The Diviner

11

Along and bitter journey it was from Sihabbah. Alessid spent much of it unable to see clearly for the tears that came to his eyes no matter how he fought them. Ayia, he was a man now and should be past childish weeping. But weep he did—though only at night, when Fadhil couldn’t see him in the moondark wasteland.

They rested during the hottest part of each day and rode on at dusk, stopping at dawn to graze and water the horses. Of all that had belonged to the al-Ma’aliq in Sihabbah, only the horses were left—those, and Azzad’s rings. Fadhil had shown them to Alessid, offered them silently in an outstretched palm. He shook his head sharply, refusing them.

He refused everything about his father now. He had to. Azzad al-Ma’aliq had been a fool—and Alessid knew that to be like him, to admire him, to love him still, would make of Azzad’s son an even greater fool.

He had always adored his father. He had wanted to be just like Azzad al-Ma’aliq: tall and handsome, always smiling, beloved by his family, cherished by his friends. Alessid, during near-sleepless afternoons and long, starhazed nights, examined the events of his own scant fourteen years of life and determined that from now on he would work very hard to be as different from his father as possible.

I am alive, he would tell himself when the tears blurred his vision. I am alive, and everyone else is dead. My Ab’ya is dead, because he was a fool.

Everyone knew the story of how Azzad had been dallying with a mistress in the city of Dayira Azreyq when the al-Ma’aliq were massacred. He had survived by the Grace of Acuyib, not through his own cunning. It had happened differently for Alessid.

It happened again and again in his memory as he rode to the Shagara camp. Again, and again, and again . . .

Mother was greatly annoyed when Father and Fadhil did not return for dinner. Later, after everyone had gone up to bed, Alessid was awakened by the sound of footsteps in the hall. Thinking that his father had at last returned, Alessid went to his door—about to open it and warn that Mother was very angry. Then he realized there were far too many footsteps, and a voice he didn’t know said, “Two more boys, and the two girls. The infant will be with the woman. Pay heed to their hazziri—we don’t know what Fadhil made for them.”

Geysh Dushann—again. But how had they entered past the protections? And how did they know Fadhil’s name? Alessid ran to his balcony, flung open the carved wooden screens, and shinnied down the flowery trellis to the ground. Moonlight shone on the garden and the pastures beyond—but brighter was the red glow from his parents’ windows. Before he could do more than blink, the glass burst and fire gushed outward like Chaydann’s gloating laughter from a fissure in the earth.

Alessid sprinted for the door of Uncle Bazir’s maqtabba. Within, he coughed on smoke gushing down from the upper floor. His mother, brothers, sisters—where was Father? Had he and Fadhil returned? Did they burn, too, in the inferno overhead?

Alessid heard more footsteps, and peered from behind the maqtabba door. Six men clattered down the stairs a mere jump ahead of the hungry flames.

“Ayia, we shouldn’t have been so merciful,” grumbled one man, “to kill them and all their servants before the fire took them. The walls have been silenced. No one would have heard them scream.”

Another man snorted. “More merciful than the Geysh Dushann would be—or the soldiers of Sheyqa Nizzira.” He paused to cough smoke from his throat. “Hurry. We must set the rest afire before we meet Haffiz at the boundary stone.”

“Did we get them all? The biggest boy was wearing no hazziri that I could see.”

It was then that Alessid knew that Addad, son of his mother’s favorite maidservant, his friend and playmate all the fourteen years of their lives, had been mistaken for him and had died in his place. Their rooms were not so far from each other, a circumstance that had allowed for much midnight mischief in the past. Knuckling his eyes, Alessid slipped out the back door and looked upward. The whole top floor was burning. The roof above his parents’ chambers fell in with a horrific crash. And just as al-Ma’aliq had died nearly twenty years ago, so al-Ma’aliq died tonight.

Alessid could see moving shadows through silk curtains on the ground floor. He dragged a heavy wooden bench over to the doors, blocking them. Only then did he see the runes drawn over Fadhil’s subtle and beautiful patterns, like smears of spoor marking a trespassing animal’s usurped territory.

He ran back to the garden doors and to barricade them toppled two of his father’s prized potted orange trees. For the kitchen door, he used a bench and a pile of large wooden toys the younger children had left in the yard—Zellim’s painted wagon, Azzifa’s rocking horse, Meryem’s doll-cart. At the front of the house, he put his shoulder to the stone pedestal and bronze basin where guests washed their hands before entering the house. None of these barriers would hold for long, but he didn’t need much time.

He ran for the stables. Mazzud and Annif, who slept above, surely should have awakened by now. So, in fact, should the whole of Sihabbah. Silencing the walls was one thing; disguising the sudden blaze of flames and the acrid smell of smoke was quite another. Alessid recalled his father’s tales of how empty the streets of Dayira Azreyq had been, how he had seen no one but the royal guard. There had been no spells then, but there was magic here tonight. The assassins were not Geysh Dushann, and not of the al-Ammarizzad—and they had scrawled Shagara symbols on the walls and doors. Perhaps other symbols had been drawn on other doors and windows tonight, and the people of Sihabbah would not know what had happened until the estate burned to the ground.

Alessid heard horses screaming. The fire would spread, and the horses knew it. He kicked open doors and flung open stalls, and they fled at the gallop. He yelled for Mazzud, for Annif, for anyone at all. There was no reply. Last of all he freed his beloved Zaqia, pausing to bridle her before leaping up onto her back. He tried to rein her around into the streets of Sihabbah, thinking to alert the town to the danger. But she was having none of it; she reared once, whinnied, and her iron shoes struck sparks from the stable yard cobbles in her flight.

She finally slowed, responding at last to his hands and heels, in a forest clearing miles from Sihabbah. She had found others of the al-Ma’aliq herd—in their terror, they had jumped fences previously judged too high for them. Alessid spent a long time gathering strays, usually with only a few sharp whistles that alerted them to his presence. They seemed relieved to find him, and their stablemates, and by daybreak Alessid had rounded up almost sixty horses.

He had watched, hidden in the trees, as solemn women carried his father’s body down from the mountain. He had seen Fadhil weeping as the grave was dug. He had been near to tears himself when Fadhil embraced him with cries of praise to Acuyib for sparing this one last al-Ma’aliq. The scenes played over and over in his memory as he rode farther and farther from Sihabbah. And Alessid ended each repeat of that terrible night with a curse and a vow. He would have vengeance—but not the pale imitation of it his father had exacted. Azzad had only hurt al-Ma’aliq enemies. Alessid would destroy them.

In the months that followed, Alessid became one of the Shagara; but for the darkness of his skin, so unlike their burnished golden complexions, no one would guess that he was not a true son of the tribe. A precocious adolescent, he came to emotional manhood without ever passing through youth. A year after losing his family, his body was just fifteen years old, his face had no beard, and his shoulders had not yet broadened. But the eyes that gazed unflinchingly at the world were those of a man grown, and grown older than the count of his birthdays.

Alessid knew all this about himself. With the example of a charming, thoughtless, carefree fool of a father behind him, a man who would not even have known how to analyze his own character—and would have seen no use for such analysis—Alessid ruthlessly subjected himself to scrutiny. Every motive, every emotion, every action and reaction, all were examined for signs of likeness to his father. And at fifteen, he was satisfied that there was nothing of Azzad al-Ma’aliq in him.

He knew that he had sacrificed charm along with self-ignorance. Smiles had departed when he rejected humor. The characteristics he despised in his father were the very same that had made Azzad capable of winning hearts. Even so, Alessid was sufficiently attractive to have won the most eligible girl in the Shagara tents: Mirzah, daughter of Challa Leyliah and her husband Razhid Harirri. And now that they were both fifteen, they were to be married.

Abb Shagara would preside over the ceremony. It would in all probability be his last official act. Though not yet forty, he looked and moved like a man twice that age. His chosen successor, who spent most of his time trying to hide his eagerness for authority, was a young man proud of his full black beard and abundant black hair, prouder still of his position in the tribe, and proudest of all of the name the Shagara had gained as breeders of horses. Alessid considered him a fool. But Alessid considered almost everyone a fool.

The exceptions were Chal Fadhil, Challa Meryem, Challa Leyliah, her husband Razhid Harirri, and their daughter, Alessid’s bride. Yet even the three healers had not his total respect, for they remembered his father with affection and sadness, and spoke of him often. Alessid thought of him only with contempt, and talked about him not at all.

The other exception was Abb Shagara. When it was learned that the al-Ma’aliq had been murdered by apostate Shagara, everyone else cried out in horror. Grimly silent, Abb Shagara stared long and hard at Fadhil, then went to the private tent where he did his work. Two days later he emerged, exhausted by his labors—for though he was not yet forty, he had not been young for many years—and ordered every close friend and near relation of the renegades brought before him. To each of these people in turn he gave a weighty silver bowl, newly made, studded with lapis. And then he asked his questions.

Did you know of their plans?

Did you help them in any way?

Are there others who believe as they believe?

What are their names?

In this manner he discovered twelve who knew, four others who helped their friends without knowing what their friends were truly doing, and the names of six Shagara not present at the inquiry who secretly supported the rebels.

Alessid watched it all, part of him believing in Abb Shagara’s method, part of him howling that Fadhil’s hazziri had not saved his family, and still a third part knowing that it was no fault of Fadhil’s, for the renegade Haddiyat had obliterated his work with their own. As the questions were asked, he sensed Meryem observe him closely, probably expecting rage or tears or cries of hatred or some other emotional display; he kept his feelings to himself, as his father had never bothered to do, and stood in silence at Fadhil’s side. Meryem could worry about him as she pleased. As Challi Dawa’an, that was her function in life. His was to wait until he was older.

That same evening he was summoned to Abb Shagara’s tent.

“Alessid. Take this.” Fadhil gave him the silver bowl.

Abb Shagara, reclining on cushions, regarded Alessid narrowly. “Lie to me, boy. How old are you?”

He started to say “Thirty-nine.” What came out of his mouth was, “Fourteen.”

“Does Khamsin still live?”

He tried to say “Yes.” What he said was, “No.”

Abb Shagara poured from a pitcher of hot, sweet qawah. His fingers were shaking a little, and his face was haggard with weariness. “Alessid, do you believe that this hazzir can pry the truth out of even those most determined to tell lies?”

This time he didn’t bother to attempt a lie. “Yes.”

Fadhil took the bowl from his hands, and bowed to Abb Shagara.

“The guilty will be executed,” said Abb Shagara. “Haddiyat or no, they deserve death for what they have helped to do. Those who assisted but did not understand will be watched by special hazziri until their loyalty is no longer in doubt. Does this satisfy you?”

“Yes,” Alessid replied. But it was as well that the bowl was no longer in his hands, for what he was thinking was, “No.”

The reason his father had been a fool was that he had allowed himself to be distracted from the true work of his life by the pleasures life could offer. These had been given him in abundance: family, friends, wealth, influence. Jemilha el-Gallidh had given him children and the power that came with land and money. His time with the Shagara had given him an invaluable asset in friends—and their magic. But Azzad had stumbled blindly into all of them, as if the most potent hazzir for luck ever made had rested against his skin from birth.

Alessid saw the world very differently: not as a marvelous place in which one might discover unexpected joy at any moment, but as a place filled with things and people to be used.

Children were meant for marriage alliances. Wealth’s power was meant to be hoarded until it would be spent most effectively. And brotherhood with the Shagara meant access to their magic, which was the greatest power of all.

Thus Alessid would marry Mirzah Shagara. They would have many daughters, who would marry men of strength and authority; they would also have many sons, who would bring kinship with important tribes. One of these sons might be Haddiyat—possibly even becoming Abb Shagara in time—and Alessid hoped this would be so. What such sons did not produce in grandchildren would be more than compensated for by their magic.

On the night of his wedding, he dressed in a new white wool robe and donned the two rings that would be his only jewelry until Abb Shagara placed the marriage hazziri on his wrists, he did not think as any other young man would about the night to come. He did not think of his bride’s sweet young body, or the wealth of her soft black hair, or the best ways to please her. He thought about the results of this night, or a night in the near future, and wondered if he would sire a son first or a daughter.

His father’s ring, the only keepsake of the al-Ma’aliq he possessed, glinted from his right hand. From his left glowed Bazir al-Gallidh’s pearl, given by that noble man to Azzad and taken, like the topaz carved with a leaf, from his dead hand by Fadhil. Both had since become hazziri through the efforts of Fadhil. The pearl gave health, purity, and wisdom; the topaz was for wealth, long life, and fame. Alessid intended to make specific use of his health, wealth, and long life. Fame would come as it would; he cared nothing for it, except as it would provide confirmation of his destiny. Of wisdom he had no need. He was already wise enough at fifteen to reject his father’s example—no, to set his father up before him as an example of how not to live his life. As for purity—pure was the purpose of his life’s journey, and marrying Mirzah Shagara was its first step.

For the al-Ma’aliq, he would take final revenge on Sheyqa Nizzira.

For himself, he would take back what was his.

And he would take the Shagara and their magic with him.

On the night of his wedding, Alessid waited calmly inside his tent until dusk. At length Razhid Harirri shoved aside the tent flap. Alessid glanced up quickly from the book in his hands. The ceremony had begun.

Mirzah’s father was dressed in a black robe and headcloth and carried a long knife in each hand. These blades he pointed threateningly at Alessid, who pushed past him out into the dusk. A dozen other men in dark clothes were there, also armed. After a few moments of turning this way and that, seeking a way out, Alessid capitulated. Mirzah’s eldest brother, another Fadhil, tied his hands before him, and Razhid forced him to walk forward at the points of both knives at his back. A crowd of women assembled quickly—whistling, stamping their feet, and calling out ribald remarks on Alessid’s youth, looks, and probable sexual prowess. He forbade himself to blush.

When they reached a newly made tent, woven of sand-pale wool and decorated with gifts of hazziri, Abb Shagara emerged from it, wearing a robe of embroidered golden silk.

“Who is this man?” he demanded.

Razhid replied, “He is called Alessid, from the tribe al-Ma’aliq. I think he will do for my daughter.”

“For what reason?”

“He is a Believer in Acuyib’s Glory. He is of an age with Mirzah. He is strong. He is rich in horses, though not in sheep or goats.”

“You may think he will do for your daughter,” scoffed Abb Shagara, “but what does her mother think?”

Leyliah came out of the tent, arrayed in all her finery—including a white silk scarf embroidered with snowflakes. She took a torch held out to her by Meryem and made a great show of inspecting the captive. “He seems acceptable,” she said at last, and winked at Alessid.

“Will he please your daughter?”

“If he doesn’t, I will have his head on a brass plate with his skewered balls for garnish,” growled Razhid, expertly flourishing both knives.

The crowd applauded with whistles and more laughter. Abb Shagara held up a hand, and they settled down, anticipating the next act in this little drama.

“Bring your daughter,” he ordered, and Leyliah clapped her hands twice, and Mirzah came forth. “Do you accept this man?”

Alessid, who had gone along with the absurd ritual so far out of respect for the Shagara, forgot his own part entirely when he saw his bride. Mirzah was a small girl, lightly made, with a pure golden skin and her father’s subtle, heavy-lidded eyes. To Alessid, she had never looked older than twelve. But tonight her mother had dressed her in amber-colored silk embroidered in gold, and enough jewels to purchase the finest seaside mansion and all its lands besides. Covering her was a gigantic silver scarf, a transparent silken glimmer that covered her from head to knees, as if she walked within a cloud. Suddenly Alessid was minded of the Lessons of Acuyib about the essential mystery of Woman, veiled to Man until the moment of their joining. And that moment was suddenly too far off for his liking.

Someone in the crowd hooted, and everyone else laughed, and Alessid knew his reaction to her was on his face. Disturbed, bewildered, he told himself this was just Mirzah, familiar and, if not precisely beloved, then at least dear to him for the children they would have. He regained control of his expression and told himself he was a man, and it was only proper that a man look with desire on the wife he would sleep beside all the rest of his nights.

But he could not deny his sudden eagerness for this first night to begin, and not only because a son might come of it.

“Ayia, daughter,” Razhid said, “I’ve brought you a husband. Look him over, and tell me if he is to your taste.”

Advice both practical and indelicate was shouted from all around as Mirzah inspected him from behind the sheer silvery veil. He hoped he had never done anything to offend her—because she could legitimately retaliate now by telling her father she wanted to see Alessid stripped naked. And this was precisely what the women of the tribe were encouraging her to do.

The ceremony of taking a husband was a relic of a long ago time when Shagara fathers raided other tribes, brought the men to their daughters, and asked if they would suit. If a man was rejected, he was sent around to other tents where any unwed girl could claim him if she wished. If there were no takers at all, he was given food, water, and directions back to his own tribe’s camp. Razhid Harirri had been famously wed to Leyliah in this manner—after choosing him, she had arranged for Abb Shagara to take him to every other woman in the tribe before finally coming to her tent, and then she pretended great reluctance in accepting him. He had entered into the teasing with zest, making a great show of pleading with each girl to take him as her husband, “For surely the last unwed girl Abb Shagara offers me to will be the ugliest, stupidest, least desirable of all!” Razhid and his wife shared a sense of humor that to Alessid was utterly incomprehensible. And as he stood there while Mirzah walked slowly around him, he was afraid that their daughter might similarly indulge herself.

There was a completely different ritual when Shagara married Shagara. Fadhil had argued for Alessid’s right to this—an infinitely more dignified process—but Abb Shagara had sulked and complained that they hadn’t had a real abduction marriage all year and he wanted to have some fun.

Mirzah seemed determined to provide him with it. As the women yelled demands to strip Alessid (“Make sure exactly what you’re getting, girl!”), she circled him slowly, drawing out the moment. He stood frozen, a muscle in his jaw twitching, and flinched when a trailing edge of her scarf brushed his hand.

At last she stood in front of him, looking up at him through silver silk, and smiled just a little before turning to Abb Shagara. “I suppose he will do.”

There were groans of disappointment and cheers of approval, and Abb Shagara waited them out before saying, “Then the man Alessid of the tribe al-Ma’aliq is accepted by Mirzah Shagara as husband. He shall live in her tent, and father her children, and become our brother. Do you agree to this, my people?”

None but shouts of approval now, and Alessid felt a soft, stirring warmth inside him. Something deep, and profound, and more exciting even than Mirzah’s tantalizing glance at him from beneath her silvery veil. These people were his people now. They accepted him for his father’s sake, yes, but now, after this year with them, also for his own.

Abb Shagara gestured, and Alessid remembered that now he was supposed to lift his bound hands. As he did so, Abb Shagara said, “Alessid alMa’aliq, you may choose to accept this marriage freely, and take the Shagara as your own tribe. Or you may resist, and be forced to wear hazziri to bind you to her and to us. Whichever you choose, never doubt that you are well and truly married to this girl, and the only means of separation is a divorce of her choosing, not yours. Shall you be free, or bound?”

“Free. I accept the Shagara as my own tribe, and Mirzah as my wife.”

Abb Shagara untied his hands and replaced the ropes with armbands of his own crafting—one gold, one silver, both set with gems and carved with runes. Then he lifted the scarf from Mirzah’s face, and once more Alessid was astonished by his reaction to this familiar girl. She had never been pretty before. She had never looked so happy before. Was it truly because she was marrying him? Women were a mystery, indeed.

Abb Shagara arranged the scarf across her shoulders, leaving her shining black hair uncovered, and fastened about her neck a gold hazzir on a short chain, also made by him. The he stood back, and gestured with both hands.

“Mirzah, here is your husband. Alessid, here is your wife. Acuyib be praised!” As the cheering swelled, he turned to Alessid and complained, “You could have put up a bit more fuss, you know. I was looking forward to some resistance. It’s much more fun that way.”

“Why should I resist what I have wanted this year and more?” Alessid asked, and took Mirzah’s hand. And wanting it more every moment, he thought, and hoped his eyes were telling her so.

That night, very late, after the feasting and dancing and singing had quieted somewhat, he again took his bride’s hand and led her to her new tent. Outside were wind chimes that rang sweetly in the cool wind: for happiness, for love, for many children. Inside were bright cushions, beautiful rugs, and an iron brazier for warmth in the winter night.

Mirzah removed her veil in a swirl of silk, and folded it carefully away in a small wooden chest. She stripped off the belt, rings, earrings, bracelets, necklaces, and hairpins that were the collected finery of all her unwed friends, and sorted them by owner for return in the morning. It was considered a good omen to lend jewelry to a bride, in the belief that her happiness rubbed off.

At last she stood before him in the dim glow of the coals, slim as a flame in her loosened amber dress, the hazzir glinting in the hollow of her throat.

“Ayia, husband?”

He looked her up and down, much as she had done to him—but without any sense of teasing her. Abruptly uneasy, he asked, “Would you have taken me if I had been stolen by your father from another tribe?”

“Oh, yes.” A tiny smile quirked her full, soft lips. “But I would have asked to see you naked first.” She untied the ribbons at her neck. “I would ask now, but virgin men are notoriously shy.”

“And Shagara women are notoriously bold.” He froze. “Who says I am virgin?”

“I do. And so does Fadhil.”

He mentally cursed his father’s old friend. But in mid-invective he was struck by a horrible thought.“Are you—your father told me you had never—”

“He did not lie, Alessid. My father never lies.” Suddenly he saw that her fingers were trembling. “I could have, when I was fourteen. But then you came to us, and I decided that each of my children will not be only Shagara—though that is enough pride in itself—they will also be al-Ma’aliq, descended of powerful sheyqirs.”

So he would be her first, as she would be his. He had a momentary twinge of nerves. What if he couldn’t please her? In the next instant he relaxed, for if she was as inexperienced as he, she’d never know the difference.

Because of him, because she wanted her children to be al-Ma’aliq, she had refused to bear a child to prove she could do so, and perhaps provide a Haddiyat for the Shagara as well. He drew himself up proudly, knowing she valued him more than her own traditions.

But what if she were barren? What if she could not give him the sons and daughters he required? They could not divorce except by her declaration—and the onus would be on him, not her. That was how it was done with the Shagara; a woman who did not conceive within three years of marriage divorced her husband for infertility and married someone else. It held even for women of other tribes who wed Shagara men. What if—

There was only one way to find out.

At least she was as ambitious for their children as he was. They would make fine babies together, Shagara sons and daughters descended from sheyqirs. He had to believe that. He had to convince himself that she—

“Alessid,” said Mirzah, “I know that you are often away elsewhere, even when you are standing before me. I don’t mind it, not usually. But I do mind it very much when I am standing before you like this.”

He looked, and saw. Abruptly—urgently—he wanted to find out if he and she could make babies together.

