Children of Earth and Sky

  Ashar had not yet been born to have his vision in the desert night. There had been no star-worshippers, no Jaddites. The Kindath with their moons had apparently been present, along with other strange beliefs to the east, and the gods of Trakesia and those of Sauradia (where Mulkar was) had been a confusing diversity of powers.

  Damaz usually enjoyed Kasim’s classes, liked watching the young ones trying to look attentive and awake, remembering himself at that age, but he was distracted today. Kasim looked at him quizzically a few times, but said nothing. He was a teacher who waited for you to come to him.

  Damaz didn’t do that. He could have, but he didn’t. Instead, when class was over and they all walked out into the cloudy afternoon, he did something reckless in the hour before they were called to prayer.

  You couldn’t spy easily on another regiment’s sleeping quarters. For one thing, there were soldiers and officers mixed in with the trainees, and the regiments had an intense, sometimes violent rivalry for precedence and recognition. It wasn’t as though you could linger by a window and listen.

  Still, Koçi was boastful and vain, and of those in their year he was certainly one of Damaz’s rivals for an early promotion into the ranks. Each spring, one, sometimes two of the fourteen- or fifteen-year-olds might (there were no promises, ever) be elevated into the army and go to war, where glory was. Where a life might be found, amid the dealing of death to infidels.

  So Damaz would probably have admitted, if pressed by someone like Kasim, that he had personal reasons for what he did in the darkening of late day, a breeze stirring the early leaves of trees. He walked towards the third regiment’s quarters—Koçi’s—and took a wide route to the back wall.

  He looked around calmly, saw he was alone, and climbed to the flat roof. It was no achievement to get up a wall.

  On the roof of any building here—they all knew this—you could place yourself near one of the chimneys and, if no fires were lit and smoking, crouch to listen to what was said inside. He was quiet in his movements. The room below was almost empty, but not quite. At the second of the chimneys he heard Koçi almost directly beneath him talking to a few others. It sounded like four voices.

  You needed to be patient doing this, and lucky. Sometimes, they had been told, a spy in war might have to remain in place for days, knowing if he made a sound he might die. You voided yourself where you were, and hoped the smell didn’t give you away. And if you were hungry you were hungry.

  He didn’t have to wait very long. They were talking about girls, insulting some. One boasted of a Kindath who’d smiled at him. Koçi made it clear that if such a girl wasn’t bedded within a day or two it was a disgrace to the man smiled upon.

  “And if a wadji smiles at you?” one of the others asked slyly.

  “Fuck that,” Koçi snapped.

  “Oh, really?” a fourth voice taunted. There was laughter.

  Koçi swore again. “Watch yourself,” he said. “We’re going to deal with him tonight.”

  “Did he really offer to bed you?”

  “Course not. Wouldn’t dare. I just don’t like him.”

  On the roof Damaz blinked. He didn’t move.

  “He’s a wadji!” the fourth voice said again, moving from taunting to doubt.

  “Right? And no wadjis like boys?”

  “But he didn’t do anything, you just said.”

  “Didn’t have to. Told you, I don’t like him. We geld him, somebody better will come.”

  “Because we don’t like him?”

  “We’re djannis!” said Koçi. “Who tells us what to do?”

  “Officers,” someone said.

  “When they know,” said Koçi. Damaz heard him laugh. “They don’t always need to know. Are you with me? You don’t have to be, but this is a test, make no mistake.”

  He had a forceful manner. The others were a year younger, one of them was twelve years old if the voice belonged to the one Damaz thought it did. They weren’t about to gainsay Koçi.

  It seemed he had been right.

  To be planning an attack on a holy man spoke to boredom and viciousness more than anything else. The boredom he understood, the viciousness he had seen in Koçi, and some others, before. It wasn’t an impediment in the army.

