A horse-drawn coach rattled past, driven by a limp-haired man in formal livery. Its silk-shaded windows pulled aside, and Djidade Berhar appeared. Berhar was Kai’s neighbor, the father of Fodjour Berhar, his oldest friend. He was one of the district’s most prominent men, and if not for Dar Kush’s vast riches, he would have been the wealthiest as well.
In youth Berhar had been a muscular giant, but by the time of Kai’s childhood that muscle had devolved to corpulence. Further years had collapsed the once-mighty Berhar inward upon himself, so that he had begun to resemble a soft, sun-ripened plum.
The sharp-faced woman beside him was ten years younger, of mixed Masai and Persian extraction. This was Allahbas Berhar, Djidade’s second wife and Fodjour’s mother. Kai remembered her as an endless font of sweetbreads and handmade toys when he and Fodjour were children. In recent years, he sometimes suspected unnamed woes had soured her, but he was not privy to Berhar family secrets, nor did he wish to be.
Still, a welcoming smile came easily to his lips.
“Elenya!” cried Allahbas. “I had heard you were coming home.”
“Madame Berhar,” Elenya said warmly. “Sidi Berhar. Good to see you. Perhaps you will make time for a game?”
The old man sighed. “Ah … satranj takes up little of my time these days. The countinghouse is game enough for me. But still, if it would afford me your delightful company, business be damned.”
“If we can contribute to your sister’s homecoming,” said Allahbas in her husky, musical voice, “by all means let me know.”
“Fodjour and I are to play together this afternoon. If there is anything, I’ll have him pass the word.”
“Good. Well.” Berhar patted his waist. “At my age the stomach is a half-trained leopard: when unfed, the claws extend. Coachman!” he cried, and rolled on.
Elenya leaned close to her brother. “Neighbor Berhar appears … unwell.”
“His health has been a challenge of late. May Allah be kind.” Kai watched the carriage depart, lost in his past memories. Memories of Kai, Fodjour, and Berhar swimming in Lake A’zam. Of Berhar hosting parties and riding to the hunt on his magnificent Arabian. All past now. “Well,” he said finally, “enough of such thoughts. Let us be off!”
On such a pleasant day Kai and his family decided to take the scenic route home, up the dirt road paralleling the stream leading north to Lake A’zam.
The young Wakil and his sister rode in front of the wagon while Lamiya rode in the back, busying herself with the children she adored. Elenya seemed to drink in the countryside, and whatever cares had weighed upon her seemed to vanish as she did. “There has been so much improvement along the canal since I left,” she said. “Yet in another way everything feels exactly the same.”
“Your room is as you left it,” Kai said with satisfaction. “But things have not been the same.”
“No?”
“No. It has not been Dar Kush since you left. It changed. Now, again, it is the same.”
She laughed, and leaned her jeweled head against his shoulder, an old, fond gesture, and one dearly missed.
The sun kissed the western horizon by the time they approached Dar Kush’s familiar cross-beamed wooden gates. As they did, a gray-haired Irishman tolled the gate’s massive iron bell.
“Master’s home!” He seemed not to believe the evidence of his rheumy eyes. “And young mistress! Tell the house, tell the fields! Young mistress come home!”
Elenya leaned over, smiling at the familiar, white-haired figure. “Abdul. How are you?”
The old man flashed a gap-toothed smile, helping her down from the coach.
“Oh, fairly, mistress. Me back is a misery, but aside from that, Allah been good. Blessed saints, it’s good to see you.”
Kai paused as the gates closed behind him, allowing a moment’s pause to absorb the sight of his ancestral home. It was ludicrously easy to take such splendor for granted, and he had sworn never to let this happen. Too much blood and sweat had been spilled to create this elegance, and after three generations, his were the shoulders upon which the responsibility chiefly rested.
The estate was one of two sharing the waters of Lake A’zam, famous for boating and fishing, with tributary streams running south to the Azteca Gulf.
