepted an invitation to the palace without first making peace with Acuyib and downing an antidote to poison—just in case. Against swords and axes there could be no defense, of course. Not without Shagara tokens. So many ways of killing . . . but neither poison nor blade featured in Azzad’s own plans.

“Sheyqir Reihan al-Ammarizzad,” he murmured again, and with a sigh set himself to reading the sheaf of poetry sent with the report. The young man really was quite good, Azzad thought, and once more was almost moved to compassion for Nizzira.

Almost.

9

One morning Azzad woke with a great many things on his mind—and no wife lying beside him to tell them to. To hear Jemilha’s counsel and conversation while they lazed in their bed was one of the joys of his life—a joy increasingly denied him these days, part of her campaign to make him rethink his plans for Reihan al-Ammarizzad. She knew Azzad very well indeed; she knew she didn’t have to be in his presence to be foremost in his thoughts. Indeed, her wisdom was such that her absence was on occasion a more definitive statement than any words she might have spoken.

But this morning he wanted her. Something seethed inside him, perhaps to do with a dream not remembered, perhaps pertaining to the subject he refused to discuss with her. He lay there, listening to the wind chimes hung from the eaves outside the bedroom windows, picking out the different notes sounded by steel and silver and gold, telling himself that he really ought to use up his restlessness in starting the day’s work early. Work would tire him, but not satisfy him—and he realized that what he truly needed was to talk with a woman. Lacking his wife, he must find another with the shrewdness only women possessed. He required counsel, and no discussion with a man would suffice.

There was only one place in Sihabbah other than his own house that would provide what he needed, and it would be necessary to ride there—not only because it was up a steep hillside trail but because riding would show respect for the lady he intended to visit. Accordingly, instead of heading for the barns, he turned for the pasture where Khamsin ambled about in honorable retirement from everything but the occasional canter with Azzad on his back—and siring foals, of course. Azzad whistled; Khamsin did nothing more than raise his head from the sweet grass and blink at him, supremely uninterested.

“Look at you, you lazy old barghoutz,” he chided. “You’re as fat as a eunuch. Get over here. We’re going to pay a call on a lady.”

Azzad’s destination was the little group of cottages where the men of Sihabbah took their ease when they wished to escape their homes—and their wives. The two women Azzad had known during his first years here had retired, giving over the business to their daughters, as happened in any family trade. Azzad had not been their customer since his marriage, but he visited sometimes all the same. Bindta Feyrah in particular was a woman whose acumen he respected.

He knocked politely on the door of the main building and was admitted with cries of welcome. Akkilah, youngest and prettiest of the girls, instantly set about making fresh qawah. Meyza, Yaminna and Lalla made Azzad luxuriously comfortable in a throne of silken pillows.

“Our little brother Dawwad came to see us last week,” said Yaminna.

“He is very happy working for you, al-Ma’aliq,” said Lalla. “It was good of you to give him employment in your house.”

“We have Feyrah’s son to do chores and take care of the occasional drunk—”

“—but Dawwad isn’t big enough to be a deterrent—”

“—so we’re all very pleased he’s found such a good place with you,” finished Yaminna.

“It is entirely my pleasure,” Azzad told them. “He’s a fine worker.”

“You’re too good to us, al-Ma’aliq,” said Yaminna.

“He’s too good to everyone,” said Lalla.

“That’s why I can’t understand why those dreadful men keep coming to kill him,” said Akkilah, arriving with a pot of steaming qawah.

Yaminna frowned as she poured for Azzad. “That reminds me, alMa’aliq—there was another one through here last night—”

“—he was small, though, and younger than the other four we’ve seen,” added Lalla.

“—we searched his clothing while Lalla kept him busy, but there were no swords or axes,” said Akkilah.

“—and we were about to send one of the boys down to tell you, only you’ve come here to us instead!” finished Yaminna.

“Cease this chatter at once,” came a scolding voice from the doorway. “By Acuyib, anyone would think you descend from geese!”

Azzad turned and got to his feet with a smile as Feyrah entered the cottage. In days long past, he had divided his favors—and his wages—equally between her and her sister Addah, but Feyrah had been his secret favorite. Perhaps this was because her sharp wits and acidic tones reminded him of Challa Meryem. She ran her family business as acutely as Azzad ran his.

“Greetings and Acuyib’s Blessings, Feyrah,” he said with a short bow of respect.

“And to you, Azzad.”

She was one of the few people in Sihabbah who did not call him al-Ma’aliq. A single gesture of elegant fingers scattered her daughters and nieces, and soon she and Azzad were comfortably drinking qawah and nibbling dates stuffed with almonds. According to the traditions of her calling, Feyrah asked no questions and merely waited for Azzad to get around to what was on his mind. For his part, he too adhered to custom and entertained her with a story he knew she would enjoy. And soon indeed he had her giggling at Alessid’s latest exploit, a project involving ducks, a belled cat, and the fluttering terror of the waterfowl when a bell rang but no cat appeared.

“Ah, I would have liked the honor of that one’s initiation myself,” Feyrah said at the conclusion of the tale. “But a boy needs a girl, not an old woman.”

“I know you too well to think that I need scoff and compliment,” Azzad countered. “That sort of thing is for other men to stammer their way through. What I will say is only this: If you are what old age looks like, then Acuyib have mercy on every girl of nineteen from here to Rimmal Madar.”

“Very nicely said,” she approved, her eyes dancing. “And just the right age, too. Any older, and I would have been insulted. Any younger, and I would have been so busy being offended by your mockery that I would have missed that lovely piece of exaggeration at the end. But while we are on the subject, I have it in mind to propose Meyza—who really is nineteen!—for Alessid. Your opinion?”

He considered, and nodded approval. Thoughtful and playful by turns, Meyza was a lovely girl and an entirely appropriate choice. “Perfect. I tell you without flattery or exaggeration or any other pretty words, Feyrah, that I feel fortunate such fine girls are here to teach my boys what they must know to please a wife. My own father sought all over Dayira Azreyq to find just the right girl for me.”

“If she was your first, I will cut off all my hair and go north to the barbarian lands, and live in one of their dreadful walled arrareems.” She offered him more qawah. “Now, tell me why you have come to talk to me today.” When he drew in a long breath and let it out in a sigh, she added, “Of course I will have heard none of it, once you set foot outside my door.”

He nodded gratefully. “I never thought otherwise. Here, then Feyrah, is my problem.”

She listened, asked no questions, and refilled their cups at intervals. At last, when he had finished, she pursed her lips and began toying with the crimson fringe of a pillow.

“Azzad, I see now why you are a rich man.”

He blinked his surprise at this observation.

