by Anne Gracie
He squirmed under her gaze. “But, Ash, I want to see that picture, I want to see if it’s as much like you as Gadi says.”
“It’s not.”
“How do you know when you’ve never seen it?”
“I don’t need to see it to know it’s one of Gadi’s stupid tales.”
Ali said sulkily, “If I got some of his gold, we could get that house in Alexandria—”
“And how would you get the gold?”
Ali’s gaze shifted.
“Ali! You are not to think of stealing from that Englishman!”
Ali hung his head and muttered, “Gadi says the Englishman has so much gold he wouldn’t miss it.”
“Then let Gadi try to steal it—and remember what I said when people call him Gadi-one-hand.” She gave a scornful snort. “ That man might look like a sleepy foreigner, but he’s dangerous.”
Ali scowled and hunched his shoulder. “I could do it if you taught me.”
“Well, I won’t. Stealing is wrong. And dangerous.”
“You do it.”
“I don’t.” She marched him through the narrow lanes and walkways, twisting and turning, not even having to think about which way to go. These streets were her territory.
He said sulkily, “You used to. And you were only a bit older than I am now. Gadi says—”
“Gadi talks too much. I stole when I was young only because it was that or starve. But now I work, and work is honorable. And you—” She touched a fist lightly to his thin brown jaw. “You will never starve, not while Laila and I are alive. You have a choice.”
“But—”
“Enough!” She shook him by the arm. “It would kill Laila if anything happened to you. You are the apple of her eye—though I cannot imagine why she cares about a wicked, grubby boy who wants to become a thief.”
“Aw, Ash.” Ali rolled his eyes and tried to look tough instead of pleased.
“Don’t aw-Ash me, now go.” She gave him a little push toward the back entrance of their home. A delicious smell of baking pastry filled the air. “Help Laila with the pies. And don’t eat too many. And stay away from the Englishman.”
“Rameses,” Ali reminded her. “But I want to see that picture. I want to show you—”
“Not another word about that man or his picture!” she said in exasperation. “Now go.”
It didn’t take her long to find the Englishman again; apart from being a foreigner, he was the sort of man people noticed.
She found him at the house of Hassan, her father’s former garden boy. Even if five different people hadn’t already told her that a great foreign pasha had come to speak with Hassan, she would have known he was there. His long, black, shiny boots stood by the front door.
She was half tempted to take them, not to steal but to hide them. Teach the Englishman to come hunting her! Let him try it in bare feet as she was. But there were too many people watching.
She hadn’t spoken to Hassan for six years—she hadn’t spoken to any of her father’s former servants—after what had happened she didn’t dare to—but she knew this area well.
Hassan’s house was small and old. There would be just two rooms for the whole family. The tall Englishman would be cramped, and it was hot, so they might open the back door. From the rear, she might be able to see.
She disappeared down an alley barely as wide as she was and, unobserved, shimmied silently over a wall and up some stairs onto the roof of the house behind. The houses were so close together she had a perfect view into the tiny courtyard at the rear of Hassan’s house, where a woman was cooking something over a small earthenware stove. She made tea and took it in for the guest, leaving the door open.
Ayisha lay on her stomach, cupped her hands over her eyes to shade them from the glare, and tried to see into the house. It was difficult, but eventually her eyes adjusted enough for her to see the Englishman take the picture from inside his coat and show it to Hassan. Hassan looked, nodded, and said something, then shook his head.
She craned to catch a word, anything, but she could hear nothing. It was very frustrating. So many Englishmen talked in loud, booming voices as if everyone in the city would wish to hear them, but this one, curse him, was quietly spoken. His voice and Hassan’s came in a low murmur.
Ayisha lay watching, hot, thirsty, and frustrated. Finally the Englishman stood up, gave Hassan something—probably gold, she thought bitterly—and left, having to bend his head to get out the door.
She climbed back down and raced around to the front, worried she might lose him again. She raced into Hassan’s street and skidded to a halt in the dust.