But within a few scant minutes, he forgot about babies completely.

“Good! Excellent! Now sweep to the left—the left, Hassam!—and attack!”

Alessid watched his “cavalry” maneuver their horses across the plain. They were far in advance of the main caravan of Shagara, on their way to the winter encampment. For more than a year, since before his marriage, Alessid had been drilling more and more youths his own age and slightly older in the techniques of armed, mounted warfare. This was all a secret from their elders.

In this generation, one of the marks of full manhood had become the acquisition of one’s own horse. Alessid had come to the Shagara with his own mare, Zaqia, and fifty-six more horses besides; by the standards of the Shagara, he was insanely wealthy. Eventually he would be the one gifting young men with horses, and their loyalty would be to him.

Azzad al-Ma’aliq had always gelded the colts marked for sale. He warned buyers of fillies that as strong as they looked, they were too delicate to be bred to the native studs. “Try it, and you’ll end with a dead foal that has killed its mother.” Three times it had happened, and that had been enough to convince people that the al-Ma’aliq mares must not be bred. And so Azzad had kept total control of the supply.

Alessid had to admit that his father had been clever in this, at least. The Shagara and the Harirri were clever, too, following the same policy. The descendants of Khamsin and the Geysh Dushann stallions were kept separate from the huge draft horses, trained differently, and doled out to boys when they became men.

Now, as Alessid watched his troop sweep down on an imaginary foe, he stroked Zaqia’s sleek neck and smiled. They knew the basics. Soon he would teach them more complex tactics. And their horses, trained for riding, would be trained for war.

“Alessid! Alessid!”

He turned in his saddle, scowling at the sight of a lone rider galloping toward him. A quick whistle broke the lines of cavalry into chaos that would disguise their maneuvers as a game of yaqbout—he only hoped someone would be quick about putting into play the stitched sheep bladder that served as a ball. Fortunately, the man riding toward him was not the observant sort regarding anything but medicine.

“Your wife has birthed the child!” shouted Nassayr.

Alessid gripped his saddle. Fadhil, Meryem, Leyliah—all had said Mirzah’s time was another month distant. “She lives?”

“Of course—Chal Fadhil is with her. And the baby is fine—a strong son!”

“Acuyib be praised,” he whispered, then heeled Zaqia around and galloped the four miles back to the main caravan.

Fadhil was just emerging from Leyliah’s wagon. Alessid leaped down from Zaqia to embrace him. “Fadhil! I have a son!”

“Yes, and a second time yes.” The healer grinned wearily. “Nassayr raced away to tell you before he knew there was more to tell. Twin sons, Alessid. A very good omen. Come and see.”

Mirzah lay on piled rugs, her mother kneeling beside her. Leyliah smiled and held up two babies, one cradled in each arm.

“Beautiful,” Alessid said, looking at his wife.

“Now I know why I could get no sleep,” she replied with a sigh. “When one stopped kicking, the other started!”

“Have you named them yet?”

“Kemmal and Kammil,” she replied. “’Beautiful’ and ‘perfect,’ because that’s exactly what they are. I hope you approve,” she added—for courtesy, because the naming of a child was the mother’s prerogative. He had wanted something a little more powerful, but was well-pleased with her choices. At least Mirzah had not followed her mother’s suggestion; at least she had not named a son for Azzad.

“They’re very fine names for very fine boys.” He knelt down to inspect his sons, taking one into his arms. “Which one is this?”

“Kammil,” said Leyliah. “You can tell by the white yarn around his wrist. We put yellow on Kemmal.”

Staring first at one and then the other, he appreciated Leyliah’s wisdom. The boys were as alike as two ears on a horse. All at once he began to laugh. The al-Ma’aliq dynasty had begun.

12

Alessid had been expecting the summons to Abb Shagara’s tent. Creating the impression that he was not expecting it, however, took some doing. The normal course of his day was to rise at dawn, start the fire outside in the stone pit and set the water on to boil, then wake his wife. They shared a large mug of qawah together—outside, if the weather was fine, to watch the sunrise gild the desert and spark white off distant snow-covered mountains—then woke the children for the morning meal. After this, he went to greet his wife’s parents, and he and Razhid tended and trained horses until noon. Another meal at his wife’s tent, a brief rest, an hour spent listening to the children’s lessons, and he was back with the horses until dusk. It was a calm, rational, productive, well-ordered life, and very little ever happened to disturb it—or the self-discipline with which he conducted it.

But today would be different. Today he must be readily available while appearing to be vitally busy. He lingered inside the tent until Mirzah chased him out. Rather than leave the vicinity, he spent a great deal of time inspecting the sand-colored wool for imaginary worn spots. He hauled out his best saddle and polished the silver hazziri, then did the same with the bridle. He scrubbed iron grills and pot hangers, cleaned ash from the firepit, and was in the middle of rebuilding the entire circle of stones when at last Abb Shagara’s fourteen-year-old nephew came to him.

“Alessid,” said Jefar, “if you have time, Abb Shagara asks for your presence in his tent. If you have time,” he repeated diffidently.

Alessid was well aware that the new Abb Shagara had not phrased it that way. If anything, it had been a direct order—”Bring Alessid to me instantly.” How he regretted the death of Meryem’s wise and whimsical son. But the successor was the one he must deal with, and a haughtier man he could not imagine. Jefar, however, was a polite boy, deferential to his elders, and in awe of Alessid’s horses, so on his lips brusque command became respectful request.

Quite deliberately, Alessid took his time. He washed his hands and face, donned a fresh robe, and told his eldest daughter that he might or might not be back for the noon meal. Ra’abi, twelve years old and in charge of her sisters when her mother was otherwise busy, looked up at him through long black lashes.

“Will you come hear our lessons? Jemilha and I have learned a new song.”

“I wish very much to hear it, but I cannot promise to return in time. Why don’t you sing it for Grandfather Razhid?”

“Because we want to sing for you!”

Alessid cleared his throat. Ra’abi was the most imperious of his girls, fretful for the day when she would rule her own tent. “I will try,” he said. “Ayia, I cannot keep Abb Shagara waiting.”

“You’ve washed and dressed, and that takes time, so you can’t be in that much of a hurry—”

“Ra’abi, enough.”

He was the only one who could quell her. She bent her head submissively—though her small fists clenched at her sides. “Yes, Ab’ya.”

Alessid walked with Jefar through the encampment. Since last night, when Abb Harirri and Abb Azwadh had arrived with a dozen each of their strongest young men, the usual calm efficiency of the Shagara had been disturbed. Not by much; nothing much ever agitated the composure of these people, a thing Alessid found comforting. Perhaps it was the timelessness of the desert wastes around them that produced such peace. Or perhaps the word was balance—between the eternal dry wilderness and the undying hidden spring, between the winds that in winter lashed storms of cold rain and in summer stinging sand. This balance was not the precarious one he would have imagined. There was a space in which the Shagara and other wandering tribes existed, a space as unchanging as the land. They knew its dimensions, its dangers, every plant that could heal or kill, all the signs and signals of scents on the wind and colors in the evening sky. They altered nothing about its qualities and rhythms, knowing how to live with it and within it. And, Alessid reflected, when one did not worry about having to change the land every year to grow crops, and when one knew precisely what must be done to survive and even to thrive, the orderly round of life took on a tranquility of purpose. It was not a gentle serenity—life here was harsh and demanding—but the Shagara did not contend with the land. They were part of it, and to battle against it would be like battling themselves.

But the presence of Abb Harirri and Abb Azwadh had caused a stir. Alessid knew from the rumors brought to him by his wife that there was a battle coming, and as he entered Abb Shagara’s tent and bowed, he hid his eagerness for the day.

Abb Harirri was the father of Mirzah’s father Razhid; Abb Azwadh was the great-uncle of Alessid’s son Addad’s wife. Both men were in their vigorous sixties, lean and tough, their full beards only slightly grayed. They were men accustomed to command, not entreaty. Alessid greeted them as the kinsmen they were to him, and at Abb Shagara’s gesture sat on a pile of carpets. He was never remiss in his respects toward the man; besides, he knew he could afford to be generous. He was well aware why the Harirri and Azwadh Fathers were here.

Young Jefar poured qawah for them all, handed round a small silver plate of delicacies, and retired to a corner of the tent. Although Abb Shagara’s servitor was supposed to become invisible, with downcast eyes and deaf ears, Jefar was as alert as a stallion scenting new mares.

“Your wife is well, and all your children?” Abb Harirri asked politely.

“I thank you, yes,” Alessid replied. “We hope for a son next year, to name Razhid for his grandfather.” He turned to Abb Azwadh. “I hope that my son Addad causes happiness in the tent of the beauteous Black Rose.”

“Ka’arli is with child, which is a great happiness for us all,” Abb Azwadh said, but his smile was fleeting. He had more important matters on his mind.

Alessid, on the other hand, was completely delighted by the news. He showed it only with a slow nod, for it would be unseemly to gloat over this new link to the mighty Azwadh.

“And your horses?” Abb Azwadh went on. “All goes well with them?”

It was the next round in the usual courtesies—but Alessid knew this was not mere civility but the beginning of serious discussion. “Forty-two foals this year,” he reported, “and thirty-eight now in training.”

“And those fully educated but not yet claimed?”

“Twenty-six.” There were in fact twenty-seven, but one of them was already privately bespoken by Jefar’s father. From the corner of his eye he saw the boy’s head jerk up, a blaze of joyous speculation in his dark eyes. An instant later he had resumed his self-effacing stance. Alessid was not surprised by his insight; Jefar was a clever, likable youth, and it was a pity Ra’abi was as yet too young to be considering him as a husband.

“Ayia,” sighed Abb Harirri, “let us pace no more around the water hole, but slake our thirst. Alessid, the Harirri and the Azwadh would like to purchase as many horses as you can spare. You know that the tribes have moved to certain lands each season since time began. The Harirri winter lands are within two days of Hazganni. Closer than we are comfortable with, but there it is. Yet Sheyqir Za’aid al-Ammarizzad contends that we are too near, and—”

“There have been raids, and deaths,” interrupted Abb Azwadh. “Our own winter camp is much farther from Hazganni, and yet our tents too have been burned and our people killed.” He paused, and his mouth vanished between his beard and mustache as he bit both lips hard together.

“There will be vengeance, Abb Azwadh.” Alessid spoke quietly.

“This is why we need your horses,” said Abb Harirri. “Riders on the swiftest of them can stand guard, and come to warn us of impending raids. When we move camp, they can range out to patrol the trails ahead, and—”

“—and keep those cursed Qoundi Ammar from attacking our wagons!” Abb Azwadh exclaimed. “This happened to the Tallib while traveling to their winter camp—seventeen killed, five wagons destroyed—”

“Your son and his wife are safe, Alessid,” Abb Harirri interposed smoothly. “In fact, I am told that Kammil led a group of young men on horseback to drive the raiders off.”

Alessid nodded his gratitude for the reassurance, but what he was thinking was that Kammil had done exactly what Alessid needed him to do, as if they’d planned it together. A clever boy. “The raiders wanted to stop the Tallib where they were, so that they would go no farther?”

“That is the opinion of Abb Tallib. Otherwise, everyone would have been killed. Being the stubborn man he is, he buried his dead and continued on. But there have been no more raids. Kammil organized twenty young men of the tribe as sentries—”

“—which is where we got the idea to do the same,” finished Abb Azwadh.

Better and better, thought Alessid, and sipped qawah.

Abb Shagara then spoke for the first time since Alessid had entered his tent. “I have told my fellow Fathers that as far as I am concerned, they may have these horses—and hazziri to go with them. We Shagara live far from any contact with the Qoundi Ammar. But just as we gave hazziri to the people along the coast to aid their fight against the northern barbarians long ago, so we must provide horses to the Harirri and Azwadh.”

Careful to keep his voice very soft, Alessid asked, “And allow them to do our fighting for us against Sheyqir Za’aid?”

Abb Shagara stiffened.

“We can do more than post sentries to warn of attack.”

“Ayia?” Abb Harirri leaned forward on his pile of carpets. “More?”

“Yes. More and better. We can do better than merely defending our people and lands.”

Abb Azwadh set down his qawah and clenched both hands into fists.

Alessid had known since last night that the time was now. He knew what he would say and how he would say it—but to have the moment fluttering in his palm like a captured bird caused his heart to race and his breath to quicken. He paused, calmed himself, and began to speak.

“For too long this seventeenth son of Sheyqa Nizzira has lolled in Hazganni, claiming to rule while in truth he tyrannizes. He has taken village after village, town after town, with all their fields and pastures and riches, and nothing is ever enough. He demands taxes, with which he decorates more palaces in more gold and gems. Now he encroaches on the desert—not because he knows how to live here, or because his limited mind perceives anything of value here, but because the Harirri and the Azwadh and the Tabbor and the Tariq and the Tallib and the Shagara do not pay his taxes and bend their heads in the dust to him. I say that we of the Za’aba Izim never will pay either money or respect. I say his soldiers have taken for him all they are going to take. And I say further that it is time to take back what is ours.”

He had them now, and he knew it. The idea that had come to him when he was but fourteen years old, during the long ride with Fadhil to the Shagara camp, had finally been expressed. It rested contented in his palm now, wings folded, and even sang to him, and he begged Acuyib for the words that would make its music sweet and powerful in the ears of these powerful men.

He looked at their eyes, and saw resistance only in the darkly narrowed gaze of Abb Shagara. But the others—they were hearing the song. And so he risked the other idea, an even sweeter one.

“And when I say ‘ours,’ I mean all the people of this region.” Alessid saw their brows arch. They were not quite ready for this, not yet, but the timing was too propitious. “Abb Azwadh, your brother lives on the coast, watching over your trade. His wife comes from Hazganni. Abb Harirri, your mother’s brother took a wife from Beit Za’ara, and one of their sons lives in Bayyid Qarhia. I was born in Sihabbah, where people still remember my family. We all have kin and friends in all parts of this land. They are like streams of blood that flow among all the villages and towns and camps. Sheyqir Za’aid has polluted many of these streams and filled many others in with sand. I say that it is time to purify.”

Jefar had completely forgotten the restraint imposed by service to Abb Shagara. He was staring at Alessid with fire in his eyes and in his cheeks, and not even a scathing glance from his uncle could quench him.

“When I was a young boy,” he went on, “I had an interest in growing things. I collected plants from the wide corners of this land, watching as they grew, discovering their properties. A thing I noticed is that it took very little effort to make them thrive. They knew their native soil—”

“Your father, I am told,” observed Abb Harirri, “planted whole forests.”

Alessid nodded, and for once in his life was pleased to acknowledge the man who had sired him. “He did, and it was wisely done. And it proves my point. Trees brought from Sihabbah grew happily in many places where such trees had not been known before . . . until the al-Ammarizzad destroyed them. They and their kind are not in their native soil. I say it is time to uproot them. And further, I say it is time to unite all tribes in a single purpose: the obliteration of the al-Ammarizzad from our country.”

“For your vengeance,” snapped Abb Shagara, no longer bothering to hide his scorn. “What was done to your family—”

“—was done by apostate Shagara,” Alessid reminded him. “And yet—what drove them to it? They thought that by murdering the al-Ma’aliq, Sheyqir Za’aid would leave off his planned attack. They were wrong. It was thought that with control of Hazganni and a few other towns, Sheyqir Za’aid would leave off his conquests. This also was wrong. It has taken him nineteen years, but now he threatens even the desert. Anyone who thinks that the al-Ammarizzad will stop after a few tents and wagons have burned will be not just wrong, but dead.”

Abb Azwadh stroked his gray-streaked beard. “Abb Shagara has mentioned that when the northern barbarians invaded a hundred and fifty years ago, the Shagara made hazziri for those who fought. Would it be possible—?”

“With respect,” Alessid said, “it is not only hazziri we require. We must fight, and there is only one way to do it.”

“On their terms—on horseback!” exclaimed Jefar from his corner.

“Out!” snarled his uncle. The boy fled the tent, and Abb Shagara continued, “What you are saying is abominable! I am as proud of the Shagara horses as any of us, and I know of at least a dozen hazziri that will protect in battle—but what you propose is—”

“—to cast out the usurper,” Alessid interrupted, “and make of this land one nation, so no one can ever again do to us what the northern or the eastern barbarians have done.”

“It would take time to organize a fighting force,” mused Abb Harirri.

“Only as long as it takes for your young men to come here and be instructed.” Alessid relished the way they all stared at him. “Come. I will show you.”

He was further impressed by Jefar when he discovered that the boy had summoned as many members of the cavalry as he could find. Thirty-eight were already saddling their horses, and twenty-six more were hurrying to do the same. Jefar had taken it on himself to saddle Alessid’s own Qishtan, only son of his much-mourned Zaqia. Alessid mounted, nodded his thanks to the boy, and gathered his troops. Desperately excited, ferociously proud that now the long, strict secrecy was ending, they responded with gratitude to his orders.

First, the smartly executed exercises in controlling their horses to behave as a single unit. Then the individual skills, showing the agility of horse and rider—and what a pair of hooves could do when they lashed out at an enemy, represented by bales of fodder. Finally, twenty men staged an assault against forty-four, and when the dust settled it was seen to be a victory for the smaller group.

By the time it was over, everyone in the Shagara camp and everyone who had come with Abb Harirri and Abb Azwadh had gathered to watch. When Alessid’s horsemen came galloping back to the outskirts of the tents, the cheers were as loud as the thunder of hooves.

He had expected it, of course—so spectacular a display could not but produce delighted pride in his people. But he had not expected his own name to be chanted to the skies so even Acuyib must hear.

“All-ess-eed!”

As his father Azzad had been spared in Dayira Azreyq nearly forty years ago, so there was a reason Alessid lived when all his family had died. Azzad had failed in Acuyib’s purpose. Alessid would not. He had these people with him, truly with him, praising his foresight and shouting his name.

“All-ess-eed!”

And there was nothing Abb Shagara could do about it. As Alessid led his cavalry into the small city of tents, Abb Shagara stood beside an awning, forgotten and furious. All other faces were elated: Abb Harirri and Abb Azwadh, parents who hadn’t a clue what their sons had been up to, boys who clamored to join their elder brothers and cousins, unwed girls who looked on these warrior Shagara with astonished fascination. Even Mirzah could not hide her satisfaction, though she tried very hard to present a composed expression and conceal any unseemly pride. Only Abb Shagara, narrow-eyed and stiff-spined with anger, disapproved.

Abb Harirri and Abb Azwadh went to the guest tents without saying anything to Alessid. Leyliah attended her husband’s kinsman, and Meryem escorted Abb Azwadh—who once, long ago, had thought to marry her. Alessid gave Qishtan over to Jefar’s care. He had no wish to join his troops in celebrating their triumph among themselves as they unsaddled and walked and rubbed down their horses—for the achievement truly was theirs, and they would enjoy it more freely without him. He wished to be alone for a time away from everyone else, to provide ample opportunity for discussion before he began to answer any questions.

So he went to his wife’s tent, where a question was waiting for him.

“Ayia, husband, I assume you wish your children to eat something hot for dinner and not starve, so may I—Jemilha, Za’arifa, you will hush while I talk to your father!—may I also assume there must be some very good reason why my firepit is half demolished?”

“Say rather that it is half finished, Mirzah.”

“A pretty point of distinction,” she retorted. “I suppose my father will allow us to borrow his fire to cook dinner. Go inside and hear the girls’ lessons. Not that they’ll make much sense, after the spectacle they just witnessed.” And, to belie her sharpness, she leaned up in full view of anyone with eyes to look and kissed Alessid on the lips. “I am proud of you, husband.”

“You will be prouder yet, wife.” He stroked her cheek with one finger, a rare gesture of tenderness, and went inside the tent.

“I am less surprised than others that you’ve kept all this secret.” Meryem nodded acceptance of the qawah Alessid served her but declined the candied fruit and nuts Mirzah offered. “The Shagara are, after all, accustomed to keeping their mouths shut.”

“But for ten years?” Leyliah asked.

“Nearly seventeen,” Alessid replied blandly. “At first I disguised my intent as lessons in the full extent of their horses’ capabilities.” He poured for Leyliah, then sat down on a small leather cushion usually occupied by one of the children. Tonight, the carpets and silk pillows were for their guests.

“A pity my son is not alive to see this,” Meryem said. “He would have enjoyed it appallingly.”

“And Fadhil,” murmured Leyliah.

“I regret this, too—more deeply than I can say.” Alessid sipped at his cup, then set it carefully on the low table. “I still miss them.”

“And even more so now, when you have a fool for an Abb Shagara?” She eyed him shrewdly.

“How large is the company of horseman, husband?” Mirzah spoke blandly, from mere idle curiosity, it seemed. But Alessid appreciated the two things she accomplished: deflecting an uncomfortable topic of conversation and letting Leyliah know that Mirzah was ignorant of his work. A lie of omission to one’s mother was as bad as a direct falsehood. Alessid understood that; he had never been able to lie to his own mother, Jemilha.

“At present, nearly a hundred, as you saw today.”

Leyliah’s gaze was as astute as Meryem’s. “And the number trained to war, who no longer camp with the Shagara? This is something Abb Shagara has not yet considered, I think.”

“He may be close to guessing, but he won’t know for certain until I tell him.”

“Neither will we,” snapped Meryem, flinging her long, silver-black braid over her shoulder. “So speak up.”

He repressed a smile. “Those who married into the Harirri, thirty-three. Five more than that with the Azwadh. Nineteen with the Tallib, twenty with the Tabbor, thirteen with the Tariq, and seventeen with the Ammal.” After a slight pause, he finished, “And those within the Shagara, who are trained but do not speak of it, two hundred and eighty-six—not including those you watched today.”

None of these three women ever revealed more of her thoughts or emotions than she wished. But as Alessid spoke the numbers, beautiful black eyes widened, and full lips parted, and golden skin flushed across high cheekbones—and Alessid realized all over again how supremely lovely Shagara women were.

“More than five hundred,” he finished, and gave them time to recover by pretending to be absorbed in selecting the perfect honeyed fig.

“How—?” was all Leyliah seemed able to say.

“The Shagara know how to keep a secret,” he answered calmly.

“And when—” Meryem paused for a large swallow of qawah to clear her throat. “When these others have instructed more young men—”

“I would guess the total would be about eight hundred,” Alessid remarked. “A more than respectable force, if correctly used.”

“How many does Sheyqir Za’aid have?”

“About a thousand in Hazganni. Thrice that spread around in the towns and villages.”

“And you know this because—?”

“I keep my ears open.”

“They believe us weak,” Meryem said slowly. “It is insulting—a mere four thousand warriors, for a land this size.”