  The wadji meant nothing to Damaz. Just another of the interchangeable faces of holiness sent to Mulkar, moving on after a time. A nasal voice, not very musical. But from what he’d just heard there had been no incident. Koçi just saw a chance to confirm his power over other trainees. And if he was questioned by superiors, well, he had a group to support his story—which is what the conversation below now turned to.

  There were many reasons to keep out of this, and no reason to interfere. Well, there might be. If any of them was going to move up to the ranks this spring Damaz wanted it to be himself. He was ready. And he truly didn’t like the idea of a man being gelded so that a boy among the djannis could amuse and assert himself.

  —

  “YOU OVERHEARD THIS AT A WINDOW?”

  Damaz looked at his teacher. He shook his head. This might have been a mistake after all, coming to Kasim.

  “On the roof?”

  He nodded.

  Kasim smiled. He had lit a lamp to read by, was sitting beside it. They were alone in the room. Classes were finished for the day.

  “We used to do that,” the teacher said. “You can hear at a chimney when no fires are lit.”

  Damaz nodded again. He had told the story to the one man he could think to trust. Kasim had seemed the only choice if he was going to talk to anyone. Damaz wasn’t sure if he’d been right. He felt even less certain with the next words.

  “You shouldn’t have gone up,” his teacher said.

  “I was trying to be fair. To be sure of what I believed.”

  “I understand. But, you see, now that you are sure you have a difficulty.”

  “I know that. That’s why I came to you!”

  Kasim smiled again but said, “A softer tongue, please.”

  “I’m sorry, teacher. I’m sorry about all of this. Tell me what to do.”

  Kasim drank from his bowl of tea. He hadn’t offered any to his pupil. Teachers didn’t do that. He looked at Damaz a long time, thoughtful eyes over the silver simulacrum of a nose. A man who had been to war.

  —

  EVENING. THE CLOUDS THINNING, a breeze from the west. Damaz could see the blue moon, with the white to rise later. The Kindath would attach a meaning to patterns in the sky, to this day, this hour. He saw a star, his first of the night. You prayed to that, a superstition, not any formal teaching of Ashar. Mostly the trainees prayed to be accepted into the ranks. Tonight Damaz prayed that he might live to see the morning and the last stars of night.

  He was alone near the gates that led out to the city. He was waiting. Unless there was some sort of alert, djannis were free to leave the compound in the evening, the gates were open. There were always women just outside, also waiting—for them. Alcohol was forbidden to the pious, of course, but not every man was born to be pious, and women were forbidden to no one. The boys being trained had to be back in their barracks by the second night bells. The soldiers had no such restrictions in peacetime, though they were mustered at sunrise every morning and needed to be present for that.

  All of which meant that Koçi and his followers would have no reason to hide themselves as they came towards the gate, heading out. Nor did they. Damaz saw them coming along the wide, smooth gravel path. They were laughing. It sounded nervous to his ears, but that might have been his own anxiety.

  His teacher had put it simply.

  “You made a decision, knowingly or not, when you went on the roof. If that man suffers or dies tonight it lies upon you.”

  “Not them?”

  “Yes, them, too. Burdens fall in different degrees in a case such as this
. But you know now, and that has meaning.”

  There were torches on tall stands along the path and lamps by the gate, with guards there and on the walkway above it. Damaz stepped forward so he could be seen.

  He did know. That has meaning.

  He called out, “Koçi, a word.”

  There were four of them. They stopped in front of him.

  “A word?” Koçi laughed. “Damaz? You wish to know the word I have for you?”

  The others laughed. They were young, it was important to remember that, and they’d surely be afraid right now. Damaz took a breath. He was aware that he could die here. He wasn’t ready for that. He had a life he wanted to live, for the khalif, for Ashar, for himself.

  He said, “My first word for you is liar. I have others. If you walk past me here, the next one will be coward and I will shout it so that everyone hears.”

  The laughter stopped.

  One of the four coughed nervously. On top of the gate behind him Damaz heard the guards’ conversation stop. They would enjoy a fight among the boys. Entertainment on a spring night.

