“Twenty-three?” asked Nessa. “Why twenty-three?”
“One for each of the standard symbols,” the Sufi said. “Vulture, foot, placenta, hand, arm, horned viper, jar, flax, reed, snake, basket …” He closed his eyes, and his brow furrowed. “Owl, water, mat, hill, mouth, cloth, water pool, bread loaf, tether ring, quail chick, double reed leaves, and door bolt.”
Aidan rubbed his knuckles against his temples. “My head hurts.”
Kai laid out four sheets of glyph-inscribed paper. “Eight months ago,” he said, “a ship was intercepted on the passage between New Alexandria and the Egyptian Sea.”
“And what became of it?” Nessa asked.
“It is best you didn’t know,” Kai said soberly. “Let us just say that before open war erupts, smaller, more controlled, but no less lethal actions abound. The Empress and Pharaoh have each authorized ships to prey upon the other’s treasure lanes. Everyone knows it; no one admits it. Any damage is blamed on pirates.”
“And how came these documents to your hands?” she pressed.
“Again, best you not ask. It is enough that they were obtained, and I have reason to consider them genuine. We believe that the Pharaoh is so confident of the code that they continued to send messages in the same manner. We managed to obtain one further message, following a summit meeting in New Alexandria, in which the ‘Triumvirate’ were said to have argued fiercely until the early hours of the morning. The meeting did not conclude until daybreak. They were said to be grim, but determined.”
“I think I remember the admiral returning in the early-morning hours, after such a meeting.”
That piqued their interest. “Did he say anything to you?”
“He never spoke to me of politics,” she said.
Suddenly, Nessa understood. “And you believe that the content of that meeting is in this letter?”
“Yes.”
Babatunde jumped in. “And that they had received word of new aggressions between Egypt and Abyssinia. We believe that this message is in response to a request from the Pharaoh that Bilalistan provide men and materiel.”
Babatunde turned the coding scroll’s wheel. Paused, studied it, and then turned again. He turned to Nessa.
“Are you aware that the admiral himself may have created this device?”
She took it from his hands and examined it carefully. “I never saw it. But I believe he once mentioned a paper written on the subject, and spoke of the military college adapting his theories to such a purpose. But again, he did not speak often of such things.”
Babatunde probed Nessa with a few more questions before concluding she had no further information.
“Well?” asked Kai.
He shook his head, discouraged. “I feared as much. With every usage of the machine, they change the order of the code wheels.”
“What does this mean?”
“It means,” said Babatunde, “that this device is even more diabolical than we thought. To create an unbreakable code is one thing. To create one unbreakable even if you have the key is something else entirely.” His voice was hushed with something near reverence. “Brilliant.”
“Are you saying that you will be unable to read the messages?”
Babatunde gave a pained expression. “I will try, my young Wakil. I will try.”
Kai, Aidan, and Nessa moved to a corner of the room. Variously they squatted, sat cross-legged, or leaned against the wall and settled in for a long and taxing evening. Nessa tired after an hour, and Aidan decided to show her to his lodgings.
Nessa flinched as they passed the gates of Ghost Town. Everything seemed so new and strange to her.
Aidan spent a few minutes showing her the places he had known as a child, and introduced her to a few people. Then he showed her to the house he had shared with their mother.
“Please, take the bed,” he said. “You look tired. I have to go back.”
She hugged him, and he left.
Nessa ran her finger along the windowsill, the bed, the counter where Deirdre had prepared meals for her child. It felt oddly as if she was searching for her mother’s spirit here.
Then at last she lay in the bed and closed her eyes. Her mother’s bed.
She gripped at it with fingers that had been too weak to keep the slave-masters from tearing her family apart, and cried for the first time since childhood.
And crying, she fell to sleep.
By dawn’s early light, El Sursur struggled to unlock the secret of bin Jeffar’s codes. His blackboard was crisscrossed with scribbles. Kai and Aidan slept in a corner of the room. Babatunde, eyes red-rimmed and exhausted, pulled a blanket over each of them, and managed a tired smile.