Some said Dar Kush’s manor was the finest in all New Djibouti, and Kai found no flaw in that judgment. Banners fluttered from the turrets above the main house, displaying Dar Kush’s flag: Bilalistan’s moon and lion, with the lethal arc of Nasad Asab, Kai’s treasured jambaya, beneath. The castle had been disassembled and shipped stone by stone from Andalus five decades earlier. Its hundred rooms, three stories, vaulted Moorish ceilings, six rose-lined fountained gardens, miniature date palms, and thousand-pillared hallways were the envy of any fortunate enough to explore her.
To others it was a museum, or a monument. To Kai, it was simply the only home he had ever known.
CHAPTER FIVE
Sensation had fled Yohannes’s arms and legs.
Suspended from the naked ceiling beams of his cell by leather straps, arms and legs spread-eagled, the Abyssinian couldn’t clearly remember what had happened to him. What he did know was that his chances of ever again seeing the Pillars of the Nile had diminished to something very near zero.
He remembered meeting with the Wakil, and then pulling a blanket under his chin in the cheaply rented room next to Al Makman, but nothing further until awakening suspended above the clay floor. That had been days ago. How many he did not know: too many cycles of torture and unconsciousness had intervened. Agony had the tendency to distort time.
His body sagged toward the ground. If there was a square digit of his body that had not suffered indignities, he could not locate it.
For the moment, he was alone. He turned his remaining eye toward the door. They would return, the men who had brought him to a place where death seemed preferable to life. Even if he was rescued this moment, he thought that the man who might descend from the bonds was not one who would wish to live. It would be a man with one eye, and a single unruptured eardrum. A man with toes on neither foot, and worst of all, a man whose abalä zär had been burned with hot pitch.
Jesu, take me, he prayed. He could feel it—there was a breaking place for all men, and that awful void beckoned him. If the good Lord he loved could not aid him, he would have to aid himself.
If he did not … then ultimately, he would answer the questions that the men had put to him. Ultimately, he would do anything to stop the agony. Even if that meant betraying his oath and mission. As a result of his weakness and stupidity the Immortal Empress herself might well fall. The Abyssinians had been kind to her Christian children. Betraying his mission meant betraying his brothers and sisters in Christ. And that he would not, could not do.
But … how to end himself? His arms and legs were not free. He felt a pain in his lower back, the muscles of arms and shoulders exhausted from hanging …
And there, and in the thought of his lord Christ, Yohannes had his final excellent notion.
The men who entered the cold, black-tiled room had seen death before, often enough that it held neither allure nor mystery. It was merely a fact: thus-and-so-many sep of cooling meat to be disposed of. They were Persian, or Africans who had been trained from youth by Persian tutors. They were of a forbidden Islamic order who, long ago, had sworn allegiance to an outlaw cleric named Hassan. Shaykh Hassan had transformed them into a fabulously lethal tool, famed from China to Bilalistan as spies and killers on a par with any in the world, a group whose very name had entered the common lexicon. They had taken that name from Hassan, and not, as some ignorant and slanderous enemies supposed, from the name of a drug allegedly used to convert the weak-minded.
Only the strong entered the ranks of the Hashashin.
The tallest of the three men was the first to enter the room. Therefore, his were the eyes that first spied Yohannes suspended with his arms and legs crossed, and his distorted face sagging toward the ground. The Christian�
�s eyes were open and sightless, his tongue swollen and protruding from his mouth.
“Damn! Cut him down at once!” the tallest bade them. His name was Omar Pavlavi. The blood in his veins was as noble as any in the Persian Empire, but his father had been a bastard, disowned by the pompous noble who had seduced and disavowed his own fourteen-year-old cousin. Omar had had few choices in life, and accepting the way of the Hashassin had been the best.
His men did cut Yohannes down, but the Christian was already beyond resuscitation. Grudgingly, the tall one admired the Abyssinian’s commitment and courage. Through horrific exertions the Christian privateer had managed to dislocate his shoulders, turn himself over in midair, so that he crossed the ropes at wrists and ankles, and was suspended downward, waist sagging toward the floor. In that position, his pectoral muscles had quickly tired, suffocating him.
“Much like his Esu,” Omar said in a flat, cold voice.
“And now, Omar? What now?” one of his men asked.
