“Allah made the world, and all it contains. To gain true union with that world is to approach union with the divine. The fruits will be your actions. I cannot, will not judge your heart without them.”
They walked a while longer, then Babatunde said, “There is love in your heart for Kai?”
She looked up at Babatunde, and her face, while strong as a young boy’s, was also yearning. “I was not married for love,” she said. “You know this. I am not a child. And yet … both my father and Abu Ali chose their children’s partners carefully, with the thought that love can blossom between those who are suited one to another.”
Wisely, Babatunde declined to speak.
“I am profoundly grateful that Kai was chosen for me.” She paused, fully aware that she had yet to answer the Sufi’s question. “Tell me. You were Lamiya’s tutor when she was promised to Kai’s brother. Did she love Ali?”
“In truth?”
“Please.”
“No,” he said. “She admired and respected him.”
Nandi shook her head. “That is not enough for me. All I have is my honor, my body, my heart. I could not give those things to a man I did not love. I could not lie in his bed, give him children, share his burdens, know that the one earthly life I have been given is shared for power, and not love. I was raised to accept this, but I cannot.”
She exhaled harshly. “So. Finally, your question. Yes. I love Kai. I have since we were children. Since first he chased me into a stream and we were both spanked when we ran home with dripping clothes.”
Babatunde chuckled. “I remember that, and counseled Abu Ali to halve his proposed strokes, but double the time you had to wait to receive them.”
She shook her head. “The longest hours of my life.” She gave a long, sincere sigh. “I love Kai, Babatunde, and know that I should have been first wife. It should have been me.” As she said this something broke in her voice, and for a moment Babatunde could see through the carefully cultivated emotional reserve. And just as swiftly, the shell formed once again, and the window was gone. “And something happened. I know not what. And he withdrew from me.”
She looked at Babatunde as if hoping that he had answers for her. “No,” she said finally. “I didn’t expect anything. My only thought is that he did not return my feelings. And I made my peace with that. I did.”
“And opened your heart to another?”
“No!”
“You spoke your heart to another?”
She nodded her head.
“The young man in the barn?”
She seemed startled, but nodded her head again.
“He should not have come here.” And now, at last, his voice grew stem. “For the new wife of a Wakil to meet with a man of past acquaintance, alone and unchaperoned, is by itself grounds for divorce.”
Nandi froze. “No. Say that you jest.”
“You did not know?” He watched her carefully.
“I …” Her lips pressed together tightly, and she closed her eyes. “I made a terrible mistake. I will not again. From the time my father decided that the wedding with Kai would go forward, Chalo has been forbidden to see me. He wished only to know that I was happy, and to say good-bye.”
“And that is all?”
“That is all.” She stopped, suddenly startled by a thought. “How did you know Chalo came?”
His only answer was a smile.
“Will you tell Kai?”
“I do not know.” It was the honest truth.
“I understand,” she said. “But Babatunde … if you choose not to do so, I will never give you reason to wish you had. I swear this.”
Babatunde’s lips turned upward at the corners. “By the one God?”
“By that force that created the universe and all of its beauty, that force that watches over the hall of my ancestors.”
“Do we see the same mountain?”
“Yes,” she said. “And not, I think, from very different paths.”
“Let me think on these things,” he said.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
Down a dark highway rode Chalo, bound for Wichita, and Cetshwayo’s manor. He crooned a low, mournful Zulu song. In addition to being a blooded warrior of his people, in addition to his duties as houndsman, Chalo was a soloist in one of the most distinguished Zulu choral groups, famous as far as the courts of Gupta. His voice, like his heart, was powerful. But unlike his voice, his heart was breaking. The song helped him to find the strength to ride on, to accept that which he could not change.
He loved Nandi for who she was: the niece of the greatest warrior who had ever lived, daughter of their tribal leader, and the most beautiful woman in the world. It was madness to think that one such as she could ever have belonged to him.
But the moon was out of reach that men might be inspired to dream, and dream he would. And sing he would. And between dreams and song, there would be a way to live his life without Nandi, and he would find it.
So enmeshed in thought was Chalo that he was slower than usual to notice the approaching horsemen. Still, they were a spear’s-cast away when he broke from thoughts of love and gave full attention to their presence. There was nothing apparent to give alarm, but Chalo’s blood began to quicken. Although they hunched in their saddles, their horses were superb, and they rode with perfect balance. They were feigning fatigue or boredom. These men were not what they seemed.
Chalo’s nerves burned, but he welcomed the sensation: a chance to vent his frustration on would-be assailants would be wonderful. If cutpurses they were, truly they had chosen the wrong man and the wrong night!
“Who goes there?” he called, hand drifting closer to his umkhonto.
“Fear not,” said one. “We are merely wayfarers.”
“Hold to your side of the road, then.”
There were two of them, cloaked in robes dark enough to blend their outlines with the night. Of course, he could be wrong…. They might merely be travelers on a lonely road, approaching an armed stranger. Perhaps what he assumed to be dissemblance was merely, anxiety.
The smaller of the two passed him first. “Good journey, friend.”
“Good journey to you.”