“Yet they’ve held almost all of this country for seventeen years,” Alessid pointed out. “And what has anyone done about it?”

“You’ve been doing something for seventeen years,” Meryem said. “But you waited. It was not the training of men and horses that took so long, it was the uniting of the other tribes in outrage.”

He said nothing. She searched his eyes for a time, then shook her head.

Again Mirzah spoke, again quite mildly. “Of course, some of those who own suitable horses will be too old to fight. For the good of the tribes they must give up their horses to younger men who can—” She glanced at the closed tent flap, distracted by a polite rattling of the wooden chime. “Enter,” she called out, and to everyone’s astonishment, Abb Harirri came into the tent. Mirzah sprang to her feet, welcoming her grandfather with an embrace.

“Child, you’re looking more beautiful than ever. Leyliah, Challa Meryem, I swear to you that if I were not already married, I would carry one of you off to my tent. Or perhaps not, for how could I possibly make a decision to take one and not the other?”

The two women smiled, for, as time-honored as such extravagant compliments were, Abb Harirri truly meant what he said.

“No, I want no qawah or sweets, thank you. Abb Shagara gave me a dinner tonight that staggers me still. What I wish, if convenient, is a private talk with Alessid. With your permission, Mirzah?”

A few minutes later the two men were outside, walking through the soft spring night toward the thorn fences. Alessid waited for the older man to speak, but the words were a long while coming.

At last, when they were far from the tents, Abb Harirri said, “Tallibah is still without a child. I am afraid that she may have to divorce Kemmal.”

Expecting conversation about the horses and the cavalry and Sheyqir Za’aid, it took Alessid a moment to rearrange his thoughts. When he did, he was both disappointed and pleased. Only the former was expressed to Abb Harirri, though.

The older man nodded. “I too am sorry, but what can be done? Our friendship is separate from our kinship, Alessid—I hope you know this—but for reasons both of affection and of family I had hoped . . .” He ended with a shrug. “But you understand.”

“Yes.”

“I will of course support you in everything that benefits the Harirri.”

“My wife’s father is Harirri, and my children are of that blood. Whatever I do, it will be with the Harirri in my mind.”

“Then we understand each other.” Abb Harirri stretched widely, his brown silk robe glinting by moonlight with a delicate tracery of gold embroidery. “Tomorrow will be a strenuous day, I think. Discussions begin early. I will retire now.”

“Sururi annam,” Alessid said, and watched him return to the tents. For himself, he walked for a while longer in the fragrant night, considering this new information.

Neither Kemmal nor Kammil had sired a child. Alessid now was certain that they never would. And whereas he wished they could have given him grandchildren, they were of even more use to him for what they had proven: that the Shagara blood was strong in his line. The twins’ infertility was proof that Mirzah had borne two Haddiyat sons. When one of her daughters bore one as well, Alessid’s position with the Shagara would be secured. It would mean that the bloodline ran true.

But he could not wait for his girls to grow up and marry and have sons— and then wait for the sons to grow up and marry and be divorced. The time was now. He was thirty-three this summer. He had already waited nineteen years for his vengeance—the same amount of time Azzad al-Ma’aliq had waited. But Alessid had put those years to much better use than had his frivolous, charming father. Where Azzad had created an empire of trade, Alessid would create an Empire.

He walked slowly back to his wife’s tent. A little ways from it, he encountered Meryem. He would have nodded a good night, but what he had just heard from Abb Harirri and what he would do and say on the morrow made him stop.

“Challa Meryem,” he said formally, “I have just discovered that my two eldest sons are almost certainly Haddiyat. I think it might be time for me to learn precisely what this means.”

She was silent for a long while. Then: “I think you are right, Alessid.” And she led the way to her own tent, where she talked and he listened until dawn.

13

It was a clear, bright summer’s night when Alessid watched his son Addad, qabda’an now of his own hundred warriors, ride away to return to his wife’s tent at the Azwadh camp. The twins, Kemmal and Kammil, stayed.

“You know now what you are,” Alessid told his sons, who walked beside him through the sparse grassland where flocks grazed. Washed gray and silver by starshine, the shadows shifted with the intricacies of the breeze. “The first year, you did not suspect. The second year, perhaps you thought about it. But it is nearly the third year, and your wives have borne no children.”

He paused beneath a wool awning set up for the comfort of those who watched the goats and sheep. All the herders were out gathering the animals for the move tomorrow to a more remote location, the better to evade Sheyqir Za’aid’s soldiers. Two hundred of them had been reported at Ouaraqqa, the last town before the wastes began. Once all the Shagara wagons were safely distant . . .

Seating himself on a firm leather cushion, he put aside his plans for his enemies in favor of his plans for his sons. He took out his waterskin and drank briefly, then passed it to them. Their faces were impassive, and entirely identical but for the tiny scar above Kammel’s right eyebrow, memento of the only time he had ever fallen off a horse. Their skin was not quite as golden as Mirzah’s, but they had inherited the subtle eyes of her father Razhid. For the rest, their long noses, long limbs, and wide mouths were al-Ma’aliq. Handsome youths, sought in marriage by many girls, had they not been Haddiyat, they would have fathered many children.

Had they loved their wives? Would they miss the girls they had married? He did not know. He guessed it might be painful for them if he asked. So he decided he would never ask.

“Neither of you has any aptitude for medicine, nor are you skilled in the crafting of hazziri. The best I ever saw either of you do was pound out a reasonably round pair of copper cups for your mother’s birthday.” He smiled a little, partly to show their lack of skill did not trouble him, partly to show his affection for them, and partly because Mirzah treasured those cups as if they had been set with jewels by Abb Shagara himself. Wobbly, comically dented, the talishann for warmth lopsided and clumsy, they had never functioned as intended—though now she knew this was not because her sons had no Haddiyat gift, only that they had no talent.

“Abb Shagara has told me he is waiting for the results of certain tests. We know what those results will be, you and I. The usual work of the Haddiyat is neither to your aptitude nor to your liking. So it may appear to you that your gift is no gift at all, and useless to the tribe. But I tell you now, my sons, you are absolutely essential to me.”

Kemmal wrapped his arms around his knees and swayed slightly back and forth. Alessid recognized it as a habit of childhood when he was thinking very hard. “You want us to work hazziri of a special, particular kind, a kind that Abb Shagara would probably not approve.”

“I do.”

Kammil was nodding slowly. With the measured style of speech of the noblemen he descended from, he said, “This summer we have reviewed with the mouallimas the lessons of long ago. What we did not fully remember took us but a short time to relearn. They have taught us more, and more esoteric, knowledge. Give us leave, Ab’ya, to consult with each other for a day, and we will tell you what can be done and not done.”

“You have that leave. Shall I tell you what I need, or will you be able to guess?”

Both young men smiled, and Alessid was content. They had grown in confidence and knowledge during their three years away from the Shagara, and now that they knew what they were, there was a new dignity and consciousness of worth. Whereas it had been difficult at first for him to meet them as men and not as his little boys, now he was glad he had chosen marriage for them instead of the other path.

The son of a Shagara mother with Haddiyat men in her line had two alternatives on reaching fourteen years of age: try to father a child on a Shagara girl who had chosen to give a baby to the tribe before she married (which many girls did), or wait another year and marry. If, after three years, no child had come of the marriage, the young man was divorced. There were formal tests to determine whether he was truly Haddiyat, but cases where infertility was the woman’s fault were rare.

The advantage to the marriage option was that a bond was formed with another tribe, the young man saw something of the world outside the Shagara tents, and when he returned to them, he was still only eighteen years old, with another twenty or so years of service ahead of him. The disadvantage was, perhaps, that he spent three years hoping in vain for a child. But every son of a Shagara mother with Haddiyat men in her line knew from childhood that his future might not include offspring.

All Shagara children were taught to read and write by the age of seven. The boys learned how to work with metals and alloys and jewels and to craft simple hazziri for the Haddiyat to inscribe. Those who showed a gift for the forge, for design, or for cutting or setting gems were apprenticed to special mouallimas, whether they turned out to be Haddiyat or not. The ones who were gifted, however—these were the treasures of the Shagara. When magic was mated with craft, the result was not only true art but true power.

Alessid had no interest in art.

He sent his sons to help the herdsmen if help should be needed this night, and he returned to Mirzah’s tent. The girls were asleep. Mirzah should have been packing for the move tomorrow. Instead, she huddled on a pile of rolled and rope-tied carpets, weeping in silence.

“Wife, what is this?” Alessid knelt beside her, and was astonished when she jerked away from his hand. “Mirzah, what’s wrong?” She refused to look at him. “You must not cry. It’s bad for the child.”

Her head snapped up. “What about my other children?”

“Mirzah—” He rocked back on his heels. “Quickly, tell me, is something wrong with the girls?”

“Ayia! By Chaydann al-Mamnoua’a, you are a fool!” She gave him a look of pure venom. “A mother should not outlive her sons!”

Alessid stared at her.

“I suspected—perhaps I even knew—but Abb Shagara came to me this morning and—” She pounded her fists on her thighs. “He made it real, Alessid!”

“Real?” he echoed stupidly.

“He said the testing was finished, and my boys—” She choked. “He told me what an honor it was—how pleased I should be! Of course he’d say so—he’s Haddiyat himself! He doesn’t understand!”

It came to him then, as it had not even when looking his sons in the eyes. Handsome, strong, obedient sons . . . young men who would grow old swiftly, as Fadhil had, and die before the age of forty-five, as Fadhil had.

Among the Shagara, being Haddiyat was the greatest honor a man could know. For the women who had birthed them . . .

Compassion ached within him—an unfamiliar emotion. He sought to gather his wife into his embrace. She once more shook him off.

“When you are busy killing,” she said in the coldest voice he had ever heard from her, “when you are taking back what the al-Ammarad stole, remember who it was who gave you the tools you will use until they are used up. Remember that they are my sons. Mine. Remember whose blood it is that made the blood they will bleed for you until they have no blood left.”

For the first time in his life, Alessid went onto his knees before another human being; he bowed his head down to the carpet and whispered, “Forgive me.”

Mirzah was silent a long time; he could feel her watching him. Then there was a murmur of thin silk as she got to her feet, and her voice came from very high over his head.

“Never.”

He remained there, having abased himself to no purpose, until long after she had left her tent.

They rode out in the early evening, the wagons and the warriors. It was midsummer and very hot even at night, and a breeze blew up from the Barrens that could sear the skin on a man’s face. It was a miserable time for travel, but travel they did, northeast toward the mountains.

At midnight, on the salt flats, at a crossroads only a desert dweller could have identified, the tribe divided. Fifty young men on swift horses stayed with the wagons to guard and warn. The rest went with Alessid: three hundred riders cloaked in pale desert colors, arrayed for battle, gleaming with hazziri, eager for the deaths of their enemies.

And as they parted from their parents and children and friends, the tribe began to chant. Alessid, having kissed his daughters—and bowed much lower to Mirzah than most men ever did, even to a woman, even to his own wife—rode to the head of the group and glanced back over his shoulder once when first he heard it. A tiny smile touched his mouth beneath the protective scarf over the lower half of his face. He showed no other reaction, and did not look back again. But he heard the chanting long after, and all the way to the village of Ouaraqqa:

“Ah-less-eed! Ah-less-eed! Ah-less-eed!”

His people were truly his. Though he had not been born one of them, he had taken their most prized daughter to wife and sired upon her three daughters and three sons, two of them Haddiyat. He had shown the Shagara a new strength in their most ancient ways. And he would soon give them power in this land equal to the power they had bestowed on him.

Self-critical, self-analytical, Alessid knew precisely why he was doing this. For himself, primarily—which caused him not the slightest shame. He did it to make sure the name al-Ma’aliq was not spoken in the same breath as failure, as disgrace. To regain what belonged to him. To provide for his sons and daughters a heritage unequaled in the history of this land. To give the death blow to Sheyqa Nizzira, who slumped in wheezing decay on the Moonrise Throne, watching with rheumy eyes as those who remained of her offspring who were still men plotted all around her.

To prove that, unlike his father Azzad, Alessid was not a fool.

He led his cavalry northward, glancing every so often at the toppled columns and shattered statues strewn over the hilltops. Long ago the Qarrik had been the conquerors here, building temples to their false gods in the towns from which they ruled—for a time, and not so very long a time at that. The people had rebelled, and the Qarrik, who had overreached themselves, had been vanquished. Then had come the Hrumman, fiercer and more warlike, thicker of muscle and more proficient at arms, marching across the land to take what the Qarrik had lost, reconstructing the shrines and reestablishing foreign rule. But in time the Hrumman had also been expelled. All that remained to mark the mastery here of either barbarian nation were a few fallen stones, a few headless statues.

So would the al-Ammarizzad fall, by Acuyib’s Will. Alessid would be His right hand, and the Shagara would be the sword in Alessid’s hand. But as much as he would use the Shagara and their magic—and his own sons—for his ends, in the same measure he felt bound to bring them to the prominence they deserved. What other people could do what they did? How dared anyone threaten them or the tribes allied to them?

A hundred and fifty years ago, other barbarians had come, this time from the north, and conquered—for a time even briefer than the Qarrik or Hrumman. The Shagara had been the key to their defeat. As he listened to the cadence of the hooves behind him, Alessid knew that representatives of all the Za’aba Izim rode with him, protecting the Shagara, who in turn protected them. It was a relationship as timeless as the wastes they lived in and as balanced. With their silence, the tribes defended the Shagara, who defended them against sickness, injury, and death. All Alessid had done was show them a new way of defense, necessary because his father had brought them new dangers by being a fool.

In many ways, he was doing this to apologize.

When the Qarrik and then the Hrumman and then the northern barbarians had been driven from the land, no one had thought to unite the tribes with the towns and form a true nation. No one had been given the vision given to Alessid by Acuyib: a united country, strong and safe and invulnerable.

It required the Shagara to accomplish it and, moreover, the Shagara in a position of prominence such as they had never before known. Alessid knew this must be so; Abb Shagara was of a different opinion. But, like all Haddiyat, Abb Shagara had grown rapidly old; he was thirty-seven and by the look of him would not reach forty. Though less than half Sheyqa Nizzira’s age, he was just as feeble and even more inconsequential to events—as irrelevant as the ancient broken columns and demolished statues littering these hills.

On the third evening, twenty miles from the town of Ouaraqqa, Alessid halted his cavalry for a quick and early meal. They would don dark cloaks and ride again when darkness fell, and circle the garrison by midnight. The Haddiyat had been heroically busy these last months, creating things they had never before been asked to create, with splendid results. Every rider wore a special hazzir, made of silver for magical strength, set with hematite for protection in battle and garnet for protection from wounds, and inscribed with four owls that gave patience, watchfulness, wisdom, and—most importantly in this endeavor—the ability to see in the dark.

But the subtleties of belief among his warriors affected the hazziri in strange ways. Those who had absolute faith (the Shagara, of course, and some others of the Za’aba Izim) were protected against everything but their own reckless folly. And Alessid did not allow stupid men to ride with him, whether they trusted Haddiyat skills or not. In previous skirmishes—he did not delude himself that these were true battles—the hazziri had protected the uncertain to a lesser extent than those who believed. The openly skeptical had taken a few wounds, which had not promoted certitude in their hearts. So this time, when the hazziri were given out, he let it be known that these were merely for luck. The Shagara, who knew better, kept silent. Alessid’s thought was that ignorance of the true power of these hazziri would prevent specific disbelief and therefore would protect even the men who doubted.

There was a kind of skewed logic to it, he supposed, smiling wryly as he ate his share of goat cheese and hard bread. If one didn’t know exactly what one was supposed to believe in, one could not disbelieve it. Ayia, he would see this proved or disproved tonight.

Kemmal and Kammil approached on descendants of Khamsin. His heart swelled at the sight of his sons—tall and handsome and strong, qabda’ans of a hundred riders each, everything a father could wish. For a moment he felt kinship with his own father, knowing that Azzad’s look of pride graced his own features now. And yet—

Pushing aside memory of Mirzah’s tear-streaked face and icy blame, he addressed his young Haddiyat. “Kemmal will lead the Harirri up from the south. Kammil, take the Tallib down from the north. When you are in position—” He stopped, seeing them exchange glances and tiny smiles in the dimness. “What? Is there a problem? Have you questions?”

“No, Ab’ya,” said Kammil. “It’s only that we’ve been over this a dozen times.”

“We know what to do,” Kemmal assured him.

“Ayia, then—go and do it. Acuyib smile upon you, my sons.”

“And on you, Ab’ya, always.”

As they rode off to organize their troops, Alessid berated himself for unnecessary repetition of his orders. His men knew what they were doing. In truth, his faith in his warriors was as absolute as in his hazziri—but he wondered if perhaps he was a little nervous. This was no skirmish with isolated contingents of Qoundi Ammar far from any settlement; this was the first time Alessid had attempted to take an entire town.

Though he had never been to Ouaraqqa, it was familiar to those of the Shagara who conducted trade for the tribe. He had spoken at length with them and studied the maps they had drawn, so when he gazed upon the town from the top of a hill, it was as if he had already been there a dozen times. Twice the size of Sihabbah, it sprawled at the bottom of a gorge, on the eastern side of a mountain stream that during spring runoff became a torrent. Ancient ruins on the western bank bore mute witness to foreign fools who had built on the flat flood plain rather than the slopes. Part of Ouaraqqa was mud brick, part of it was wood, and some of it—most notably the water mill that ground grain to flour—had been built of toppled stone temples from across the stream. Alessid thought about that for a moment, and smiled; the people of this land had turned the possessions of former conquerors to their own use. He wondered what of Sheyqir Za’aid’s he would employ once the al-Ammarizzad were gone the way of the Qarrik and Hrumman and the northern barbarians. He could think of nothing the al-Ammarad had established in this country but hatred—and indeed they had tried to destroy utterly the one thing about which he and his father Azzad were in accord: the wealth of trees.

But renewing that wealth would come later. Right now he must take Ouaraqqa.

Only starlight glinted off the stream, thin in midsummer. The mill was silent, the flocks were gone to high summer pasture, the winding streets were empty of townsfolk. Only the occasional Qoundi Ammar rode through on patrol. All this was reported to him by Jefar Shagara, who despite the objections of his uncle Abb Shagara had been given permission by his parents to accompany Alessid on this assault. He had been given his horse in advance of his fifteenth birthday—a four-year-old half-breed mare named Filfila for the peppery black-and-gray dapples that made her blend into the night shadows. There was no prouder warrior in Alessid’s cavalry. Nor, with the exception of his own sons, one Alessid would do more to keep safe.

Accordingly, he received the boy’s report and sent him to the rear of the company. Jefar was not happy, but neither was he skilled enough yet with a sword to join in the attack. Alessid stroked Qishtan’s glossy cream-gold neck and waited for his sons’ messengers. When they came,and told him the Tallib and Harirri were arrayed as ordered, Alessid touched the hazzir at his breast and roared the command to charge.

The Qoundi Ammar in their arrogance and their contempt for the people of this land believed that no one would dare attack a town they held for Sheyqir Za’aid and his exalted mother. Alessid knew with regret that this arrogance would change once this night was over, but he had chosen his target with this in mind. Ouaraqqa was important to its own people only as a prosperous market town, but to the military mind it was vital: It commanded the only pass through this part of the mountains. For this reason, it was garrisoned with a force of two hundred. With this place in his hands, Alessid could isolate the Sheyqir’s warriors who patrolled the south. Without support, without a home position, they would be easy prey for the Tabbor, whose lands they occupied.

It was risky in some ways; Challa Meryem had warned him that once liberated, the Tabbor might withdraw from the larger campaign. But he had to have Ouaraqqa to deny Sheyqir Za’aid this pass, and so Ouaraqqa must be taken.

The Tallib, with Kammil as their qabda’an, swept down from the north along the watercourse. And as they did, Alessid led his own troops in from the east, crushing the town on two sides. The Qoundi Ammar were roused from their garrison—the four largest houses in the center of town, commandeered without compensation for the owners. But their horses were not only penned far from the soldiers’ quarters, they were now galloping down the gorge—for, from the south, the Harirri with Kemmal leading them had freed two hundred pure white stallions trained for war.

“Slaughter,” Kammil said afterward, with admirable succinctness. And it was true.

Alessid, inspecting the town by dawnlight, heard the cheers of Ouaraqqa’s people and saw their grateful amazement that no one but Qoundi Ammar had been killed. His warriors had taken only minor wounds—and the ones who had were none of them Shagara. Moreover, they had separated townsfolk from enemy soldier as if they battled in full daylight. The most serious injury, in fact, was to a young Tallib skeptic who had not even been wearing his hazzir; he was knocked in the head by a low-swinging shop sign he hadn’t seen in the dark. After he came back to consciousness and learned how few of his companions had been wounded in the fighting, he was a skeptic no longer.

Alessid accepted the invitation of the town elders to share their morning meal. As they lauded his courage, his skill, his daring, and his brilliance over strong qawah and the softest bread he had ever eaten, he knew that it would never be this easy again.

14

All that remained was Hazganni. Alessid remembered the city from his childhood: a cheerful maze of shops, houses, mansions, gardens, warehouses, and the huge central zouq where once he and his brother Bazir had escaped Fadhil’s watchful eye for one whole delightful afternoon. The belting they had received that evening had been well worth the excitement. In the vast zoqalo, all manner of vendors sold a dizzying variety of merchandise: whole rainbows of bright silks and woven woolens, thread and yarn, buttons and lengths of embroidery, spices and candies, shoes and scarves and cloaks and gloves, pottery jars, brass plates, bronze bells, copper bowls, “silver” jewelry that was really tin, wooden toys . . .

There was also an array of “medical” specialists, hawking cures for the bald and the ugly, the sore and the lame, and every disease with which Chaydann al-Mamnoua’a had ever afflicted humankind. Bazir’s favorite had been an old man in the very center of the zoqalo who sing-songed his skills while pacing back and forth on a garish carpet, a gruesome collection of clamps and pliers jingling from a chain around his neck as he rattled a tray of successfully yanked teeth. Alessid, gazing down at the city from the hills, smiled to think that perhaps that same old man would be there, exhibiting his souvenirs to other wide-eyed, deliciously horrified boys. The great zouq had been a magical place, and Alessid had loved the tangle of it, the smells, the noise, the swift brilliance of color and movement.

But he was told that the zoqalo was nearly empty now, nearly silent. The local vendors were all too terrified to set foot outside their own shops, if any. The towers and walls built at Sheyqir Za’aid’s order kept folk from the countryside from freely entering the city with their wares. There was poverty within and without those walls. From a hilltop three miles from Hazganni, Alessid cursed Sheyqir Za’aid for the people’s sake.