“We need the list: who was in Grand Imperial that day? Every commercial vessel’s registry must be searched. Every hotel guest list scrutinized. Work backward. Find everywhere Yohannes went, everyone he spoke to. Send our current information to the Pharaoh immediately, by the next ship.”
“What if the contact arrived by private boat?”
“The docks will have records,” he said. “I want to know. The man who received those documents was powerful. Probably military. Wealthy, or with access to wealth. He will leave a trail. We must follow it. We will find the man we seek. And when we do …”
“What, sir?”
“We will send him west.” That last was an Egyptian, not a Persian turn of phrase. In ancient days, it meant to send a corpse to the embalmers who lived on the west bank of the Nile.
Still, in this miserable land of mongrel cultures, Omar found the expression apt.
CHAPTER SIX
Kai’s fingers stung, and his ears rang with the percussive slap of palm against drum as it echoed back from the dome of the Berhar solarium. Hands a blur of motion, he luxuriated in what could only be called rhythmic bliss.
One of the few respites from his economic, military, and political duties was djembé practice. Of all his companions, Fodjour and Mada Berhar practiced with him most often. Fodjour had considerably more drum skill than Kai, a fact his friend mentioned at every opportunity. Kai, in turn, exacted vengeance at sword strokes. In that more martial practice, few of his companions cared to contest with him. In truth, in all New Djibouti there simply was no swordsman at Kai’s level. But Fodjour’s ego seemed as impervious to the embarrassment of consistent, predictable defeat as Kai’s was to Fodjour’s dazzling polyrhythmic exhibitions.
Conversely the willowy Mada often seemed to have no ego at all. Fodjour’s thirteen-year-old half-brother was blessed with the ability to submerge himself in any activity at hand with equal enthusiasm if not facility. He was not particularly gifted at drum or sword, but was a sturdy workman in his intellectual studies. And more than that, what Mada possessed in plenty was a child’s sheer, exuberant joy in living.
Kai had laughed and played with his friends for the better part of an hour now, the white-domed solarium reverberating with their music, be it improvised or traditional. The solarium itself had been constructed twenty-five years earlier by Fodjour’s father as a wedding present for his second wife, Fodjour’s mother Allahbas. It was a place of exotic scents and sights, bristling with a hundred varieties of tropical flowers and plants. There, it was easy to imagine that they were not in arid Djibouti but instead in some palatial Malian or Yoruban home. Although Fodjour had adjusted his pace to allow Kai to extend himself, all three drummers were glazed with sweat.
Years before, in traditional fashion, beneath the discerning eye of a wizened, impossibly ancient drum-master, Kai had hand-carved his goblet-shaped djembé in one piece from a hollowed-out tree trunk and covered it with a shaved goat skin. Over the course of the ensuing month he had delicately adjusted skin tension and shaved wood to alter the resonance and pitch, until his teacher had finally smiled toothless approval and declared the instrument complete.
Traditional African music was a standard part of a young gentleman’s education. The djembé was played with the hands, unlike the more sophisticated Abyssinian lelit samäy, a fifty-four-key choral accompanier. The “Night Sky” could, in combination with its eight tonal membranes, produce an almost infinite variety of rhythms and melodies, earning its name when a delighted eighth-century Empress declared that it could create more sounds “than there are stars in the night sky.”
The djembé, a far simpler Malinké instrument, achieved its aural spectrum through diverse hand positions and the intensity with which a musician struck the skin. Response varied from a deep bass achieved through a strike at the center, to a middle “tone,” to a light, metallic “slap” created in response to a strike at the edge.
Every djembé player developed his own style, but Kai’s was informed and influenced by a lifetime of sword practice. Fodjour was precisely the opposite: in swordplay, he was excessively fond of flamboyant rhythmics, sometimes at the cost of efficiency. While Fodjour’s musical exertions were motivated by pure pleasure and expression, Kai’s mind was always partially occupied with thoughts of varying timings of martial engagement. When lost in the music his blood rushed with the imaginary clash of swords or hands, his body swayed in response to the complex and challenging spontaneous invention that was Fodjour’s delight and forte.