“Had you only yourself to consider, you would have done one of two things long ago: sink into utter obscurity or die of a jealous man’s anger when he caught you with his wife. In the first case, you would have discovered that charm and good looks are worth only so much in this life, and in the second, you would have learned that charm and good looks can also be the means of leaving this life. But because you are the last of your blood, except for this cousin you mention in your homeland, you used your charm and your good looks for goals other than your own gratification.” She smiled through her lashes. “I approve of this, Azzad. Everyone ought to have an ambition.

“But yours,” she went on, serious again, “is very much greater than yourself. You are the least avaricious man I have ever known—and yet you have worked these many years to accumulate riches. I have wondered about that, and now I understand. Your ambition has nothing to do with you, or your family here, or even those who died long ago. It has everything to do with your sense of what is right and what must be punished. Wickedness and waste offend you, someplace deep inside where you might never have looked had not everything else been stripped from you. I believe that in this place you saw something very simple: a disorder of things that must be put right.”

“You ascribe to me too much honor,” he replied slowly. “All I am after is vengeance.”

“That is not true. It is a part, but it is not all. There are people like you in the world, Azzad, very rarely—those whom Acuyib uses. You may believe yourself prompted by personal and even selfish considerations, but there is something more profound at work here. What the Sheyqa did to your family was a very ugly wrong. It is obvious that your task is to right that wrong. But it is for you to decide how ugly you wish the righting to be.”

“I want . . . I want her to suffer as my mother and sisters suffered. I want her to know what it is to be helpless. But I do not want her to die. I want very much for her to live—and that makes me worse than she, Feyrah. Much worse.” Azzad looked into her large, fine eyes and said, “And perhaps the worst thing of all is that although I know this, I do not care.”

“Then you will certainly succeed.” She regarded him for a long moment. “I have done nothing to ease either your heart or your mind, have I? But ease is not what you were seeking, I think. Nor approval.”

He had to shake his head. “Neither one, you are right. I think what I needed was to hear myself say it to someone . . .” He paused, at a loss to explain.

“Someone for whose life you are not responsible,” she interpreted, nodding. “Ayia, it has been accomplished, then. I won’t ask if it helped.”

“But it did. Very much. I’m not sure I agree about any greater purpose, but I do understand more clearly some of the possible consequences.”

“Do you?” She rose smoothly to her feet. “I wonder.” From a pocket of her robe she took a small brass bell that Fadhil had made for her long ago, and rang it four times. “You have said nothing, I have heard nothing,” she told him just before the girls ran lightly back into the cottage.

“We’ve been petting Khamsin—”

“—I hope it’s all right that we gave him carrots—”

“—he nibbles daintily as a lamb!”

Azzad laughed. “He knows to behave himself around ladies.” Pushing himself to his feet, he bowed to Feyrah. “My thanks, as always. Perhaps you will agree to advise me on a new type of qawah blend some farmers along the coast have concocted. I shall send a bag up to you, and await your judgment.”

Feyrah nodded acceptance of this means of paying her for her time. “I’ll look forward to it.”

“You’re not leaving so soon!” cried Lalla.

Yaminna made a face at her pouting cousin. “Do you really think to tempt al-Ma’aliq?”

Azzad bowed. “I am tempted almost beyond reason every time I visit here.”

“A lie!” laughed Meyza. “Everyone knows your eyes are only for your wife!”

He smiled ruefully and shrugged. “Nonetheless, I must abandon the unique fascinations of your company. I have an appointment later today with Ferrhan Mualeef, who has literary ambitions and seems to think my life makes a good story.”

“Ayia, he was here some days ago,” Lalla said with a giggle. “What do they teach their young men in Hazganni?”

Azzad deduced she had not been impressed and gave thanks he had learned his lessons in Dayira Azreyq.

It all seemed a very long time ago. Another life. Another Azzad. As he rode back down to Sihabbah proper, he reflected on how much this land and its peoples had shaped and changed him, had made him their own. His life had been saved by the Shagara, who befriended him and made his enemies theirs. He had married a noblewoman of Sihabbah, who had made him so thoroughly hers that he had not even thought about another woman since his marriage. What had he done in return, for these people and this land? Ayia, the horses and the trees—they were the most obvious—but most important were the children. They belonged here, to a land and a people theirs by right of birth. Azzad had given five sons and two daughters to this place that had become his life. He considered the debt paid.

But the debt to the Shagara, for giving him back the life he had so nearly lost in the wastelands—that could never be repaid. For the wise Feyrah had been correct: It was the loss of everything else that had made him look deeper than he ever would have done, and if she had been mistaken about the nobility of what he’d found there . . . still, it made a pretty wrapping for a thing that would be very ugly indeed.

The Geysh Dushann who had visited the ladies was seen in Sihabbah only once more—when his body was recovered from a streambed that marked the border of Azzad’s farthest pasture. The fence he had evidently attempted to climb was studded every few handspans with thorns such as were used in Shagara fencing; perhaps he had pricked a finger and died of the poison, or perhaps he had simply lost his balance. By the time he was found, it was difficult to tell.

A curious thing was found in his possessions, something the ladies had not known to be significant. A small drawstring pouch, stamped on the outside with talishann, hung from a leather thong around his neck. Inside was a chunk of pyrite and a bit of hammered tin with a sign Fadhil did not recognize, packed in amid six different kinds of dried leaves and flowers. Fadhil identified two herbs as moderately curative, but to put them in combination with the others was a waste of a healer’s time and effort. Perhaps the blend had been meant merely to provide a pleasing scent—if so, it had long since faded.

The pyrite was of interest for its qualities of practicality, memory, and protection. The Shagara markings on the pouch meant nothing more sinister than success, luck, and knowledge. But when Fadhil detected a trace of rust-colored stain on the tin, he frowned and sorted through the dried herbs again. A tiny clump of leaves and flower petals was stuck together with blood. Shagara blood. Whatever the unfamiliar talishann meant, someone had been serious about this pouch and its contents.

“No match for your skills, certainly,” said Azzad, shrugging, and poured more qawah for his wife and Fadhil. “Merely another failed assassin.”

Jemilha, watching Fadhil’s studied lack of expression, said quietly, “Or the first to be armed with Shagara work. He is the first, is he not?”

“Insofar as I am aware,” the healer admitted, uneasiness shifting his shoulders just a little. “I think that he may have obtained these things illicitly—in which case the talishann would not function as well as if they had been made specifically for him.”

“Have you ever seen such a collection before, worn in a pouch filled with herbs?” she persisted.

“Ayia, there are certain antiquated customs—”

“Herbs that are mostly useless for healing? Herbs that had lost their fragrance long since?”

Azzad approached and formally presented her with a fresh cup of qawah. “Qarassia, if it will bring peace to your thoughts, I will send to Challa Meryem and ask. But we all know that the Geysh Dushann are forbidden the healing tents of the Shagara, so this man must have stolen these things—hoping in vain that they would protect and aid him. They did not. So ends another Geysh Dushann.”

