A Wind in Cairo

by Judith Tarr

  “And now,” he said. His voice had changed. His face had gone terrible. “And now, daughter. What is that?”

  His finger pointed to Khamsin. Who knew that he was far from prepossessing, sprawled naked on carpets with a half-dozen swords pinning his privates; but surely he had not earned such scathing contempt.

  Her cry was soft, but it was deadly fierce. She broke free and leaped, beating back the startled swordsmen, dropping beside Khamsin. She was even more angry than he. Their eyes clashed like blades; she hissed, even though she could see that his captors had not harmed him.

  She pulled him up. He let her. But when he stood, with utmost delicacy he eased away.

  For all her fire of temper, she could see what he was doing. She let him go. She smoothed his hair with a hand that spoke more than any flood of words. She spun upon her father. “That, as you put it, is the man who died to give me life.”

  “He lives,” al-Zaman pointed out. “And it was not a man who died for you. It was a stallion.”

  “It was Khamsin. This is Khamsin.”

  Tensed for incredulity, Khamsin reeled before belief. Al-Zaman was mad, if most methodically so. He could accept what had his mamluks, even his concubine, rolling their eyes and muttering. “And for that, he was given human form?”

  “He was born a man,” said Zamaniyah. “He offended a mage. For that, he walked in beast’s shape. When he offered his life for me, he redeemed his sin. He won back his humanity.”

  Khamsin took note of how she said it. And how her father received it. Al-Zaman’s eyes narrowed. “He carried you? He served you?”

  “With heart and soul,” Khamsin said. He mastered his rearing temper. He bridled it; he won it to his will. He bowed low before his mistress’ father. “Your servant, my lord.”

  The booted foot rose over him. He braced for the blow.

  “I would not,” said a gentle voice.

  Khamsin stilled where he lay.

  “Faithful service,” continued Ali Mousa, “should receive a just reward.”

  “I am just,” said al-Zaman. “I do not geld him with my own hands. He was alone with my daughter.”

  “Alone, yes!” she cried. “And too exquisite a gentleman to do more than look at me.”

  “That is enough,” said al-Zaman.

  Khamsin rose to his knees. The Turk’s sword hissed from its sheath. He tilted back his head, parting his beard, baring his throat. His eyes, he knew, were anything but cowed. He could not make himself fear the steel that glittered so close, so thirsty for his blood. What did it matter? The man had the right of it. Zamaniyah was not for him. Could never be for him. He had had that brief sweet hour with her. It sufficed. He could die for it; he did not care.

  Except…

  Another face hung over him. Far finer, paler, older than the face of al-Zaman, though not much older in years. Sorrow had aged it; care; weariness.

  Slow light was dawning in it. Khamsin’s glance flicked. Thin ivory fingers closed about the hand that held the sword. Dark eyes peered, seeking a face beneath the forest of hair. Tensing, lest it not be the one he prayed for; darkening, brightening, as hope ebbed and flowed.

  Ali Mousa broke al-Zaman’s grip upon the hilt, cast the sword away. Al-Zaman stared uncomprehending at his empty hand, his frail and aged enemy.

  The sharif had forgotten him. Khamsin blinked against the blaze of joy. “Hasan?” whispered Ali Mousa.

  It was less a nod than a collapse. Ali Mousa was there, holding him, thin and startling-strong, saying his name over and over.

  It ended quickly. Ali Mousa had drawn taut. “You were…you were slave to…these?”

  “To the woman who died for you.”

  That struck true, and deep. He looked long into his son’s face. “You have changed,” he said, very low.

  “I’m older,” said Khamsin.

  “Older,” his father said, “and thinner, and harder. And stronger. So much stronger.” He took Khamsin’s hands in his. They were broader than his own, and smoother, uncalloused; and younger. But the shape was the same, the long fingers, the elegant oval of the palm. He held them to his heart. It beat hard. His eyes were bright with the tears which he was too proud to shed. “All the while, so close, so very close. And I never knew.” He spun in sudden, icy rage. “You! O my enemy. Did it amuse you, this mockery? Did it cost you dear to purchase the spell, to enslave my son to your daughter? And then, at last, to kill him. Knowing that I did not know. Laughing behind your eyes, to see what a fool I was.”