For those hours, he was not Wakil, nor husband, nor even loving father. He had no name: he was merely a drummer among drummers, following the lead of a master musician, lost in the energies and textures of the music he loved. Together they re-created and explored the land that birthed their people, although that continent was a world away, more a thing of dream and imagining than experience.
For an hour after practice, the three drummers broiled themselves in the Berhar hamam, a form of steam bath loved in the Islamic world for a thousand years. The hamam was another domed building built separately from the main house. There, languid servants served cakes and tea, offered vigorous massages, and played music on flute and lute. Steam was pumped in from well-stoked boilers, temperature controlled by a cunning series of valves.
Sweat streamed from Kai in glistening rivulets, carrying away the toxins of exertion.
“For years I had wondered,” Fodjour said. He arched back to allow a mild gout of steam to play over his broad, thick torso. “You’re such a fiend for drumming that it sometimes seems you’re trying to kill yourself—and me along with you. Now I know you’re just trying to get to heaven.”
“Punish the body to save the soul.” Mada grinned.
“The younger brother grasps subtleties that entirely escape the elder,” Kai murmured, melting into the heat.
“Hah,” said Fodjour, without the slightest trace of humor. “Hah. Hah. Seriously, Kai: slow down a bit. You might improve.” He considered for a moment. “Not that you’ll ever be as good as me, of course …”
“One day,” said Kai, “when you have students of your own, you will think back on these conversations, and smile.”
Fodjour grimaced as a servant adjusted a valve, and steam gushed into the domed room. “Will I now?”
“Oh, yes,” Mada said. “You will make a wonderful shaykh one day.”
“I’ll leave the spiritual path to Kai. I am quite content drifting in the shoals of finance.” Now, finally, he smiled. “But I do feel Allah’s call when I clasp a mare’s flanks between my knees and spur toward the horizon.” Eagerness touched his voice. “Perhaps we could ride tonight?” Fodjour was almost as fine a horseman as a drummer. During the Aztec Wars, those equestrian skills had saved every man in the Mosque of the Fathers.
“We could ride now,” Kai said. “A race around the lake? I must be back for afternoon court, but no reason I can’t enjoy the trip. Mada?”
“Mother needs me in the topiary garden,” he s
aid. “Perhaps tomorrow.”
“A plan. So. Once again, it is Fodjour and Kai, racing for … let me see. Shall we wager?”
“Of course. The prize?”
“The loser writes a poem praising the winner.”
“Arrgh. Sharpen your quill, villain. The race is on!”
Ordinarily, Kai held court on a weekly basis. He preferred to conduct business in a canopied section of public gardens, northeast of the main house. Although not so refined as the mansion’s solarium, the gardens were the result of fifty years of expert cultivation and were renowned as a haven of balance and poise. When dispensing justice, Kai craved all of these qualities he could muster.
The wealthy and powerful flocked to Dar Kush, hoping for a favorable settlement of feuds, debts, or contracts. These he generally found boring, mere applications of legal codes studied for hours every week. But the day’s fourth case brought something different to the docket. It was a sharelander named Sallah Mubutu who bowed humbly before him.
“Please.” Sallah trembled. He was short, round-faced, and elephant-eared, with a straggly mustache that threatened to overwhelm his mouth. His clothes were overly patched but clean. It seemed all he could manage to keep from crumpling to his knees. “Mercy, Sidi.”
“Who is he, and why is this man before me?” Kai asked. He broke the seal on the scroll his friend and assistant Kebwe D’Naan handed him, and began to read. “I would think that the local constabulary could adjudicate these matters.”
Kebwe leaned closer. “Sallah Mubutu served in the Aztec campaign, Wakil. His family pleads that you hear his case.” Kebwe was Ibo, his people from Oturkpo in western Africa. Kebwe was a staunch friend and comrade, another veteran of that western conflict that had claimed so many good Muslims and sent so many Aztecs howling on the road to hell. Kebwe was sergeant of his brother Ali’s regiment Djibouti Pride, and now a member of Kai’s guard. He was blue-black and heavy-limbed, but deceptively lithe enough to have earned the nickname “Little Frog” as a child.
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