Several times during the night he had drilled Aidan for every piece of information he could extract: where the scroll had been found, the appearance of the environment, anything that might provide a clue.
So far, nothing had helped.
Then he looked back at the blackboard.
“Allah, inspire me,” he said. “I know not the stakes, only that the boy I love as a son relies upon me. He wagered his honor and fortune on this, and threw his dearest friend into the crucible. There must be a way. What one man can make, another can unmake. But I fear I have neither the strength nor the wit. These old bones grow tired.”
He drew a bath and soaked for a time, glyphs dancing behind his closed eyes. Emerging, he donned slippers and a bathrobe, then sat at his desk again, rubbing his eyes. The writing still looked like gibberish. “Perhaps a walk,” he murmured.
Heavy with fatigue and discouragement, he pulled a cloak over his bathrobe, and left the room.
The house was still dark, save for a few drowsy servants going about their early-morning duties.
The sun had yet to rise above the eastern horizon. Babatunde walked across the grass, watching the morning mist as it rolled across the lawn, enjoying the strong dank smell of the fog off Lake A’zam. He studied the moon, low on the horizon now. The early morning was quite still.
The moon transfixed him, almost as if there were answers written on its pale disk. “What were you trying to say, oh Caliph?” he whispered. “What … were you … always … trying to …”
He squinted as he saw a female figure walking across the grass toward him. At first he assumed that it was a servant heading for early-morning kitchen duties, but made out that it was Aidan’s sister.
“Sabíya-t O’Dere,” he said. “Taking an early-morning stroll?”
She smiled as she approached him. “The admiral is a great fan of early rising, and I’ve caught the habit. I thought I would come and see what the legendary Sufi has done with my brother’s efforts.”
“Less than I might have hoped.” He paused, considering. “Tell me,” he asked. “What did the admiral think of the Caliph?”
Nessa ran her fingers through her strawberry hair, and thought. “Amon thought him highly intelligent, that he enjoyed wielding power a bit too much, and …” She paused, as if struggling to remember, or perhaps decide if she should speak further.
“Yes?”
“That the Caliph pretended to be more pious than he actually was.”
“That is often the way with politicians. They—” He paused, staring off into the fog, mouth open.
“Oh! Oh!” he cried, and rushed back into the house.
Babatunde tore apart his study until he found a sheaf of letters, then thumbed through those until he found the one he sought. Then, humming happily, he ran through the hall until back to his own office. “Where is it?” he said.
Aidan and Kai were beginning to stir, but were far too groggy to respond to his question.
“Where is what?” Kai moaned.
“Thank Allah for the munafiq.”
“What?”
“Hypocrites. Impious men.” Babatunde touched his fingertips together, entering lecture mode. “The Caliphate is a spiritual lineage, supposedly those who hold power in trust following the death of the Prophet, Peace Be Upon
Him. But our Caliph is a political, not a spiritual animal, and such creatures mistake the form of the thing for the content.”
“Eh?”
Aidan rolled onto his back. He had yet to open his eyes. “It is entirely too early for this.”
“A righteous man often begins his letters Bismillaahir Rahmaanir Rahim, ‘In the name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful.’ But the Caliph does it compulsively. There—see?” he pointed. “Every letter he writes carries that inscription. There is the possibility, just the possibility, that he made the mistake of doing the same thing with his coded messages.”
Kai and Aidan looked at each other without the slightest comprehension.
Babatunde weaved his fingers together, and cracked his knuckles with excitement. “If so, then by mapping that blessed phrase over the coded transmission, I can arrange these wheels until they produce that meaning.”
“And when you do?”
“If I do … I’ll have it.”
“Have you slept?” Kai yawned.
“Who needs sleep?” cried the Sufi. “I have a conundrum!”
Kai and Aidan grinned. “I wager that you need breakfast, though—”
“Oh, fine. Have it brought here if you must. There is work!”
