The Doctor raised a bushy eyebrow. “You know, boy, I’ve heard people ask the same about Raseed bas Raseed! ‘His face is so sour,’ they say!”
He is always making mock, even of matters of life and death, Zamia thought, noting the Doctor’s oafish smile as he poked the dervish in the ribs.
As if he were thinking her thoughts, Raseed frowned. “Apologies, Doctor,” the dervish said, “but there is little cause for jesting here.”
The ghul hunter smiled a frustrated smile. “Wherever on God’s great earth a man tries to make light of his troubles, trust a damned-by-God holy man to open his mouth and put a stop to it! And here I thought this one—” he jabbed a fat finger again at Raseed “—had been learning to loosen up a bit.”
Though Zamia could not say why, Raseed reacted as if struck. “Loosen up? May God forbid it. If anything, this is a time for redoubling virtue and vigilance. The Traitorous Angel’s foulest servants stalk the city,” the dervish said forcefully. “May it please All-Merciful God to protect us all!”
“May it please God,” all present echoed ritually. When Zamia looked back at the Doctor, he was no longer smiling.
Chapter 12
“MAY IT PLEASE GOD,” Dawoud Son-of-Wajeed said, and heard his words spoken simultaneously by the others. “So now we know some of what we face,” he said. “What do we do about it?”
For a long few moments there was nothing but silence. His words hung in the air, and the group’s grim expressions reflected the enormity of the situation. Dawoud scanned the faces that filled his sitting room. His wife’s eyes carried the impression of having seen too much, and Adoulla’s features displayed a weariness that Dawoud knew was reflected in his own. The young warriors’ expressions were different, though, Dawoud thought. The emerald-eyed girl and clean-shaven boy were more determined than resigned. The older trio’s stances were set by weary habit, but Raseed and Zamia’s were set by will.
Adoulla’s assistant was the first to speak, and he did so heatedly. “We must warn the watchmen, Doctor. Or perhaps the Khalif himself. Someone in authority needs—”
The ghul hunter snorted in disbelief. “You still think this is where our energies should go, boy? After two years in this city even a slave-to-titles such as yourself must recognize that the Khalif isn’t going to believe such as us. And even if he did believe there was a threat to Dhamsawaat, his greatest concern would be how it affects his coin purse. It is a waste of time trying to convince a selfish man to care about what lies beyond his nose. No. The Khalif will be as helpful as a hole to a pail. But I have learned that the Falcon Prince may share some of our troubles. He could—”
He cannot be serious! Dawoud cut his friend off, putting a hand on Adoulla’s big shoulder and wagging a finger in his face. “How can one man be so wide-eyed and so damned-by-God cynical at the same time, brother of mine? Even if we could find Pharaad Az Hammaz, linking our fates to his would bring more trouble than aid. Half this city is hunting him! And besides, there are a few good guardsmen out there, you know. Most notably their captain.”
He turned to Raseed, who looked desperate to kill something. “Your idea is sound, Raseed. And the Captain of the Guard, Roun Hedaad, is known to me. Indeed, Litaz and I once saved his life. Tomorrow morning I will go to the Crescent Moon Palace and try to speak to him about what we’ve turned up. It is a vague warning I’ll be bringing him, but he will be thankful for it nonetheless. It cannot hurt to have the guard aware that this threat is out there. And it just might help.”
Adoulla stroked his beard. “Hm. Roun Hedaad is a good man as guardsmen go. A very good man. But everyone knows he is a holdover from another era and wields little power these days. The Captain of the Watch holds the real power. Still, it’s not a bad idea, I suppose. If anyone in the palace is going to look past his self-interest long enough to wonder about the slaughter of poor people, it will be Captain Hedaad. So perhaps someone should speak to him.” Adoulla turned to Raseed. “Are you satisfied, boy?”
The dervish inclined his turbaned head in acknowledgement, then turned to Dawoud. “And thank you, Uncle.”
