Aisha put out a hand to tip up the girl’s chin. Like all children in the Pale, she was respectful but utterly at ease with adults: in the Pale, all adults were protectors of children, or else painfully dead.
“I had eaten and drunk enough,” she answered with the first words that came to mind. “And you? What is your name, little sister?”
“Erika,” said the girl. “I followed my sister Shulamit and her friend . . .” Her eyes creased into merriment, and Aisha revised upward her estimate of the child’s age. “No, not like that. They said they went on a new hunt. Not for tamerlanes but for men. I heard them say it. For spies.”
Aisha stared at the girl. Allah, do you send a child to aid me?
“I like you,” she confided. “You do not laugh at me for what I said. Shulamit said people would laugh if I told them.”
“You are Bandari,” Aisha said. “Even young as you are, you would not say . . .”
“They go to find proof now, Shulamit and Karl do. But they make noise when they hunt!” Outrage quivered in the girl’s soft voice. “You do not make noise when you walk.” She pointed at Aisha’s bare feet.
“Why do you tell me?”
“Because you are kin to Barak and the Judge. You know ...” she glanced around before mouthing the name of the nomad chieftain, not daring even a breath of sound. “I watched you.”
Had Aisha been all that much older than this Erika when she had left Tallinn? That seemed as long ago now as the time when Haven turned cold.
Aisha squatted down beside the girl. “What makes you think . . . ?” she whispered.
“Shulamit travels . . . much. She says she never saw the cousins who call themselves Gimbutas before, and when she greeted them, they watched her as if she were a nafkeh ... a whore,” she translated. “Our clan would not do so.”
She cocked her head at the girl. Where? Wide-eyed, Erika pointed. That way. Aisha glanced down at her feet and grinned in appreciation: not having Sauron blood, the girl couldn’t risk the loss of toes or worse by going barefoot. But she had worn soft slippers, rather than boots. A clever child. Allah send she have a better fate than Aisha.
Silently, they prowled, past yurt, wagon, and home. Lamps, torches, and fires confused the senses Aisha had learned to rely on in her years of wandering the steppes; the nightsounds of a town, sinking to rest after the emotions of a feast, a binge, and a near-riot, blocked her hearing.
“This isn’t going to work,” she whispered to Erika. “Go find your sister and go home.”
“They said it would be someplace private.” Her eyes danced with sudden, wholly unmalicious humor. “They know a lot of places to go. That’s why they thought they could find the spies.’
A boy and a girl, scarcely adult, more intent on each other than on caution; Aisha wanted to groan.
“Do you know of such places?” she asked the girl. Erika promptly raised a hand and began to tick what had to be half the meeting places of the Bandari young folk off on her fingers.
Privacy, Aisha thought. It was scarcer than rubies of the type that glittered on her hand, either in the tribes or among the Bandari. And yet, if reports had been stolen and were to be passed to the men who had stolen them, it must be done in private. Assuming the spies were Kemal’s men, she didn’t think an exchange could be made in Kemal’s yurts--too closely watched. Assuming--which she didn’t---that the spies were Gimbutas, she couldn’t imagine any privacy at all in that clan; and, again, if they masqueraded as Gimbutas, they wouldn’t risk exposure.
The Bandari of Eden . . . memories clicked and flashed into place: the bunker, where Ruth had been held; where Judge Chaya had hidden as a child. Honored now, but little used; and far enough away that no one might watch it. It was a wild guess, but it was better than the nothing she had turned up in a long night of wandering.
You know, Aisha told herself, you could be making all this up, you and a little, left-out meid who wants attention. Can’t you see it now? “Oh, that’s our crazy cousin.” Really a great political asset, just when you mean to help.
She recognized that voice; it was the inner killer you heard when the winds lashed you, you hadn’t eaten for days, you had a fever, and all you thought you wanted was to lie down and sleep forever. She had practice in ignoring it, and she hadn’t lived this long by distrusting her hunches.
First, get the child away.