  “No.” Khamsin’s voice barely rose above a murmur, but it brought them all about, even his father, even al-Zaman poised to leap for his sword. “No, Father. It was my doing, every bit of it. They never knew. They never gave me aught but honor.”

  “Slave’s honor,” grated his father.

  “Servant’s honor. And far more than I ever deserved. I took a woman by force, Father. I was her guest; she had healed me; and I destroyed her. I deserved worse than death. I received not only justice but mercy.”

  Zamaniyah spoke above his head. “We didn’t know, my lord. We never would have shamed you so.”

  Ali Mousa’s head bowed. He looked shrunken, tired. “Was he a good servant?”

  “He learned to be.”

  The sharif frowned faintly. “I would hardly have believed it possible.” His frown darkened. “If you touched whip to my son’s body—”

  “Never,” said Khamsin. “Not once; though I provoked her richly. It’s a Greek way. It is,” he said, considering it, “very strange.”

  “It works,” she said.

  He looked at her. His heart melted and flowed. His body yearned toward her.

  Sternly he mastered himself. “Father, I earned what I had. Sheikh Uthman would never have spared the lash as this lady did. He would have beaten me to death inside of a month, or sent me back as a worthless dog.” Khamsin met the outraged eyes. “You wanted me trained, Father. Do you care how anyone did it?”

  “I care who—” Ali Mousa stopped. Suddenly, astonishingly, he laughed. “Ah, Allah! How inscrutable indeed are Your ways.”

  He had not yielded. He could not look with hatred upon Zamaniyah. But al-Zaman, who had given him nothing but hate, whose sword he had found raised to cleave his son where he lay… “A Muslim,” he said very gently, “may not enslave a Muslim. Do you contest that, O my enemy?”

  Al-Zaman met his subtlety with brutal directness. “It is yours. Take it. My gift to you: I leave it whole. Only let it never again cast eyes upon my daughter.”

  Ali Mousa bowed with flawless courtesy. “For my oath,” he said, “which purchased your daughter’s life, I leave you unslain.” He beckoned. One of his escort covered Khamsin with his own green cloak. “Come,” said Ali Mousa.

  Khamsin was trained to obedience; and, O miracle, to prudence. He came. It cost him high to come with eyes that did not turn, did not yearn, did not cling to Zamaniyah. Still more did it cost him to hold back the tears.

  It was better thus, to end what could never have been. Without a word. In the cold fire of their fathers’ enmity.

  27

  Zamaniyah watched them go. Her soul was empty. Jaffar was dead. Khamsin was lost. There was too little left of her for speech.

  Someone buzzed at her ear. Abd al-Rahim, rapt in righteous anger. Had he been there all the while? “That appalling creature,” he said, glaring at the open tentflap, at the light now freed of their shadows. “That he dared—that he dared to lay hands on you…”

  Her eyes burned, dry as sand. Such daring. Such sweetness. Such perfect cowardice. He could have left her with more than this stretching emptiness. He could have given her what the Hajji’s daughter had had. Zamaniyah, at least, had wanted it.

  She sucked in a breath. “I died,” she said. “I died, and I don’t remember. I slept, I dreamed, I woke and he was there. And so much was gone. Is gone. I’ll never see him again. Or Jaffar. Or—”

  She swallowed the rest of it. Her throat spasmed. Sh
e fought it open. “I didn’t know that I was happy.”

  If any of them spoke, Zamaniyah did not hear him. The silence stretched. For all that she could do, the numbness was passing. She was alive. She felt. She grieved; and yet she breathed, and in breathing was a subtle joy.

  The world was a shadow and an exile. But such a shadow. Such an exile: sweetness clothed in pain.

  Abd al-Rahim was gazing at her. For a moment she saw his eyes unguarded.

  No wonder he always made her blush. His adoration was as naked as—as—

  She must not think of that one. He was gone. This was present, and permitted; and yes, fair to see. Very fair. And he loved her to distraction.

  Her heart was cold. All the sweet warmth that had roused in her was gone. Death had taken it. Khamsin’s death.