The Englishman looked up and looked at her—right at her. He hadn’t finished putting on his long, tight boots, but he stopped tugging on them and stared at her. The cold eyes narrowed and his dark brows came together.
Ayisha cursed and ran in the opposite direction. She would circle around to catch him up later.
He’d noticed her, had stared at her, had frowned.
Stupid, stupid, careless, foolish girl, drawing attention to herself like that. Of course he looked. Anyone would, at some boy who rushed out into the street like a madman, then turned and fled.
Her heart was pounding. He couldn’t possibly know who she was, she told herself firmly. No one of her father’s world had seen her in the last six years, and anyway, she was living as a boy. If her disguise could be seen through in one swift glance, she would never have survived six years on the streets. No lone female would be tolerated, let alone one dressing herself in men’s clothing. It was a sin, a crime. She would have been punished severely according to the law, and then . . . she shuddered at the possibilities.
No, her disguise was good. Nobody knew she was a girl; only Ali, who was like a little brother to her and who slept on a straw mat near her each night. And Laila. She’d discovered the imposture years ago, but she’d kept the secret and helped Ayisha perfect her disguise. Laila understood the need for it.
To everyone else Ayisha was that street boy, Azhar.
And nobody—not even Laila—had any idea who her parents were. That knowledge was more than Ayisha’s life was worth.
Rather, it was exactly what her life was worth.
She trusted no one with that secret. She did her best to forget it herself. It was only when someone came hunting her that she was forced to remember.
Someone like this Englishman.
But he couldn’t possibly have divined her secret, not in one glance, not in two. She’d just been careless, skidding to a halt like that, showing too much interest in him, that’s all. It wouldn’t normally matter, except those uncanny eyes seemed to see everything.
She would be more careful in the future.
She caught up with him again a short time later. She’d changed her turban, and now instead of a dusty blue cloth, it was white, with a strip of red twisted through it. She always kept an extra tied around her waist. In a crowd, people searching for you looked for your turban; change it and you were a different person.
She shadowed him all day, keeping herself well back, hidden in shadows or doorways, down alleys, behind others. Several times he turned and scanned the surroundings as if he knew somehow she was there. Luckily she was small and shabby and very skilled at being inconspicuous.
He visited most of her father’s former servants that day. He was very thorough, damn him—not like the others who’d come before.
Each time he took the leather folder containing her picture from the inside pocket of his coat and showed it to them. Each time they would peer, nod, then shake their head or shrug.
But at no point was there any chance for her to steal the picture. A dense crowd would be best, like the one she’d first seen him in, but he hadn’t returned to the busiest part of the city.
All afternoon it had been small houses in narrow lanes or dead-end alleys; bad locations for an out-of-practice thief to revive her old skill, even if he wasn’t followed most places by curious onlookers and
street beggars, some of whom she knew. And who, therefore, knew her. And would be sure to gossip about Azhar’s interest in the picture.
Now the Englishman was standing at the doorway of a man who’d done odd jobs. He was fatter now, but she remembered him. Gamal. She’d never liked him. It would have been polite to invite the foreigner in. All the others had, but Gamal wanted everyone to see his grand visitor, so kept him outside in the sun.
Ayisha couldn’t approve his rudeness, but she could take advantage of it. Luckily a small group of curious onlookers had gathered. She edged closer.
“Hah! I knew you were lying when you said you weren’t interested,” a voice whispered triumphantly at her elbow.
“Ali, what are you doing here?” She cursed silently and hauled the boy back out of earshot. “I told you to help Laila with the pies.”
“And so I did,” Ali said indignantly. “And now she has sent me to pick greens for tomorrow’s pies.” He held up a cloth bag.
“I see no greens growing here,” she pointed out. “The river is the place, so go. I told you to stay away from this man.”