After breakfast, Nessa asked Aidan to show her more of his childhood home. Together they toured the main house and gardens, the stables, and fields, and then circled back to walk the shore of Lake A’zam. A hundred cubits from the yacht dock, the pair was confronted by a pair of Dahomy.
“Who goes there?” Yala called.
“Aidan O’Dere, and sister Nessa.”
Yala smiled broadly, displaying gleaming white teeth against black skin. “Aidan! You are the Wakil’s white friend. Nandi says he trusts you above all others.”
Aidan was startled by this. “That’s me, I suppose,” he said. There was a loud hissing sound behind Yala, and Aidan glimpsed a black metallic wedge moving, one digit at a time, onto the lake from the dock. “What is this?”
“Do you know of Chifi’s work? The Tortoise?”
“Yes. I never understood it, but Kai spoke of it. A floating metal ship?”
Chifi climbed out of the ship. “Metal over wood, Aidan.”
“Sabíya-t Kokossa!” he said politely. “It has been years.”
Her lips curled in a smile, but the rest of her face remained still. “Indeed,” she said. “I hear you’ve done well with your freedom. Well done. Freedom belongs to no one, and everyone. And is this your sister?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Nessa curtsied. “Your father’s name was spoken with reverence as far as New Alexandria.”
Chifi’s face tightened, and then relaxed a bit. “Would you care to come aboard? I was planning to take her for a short run, and we could use another hand.”
“Absolutely,” said Aidan.
Chifi took them down into the warm, dank depths of the Tortoise. She showed them the guns, the armor plate, the hot-air pumping mechanism.
“The engine is powered by the changing volume of air as it heats,” she said. “We use such pumps to circulate or remove water. Air in the bottom is warmed, expanding and forcing the piston upward.
“Then the displacer is driven downward to the bottom of the cylinder. Since the displacer is of a smaller diameter than the cylinder, the hot air rushes around the displacer to the cool end of the engine. Once in the top end of the cylinder, the hot air begins to contract, sucking the piston downward. Now the displacer moves upward, forcing all the cool air from the top end of the cylinder into the bottom end. Here the air is heated, and the cycle begins again.”
Sallah Mubutu showed them other wonders, answering Aidan’s questions. The Tortoise was like no other boat he had ever seen, and was one of the great marvels of his life.
Kai and Lamiya were speaking intimately in the central courtyard when Babatunde raced toward them yelling, “Kai! Kai!”
“Babatunde!” cried Lamiya. “Tie your robe!”
“Oh! I … pardon me.” He turned, tying his robe, but handed the papers back to Kai as he did.
“And what is this? Hmmm.”
There was a long pause, and then Kai murmured, “Ali’s beard. You’ve done it! Babatunde, the size of your … intellect never ceases to amaze me.”
“Kai, you were right,” Babatunde said. “Now they have to listen!”
“You would think so, wouldn’t you? But we’re all mad, my friend. Let’s just hope that our particular insanity is communicable.”
CHAPTER SEVENTY-SEVEN
That very afternoon couriers had ridden to the heliograph towers, and within minutes their messages flashed across the district. By midnight, a secretive meeting convened in Kai’s offices: neighbors, a councilman, a wealthy merchant, an influential doctor.
“I have read the decoded scroll,” Kai said to his guests. “We have all read its words. Pay them heed. Bilalistan is to remain a protectorate of Egypt. Our sons are to fight along the Nile for Pharaoh’s glory.” His guests grumbled. “The Caliph was at this meeting,” he continued, “as was Dosa. As he claimed, bin Jeffar was not a signatory.” Kai concluded and spread his hands flat on the table before him.
“This is grave news indeed,” said Djidade Berhar. He sat in a wheeled chair of wicker and iron. His ashen face made plausible the rumors that illness was winning its contest with medicine and will. Still, his quavering voice projected above the din. “They would raise our taxes, and press our sons and slaves into military service? No. I say no!”