“Erika, do you know where Judge Chaya lives? I want you to get her . . . please. And tell her that her niece, Aisha . . . bat Juchi, can you remember that? thinks she’s found some answers. You can say you helped; you did. Ask her if she can come to the bunker”--Erika’s eyes widened--”as soon as she can. Armed. Then, you go home, do you hear me? And if you meet your sister and Big Karl, tell them to go home, too. “
“Ja, tante,” Erika nodded and padded off so fast that Aisha would have taken hot iron in her hand and sworn that the girl would obey all her instructions. Except, perhaps, the last one.
The Judge was half Sauron. And Barak wouldn’t let her go alone. Three half-breeds ought to be enough to take out a nest of spies.
Stealthily, Aisha crept toward the bunker. The approaches and the half-ruined stonework offered some sturdy places for hands and feet: she didn’t want to leave a blood trail on the rocks for men or beasts. She took a deep breath of air and waited, utterly motionless, surveying the place with all her senses. From within a cracked wall came the sense of heat. Well enough, but it could be a beast, or beasts. She flared her nostrils. Human scent, unmistakable, but without the spoor of rut that even she could identify. Four people: she counted the invisible sources of heat.
The cyborg she had slain knew by training as well as instinct how to use the senses she fumbled even now to control. No point regretting it. Aisha edged closer ... no, that handhold looked like it would crumble . . . three points anchored . . . lever the leg over now, quietly, you fat musky!
The pulse in her temples distracted her so she ignored it, focusing on the heat, the voices up ahead ... by instinct, she crept up the rocks, picking a vantage-point, a place where she could listen and watch and, if the time came, when the time came, intervene.
“What do they say?” The voice bore the accent of Tallinn, but weighted with heavy sarcasm. “Bring the hakim along, you said; one hakim can understand the words of another.”
Aisha heard whispered curses and a scrabbling through pages. “They’re in bandarit, even to the letters. Allah wither them!”
“Then we get someone to read them,” came a third voice. Kemal. “The fool slut who helped us gain them. Fetch her. She can refuse us nothing now.
“I’ll go, lord,” said a man whose arms were almost as fine as Kemal’s own.
Aisha shifted into shadow as one of the nomads slipped from the bunker. She would know his scent again, if anyone would believe her.
Sannie? Somehow, that made sense. She wanted Barak, and she wanted him to be kapetein. Seize the records, hide them. If nothing in them hurt Barak, betray Kemal and let them be ‘found.’ Or find them yourself and reap the harvest of gratitude that might follow and be wife to the kapetein--and healer of the rift between Eden and Ivrit, if Sannie cared for that.
But if the medical records held . . . oh, Aisha did not know what . . . taints in the blood, the threat of disease, the nomads had what they could not read and would probably destroy. And the files would hold no dangers for Barak.
It was all dishonor, greater than her own in leaving her father’s corpse unburied.
Grimly, Aisha shook her head. If they planned hunts as badly as they planned this, they would have starved to death. The wind blew and she sheltered against the rock as the night passed. How long, dammit, how long would it take for the Judge to come or for Sannie to betray herself? She had wintered on the steppe, and the Pale’s weather was gentle in comparison; but she didn’t think she could wait that long before she must attack.
“Douse that flame! Someone’s coming!” Darkness.
Aisha didn’t t
hink that Barak or the Judge would make the noise she heard, a confident crunch/crunch/ crunch of boots on rock. Obviously, someone did not fear disclosure. Other bootsteps followed.
A new light flashed into the darkness, deliberately glinting on the long barrel of a pistol. “You’ve got the medical records? Hand them over.”
The accent was burred, harsh, that of an Edenite. Aisha had last heard that voice upbraiding her kinfolk. Hans Haller? Had he set the spies?
“I had Sannie watched. Should have known she’d do something stupid. These women . . . what we get for letting them think they run things . . . even our esteemed Judge.”
Incongruously, Kemal laughed. “You’d shoot a guest?”
“I’d say you outwore your welcome when you turned spy. So I’ll take these, and you can just leave quietly. Or you can have a fight and be known as the men who turned on their hosts.”
How many people had come up here? Aisha wondered. The more who knew of this, the less chance for a decent concealment.
“The new kapetein would hardly approve of this. . . .”
Haller gestured at the records. “Those prove he’s no more fit to be kapetein . . .”