“And this discussion?” she asked, in that silken tone he had come to dread over the years, a tone like a soft fog that wrapped a man’s heart in sudden ice.

“If there is nothing else to say, nothing else to learn, and nothing to plan for . . .” He shrugged again.

“And you have far more important plans to make—yes, I know, husband.” She set aside her untasted drink and rose. “The children’s lessons must be heard. I will leave you to your plans.”

Azzad hesitated, then asked, “Once Alessid, Bazir, and Kallad have recited to your satisfaction, may I see them afterward?”

Her face tightened like an angry fist. But all she did was nod and stalk out of the room in a swirl of bright silks.

“She isn’t happy,” Fadhil said mildly.

Azzad cocked a sardonic brow. “I’m sure she was hoping you wouldn’t notice.”

“She could forbid this, you know. It is well within her rights.”

“Happy or unhappy, approving or disapproving—she understands. Men simply see a thing and decide one way or another and don’t bother much with reasons. Women think. And those who think longest understand best. As the writings have it, men’s thoughts are the sand, easily scattered by any wind that happens along. But women are the rich earth that grows thoughts and ideas, and from these come understanding.”

“And what of you, the one they are calling Il-Kadiri?” Fadhil smiled.

“That silly child, Ferrhan Mualeef, has been reading bits of his work to you, hasn’t he?” Azzad sighed. “’Bringer of Green,’ indeed! It’s only common sense—”

“Sense, Meryem says, is the least common thing of all.” He glanced around as Alessid’s voice echoed down the stairwell, teasing his brothers into a jumping contest. “Do we tell them everything tonight?”

“Not quite everything. They’re good boys, but still only boys, after all. They might say something unawares.”

“And we cannot allow a single grain of sand to stray outside Sihabbah, or it will surely stick in the eye of this Sheyqir Reihan. Ayia, when the time comes for them to know everything, I will be ready with something for them.” He frowned. “I wish, though, that I knew how the Geysh Dushann came by those Shagara items. And what that strange sign means.”

Whatever Azzad would have replied was lost, for Alessid burst into the room, Bazir and Kallad a step behind him, shouting, “I won! I won!”

Azzad hid a smile. Alessid always won.

“They’re coming.”

Azzad nodded in the twilight gloom. It would be impossible to miss them: the white horses that were the pride of the al-Ammarizzad practically glowed in the dark. The one golden horse, pride of one al-Ammarizzad in particular, shone like the rising of the summer sun.

Mazzud shifted in his saddle and whispered, “We’re too close to the city. We should have taken them last night at the watering hole.”

Azzad stayed silent, not reminding his old friend that they were so far from Hazganni that none but the owls would hear, and that the stop at the watering hole had been part of his plan. While the group of al-Ammarizzad and their servants slept, foolishly trusting their horses to warn them of approaching danger, Azzad and Fadhil had, with the aid of specially crafted hazziri, slipped into the saddle waterskins a tasteless, odorless drug. Now, almost a whole day later, peering from the shelter of trees and bushes he himself had ordered planted, Azzad saw the sedative taking slow, subtle effect. Ten offspring of Sheyqa Nizzira and the ten men who served them swayed slightly as they rode, drooping forward, jerking upright again as they felt themselves falling asleep.

Azzad glanced at his sons. Alessid grinned back—the typical impudent thirteen-year-old, well aware that full manhood was close upon him. Bazir, almost eleven and tall for his age, nodded solemnly when he saw Azzad looking at him; Kallad, two years younger, smiled. Both boys were nervous, but hiding it well. Alessid, by contrast, looked as if he and his horse awaited the start of a race: eager yet controlled, excited yet utterly confident. Azzad was well pleased. He was determined that his sons participate in this act that would define them as al-Ma’aliq. This was their vengeance as much as his. He only regretted that Zellim and Yuzuf were too young to be here.

The ten sheyqirs lolled drunkenly in their saddles. Azzad knew who they were by name, thanks to his agent in Rimmal Madar, and could not have been better pleased had he given specific instructions to Nizzira about which of her progeny to send. Acuyib was not only smiling, He was laughing in His Beard at the joke shared with Azzad. The Most Noble and Mighty Sheyqirs were all young, all intended for vital marriage bonds with powerful families, to bring a harvest of wealth, alliances, and children.

Azzad lifted a hand in signal to Fadhil, Mazzud, and the three boys. The al-Ammarizzad reined in, their movements sluggish, confusion scrawled on their faces in the sunset as six riders emerged from the trees on either side of the road.

“Who’re you?” a bearded sheyqir slurred.

“Azzad al-Ma’aliq.”

He laughed a sloppy, drunken laugh. “The al-Ma’aliq’re all dead.”

Azzad smiled. “Not all.” He turned his attention to the rider of the golden stallion. “Nihazza is an impressive horse, is he not, Reihan?”

The young man was indeed exceedingly beautiful, even slack-lipped and bleary-eyed with Fadhil’s drugs. He retained enough wits to know this was a trap. He hauled clumsily on the reins—but Alessid leaped lightly from his saddle and gave a soft, melodic whistle between his teeth. Nihazza responded instantly by planting his hooves in the dust and refusing to budge another step. Alessid came forward quite casually and laid a hand on the stallion’s bridle; Nihazza snuffled, recognizing him, and nuzzled a pocket for the expected treat.

Reihan’s brothers and cousins, belatedly realizing there was danger but not quite believing that danger to their royal persons could come in the form of three men and three boys, attempted to maneuver their horses. But before the al-Ammarizzad and their attendants could do more than fumble at their saddles, bridles were seized and swords were taken and piled on the ground.

“Robbers,” one of the sheyqirs announced, as if weeks of heavy thought had led him to this brilliant conclusion.

“Whassa trouble?” another demanded. “Outta way, fallahin—”

“Al-Ma’aliq,” Alessid corrected him, almost pleasantly.

“They’re all dead,” came the reply, with a befuddled snort.

Another, looking to be the youngest, nodded, his head loose on his neck. “Long time ago—orders of the Sheyqa my gran’ma—”

“You,” Reihan said, swallowing dry and hard as he peered at Azzad. “You sent him—Nihazza—”

“—knowing you would want more like him,” Azzad finished. “I know you, al-Ammarizzad. I know all of your greedy kind. Acquisitive, selfish, arrogant—I knew Nihazza would be the only invitation you’d require. Acuyib meant this to happen.”

“It was nothing t’do with me.” Reihan shook his head in a vain attempt to clear it. “I—I was no more than a child—”

“So were my sisters,” Azzad said. “And all the children your mother ordered burned alive. Innocent children, whose only crime was that they were al-Ma’aliq. Your crime is that you are al-Ammarizzad.”

