Throne of the Crescent Moon

by Saladin Ahmed

  Raseed came to his feet and looked toward his sword.

  “You can thank me later!” the Falcon Prince shouted mockingly, and he leapt effortlessly—sorcerously, no doubt—to another rooftop, leaving Raseed staring stupidly at the vial in his hand.

  His stomach cramped in agony, and his throat burned with bile. His head still swam, and for a moment he stood motionless. The scales of his soul weighed stolen goods against the life of an angel-touched girl.

  Then Raseed silenced the outraged voice within him and began to make his way back to the Scholars’ Quarter.

  Chapter 11

  ZAMIA BANU LAITH BADAWI found herself amidst a confusing rush of sounds and sights and smells. The keening winds of the Empty Kingdom. The sweet smell of dried dung burning in the air. The tanned tents of her people. The happy cries of those she knew to be dead.

  A dream.

  She floated just above the tents, as if sitting in a tree that was not there, and watched the Banu Laith Badawi go about their work—cooking, cleaning hides, grooming camels, mending clothes. She tried to call out to them. Her throat grew sore with the trying, but no words came. She growled, she tried to approach them, but nothing happened.

  Her father stepped into view, speaking to someone she couldn’t see.

  I am a Badawi chieftain, not some slavish townsman! Laith Banu Laith Badawi decides what is best for his tribe! God took your mother, Protector, with the same hand he used to give you to me. And the Angels gave you this gift. I will not reject what God, and the Ministering Angels, and the woman who was my night air, gave to the band because of the idiocies of the Banu Khad or the Banu Fiq Badawi. They are fat, weak bands full of hypocrites. Let them say what they wish among their own damned-by-God tents about my choice for Protector of the Band. But they will deal with you at council with the same respect that we show their Protectors or there will be blood feud!

  These words. Zamia knew these words. Her father had spoken them to her not a year past. It had not come to blood feud, but instead to the water-shunning of her band. And then something had struck the Banu Laith Badawi, something more foul than any feud. She had known, when she had come across the heart-robbed corpses of her tribesmen, that it had not been the Banu Fiq or the Banu Khad.

  Suddenly her father was gone, and the desert with him. Zamia woke and slept and woke and slept and it was all as one. Once, a cloud seemed to lift from her eyes and mind. She saw, for a few clear moments, that she lay in the Soo couple’s shop. Then the cloud of sleep lowered again.

  She was back in the desert, far from any tents, deep among the dunes. She watched a green-eyed girl a bit younger than herself pick her way quickly across the sand. The girl was dressed in Badawi camel-calf suede, but she traveled alone, with no other tribesmen in sight. Suddenly the girl stopped and turned and looked at Zamia. Then, before Zamia’s eyes the child began to grow taller, her mouth growing hard and her eyes going cold. Aging.

  And Zamia screamed as she saw that the girl was her. She watched herself, bandless, tribeless, and alone, growing old and then shriveling into a skeleton. Then bones turned to dust and blew away in a howling wind.

  She woke with a scream and sucked in air. Then she vomited, tears filling her eyes. She felt weak and wasted, like the old woman she had become in her dream. Suddenly there was a loud banging, and she heard shouted words that made half of her want to flee and half of her want to kill.

  “Mouw Awa! Mouw Awa!”

  The Doctor’s voice. It took a befuddled moment for Zamia to realize that these were real sounds, not dream-echoes. The monster strikes again! Fear filled her. She tried to take the shape. Her body burned with the effort, like trying to draw breath in a sandstorm. But the shape did not come. She was helpless. She tried feebly to gather her strength.

  But after a moment she realized that there was no attack, praise be to God. She was in the Soo couple’s home. The Doctor was stomping about the shop shouting, and Zamia realized the banging noise had simply been the heavy door slamming as he’d entered.

  “Mouw Awa! Mouw Awa!” the ghul hunter shouted again. “It’s Kemeti hidden script—Name of God, why didn’t I recall right away? The ‘Child Scythe’—now I know where I’ve read that name! Litaz! Litaz Daughter-of-Likami! Where are you, woman? Dawoud! Where is your wife?”