For his own, he damned the man for destroying the trees. Not because his father had either planted them himself or encouraged others to do so; not because without them there was no protection from the ever-hungry desert; not even because of his childhood memories of playing beneath those trees. The groves would have made cover enough for an army twice the size of Alessid’s. Now there was nothing between him and Hazganni but miles of dead open country.

Turning his back on the city, he walked downhill to his tent. There, beside the fire, Jefar was brewing qawah for the qabda’ans. The warriors of the Za’aba Izim were consolidated now, over a thousand strong. They knew how to fight; every man had been in at least ten actions. Their horses—many of them pure white, captured from the Qoundi Annam—were fully trained to war. Alessid had kept them in their original groupings, one for each of the seven tribes. But they knew they must now become a single force, to take Hazganni.

Alessid stood apart for a few moments, surveying the qabda’ans. Despite having been divorced by their wives, Kemmal still led the Tallib and Kammil was qabda’an of the Harirri. Alessid’s third son, Addad, was in no danger of being divorced; his wife was hugely pregnant, and the Azwadh followed the husband of their beloved Black Rose as if he had been born one of them. Alessid had blood ties to the Ammal, as well, for Mirzah’s grandmother and great-grandmother had been of that tribe. The qabda’an of the Tabbor had wed Mirzah’s close cousin. Only the Tariq had no intimate ties to Alessid. The Shagara themselves were, of course, Alessid’s personal army.

Over a thousand, all told. Within Hazganni and patrolling its walls were more than twice that number.

Accepting the cup Jefar offered him, Alessid sat on a flat rock and addressed his qabda’ans. “Aqq’im, my esteemed brothers, we cannot storm the walls of this city. They will see us coming for miles, even at night with a dark moon. It seems to me there are two alternatives. Either we face them in open battle on the plain outside the city, or we destroy them from within.”

They all knew that neither would be easy to accomplish. Why should the Qoundi Ammar come out to do battle, when all they need do was laugh atop the towers? And how could anyone get inside a city so tightly shut that not even a snake could slither inside unremarked?

“If we could get inside,” mused Addad, “the people might aid us. Surely they know what we’ve done for others, what we hope to do for them.”

“Grandson,” said Razhid, “when Sheyqir Za’aid first came here, the people of Hazganni capitulated rather than fight for their city and their freedom. After nearly twenty years, can you think they would suddenly rise up?”

Addad sighed. “You’re right, of course, Grandsire. But surely there must be some who would aid us.”

“And how could we find them? Sneak someone inside and have him knock on doors asking if anyone would care to open the gates for us?” Razhid echoed his grandson’s sigh. “There may be some, as you say, who would help us—but there will be many, many more who would gladly sell us to the Sheyqir.”

Alessid nodded. “I don’t think it’s possible to get enough warriors secretly inside to make a difference. Yet how can we lure them out of their security into battle?”

“Do we have to?” asked Azadel Tabbor, a fiercely bearded man whose shoulder muscles bulged beneath his robes. “Could we not starve them out?”

Alessid raised a hand as if to ward off such an occurrence. “The people of the city would be burying each other long before the Sheyqir feels even the slightest pang of hunger. Our enemies are the soldiers of the Qoundi Annam, not the forty thousand people of Hazganni.”

“Al-Ma’aliq,” said Kammil, giving his father the formal title rather than calling him Ab’ya, “may I point out that we have what the Sheyqir does not?”

“More horses?” Tabbor asked, frowning. “Finer warriors? A better commander?”

Kemmal nodded acknowledgment of the compliment to his father, then glanced at his twin. “Those, certainly,” he agreed. “But I believe my brother has something else in mind.”

Two days later, his eldest sons came to Alessid’s tent and presented him with a plain wooden box. Inside, resting on black silk, was a simple rectangular plaque, three inches high and two wide, depicting an ibis in low relief. Inspecting it without touching it, Alessid listened to his sons explain.

“We reworked an existing piece,” Kemmal began, “for as you know we’re both terrible at design and crafting. Grandfather Razhid remembered that his grandfather had an ibis hazzir, for what purpose he didn’t recall, and that it had been passed to youngest sons at their marriage.”

“And now—?” Alessid prompted.

“Magic—both the silver and the bird. We set the sapphire eye to give dreams of loss. It was done in late morning, when it is most powerful.”

Kemmal said, “And the onyxes were done at midnight. One stone on the breast for doubts, the other atop the head for terrifying dreams.”

“Have you a plan for getting this to the Sheyqir? It is a magnificent piece, and he is greedy, like all of his kind, but suspicious. I can’t just send it to him.”

“There is among us one who volunteered to ‘betray’ our people,” Kammil told him. “He will say it is out of concern for relatives inside Hazganni, but he will make it obvious enough that he is simply a coward terrified of the coming battle—”

“A nice impression for them to have of us!” Alessid approved. “Go on.”

“This will be in his possession, but we haven’t decided if it is a token of his good faith, stolen from someone important—perhaps yourself, Ab’ya—as a gift for the Sheyqir, or if it would be more subtle to make it a family treasure with which he is reluctant to part. He feels confident that he can make either work and can get it into the Sheyqir’s hands.”

“And who is this supposed traitor?”

The twins exchanged half-glances. “Jefar.”

“Absolutely not.”

“Ab’ya—”

“No.” He stared at the hazzir for a time. “Should this reach the Sheyqir, will this frighten him enough?”

“Over time, yes.”

“How much time?”

They traded looks again. Kammil answered, “Perhaps a month.”

“We don’t have a month.” Alessid shut the box. “Make it more powerful.”

“Ab’ya—” Kemmal bit his upper lip. “These are things the mouallimas caution against. We Haddiyat learn the sigils and the properties of the gems, but there are certain applications—”

“—that are not done,” Alessid finished for him. “Do you see any mouallimas here? Do they ride with us, their swords ready to take Hazganni? Make it stronger, Kemmal.”

“With respect, Ab’ya—”

“Acuyib give me patience! If a man’s family is starving and a sheep is available to him and he knows how to slaughter it, he slaughters the damned sheep!”

“But if it is the only one left, his family will soon starve anyway.” Kammil met his gaze squarely. “Should we work this hazzir to be more powerful—to do actual harm rather than merely suggesting certain things to the Sheyqir’s mind—”

“Enough!” Alessid slapped his hands on his thighs. “I want this man frightened out of his wits. I want him sick with fear—in both his mind and his body. I want him plagued and tormented and leaping at the smallest shadow. Do you understand me? Either make this more powerful or think up something else.”

“Yes, Ab’ya,” they said together, and departed his tent.

Eight days later, on a fine, fair evening just before dusk, Alessid rode to a promontory overlooking Hazganni. The setting sun glowed behind him, turning his robe and his horse’s cream-gold hide to molten sunlight. The soldiers on duty in the tower saw him at once. An alarm drum pounded, and the walls bristled silver with swords and spears.

Alessid watched. A stray bit of whimsy left somehow inside him observed that the city looked rather like a prickleback hunching to bristle its spines: silly and ineffectual against anything larger than a snake. There was a lesson in it, he mused—the little animal trusted too much to its defenses against a particular enemy and had not the wit even to realize that other enemies could be much more dangerous.

Too, he thought, the wayward amusement diverting him again, it was a clever snake that knew a mouthful of spines was avoidable. All it had to do was find a single slender gap in all those defenses, slither through it, and strike.

At length, in a voice honed by years of training his cavalry in the wide wilderness, he shouted, “Soldiers of the Qoundi Ammar! Tonight your sleep will bring you dreams of the future! We show you these visions in warning of what is to come!”

Behind him, out of the soldiers’ sight, his men began to chant: “Ah-less-eed ! Ah-less-eed! Ah-less-eed!”

He let the sound wash past him, flowing down the rise to surge against the city walls like the ocean few of them had ever seen. If there was laughter among the Qoundi Ammar, and he knew there would be, it was drowned in the rhythmic tide of his name.

He smiled and rode away.

That night, wrapped in black cloaks and protected by potent hazziri, Kemmal and Kammil walked down the hillside. Silent as shadows and as invisible, they worked with swift thoroughness. On each of the four towers and at the midpoint of each connecting wall, they wrote and drew. By midnight, Hazganni was encircled with Shagara magic, delineated in al-Ma’aliq blood.

The next evening, just at dusk, Alessid once more rode golden Qishtan down to the hillock. The response was the same, with soldiers scrambling to their posts, but this time someone threw an axe at him. He watched it thunk harmlessly to the ground far from where he sat his horse, and smiled.

“Soldiers of the Qoundi Ammar! Tonight every bond in the city will loosen! Listen while stones shift against their mortaring, and know that the walls of the al-Ammarizzad are beginning to topple!”

“Ah-less-eed! Ah-less-eed! Ah-less-eed!”

Over dinner that night, Razhid observed, “Our old friend Abb Shagara, may his soul find splendor with Acuyib, would have loved this. And Fadhil would have been appalled—or at least feel compelled to give the appearance of it before laughing himself out of breath.”

Alessid poured more qawah for them both. “Ayia, if I didn’t keep Abb Akkil Akkem Akkim Akkar strictly out of my thoughts as I bellow at the top of my lungs, I’d be laughing so hard I’d fall from my saddle. And think what an inspiring picture that would be!”

His wife’s father eyed him. “Alessid, did you just make a joke?”

He thought for a moment, then smiled. “I believe I did.”

“Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone.” After a wry grin, Razhid grew serious. “How are the boys feeling?”

“Fine. Is there a reason they shouldn’t?”

“Surely you know what they’re using to write with.”

“Of course. I’m their commander.”

“And their father! They worship you, Alessid. And they’ll spend themselves for you,” he warned, “completely and unselfishly.”

“I know.” He thought of Mirzah and refused to let her father see his pain.

When his sons returned very late that night, Alessid was waiting for them with strong wine, fresh fruit, and new-baked bread. “How many more nights can you do this?” he asked.

“As many as you require of us, Ab’ya.”

But Kammil was almost too tired to lift the cup to his lips, and Kemmal didn’t say anything at all. Razhid had been correct; they were spending themselves for him without thought to their health. If they returned to their mother’s tent as wilted and pale as they were now, Mirzah would slit Alessid’s throat.

And she wouldn’t even wait until he was sleeping to do it.

“I think we will let the Qoundi Ammar wait before the next working,” he said to his sons. “Wait, and wonder, and grumble about the Sheyqir—” He had been speaking almost at random, trusting his mind to come up with reasons convincing enough that would save his sons’ pride, but now he smiled in genuine liking for the idea. “—and exhaust themselves inspecting every wall in Hazganni!”

Kemmal dutifully smiled back; Kammil dutifully protested, “We can continue as originally planned.”

“I believe it would be better to wait a day.” He said the words in such a way that they knew they were not to argue.

The next day while they slept, he took care of the restive elements among his cavalry. After a spring and summer of battles, every man was brashly convinced that he could defeat fifty Qoundi Ammar without breaking a sweat. They wanted to fight, and they wanted to do it now. Alessid appreciated and approved their zeal, but if all went as planned, they would do very little actual fighting for Hazganni. Where would all this energy go once they returned to their tents and the admiration of their people? It was a question that had been occupying his thoughts for quite some time.

That afternoon Alessid found a quiet place away from the camp and sat down to consider. His men would return to their tribes and renew the ancient balance of life in the wilderness: work, family, seasonal travel from one place to another. These places had been claimed by them forever; Sheyqir Za’aid had perturbed the natural equilibrium between the wasteland and its people, but had not Alessid done the same thing even while he was attempting to restore it? The men of the Za’aba Izim knew now how to make war to take back what was theirs; would they ever use these skills to take what was not theirs?

For one of the few times in his adult life he called up memories of his father, so that he could review his father’s memories. Rimmal Madar; Dayira Azhreq; the lying, greedy sheyqas who, not content to throw out barbarian invaders, had taken what had belonged to the al-Ma’aliq and made it theirs. Or attempted to. The al-Ma’aliq lands had never truly belonged to the al-Ammarizzad, any more than Hazganni and all the other towns and fields and forests and mountains of this country would ever belong to them. In truth, he could think of only one place and one people belonging entirely to and with each other: the desert and the Za’aba Izim.

As he sat through the long hours of the night, gazing down at the city—and especially the ruined groves—it was with a slow and certain understanding that he discovered why.

The Seven Names, the desert. The tribes were the land’s. They knew it, used it, cared for it. They knew the places where water, grazing, even fruit could be found; they hunted its animals and harvested its plants; they never lingered so long in one place as to deplete its resources. But how had it happened that the desert belonged as well to the Za’aba Izim? For Alessid knew it did; he had sensed it on some deeper level of his soul. It was not because they put walls around the desert, or drew adamant lines on maps, or defended it with their blood, or—

No. That was the reason. The blood. Especially the blood of the Shagara.

The sun and wind and water, the ground from which food grew—the herbs for medicine and the herbs for seasoning—all these things were within the Za’aba Izim and had been for uncounted lifetimes. Their bones and flesh and blood were made of the desert. In the Shagara, for reasons unknown and unknowable, that blood had turned into power.

The land itself had given them the means with which to protect and defend it. The land was theirs.

Not his. Not Alessid’s. He knew that. He no more belonged to this country than it could ever belong to him. He had not given it enough.

Mother, father, sisters and brothers, friends—

But not his blood.

Not until now.

It was nearly dawn before he roused himself. In the dirt he drew a rough map. The mountains here, the coastline there, Hazganni and Sihabbah and Ouaraqqa and other towns marked by pebbles. To the south was the Barrens; to the west, fine grazing and growing land; to the east, more wastes and then the Ammarad; and to the north, the Ga’af Shammal and beyond it the barbarian domains. None of it was needed, none of it even coveted. But great swaths of it were there for the taking.

An army’s purpose was to make war. Alessid had crafted an army that had defeated the best that Sheyqir Za’aid could field against him. This was not so remarkable as it appeared, as Meryem had pointed out.

“The Qoundi Ammar have no homes here, no families, no sheep they have tended or fields they have plowed. But look at the Tabbor—initially reluctant to fight, until their lands were threatened. And then they fought like demons. The wonderment of it is that once their own interests were taken care of, they continued to fight to reclaim the lands of others. Do you see what you’ve done, Alessid?”

He saw indeed. Where once Za’aba Izim and townsfolk had been almost strangers to each other, and the only bonds between them had been of language and trade, now they had begun to think of themselves as a single people, and all this land as theirs, together. It had not happened when the Qarrik invaded, nor the Hrumman, nor the northern barbarians from beyond the Ga’af Shammal. It had taken twenty years of Sheyqir Za’aid’s rule to make it happen—and, Alessid knew without vainglory, the presence of one man strong enough to unite tribes and townsfolk against a common enemy. One man who taught them how to make war in a new and terrifyingly effective way.

He would win. He knew it as surely as he knew his father had not been capable of this. Victory was a honey-sweet thing, and the people had discovered its taste and liked it—but what happened when the enemy was gone? Proficient in war, the tribes might fall upon each other—definitely a thing to be avoided. But without practice, the skills of war would wither, and anyone with an army could invade this land again. The Qarrik had done it, and the Hrumman, and the northern barbarians, and the al-Ammarizzad.

“It will not happen again,” he vowed quietly. “We will be strong.”

After Hazganni was taken and Sheyqir Za’aid was dead, there would be a tense time while everyone waited for Sheyqa Nizzira’s vengeance. Yet after that—? An army was necessary, but it was necessary to give an army something to do.

The first of the al-Ammarizzad had found a solution in Rimmal Madar. Deeply as Alessid despised the thought of borrowing ideas from his family’s enemies, he had to admit it made sense. The majority of men who fought to protect their homeland did so because they wished their lives to be what they had been: settled, serene. These men would sheathe their swords without regret and go home. But those who had a real talent for armed conflict—ayia, these were the men that had been formed into the Qoundi Ammar. Azzad al-Ma’aliq’s youthful ambition had been membership in this elite corps, and his reminiscences flooded Alessid’s mind.

Neither time nor contemplation would reveal any other solution. Those of Alessid’s army who wanted only to have done with war and go home, they would do so with his blessing and the gratitude of the Za’aba Izim. But those who enjoyed war—those who, he suddenly realized, found laughter in contemplation of battle, just as he did—those men he would keep.

He would ask Razhid to watch and listen and give him a list of names. And he looked at the map drawn in the dirt, and especially at the Ga’af Shammal and the rich lands to the north. Odd names they had: Granidiya, Trastemar, Qaysh. He wondered if he had not found something for his soldiers to do.

“Soldiers of the Qoundi Ammar! Tonight one wall of Hazganni will collapse! Tomorrow night, another wall—and then another, and another, until the towers are rubble and the city lies in ruins! You people of Hazganni who despise the Sheyqir, I do not ask you to rise up against him, for fighting is the work of warriors. My words are for the Qoundi Ammar. Those who do not wish to die, come out by dawn light and throw down your swords. By Acuyib’s Glory, you have the word of Alessid al-Ma’aliq that you will not be harmed. All those who refuse this offer of life, prepare yourselves to die!”

“Ah-less-eed! Ah-less-eed! Ah-less-eed!”

That night he went with his sons to the walls of the city. Clothed in black—and careful not to be seen, for the hazziri were theirs, not his—he walked beside them down a ravine and out on the flatland. Once there had been green crops here, graceful palm trees, sturdy pines. Now: scrub grasses, dry and yellow amid the stumps and charred corpses of trees. What had Za’aid al-Ammarad been thinking? Alessid shook his head. The man was a fool, and deserved to die as a consequence of his folly.

He saw no glint of swords. A light burned in each tower, but he was willing to wager that Shagara magic had everyone in Hazganni busy shoring up walls. As they neared the city, sounds echoing off the buildings confirmed it: shouted orders, clattering wood beams, the hollow ring of hammered nails. He very nearly laughed aloud.

A disembodied whisper and a hand on his arm slowed his steps. The hazziri truly were remarkable; he could see Kemmal only as a vague shadow against the starlit hills. “Ditch,” was all the young man said. Alessid nodded, and followed him cautiously downward, giving grudging acknowledgment to the cleverness of the Qoundi Ammar. At the bottom of the ditch were short, sharp stakes—made of wood, not steel that would gleam even by night, their angle and the dark smear of poison on their tips fatal to charging men and horses.

A brief climb, and they were at the wall. Alessid crouched low, watching as twin shadows drifted back and forth, back and forth. They had begged him to stay in the camp, but they needed a guard just in case, and who better than their own father, their commander? This reasoning had fooled neither of his sons. He wanted to be there, he wanted to witness this magic being conjured at his pleasure.

He knew they were drawing griffins and vultures in their own blood: retribution and death. He wasn’t certain which other symbols they used, but he did know dozens of bloodstones were being wedged into the cracks between bricks. Collected from hazziri worn by Shagara and Harirri and Tallib, Ammal and Tariq and Azwadh and Tabbor, they had previously been worked for beneficial purposes: to stop bleeding, to protect against scorpions, to purify the blood, to assuage grief. Over the past days Kemmal and Kammil had changed them, charged them with new purpose.

Kemmal had told him, “Were there clouds, we could persuade them through the bloodstones, and there would be a tempest. The same with wind, which also responds to this stone. But because there are no clouds and no wind . . .”

“One does not mock Acuyib by attempting to raise storms in late summer,” Kammil had added. “There is a balance to magic, a rhythm that intertwines with the world of which it is a part.”

“All I require is the toppling of a wall,” Alessid had assured them. “Nothing so gaudy as a storm.”

He listened to the frantic midnight noise from within the city and watched the dark and silent suggestions of men move back and forth nearby. Not fifty feet from him was an iron door in the wall. He looked at it longingly, wondering if he should have sent someone to steal inside and poison the Sheyqir’s well, or open the main gates for the army, or scatter hazziri around the barracks to unman the Qoundi Ammar, or—

No. It was better done this way, done with demonstrable magic. Everyone in the city would see that the wall had toppled without any visible attack.

At length he began to hear a low, silken hum. Frowning, he concentrated—and gave a start when he realized it was coming from his sons. Rising, falling, a tuneless song and a wordless chant, the sound soothed and stimulated all at once, and he was so intent upon it that the first he knew of the magic’s effect was when the wall at his back quivered.

Alessid scrambled to his feet as dust-dry mortar sifted down on him. The twins had done their work too well—the wall was not supposed to topple until tomorrow. Again he felt a hand on his arm, and the shadow before him murmured, “It begins—but it will be slow.”

“You’re finished?”

“Yes, Ab’ya.” Kammil’s voice was distant, exhausted. Alessid put his hands where he thought his son’s arm must be and held only empty air. The shadow had moved on.

They were back down at the bottom of the ditch, weaving their way through the wooden stakes, when they heard the footsteps. Kemmal and Kammil had not reported any patrols on the other nights of their working—another stupidity of a complacent, arrogant al-Ammarizzad. But footsteps there were, and Alessid froze, his sleeve a finger’s breadth from poison. He was trapped here in the lethal forest, hideously exposed and utterly helpless.

He looked over his shoulder. A single man, bent nearly double under the weight of a huge sack, trod heavy-footed to the iron door. He lowered his burden to the ground, wiped his brow, and drank from a waterskin at his belt. Alessid’s muscles began to ache with the strain of immobility and the thwarted urge to flee.

A few minutes passed. Then the door opened, silent on well-oiled hinges. A woman’s shape was limned by light from the small candle she held. The man swung the sack over the threshold as she groped in a pocket of her dark cloak for a small pouch, which she handed to him. Food, Alessid thought. Only a woman buying food for her family or for sale. With the cessation of regular delivery from the countryside for almost a month, people acquired food however they could. He watched the man shake his head and try to give back the pouch and deduced that he was a relative, perhaps a brother or cousin, unwilling to accept payment for keeping this woman and her family alive. At least the Sheyqir’s idiocy in not posting regular patrols allowed clandestine supplies to enter Hazganni. Perhaps some of the Qoundi Ammar were well-paid to ignore the traffic.

But the woman glanced over her shoulder nervously, as if worried she might be seen and caught. The man moved to close the iron door as she hunched over, grasping for a hold on the burlap. All at once she jerked convulsively, and pitched forward to sprawl across the sack.

The man stumbled, and cried out, and fell down dead, and five soldiers surged out the door, crimson cloaks swirling as the dreaded Qoundi Ammar spread out to search for other prey.

“That’s two,” a soldier said to his companion, “who’ll not be defying the Sheyqir’s orders.”

“Did they think us so stupid that we would not be watching, even when we seem not to watch?” another chuckled.

