by Micah Yongo
“Mhm. An apt price for the building of a road then, a marriage?”
“For some.”
“And what about for you?”
“Me?”
“Yes. What would be your price, Hassan?” Yasmin said, testing the sound of his name on her lips as he had hers. “Why would you marry? For duty? Or devotion?”
Hassan turned from the party and looked directly at her. “Who’s to say the two cannot be one?”
They married less than a year later. They began a family, built a home, and, Yasmin felt, were to build something more. But that was before Hassan’s father died. Before Hassan took up the stewardship of Dumea. Before the light in his eyes that had first drawn her began to wane and the man she knew withdrew. Now Hassan laughed less. Talked less. Worked more. And then, just days ago, there’d come the news about Yasmin’s estranged older brother, Zaqeem, the governor of Qadesh and one of Hassan’s oldest friends – found dead by an altar in a Sumerian forest. Hassan hadn’t slept or eaten well since, but for Yasmin it was different. Her father had disowned Zaqeem before Yasmin knew how to walk or talk, exiling him for what had apparently become an unseemly preoccupation with the outlawed traditions of the Magi. Which Yasmin had always found strange. Nearly a hundred priestly orders, as many as ten thousand men and women, had been destroyed by Sharíf Karel in the Cull three centuries ago when the Sovereignty began, with the few who survived fleeing to Súnam. Why would anyone risk their life and those of their loved ones to pursue the very practices their sovereign’s forebears had fought to eradicate? It made no sense. And yet that was what Zaqeem had done. And now he was dead.
To Yasmin, the news felt strange and vague, a thing she was meant to feel but couldn’t. And so that evening she gazed mutely from the corner of the decree court as the harvest festivities began. She watched the colourfully festooned drapes marking the square and the smiling people who filled it, feeling like a stranger. Like she didn’t belong.
“So glad to see you, sister.”
She looked up to find Bilyana approaching from the crowd, waving as she came. The festival was small, but Bilyana had come dressed in rich blue-dyed cotton as fine as any found in the high bazaars of Qalqaliman. She was dressed fit for a king’s table, her arms braced with twin armlets of polished bronze. Yasmin smiled despite herself. “A fair sight you are, Bilyana, for a fair evening.”
“Is it? You must be yet to taste the wine, sister.”
“A mistake you have not made.”
“A mistake I shall never make. What else is a feast for if not wine?”
“Quite.”
“Mock all you like, but in this place we must scrounge for our delights wherever we can find them. Though I admit, this time ‘delight’ is no way to describe the wine. Perhaps gutterwash or dregs. A right-minded man would not offer it even to his oxen.”
“A right-minded man would not offer any wine to his oxen.”
“Well, perhaps he ought. They may work harder knowing how poor the end of their labour has been.”
“Oxen till for crops, Bilyana, not wine.”
“What? Oh. Well, then useless beasts they are. I’d always wondered why they seem so glum. But at least they have an excuse. You, on the other hand…”
Yasmin balked, frowning, and looked at the other woman. “You are not kind, Bilyana.”
“And never aim to be. Its charm is thought too much of, you know. Now honesty, honesty is a better way, kinder than kindness. Are they not the words of some poet or scribe? Anyway, you are glum, and without excuse, having not endured the wine.”
In truth, Bilyana, of course, was not Yasmin’s sister but rather the wife of her cousin, Tobiath, who, after fostering as a boy with Hassan and Zaqeem at the home of the crown city’s scribe, had elected to follow Hassan here and serve in the schools and library rather than remain in Hanesda. A decision that had built in Bilyana – whose affection for the crown city mirrored Yasmin’s – a sort of wry boredom, but one she wore well, or at least better than Yasmin managed to, tempered by wine and food.
Bilyana sniffed diffidently, her nose ring shivering, and turned her square pudgy hips to glance around at the gathering.
“So,” she persisted, bullish from the wine, “what is it? Your face is longer than a mule’s.”
