by Micah Yongo
“Dumea,” Gahíd said patiently. “What of Dumea?”
“What does Dumea have to do with anything?”
“The decrees there are yet to be fulfilled.”
“And those you sent remain in the city?”
“More than that, Sharífa. Those I sent saw the steward, Hassan, leave Dumea and go beyond the Narrow, into Súnam.”
“The Summerlands? When?”
“Less than two weeks ago. I received word only today. They say he met with one of the daughters of Queen Umani.”
“Umani?” Chalise watched the ground as she resumed her pacing.
“Sharífa?”
“I’m thinking…”
Gahíd leaned back and turned his gaze to the street.
Chalise, after a few moments, came to a stop and turned to face him. “The ones you sent to spy on Hassan,” she said. “They are of the same sharím as these rebels?”
“Yes.”
“Then you will have them return. If there are any who will know why these betrayers are doing as they are it will be those who’ve spent most of their lives with them. They may be able to tell us something of their aims, even unknowingly, perhaps we will learn what they plan next. You will question them, and then send word to me.”
“And Súnam?”
“Súnam will wait,” she said. “For now, at least.” She turned to start back toward the market. “The Sovereign council is against me, Gahíd. They will not agree to act against the Summerlands. When the time comes, it will be the Brotherhood that shall be called upon to do what must be done. Which is why we must first take the thorn from our own foot before we seek to tread on another’s.”
With that she strode away across the clearing. Gahíd watched the chamberlain, Elias, come to her side as she turned again and beckoned to the waiting Abda. The bodyguard glanced to Gahíd. Gahíd nodded at her, releasing her to return to the sharífa. It was only as she obeyed that Gahíd noticed the chamberlain watching him, the old man’s gaze lingering for a moment across the distance before he too finally turned to follow the queen.
Eighteen
C A R N I V A L
Melodic jangling sounds floated over the giant walls of the city as the drivers hailed the gates. Shouts and laughter from men and women inside the walls. Neythan poked his head out of the carriage, watching as the long-awaited high doors of Hanesda slowly parted.
The watchmen waved them through with a caravan of cloth and spice merchants he and Caleb had joined in the hill country after fleeing the men at the well. Caleb, it turned out, knew one of them – a balding and diminutive spice seller by the name of Nouredín. A man with an annoying habit of leaning in too close as he spoke, voice always hushed, as though he was about to suggest robbing those nearby. It was a manner all the more irritating for the sharp niggling scent of cardamom, cumin and some other smell Neythan didn’t recognize that wafted from the man whenever he opened his mouth to speak. He leant toward Neythan now, nudging his thigh with a fist, falsely familiar.
“Seems our timing is good, my friend,” he said, pointing upwards. “New moon festival. There will be many delights within for a man like you.” His lips, thin and crinkled, twisted into a narrow smirk as he winked, making his mouth look like a wound. Neythan ignored him, as he had for most of the journey. He had other things to think about. Like what had happened back at the well, the sheepcoated men who’d attacked him, and Jaleem, who’d pointed the finger.
“They hunt you,” Caleb had observed not long after in the plains.
“So I saw.”
“The Shedaím must think you in league with Arianna. Understandable, really. You did not return to Ilysia. You didn’t tell them what happened. You went after her unbidden. They would have found only the body of your friend, you and her both missing.”
“Yes, I know…”
“Natural for them to suspect you with the time that has passed. The question is what you will do now.”
“I should return to Ilysia.”
Caleb had leaned in quickly then, almost tipping from his seat as if to snatch the words from Neythan’s lips. “But you will not,” he said. “We have a covenant, as binding as blood. If you return they will punish you because you should have returned the night it happened. Then you shall be kept from fulfilling what is agreed.” Then, slowly, Caleb leant back again, eyes wide and staring. “We have a covenant, you and I,” he’d said again. “As binding as blood.”
Neythan grimaced at the memory as he sat swaying in the carriage. He was bound to the words he’d given, and now it seemed they would lead to his being hunted by the Brotherhood. His only comfort was that the men who’d come for him were soldiers, not Shedaím. But Jaleem – why had they sent Jaleem?