“Brigands,” proclaimed the Intellect among them. “Gonna rob an’ kill us—”

“Kill us?” a proud sheyqir whined, and a third blustered, “Wuddun’ dare—”

“I have no intention of killing you,” Azzad said—reluctantly, for this had been a point of contention between him and Fadhil. But this way was better; it would cause Nizzira more anguish. “You will live and return to Rimmal Madar.”

Nine of them had gone limp in their saddles—half with relief, half with the powerful sedative. Only Reihan still fought, his fine features tense, his magnificent dark eyes forced wide open by sheer effort of will.

Azzad contemplated him for a moment, then said, “All of you, get off my horses.”

“Your—?” The Intellect drew himself up with what he probably imagined was dignity.

“Which one are you?” Azzad asked.

“I—Sheyqir—” He listed to the right before lurching back and steadying himself. “Azhim, third son of Sheyqa Nizzira an’ fourth huzbin’—I mean, fourth son, seccun’ huzbin’—” He frowned his puzzlement that he couldn’t quite place himself within the royal hierarchy. At last he simply shrugged, an action that nearly toppled him from his horse, and said, “’M Sheyqir Azhim.”

“Sheyqir Azhim,” Azzad said pleasantly, “if you open your mouth one more time, I’ll cut out your tongue. Now, get off my horses.”

After some encouragement at the points of their own swords, they did so, sliding bonelessly to the ground. Bazir, Alessid, and Mazzud swiftly tied up the servants, then hobbled the horses. Kallad and Fadhil placed on each al-Ammarizzad’s left thumb a silver ring. Azzad had watched Fadhil craft the rings, set with etched carnelians and inscribed with rows of tiny ants. Azzad had insisted on the insects, enjoying the pun: Ants were a symbol of harvesting, which was the meaning of izzad.

One of the brothers squinted at his new jewelry and muttered, “Ugly thing. Wuddun’ givvit to a whore.”

Another, dimly perceiving that Azzad held all the power here, said, “Issa nice present. C’n we go now, al-Ma’aliq?”

He ignored them. Still astride Khamsin, he nodded to Mazzud, who kindled a fire in the stone circle constructed that afternoon, then said to the al-Ammarizzad, “Remove your sashes.”

They grumbled but obeyed, swaying on their feet, fingers awkwardly unwinding the red silk, golden fringes tangling. Bazir and Kallad collected the sashes, then ripped each lengthwise down the middle. Blurts of outrage became gasps as the sheyqirs were knocked off their feet into the dirt. They struggled feebly, but the fear in their brains could not overcome the drug in their bodies. Their hands were bound behind them with their own torn sashes. Azzad watched terror brighten their blurry eyes as the fire lit the clearing in yellow and angry crimson—and showed them the instrument slowly glowing to white heat in the flames.

Anyone who knew anything about horses would recognize such an instrument.

“Bring Nihazza,” Azzad commanded.

Mazzud and Alessid held the gray stallion triple-roped. Bazir held Nihazza’s head, stony-faced, regretting the horse he had hoped would be his, but knowing the sacrifice to be necessary. Quickly and carefully, Fadhil smoothed a thick, sickly-sweet smelling unguent on and around the testicles. Azzad dismounted and personally gelded the stallion with cauterizing white-hot iron.

Nihazza jerked once, but the salve had deadened pain. Bazir turned his head away. Azzad thought of how he would feel had it been Khamsin.

Turning to the ten offspring of Sheyqa Nizzira, he said, “This also I will do to each of you. But I will allow you to live, which is more than the Sheyqa allowed the al-Ma’aliq.”

There were outcries, some of disbelief and some of fear and some of blustering rage. The only one who made no sound, the only one who seemed to understand, even through the drug befuddling his mind, was Reihan. He did not doubt Azzad’s word about what was about to occur; he was neither afraid nor angry. He hated. And in the dark loathing that shone from his eyes by firelight, despite the sensitivity of his poetry and the elegance of his beauty, Azzad saw in him a true son of Sheqya Nizzira.

Azzad thrust the gelding shears into the fire, and again, and again, ten times in all. And so he harvested the al-Ammarizzad.

In due course Azzad received a letter from his most trusted agent in Dayira Azreyq. It had been well worth waiting for.

They have returned. They were led into the palace by night, and in secret. No one saw them but the servants who opened the doors. My sources tell me that many tabbibi came in haste that same night and departed just before dawn in fear for their lives. What this must mean, I think you know.

Of course he knew. Nizzira wished no one to discover that ten of her progeny were no longer men.

All Dayira Azreyq holds its breath. The Sheqya has not been seen in days, and there are dire tidings of her rage. More tabbibi have come and gone, and my friends among them says that the violence of her grief may well be the death of the Sheyqa.

Ayia, Azzad hoped so. Let her feel more anguish than a human heart could hold. Let her suffer every time she thought of her ten gelded darlings. Let her scream the name of al-Ma’aliq without ceasing.

I regret to write that three days ago, the order for Sihabbah timber was canceled. My friends in the Zoqalo Zhaddim say that orders for certain other items have also been canceled. What this must mean is confirmed by the departure of the officials of the provinces held by the al-Akhdir from court, with no marriage contract regarding Sheyqir Azhim in their hands.

Azzad wondered if the al-Akhdiri ambassadors had any idea of why Azhim would not be getting married to any woman.

There has been talk about sending an army to Hazganni by sea. It is not agreed upon, but should this occur, I will give ample warning.

Very efficient of him, Azzad thought, but unnecessary. The Shagara hazziri, old as they were by now, that had protected this land from invading northern barbarians would function just as well against the soldiers of Rimmal Madar. Besides, with the northern tribes formerly allied to the al-Ma’aliq restless still, Nizzira could not afford to send half her army out of the country.

Yesterday two of the Qoundi Ammar were dispatched to The Steeps. I saw them ride out myself. What this must mean, I believe you also know.

He would be five times a fool if he didn’t. There was more to the letter—inventories, business dealings, the usual—but after a quick perusal Azzad returned to the best news. He read it again and again. The proud sheyqirs slinking into the palace by night. The tabbibi summoned to confirm that the deed was hopeless of remedy—and threatened with death if they spoke of it. The marriage alliance that would not be—all the marriages that would never be. The sending of emissaries to the Geysh Dushann to demand revenge. And especially—ayia, especially!—the helpless rage of Sheyqa Nizzira. Worst of all, her favorite son, her beautiful, poetic Reihan, light of her heart and joy of her old age—

“And so,” his wife said, standing in the doorway of the maqtabba. “At last you have your vengeance.”

“Yes,” he replied with a humming sigh of satisfaction. “I have it.”