Yasmin thought about her argument with Hassan that morning. “Noah,” she lied. “The Judgment is so close now. Not that one would know it to see him. All day long he is with those pigeons. It is not good for him. He doesn’t study. He rarely even speaks with the other children.”
“I’d not speak with them either; good-for-nothings all of them. You should leave him to his way.”
“Easily said.”
“Easily done.”
“For you perhaps.”
Bilyana only paused but it was enough to make Yasmin regret the words. Bilyana’s barrenness was the other reason for her taste for wine.
“Yes. Well,” she replied, before Yasmin could pity her with apology. “We all have our troubles… Which reminds me. I have a favour to ask.”
Yasmin nodded meekly, stung by her own callousness.
“It’s my brother, Zíyaf,” Bilyana said, leaning in conspiratorially.
“Is he well?”
“Hm, well, the answer to that is less than simple…” She stopped abruptly and smiled, waving at someone in the crowd. “Old hag,” she muttered to herself, still smiling as she waved. “Smiles to my face and then preens and coos whenever Tobiath is around, laughs like a hyena at all his jokes. A drunken hyena. As though she could be any less subtle. I mean, fathers bless him, your cousin’s a good man but he’s as much wit as a mayfly… Anyway. Zíyaf.”
“Is he alright?”
“Well. He’s taken with a Súnamite, some woman he came upon when your husband sent him down there to collect a Saori staff for the library.”
“Came upon?”
“He likes her… well… is convinced she ought to be his wife.”
“His wife?”
A goblet of the offending wine had somehow appeared in Bilyana’s hand. She sipped it and nodded, the tiny bauble of her nose ring dangling vigorously.
“I see.”
“No, sister, you do not. This Súnamite, it happens she is the daughter of a chieftain.”
Yasmin grimaced.
“Yes,” Bilyana replied. “Exactly. You know our situation.”
And Yasmin did. The reason for Bilyana’s willingness to follow Tobiath to Dumea in the first place had been the fall of her own house and the debts it had crippled her and her brother with. The humiliation of coming to Dumea had been a welcome choice compared to the unforgiving ire of their creditors.
“You’re worried about the dowry.”
“I’m worried about all of it. The visit, we have none to speak for him. Tobiath and I, we are too young, and we have no titles… But Hassan,” she said hopefully. “Well, he is steward of Dumea.”
“Oh, no–”
“They would receive him, Yasmin. He could sit and talk with their elders, decide the brideprice.”
“Bilyana, Hassan is very busy.”
“I know. I know he is. But if he could do this…”
“I doubt he would be willing. The journey alone, there and back, is at least two weeks, likely three with the rainy season just beginning. And the heat…”
“Yes, I know, but there would be good reason for him to.”
“What reason? We have Noah’s Judgment, after that we are at court in Hanesda. I see no way he could–”
“Governor Zaqeem,” Bilyana said suddenly.
Yasmin frowned. The name of her dead brother hung in the space between them. Somewhere a minstrel and strings had begun to play. The crowd were starting to clap. Yasmin stared at the other woman. “That is not funny, Bilyana.”
“And I play no game, sister.” She leaned in further. “What if I told you I knew things, about Governor Zaqeem, about why he died?”
“Zaqeem died because he tried to have a
pair of orphan girls put to death on an altar like goats. Should it be any surprise he was come upon by robbers? Everyone knows raiders always seek those disgusting gatherings, all the gold to be had there, and–”
Bilyana touched her arm, gave a short sad smile. “No, dear sister. That wasn’t why. Speak to Hassan. Tell him what I have said. He will understand. Then ask him to favour my brother. He listens to you, Yasmin.” Bilyana finished the wine in her goblet and glanced back to the crowd. “Now, I have to go. I can see Tobiath trying to leave. We have so few parties in this wretched place and always he seeks to leave. To go where, I ask?”
With that, Bilyana briskly walked away. She turned once and offered another tight nervous smile, mouthing the words he listens to you, before disappearing into the shallow throng of people without looking back.