Beside him, Litaz stood and spoke softly. “Roun Hedaad will make a good ally in this. I wish I could accompany you, my love. But the girl’s healing is still incomplete. Come tomorrow morning she’ll need crimson quicksilver, and I’ll need to be here with her in order to apply it. Speaking of which,” she turned her beautiful eyes to the tribeswoman, “it is about time to apply a sleeping salve. Come with me, Zamia. This is a private matter between women—let us leave these oafs to themselves.”
To Dawoud, the girl seemed about to protest—no doubt she fumed at the idea of being left out of battle planning—but her head drooped and her body was clearly putting the lie to her will’s stubborn resilience. With weak steps, she followed his wife out of the room.
Dawoud turned to Adoulla and Raseed and shrugged. “So I will go alone. Litaz must stay here, and the Khalif has little respect for your order, Adoulla.”
Adoulla rolled his eyes. “Aye, and the feeling couldn’t be more mutual. We’re best off dividing tasks, anyway. As for myself,” he started, then looked hesitant, embarrassed even, to speak his next words.
What is this? Dawoud wondered. His old friend was rarely embarrassed by anything.
“As for myself,” the ghul hunter continued, “come morning I will go to the Singers’ Quarter to speak again to the boy Faisal, whose family was slain.”
So that’s it. Adoulla was ashamed of his own weakness. Afraid he was making selfish choices. Anxious that Dawoud would judge him harshly for it. Well, Dawoud could never pass judgment on this man whom he’d been friends with for a long lifetime. But neither would he let Adoulla lie to himself.
He smiled as he spoke. “Aye, speak again to the boy. And while you are about it—what do you know?—you will be at the house of the only woman that you have ever really loved. It is funny how All-Provident God arranges these things, eh?”
He’d meant only to tease his friend, but Adoulla’s expression was dark and troubled. “Miri Almoussa knows a great deal about the history of this city—she may have more information on our enemies.”
At this the dervish, who Dawoud had nearly forgotten was there, chirped up. “With apologies Doctor, I hope you will excuse me from accompanying you tomorrow, for—”
“For a holy man ought not be seen traipsing about a whorehouse, eh? And ought not associate with certain types, eh?” Adoulla’s tone spoke of the weariness of an old argument. “I grow truly tired of this, boy. You cannot call a man ‘partner’ and insult his friends at every turn.”
The boy’s tilted eyes went wide, and Dawoud thought his own might have, too. Adoulla seemed unaware of his surprising choice of words.
“I…I have never dared call myself your partner, Doctor. I am merely your assistant.”
Adoulla shrugged. “You’re my assistant in ghul hunting, true. But you and that forked sword of yours are near as good at it as I was in my prime.”
The boy looked profoundly embarrassed, and pink points tinted his golden cheeks. “I thank you, Doctor. But in any case I do not ask to be excused for the reason you named. Rather, I ask to remain here and act as a guard for the women.” Now it was the boy’s turn to look ashamed of himself and stammer. “The monster may return. I’ve…I’ve failed once to protect Za—er, the tribeswoman. Due to my lack of diligence, she was attacked, and if I am to—”
Dawoud could not listen to this. Adoulla teased the dervish but essentially coddled the boy’s rigid nonsense. Dawoud would not. If the dervish wished to judge himself guilty on the basis of nothing, that was his business. But Dawoud and his wife were being drawn back into grim matters that they’d left behind long ago. They had little choice—as foul a force as Dawoud had ever sensed threatened their best friend. But he’d be damned by God if he was going to go into battle with confused warriors at his side.
He wheeled on Raseed. “Do you have jackal fangs, boy? Not so far as I can s
ee. So how in the name of Merciful God is it your fault the girl was wounded? The life you have chosen is war, young dervish. A war against the Traitorous Angel. The sort of thing your Order talks about in all of their oaths and Traditions. Well, this is the reality. The girl ought to praise God that she’s still alive. People—people we care for—die in wars. You seem unprepared for this. And perhaps unprepared to do the duty you left the Lodge for.”
Raseed lowered his head, his blue turban bobbing “You are correct, of course, Uncle.” The boy’s look said that each word was pulling a sword blade through his guts. “I must put ‘the sun of God’s good before the candleflame of one life.’ I just…I…it was my fault that—”
Litaz reappeared in the doorway, apparently having put the tribeswoman to bed. “What with the enemies that are after Adoulla, I would feel better if I could work without worrying that a ghul pack is going to knock down the door. Let the boy stay here with me and act as a guard.”