“Aw, Ash, picking greens is woman’s work and—”
It was an old argument and Ayisha had no patience with it. “And eating and being disobedient is a boy’s? Do you want to grow up like Omar?”
Ali grimaced, not liking the comparison.
Laila’s brother Omar bestirred himself as little as possible. It was Laila who earned the money that fed them, baking bread and pastries in the clay oven in the tiny courtyard. She scoured the city surrounds for wood and dried animal dung to burn in the oven, she made fillings for her pies with wild greens and herbs and just a smidgeon of cheese, but she was a born cook and her pies sold as fast as she could cook them.
She was also a born mother, her barenness notwithstanding. She ached at the plight of the street children, would have fed them all if she could, but Omar forbade it. He took every coin that Laila earned. It was his right, as the head of the family.
Every coin that he knew about. Laila and Ayisha had hatched a plan . . .
“Omar is not a man; he is a leech,” Ayisha said. “And there is no such thing as women’s work, only work. So if Laila asks you to pick greens, you pick greens—understand?”
Ali sighed and nodded, then glanced wistfully to where the Englishman stood in his long black boots, looking tall and handsome and exotic and in every way so much more exciting than an herb. “Can’t we just ask to see the picture?”
“No.”
“Why not? You want to, I know. Otherwise why are you here?”
“I was passing and stopped out of curiosity,” she told him. “But I have work to do and so, my little greens picker, do you. So go.” She pushed him lightly in the direction of the river.
Ali left, his steps lagging, a vision of martyrdom, but then, boy-like, he suddenly brightened and bounded off. Ayisha grinned. He was unsquashable, that child, and she loved him for it. She turned back to the Englishman, but he was leaving, his face remote and unreadable.
Gamal remained outside his house and boasted to the small crowd of curious neighbors who came closer now that the Englishman had left. Ayisha sidled up behind them to hear what Gamal had to say.
“He is a great lord from England, my visitor—Rameses, brother to the English king.”
Ayisha tried not to snort. As if a royal English prince would be wandering the backstreets of Cairo with one interpreter and no armed guard. Even if the English king allowed it, Mehmet Ali, the pasha, would not.
Gamal drew himself up to his full girth and said, “Indeed, he traveled all the way from the other side of the world just to talk to me. He asks about the Englishman who used to live in the rose-colored villa near the river.”
“Is that one not dead?” someone asked.
“Yes,” Gamal said, “but property went missing and the Englishman’s family wishes to recover it.”
Property. A cold trickle ran down Ayisha’s spine.
“Did you steal it, Gamal?” someone joked, and everyone laughed, not in a friendly way.
“Why should I, who speaks with English lords, bother with ignorant fellahin?” Gamal gave his neighbors a disdainful look and went inside, closing the door.
The neighbors muttered huffily and began to drift away in small indignant clumps. There was nothing more to be learned and the day was passing, so Ayisha left them to it.
She caught up with the Englishman and his interpreter as they turned off the main road and into a quiet, cobbled alleyway. Ayisha’s steps faltered. She knew that street. The third house from the end was well known in certain circles . . .
Zamil’s.
Sure enough, they stopped at Zamil’s and knocked on a thick, iron-reinforced door.
Anxiety coiled in the pit of her stomach. What business would he have with Zamil?
She loitered in the shadows while the interpreter spoke to someone through a grill. A moment later they were admitted. The heavy door clanked shut behind them.
Every instinct she had shrieked to get as far away from this place as she could. She started to leave, then turned back. She had to know what she was up against. She had to. She dithered for a moment, uncharacteristically indecisive.
“What do you want at Zamil’s, young bantam?” growled a deep voice behind her.
She whirled and found a huge man looming over her, his hideously scarred face bristling with a large black mustache. Ayisha recognized him at once. He was known to all who lived on the streets as the Greek, Zamil’s Greek, the fastest man with a knife in all of Cairo. And the most vicious.