Seven
F A M I L Y
Daneel stood beside his brother and watched Tobiath and Bilyana leave the gathering. He watched as the couple squabbled in the street. Then he tried to imagine the things they’d be saying to each other as he and Josef went on ahead to wait at the library, where they knew Tobiath would eventually go. It had become a habit of late for Daneel. Imagining things. Daydreaming.
He’d had plenty of time for it, after all. Days, in fact. That was how long he and Josef had been here, stuck in Dumea, discreetly following the city’s officials around like stray dogs. Studying them. Waiting. Daneel had never been good at that. Both his strength and weakness, Master Johann liked to say. At the moment it was proving to be the latter. Even Josef was growing tired of his complaints about being here. It had got to the point he’d taken to roaming the city alone each morning to avoid Daneel’s company, learning the streets, or else simply meditating in the safehouse. Which was the other thing Daneel was sick and tired of – the safehouse.
The housekeeper was an old blind woman who’d been a beggar the Shedaím redeemed, granting her the small hovel she now kept for sheltering the strangers they sent. The Brotherhood kept many like her, in every city; always blind, always old, though not always as forgetful as this one, forgetful of how many times she’d told her story, how many times she’d praised the mercy of the strangers who’d redeemed her. Too many times for Daneel to hear again. He’d rather follow this Tobiath around and imagine what he and his wife might be arguing about.
Besides, Daneel had never been much good with meditating anyway, the first discipline they teach you. Unlike Neythan, who could contentedly sit still with his eyes closed for over half a day, Daneel had never been able to build a taste for it.
He shrugged.
What of it? As Master Johann would always say: each tree has its fruit, and Neythan’s bloodtree had little, for all the meditating he did.
Where was Neythan anyway? And what of Yannick and Arianna? How long were he and Josef expected to keep following around city officials in Dumea to pass the time?
“Something is wrong,” Daneel said.
Josef sighed and continued to watch the library. They’d found a good place to wait. It was early evening and at this hour the library cast a deep shadow along its eastern side.
“I can feel it,” Daneel said. “The others ought to have arrived by now.”
“We don’t know that.”
Daneel looked at his brother. “Of course we do. What’s that even supposed to mean? We don’t know that.”
“It means the decrees.”
“What of them?”
“None of us were privy to each other’s edicts.”
Daneel thought about it. Say what you want about Josef, he always had another way of seeing things. “You think there’s more to what they were ordered to do,” Daneel said. “Before coming here.”
“Perhaps.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. That’s the point.”
“We were not told of that. Master Johann said nothing of that.”
“No. He didn’t.”
“You think it a test.”
“Probably.”
“Because we are not to discuss our decrees, what we are each to do.”
“Perhaps that’s the test.”
“Whether we will or not.”
“I think so.”
“So what were yours?”
Josef chewed.
“I’m your brother, Josef.”
“I haven’t forgotten.”
“You’re not going to tell me?”
Josef didn’t answer.
“Fine. Don’t tell me… but I know something’s wrong.”
Josef didn’t say anything. Neither spoke for a while. They listened to the faint sound of music as it drifted across from the harvest festivities in Dumea’s main square. The celebrations had been going on for some time. It seemed to be all they did here, indulge in celebrations and spend the rest of their time in debates, waffling on about the meaningless writings of dead men stored in their library. To be expected in a place like this, Daneel supposed. Jaleem, the woodworker, had warned them as much back in Ilysia. Not a talkative man but one of the few things he’d shown a willingness to speak at length about was Dumea, the city of his birth. What it was like now and its history.