  Both of the Doctor’s friends appeared on the stairway. Litaz’s expression was one of stern irritation. “Name of God, Adoulla, I told you the girl needs quiet in order to rest. Have you lost your mind? What is all this shouting?”

  Zamia was fully awake now, and she managed to sit up on the cushioned divan. She was pleased to note that where her wound had burned before there was only a light stinging.

  To her left, Raseed leaned against the white-painted wall, looking even more uneasy than usual. His silks were dusty, and he looked pale, almost as if he’d been sick.

  Not wanting to look at the dervish too long, she turned back to the Doctor. His smile was broad as he boomed words at Litaz.

  “Litaz! My dear, please tell me you recall my lending you a book—”

  “You’ve lent me many books, Adoulla. Which one?”

  “Written by the court poet Ismi Shihab. A rare copy of his private memoirs from just before the civil war—remember? It took Hafi five years to find me this book! Remember?”

  Litaz rolled her eyes. “Right. I remember you forcing it on me. You were so excited to have found it. Boring stuff, nothing like his poetry. I read a few pages of meaningless royal intrigue and set it aside. It’s still upstairs somewhere.”

  “Thank All-Provident God that you are such a poor returner of things, my dear! Praise God!” The Doctor leapt up the steps, positively beaming. The Soo couple followed. Zamia heard the sounds of frantic rummaging upstairs, and more shouted conversation between the Doctor and Litaz about books.

  Zamia longed to fight someone. She was uneasy with the poking around and reading that the Doctor seemed to find so necessary. The urge to leave these dawdling old people nearly overtook her, and again she forced herself to face rock-hard reality. A Badawi warrior always found the most effective way to deal with enemies. And trying alone to find her enemies and stage a suicidal ambush was not the most effective way. She had no one else to turn to. She could expect no help from her people, even in fighting creatures such as these. In fact, Zamia knew, there would be those who would blame the appearance of such monsters on her band’s supposed corruption.

  She was again overcome with a terrible sense of all she had lost. She thought of home—of spiced yoghourt and fresh flatbread. She wished, with tears forming in her eyes, that she could see her father, or her cousin, or any of her band, one more time.

  With my father against my band! With my band against my tribe! With my tribe against the world! The old Badawi saying echoed mockingly through her head. She was the last of the Banu Laith Badawi, and she had no children. What was band now? What was tribe?

  Her thoughts were interrupted by the Doctor’s shouts from above “A-ha! It is here, praise God!” The ghul hunter came running downstairs, the others behind him. He sat at the low table beside her divan and opened a small black book.

  “You have more right to hear this than anyone, Zamia.”

  She nodded appreciatively, still feeling weak.

  When they were all gathered around, the Doctor jabbed a thick finger at the book before him and bellowed, “This book! This is where I know the names Hadu Nawas and Mouw Awa. Ismi Shihab’s memoirs. Listen to this, all of you.

  “Hadu Nawas was the last living member of a once great family. He was wealthy and kept a fine mansion near the Far Gardens, on the outskirts of the city. Once, twice, thrice did dark rumors arise among the poor people of that neighborhood about children disappearing into Hadu Nawas’s mansion. The Khalif knew of the man’s warped ways, but Hadu Nawas was a political ally, so the Khalif did nothing.

  “The winds of politics shift quickly, though. A series of events—intricate as puzzlecloth, quick as lightni
ng, made Hadu Nawas an enemy of the court. And suddenly the pious Khalif was outraged by Hadu Nawas’s child butchery.”

  Here the ghul hunter looked up at Litaz. “And you say you found this book boring, my dear?”

  Litaz shrugged. “I did not read that far.”

  The Doctor turned back to the book and kept reading.

  “I was there—sent as a recorder of crimes—when the watchmen burst in on that man-shaped monster. He had made an unspeakable little lair for himself beneath his mansion. There were indecent drawings on the walls and child-sized cages. We found Hadu Nawas with a hatchet in his hand and a gratified snarl on his face, standing over a little girl’s body.

  “I cannot lie to God, so why lie to the page? We bound that man and beat him. Tore out his nails, stabbed at his olive sack and tortured him right up to his trial. Some wished to put the fiend on display but the Khalif forbade speaking of the crimes to the common people.