  “What kind of fucking fool are you, you northern savage?”

  Koçi had been born in Batiara, some said in Rhodias itself, taken by corsairs from a ship. His parents had been killed, the boy brought east. It was rumoured they had been wealthy and the pirates chastised for not keeping them for ransom. Sometimes the need to kill Jaddites overcame good sense.

  A djanni’s earlier life was not supposed to matter at all. It was left behind—with his name—as if it had never been. This wasn’t entirely so, however. You heard stories, sometimes they might be true.

  Damaz said, “I did not report you to any officers. It is just me here. But I heard you earlier. You are not going out to do what you intend to do, not without fighting me first.” He was careful, didn’t name the action. He was giving them a chance.

  Another nervous cough. Someone muttered, “Koçi, he knows!”

  “Shut up,” Koçi said quickly. “There are flies in your mouth.”

  “And in your brain, Koçi,” Damaz said, lifting his voice. It mattered that he frighten the other three, that they realize the guards could hear. “You think this will give you a reputation for bravery?”

  “He . . . I have my honour to defend!” Koçi declared.

  “You do not. I heard you, remember? I heard all of you. And I have named you a liar.” He squared his shoulders. “Do something about it.”

  “Koçi! He heard us. He was on the roof!”

  “I was on the roof,” Damaz agreed. “So I know Koçi lied, and that you three are going out also, knowing that. Which brave hero carries the gelding blade?”

  That had an effect.

  “Koçi, he’ll tell the officers!”

  “His word against four of us, idiot.”

  “But he heard.”

  Damaz smiled, though his heart was pounding. You didn’t let others see anxiety in you, ever. “Last offer. I have told no officer in your regiment or mine. It is just us here and nothing has happened. You lied about that man and I cannot, in honour, let you pass, because I know.”

  “Honour!” scoffed Koçi. He was blustering and unpleasant on the edge of manhood and would likely be worse as a man, Damaz thought. He wondered if well-born people from Batiara were all like this. It was even possible these traits would help him as a djanni. Koçi had followers already, didn’t he? On the other hand, he wasn’t very smart.

  “Guards!” Koçi called. “An impertinent trainee is blocking our path!”

  Nothing had happened. Now something would.

  Damaz could walk away. He wasn’t going to do that. He wouldn’t have been here if that was a possibility. The blue moon, waxing, was free of clouds above them now, the wind was in his face.

  “Guards,” he said, “these four trainees are carrying gelding tools to attack a wadji at his temple in the city. A disgrace for all the djannis. Please search them and confirm the truth of what I say.”

  “Ashar’s soul!” one of the boys with Koçi gasped. And a moment later Damaz heard a sound he was listening for.

  “One of them,” he called out, “just threw a gelding blade to his right. Bring a lantern, you will find it.”

  “No need,” came a cold voice from the cypress trees beside the path. “He almost hit me with it.”

  Men stepped from the trees into the light of the torches. Damaz felt himself going pale, even as he drew himself up as straight as he could and saluted, urgently. He was looking at his own commander of the fifth regiment, and at Koçi’s of the third. Teacher Kasim was with them. A betrayal? It felt like one.

  Because in front of those three stood the serdar of all the djannis in Mulkar. Their commander, whose voice was the one they’d just heard. One of the boys with Koçi, the youngest one, was gasping for breath, as if he’d been clubbed in the belly.

  Damaz felt a little like that. He wasn’t going to let it show. He looked at his teacher, who met his gaze calmly. There was, Damaz thought, a lesson to be learned here, if he survived this night.

  “Bring lanterns!” the serdar said. His name was Hafiz, and he was feared by the young ones more than angry ghosts or plague or the figure of Death itself. In some compounds, it was said, you wanted to attract your serdar’s attention. Not in Mulkar.