“Well, speak up! Trying to sneak a look at Zamil’s merchandise, eh?” He bent and thrust his face close to Ayisha’s, grinning through teeth that were broken and blackened. Several had been filed to points. His breath was fetid.
Fatal to show fear in front of such a man. Ayisha jerked her head casually toward the door. “My master, the English lord, is in there.”
“Master!” The Greek sneered. “No customer of Zamil, let alone an English lord, would keep a scrawny, ragged pup like yourself in his service. Get thee gone, whelp—unless—” His eyes ran over her and his smile turned into a leer that made Ayisha sick to her stomach. “Unless you have something to sell.”
Her skin crawled, but she pretended not to notice his interest. “Nay, I sell only information, effendi. Who do you think guided the foreign lord to this house? Do you think his tame servant would have knowledge of Zamil’s?”
She snorted, then gave the big man a cheeky look. “Perhaps the great Zamil—or his most excellent right-hand man—will reward me for it, eh?”
The Greek stared a moment, then threw back his head in a roar of laughter. “I like thee, bantam,” he said and thumped Ayisha on the back.
He bashed a meaty fist on the door and the grill opened. The Greek said, “This cheeky monkey thinks he is old enough to gaze upon Zamil’s merchandise. Let him in to join his master.” As the door swung open, he said to Ayisha, “Take care of those big eyes, bantam.”
“My eyes?” She frowned.
“That they do not pop out of their sockets when they see Zamil’s women,” he said, and both men roared at the joke.
Ayisha managed a halfhearted grin and sauntered jauntily through the entrance as if her heart were not thudding like a drum. The door shut with heavy finality behind her, and she stood in another world, a world far removed from the dusty, crumbling city.
She stood in a courtyard, paved with honey-colored stone, framed by carved arches and fluted columns. A fountain tinkled into a pond on which water lilies floated. Jasmine coiled up an elegant wrought-iron screen.
A dozen richly dressed men waited in the courtyard, each with servants in attendance. They talked among themselves, the sort of talking strangers did while waiting for something to happen. In a shadowed doorway a tall Turk stood, giving orders to unseen people within.
She knew what they were waiting for. Her stomach clenched. She wanted to flee,
to be on the other side of that big ironbound door. The safe side.
Servants brought refreshments to the waiting men: tea, sherbet, small exquisite dishes of food. She could smell the food, fragrant and delicious. She was hungry; she hadn’t eaten all day, but even if they offered her anything—which they would not—she couldn’t swallow a morsel. Not in this place.
She spotted the Englishman on the far side of the courtyard. His foreign clothing drew curious and faintly hostile glances, but he stood, apparently unconcerned, looking about him with a cool, unreadable expression.
Keeping her head down, she wandered over, taking care to remain inconspicuous, and took up position behind him, squatting humbly against the wall as the lowliest servant would, waiting for his master.
The Englishman said something to his interpreter who moved toward a man sitting on a raised stand in the other corner of the courtyard, a plump man in flowing silken robes. Zamil.
He was intercepted after three paces by Zamil’s men, but after a short conversation, was escorted to Zamil by his minions. A few moments later Zamil waved the Englishman forward.
Ayisha slipped through the crowd to get closer.
He pulled out the folder and showed Zamil the picture. Zamil looked at it and shrugged. The Englishman said something else—Ayisha could not catch it.
She edged nearer, in time to hear Zamil say, “No, a young white virgin fetches a fine price and six years ago . . .” He shrugged. “Who knows where this one is now? One thing is certain, she will be a virgin no more.”
He looked at the Englishman’s impassive face and chuckled. “But fresh fish is tastier than old fish, no?” He jerked his chin toward the auction stand. “The auctions will start soon if you want to buy.”
But the Englishman didn’t even glance that way. With a curt farewell he turned and left, striding through the crowd of buyers as if they weren’t there. Like the folk in the marketplace, they drew back to let him pass. It was those blazing silver-blue eyes, she thought as she made to follow him out. They were enough to freeze your marrow.