“Is it sweet to the taste, husband? Does it fill you the way a new child fills me now?”

Azzad sprang to his feet. “Jemilha—!” He rose to embrace and kiss her, but she eluded him, holding out two shiny objects.

“I asked Fadhil to make these. One set for you, and one set each for all of us. Say you will wear them always, and I will never speak of this matter again.”

His gaze fell from her adamant face to a pair of wide silver armbands studded with a rainbow of tiny gems. Purple amethyst, blue turquoise, sea-green beryl and spring-green peridot, golden topaz, red-orange carnelian and crimson garnet—a dozen of each, set around complex talishann, and a single owl for watchfulness. He didn’t remember all the meanings of all the jewels, but he did recognize one because Fadhil had once said it was extremely rare.

“Peridots. These must have cost as much as Khamsin’s best foal.” He eyed his wife sidelong. “But a small price to pay for protection against my own folly—is that the way your thoughts run, Jemilha?”

“Will you put these on, Azzad? And never take them off? If you promise, this will be the last you’ll ever hear from me about what you did to Nizzira’s sons and grandsons.”

“I promise.” He clasped the silver hazziri onto his arms and again tried to embrace Jemilha. Again she avoided him, turning on the heel of one white velvet slipper. In the whirl of her movement the sleeves of her bedrobe shifted at her wrists, and by the lamplight he saw the bracelets that were a match for the armbands. “Qarassia—”

“Sururi annam, husband,” she said over her should as she left the room. And he wondered if she would ever sleep sweetly again.

Ayia, this was all nonsense. Nizzira would know who was responsible, but what could she do about it? Send her army? It would be an invitation to the northern tribes to attack. Send the Geysh Dushann? Likely, but not all that worrying. Azzad glanced around the maqtabba. Shagara safeguards were all over the house in Sihabbah, the house in Hazganni, at the perimeters of all the al-Gallidh holdings. Even if assassins got past these, there were the protections on his person. He held up his arms, admiring the gleam of silver and jewels by lamplight. He and his were safe.

And there would be a new baby in the new year—a sixth son or a third daughter. It would be a daughter, he decided, a sign of Acuyib’s approval. He’d name the girl Oannisia, for Acuyib had indeed been merciful to Azzad, and just.

The evening shadows deepened, and Azzad was lighting another lamp so he could read the letter yet again and gloat over it when Fadhil came into the maqtabba. His golden skin looked pallid and fragile, drawn tight across fine bones by worry, lined with sorrow.

“What is it, my friend?” Azzad asked, rising.

“Khamsin,” was all Fadhil said.

He would never know how he got to the stables. He only knew that one moment he was surrounded by books and the scent of fragrant lamp oil, and the next he was in Khamsin’s stall with the reek of medicine in his nostrils.

“It’s no use, al-Ma’aliq,” said Mazzud, tears unnoticed on his weathered cheeks. “He is old, and it is his time.”

Fadhil crouched beside him. “I’ve done all I can. Mazzud is right. It’s his time.”

He knelt there all night, remembering how he had done the same when Khamsin was newborn, so that Azzad would become familiar and beloved. He remembered all the years since—twenty-two of them—that had taken him and Khamsin from the ancestral castle of the al-Ma’aliq to the city streets of Dayira Azreyq, from the brutal climb of The Steeps to the camp of the Ammarad, from the tents of the Shagara to the sweet mountain meadows of Sihabbah.

The stallion’s heart stopped just before dawn. There was a final sighing breath, and a slight movement of the head against Azzad’s caressing hands, and then the last gleam faded from the huge eyes.

“No,” Azzad said, and buried his face in Khamsin’s neck and wept.

10

The Geysh Dushann renewed their attacks. They cared no more for subtlety. For their pride’s sake, it no longer mattered to them whether or not the Shagara knew who killed Azzad al-Ma’aliq.

But Azzad was not killed. And if he had had any lingering doubts of the effectiveness of Fadhil’s hazziri, he had none at all after one would-be assassin fell from a second-floor balcony and was gutted by his own ax. Viewing broken railings the next morning, Azzad traced with one finger the talishann painted on the wood. For a few moments he debated asking Fadhil to tell him exactly what protections had been added to the house, but two things stopped him. The ways of the hazziri were the deepest secrets of the Shagara, and he didn’t want to put his friend in a position where he must refuse to answer. Also, he recalled very well what Fadhil had told him long ago: If one knew the hazzir’s precise meaning, too much trust would be placed in it, and the wisdom of ordinary caution would fly away. “Not even the Shagara can protect against stupidity.” Azzad concluded that whereas belief could increase the power of the magic, one could in fact believe too much.

The Geysh Dushann came, singly and in pairs, openly and in disguise. Every one of them failed. Jemilha was true to her word; no reproach ever passed her lips for the danger. But her eyes grew larger and larger in her weary face with the strain of her fear and the new pregnancy.

Fadhil made new hazziri for her and the children. He repainted the protections in and around the house in his own blood. He sent to Abb Shagara informing him of events, and by way of reply came six young Shagara men, who worked for eight days reinforcing Fadhil’s work with their own. A letter from Abb Shagara said that if the noble Lady Jemilha grew bored in Sihabbah, she was very welcome to visit his tents and stay as long as she liked. A note from Meryem was less tactful: She recommended that Fadhil tell Azzad not to be more of a fool than Acuyib had made him and get his wife and children out of Sihabbah at once. Azzad sent a letter back with the six young men, thanking Abb Shagara for his care. But he did not leave Sihabbah.

There were attempts at the house, at the stables, in the town. The Geysh Dushann sabotaged saddles and bridles, poisoned provisions, dusted the insides of gloves with toxic powder, and ignited na’ar al-dushanna that filled rooms with noxious smoke.

A little furry creature, oddly manlike about the hands and eyes and ears, was caught in the kitchen while putting something into the soup. Alessid made a pet of him, teaching him to add sugar to his mother’s qawah and training him to do many other tricks. But the animal sickened during the cold weather and died. By then Alessid had a new pet: the deadly snake he found slithering across his room one morning. With its poison sacs removed, it was an oddly affectionate creature, and Alessid’s hunting skills grew apace when it turned out the snake preferred succulent pasture-fed mice to the grain-eaters of the barns.

Nothing the Geysh Dushann did could touch Azzad or his family. Yet by midwinter in the new year of 630, the perspective of Sihabbah’s people began to change. Outrage at these offenses became annoyance at their continuance—and this was but a step away from anger directed at Azzad. None among them had been injured, but it was hard to live in a place where every stranger must be suspected of intent to commit murder.

Azzad humbly consulted Abb Ferrhan—past eighty and more sternly judgmental than ever—and apologized for the ruination of Sihabbah’s peace, promising that when Jemilha was delivered of her child and could safely travel, he would take his family elsewhere.