Alessid could not even tell his sons, his twin shadows, to escape. He dared not utter a sound. He found that he could not utter a sound. Yet it was not fear but anger that closed his throat and thickened his tongue within his mouth and sheened his skin with sweat. He had been as stupid as the pair now lying dead on the ground. He had put too much faith in Shagara magic to keep each and every member of the Qoundi Ammar working at the walls all night in terror of their falling down tomorrow. Instead, his enemies would fall upon him—it would be only moments before their questing eyes turned to the ditch—and his dream would die with him. His purpose, his hope, his desire, his reason for being alive, all would be gone. And without him—

He saw then the danger of investing all vision, all power, in one man. One mortal, killable man.

Over the renewed shouts within the city and the calls of the soldiers to each other and the thud of their boots on the sun-baked soil, Alessid heard a hiss of pain. An instant later he felt someone take his hand and force upon his thumb a ring that felt slick and wet. The world became darker, and the starlit edges of the stakes and the ditch and the hills beyond blurred delicately. And he saw, quite clearly, Kammil standing beside him, no longer wearing the hazzir of agate and opal and silver that rendered him invisible. The young man’s eyes were hazy with the lingering effects of his work, his face haggard, his shoulders sagging.

“Hurry—I’ll distract them.” His voice was scarcely a whisper.

“They’ll kill you—” This from Kemmal, still a shadow.

“I’m already dead.” He held out his arm, where the sleeve had been torn by a sharpened stake of poisoned wood.

Alessid never knew whether or not Kammil had grazed himself intentionally. It would be like him: a sacrifice to save father and brother, the act of a truly noble man. Alessid had time only to touch his son’s face with a shadowy hand before Kammil ran back up the slope and called out derisively to the Qoundi Ammar.

Alessid and Kemmal escaped. They reached the hills, and the encampment, and Alessid’s tent, and there Razhid was waiting. When he heard what had happened, he wept for his grandson, for in their shock and grief and exhaustion, his father and twin brother could not.

15

“Aqq Allim, my friend!” Alessid rose to welcome his kinsman into his private maqtabba. “What brings you all the way here from Dayira Azreyq?”

Allim grinned. “The squalling of my newborn son. I swear to you, I was three days out to sea before the echoes faded and I could finally get some sleep.” Tall and handsome like all the al-Ma’aliq men, he could have passed for the younger brother Alessid had named him. Only the cleft in his rounded chin was anomalous to their family, legacy of his late grandmother, Sheyqa Nizzira.

“My congratulations to his mother and to you—and to Oushta Sayyida. How fares she?”

Alessid served qawah with his own hands and settled with his cousin on piled pillows. He had two offices; this one inside the palace had a proper work table and chairs but also carpets and cushions to remind those who came here of his youth in the wilderness. The other maqtabba was a tent in the palace’s vast gardens, where he met with the Za’aba Izim. In it, there were no reminders of the city.

“The name of al-Ma’aliq was enough to conciliate the northern tribes,” Allim said. “They trust us, as they did not trust Nizzira. I am glad to report that Rimmal Madar knows a peace such as has not been known within living memory.”

“This pleases me greatly,” Alessid replied, nodding. Sheyqa Sayyida was a shrewd woman; the qabda’ans had been thinking of the immediate problem of Tza’ab Rih when they invited her to succeed her grandmother, but Sayyida had much more to offer with her al-Ma’aliq heritage. Peace with Alessid, to be sure—that was what the qabda’ans had wanted, and they got it. But there was peace with mettlesome northern tribes as well. Now both Rimmal Madar and Tza’ab Rih were free of disputes, free to thrive. Trade had doubled and tripled in the last two years, and everyone was growing very rich.

Allim sipped his qawah and suggested, “I would imagine you find the al-Ma’aliq name almost as helpful as my mother does? True, here it does not have the same long history as in Rimmal Madar, but your father was greatly loved, and his memory is yet green.”

Alessid made the required smile and nod: the former for the pun on his father’s nickname, the latter for the compliment. Allim then hesitated, as if about to lead into the topic he had come across the sea to discuss. But Alessid wanted to hear more about Rimmal Madar first—because he had a very good idea of what Sayyida had sent Allim to ask.

So he diverted the conversation by saying, “But have I heard something about your mother’s kin?”

Allim grimaced. “Chaydann al-Mamnoua’a has afflicted my mother with twenty-nine pestilences who are most unfortunately related to her by blood. I would not honor them with the term kin.”

Of the fifty offspring of Nizzira al-Ammarizzad, children and grandchildren, one sat on the Moonrise Throne. Sixteen were dead of various causes: war against the northern tribes, illness, accident, suicide—including poetic Reihan. The others who had been with Reihan lived in seclusion far from the court. That left twenty-nine relatives of Sheyqa Sayyida to plague her.

“My own mother is a gentle, quiet woman,” Allim continued, “who wishes only to tend her family and her country in peace.”

“Admirable.” Though it was of course a bald-faced lie; Sayyida would not have survived to inherit the Moonrise Throne had she been gentle and quiet.

“In fact—”

Ayia, here it was.

“—deeply as my mother loves my father, she often laments that he is not the kind of man who can rule a family the size of ours.” Another grimace. “Three of my brothers married al-Ammarizzad. They are quite despicably prolific.”

Sayyida had used those marriages to ensure her own survival in the years before her grandmother’s death. Presumably the time was not yet propitious for divorces, or perhaps the young men had grown fond of the ladies and Sayyida did not wish to make her sons unhappy and therefore dangerous. Alessid understood perfectly, however, that because the Sheyqa was without daughters of her own, daughters-in-law were the only candidates for the succession until granddaughters came of age. Another al-Ammarizzad ruling Rimmal Madar? Unthinkable. And unnecessary.

“With so many to be ruled,” mused Alessid, “it would be troublesome for even the cleverest man. More qawah?”

“Thank you. My mother,” Allim persisted, “to be quite frank, envies you your daughters.”

“And she wants to marry one of her sons to one of them, so that her grandchildren are doubly al-Ma’aliq—and have Tza’ab Rih doubly for an ally.”

Allim’s jaw dropped a little. Alessid smiled.

“Ayia, my friend and brother, it was not so very hard to guess. Sayyida is an astute woman. It is as well that you have no sisters, for I have no sons to send—one of them was divorced and no woman wants another woman’s leavings. My other son is happily married, with two children, and I would have every Azwadh in the country at my throat were I even to hint at a divorce from their adored Black Rose.”

Allim had recovered and said feelingly, for he had met the lady on a previous visit, “Any man who asked a divorce of Ka’arli Azwadh would be too stupid to find his own nose in a mirror.”

“Besides this, Oushta Sayyida requires an intelligent young woman who can keep her informed.”

“That is precisely her thinking. Would you consider it?”

Alessid pretended to do so, from politeness. At length he shook his head. “Ra’abi is the only one of an age to marry. Jemilha is but thirteen, Za’arifa ten, and Mairid only two. But I believe that even Ra’abi is too young to leave her home and marry a man she has never met and live in a place strange to her.”

“My brother Zaqir would of course come to Hazganni, so that she may see him before any betrothal is contemplated.” Blandly, he added, “It may be advisable for him to linger here. . .perhaps for several years.”

Alessid nodded with equal composure. Sayyida had waited many patient years to become Sheyqa of Rimmal Madar; all her sons presumably also knew how to wait. Allim, however, seemed determined to make sure one of his brothers did his waiting a long, long way from home.

“Zaqir is the youngest,” Allim went on, “and—though our mother pretends otherwise—quite her favorite.”

A tidy way of saying that Sayyida was already disposed to look upon this son’s daughters more favorably than the others.

Alessid mused, “I would actually consider sending her to Rimmal Madar, much as I would miss her—” He hid a grin as Allim’s eyebrows twitched. “—but for one thing. The Sheyqa Mirzah is Shagara. Though special leave was given for my sons and daughters to be called by my own name, they remain Shagara in all that matters.” Especially in the matter of the daughters who might bear Haddiyat sons. He had not the slightest intention of gifting his dear cousin, friend, and fellow al-Ma’aliq Sayyida with Shagara magic in the form of one of Ra’abi’s sons. “In that tribe, it is the men who marry outside the tents, not the women.”

“I am aware of this oddity,” Allim answered. “But as an exception has been made in the name they bear, surely a similar exception—”

Alessid shook his head. “I am sorry, but this is impossible. I greatly desire an even closer connection with Rimmal Madar. But my wife would divorce me if I sent him one of our daughters.”

“Divorce? Surely not! You have made her Sheyqa of Tza’ab Rih!”

“A task at which she excels. But she would be just as happy returning to her tent, and her family, and the ways of the Shagara.”

Allim set down his cup. “So if this marriage is to occur, Zaqir must come to live in Tza’ab Rih.” He actually managed to sound reluctant.

“Yes. And his children would be called al-Ma’aliq—without the al-Ammarizzad.”

Allim’s lips quirked in amusement, and it was Acuyib’s honest truth that came from his lips as he said, “He would not mind. He loathed our late unlamented grandmother even more than I did. Ayia, when I return home, I will tell my mother all this—and Zaqir, too. I think they will agree. The Sheyqa desires this marriage.”

Alessid nodded. He knew that Sayyida had in fact told Allim not to return without a firm commitment: The sons of Azzad’s agents in Rimmal Madar were now working for Alessid.

“Aqq Alessid, you have not asked what kind of man Zaqir is, or whether he would suit Ra’abi.” Allim’s eyes had narrowed slightly, but there was a gleam of humor in them—as if he knew very well that Alessid already possessed more, and more intimate, information about his brother Zaqir than did their own mother.

Alessid pretended to consider. “She will not be shy about stating her views. If he believes talking is important in a woman, he is either extremely wise or an absolute idiot. If the former, Ra’abi would admire him. If the latter—” He grinned suddenly. “—she would most likely slay him.”

“Ah. I begin to wish I was not myself married.”

Alessid smiled. “More qawah?”

“Would that we marry off the other girls so easily—and so exaltedly,” Alessid told his wife that evening.

Mirzah made no answer. She had put Mairid to bed and now sat on a couch upholstered in sky-blue silk, a basket of mending at her feet and one of Jemilha’s tunics in her lap. Alessid watched her needle skim in and out of the soft green fabric, taking almost invisible stitches with the speed of long practice.

Perhaps Sayyida had pretended to be a sweet, gentle, useless woman who preferred to sit, and sew, and ignore the larger world. Mirzah would never have done so, not even to ensure her own survival. Shagara women did not pretend meek deference. Earlier, Mirzah had described the arrival of the forty Tallib women whose turn it was to guest in the palace and her plans for their stay. Each tribe was invited to send their most important women for a month in spring or autumn, when the weather was most pleasant and it was easiest to travel. The visits were Mirzah’s idea, as were the small gatherings at which the women of Hazganni met and talked with the women of the tribes—and found that despite differences in their everyday lives they had much in common. Mirzah’s next project would be to take groups out to a special encampment the Azwadh had volunteered to raise near the city, so that women who lived in houses could see how their sisters lived in tents.

The forging of a united country was not accomplished solely through the fellowship of men in war. Eventually there would be hundreds of marriages among tribes and townsfolk, and by the time the grandchildren were born, the people of Tza’ab Rih would think of themselves as one people, not many.

He watched Mirzah’s needle glide through Jemilha’s tunic, and he knew he had not only a wife but a true Sheyqa.

Still . . .

“Why don’t you have the servants do that?”

Her shoulders, covered by a white silk robe and draped in a flame-colored scarf, lifted in a shrug. She kept on with her sewing.

“For nearly two years you have been Sheyqa, and yet you do your own mending. Mirzah, my wife, not only are there servants to do it for you, but it truly need not be done at all. Jemilha and all the girls can have as many new clothes as they wish when their old ones wear out.”

“This is her favorite. I can hardly get her to wear anything else. And it’s not worn out. The fabric is perfectly good. She merely tore a hole in it, climbing a tree.”

Since coming to live at the palace, none of the girls could be kept out of the trees. Alessid understood. He’d spent his childhood leading his little brothers up every tree in Sihabbah, much to their mother’s anxiety. Jemilha, though, had a special reason for risking scrapes and bruises: She wanted the best possible view of everything, so she could draw its likeness. From the first moment pen and ink were set before her, she had scorned making letters for the more complex delights of making pictures.

“She could climb a hundred trees and tear a hundred holes in a hundred tunics, and—”

“That she may do,” Mirzah interrupted, her fierceness startling him. “You may call me Sheyqa of Tza’ab Rih, and we may live in this echoing great cavern with a hundred people waiting on us hand and foot—but if I want to mend my daughter’s favorite clothes myself with my own sovereign hands, then by Acuyib I will!”

“You miss your own tent,” he said.

Another shrug, and another silence, and another series of fine stitches.

“I understand, Mirzah.” He was not overly fond of living in a palace, either, except for what it represented. And he had spent much time, effort, and money changing what it represented. Workers had spent half a year gutting it of Sheyqir Za’aid’s atrocities. Most were merely ugly: tapestries of garish and improbable flowers, dreadful furniture with not an inch left uncarved. Some were truly ridiculous: the Sheyqir’s own crimson porcelain commode, which had small braziers on either side so the royal member would not be chilled and a cushiony velvet seat so that the royal rump would not be chafed. A few of Za’aid’s decorations were appallingly obscene: Alessid didn’t like to think about the lewd paintings in the bedchamber. The seaside estate had been even worse. Mirzah had ordered the disgusting playground of the al-Ammarizzad emptied from cellars to roof tiles, and given it to her brother Fadhil to be turned into a dawa’an sheymma staffed with Shagara healers. For this alone, Tza’ab Rih praised their Sheyqa’s name.

“I do understand,” he repeated, and she looked up from sewing long enough to give him a skeptical frown. “Come, leave that. I have something to show you.”

“I’m not finished.”

“Finish tomorrow. Jemilha can live for a day without her favorite tunic, and climb trees wearing something else. Come.”

He led her through the family’s quarters, down a flight of stairs, and along a stone corridor to a large double door. The wood was carved with an intricate tree that disguised the juncture. On the left panel was a lion; on the right, a griffin. Both beasts wore crowns.

He saw that she comprehended the symbols at once. The lion that was his own name. the griffin that had become his personal icon, and the tree of life that was the Shagara.

“These will be your rooms,” he told her. “I had hoped to have them ready for your birthday, to surprise you—but I think tonight you need to see them.”

“My rooms now are perfectly adequate.”

“Mirzah, don’t be so stubborn!” He opened the doors and heard her catch her breath. All the gaudy, tasteless al-Ammarizzad ornamentation had been removed. The entry hall was a soothing square of green tile floor and white walls and four rounded archways, with an intricacy of gilded plaster-work molding that spelled out excerpts from The Lessons of Acuyib dealing with family joys.

“To the right are your reception chambers,” Alessid told his wife. “To the left, your private rooms. And straight ahead—”

He guided her toward the far portal. Beyond a carved folding screen was an indoor garden, but without plants. Instead, artisans had created a cool, inviting haven of rich color and gentle sound. From a central fountain water chirruped into a shallow square pool tiled in a whirl of blues. The raised edge was green, as were the floors and the walls as high as Alessid’s knees; a winding maze of gleaming trellises rose ten feet high, dappled with flowers. Above this the tiles were blue again, darker and darker as they rose to the ceiling: a deep sapphire dome misted with tiny silver stars. From the dome’s apex depended delicate silver hazziri on nearly invisible chains that chimed counterpoint to the fountain. An arching alcove in the north wall contained a carpet, a real one, of blue and green and rose, matching pillows, and a small recessed shelf for a lamp and books.

“This, too, is yours,” Alessid said softly.

Mirzah glanced up at him. “Mine?”

“Yes—and any guests you care to share it with.” He slipped an arm around her waist and drew her toward the softly carpeted alcove. “I was hoping to be the first... .”

She froze beside him. “No. There will be no more daughters to sell off in marriage—and no more Haddiyat sons that I will outlive.”

He touched her cheek, trying to soothe her. She jerked her head away. Telling himself to be patient, he began, “Kammel’s death—”

“—came too soon, even for one of his kind. How long will his brother live? Shall I go on having babies to replace the sons I will lose?” Her voice rose, her words quickened. “I’m young enough still. How many do you want, husband? How many sons and daughters does the al-Ma’aliq require?”

“Mirzah, you don’t mean this.”

“I mean it with every bone in my body, Alessid.”

“Ayia,” he said coldly, “then I will trouble you no more. There are other beds, after all.”

“Ayia,” she responded in the same tone, “and should I learn that you have lain down in one, I will divorce you as is my right and take my children back to the Shagara tents.”

Alessid al-Ma’aliq was not accustomed to being thwarted; still less was he familiar with being threatened. For a full minute he simply failed to react.

In that time his wife turned on her heel and left the ever-blooming garden he had created for her delight. He heard the soft whisper of her slippers on the tiles. The opening and closing of the doors. The mindless chatter of the fountain and the maddening tinkle of the hazziri. He looked around at the shining tiles—a mimicry of living things and glinting stars, a chill illusion.

To the unreality, he said, “Does she think I do not grieve?”

He left the cold tile garden and never set foot in it again.

Ra’abi el-Ma’aliq and Zaqir al-Ammarizzad el-Ma’aliq duly met, and genuinely liked each other despite the promptings of their parents’ ambitions. She was pleased by his looks, his manners, his elegance, his education—and his deference to her greater position here in Tza’ab Rih while never behaving as anything less than the sheyqir he had been born. For his part, he was pleased that not only was she as lovely as his brother Allim had said, and as clever, but her words were as interesting as they were abundant. In 654 they were wed, and a year later she bore a son. Mirzah wept when she was told the child was a boy, but by the time she went to see him her eyes were dry and she was smiling.

Mirzah remained Alessid’s Sheyqa, capable and conscientious, but she was no longer his wife. He was discreet about his infrequent pleasures. He might have taken an official concubine, of course, but as deeply as Mirzah had injured him, he would not injure her dignity by putting another woman in the palace. Indeed, he never took a woman inside its walls. Instead, when he traveled Tza’ab Rih—which he did often, showing himself to the people and familiarizing himself with their lives and problems—he invariably chose a young widow who never afterward remembered who her lover had been. Kemmal had been most obliging.

The young man had explained himself to his father on the night he offered the talishann. “I understand my mother’s pain. I understand the guilt she feels. Because of her, I am gifted with that which makes me honored among the Shagara, that which allows me to do what other men cannot. But because of her, I will never father a child, and I will be dead at an age when other men are not even old.”

“You may understand, but I do not. Other women have borne Haddiyat sons—Meryem, Leyliah—”

“She suffered greatly, losing Kammil so young,” Kemmal murmured. “Forgive me, Ab’ya, but I think I may be the only one who knows what she feels. He was my twin brother, as close to me as my own thoughts.”

Stung, Alessid said, “He was my son, too.”

“I do not think she ever allowed herself to acknowledge that Kammil or Addad or I might be Haddiyat—just as she does not speak of it regarding her brother Fadhil. But now she cannot escape the knowledge.”

“You mean to say that if she could be guaranteed only daughters—”

“Yes. Only watch her with Mairid. The joy of a girl-child is unencumbered.” Kemmal paused a moment, then said, “I know that you cherish my mother. I know you would prefer to be her husband rather than another woman’s lover. To go from woman to woman reminds you too much of your own father, and the tales told of—”

“Be silent!”

“Forgive me, Ab’ya. All I would add is that for your own health, you should not be emulating Sa’ahid the Chaste, content to chant The Lessons every night until dawn.”

And then he had presented his father with appropriate hazziri and instructions as to how they worked.

With Ra’abi happily married to Zaqir, Jemilha was next. She chose Ka’ateb Tallib from the young men presented as suitable. Her sister Za’arifa, barely fourteen, decided at the wedding that Ka’ateb’s younger brother was the man for her and made the next year unbearable with her impatience.

There was never any further question about where his daughters’ husbands would live. Not only were the girls Shagara, who therefore did not leave the tribe, but one did not marry a son into the family of the Sheyqa of Tza’ab Rih and then negate the advantage by keeping him and her in the desert. The young men were their families’ conduits to influence, and they all knew it.

The day after Za’arifa’s marriage, a delegation from Ga’af Shammal begged audience with Alessid. Invited to the wedding for courtesy’s sake, they made the long journey for curiosity’s sake and were dazzled by all they saw. In the audience hall they came straight out with it: they wished to become part of Tza’ab Rih.

Their unmannerly directness offended Mirzah. Standing at her side where she sat in the plain wooden chair she insisted on, scorning the silver throne left here by the al-Ammarad, Alessid felt her fingers claw stiffly into his wrist, and placed his hand over hers in warning.

She spoke before he could draw breath. “You are independent of any ruler. You have ever been so.”

“Yes, great Sheyqa,” said the al-Arroun who headed the delegation. “And have paid for it in our blood. When the Qarrik came, and the Hrumman, and the barbarians from Granidiya and elsewhere—ayia, we survived them all, but we are weary. We must waste the time and strength of our young men to guard the northern border when they ought to be adding to our wealth by crafting goods and tilling fields and tending sheep.”

Living could be dangerous in Ga’af Shammal. Raiding barbarians sacked towns and stole livestock. They did not attempt to take the land, only to take from its people the fruits of it and their labors.

“You have an army, glorious Sheyqa,” al-Arroun continued, “mounted on strong horses.”

“Ayia, I do,” Mirzah told him. “And you propose what, precisely?”

Alessid bowed his head to her, saying, “Your permission, Sheyqa?”

Compressing her lips, she nodded briefly. He was always scrupulously polite about the fiction that she ruled Tza’ab Rih’s exterior as well as interior affairs. He knew she hated him for it.

“We are not just neighbors but kinsmen, if I am not mistaken,” he said. “There is more than one al-Arroun in the al-Gallidh line of my mother, is there not?”

“Perhaps another marriage can be arranged,” Mirzah said cuttingly. “We have one or two daughters yet unwed, do we not, husband?”

Alessid forced a noncommittal smile onto his face. Mirzah seemed to care less and less about the manners she showed him.

Al-Arroun’s eyes—dark green, legacy no doubt of some invading barbarian ancestor he was ashamed to acknowledge—had rounded like dinner plates with the prospect of alliance with the al-Ma’aliq. “It would not need that,” he said hastily, “to bind our loyalty. We have all of us talked long and worriedly about this. There are those who dislike the prospect of becoming part of your realm—no insult to Your Highnesses intended. But they dislike even more seeing their houses burned and their work destroyed and their sons carrying swords. If it is agreeable to you, we would welcome you as our Sheyqa.”