“Than who?” a woman’s voice pierced the night. “Than you, Hans Haller? Who is your candidate? Or had you planned to hold whatever might be in those records over Barak’s head? Blackmail is as much a crime, you know, as theft. Or spying.”
So quietly that Aisha had never heard it, Judge Chaya and her son had come up the rocks and fanned out into position. Two clicks sounded.
“I would like to know,” the Judge’s voice was assured, even a little humorous, “who is whose catspaw in this. Sannie? A willing tool. She might not even guess who put her up to it. Or did someone . . . one of her own . . . egg her on. Steal the records since your attempt to get Karl to disclose their contents failed miserably. Never mind what harm it might do our medical care. Steal them, discredit Kemal for spying, throw me out of office? That’s another way to look at it. Or, let’s look at it from Kemal’s point of view. Cast the Bandari into ferment, maybe into civil war, and then move in, if you can. “A pretty mess.”
“You’re a fine one to talk about messes,” Haller snarled at the Judge. “Righteous, aren’t you? You don’t want your son to be kapetein? You want it so bad you can taste it. But he’s just not qualified, is he? Not of old Piet’s line, is he? Because you’re not. We all know that, just like we know why that woman you brought in wears the ring you used to have. She’s bad seed, isn’t she? You all are. We never saw you with your husband. How do we know . . .”
The bullet that punched the life out of Hans Haller came from behind Aisha. He looked astonished, then agonized, and then like nothing at all. As Haller’s guards whirled, trying to find the source of the shot, the tribesmen jumped. Aisha saw knives glint and then streams of blood, rapidly cooling in the night.
Barak dropped to his feet and walked into the bunker. “Everyone don’t move. Haller just went too far. And you heard it. One move, though, and you’ll go farther.”
Incongruously, Kemal chuckled. “What about you?”
Barak shrugged. To Aisha’s senses, his breath and pulse were normal . . . Soldier normal . . . and he wasn’t sweating at all. Half-blood that he was, he should have shown more stress than that. “A man’s mother--she’s sacred, or should be. All right, Kemal. This has all gone too far. Hand over the records.”
Kemal prodded at Hans Haller with his toe. “I never liked him,” he said. “This was well done, all but the blood feud it will bring.”
“We don’t have feuds,” said Barak. “We have laws. I’ll have to stand trial.”
Kemal grinned sardonically. “So you say. Say it again if you live that long. But hear what I say, man of law: If the Pale casts you out for this night’s work, I’ll make a place for you in the tribe.”
Absently, Barak flipped through the crumpled leaves. “Sure. After all, I’m of your blood. Just like Aisha. Come on in, why don’t you, cousin? You, too, mother. Let’s make it a family party.”
Kemal shook his head as if admiring what? Enemy? Ally? Aisha sought for a word and found it in accomplice.
Judge Chaya slipped in through a fissure in the wall. “We ought to burn those,” she muttered.
Barak laughed, a sound Aisha distrusted. “Kemal, you were right about law, weren’t you? God, that I should live to see the day. The Judge urging her son to break the law? Why?”
He bent over the records. “I could understand concern over my . . . our Sauron blood. But I’d have thought it was diluted. You’re only half-blood, so I’m a quarter Sauron. Shouldn’t make for any trouble. Unless,” he froze. “Unless . . .”
Light glinted off the ruby on Aisha’s hand and caught Chaya’s attention. Abruptly, she seemed to shrink in on herself; for the first time, she looked old. She looked at Aisha, who knew in that moment that both faced the same walking nightmare every day of their lives.
“Blood,” Judge Chaya murmured. “So much blood. Always calling for more.” She looked down at the bodies lying in the darkness that spread out from beneath them. ‘The God-bloody Saurons.” Her eyes darkened as if she stared into hell. “They took him from me. Took Heber. And I never even saw his body.”
“Ama . . .” Barak’s voice was gentle on the word.
“She’s got to let it out,” Aisha’s voice was so ruthless she could barely recognize it. “All these years, the wound has festered. What did you do, kinswoman? The Saurons stole a life from you, so you . . . stole one back?”