  Damaz could hear the gate guards scrambling to obey behind him. This had become much more than a diversion. Several of them hurried up, bearing the demanded lights. Men began drifting towards them, attracted by the commotion. Soldiers would be going out into the city along this path. They’d stop now, to see what trouble the young ones had brought upon themselves.

  “Which one threw away the blade?”

  Hafiz, serdar of the djanni, never raised his voice. No one ever missed a word he spoke. With real pity, Damaz saw one of the boys step forward and salute as best he could while trembling.

  “I did, serdar. It was unforgivable.”

  That was brave, Damaz thought.

  “You were afraid?” the serdar asked.

  The boy swallowed. “I was, serdar.”

  “Understandable. But you are correct, it is not forgivable for a djanni. Guards, take this one to the physicians. He is to be castrated and handed over, if he recovers, to the office of the eunuchs in the city.”

  Damaz’s turn to swallow hard. He looked at Kasim and saw his teacher gazing back at him.

  Neither of the regimental leaders had spoken. Both had faces like winter. The serdar said, “Who else carries a gelding knife?”

  One of the other boys stepped hesitantly forward. Koçi had not moved. He was as rigid as Damaz, staring straight ahead. It was too dark to see his eyes.

  “You did not throw it away,” the serdar said.

  The boy shook his head, then added, “No, serdar. I have it still.”

  “You were going to use it on a wadji in the city?”

  What could a thirteen-year-old possibly say? “Yes, serdar. He . . . he offended one of—”

  “Did he? The truth. Be very careful.”

  Damaz wanted to look away.

  The boy took a shaky breath. “No, serdar. That . . . that is what we were going to say.”

  “And who decided you were to say that?”

  Courage could appear in many different guises, Damaz thought. The boy—he didn’t know this one’s name—held his posture, and kept silent.

  The serdar stared at him. He gestured at the third of Koçi’s acolytes. “Step forward, trainee.” The boy did so. His legs were shaking. “Who told you to say the wadji had offended?”

  The serdar knew the answer, Damaz thought. They all did. But that wasn’t the point of the question, was it? And this one, too, was brave beyond his years. His hair was so blond it was almost white.

  “Serdar, it would shame my regiment for me to answer. For
give me. Please.”

  Damaz closed his eyes for a moment. He opened them and looked at the white-haired boy. The serdar said, quietly as ever, “They are brave enough to be djannis, but it is not permitted to refuse an officer’s request for information. Forty lashes. If they live they may be returned to the third regiment. Take them.”

  A guard from the gate spoke an order, men detached themselves. Damaz watched three boys led away, back up the gravel path, around where it curved, and out of sight.

  He felt grief come into him. He had done this. Twenty lashes by a disciplinary officer could kill a man, and those two were younger than he was, smaller. And the third boy was going to be . . .

  No time to think about it.

  “The two of you,” the serdar said. “Before me. Now!”

  Damaz and Koçi stepped forward, as if on parade. They stopped before their commander. There was a good deal of light now, the torches and the lanterns.

  There was also a crowd, extending into the shadows. The clouds were gone, a moon was out, the night was young as a maiden, there were pleasures waiting in the city. This was, however, a pleasure worth lingering for.

  “Are you ashamed, as a djanni?”

  The serdar was looking at him, not Koçi. Damaz stepped forward one pace, as required, holding himself as straight as he could. You are a spear, their drillmaster always said. You are ready to be hurled forward by your orders.

  He said, “Serdar, I am not.”

  He heard murmuring.

  “And why not so?”

  “I sought wiser counsel, serdar. I hoped to stop an assault that would shame the compound. I came alone and I was prepared to die for our honour. I do . . . I do feel sorrow, serdar.”

  “Not a djanni’s proper feeling, trainee.”

  “Even . . . if companions are to be lost, serdar?”

  Another murmuring. He tried to breathe normally. The serdar’s face was utterly unrevealing, even lit by the lantern beside him. He said, “If companions shame the djannis, they are not worthy to be mourned.”