“But you say she isn’t due until spring!” Abb Ferrhan protested.

“I am sorry. But she cannot be taken great distances in her condition.”

This was not strictly true. Though this pregnancy was giving her trouble, when none of the others had, still she was perfectly capable of a journey if taken slowly. Azzad simply had no intention of running away. And he trusted to Fadhil’s hazziri to continue protecting him and his, as they had through nearly five months of unsuccessful strikes by the Geysh Dushann.

And then the assaults ceased.

Spring came, and Jemilha gave birth to a healthy girl, duly named Oannisia as Azzad had promised to Acuyib. All the children grew and progressed well in their lessons. Kallad, serious and bookish, was obviously destined to become a scholar. Zellim showed an aptitude for music, Bazir for mathematics. Yuzuf was the charmer of the brood, with a pair of huge brown eyes, soft and sweet as a fawn’s, that allowed him to escape nearly all punishment for boyish misdeeds. Azzifa and Meryem were lovely, carefree, their father’s delight. And Alessid, his firstborn—ayia, Alessid would soon be a man, and a fine one, tall and strong and handsome, who would be sought after as a husband by every girl in every town and village between here and the great northern ocean.

All of Azzad’s world was perfectly at peace. Trade was as good as ever, perhaps better; Khamsin’s last foals were born and thrived.

But Fadhil, Azzad saw one afternoon in early summer, had become old.

They were on the way to a house outside Sihabbah’s boundaries. Fadhil had chosen to walk rather than ride, and Azzad went along with him to carry his satchel of medicines.

“You don’t have to act as my apprentice,” Fadhil said irritably.

“You were favoring your right shoulder last night,” Azzad replied, “and you never walk unless your back is aching so much that you can’t ride. I’m not the only one who observes symptoms, Fadhil.”

“And pleased with yourself for it, too, Chal Azzad,” the Shagara answered with a little smile. “Very well. Yes, my shoulder is troubling me, and I believe I rode too far with the boys the other day, which is why my back hurts.”

“Can’t you cure yourself?”

“Sometimes it’s wiser to allow the pain to work itself out. If it does, good. If it doesn’t, there may be something else wrong that curing the first might mask.”

“You’re the tabbib,” Azzad said, shrugging.

“Indeed I am.”

Their destination was a cottage just outside town—one of the prettiest properties in all Sihabbah, in fact. Nestled beneath a stand of towering pines, with a view down the whole valley, it was the home built for Feyrah this spring when she had given over the entirety of the family business to her daughters and nieces. She and her sister now lived there, tending for amusement and pleasure a garden of exotic herbs that Azzad had ordered for them from the barbarian lands to the north.

Except for trees, which were the most important of all Acuyib’s gifts, plants rather bored Azzad. He appreciated flowers because of Jemilha’s delight when he gave her a bouquet; he acknowledged the usefulness of herbs for healing; he had his favorites among the spices that flavored his food; he valued the grains that fed his horses. But all these required constant care and cosseting, season after season. A tree, once established, settled down and went about the business of growing. If not an eternal thing, the way a mountain’s bulk or a desert’s vastness was eternal, a tree was as permanent as a mere man could wish to see. It simply was, and continued, and for reasons he didn’t understand he found this notion a comfort.

But this garden of Feyrah’s interested him, and the interesting thing about it was the fascination it inspired in Alessid. The boy liked nothing better than to ride up here after lessons and help the ladies tend the plants. For someone as physically restive as Alessid, a liking for the gentle occupation of gardening was perhaps the last thing one might expect. Azzad had asked him about it once, and received a muddled sort of reply that boiled down to: I like to find out the differences and the samenesses. An interesting boy, to be sure. Azzad sometimes wasn’t quite sure what to make of him, but knew he’d enjoy watching what the boy made of himself.

The ladies welcomed their visitors with all the usual warmth, plus that bit extra always reserved for Fadhil. A new harvesting of herbs was produced and exclaimed over; there were significant hopes for a powerful painkiller from an infusion Fadhil spent a great deal of time discussing with Feyrah, and this told Azzad much about the reason for this long walk today.

As qawah was served—outside on the patch of grass, for it was a lovely day—and the newest recipes for smallcakes were sampled, Azzad watched his old friend with worry in his heart. Fadhil moved with a kind of studied grace these days, as if his brain must constantly remind his body what walking and reaching and shrugging looked like to others so that no one would notice his pain. It was only when the younger ladies arrived for their daily visit that Azzad pushed aside his concern and exerted himself to be charming.

They had news for him.

“Yet another one, al-Ma’aliq, we can scarcely credit it!” Yaminna told him as he selected the choicest cakes for her as a gentleman ought. “He wasn’t like the one who came this winter—”

“His hair didn’t have that reddish cast,” Lalla interrupted. “I mean, it did, but it was obviously hennah.” She giggled suddenly. “Yaminna, do you remember the time you had a notion to become a redhead—”

“And I had a terrible time correcting the damage,” Fadhil said. “Shame upon you, Yaminna, trying to improve on the glory Acuyib gave you.”

“I repented, Chal Fadhil,” she replied, laughing. “Ayia, how I repented!”

“Something else about this man,” Lalla said. “He had dyed his skin as well as his hair. The brown was all over his body, but in a few places not as well applied as in others. If you understand what I mean! But the point is that he was a stranger, though not one of them, even though he tried to seem so. His natural skin was golden, like Chal Fadhil’s.” She sat back on her heels with a What do you think of that? look on her face.

Shagara pretending to be Geysh Dushann? Ridiculous. But Azzad was too polite to say so. “I shall watch most carefully for a man with badly hennah’d hair,” he assured her.

In the normal course of things, the two men would have whiled away the afternoon most pleasantly. But Azzad, alert to his friend’s attempts to hide pain, saw suddenly that he was also attempting to disguise unease. He was halfway through a gallant speech of reluctance to leave the ladies’ company when Yaminna leaned closer to Fadhil and whispered something in his ear.

He smiled at her and shook his head. “I thank you, but no. I am too weary to do you justice, I fear.”

On the walk back to town through the golden dusk, Azzad confronted him. “Tell me the truth. Are you ill?”

“No.”

“You look ill,” Azzad said bluntly.

“As you said earlier, I am the tabbib.”

“Fadhil—”

“I would rather speak of the Shagara who has disguised himself as an al-Ammarad—for can you doubt, from the description, that this is what he is?”

“Fadhil!”

A long, quiet sigh. “Very well. How old are you this year, Azzad?”

“Thirty-nine—and don’t remind me! The gray hairs in my head and beard—caused by my children, I swear it by Great Acuyib!—my age sneers at me from every mirror!”