And so it was that Mirzah went to Ga’af Shammal, and met her new people, and set with her own hands the boundary stones that marked the borders. Alessid and five hundred of his cavalry went with her, and two hundred laborers to construct barracks in ten different locations, and ten Haddiyat of the Shagara to work the runes and icons that would seal the safety of Tza’ab Rih on this new borderland.

Some weeks after their return to their palace in Hazganni, a curious incident occurred. The chattering fountain in the chambers Alessid had created for Mirzah, and which she never used or even visited, suddenly stopped working. This was due, said the annoyed Master of the Household, to little Sheyqir Zakim, youngest of Alessid’s grandsons. An energetic toddler, he was into everything and usually able to get himself out of it. This time, however, he had decided to bathe his puppy in the shallow fountain pool, and the resulting combination of soap, fur, and a brush that shed most of its bristles had proved fatal to the delicate mechanism. The trouble was that the specifications had been lost, and the artisan who had designed the fountain was long dead. The waters would never play in the same fashion as before.

“Don’t distress yourself,” Alessid reassured him. “It doesn’t really matter exactly how the water dribbles, does it?”

“But, al-Ma’aliq, there is the commission!” When Alessid looked a question at him, he went on, “From Sheyqa Ra’abi, to make for her husband’s exalted mother a book of pictures showing the whole of the palace. It is for the anniversary of the Sheyqa’s ascent to the Moonrise Throne, and it must be finished, it must!” He paced the carpets of Alessid’s maqtabba and fretted as if the fountain had deliberately betrayed him. “Al-Ma’aliq, I appeal to you!”

Alessid knew who must be doing the drawings: Mirzah’s brother Fadhil. He was Haddiyat like the man he had been named for, and at forty-two years old, Acuyib had been kind to him: His age showed not in stiffened joints or wrinkled skin but only in the pure white of his hair and a slight impairment of his hearing. Otherwise, he looked nearly the same as on that long-ago day when he had taken Alessid to Mirzah’s tent to be married. Still, Alessid could not help but contrast Fadhil’s age with his own vigorous prime, though he was only a year the younger. In the spring of last year Fadhil had given over governance of the seaside dawa’an sheymma to a younger healer, retiring not to his tribe’s tents but to his sister’s palace. And in his comparative idleness—there were always sniffles and scrapes and strains and sprains to be treated among the hundreds living here—he had learned from Jemilha how to draw.

She was very good. He was even better. Her work was careful and deliberate. His was instinctive, as if the pen and ink had been waiting for him and him alone. Discovery of this new talent so late in his life was a delightful surprise, and he had taken the likenesses of all the family, illustrated books for the children, and begun a series of landscape studies. He was the natural choice to prepare this very personal gift for Sheyqa Sayyida.

Fadhil laughed when Alessid told him of the Master’s anguish. “I was saving all the fountains for last, you know,” he confided as he opened the leather case containing his drawings. “Water at play is difficult. I’d almost rather draw each grain of sand in a storm! But I think I recall enough of how that one danced.”

The illustrations were exquisite. Every leaf on every tree; each smooth cobble in the courtyards; all the delicate shadows and radiant light caught like an indrawn breath of delight on paper.

The drawing of pictures was not a Shagara art. Indeed, such impulses had always found expression in abstract pattern and ornamentation rather than faithful depiction of scenes or people. Signs and symbols, and the graceful script of The Lessons, these things were common decoration in the homes of Tza’ab Rih. Leyliah had considered this and in typical fashion had decided why it was so.

“If it is not small and portable, the Seven Names have no use for it,” she told Alessid. “Look at that huge leather book my son is assembling! Can you imagine every family lugging something like that from camp to camp, adding to it, creating others through the generations? No, such things are for people who settle in towns, and have money to pay for them, and leisure to contemplate them, and don’t have to pack them up and carry them!”

“But—”

“Yes, I know,” she said before Alessid could fully form the thought, let alone voice it. “My answer to that is that in the distant past all the Names in this land—not just the Seven remaining in the desert, but all of them, Alessid—everyone lived according to the old ways. Some of them decided to stay in one place or another, and that was how Sihabbah and Hazganni and all the other towns were established. But people obviously retained the habits of travel, even though they traveled no longer. Besides, there is the question of materials. Parchment can be written on and scraped clean over and over—and Acuyib knows there are enough sheep and goats to provide it. But paper? Hideously expensive.” She eyed him with the sudden sparkle of a smile that made her look half her age. “Fadhil is lucky that his sister is so very rich that when he makes a mistake or is dissatisfied with his work, he has only to rip the paper up or toss it in the fire.”

Recalling his days of schooling—the tedium of having to scrape his faulty script off a parchment page so he could correct his mistakes was equal to the embarrassment of knowing that the action brayed his errors—Alessid was pleased all over again that he had made so wise a trade agreement with the barbarian realm of Qaysh. An enviable land, Qaysh was so lushly forested that trees could heedlessly be harvested for the production of paper.

A few days after Fadhil started on his depictions of the various fountains, he came to dinner one night with a bandage around his hand. “I was in my rooms, sharpening the pen to get the finer lines right, and the knife slipped,” he explained. “I’m afraid I bled all over the drawing of that fountain in the tiled garden. But don’t worry, I made another.”

“I shall be interested to see it,” Mirzah said at once, with a poisonously sweet sidelong glance at Alessid. “I’ve forgotten how many years it’s been since I was in that part of the palace.”

The next morning it was discovered that the broken fountain had sprung back to life. But the morning after that it was silent and still once more. No one noticed, except for the Master of the Household and the workers he shouted at—for Fadhil had unexpectedly died during the night.

Mirzah refused to leave her chambers. Alessid knew she mourned not just her brother but her remaining Haddiyat son, even though Kemmal was still alive and well and strong. Impatient with her obstinate determination to suffer, Alessid left her to it. She could accomplish her goal much better without him.

The morning after Fadhil’s death, Leyliah prepared to take her son’s body back to the desert. She invited Alessid to help her sort through Fadhil’s possessions for remembrances to distribute among those he loved.

“I don’t know why it happened,” she fretted, folding and refolding tunics, shirts, trousers. “He was always well, wasn’t he? A healthy little boy, and even as he grew older it never seemed as though he was growing old.”

Alessid busied himself packing books that would be added to his own libraries—for the Shagara did not haul books from camp to camp any more than they did big leatherbound folders of artwork. He said nothing to Leyliah, but he was thinking that with the death of her adored son, she seemed all at once to have grown old.

“Something hidden,” she went on broodingly, “something without symptoms . . . such things are not unknown, of course, but I wish I knew . . . I wish I had been here with him . . .”

He glanced around, astonished to hear tears in her voice. But she was dry-eyed, self-disciplined as always. He wished Mirzah could summon up the same control. Ra’abi had told him that her weeping was the worried talk of the palace.

To Leyliah he murmured, “It was very quick, I was told. A servant had brought qawah only moments before and hadn’t even reached the stairs before she met a messenger in the hallway.” What he didn’t mention was that however swiftly death had come upon Fadhil, it had not been painless. The messenger, receiving no answer to his knock, had debated a moment whether or not to enter. A cry and a clatter from within decided him. Sprawled before the blazing hearth was Fadhil, already dead, an expression of appalling agony on his face. “And the oddest thing, al-Ma’aliq—I didn’t like to talk of this, either, not in front of his mother and the Sheyqa, but—” The messenger twisted his fingers together. “Both his hands were reaching toward the fire—like claws, as a heat-maddened man would grope his way toward water in the desert.”

Why there had been a fire in the hearth in late summer was obvious to Alessid now. There were scraps of paper in the grate. Fadhil had been cleaning out his sketches, tossing into the flames those he didn’t like or couldn’t use. As Leyliah went through her son’s jewelry coffer, Alessid crouched down and picked up the few remaining bits of scorched paper. A horse’s head and part of the neck, the windblown mane much drawn-over, as if he couldn’t get it quite right. The flow of a curtain drawn again and again, each one different, as if recording the shift of the breeze against the silk. The first tiled tiers of a fountain pool, which Alessid reluctantly recognized, a few stray droplets caught gleaming, the paper discolored by some brownish stain. A man’s and a woman’s clasped hands, with the beginning of a verse from The Lessons scrawled below (“Let the woman and the man live with and for each other—”). Alessid could not help but note the tenderness of that drawing, and wondered all at once if Fadhil had ever loved a woman. If he had ever regretted not having a child.

“What are those?” Leyliah asked.

She was standing right beside him, and only a lifetime of self-control prevented him from flinching his startlement. He showed her the little handful of half-burned drawings. “He was talented,” he murmured. “Very talented.”

“Yes.” She glanced through them, lingering over the partial depiction of the fountain. Plucking it from his fingers, she said, “This must be the one he spoiled by bleeding on it. I must look through the finished pieces, to see if he managed to do a fair drawing for Sheyqa Sayyida.”

She turned away, the blood-stained drawing still in her hand, and opened the leather book. Muttering something about better light, she swung the book around on the table, and put her back to him. Only when her shoulders began to tremble did he understand. He tossed the remnants of Fadhil’s art back onto the hearth and let himself silently out of the room.

16

“No, Jefar. I will see no one,” Alessid snapped. “I will not receive people I don’t know, who have the impertinence to come here—uninvited!—during a time of mourning. How you can even suggest it is beyond my comprehension.”

The younger man bowed nearly double. “Forgive me, al-Ma’aliq.”

Alessid was instantly ashamed of himself. His own sorrow for the death of Meryem Shagara was deep; Jefar was hurting, too, for he had recently lost his young wife in childbed. So Alessid gave him words rarely thought, let alone spoken. “I am sorry, my friend. That was selfish of me.”

Jefar straightened up, gesturing away Alessid’s concern. “The apology must be mine, al-Ma’aliq, for disturbing you. But what I have heard, together with what little this man has told me, made me believe you would wish to see him.”

“Who is he?” Alessid rose from the paper-strewn table where he had spent the last futile hour trying to lose his grief in work. Meryem, one of the mainstays of his life—and one of the few who still remembered his father, Azzad. It irked him that this latter thought occurred to him over and over again. “What does he want?”

“He calls himself Baron Zandro do’Gortova, an emissary from Count Garza do’Joharra.”

“Oh. A barbarian.”

“Ayia, yes,” Jefar replied casually, “but with a tale to tell of King Orturro of Qaysh, and—”

Interest sparked. “The one with the daughter?”

“Yes.” Jefar paused. “The intriguing thing is that I have had a report from a border garrison that an emissary from the King of Qaysh crossed into Tza’ab Rih a day behind this man who would speak for Count do’Joharra.”

Alessid paced the carpet for a few moments, then turned to Jefar with a smile. “Then the rumors are true, and the girl is with child.”

“So it would seem, al-Ma’aliq.” Jefar had a golden Shagara face of the type that would only grow more handsome as he entered his thirties and forties, but his eyes at that moment might have been those of a naughty little boy contemplating mischief with unholy glee. “Qaysh and Joharra are evenly matched, they say.”

“The reason for the proposed marriage alliance. Precisely. I think I would very much enjoy meeting these barbarians, don’t you?”

Orturro do’Ferro da’Qaysh, a man in his late prime, had occupied the throne of his ancestors for eight years. Depending on which faction one listened to, he was energetic, self-confident, and resolute, or restless, arrogant, and stubborn. Denied by his late father nothing but that which he wanted most—power—he had come to kingship at the age of forty determined to exercise the full scope of royal privilege, especially when it came to the right of taxation. Decrees flowed from the palace at Ferro, and what flowed back was money—in torrents. With it, he established a court such as Qaysh had never before seen. To this court at Ferro had come Count Garza do’Joharra, who ruled an independent realm of his own. Approximately the king’s age, having just buried his third wife, Count Garza presented himself as a suitor for the hand of Orturro’s daughter. He was still very handsome; she was ambitious for an important marriage; her father understood quite thoroughly that he could not best Joharra on the battlefield, so he might as well face facts. Matters progressed to the satisfaction of all—until Count Garza’s only daughter, Nadaline, arrived in Qaysh ten days before the celebration of her father’s fourth wedding.

It was said that King Orturro had been so instantaneously smitten that the fabulous pearl-and-garnet necklace he had intended as his daughter’s wedding present had graced Nadaline’s lovely throat within hours of her arrival. Everybody was furious, nobody was speaking to anybody else, and not only had the marriage been canceled, but all parties had withdrawn to their best-defended strongholds to prepare for a war neither could win.

“Ayia, one would not think it compassionate,” Alessid mused, “to find so much amusement in other people’s calamities.”

“I think, al-Ma’aliq, that Acuyib has a most elegant sense of humor.”

“I agree. Allow these men to present themselves—one at a time, and each without knowing the other is here. This is possible?” he asked, knowing it was.

“Of course,” Jefar answered. “The one from Qaysh has been here three days, the one from Joharra less than one—both in strict isolation. They’re not happy about it.” He shook his head sadly, dark eyes dancing.

“In a few days, then, they will be most desperate to be cheered up.”

Jefar bowed again, shoulders shaking now with repressed mirth. “AlMa’aliq is wise and perceptive.”

“Al-Ma’aliq is wondering how he will keep from laughing himself silly.”

Four mornings later Alessid entered the tent in his garden. Garbed in a white silk robe with an embroidered white-on-white gauze cloak over it, an elaborate hazzir gleaming from his breast and the rings that had been his father’s and great-uncle’s on his hands, he arranged himself on carpets and pillows to receive the ambassador. He had not ordered refreshments; those who believed in Acuyib’s Glory did not eat or drink with barbarians. In fact, everything about this reception would purposely emphasize the differences between the people of Tza’ab Rih and those who had once thought to conquer them. It was as luscious as the taste of wine-soaked pears on a sweltering day, that now the northern barbarians had come not to conquer but to beg. For Alessid had a very good notion of why both the King of Qaysh and the Count do’Joharra, so evenly matched in military terms and so enraged with each other, had sent their men to him.

The tent flap parted, and Raffiq Murah entered and bowed. He was a plump little man with a scholarly air, sent to court some years ago by his father to acquire some polish. As the scope of Tza’ab Rih’s affairs widened, Alessid had been delighted to discover that Raffiq had an ear for languages and a tongue that could work its way around barbarian speech. Its written form was as ugly to the eye as its words were to the ear, all angles and sharp points; a language, spoken or written, ought to flow like water.

“Stand here beside me, Raffiq, and do not give me only his words, but your thoughts on their meaning.”

“Al-Ma’aliq honors me.”

Jefar brought in the ambassador. A big, brawny-chested man with a high color staining his broad cheeks, he had to duck far beneath the opened flap, which caused him to bow sooner and lower than he intended. This upset him, and Alessid almost smiled to see it. But what interested him most in these first moments was that the man wore a most curious assemblage of clothing. The bright red shirt had flamboyant, billowing sleeves, not buttoned at throat and wrists like an honest man’s but tied with fluttering ribbons stiff with gold embroidery. The sleeveless woolen garment that went over it was bright green and likewise embroidered in gold; it was closed with laces to the waist, where it was cut sharply back to fall from hips to the tops of high black boots. An immodest garment, showing everything a man possessed, for, oddest of all, he wore trousers such as women wore beneath work tunics. The trousers were made of leather. Alessid blinked once, thinking that he must be mad to wear such things in this climate, and nodded permission for Jefar to speak.

“Al-Ma’aliq, I present to your notice Don Pederro do’Praca, nephew and ambassador of King Orturro do’Ferro da’Qaysh.”

Hearing his name, the man bowed and spoke. Raffiq translated. “My noble uncle King Orturro greets His Excellency with all good will and friendship, in the Name of the Mother and the Son.”

Alessid replied, “Al-Ma’aliq recognizes the emissary of King Orturro of Qaysh, and welcomes him to Tza’ab Rih in the Name of Acuyib of the Great Tent, may the brilliance of His Glory be made known to all those pitiable souls currently living in darkness.”

When this was translated, Don Pederro’s thick brows quirked in faint annoyance at the implication, but his voice was smooth as he expressed his wishes for the continued health and happiness of Alessid and his family. Alessid answered in kind. There were more pleasantries, indicating that the barbarian had at least a modicum of manners, but Alessid was amused to note that the ambassador’s cheeks were redder than ever, and sweat had appeared on his brow. At length, Alessid did the correct thing and told Raffiq to ask Don Pederro the purpose of his visit.

There followed a protracted tale of insulted pride and outraged honor. Many times Raffiq had to beg the man to slow down. Alessid easily picked the ripest bits: if Nadaline do’Joharra was pregnant, and it was by no means certain that she was, it was none of King Orturro’s doing; Orturro’s own daughter was inconsolably insulted by Count Garza’s repudiation and abandonment of her mere days before their wedding; the crimes against Qaysh were obvious and required immediate redress.

“The King of Qaysh is confident that his friend the King of Tza’ab Rih—I must add for myself, al-Ma’aliq, that the insult to the Sheyqa be forgiven, for this man comes from a place that cannot work its collective mind around the notion of a woman as head of state.”

“No matter. Go on.”

“The King of Qaysh knows that Your Highness will readily understand that an insult to one royal master is a challenge to all and must not be allowed to stand,” Raffiq concluded, stifling a sigh of sheer gratitude as the ambassador at last fell silent. Alessid traded amused glances with Jefar. “Finally—again, I ask forgiveness on my own behalf, al-Ma’aliq, this man has the manners of a goat—he says that the King of Qaysh is certain that his request will be given a favorable reply.”

“Oh, he is, is he?” Alessid kept his face and voice as bland as milk. “And what do you think?”

“I believe he has been told to return with a favorable reply or not to return at all.”

“I agree.” Alessid reclined on his pillows. “Ayia, his story is most entertaining, but he’s lying when he says the girl might not be pregnant. She is, and by the king. Don’t tell him that!” he added quickly as Raffiq opened his mouth. “Tell him that I am—ayia, what am I, Jefar?”

“Stunned, al-Ma’aliq. And perhaps sympathetic, as the father of daughters?”

“Oh, absolutely. I am stunned and sympathetic, and I will consider seriously the King’s request. Now get him out of here. He looks as if he’ll collapse any moment. Leather, in this heat!”

That afternoon the scene was repeated with the emissary from Count Garza do’Joharra. Baron do’Gortova was introduced, sweating even more profusely than Don Pederro, for his clothes were entirely of yellow wool, lushly embroidered in silver, and he wore a large black felt hat with two purple plumes that sagged limply in the heat. The pleasantries exchanged were the same; the tale of insulted pride and outraged honor was the same (though from the opposite perspective, and Nadaline was definitely pregnant); the request that ended the recital and Alessid’s promise to consider the matter were also the same.

When the Baron had departed, Alessid lay back on his pillows and laughed himself silly. “Two furious women wanting vengeance on their lovers, two furious fathers wanting the other’s balls on a stick, and two armies preparing for a war neither can win! Acuyib is more than good to us, Jefar!”

Two mornings later, to Don Pederro of Qaysh, Alessid said: “I am shocked and appalled by the tale you have told me. After much thought, I have decided to honor your request. In twelve days’ time, my men will cross the border. I shall expect your master’s troops to leave whatever strongholds they now occupy and proceed to a suitable place for battle. Be assured that I will send enough men to make certain of a great victory.”

That same afternoon, to Baron do’Gortova of Joharra, Alessid said: “I am shocked and appalled by the tale you have told me. After much thought, I have decided to honor your request. In twelve days’ time, my men will cross the border. I shall expect your master’s troops to leave whatever strongholds they now occupy and proceed to a suitable place for battle. Be assured that I will send enough men to make certain of a great victory.”

It was only the literal truth.

In due course the mounted troops of Tza’ab Rih rode north to a river valley, a most suitable place for battle, whereon were assembled the opposing forces of the King of Qaysh and the Count do’Joharra. Messages were sent to both camps suggesting certain tactics—to which they readily agreed. Then battle was joined, each side expecting the Tza’ab to enter on its behalf. The Riders on the Golden Wind split into two sections. One, led by Alessid al-Ma’aliq, annihilated the Qayshi; the other, led by Jefar Shagara, massacred the Joharrans. It was indeed a great victory.

And thus was the conquest of the rich barbarians lands begun, and the Empire of Tza’ab Rih established.

Twenty days after the battle, King Orturro do’Ferro da’Qaysh was found in a fishing village, ludicrously attempting to blend in with the local folk by living in a cottage. Jefar remarked that he might have gotten away with it longer had he not been paying for food with coins bearing his own likeness. The king was brought before Alessid, where he blustered and raved for a brief but amusing time before being given a choice of prisons: up a tower or down a dungeon. He chose the former and was led away. Ra’abi was then declared Queen of Qaysh—the title was familiar to the populace, even if power vested in the hands of a woman was not. But none objected, for all understood that her mother’s land of Tza’ab Rih and her husband’s mother’s land of Rimmal Madar lurked behind her.

Sheyqa Sayyida was vastly pleased that Zaqir had become a king, but she was a little disappointed when Alessid gently corrected the mistake: Zaqir was the Queen’s husband. No matter what the local custom, both title and authority would reside in Ra’abi. He didn’t mention that after long consultation with Leyliah, he had decided that the people of Qaysh would simply have to get used to the idea that royal descent came through the female line. It was the female who produced Haddiyat sons—and no al-Ma’aliq ruler should be without one.

“People accustomed to kings will grumble,” Leyliah warned.

Alessid shrugged. “Their opinions do not concern me.”

“They should! You’re letting them keep their religion—”

“A ridiculous faith.”

“—their customs—”

“Including their incredibly impractical clothing.”

“Alessid, will you allow me to finish!” she snapped. “They’ll retain their lands and livelihoods as long as they’re loyal—but consider the shock all this must be to them. I think it would be best if you let it be put about that Ra’abi is merely a figurehead, and the real power rests with Zaqir.”

“That,” he said, “would be a lie. The real power rests with me.”

Thus at the age of twenty-three Ra’abi became a Queen, and took a new name: al-Qaysh al-Ma’aliq. She and Zaqir and their children traveled north to the palace at Ferro, which also received a new name. Ferro was too much like ferrha; Ra’abi declared herself unwilling to inhabit a bakery and so called her residence Il-Kadirat, honoring the name by which her grandfather Azzad was known among the people of Tza’ab Rih. It was an excellent and appropriate choice, for the palace rose in vine-covered stone in the midst of a lush valley, framed by forested hills and carpeted in wildflowers, and was green the year round.

That next spring Alessid took Mirzah with him on a ceremonial visit to Il-Kadirat. The people ought to see the great Sheyqa, who at forty-five was yet a handsome woman with great presence. She impressed them with her poise and dignity, but for warmth and charm they looked to Mairid. Ten years old, lively and quick and already bidding to be a spectacular beauty, Mairid was Alessid’s favorite of his children. It pleased him to see that she was Qaysh’s favorite as well.