The carriage jolted, tipping Neythan from his thoughts. The carriage was moving again, rolling through the city gates. The music grew louder as they entered, drowning out the crunch of dust beneath the cartwheels. Neythan lifted a corner of the canvas walling the cart where he sat, tugging it to one side with a finger to peep through. Outside, the night stuttered by to the bumpy roll of the wheels. Pale ribbons hung droopingly in messy festoons across houses and moorposts and stall roofs.
The streets were filled with people: women, midriffs bared, clothed in loose, skimpy livery; men chasing, laughing, grinning, cavorting through the streets and upon walls and in narrow alleys to the sound of flutes, cymbals and timbrets and somewhere the steady thud-patter of drums. Along the road Neythan saw a sinewy old man, half-naked, jumping in erratic hops and leaps, tossing his limbs wildly as if on fire as those nearby wandered in wine-staggered steps around him. A troupe of small children stood on a long foot-high wall in an alley, each gazing at Neythan as he passed by in the cart.
Another street; a pair of beggars on hands and knees tugging at scraps of dropped meat, the street panning away to the side, another jerking into view. More people, colourfully dressed, single-shouldered robes, hips and waists jigging, dancing to a band of shirtless drummers, their drums – long kettles of hollowed wood – slung at shoulders and hips, marching as gambolling bell-tethered ankles skipped and bounced over the ground to the rhythm of their pitter-patter beat whilst one gleeful woman in the middle of them all, dressed in red, tambourine in hand, turned endlessly.
Neythan replaced the drape. He turned to face Caleb as the carriage rounded a corner.
“Every new moon is like this?”
“Yes,” Nouredín invited himself to answer, leaning in again, grinning. “It is why we come, all of us. We do our best business at the new moon. Is that not so, Caleb?”
Caleb gave an obligatory nod.
“You can sell spices in this?”
Nouredín looked at Neythan as if he had something on his face, and then started laughing raucously. He laughed a while longer, his head wagging, before seeing Neythan staring flatly back.
“Spices,” Nouredín sighed. “Ah, no… no, no my friend. I have spices yes, but here, we sell jewellery, garments, and wine, lots and lots of wine.” He flopped a palm on Neythan’s shoulder. “The wine is the joy of it; the quality is the worst kind, but during the carnival it will sell as though plucked from the very honeyvines of Tresán.”
Neythan shrugged the man’s palm from his shoulder and grunted, turning again to peer outside at the passing streets. Each one was busy and narrow, every house and terrace pressed together. It was hard to believe they were finally here. Hanesda. The Crown City. Seat of the Sovereignty. Home of the Founding Council and the First Laws, and throne of the sharíf himself. For years Neythan had heard of its lavish buildings, the resplendence of the palace, the greatness of the forum and amphitheatre. What he saw now, one eye peeping through the narrow slip his finger opened, bore little resemblance to what he’d imagined.
“Quite a sight, isn’t she,” Nouredín said.
To which Neythan, as had become his habit, made no reply.
“But her bosom is deep, with many a sweaty cleft and corner, and as craggy as a catacomb. Your task will not be
easy.”
Neythan glanced back over his shoulder.
“Caleb has told me why you are here,” Nouredín explained. “That you are looking for someone.”
Neythan turned fully now and looked hard at Caleb, who simply shrugged.
Nouredín smiled placatingly and again leant in, his thick nose prodding. “So happens I have a cousin in the city, you see,” he murmured. “He is a ranger, and good at it. Would find a tadpole in the Swift if need be.”
Neythan ignored him and went to sit by Caleb. “What is this?” he hissed. “You told him why we are here?”
“Nouredín is a man who can help.”
“So you will speak secrets to the unsworn?”
“Unsworn? Am I a Brother?”
“You know what I mean.”
“I told no secrets. Only that we’re seeking someone.”
“You should have told me.”
“You wouldn’t have agreed.”
“With good reason.”