“Would you like some of what I use to hide mine?” Fadhil gave him a sidelong smile. “No danger to one’s hair, unlike that awful stuff Yaminna tried—”

“What?” Azzad stared at him. “What are you talking about?”

Fadhil kicked at a stone in the path. “Among the Shagara, such cosmetics are not necessary. We know. We understand. But here—ayia, no one would believe that I am two years your junior if I did not dye my hair and beard. I am afraid, though, that in the last year or two, the lines on my face have betrayed me.” He glanced over at Azzad with another tiny smile. “There is no hiding them, you know.”

“Betrayed you?”

“Yes. They show what I am.”

“Everyone knows you’re Shagara—”

“There are Shagara and Shagara, as you know. At least, you know a part of it.” He held a pine branch out of Azzad’s way.

Azzad stopped, staring at his friend. “You mean about not being able to sire children?”

“That is an aspect of it. In the next year, my shoulder and my back will not be my only aches. I am fortunate in that my hands remain strong and free of pain.” He let the branch drop, and sighed again. “How old do you think Chal Kabir was when he died in 614?”

Recalling the tabbib’s appearance the year before, when Azzad had taken Farrasha and Haddid to the Shagara camp, he said, “More than seventy, less than eighty.”

“He was forty-one.”

Azzad felt his jaw fall open.

“Forty-one,” Fadhil repeated softly. “You have not seen Abb Shagara in many years, Azzad. He is my age—we were born almost on the same day. When I visited last summer, I saw what the cares of being Abb Shagara can do. His hair and beard are now almost completely white.”

“Ayia!” Azzad breathed. “Then you—and Abb Shagara, and those like you—”

“Within the tribe, we are called Haddiyat.”

“You use yourselves up in service to others,” Azzad heard himself say, the words coming from the instinctive place that was wiser than his conscious mind. Grief and guilt crushed his heart. “The cares of caring for us—what you’ve done for me and mine, especially since last spring—all the hazziri, and your blood in the paints—all the things that keep us safe from the Geysh Dushann—”

“Do not, Aqq Azzad,” Fadhil said swiftly, his fine, strong hands clasping Azzad’s shoulders. “It would happen wherever I lived, whatever I did. Some of the Haddiyat spend themselves in making hazziri for strangers, in healing strangers. I have been singularly blessed by Acuyib, because my work is done for people I love, for a woman and children I cherish as if they were my own—and a man who is my brother more than any Shagara could have been. How better should I spend myself than for love of you and yours, who are also in some ways mine?”

Azzad had no words now. He embraced Fadhil, remembering at the last moment not to grasp too strongly lest he cause pain. They had been young together, and Azzad had always assumed they would grow old the same way. He could not imagine growing old without Fadhil at his side.

“How long?” Azzad grated. “How long will you—”

Fadhil deliberately misunderstood him. “I will work as long as I can.”

“How long?”

This time he did not pretend. He sighed quietly against Azzad’s shoulder. “Do not grieve over me yet, my friend. I am alive and as well as any Haddiyat can expect to be at my age. I have never regretted what I am. And Acuyib has favored me beyond human reckoning. I have a good life, and it is not yet over.” He drew back a little, to smile into Azzad’s stricken face. Lines there were on his golden skin, and the frail dry wrinkles of a man half again his age, and a depth of weariness to him that now frightened Azzad. “Another secret to keep, to be locked away with all the others.”

“I won’t tell Jemilha,” he said thickly, letting Fadhil go. “Or the children.”

“I didn’t think you would.” His gentle smile widened to a grin. “Only please, Azzad, do take that pitiful expression from your face before we get home! Jemilha is no fool—and neither are your children.”

“But Sheyqa Nizzira is,” another voice said behind them. Both men whirled to confront a man unknown to them: young, perhaps twenty-two years of age, with a scanty beard and a reddish glint to his thick black hair. “You don’t recognize me, I suppose, Chal Fadhil. I was only a child when you left the Shagara tents. My name is Haffiz, son of Murrah, and I have come to warn you.”

“Warn of what?” Azzad asked warily.

“May we speak of this in a place more private?”

They walked on in silence, to a side path leading to a rocky promontory overlooking the valley. It had been one of Jemilha’s favorite sites since childhood; she had herself built the knee-high pebble castle, endearingly lopsided, next to a bench put there for her father and uncle. Azzad sat on the bench now, with a glance for the shadows sliding across the hills. Soon the nightly promise of Acuyib’s Glory that was the sunset would paint the land in fabulous colors, intimations of the splendor that awaited the faithful after death. A few hundred feet below, clinging to the side of the mountains, was Sihabbah; below it was the estate still known as the House of al-Gallidh. All at once Azzad felt the threat to its peace deep in his bones, an ache like unto the pain Fadhil had finally admitted today. Fadhil stood behind him, watchful and silent, as Haffiz turned his back on the valley and faced them to tell his tale. He had recently journeyed to the coast, with hazziri for the zouqs in several towns there. In one place, he heard of a party of al-Ammarad merchants, also there for trade, and put himself by way of observing them.

“But if they were merchants,” he said flatly, “I am the next Sheyqa of Rimmal Madar.”

“Geysh Dushann?” Azzad asked.

Haffiz nodded. “The same. And with much time to spare before their assigned kill, or so I thought, for they were drinking like horses ridden hard for three days. I disguised myself, as you see—” He gestured to his hair. “—and pretended to be an Ammarad trader, long resident in this land. They drank, and I drank, but I was wearing this to protect me from drunkenness.” He held up his left first finger, encircled by a silver ring set with an amethyst. “What I heard when we all stumbled back to their lodgings is what I will tell you now.”

“Which is?” Fadhil prompted.

“Nizzira is sending an army. Five hundred of the Qoundi Ammar, supported by Acuyib only knows how many foot soldiers. Their orders are to lay waste to all that Azzad al-Ma’aliq possesses.”

Azzad shrugged. “Nizzira cannot spare so many from Rimmal Madar and hope to keep the country in her palm. Her soldiers are her fingers, and the northern tribes will take advantage of her loosened hold.”

“I know nothing of this,” Haffiz replied. “I know only what I heard that night. The failure of the Geysh Dushann weighs heavily upon them—they are to meet this army when it comes ashore and guide it first to Hazganni and then here to Sihabbah. This is why they drank, to drown the voices of reproach in their heads for their failure to kill you all these many years. That night, they were angry. What they will do to the people of this land when they are both angry and sober does not bear considering.”

“Is this possible, Azzad?” Fadhil asked quietly, his voice hushed in the deepening shadows. “You know this Sheyqa. Would she do this?”

Azzad rubbed his beard. “The Geysh Dushann have known nothing but failure, as Haffiz has said. Nizzira could be that desperate. If my agent in Dayira Azreyq knows what happened to the sheyqirs, then others must—and such a thing cannot go unavenged.”