The people, in truth, were genuinely welcoming. Alessid had given them the right to live their lives much as they had always done, including the practice of their Mother and Son religion. Their fear that Tza’ab Rih would bleed Qaysh dry was shown to be unfounded when Ra’abi canceled all of King Orturro’s taxes. She levied only one to replace them: a yearly payment assessed of every man, woman, and child who did not profess belief in Acuyib’s Glory. Compared to what they had paid Orturro to support his ostentations, this tax was as nothing.

It helped when Mairid, instructed by Mirzah, announced to her sister’s court that out of her own inheritance, she would pay the tax this year for every girl her own age in Qaysh. Naturally they loved her. And when in gratitude one of the noblemen gave her a pearl the size of a hen’s egg, Alessid allowed her to keep it.

“You spoil her,” Mirzah said that evening.

They were private in the chambers Ra’abi had readied for them—cool and luxurious, with windows half open to the breeze that rustled the pines. At home, windows were guarded by intricate wooden grilles; here, fine silk mesh screened out the insects, and of these there were an overabundance. Alessid heard his wife’s words as he inspected bubbles in the window glass, intrigued and annoyed in equal measure by the way the flaws distorted the outside world. Imperfection always displeased him, but he had to admit that the strange shapes seen through the curvatures, especially the flickering of torches in the garden, might be considered pretty. It was a concept that abruptly disturbed him. It felt like something his father might have thought. Over his shoulder, he said, “Mairid is the last of my children. I intend to delight in her.”

“There are always the grandchildren.”

“But Mairid is mine.” He paused an instant, and then with calculated coldness asked, “She is mine, is she not?”

Mirzah gasped.

“Ayia, of course she is,” he went on. “She has my eyes, my cheekbones, my mouth—and my intelligence. She’ll make a fine Empress.”

“ ‘Empress’?”

He turned to her then, relishing the shock in her eyes.“Didn’t you know? Our son Addad is a fine man, but he lacks vision.” Or, rather, he thought suddenly, Addad would see things through the distorting flaws in the glass, not as they were but as he imagined them to be—as they looked prettiest and most interesting. “The other girls will have their own lands—or hadn’t I told you yet that Granidiya and Pracanza and Joharra will one day be a part of the Empire? I’m only waiting until Jemilha and Za’arifa are old enough to hold a country in their hands.”

“Why?” The silver of her necklaces and earrings shivered with her rage. “Why must you always have more? More land, more wealth, more women—”

“I care nothing for land, except as it nourishes my people. Wealth is useful for the same reason. As for women, I defy you to find even one who claims to have enjoyed my favor.”

“You haven’t slept solitary all these years!”

“Prove it,” he said. “Prove it, and divorce me—and see if your daughters wish to return with you to the Shagara tents, when I can give them kingdoms.”

“Take care lest those in the Shagara tents come to you, as they did to your father!” She gave him a sleek smile: I know things that even the great al-Ma’aliq does not! “There are many who agree with those who exiled themselves years ago rather than countenance the perversion of Shagara ways.”

“A few malcontents—”

“More than you know! And remember that they succeeded in killing your father where the mighty Geysh Dushann failed! You have used everyone, everyone—the Shagara, my daughters, my sons—without pity, without conscience—you’re not the man your father was!”

“Acuyib be praised for it,” he retorted.

“Chaydann al-Mamnoua’a be blamed for it! Azzad never used the people he loved! But you—you don’t love anyone at all, unless they can be of use to you!” Tears streaked her face, aging her. “And it kills, Alessid—being of use to you kills.”

He turned and left her, shutting the door behind him. He leaned against the carved wood, listening to the sound of her weeping. Long ago, he remembered, he had returned to her tent to find her crying over their Haddiyat sons. Her tears had moved him then. Not now. He wondered when he had stopped caring for his wife, and after a few moments’ thought decided it had happened just now, tonight. Today he had been proud of her as she met the people of Qaysh; he had watched with pleasure as they admired her mature and dignified beauty; he had smiled when she smiled on accepting flowers from little girls. Not his wife for years now, she was an able Sheyqa, and that had been enough to retain his love.

It was no longer enough.

Mirzah was the mother of his children—surely he ought to love her still for that. But what was she, truly, other than a woman who used to be his wife, who had given him children in the past, whose function was to appear at his side and smile? He respected her as a Sheyqa, but he no longer loved her as a woman. Perhaps she was right about him. Perhaps he only loved where there was usefulness to his ambitions.

No. He loved his children unreservedly. Each time he passed the place where Kammil had died beneath the walls of Hazganni, he nearly wept anew.

Kammil had died being of use to him.

Alessid was not Azzad. Why should he regret this? He was alive, and he would make his children rulers of vast lands. What had charming, foolish Azzad done to match that?

After a brief and entirely satisfactory little war, Za’arifa became Queen of Granidiya. Two years later, King Joaono do’Trastemar was deposed and killed, and Jemilha became Queen of Ibrayanza. Yet even watching what happened to its neighbors, the land of Joharra resisted conquest by the Riders on the Golden Wind. This was a curious circumstance, for its army had been wiped out and Count Garza killed. But Nadaline yet lived, and her son as well, in the fastness of a mountain castle said to resemble the ancient alMa’aliq lands in Rimmal Madar, and loyalty to the girl and her baby was comparable to that of the people for the al-Ma’aliq. Alessid reluctantly respected this and decided the easier lands would be added to his empire first before he turned his attention to Joharra once and for all.

There was plenty to do in organizing the three countries already acquired. Tza’ab Rih flourished, as did his family. There were four grandsons and seven granddaughters to help Alessid celebrate his fifty-fifth birthday. He loved all of them—but part of his heart was reserved for the children his beloved Mairid would have one day. She was nearly sixteen, and it was time she married. He had kept her with him too long, cherishing her too much to relinquish her.

The day after his birthday banquet, he called her into the great tent in the gardens. He had done the same with her sisters to announce the names of the men from whom they would select their husbands. Ra’abi, Jemilha, and Za’arifa had all dressed in their finest, jingling with hazziri and swirling with silks, aware of the importance of the occasion even though it was private between each girl and her father. Mairid arrived in a plain work tunic and trousers, barefoot and bareheaded, filthy from working in the herb garden.

“I know what you want to say, Ab’ya,” she told him before he could do more than open his mouth. “But I’ve already chosen my husband.”

“Ayia?” was all he could manage.

“Ayia,” she agreed, smiling. “Jefar.”

“Jefar!” Alessid sat up straight on his piled cushions. “He’s twice your age!”

“If that’s your only objection—”

“It is not!” he roared.

She picked dirt from beneath her nails. “I can’t think of a single reason why I shouldn’t marry him. And I really don’t want to hear any that you make up for the occasion. Should you forbid me, I’ll simply take him into my bed. If you don’t want a scandal, Ab’ya, for all of Hazganni to tittle over the way they did over that silly Nadaline girl, then you’d better let me marry him without making a fuss.”

“You won’t be taking anyone anywhere if you’re locked in your rooms,” he said darkly. “And I find it difficult to imagine how you could become pregnant if Jefar is posted to a garrison in Ga’af Shammal.”

“Don’t be silly, Ab’ya,” she scolded, smiling. “You need him here. Don’t you want to know why he’d make a good husband for an Empress?”

“No!”

“He’s beloved of our people. He’s Shagara—and we al-Ma’aliq need a link in this generation, after the Harirri and Azwadh and Tallib marriages. He’s smart, and he’s watched you govern all these years, just as I have, so it isn’t as if I’d have to teach him anything. He’s a brilliant war leader—having proved that at your side time and again—and the troops trust and love him. Just as important, the barbarians in the north have been defeated by him personally, so they’ll know not to make trouble.” She paused, and for the first time a powerful emotion shone in her eyes. “And I love him.”

Alessid felt the air leave his lungs in a rush. She had thought it all through, like the Empress she would one day be—but she was also a young girl in love. He had never denied her anything, but he had to deny her this. Because it hurt him to do so, his voice was rough as he said, “Your feelings have nothing to do with it. You will not marry Jefar Shagara.”

Suddenly she was no future Empress. Her jaw jutted, her eyes ignited, and her fists balled at her sides. “I will marry him! You can’t stop me!” And with that she ran out of the tent.

Alessid jumped up and followed her. “Mairid!” he shouted, aware that it was undignified to be racing through the gardens after his wayward daughter. The workers were trying not to stare. “Mairid!”

She vanished into the stables. Cursing, he went after her, and in the noise and bustle of a hundred splendid horses and their grooms and trainers, he lost her. Grabbing a grizzled veteran of the war against Za’aid al-Ammarizzad, he demanded to know where Sheyqa Mairid had gone. The old man dropped the saddle in his arms, trembling with nerves at this furious aspect of the usually self-possessed al-Ma’aliq. Nothing came out of the aged veteran’s mouth but panicky mumblings. Alessid abandoned him and strode along the alley between stalls. Beneath lofty rafters, magnificent stallions and noble mares looked curiously at him, many of them with Khamsin’s eyes. He reached the last stalls, where Mairid’s favorite filly, munching contentedly on oats, glanced around curiously when Alessid began a string of lurid curses.

Pushing through the back door into the sunlight, Alessid swore anew as he saw a slight figure on horseback galloping across the small paddock toward a fence. She had gone into the stables only to snatch a bridle from the tack room. Tempted to do the same and follow her, Alessid abruptly recalled days in his childhood when he had behaved exactly as Mairid did now. Frustrated, angry, unhappy, or simply bored, how often had he leaped onto a horse and ridden out of Sihabbah, putting speed and wind between him and his troubles?

He had done the same on that horrible night when his father and mother and sisters and brother had died. Escape—was there truly such a thing?

She was like him, his Mairid. She would return when she was ready. She would flee into the croplands, and then the forested hills, but eventually the horse would tire, and she would be back by nightfall. It wasn’t like when he was a boy, and his mother worried about the Geysh Dushann. There were no such dangers in Tza’ab Rih, especially not to its ruler’s favorite daughter.

Mairid did not come back by nightfall. Alessid worried, but told himself that a night spent sleeping on the hard ground wouldn’t do her any harm. She would have sense enough to return home when morning came.

But morning did not come. Instead there blew in from the Barrens to the south a thick, choking wind, laden not with fine white-gold sand but with heavy black grit, thick and sticky. To go outside was madness, yet the daily life of Hazganni demanded that people indeed go outside—bundled in cloaks and veiled in silk and scarcely able to see.

Jefar Shagara went outside, draped from head to foot, his horse protected by thin silk over eyes and nostrils. Alessid waited for him to return with Mairid. He sat in his maqtabba, listening to the whining dark wind, his gaze shifting slowly from lamp to glowing lamp by which he was supposed to be tending the business of his Empire.

At last a servant came in. “Al-Ma’aliq, they’re back.”

Alessid went to the windows that overlooked the courtyard, but of course they were tightly shuttered. Even had they been open he would have seen nothing for the obscuring dirt. He stared grimly at the bubble-distorted glass and the carved screens beyond it, and said, “Send her to her rooms. Let no one see her but the servant who draws her bath and brings her food. If she is hurt, send her grandmother Leyliah to her. But no one else. And she is not to leave her chambers for three days.”

The dark wind died down that night. Windows were gratefully opened to fresh air. Brooms wore out sweeping streets and zoqalos free of dirt. And everyone prayed to Acuyib for a swift rain to wash Hazganni clean.

When Mairid did not emerge from her rooms after the prescribed three days, Alessid surmised she was sulking. She was willful and stubborn, but so was he. Still, he called into his presence the servant who brought her food and water.

“What does she say when you leave her meals at her door?”

“Nothing, al-Ma’aliq. She has not come to the door to accept the food herself. The plates are left outside, and only the water is taken in.”

Scorning him by starving herself was the action of a spoiled child. Mirzah was right; he had given Mairid her own way for too long. But when the fourth day passed and no one saw her, his anger was such that he went upstairs to her rooms and flung open the door, bellowing her name.

She lay on the flowered carpet, a frail little figure in a white nightrobe soaked with sweat and stained with vomit.

When Leyliah saw her—tucked up in bed, mumbling with fever—she turned white to the lips.

Alessid, who sat at his daughter’s side holding her hand, felt his heart stop. “What?” he rasped. “What is this?”

“I cannot be sure,” Leyliah whispered, suddenly looking every one of her seventy-four years.

Mirzah, seated on the other side of the bed, wrung out another cool rag and bathed Mairid’s brow. “No, Mother. You are sure. Tell us.”

Sinking into a chair, the old woman drew in a shaky breath. “Shagara legend tells of a burning dark wind that killed hundreds of our people.”

“When their tents fell on them in the storm,” Alessid reasoned.

“No. It was a disease. Hundreds died—the very old and the very young at first, then—”

“But some survived it.”

Leyliah would not look at him. “Of every ten, four died.”

“Mairid will live.”

“Alessid—”

“She will live.” He stared Leyliah down. “Summon Kemmal. He will make hazziri for his sister. She will live.”

A spark of hope shone in Leyliah’s beautiful eyes. “In that time long ago, there were no Haddiyat—” She stopped, and wonderment spread over her face. “Of the Shagara who survived, within a generation—”

“Then it’s not inevitably fatal. Mairid will live.” He looked at Mirzah. She nodded slightly. For that scant moment, they were in complete harmony.

“Yes. She will live.” Mirzah’s lips tightened as if to hold back other words, but within a moment they escaped, cold and bitter. “Al-Ma’aliq has decreed it.”

17

He did not leave her bedside. He paid no heed to Leyliah, who urged him to eat, to sleep, to guard his own health. Mirzah came and went. She brought news that others were suffering among the family. The whole of Tza’ab Rih was in mourning for the Black Rose. Alessid felt a vague sort of pity. But he was too preoccupied with Mairid, too intent on her every breath and movement, to allow himself to think that soon he might be grieving. The disease ran its course; those who could not withstand it died, and those who were strong and blessed by Acuyib survived. By the twentieth day after the dark and stifling wind swept into Hazganni, no new cases were being reported.

Yet Mairid lay in her bed, fevered and insensible—not dead, praise be to Acuyib, but not recovering, either.

“It is interesting,” Mirzah said one afternoon, while she bathed Mairid’s parched and fevered skin, “that it took this to teach you how much you can love.”

Too weary to contend with her, he said nothing.

“Then again,” Mirzah went on, “if Mairid dies, she is of no use to you.”

“Be silent.”

“Who did you have in mind for her? One of the Tabbors?”

With sudden passion: “She can wed the King of Ghillas if she pleases—if only she will live.”

“Careful. She might have heard that.”

He glared at her over their daughter’s frail body. “Get out.”

“When I am finished here.”

“Now.”

She ignored him, and completed her task, and eventually rose and dried her hands. “Alessid, summon Jefar to her.”

He felt something akin to hatred. Jefar, who had ridden out in the dark wind and stayed as well and healthy as ever. Jefar, whom his daughter loved.

It was bitter for Alessid to see Mairid’s head turn feebly toward the sound of Jefar’s voice. To see her dry lips curve ever-so-slightly in a smile when Jefar took her hand. To see the helpless agony in Jefar’s eyes as he looked upon her fever-wasted face. To know himself supplanted, defeated. A bitter well from which he was compelled to drink deep. He watched them for a time, and then, when he saw in Mairid’s eyes that she was lucid, clasped his own hands around theirs and said, “I betroth you, Mairid my daughter and Jefar my friend.”

It had always been enough to be loved by those few whose love he desired. Now, to watch his daughter turn her eyes to another man, loving him more, Alessid knew there was more to love than being loved. And in proving his for Mairid, he had lost her. But surely, surely there was someone in whose eyes he would see it returned in full unchanging measure, someone in whose heart he would always be first.

His people. Yes. He had created a nation out of nothing. They knew it; they revered him; they loved him without reservation. When Mairid recovered and her marriage to Jefar Shagara was celebrated, their cheers were for Alessid as the bridal party walked through the streets of Hazganni. They cried out his name. It was release from worry and sorrow after the long months of sickness and death, but it was also love for him. For him. He had made them great. He would make them greater still. And he knew how he intended to do it.

Countess Nadaline do’Joharra had resisted Tza’ab Rih since the first Riders on the Golden Wind had destroyed her father and the father of her child. Barricaded in her mountain fortress with those who remained of her father’s warriors—added to those who rallied to her from Qaysh, Granidiya, and Ibrayanza, the conquered lands—she had spent these years raising her son and keeping mostly to herself. Many years later, however, with the boy nearly a man and by all reports an accomplished youth beloved of his people, she had become an irritant. And Alessid was determined to take Joharra once and for all.

“How could we have let it come to this?” Mairid asked on the day word came that the army of Joharra had retaken five important villages from the Tza’ab. “Why wasn’t she killed years ago, and her son with her?”

Alessid shrugged, and resettled himself on carpets in his garden tent. “I had other things to do.”

“Ab’ya, it’s time to give our attention to Joharra,” she replied firmly. “This Countess Nadaline must be dealt with. And especially her son—for he can claim both Joharra and Qaysh.”

“So your sister Ra’abi has been complaining to you, has she?”

“Having heard nothing from you on the subject, naturally the Queen of Qaysh is concerned.” Brisk and efficient, she proceeded to detail options. As Alessid listened, he congratulated himself on choosing her to rule when he was dead. She knew what she wanted and how to plan most effectively to get it; tenacity was an excellent trait in a ruler. In the years since her marriage to Jefar she had borne two daughters and three sons, one of whom might be Haddiyat. The years had proven that all her sisters had birthed gifted Shagara males. It was very likely Mairid had done the same. But they would have to wait a while to find out—likely until after Alessid was dead.

But he was not dead yet. And Mairid was not so clever as she thought she was. He could still teach her a thing or two.

“All very interesting,” he interrupted suddenly, winning a frown from her lovely brow. “But you forget an asset we have which the Joharrans do not.”

“I’ve already described a plan for using hazziri—”

“I am thinking of something more subtle than magic.”

“Which is?”

To her great and obvious frustration, he only smiled.

Later, alone with his thoughts in his maqtabba, he wrote a private letter to his cousin Sheyqa Kerrima of Rimmal Madar—who had succeeded to her mother Sayyida’s Moonrise Throne earlier this year. What he proposed was not a thing Mairid would have considered. Nor Ra’abi, nor even her husband Zaqir, Kerrima’s brother. But Alessid had thought of it, and that was why he ruled an Empire.

A few months after the delivery of the letter, Alessid had his reply. Countess Nadaline do’Joharra was dead, her son in exile, and all of Joharra firmly in the possession of Alessid’s granddaughter Za’avedra the Younger, eldest child of Queen Za’avedra of Ibrayanza. Though it should have been one of Ra’abi’s daughters, the only one available was but six years old. Thus it was that Joharra finally came into the Empire of Tza’ab Rih.

A little while thereafter, Alessid received in secret a strange and grim young tribesman from the east. He did not bow to the al-Ma’aliq, but the al-Ma’aliq didn’t much mind. Sheyqa Mairid did mind; she frowned but said nothing.

“You allowed the son to escape,” Alessid said.

“No, we did not, for the son was not in Joharra. Had he been, he would not have escaped.”

“Nonetheless, Ra’amon do’Joharra yet lives.” Alessid paused, relishing the moment. “As my father yet lived.”

The Geysh Dushann tensed visibly, but only for an instant. “It was Acuyib’s Will.”

“Ayia?”

Reluctantly, his dark skin even darker with the rush of blood to his face, the Geysh Dushann replied, “As our kinswoman the great and noble Sheyqa Kerrima has said it, Azzad al-Ma’aliq lived, by Acuyib’s Grace, that in time our enmity might be abolished in this favor to you.”

Indignant, Mairid broke in, “Is that what she called it? A ‘favor’?”

There was an impression of grinding teeth; the man was yet very young. “Reparation, then, for the attempts on your father’s life.”

Alessid nodded. “It is enough. Or, rather, it is not enough, but it will do. You and your tribe are no longer my enemies. I will so inform the Shagara, so that for the first time in almost seventy years your people may go to them for healing.”

The Geysh Dushann was silent for a moment, and Alessid thought he might have stumbled upon a little wisdom. But then he burst out, “Which will not bring back my grandfather, or my father’s brother, or any of those who died in those years from the enmity of the Shagara and the lack of that healing.”

“As it will not bring back my father, my mother, my five brothers and two sisters,” Alessid retorted. “We make our bargains based on the past, but we construct them so that the future will be better—or so we may hope.” This was more for Mairid’s benefit than that of the Geysh Dushann, but Alessid did not glance at his daughter to make sure she got the point. Eyeing the young man coldly, he commanded, “Declare to me, Ammarad.”

The words blistered the proud lips speaking them, but they were said. “You and your tribe are no longer our enemies.”

“Nor is the Empire of Tza’ab Rih.”

More acid, but spewed out more swiftly so as to be rid of it. “Nor is the Empire of Tza’ab Rih.” And he ended the oath by touching first his brow and then his heart.

Satisfied, Alessid asked, “So. How was it accomplished?”

For the first time, the Geysh Dushann looked smug and confident in what Alessid deduced must be the way of his kind. But his voice was bland as he remarked, “There is a family of artisans who make tiles. Very beautiful tiles. When these Grijalva came to redecorate the lady’s bath, they were given . . . assistance. The tiles of a bath can be very slippery, and the waters thereupon . . .” He arched his brows delicately. “. . .treacherous in other ways.”

“I trust no one else will experience the same accident?” Meaning, of course, that it should never be discovered as anything other than an accident.

“No one, al-Ma’aliq.”

Alessid nodded and dismissed the assassin. Alone once more with his daughter, he said, “So you see, we did not require Shagara magic after all.”

“Ayia,” she sighed, removing the ornamental coronet that invariably gave her a headache, “but any contact with the Geysh Dushann is dangerous.”

“As it happens, I agree. But this was the simplest way, and it solved two problems. I wish to leave you an empire as free of the past as I can make it.”

“Yet the bargains we make based on the past—Grandsire Azzad’s, yours, mine—are the foundations of what we do in the future. So there is no real freedom from the past, is there? Countess Nadaline is dead, the enmity of the Geysh Dushann is canceled, but—” She sat straighter, gaze narrowing. “The boy. Nothing was said of where he was, only of where he was not.”

“So you caught that, too. Still . . . how much of a future can he possibly have?”

“None, if he intrudes upon my notice.”