As the second man approached he gestured expansively, smiling, hands open and empty.
A third man, hidden until now, stepped out onto the road behind the Zulu, whirling a leather strap above his head.
Chalo’s keen senses alerted him an instant too late. He wheeled around in his saddle, but the stone had already been released, and struck him squarely on the side of the head. The young Zulu tumbled from his horse, but a lifetime of training did not fail him: despite his pain-muddied thoughts he rolled to one knee and began drawing his spear. No time. The smaller man had goosed his horse up and unfurled a whip, casting it with snake-swiftness to curl around Chalo’s neck.
Choking, the young Zulu’s fingers dug for the coils, struggling to loosen them, but his brain was too dazed from the stone-strike. He crashed onto his side.
Chalo fought for breath that would not come, and struggled against unconsciousness as if it were death. Although not that great darkness, it was as inevitable as the end of life itself.
“He was very alert,” said Omar Pavlavi after Chalo’s struggles had ceased. “Bind his arms and legs.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT
Stumbling along with the others, Aidan was herded through a mile of twisting corridors into another group holding pen. The cells were matted with stinking straw and were poorly ventilated through tiny barred windows. He felt tumbled back into the past, into a world he barely allowed himself to remember. His skin crawled with the sense of sheer confinement, uncertainty, the feeling that his fate was completely out of his hands.
No. I control my destiny, he thought, attempting to stave off panic. The sights and sounds and smells of this were worse than anything he had experienced in ten years, since the first slave pens in Djibouti Harbor.
“Get the hell in there, pigbelly!”
/> Aidan breathed a silent prayer that this would be a very temporary lodging. The men were pushed in until there was no more room to sit or lie, until they were shoulder to shoulder and belly to back. The stench of fear and rage was almost overwhelming. Inevitably, tensions began to rise, jostling and shoving and cursing growing more intense by the minute. These men were more than ready to hurt each other for the pleasure of strangers. Some of them actually seemed eager.
They elbowed each other, fighting for room, for air. Just when Aidan feared that the shoving would lead to blows the guards returned, and their cell door opened. The guards might have lacked humanity, but their discipline and caution were admirable. The prisoners never had a moment’s opportunity to revolt, to turn on their captors, to convert bondage into a desperate scramble for freedom. The door swung back and locked into place, opening a dark passageway. If Kai was correct, it would lead to an arena only a few cubits to the side—small enough for the milling, thrashing, panicked slaves to find each other.
“Go on! Get out!” the guard said. Two men behind him held cheap pistols that they kept pointed directly at the prisoners. Cheap those weapons might have been, but Aidan had seen flimsier blow men straight to hell.
The slaves were silent, knotted up with tension. In the corridor they were fitted with leather hoods. Aidan’s stank of sweat and old dried blood. It blotted out vision, but he could breathe through nose and mouth slits. Then he was told to place his hand on the shoulder of the man in front of him, and march.
From Aidan’s perspective, the darkness was absolute, and absolutely claustrophobic as they were marched in.
He could hear the crowd but not see them. And hear the voice of the announcer as it rang over the roar of a thousand greedy throats. The crowd had come for blood, and blood they would have.
“Peace be unto you, gentlemen!” cried the announcer. “The Pharaoh’s court welcomes you to the evening’s entertainment, a battle royale, with the last man standing to receive his weight in pig fat!”
That feeble witticism triggered a general roar of appreciation.
Aidan’s breathing constricted. If he peered down toward the nose slit, he could catch a sliver of light, but nothing really useful.
“Let the battle begin!”
At the instant that he heard that cry, Aidan dropped onto his back, knees up to his belly, elbows clinched at his sides, chin tucked against his chest. He heard cheers and groans and the sounds of blows and harsh breathing. He heard curses and shuffling feet, and the dull patter of coins tossed onto the sand by an appreciative audience.
When a foot struck his side he grabbed for the leg, rolled over it to force the man down, struck a sledgehammer blow to the groin. This sensitivity Kai had taught him: to touch one part of a man’s body was to know where all the rest of it had to be.
The air clotted with strangled grunts and screams as, one after another, the blindfolded combatants went down. Bones crunched. Aidan had come back into a low position, crouching this time. A man stumbled against him, went down, and Aidan finished him with a vicious series of elbows to the head. When the man went limp, Aidan hunched back down again.
At first the crowd had booed his actions, but as some of the observers began to understand his tactics, there were shouts of encouragement for al zalîl, “the sneaky one.”
The sand beneath his feet became tacky with what he could only imagine was blood. His ears rang with desperate struggles, choking sounds, the splintering of a bone.
At last most of them were down, and moaning. He heard the attendants haul them away. How many opponents remained? One? Two?
Two, he thought. He remained very, very still, allowing the others to move first. There: his ears picked up one, to the left, moving toward him. It was all Aidan could do to control his breathing, to prevent himself from gulping for air. That would give him away, and begin the disintegration of his own structure. It was quite possible that the other two thought they were the only ones. The crowd could give him away, of course, but their agitated rumble suggested that they were amused by the situation, and approving of his strategy.