How Seth of Hophir, the eighth king of Dumea, had built the library before the Sovereignty’s birth. How his grandson, Sufjan, later sought to fill it with works and writings from every known land, beginning a tradition that would be handed down through his line for generations until news of it reached even to Kosyatin, the sixth sharíf, who, when he came upon Dumea to raze it, couldn’t, for fear of destroying the sacred library. In the end Dumea became part of the Sovereignty in nature if not name, ceding fealty to Hanesda in tribute without adopting its laws, and thereby turning its line of kings into stewards. Since then it had become little more than a hinterland on the way to Súnam to which Sharífs banished the disfavoured and undisciplined as ancestral penance for the citystate’s resistance to full sovereign rule. Which, Daneel thought, only added to the scores of babblers and wastrels already here.
He sighed. The tale of the place was as boring as being in it. He leaned over to his brother. “I am to kill Hassan, the city steward,” he said. “When the others arrive.”
Josef looked at him, still chewing, then back to the library.
“I told you my decree.”
“You did.”
“You’re still not going to tell me?”
Josef said nothing.
“I can’t believe you’re not going to tell me.”
“They’re here.”
“What?”
“They’re here. Look.”
They watched the men they’d been waiting for go into the library, and then got up to follow. They climbed the wide steps of the entrance and entered, passing beneath the tall arch of the doorway into a short high-ceilinged anteroom. Dense patterns covered the walls. Through another doorway and beyond the anteroom, the space swelled higher and wider still, a yawning expanse of shelves and scaffolds. Rolls of vellum and scraps of jaundiced parchment poked out from sills dug into the walls.
“There they are,” Josef whispered.
Daneel followed his brother’s gaze. Two men sat opposite one another at a small table across the room. Josef and Daneel wandered in their direction to a shelf filled with wooden artefacts, each etched with unfamiliar markings and scribbles.
Daneel picked one up and turned it in his hand, showing it to his brother.
Josef glanced at the piece and cocked an eyebrow. They conferred like this quietly from a distance, just close enough to hear some of the muttered speech of the pair they’d followed in.
“You’re not listening to me. How can you be sure he was there?”
“Hassan, I know this is difficult…”
“Difficult? Do you, Tobiath? Can you?”
“My brother, Hassan, my brother, my own flesh and blood, he saw him there with his own two eyes. I know he can be… well…”
“He is a drunkard.”
The other man lifted a
finger. “He is my brother, Hassan. He knows what he saw. Governor Zaqeem was lying there among the others with his throat cut.”
Hassan sighed. Looked away. Looked back again. Said something too quiet for Josef or Daneel to hear.
The other man, Tobiath, waved him off. “It’s nothing… just… listen to me, my friend. You must listen to…” More murmured words, placating gestures.
Hassan was shaking his head.
Tobiath was becoming more animated. He grasped Hassan’s forearm. “You must see,” he said, just loud enough to hear. “Zaqeem was not a simple man. You didn’t know everything about him, neither of us did. You said it yourself, for more than a year he’d been hiding something. Perhaps now we know what that something was.”
“He was not one of them.”
“Yet he was found among them.” The man lifted his hands. “I loved him too. But it is where he was found. He was mere feet from the altar.”
Hassan shook his head again. Their voices dropped once more from earshot.
Tobiath was murmuring intently. He seemed to be doing most of the talking now.
After a while Hassan leaned in. “And Yasmin?”
“No,” Tobiath said, a little louder than intended. Both glanced around the room before turning back to one another. “Do not tell her, Hassan. She cannot know.”
“You are doing as Zaqeem did, Tobiath. You are keeping things from me. And now you ask I do the same with her?”
Their voices lowered again. Josef looked around but there was no way of getting closer without making their listening obvious.
The Brothers continued to move around the library, pretending to examine its various artefacts and texts whilst remaining within earshot of the two men until midnight, when the library closed. When Tobiath finally left, Josef and Daneel followed him from a distance. They watched him go along the side streets by the sheepgate. They followed him through the narrows by the city’s west quarter and then out into a deserted street.
From the adjoining alley, they could see Tobiath walk the street’s length to the walled end on the other side. The man reached the cornerhouse, stopped to look around, and then retrieved a key from beneath a pot beside the door.