Chaya nodded. “You aren’t the only woman who kills Saurons, girl. Left him dead on the plain with a spike through his head. My son’s mine. He was just the means.”
“So I’m not of Piet’s line on either side,” Barak said. “You didn’t want to admit what you’d done. Instead, you discouraged thoughts of me becoming kapetein. But what if I had? What would have become of your law if I had?”
“It was all in the blood!” Chaya snarled, then seized control of herself. “The law would have been broken. But no one would have known. Just me. I would have taken the blame on my soul. The Pale would have had a strong leader. And would that have been so bad?”
“It can’t happen now,” Barak said.
Chaya nodded her head and dared to look at her son.
“You don’t hate me?”
“I just wish you’d told me earlier. I could have done something to . . . take myself out of the running. Well,” he stared down at Hans Haller’s body, “at least now I’ve taken care of that.”
“What about us?” asked Kemal.
He and his men knew too much to live now. He stank of fear, and he must know that the three who faced him could smell it; but Aisha was proud of his courage in that moment.
“Dishonored,” said the Judge. “Spying. Conspiring with him. I wouldn’t stoop to kill you. Tell about this night’s work, and I’ll see no one believes you. Ever. Get out of here. Come back with your warriors and we’ll give you a fight. Come back with more spies . . .” She spat.
“Some more are coming,” Barak observed, almost as if he counted heads at a feast. “They’re not making very good time.”
But then, they don’t have Sauron blood.
“A tribesman,” Aisha said. “Kemal sent him to bring in Sannie.” Her lips quivered. “He wanted her to translate the medical records for him. Want me to tell her that her services aren’t required?”
Barak shook his head. “She has to see. There has been too much hidden.”
“It would not have been dishonor if my plan had worked,” Kemal said. Color flushed his high cheekbones. “And my blood is still dishonored.” He gestured at Aisha.
“I’m not about to kill myself to cleanse it,” she told him.
He shook his head. “Not what I meant, girl. Your father, not you. We cast him out. You chose to go with him, a loyal daughter, worthy of honor. It’s not your fault.”
She shed years in that moment, years and defenses. Tears rose
briefly, then subsided. Karl Haller had said the same thing. Forgiveness. Mercy. Those were . . . what? Miracles? Avenging one’s blood, though, was a law.
“But it is my blood,” Aisha said softly. “And my father’s cries up to heaven for vengeance.”
“You go,” Kemal gestured to his men. “I’ll see this through.”
“But, khan . . .”
“I said, go! I am no khan, who am a dishonored man. Or do I slay you for your disobedience? Tell them, I shall return when I have cleansed my name.”
The nomads left quickly, pushing past their comrade with his reluctant companion on the way.
“Come on in, Sannie,” said Barak.
The Eden woman’s eyes widened with dismay, whether at the sight of Barak or the bodies on the bunker’s floor, Aisha couldn’t say. But only for a moment. In the next, she controlled herself as well as any half-Sauron woman might.
“What did you hope to gain?” Chaya asked gently. “You couldn’t have known what was in those records.”
“He . . . Oom Hans ... he wanted to know, thought there might be something when Karl wouldn’t talk. I thought... I thought . . . best to get rid of them. And you would have been kapetein, Barak. And the Pale would have been strong. All of us, Eden and Ivrit, just as Karl’s dinned into my ears since before I could ride. And would that have been so bad?”
Even Kemal burst out laughing. Sannie flushed with shame.
Chaya shook her head. “For the first time, Sannie, I think I could approve of you as a daughter-in-law. My thoughts exactly. But it’s too late now. And the law is the law, no matter how much could we think we might have done by breaking it.”
“You can’t go firing off pistols--even after a feast-- in the Pale and not expect someone to investigate. So I’m here. I’m investigating. What do I see? I see evidence of a fight. We could rearrange things, you know. Give one of them my son’s pistol, say he stole it, shot at Haller, who tried to get the records back from him. Eden’s got a hero; you’ve got a spy or two you can disavow, Kemal; and we’ve got a new kapetein. We get you installed, son, and then we can start thinking about what to do to the Saurons for this--just one more grudge we owe the bastards.”
War World III: Sauron Dominion Page 24