The other two men circled each other, each locating his adversary by sound. They crept closer and closer together, and then collided. Fists hammered skin, men gasped, and one went down hard enough to raise a cloud of sand. Aidan took a chance and came out of his crouch, took two leaping steps, and flung himself, low. Something whistled past his cheek, grazing and bruising skin. Then he had his hands on one of the men, wrapped his arms around the man’s knees, and rolled him down. There was a brief, terrific struggle. Aidan smashed a sledgehammer fist into an already wet and sticky face, and the man went limp. Aidan rolled up, away from the second man, and froze again.
He could hear his own heartbeat, and above it, the second man’s desperate wheezing. Sand crunched, followed by another pause. Whispery sliding sounds as the man pivoted this way and then that.
The Irishman weaved backward just in time to avoid a thrashing kick that cost his single remaining adversary his balance. The man’s supporting foot slid, and he fell and then lurched up, blowing blood or mucus from his nose with a slobbering exhalation. There. Aidan knew where the man was as clearly as if his eyes had been open. He kicked with the side of his foot, as Kai had taught him, his heel spearing into ribs and gut. Something cracked, and the man went down cursing.
The crowd cheered, and the horn blew.
Aidan was the last man standing.
In the audience, Kai watched, and was well pleased. He had held his breath during the last few moments, uncertain of Aidan’s tactic. The kick had been risky, requiring too much commitment, but ultimately a man must make his own decisions about such things. If Aidan had gone against his advice, well, his old friend had still done just fine.
Just as important to his plan, he watched the tall, thin man that the arena manager had pointed out to him. This was Muata, agent for Fazil Dosa, industrialist and third of the New Alexandrian “Triumvirate”—with the Caliph and Admiral bin Jeffar—the three men suspected to be leading the way to war.
Muata was said to attend all the fights, looking for talent. And Muata had observed Aidan’s display with great pleasure.
Now, of course, the game truly began.
CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE
11 Rabi al-Awwal A.H. 1295
(Friday, March 15, 1878)
Still using his false name, Kai arranged a meeting with Muata. “So … I watched your man. Like you say … he is very good. Very unusual.”
“I believe he can beat the German.”
“Heh,” chuckled Muata. “That would be a day.”
“Yes.”
“So why don’t you match them?”
“I must return home to Azania,” Kai lied. “I haven’t the time or the patience to train my man for that fight. You do. I would sell him to you at an excellent price. You will wager for me, and we will share the proceeds. You train him, feed him, house him.”
Dosa’s agent stroked his chin. “If a price can be reached … come! Let us have refreshment, and speak of business.”
“A man after my own heart.” Kai grinned.
“And your wallet! Watch out for your Alexanders.”
Kai rubbed his hands with relish. “A bargaining man, then! Let the game begin.”
So they sat and drank coffee, and talked business. The blend was unusually smooth and flavorful, and Kai was of a mind to ask that a few pounds of the beans be thrown in to sweeten the deal. “What grind is this?” he asked.
“Kopi Luwak!” said his host. “You approve?”
“Very much.”
“Well, it comes from the island of Djava. It is quite a delicacy here in Alexandria.” Muata’s eyes sparkled. “Would you care to hear more?”
“Of course,” Kai said and sipped again. Delicious!
“Well, first the beans are fed to a small furry animal called a fungo cat.”
“Umm?”
Then, some time later, the droppings are harvested—
”
Kai stopped, staring.
“Oh, the beans are well cleaned, but the cat’s digestive juices have tempered the beans, providing the exquisite bouquet you enjoy.”
Kai stared at his cup. It was rude not to at least pretend to enjoy the food and drink served by a host, but he couldn’t get the image out of his mind. Kopi Luwak indeed. Was there no end to New Alexandrian decadence?
He pretended to sip at his cup, continuing to smile and talk, but that image continued to recur.
But stirring in and around his wave of revulsion was a bit of genuine curiosity … and mischief. Kai wondered again if a deben of Kopi Luwak beans might be obtained. He would enjoy providing a new, and unique experience for his old friend Babatunde …
And perhaps having the pleasure of watching the Yoruba’s face as his morning brew’s origins were described in loving detail.
And at that thought, he smiled and raised his cup in salute.
Later that day, Kai went to Aidan’s solitary cell. He wished he could have hugged his old friend in congratulation, but was forced to assume that their words and actions could be somehow witnessed. All he could afford was a brusque “well done.”
Kai maintained his emotional and physical distance until he heard the patter of feet approaching down the corridor. They had only a few moments together before Muata’s men arrived. Caution warred with affection.
What if this goes terribly wrong? What if you never see him again?
Affection won, and Kai hugged Aidan hard. “Even now,” he whispered, “if you change your mind, it is not too late.”
“Do you have doubts?”
“How could I not? Still, you have learned well, and it is your choice to make.”
“Did you like the fight?” Aidan’s eyes shifted away. “I mean, did I do well?”
Kai smiled broadly, remembering the sight. “Quite well indeed.” He searched his own emotions. Had he himself done right? Made sufficient effort to talk his friend out of this perilous course? “You are certain you wish to go through with this?”
“I’ve come this far….”
Zulu Heart Page 35