  “Lady,” said Abd al-Rahim. “Oh, lady. To see you alive again…”

  She let him take her hand. She even let him kiss it, though only once. He held it to his heart. Such joy he took in it. She was glad that he could be so glad.

  Maybe that sweetness would come back. When she had rested. When she had forgotten ivory and cedar, and a narrow Arab face, and dark eyes startling against the pallor of it.

  “Lady,” Abd al-Rahim said again, more diffident now, though he spoke quickly enough to tumble the words together. “When it seemed you had died, when we dared to dream that you would live again, I asked—your father said to me—he allowed me— He has given me leave to win your favor. If you would, Lady. If you could…I would joyfully ally my house with yours.”

  She stood very still. Oh, indeed. Did her father think that she was a fool or an infant? Could he not have given her even an hour’s grace before he loosed on her this eager child?

  There was no answer in al-Zaman’s face, no anger, no triumph. He had done what he had done. He willed what he willed. And he had seen deadly danger here, and he had moved as swiftly as mortal man could move, to turn it aside.

  She spoke almost gently. It was not, after all, Abd al-Rahim’s fault that her father had decided to sell her quickly, while anyone was willing to have her. No more was it her father’s fault that he wished to preserve the honor of his house. “This is very irregular, my lords.”

  “It is,” said Abd al-Rahim. “But it is permissible; and we do it only and always for your sake.”

  She stifled the spit of rage that wanted to burst out of her. “For my sake. Yes. My word is not enough, nor my honor sufficient; I am tainted with his simple presence.”

  Abd al-Rahim’s eyes glittered. “That—that—there is no word for him in any human tongue. An animal, a shambling animal. How dared that sorcerer inflict such a horror upon you?”

  He did not know, she reminded herself. Again. He was only a boy, and in love, and a stranger to magic. “It’s over now,” he said, soothing. “Never again. I’ll defend you. I’ll keep you in joy and in peace. You can forget it all, and know only contentment. My love, my protection; if Allah wills, my sons—”

  They were chains, those words: gentle, and loving, and merciless. They bound her. They led her from the tent. Already Abd al-Rahim had claimed her even for her father’s eyes to see. It was his arm, and not al-Zaman’s, which circled her shoulders; his strength which bore her through the stares and murmurs of the camp; his cloak which slipped as if of its own accord to veil her head.

  oOo

  The war was won. The alliance was broken, Mosul driven back, Aleppo laid low and suing for peace. On the morrow the sultan would begin his march on the city.

  He kept no greater state for that he was now a king twice over. He sat in the glittering throng of his emirs, in his accustomed lightless black; but his smile had gained a new brilliance. He saw her passing well beyond the circle, wrapped in the cloak, walled in her lords and masters, and yet he knew her. He stood up in front of everyone, forgetting rank and dignity to abandon his place, to thrust through the emirs, to seize her in a bruising embrace. The force of it spun them both about, left her breathless and dizzy.

  He held her at arm’s length and drank her in. She was aware, dimly, of Abd al-Rahim hovering, of her father standing close. Then she forgot them. The sultan was drawing her with him. Emirs were retreating, doing their best not to stare.

  She kept her eyes down. Or tried. They had a will of their own, to wander upward, to reckon faces. Simply for prudence, she told herself. She should know who was there; who had seen what there was to see.

  With every glance her spirits sank lower. At every white turban her heart would jump; at every long white beard her eye would catch. None was both long and red, and branded with white.

  Of course they were not there. They were mindful of their promises. They had gone as far from her as they could go.

  Her eyes yielded at last to her will. Her hands knotted in Abd al-Rahim’s cloak. She fixed her gaze on them.

  As if from very far away she heard the sultan dismiss the emirs. Some protested. “Later,” he said, sharp and imperious. But to her he was most gentle. “Here, sit, where it’s quiet, and out of the sun. Or if you’d rather—my tent—”

  “It’s better here, my lord,” she said. He had set her in his own place, under his canopy, banked in cushions. One of his servants set a cup of sherbet in her hand. She touched her lips to the rim but did not drink. As unobtrusively as she could, she set the cup aside.