“Without reason enough. What did you think, Neythan? That we’d come here and seek her out by our own means? You see what it’s like out there. This is not Ilysia. A man could seek a stranger for a year here and not find him.”
“We’d find a way.”
“There is no other way. The Brotherhood hunts you now. You cannot do as you once might have. There isn’t the time.”
Neythan’s jaw clenched.
“We have the purse, Neythan, and he can help us.”
“So any man would say when silver is offered.”
“Perhaps. But we have little choice. And the fact remains…” Caleb nodded at the waiting Nouredín across the carriage as he leaned forward, straining to hear. “He does know people. People who can help us.”
Nouredín managed to pick out this last part over the noise of the music. “My cousin, as I have said, is a ranger. He’ll know the one you seek or how to find them. It would be my pleasure to introduce you… for a small price, of course.”
“Of course,” Caleb replied.
Nouredín smiled. “Good. So, we have an agreement?”
Caleb looked at Neythan. Nouredín perched on the edge of the bench, waiting.
Neythan finally looked up at the spice seller and sighed. “A ranger, you say.”
Nouredín grinned. “Ah, my friend…”
The carriage slowed and came to a halt by a square filled with tent booths. They peeled back the drape and clambered down from the cart. Caleb stretched and rubbed his numbed backside. Neythan stood and looked along the length of the parking caravan, ten donkey-drawn carts in all, driven by Nouredín’s men. Beyond the square of tents stood whitewalled houses, flat-roofed and piled one atop the other into terraces, rising high over the narrow alleys that squeezed between them.
“Your first time in the city?”
Neythan turned again to find Nouredín watching him. He nodded.
“It shows.”
Neythan looked over the square of tents. There was a quarter-mile or so of them. “Why all these booths?”
Nouredín looked across the square and sniffed. “Sippar, Qareb, Qadesh, some from Calapaar and Qalqaliman perhaps. Marketers mostly, like us, they have come to sell. There’s rarely space for us all at the inns, and so we use the square to pitch our tents.”
“This is where you will sleep?”
“Sleep?” Nouredín grinned. “We will not sleep on a night like tonight, my friend. Neither should you.” He smiled and began to move away toward the hired men unloading the stock and the other merchants alighting from the carriages behind, and then stopped and turned back. He looked Neythan over. “You know… you should come with us.”
Neythan glanced at Caleb, still stretching, and then back to Nouredín. “With you where?”
“Here you are, in the city of cities for the first time. What a poor friend I should be if I failed to introduce you to its many qualities. We are friends now after all, eh? And do not say you have Caleb here for your guide. He is poor counsel when it comes to the treats of Hanesda, and besides, since we have an agreement, there is little reason why you shouldn’t meet my cousin tonight.”
“The ranger?”
“Yes, the ranger.”
Neythan looked at Caleb. Caleb, doubled over, shrugged and waved him on.
“You’ll not come?”
“Let him rest, he is weary,” Nouredín said. “The journey was long. His bones are not as young as yours. Come. I will show you the city, then you will meet my cousin. Caleb will still be here when you return.”
Nouredín, true to his word, led Neythan along countless alleys, deep into the city, along with his company of vendors, sellers and brokers, each one with their quick smiles and slippery eyes nodding and laughing at Nouredín’s jokes and stories.
They visited and exited underground dens with drinking men and giggling women. At every corner another stranger who knew Nouredín’s name saluted his coming and going with a happy deferent bow or a brittle embrace and kiss, before ushering his party into whatever festivities waited inside.
They entered the third or fourth place Nouredín took them to through a narrow low door, one by one, and descended what seemed a hundred or more steps into a broad dim-lit space. The room was split by rainbows of thin sheet drapes, muslin and cotton. Slow ripples billowed across them from the wafted heat of the potted fires in each corner, along with the shadows of dancing women. Bare-bellied girls sauntered about the narrow smoky space carrying platters of fruit and wine. Smiling hosts whispered in ears. Bronze lampstands flickered and breathed. Flutes and hand-drums played. Nouredín was handing Neythan a brass goblet. Neythan eyed it doubtfully whilst Nouredín smiled.