Alessid smiled to himself. “Go now, and say nothing of this. You will rule after me, so it was necessary for you to know the truth of what happened to Countess Nadaline. But to everyone else it must be a fortuitous accident.”

When she was gone, he took out paper and pen to write another letter to his cousin Sheyqa Kerrima. He would send it with a fine young gelding and a gorgeous leather saddle from Sihabbah, jingling with golden Shagara hazziri.

Not the blooded kind, of course. Not the kind that really worked. One never knew when the past, in the form of al-Ammarizzad greed, might intrude once more upon his notice.

Leyliah Shagara was as beautiful in her old age as she had been when a girl. At eighty-six, her skin was a marvel of dusk-gold softness, and her hair was pure silver without a hint of yellowing, and her lustrous dark eyes saw as clear and straight as ever. She had outlived her husband, two Haddiyat sons, three daughters, six grandchildren, four great-grandchildren, and all the friends of her youth. She was the only one left besides Alessid who personally remembered Azzad al-Ma’aliq—one of the four men she had loved and the one she had mourned longest, for he had been the first to die. But in Alessid’s opinion, Razhid and Fadhil and Abb Akkil were worthier of her sorrow than Azzad.

It was Leyliah, however, who pointed out what should have been obvious to him: that Mairid’s son Qamar, even in childhood, was Azzad all over again. At first Alessid rejected the notion. How could he love so thoroughly anyone who was so thoroughly a copy of his father? But when he looked with his heart, he saw the charm, the grace, the cheerful mischief, the enchantment of presence and smile. It was so easy to see Azzad as he must have been in boyhood, with his big dark eyes and laughing face and the ability to wheedle anything he liked out of anyone he pleased. Yet even knowing this, fully aware that he was being wheedled, Alessid indulged the boy. The love between them had nothing to do with favors asked or bestowed. Qamar loved him, even on the rare occasions when Alessid said No.

All the grandchildren spent at least a year living with the Shagara. Those who also had ties to the other tribes of the Za’aba Izim lived with them for a time as well, to affix the relationship as well as to teach the younglings about their heritage in the desert. The year Qamar spent with the Shagara was the loneliest of Alessid’s long life.

The boy returned much taller but no more obedient than when he had left. Leyliah, in whose tent he had lived, reported him hopeless at every craft but one: that of horses. Alessid shrugged and smiled, and gave Qamar a splendid colt to train as his own. The horse loved him as devotedly as everyone else—to the extent of escaping his grooms and mounting the stairs to Qamar’s chambers one evening when lessons had kept the boy from him for two whole days.

Thereafter, every few days Qamar spent the night sleeping in Shayir’s stall. And every so often, Alessid joined him. He refused to concede to Mirzah that a bed of straw and blankets was not as beneficial to his aging bones as a feather mattress and silken quilts; indeed, he refused to acknowledge his years and did not even feel them when he was with Qamar.

They talked, and read books aloud by lamplight, and curried Shayir until he shone like golden fire. And then Qamar would sprawl on the straw, and Alessid would curl next to him and watch him sleep until sleep overcame him, too. He had never been so perfectly happy in all his life.

But when Leyliah had returned from the Shagara camp with Qamar, she had also brought words of warning. The Abb Shagara who had deplored Alessid’s use of magic in war was long dead, as was his successor, but the new one thought like the old—and the cancellation of enmity between the Shagara and the Geysh Dushann, done without even consulting Abb Shagara, turned the leader’s thoughts in grim directions. Leyliah had explained the necessity and the wisdom of it: that now no one in Tza’ab Rih need fear the assassins, that they had made recompense for the attacks against the al-Ma’aliq, that Joharra was now ruled by a Queen whose mother was a Shagara.

Abb Shagara had not been impressed.

“But neither does he encourage open rebellion,” Leyliah concluded. “Though I must caution you, Alessid, that I believe this is more due to respect for my age than for your power. It is not right, but it is true.”

“Then you shall have to live forever, ayia?” Alessid answered smiling, and went off to ride with his grandson.

Joharra did not stay quiet for long. Za’avedra the Younger ruled the land as her mother ruled Ibrayanza: lightly, unobtrusively. The people kept their homes, their farms, their shops, and their religion. But they also kept their pride alive, that they alone had resisted the Riders on the Golden Wind for so long. And they especially kept their hopes of return to independence, personified in the young man who, though bastard, could lay claim to two thrones.

Ra’amon do’Joharra was living in Cazdeyya, a mountainous land north of Joharra across the marshy river valley claimed by a family called do’Barradda. Alessid had no use for either piece of territory. He knew how far his influence could spread. He had established his borders and set up garrisons to guard them. Keeping the peace certainly gave his warriors enough to do.

Peace was the last thing on the minds of the Joharrans who attacked their own city in the autumn of 683. Ra’amon was not with them. Indeed, he later claimed he had no knowledge of what they did in his name. This was likely, as Cazdeyya was often isolated from the rest of the world by heavy winter snow and the occasional earthquake that rendered the roads impassable. Whether Ra’amon knew of it or not, however, the attack progressed—and succeeded. Queen Za’avedra, her husband, and their three-year-old son were captured and put to the sword. Joharra was no longer of the Empire of Tza’ab Rih.

This state lasted exactly as long as it took for the combined armies of Qaysh and Ibrayanza to reach Joharra. The siege and battles that ensued raped the surrounding countryside and nearly destroyed the city. But Joharra was at length retaken, and Alessid himself rode into its capital with its new Queen at his side: Za’avedra the Younger’s sister, Dabirra. Eighteen years old, mother of two sons, Dabirra was determined not to make any of the mistakes she perceived her sister had made. It was only by direct order that she was restrained from reviving an ancient custom of the Hrummans who had once ruled this land: the taking of one life in every ten as punishment for a nation’s crimes. Everyone knew who had given the command for mercy, and gratitude for Mairid’s leniency was matched by real fear of Dabirra’s wrath.

Alessid had come to Joharra with Mairid, Jefar, and three of their children. It was a pretty point of precedence, that entry into the city—Dabirra, after all, was now a Queen, but Mairid was the heir to the Empire. She let her cousin have her splendid day, following along last of all. For, as Mairid knew full well, once Dabirra and her husband and sons had passed beneath the war-shattered stone gates, all attention was on their future Empress. Alessid missed the spectacle, having ridden in front with Dabirra, but could imagine it. Beautiful Mairid, dignified gray-bearded Jefar; Rihana, sixteen and the image of her grandmother Mirzah at that age; Akkar, a scholarly fifteen and Mirzah’s favorite; and nine-year-old Qamar, gleefully certain that all this commotion was for him and him alone.

“After all,” he said to Alessid that evening, “was I not the very last one they saw? That makes me the one they waited all that while to see!” When Alessid laughed, stinging his grandson’s pride, the boy sulked. “Ayia, you just wait! When I’m bigger, I’ll make hazziri enough to show them all!”

And for the first time a chill settled on Alessid’s heart when he looked at Qamar, because for the first time he began to understand the emotion that had crushed Mirzah’s happiness.

Joharra soon settled under the iron grasp of Queen Dabirra and her husband. But she bore no more children, and her two sons were both Haddiyat. When she died young, with no female heir, Alessid consulted Mairid regarding what was to be done.

Her answer was simple: give the people of Joharra what they wanted.

Her father stared at her. She laughed lightly and leaned over his worktable to tweak his white beard.

“How often have you seen Rihana these last few years? Not often. She fell in love when we first visited, Ab’ya.”

“With a barbarian?”

“With Joharra. She will have it on any terms she can get. And I am of a mind to propose certain terms to her . . . and to Ra’amon do’Joharra. I think they will both agree.”

Had he grown stupid in his old age? He understood none of this—most especially not the love of a half-Shagara girl for the mountains and forests and river valleys of a foreign country. An idea returned to him that in the last years he had been too busy to pursue: the relationship of people and place. Rihana belonged to Joharra, it seemed, through a process Alessid could not comprehend. Had her ancestors breathed its air? Had its water soothed their thirst? Had its soil yielded food for their tables?

He realized then that although he had lived with the Shagara for many years, had married a Shagara girl, and his dearest intimates were almost exclusively Shagara, he had never felt himself one of them. He had never really felt at home in the desert. He did not belong to that land, any more than it truly belonged to him. Was there too much of his mother in him, too much of Hazganni and Sihabbah—or, grim to consider, too much of his father and Rimmal Madar?

He did not understand it. Neither did he understand why Rihana agreed at once to marry a man she had never set eyes on for the sake of a land she had desired since first setting eyes on it. An emissary was sent to Cazdeyya, and Rihana moped and fretted for months before the reply returned. As preparations proceeded for this marriage Alessid would never comprehend, his granddaughter spent most of her time taking lessons from Raffiq Murah in how to speak her future husband’s ugly language.

At seventeen years old, Qamar—who of course knew everything about everything—thought his sister a fool, and said so. His mother advised him to close his mouth and give thanks that not only had the matter been arranged to the satisfaction of all, but that Acuyib in His Wisdom had seen fit to move Ra’amon do’Joharra not only to change his name but his faith. He was as eager to return home to Joharra as Rihana was to make Joharra her home.

Alessid foresaw dreadful contention between them, despite the compromises each had willingly made for the sake of ambition. On the day Rihana departed for her new country and her new husband, he gave her a sealed letter, addressed to them both, to be opened the morning after the wedding. The contents were simple: a solemn reminder that peace and prosperity would come to Joharra not because of his name or her power but through a wise use of both. He urged the pair to let their mutual love of their land bind them to its service and recall always that their children would belong to Joharra and Tza’ab Rih in equal measure.

He did not write the words himself. In the last year or so, his hands had begun to stiffen and curl at the joints. Even lacking a single drop of Shagara blood in his veins, his fingers were as crooked as those of a rapidly aging Haddiyat. It was Qamar’s slim, supple fingers that had written the letter. The boy added a touch of artistry to the solemn words, drawing talishann at each corner of the page, familiar to all who had ever bought a Shagara charm as a wedding gift: happiness, fertility, love, fidelity.

As Qamar waited for wax to melt so the letter could be sealed, he looked at his grandfather with eyes as large and sweetly innocent as a fawn’s. Alessid knew exactly how much of this ingenuousness was a pose and how much was genuine: there was always a telltale quirk to Qamar’s mouth when he was playing at an attitude. Alessid arched his brows, and the boy grinned suddenly, knowing he’d been caught yet again by a grandfather much smarter than he.

“Ayia, very well—I’ll tell you,” Qamar said. “What I don’t understand is how Rihana’s children can be half Tza’ab and half Joharran. It’s one thing to be of two different tribes, like Challa Leyliah, or even two different countries, like you. I’m still trying to work out how Rihana can be so passionate about a place she doesn’t even belong to, but that’s another matter entirely. What I want to know is where her children’s real loyalty will lie.”

“It must be one or the other, you think?”

“Of course. I’m Tza’ab. An eighth part of me comes from Rimmal Madar, but it’s been a very long time since Grandsire Azzad left, and I’m sure that even if I went there I wouldn’t recognize any of it, or feel anything for it—not the way I did that year I lived with the Shagara.”

“Recognize?” Alessid asked. “What does that mean to you?”

“I felt at home there.” He shrugged elegant shoulders. “Maybe it was just hearing stories about it all my life, but maybe not. It just felt right, being there—as right as it does when I go to Sihabbah where your mother was born. Nothing tasted strange, the way it did when we went to Joharra.”

“Tasted—” He regarded his grandson with astonishment. “That’s it, you know. That truly is proof.”

“Of what?”

“Do you remember, when Zaqir first came from Rimmal Madar to marry Ra’abi—”

The boy laughed. “Ab’ya, I wasn’t born way back then!”

For a moment Alessid was startled. Such was his love for Qamar that it felt as if the boy had been in his life all of his life. “Someday you’ll be an old man, too, and plagued with a pest of a grandson!” he scolded, but with a smile. “Ra’abi and Zaqir traveled the length and breadth of Tza’ab Rih, showing themselves to the people, getting to know them and the land. They were in one of the smaller villages beyond Sihabbah, dining with some people who had actually known my grandfather al-Gallidh. With the qawah and sweets at the end of the meal, nuts from their own groves were served. Zaqir swallowed exactly one of them—and began to choke to death.”

Qamar’s eyes could hardly get any bigger. “Why? Poison?”

“Don’t be absurd, boy. Everyone ate from the same bowl, and no one else became sick. But if a Shagara healer had not been with them—Ra’abi was pregnant at the time, and taking no chances—Zaqir would have died. His throat swelled almost closed. He was from Rimmal Madar, where such nut trees are unknown.”

A frown darkened the usual bright whimsy of Qamar’s face. “If what you imply were true, then we ought to eat nothing that doesn’t come from our native soil. I ate everything they put in front of me in Joharra, and so did everybody else, and nobody—”

“Zaqir’s case was extreme. But let me tell you why this thought occurred to me.”

He was only halfway through an explanation of how place and people belonged to each other when Qamar suddenly cried out in surprise and pain. Green wax had been melting all this time in its little glass bowl set in a bronze scaffold, gently heated by the small candle below it. But the candle had flickered and flared in an unruly draft. The luxuriant feather quill Qamar had been twirling idly between his fingers had caught fire, burning his hand. “It’s all right, Ab’ya,” he said at once. “It doesn’t hurt—I was only startled. Here, let me set the seal, and then you can tell me the rest of your ideas.”

“Leave it be,” Alessid told him. “I’ll call for a healer.”

“No, it’s nothing. I want to hear more.” He didn’t wince as he smoothed out the page, then folded it neatly so that the four corners met in the middle. He ran a singed and slightly bloody fingertip over the matrix of Alessid’s personal seal, making sure there was no lingering wax to disfigure the impression. Green wax was poured, the seal was set, and the letter set aside.

Rihana and Ra’amon pleased each other very much. The people of Joharra were equally pleased. The man they considered their rightful ruler had returned. The woman he married had openly declared her love for their land and had all the power of the Empire of Tza’ab Rih behind her to keep them safe. His conversion to the Glory of Acuyib troubled them but little, for they saw it as an expediency. Joharra was worth a change in liturgy.

A few months after the marriage, Alessid received a letter from his granddaughter that confirmed everyone’s wisdom, including his own. Love there was between Rihana and Ra’amon, and great joy; as far as each was concerned, no other man and no other woman existed in all the wide world; and she was already pregnant with their first child and hoping for a girl. Rihana praised everything from her new husband to her new Joharran-style clothes (their women dressed even more oddly than their men, imprisoning themselves in tight bodices and voluminous skirts). Alessid decided Mirzah ought to read it as well, and accordingly made his way to her apartments.

“ With regret, al-Ma’aliq, the Empress is indisposed.”

Alessid regarded his wife’s maidservant, his eyes narrow and his lips taut. He had heard this same sentence a hundred times and more. He saw Mirzah only at official functions nowadays. She never even sat down to dinner with the family, preferring to stay in her rooms. He had indulged her even more disgracefully than he ever had Mairid or Qamar.

“Open the door.”

“With regret, al-Ma’aliq—”

“Open it.”

The woman’s hands twisted. “I cannot,” she whispered. “She has ordered whippings if—”

“Open the door or I will order your tongue cut out and your eyes burned blind,” he snarled. He would never have done so, of course—not only was he disinclined to physical cruelty but terror was no way to rule an Empire. But the servant was already in such a state of nerves that she believed him. With a shiver, she opened the door she guarded, and he was admitted to the rooms of the Empress.

He had not been inside for years. This entrance was not the one that led to the fountain room with its tile garden; instead, he came in another way, by the portal from which she emerged in all her finery to receive ambassadors. There were servants here, too, and fear in their eyes at the sight of him. Alessid was more determined than ever to discover what was in his wife’s rooms, that she so seldom and so unwillingly left them.

When he finally saw, he wished he had not.

Mirzah sat in the center of her bedchamber, on a priceless rug from Dayira Azreyq that had been a gift from the late Sheyqa Sayyida. She was filthy, her graying hair lank and unwashed, her body reeking, her robe stained with food. She was rocking slowly from side to side, humming as she stroked the yarn hair of seven dolls in their cradles, lulling them to sleep.

“She believes they are her babies,” said a familiar voice behind Alessid. He turned to find Leyliah, suddenly bent and old, sorrow thickening her voice. “She calls them by their names . . .” She hesitated, then murmured, “And sometimes, the one that is usually Kemmal, she calls Qamar.”

Alessid refused to feel. “How long has she been like this?”

“Until recently, it came rarely and went swiftly.”

“How long this time? How long will she be like this?”

Leyliah shrugged. “Another day, or forever.”

“Do something for her.”

“There is nothing to be done.”

“There must be!”

“Nothing, Alessid. It is not a thing a Shagara can heal—or the al-Ma’aliq can command.”

He could not bear Mirzah’s humming. He drew Leyliah into the outer chamber and kicked the door shut. “What happens when the people discover this?”

“They will not discover it. Her servants are few, loyal, and silent.” She paused. “Qamar sits with her each day for a little while—she thinks sometimes that he is Azzad, when your father would visit the Shagara tents.”

“But—you said that sometimes she—the doll—”

“Yes. Sometimes, when Qamar sits with her, she uses his name when she sings her children to sleep. He is very good about not being shocked by his grandmother’s madness.” She trembled briefly. “There, I have said it at last. My daughter is mad.” And she covered her face with her hands and wept.

Alessid left his wife’s rooms. He sat alone in his maqtabba for several days, and emerged at last to declare that the Empress, as befit a pious woman, had decided to spend the rest of her days in solitary devotion to Acuyib, praying for the happiness of the people of Tza’ab Rih. They revered her for this, sending tribute of the land’s bounty: oranges, wine, silks and woolens, gems, candlesticks wrought of iron. Alessid thanked them in Mirzah’s name and quietly distributed the gifts among the poor.

When Mirzah died, the whole Empire mourned. And when Leyliah followed her daughter into death a few months later, Abb Shagara himself came to take her body home to the desert.

He also came to speak his piece to Alessid. In the privacy of the great tent in the gardens, he confronted the al-Ma’aliq.

“It is you who drove Mirzah mad—your use of her sons and grandsons and the magic she gave them—you used them to make war.”

Alessid said nothing.

“Be advised, al-Ma’aliq, that there are those among the Shagara who oppose you. While Leyliah lived, they kept silent. I kept silent. But now—”

“Now you will rebel?” He laughed without humor. “Look around you, Abb Shagara. The Za’aba Izim, the Qayshi, the Ibranyanzans, the Joharrans, the Granidiyans—half a million people look to me for law, protection, governance. Your handful of rebellious Shagara are nothing to me—magic or no magic.”

“They are angry,” he warned. “So am I.”

“And so am I! You accuse me of misusing the Haddiyat—and yet they supported me like everyone else when I made Tza’ab Rih into a nation. No one denounced me then! Not when I was making the Shagara into the most powerful and revered tribe in all the country! And now you say it was I who caused the madness of my wife. Do you know, Abb Shagara, that many years ago she refused me her bed—me, her husband, father of her children—she denied me any more children, because she did not want any more Haddiyat sons. A Shagara woman bears Haddiyat proudly and rejoices in them. Mirzah did not. And because of it, she went mad. How can I be held responsible for this? I cannot. And you and your dissident Shagara know it.”

“She—”

“Silence! Take your anger to the most obscure corner of my Empire and trouble me no more with it. Be assured that if I hear anything about dissension, I will treat the Shagara as I would treat any traitors to Tza’ab Rih.”

Abb Shagara sucked in a breath. “You would not dare!”

“Would I not? Get out!”

A year or so later, he heard that Abb Shagara had died. Not that he was Abb Shagara when it happened, He had renounced the honor, a thing that had never been done before, and with a score of like-minded cousins, both male and female, set out to find a new home. He died along the way. The rest of the group established a small community, no one knew exactly where. They sent word back to the Shagara tents that they were safe, and anyone who wished to join them could come back with the messenger. Some did, finding the prospect of solitude and study appealing.

The men among them, some Haddiyat and some not, were dedicated to the preservation of the ancient traditions. The women, all of whom had Haddiyat in their lines, declared themselves unwilling to see their sons ride off to war—or their gifted sons craft hazziri for death and destruction rather than to help people.

“And how,” Alessid mocked, “can they possibly help anyone, living no one knows where?”

Qamar made a face. “One suspects they intend to help only themselves. Who cares about them, anyway? Come, Ab’ya, Shayir has sired a new foal, and you must tell me what you think.”

That was how it was between them: Alessid spending himself as always in the work of ruling until Qamar beguiled him from the maqtabba or the audience chamber or the now threadbare tent in the garden. They were wellnigh inseparable, the man in his seventies and the boy not yet twenty. He could not help but recall what Leyliah had said: that Qamar had soothed his grandmother Mirzah with his resemblance to Azzad. And then he invariably recalled also that Mirzah had believed Qamar to be Haddiyat.

Nonsense. The woman had been mad.

Qamar was a scapegrace of the first order, with a hundred broken maidenheads and broken hearts already to his credit. If he had any sense of duty, it was well hidden. As for dedication—only in pursuit of pleasure. Even aware that he was a copy of Azzad, Alessid loved the boy. Perhaps, he thought, because Qamar was so like Azzad, the father Alessid had once adored.

It came Alessid’s time to die, peacefully and without too much pain. There was time to finalize certain arrangements—to further endow the hospitals that had been Mirzah’s pride, to distribute money among the poor, to order the planting of yet another small forest of trees. For each of his descendants he chose a small memento: a ring, a bracelet, a necklace, something to remember him by. In looking through the jewels given to him over a lifetime, he found the armbands given him the day he had wed Mirzah. Love and fidelity , fertility and happiness. His lip curled at the sight of the talishann carved into the metal, and he was about to toss both armbands from him when he remembered slim fingers drawing the same symbols on the corners of a letter. And a burning feather. And a thin smearing of blood.

“No,” he whispered to himself. “No. Not Qamar.”

“Al-Ma’aliq?” asked the servant who was helping him sort the jewels. “Is anything wrong?”

“Nothing,” he said, and heard his voice quiver, and said more strongly, “Nothing.”

To Qamar, who was the only one with him when he died—by Alessid’s own order, as he felt death approach—he gave the chadarang service of carnelian and jasper long ago rescued from the ashes of the house in Sihabbah, and the topaz that had belonged to Azzad, and the pearl of Bazir al-Gallidh, and the hazzir from his own breast.

He watched through dimming eyes as the boy slipped the chain over his head. If Acuyib had been so cruel as to make Qamar what Alessid was terrified to admit he might be—

No. He would not die in uncertainty. He would believe, and it would be as he believed, for had not his belief created an Empire?