  The sultan sat by her. She saw her father’s face beyond him, caught between obeisance and resistance; and Abd al-Rahim seeming not to know whether to be outraged that he must share his new possession so conspicuously, or transported with joy at so potent a proof of the sultan’s favor. Neither could sit until he bade them, and he was intent upon her, simply and purely glad to see her there, alive, solid to his touch.

  A flash of green caught her eye. Someone was coming toward them through the ordered tumult of the camp. A Hajji’s turban, a magus’ face, though blurred with distance. He had companions. An old man and a young.

  Her breath came short. The sun was too bright. She could not see them clearly. But the young one—no wild man, that. He looked like any young man of breeding, walking a discreet step behind his lord. His turban was white, and modest. His robe was dark and simple. His beard was short, hardly more than a shadow on his cheeks; its white brand was shrunk to a glimmer. He was all changed, all a prince, with a tang of magic in the swiftness of it.

  He moved like an Arab stallion still, light and smooth, with a long, flowing stride.

  Al-Zaman could not see them: they were behind him. With all the will she had, she looked away from them.

  The sultan was calmer than he had any right to be, with flint and steel coming inexorably together before him. “My lord,” she tried to say.

  He turned to her, brow raised.

  She could not say it. She scowled at the cup beside her foot and waited for the fire.

  It was very cleverly done. They did not see one another until the newcomers had reached the shade of the sultan’s canopy; and then they could only stop, stiffen, glare.

  Khamsin—Hasan Sharif—would not look at her. Even bowed, his head was haughty. The shadows loved the planes of his face.

  As he went down in obeisance, she saw the braid beneath the turban. And he no Turk at all, but Arab of the royal Meccan line. Vanity? Or defiance?

  She must not think of him. She could think of Abd al-Rahim, who was going to marry her. Or of her father, who was deathly close to forgetting where he was and what he had sworn.

  Or of the Hajji, whose design she saw written plain in every turn of this tangle.

  She knew when al-Zaman crossed the edge. Her fault: she had let her startlement distract her. She tried to catch him as he started forward, but he was beyond perceiving so light a weight as hers.

  She braced herself for a roar of rage. But once he had moved, he seemed to collect himself. He bowed with rigid correctness. “O my sultan,” he said. “I am always and faithfully your servant. Yet, now that you have won your victory, I beg your indulge
nce. Give me leave, my lord. Free me now to take my daughter to her rest. Free us both, my lord, to prepare her wedding.”

  His audacity was breathtaking. Abd al-Rahim smiled at her, a warm and peaceful smile, the smile of a man who has gained his heart’s desire.

  Only one of them all had the wits to say the proper words. “I wish her happiness,” said Ali Mousa. His bow was for her, and his long grave glance. She could not guess what he was thinking. Whether he wondered at the suddenness of it: he who knew better than any what his son had been most famed for.

  He did not wield that weapon against al-Zaman. She was in his debt for it.

  “And this, I presume,” he said, “is the fortunate young man.”

  Abd al-Rahim bowed. “Indeed, my lord, I am the most fortunate of men.”

  “Allah willing,” said al-Zaman.

  “And what,” asked the sultan, “does the lady say to that?”

  He sounded strange. He looked much the same as he always did, neither smiling nor scowling; merely a little worn. He must have been deathly weary.

  She swallowed. Her throat was dry. What she could have said in his simple presence swelled to bitter labor before these others. That one other. Who had never, even once, spared her a glance.

  “The lady,” she said, rough-throated as a boy, “is her father’s obedient daughter.”

  Khamsin’s head flew up.

  She would not look at him. She had said nothing to be ashamed of. Her words were modest, and they were proper. If they lacked passion, that was only fitting in a maiden of good breeding before a gathering of men.

  “Zamaniyah,” the sultan said.

  She turned at her name. His eyes were very steady. “Do you remember,” he asked her, “what you promised me?”

  She nodded.

  His tension did not ease. “This is your free will?”

  “My lord does not approve the match?”

  “The match is excellent.” He was fighting to keep the sharpness from his tone. She wondered if the others could hear it. Not, most likely, her husband-to-be. He was rapt in bliss. “I ask if you do this because you want it. Or because you are weary, and new come from death, and trapped by the swiftness and cleverness of it; and because you cannot but be obedient to your father’s will.”