  “The web of influence was woven such that the Khalif wished to purge the perished Nawas family’s name of this last-of-the-line madman. So Hadu Nawas’s name was stripped from him. It was decreed that he would be sealed in one of the tainted tombs of the Kem—destined to die of thirst or madness in the deep desert ruins.

  “As a part of this punishment, the murderer was given a new name, a name tainted by the corrupt old Kem, to mark him for his imprisonment. It was not Hadu Nawas that was sealed in that tomb. It was Mouw Awa, the Child Scythe.”

  The Doctor closed the book and scratched his big nose. “That is all the poet has to say.”

  Zamia shuddered, and not only from her weakness. More than once, her band had spotted the imposing ruins of an ancient Kemeti pyramid or obelisk. But no Badawi in his right mind would go anywhere near these places, which were known to be tainted by the foulest sorts of magic. To be imprisoned in such a place.…

  “Cast into a ruined pyramid to die,” the old magus said. “Well, something obviously found him there. Something that would not let him die. That had a use for the soul of a killer of children.”

  “The Dead Gods,” Litaz said, her voice eerily flat.

  The Doctor scratched his balding pate in thought. “Well, my dear, you Soo know more about the heathens of old than we Abassenese do, but there are books that say that the Faroes of Kem ruled with soul-eating magics from their gods.”

  Raseed, who had been long silent, narrowed his tilted eyes. He drew his sword and began to clean it. “With apologies, books and history are not our concern. This creature Mouw Awa is murdering men and women. Worse. If the Doctor speaks true, it keeps their souls from God’s presence. It—and whoever set it to killing—must be found and slain now.”

  The way the dervish stood and spoke made Zamia want to be nearer to him. Were she not lying down, she feared she would have taken a step toward him against her will.

  “So how can we hope to kill this foul thing?” Raseed continued. “My sword made no mark on it. My boldest blade-strokes did nothing.”

  Dawoud’s brow furrowed in thought. He pulled at his hennaed goatee. “I am not surprised by that,” he said. “This Mouw Awa was apparently born of ancient Kem magics—twisted spells that your steel and even my own powers and Adoulla’s invocations could well be useless against. What say you, beloved?” Dawoud turned to his wife, not looking hopeful.

  The alkhemist shook her head, her hair-rings clinking. “Given God’s help and months of study, perhaps I could try and devise some substance to fight such a thing, but we don’t have months.”

  Zamia found herself speaking the words almost before she thought them. “It fled from my claws. I wounded it badly. Sense says I am the only one who can kill it.” She was very aware of what her next words were, and speaking them filled her with nausea. “Except that I am, myself, wounded and half dead. And I cannot take the shape.”

  Litaz sniffed at her. “Don’t insult our craft, child. You’re not half dead. The way you heal, you’ll be back on your feet in a couple of days.”

  Zamia turned her head and found the Doctor looking at her so hard that she felt certain he could see through her.

  “Indeed,” the ghul hunter said. “And may it please God that it be so. For the child may be right about her claws.” He stopped staring at her and seemed now to stare hard at nothing. “Do you know, I’ve read translated accounts by barbarian priests in the Warlands? The land of Braxony was once tormented by creatures half wolf, half man. The heroes of that land were able to slay the monsters with silver swords—swords that they claimed were touched by Angels, as I recall. Of course those were just books and histories, and thus not our concern,” he said, sparing a droll look for Raseed.

  Raseed made a noise in his throat. “The Angels would never visit blessings on those heathenish lands! Their favors are not for thieves and blasphemers! They—” he fell silent and looked at the floor. For the first time since she’d met him, Zamia scented something impure wafting from the dervish’s body. Something almost like deception. Impossible, she told herself. Perhaps her senses had been a bit confounded by injury and healing drugs.

  The Doctor shrugged his big shoulders at his assistant. “I don’t know about that. But this is similar to what your people say of the lion-shape, is it not, Zamia? When you told me you carry no weapon, what was that bombastic bit of verse you spoke?”

  It disturbed Zamia that she was growing so used to the Doctor’s insults to her people that she had begun ignoring them. “I am a Badawi, not a timid townsman. Bombast is not an insult to a true tribesman.”