Dawoud nodded. “Anything to keep you safe, beloved.”
He and Litaz spent half that night lying beside each other, too anxious to sleep and not secluded enough to make love. Dawoud held Litaz’s small hand in his, but they said little. Finally, they drifted into sleep.
When he woke at dawn he did not wake Litaz. Instead he said silent goodbyes to her and a loudly snoring Adoulla, and stepped quietly out the door into the still half-dark morning.
Soon the nights would be growing shorter. The Feast of Providence, the night before the shortest day of the year, was almost upon them—though he’d do no celebrating until this Orshado and the things that served him were destroyed.
Dawoud started walking and soon left the Scholars’ Quarter behind him. He breathed deeply of the early morning air, trying to drive from his body the taint he’d felt when he’d worked his scrying spell last night. The power behind that taint…there was more to this than a handful of killings, Dawoud felt certain. That sort of power aimed at bigger things.
For the first time since he and Litaz had seen the smoke rising from Adoulla’s townhouse, Dawoud really turned over events in his head. He was angry to have been dragged into this business. For decades, his and his wife’s work had drawn them away from all that was normal and happy. Dawoud’s body wrecked by magic. Their baby boy murdered by monsters. When they had fought and traveled beside Adoulla and others, the hypnotic song of responsibility had called them onto paths of danger and madness, like the snake-tailed dune maids that lured desert travelers to their doom. But they’d left that all behind. Dawoud’s greatest worries these past few years had to do with ministering to the poor without going broke, and with his wife’s increasing desire to leave this city he had made his home. But now.…
He passed a shuttered storefront, then stopped walking as his chest suddenly tightened and blazed into pain. In the course of his calling Dawoud had been both stabbed and poisoned, and this felt like both at once. He began to cough and nearly collapsed from it.
It was several minutes before the coughing fit passed. Standing frozen there on the street, he panted painfully, feeling his body taking on more age than was its due. The healing and scrying magics he had worked over the past day—it had been many months since he’d done such. He felt the toll with every labored breath. Loudmouthed Adoulla liked to complain about his old man’s aches, but he knew nothing of pain. Of weakness. When Dawoud worked his magic—Name of God, when he simply walked down a dusty Dhamsawaat street too fast!—it felt as if God’s great fingers were pinching his lungs shut.
With this Orshado and his monstrous servants out there, Dawoud, his wife, and his oldest friend were needed more than ever before, but he did not know how long he could last back in this life. Not for the first time, his head was filled with visions of himself as a doddering invalid who needed his wife to spoonfeed him.
He tried unsuccessfully to keep his face from betraying his pain to the porters and cartmen passing by. But, he saw, he needn’t have bothered—for the busy people of Dhamsawaat didn’t give three shits for a dying old man’s agony. The only looks he received were looks of disgust. After a moment his breathing began to return to normal, and he gave the self-centered people around him his own look of disgust. Perhaps Litaz is right. Perhaps it is time at long last for us to leave this cold-hearted city.
He leaned heavily against a stone wall and allowed himself one deep shudder. Then he focused his soul and drew himself up. There was a task at hand. And if he was going to be there for Litaz, he had to be strong. He clenched his fists and pressed on, trying not to feel the ache that was building in his back.
He stepped out onto the Mainway, ignoring the hawkers’ shouts. For half a moment he toyed with the idea of hiring a sedan chair. But it was only toying. In all his years in Dhamsawaat, Dawoud had only ridden in one a handful of times. As with other things, his wife had been able to move from the Soo way to the Abassenese with more ease. When she was not with him she often hired chairs. Being a rich Blue River girl prepared her for having men carry her on their backs, he supposed with a snort, dodging past a bowlegged pistachio seller.
For an honest Red River Soo like himself, such a way of moving through crowds was simply wrong. Not doing so on the way to the palace, though, meant a long, hard walk. At least the day promised to be a cool one.