“Kai,” said Councilman Pili, “I say you have done great service. My cousin will hear of this!”
“The Governor comes to the opening of the Choral house this weekend,” wheezed Berhar. “I say that that may prove our best opportunity, more appropriate than any flashed or written message could be.”
“One of you good men may have to speak for me. The governor is not numbered among my supporters.”
“We shall all speak for you,” said the merchant.
Kai nodded thanks. “And now comes the part most dear to all—you have offered strong words. Now I need deeds. I need your gold and your support in the Senate.”
“And you shall have it,” said Berhar. “We cannot wait for a senate to mandate action. Something must be done immediately.”
As the others babbled congratulation, Berhar’s dying eyes burned. He wished power for his son and blood and name, that much was true. He had allowed Allahbas to convince him that Kai should step down as Wakil, that Fodjour might take his place. This was true as well.
But New Alexandria’s treachery demanded that he place personal ambition in perspective. Kai, the boy he had once labeled mischief-maker and scamp, had, for all of his apparent naiveté, accomplished much in an arena where more experienced politicians and strategists had failed. What this young man had wrought was vital for New Djibouti’s survival, and only a fool—or a madwoman—would deny him proper credit. What did that mean for his own secret goals? Of this he could not be certain. Knowing Allahbas’s unbounded ambitions, it might be difficult to convince her to forestall her plans until the current emergency had passed.
Very difficult, and as Berhar’s disease progressed, he had less and less strength with which to oppose her.
So then … whatever would be, would be. And at this point in his life he merely wondered if he would live long enough to see it through.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-EIGHT
As two making a pilgrimage, with the coming of dawn Aidan led Nessa to the still-blackened remnant of the prayer grove. Burned stumps still scarred the earth, but dozens of transplanted saplings bore a promise of new life and hope.
They were quiet as they entered, displaying that natural awe experienced on entering a holy place, a place of worship or sacrifice, a place where whatever gods there were approached most closely the mortal world.
He led her to a weathered wooden cross thrust upright before a small heap of stones.
“Is this hers?”
> He nodded, and ran his fingers over the weathered wood. “I carried every one of these stones myself, as a boy. I added a new stone a year every year until leaving to seek my fortune at the Ouachita crannog.”
Nessa sank to her knees before the cross, and pressed her lips to its splintered wood.
“I remember one of our father’s tales,” she said in a low, reverent voice. “He called it ‘The Voyage of Maelduin.’”
Aidan shook his head sharply. “I haven’t thought of that poem for ten years.”
“I don’t remember it all,” she said, “but I used to chant it to myself on the boat from Andalus. It told of the journey between life and death. I remember the island of lost women.” She closed her eyes, and began to recite in a Gaelic singsong so high and sweet that he was momentarily transported back to their childhood:
“The flowing green waves brought them over the sea to a mountain island.
“Beautiful maids dwelt therein, grooming and bathing each other in a bath of the purest water.
“Their Queen Mother rode on a fleet horse to greet them, the maidens at her side all curl-haired and open-handed. She said:
“None who dwell here will die. Rest unafraid, swathed in gentle garments, sleeping on a woven bed …”
Her voice broke, and she began to cry, digging at the grass around the rocks with her fingers. “Mother,” she whispered. “You did not fail me. Memory of your love sustained me. The boy you nurtured rescued me. You would be proud. Rest easy, sweet.” She rested her forehead against the ground, and there for a time she wept.
She looked up at him. “I had not cried for five years. I swore that I would not, again, and kept that promise to myself until I slept in Mother’s bed.”
Finally Nessa dried her eyes and turned to her brother. “We have many sorrows, Aidan,” she said. “I say we bury them here with Mother. She was strong enough to bear them all, and she would want us to begin afresh.”
“Can we do that?” he asked.
“We’re the only ones who can,” she said, and threw her arms about his neck, pillowed her face against his shoulder, and remained there for a time. Then finally they rose together and walked back to Ghost Town.
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