“The best wine you are likely to taste.”
Neythan raised a palm and shook his head.
Nouredín, still smiling, cocked an eyebrow, puzzled.
“I do not drink it… I don’t like the taste.”
“Ah, then you should taste this, my friend. All other wine is as pigswill next to it.”
“You are kind… perhaps later.”
“Take. Drink. What kind of host should I be to have you dry?”
Neythan didn’t take the goblet.
“It is but one cup; you needn’t have more unless you wish but I will not have you my guest and not partake of such good stock.”
“I thank you, but no.”
Nouredín’s smile lingered, his eyes shifting toward onlookers. He stepped forward and leaned in yet again. “It is not right to refuse the gift of your host.”
Others were starting to take note of the exchange. Neythan glanced around, and then back to the rigid, hard smile of his host. Nouredín’s hammy gold-ringed fist was wrapped around the offered goblet, waiting. Neythan, reluctantly, took it.
Nouredín remained, continued to watch.
Neythan, looking around and then back at his host, cleared his throat and sipped from the goblet.
Nouredín frowned, gesturing impatiently with his hand. “A mouthful at least. You will not get the flavour.”
Neythan took a mouthful, swilling it, and then swallowed. The sweet tart taste fell down his throat. He looked up again. Nouredín, satisfied, nodded knowingly.
“I told you there would be delights did I not. It is good, uh?”
In truth, the wine was very good. Neythan examined the goblet and nodded.
“Then drink. It is but one goblet. And this is a party.”
Neythan took a larger sip. Not too large. But then again, what would he know? He’d never taken wine before. It was only after he swallowed he began to think his estimate may have been generous. He could feel his lips tingling and his cheeks beginning to numb. They continued on down more corridors, past more lampstands. Some moments later, perhaps longer – he was finding it difficult to tell – Neythan found himself sitting in a curtained chamber. His lips felt cool and turgid. He pressed his fingers to his scalp, trying to massage feeling into it. He was sweating. The music seemed to be pitching from loud to soft, lean
ing from one to the other like a sliding bucket on a wind-tossed ship. The low woody whistle of a flute bounced in time to light drum patter and the dainty rattle of bells. The room seemed to be gently swinging back and forth. People talking over it all, quiet chatter, murmured voices, then, the vague sense that one of them was speaking to him.
“… And so Caleb told me of your concerns. You must understand, he and I have been friends for many years, often partners. Our talents are of mutual benefit to one another. He is an able courier of goods, I have many goods to courier. A healthy partnership. Always, the best ones must be this way, each party of shared aims though differing means. My wives, they can never understand this. Always they are expecting me to be as they are – chattering, talking. I try to explain. I am a man. You are women. We don’t have the same ways, the same temper. Ought I to wear dressgowns and anklets? Or ponder nose-rings and bracelets? It is the fashion of Parses, yes, but let us not call those of that city men and mar the name. We are different, I say, let us rejoice in it. But no, they will not understand and so always, Why don’t you do this? Why must you do that? Ah. A nagging woman, my friend… such a thing, I will tell you, it is not good, will drive you from house and home. Keep but one wife if you desire peace. It is what I tell my sons, but one wife… Where was I… ah, yes, Caleb, he has explained it all to me. You must find someone, yes?”
Neythan slouched; he was struggling to follow the other man’s speech. The words seemed to smear into each other. “I uh… I am.” Neythan puffed his cheeks; the air felt thick and warm, his words sticky in his mouth. He sighed, hiccupped. “I’m looking for my sister,” he said slowly. His throat was dry. He could have done with another drink. A young almond-skinned girl with frizzy hair appeared, presenting a silver platter with a single brass chalice as though summoned by his thoughts. Neythan smiled lazily, at least he thought he did, the muscles in his face were growing steadily less compliant. He took the vessel and nodded his thanks. The woman smiled back, her gaze lingered on him, then she moved away through the sheet-draped walls into another corridor.
“Your sister, you say. How does a man lose a sister?”