He walked for an hour and a half down broad roads before turning down Poulterer’s Row, which was packed with people preparing for the Feast of Providence. Every neighborhood in the city had a chicken seller, of course, but on Poulterer’s Row one could peruse the rare delicacies of the great master merchants: purple partridge, sun-dove, heron-stuffed swan. It was also the only place in all of Dhamsawaat that one could buy a pickled ostrich egg from the Republic. The smells of death and feather were thick here, and Dawoud was seized by a dry retching. He sat for a moment and gave a copper fals to a water seller who poured from his skin a cup of water so welcome it made Dawoud thank God aloud.
After yet another hour of his sandals slapping stone and packed dirt, Dawoud made it to the western gates of the Crescent Moon Palace. It had been a couple of years since he had been down this way, and he found himself newly dazzled by the building’s brilliance. Rising from the great white dome on a thin spire of gold was a sculpture of a man on horseback wielding a long lance. The head of the statue was changed to resemble each new Khalif. Dawoud realized he’d not been to the Palace since the new Khalif had taken the Throne of the Crescent Moon.
The statue gleamed, showing the lean-featured Khalif’s martial prowess against God’s enemies. Of course, everyone in Dhamsawaat knew that the new Khalif, like his father, had never once been in battle in his pampered life. It was the kind of hypocrisy that made Adoulla choke on his breakfast, but Dawoud wasn’t much bothered by it. Matters of state were about hypocrisy as much as anything else. The Soo people understood this as a simple fact that needn’t be condemned—a thing that simply was.
Dawoud approached the squat stone guardhouse that stood beside the gate. Calling on Roun Hedaad meant getting word to him by way of a helpful watchman. Dawoud did not have Adoulla’s total scorn for the Khalif’s men, but he did know that most of them could not be truthfully described as helpful. A pair of them exited the guardhouse and walked by, wearing steel-studded leather jerkins and displaying the slim maces that were their weapon of office. They eyed Dawoud as they did everyone they passed—with a vaguely menacing squint, ready, almost eager, for trouble. Dawoud gave these two a deferential old-mannish nod and sought out the least hostile looking watchman he could find: a lanky boy with soft eyes.
“God’s peace, young man. I must get in touch with Captain Hedaad immediately regarding an urgent matter.”
The boy said, more politely than Dawoud expected from a watchman, “If you’ve got a complaint about the watch, Uncle, I’m afraid you’ll need to take it to the eastern gates office. They’ll get you an audience with a vice captain and in a few days perhaps—”
“Forgive me, young man, but this is not
a matter that can wait. My name is Dawoud Son-of-Wajeed, and I am well-known to Roun. I promise you that if you give him my name he will want to see me right away.”
The boy fixed those soft eyes on Dawoud, trying to somehow spy out ill intent. He put an idle hand on his mace and scratched his nose. “Well-known, huh?” Another long look. “Fine. But you’d better not be jerking me about here, Uncle.”
Dawoud inclined his head graciously.
Half an hour later a different watchman led Dawoud into a small chamber just inside the palace proper. The room was crowded with grain sacks and coils of chain, but there was a small divan in the corner. The watchman gestured to it gruffly, then left. No sooner had Dawoud settled gratefully down onto the dark wood than Roun Hedaad’s wide frame filled the doorway.
Dawoud started to stand, but the Captain of the Guard kept him from doing so. He bent down to embrace Dawoud and they exchanged greetings. Then Roun sat beside him.
The squat man had always seemed to Dawoud to be cut from a block of brown stone. There was the slightest bit of gray in his thick black moustache now and a few tiny lines at his eyes. But he looked as hard as ever, as did the masterwork four-bladed mace at his side.
“Thank you for making time to see me, Captain.”
The man scratched his club-shaped nose. “I can always make time for a man who saved my life.”
Dawoud waved a dismissive hand. “Well, my wife’s tonics had as much to do with that as anything. Besides, we were paid a good price for our work then.”
“Fair enough. So what is it you have come here to ask then, Uncle?”
If it were Litaz here, she’d have planned all of the words to use here. But that was not how he did things. “You know some of the strange, cruel magics my wife and I once made a life of fighting,” he said to the Captain of the Guard. “I’ve come to you because such a threat is loose in Dhamsawaat now.”
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