“As we have seen.” Fadhil paced a few steps from behind the bench to the cliff’s edge, then turned. “They have been preparing over these last months, then. Gathering themselves elsewhere. That is why there have been no attacks.”

Azzad nodded his agreement with this estimation. “And this is what I feared, my friend, when Abb Shagara made my enemies his enemies so many years ago.” And still Azzad had taken his vengeance, and still he gloried in it, and still he trusted to the Shagara to keep him and his safe. Had Jemilha been right after all?

No. Acuyib had allowed him to live, that horrible night long ago, and to know what had happened to the al-Ma’aliq. How could any man worthy of being called a man live out his life without exacting payment for such evil?

“You are not just ‘any man,’ Azzad,” said his wife’s voice in his mind.

Fadhil was pacing again, back and forth along the precipice. “The hazziri we once used against the invading barbarians—”

“—are old,” Haffiz finished for him. “And the men they were made for are dead these hundred years and more.”

Azzad clenched his fists. “I don’t want the people of this land to suffer, Fadhil.”

“A noble sentiment,” said Haffiz. “And I am reminded that when I reported all this to Abb Shagara, he gave me things for you.” From his sash he produced a fistful of gold, silver, and jewels: necklace, armbands, rings. The late sunlight glossed the finery in red-gold. “Not to replace the ones you wear now, but to add to their protections.”

“Abb Shagara is generous and wise,” Azzad said. He accepted the gifts, and had put on the two rings and one armband when Fadhil suddenly leaped toward him and snatched the necklace from his fingers.

“What is this?” he gasped. “Azzad, get rid of those—hurry!” His fingers scrabbled at the armband. “Haffiz, what have you done?”

“Righted a great wrong,” said Haffiz—and in a movement too swift for eyes to follow in the dimness, he stabbed a long, dark, needle-thin knife into Azzad’s arm.

Azzad grunted, more with surprise than pain. The knife slid from his flesh, leaving only a single drop of blood to stain his sleeve. Haffiz stood immobile, the knife shining clean now in his hand, watching as Fadhil emptied his satchel of medicines onto the ground.

“Traitor!” Fadhil spat, searching frantically through the chaos of vials and packets and small glass bottles.

“You are the traitor,” Haffiz replied calmly. “You dishonored yourself and the Shagara by selling your heritage to this gharribeh. He so corrupted you that you used your healing skills to help him mutilate—”

“They were his enemies, and thus my enemies.” Fadhil squinted at the label on a bottle, then discarded it for another. “Tell me what you used on him. Tell me!”

“No.”

Azzad regarded all this with a frown. It was but a pinprick, not even painful.

And then he realized that it should have been painful.

“He deserves to die,” Haffiz stated.

“For what reason?” Fadhil cried. He grabbed for a little silk pouch, opened it, ripped Azzad’s sleeve, and sprinkled whitish powder on the wound. Azzad could not believe that any pinprick so tiny could kill him—but he also knew how skilled were the Shagara.

“He brought new ways,” Haffiz said, as if that were the sum and substance of it. “With his horses for riding and his enemies that are nothing to do with us, he is as deadly as a disease. But he will die, and when I am known to be his killer, I will become Abb Shagara and lead our people back to the true path.”

“How did Meryem fail to discover your madness?” Azzad asked, and his voice to his own hearing was as an echo coming up from the valley far below.

“Madness?” His words came from blackening shadow. “Is it madness to kill you before the army of Sheyqa Nizzira comes—so that with you already dead, the land and the people will not suffer?”

Fadhil had chosen a vial from the litter on the ground, and forced it to Azzad’s lips. “Drink. Quickly.”

He gulped, and coughed at the sour taste. Surely this could not be happening. Not to him. Not now. Not after all he had been through and all he had done—

“As for Challa Meryem—she knew nothing of my thoughts or my plans. None of them did. More fools,” he added with a shrug. “She and Challa Leyliah will be the first to admit their errors and accept me as Abb Shagara, or they will be the first to die.”

Fadhil sprang to his feet and cuffed him across the face.

Haffiz staggered, tripped over the Jemilha’s little castle of pebbles, smashed it beneath his boot heel. He caught his balance, then coughed and spat out blood. “Another perversion. Would you sin against all Shagara by murdering a fellow Haddiyat?”

Azzad was not sure if the world was darkening because of the poisoned knife or the gathering dusk. But when his friend knelt before him and took both his hands, he knew. Even in the darkness he saw his own death in Fadhil’s tear-filled eyes. Numbness had spread up his arm to his shoulder, across his back, and would soon find both his head and his heart. It occurred to him that the Mualeef boy would be finishing his book rather sooner than either of them had expected. Ayia, an interesting ending to an interesting life.

But it was not yet over, and there were things he must say.

“Even if Haffiz is correct,” Azzad said slowly, “and Nizzira’s army spares the people, my wife and children will not be spared. See them safe, Fadhil. Please.”

“I will do it. After I kill Haffiz.”

“No. Do not break your ancient laws. He matters nothing.” He heard Haffiz suck in a breath at this insult. He wondered briefly why Haffiz was content to stand and watch Azzad die, then decided he must truly be mad, to think that killing a single man would solve all his problems, fulfill all his dreams, make him Abb Shagara. Fadhil was safe from him; Shagara tradition would not allow him to kill another Haddiyat.

“Azzad—” Fadhil’s voice was cloudy with tears.

“Take Jemilha and the children away. Now. Tonight. Take all the horses. Leave—” His lips felt cold and stiff. “Leave only fire behind you. Especially the maqtabba. They must not know the names of those I employ in Rimmal Madar.”

“It will be done, al-Ma’aliq. I will make all appear as if everyone died in the fire.”

As his mother and sisters and aunts and cousins had died. Perhaps it would work. If Fadhil left talishann enough, the Qoundi Ammar would believe. He tried to say this, but his mouth was reluctant to form words. It didn’t matter, anyway; Fadhil would know what to do.

But there was more he must say. He struggled, purposely biting his tongue to feel pain, refusing to be frightened when the response was sluggish and muted, and managed, “Children—tell them—”

“I will, Azzad. I will tell them how much you love them.”

A long while seemed to pass. He seemed to hear the shrieking of a hawk somewhere above the trees. He tasted blood, coppery-sweet, flooding away the bitter medicine, and then he could taste nothing at all.

Now, at the last: “Jemilha.”

“Yes, Azzad. I will tell her.”

Ayia, she was never “just any woman,” my Jemilha, he thought, wishing he could smile. The numbness that had claimed his lips reached his heart, and then, through the gathering darkness, his eyes as he looked down at the tiny lights that marked his home, where his children were, and Jemilha. Fadhil would see them safe.