  “Fine, fine. The saying, child, what is it?”

  “My claws, my fangs, the silver knives with which the Ministering Angels strike.”

  Then without warning, she felt tears begin to well up in her eyes. She wiped them away. “I am the only one who can avenge the Banu Laith Badawi, and I cannot take the shape!”

  “You will avenge your band, Zamia. Rest easy in that,” the Doctor said, and Zamia thanked God for the confidence in his eyes and scent.

  The ghul hunter went on, his voice growing softer. “Child…you should know…That is…well, your pain is the freshest here, Zamia, but it is not unique. God’s truth be told, girl, we’re a veritable orphan hall here! The boy’s kin left all claim to him behind at the gates of the Lodge of God. My friends are a thousand miles and twenty years away from anyone they called family. And they’ve lost…” the Doctor stopped himself from saying something. “They’ve lost much more than you could know to this half-secret war we fight against the Traitorous Angel.”

  Zamia looked over at Litaz. The alkhemist’s normally warm smile was nowhere to be seen. She gave Adoulla a sad look and stood up. In her small blue-black hands she held Zamia’s father’s dagger.

  Zamia reached out weakly, wanting to hold the weapon in her own hands. “That dagger. My band’s…” she started to say.

  “Don’t worry,” Litaz said, “I will return it. But—thanks to Raseed—we now have a solution that will distill the strange blood that blackens it to an analyzable essence. It will take me a little while to prepare it, though.”

  The alkhemist darted another look at the Doctor—irritated rather than sad. “Adoulla, since you are so set on sharing secret pains today, maybe you should speak to the girl about your own family.” She left the room. Dawoud followed her out, throwing the Doctor an apologetic glance as he did so.

  “And what, Doctor, was that about?” Zamia asked.

  “Ask Litaz some time, and she will tell you, child. She is right, though, that I owe you a bit of my own story—for there should be a balance, between allies, in what we know of each other’s pain.”

  Raseed, looking disgusted with himself and still smelling atypically of deception, stepped out of the room, giving her and the Doctor a bit of privacy. She watched the dervish go, puzzled, then forced her attention back to the ghul hunter. “Litaz mentioned your family,” she said.

  “Aye. She means my parents, really. I only have the dimmest memories of them alive. Mostl
y I recall finding their bodies. As a boy, I told myself stories about them every day: they were killed because they were really a Khalif and queen in disguise and I, like a story hero, was a secret prince.

  “But they weren’t royalty,” the Doctor went on. “They were a porter and his wife, ordinary people of the Scholars’ Quarter, who left me, through no choice of their own, to a cruel fate with no kin and no money.”

  The Doctor paused to fetch Zamia a clay cup of cool water. She took a long drink from it, felt the sweet pain of her parched throat coming to life again. She didn’t know what to say to the Doctor’s words. “How did they die?” she asked, realizing too late that to these too-subtle city men, such a question might be taken as rude.

  But the Doctor only sighed. “Pointlessly, my dear. They died pointlessly. No grand prophecy, no dark mission of the servants of the Traitorous Angel. Just a pathetic, desperate piece of shit with a knife, who was drunk or stupid enough to think he could somehow get a few coins out of my completely coinless father.” Vacantly, the ghul hunter plucked up a bit of brown cloth from a Soo sewing tray sitting on the cushion beside him. As he spoke he began to twist the cloth in his hands, apparently unaware of what he was doing.

  “When I was barely a man I managed to track their killer down. He had ended up a one-legged gutter-sitter, obliterated by wormwood wine. I had started to study my craft then, but in truth I was still the street tough that had led the other young troublemakers of Dead Donkey Lane. But when I found that man, I was more vicious than I’d ever been in any brawl. I killed him with a knife. Stabbed him ten times. It takes a man a long time to die from a short-bladed knife. Long enough for me to wake from my rage. Long enough to find myself holding a bloody blade, hovering over the body of a still-begging cripple.”

  The Doctor shook himself. “I still can’t explain what I felt at that moment. But you and I have more than one thing in common. To this day I keep my hand free of the feel of killing-steel. I’ve seen enough knives and swords. Now, instead of killing, I do all that I can to keep men from dying.”