He knew the answer to that.
They came from the desert, his people. From shifting, impermanent dunes and sandstorms and harsh, bleak, sculpted mountains; from a place where the wind could blow forever without being checked or stayed. Where the sun killed and it was the night stars that offered promise of life, air to breathe, a breeze to cool the blistering fever of the day. Where water was . . . what? A dream, a prayer, the purest blessing of the god.
He had no memory of such places himself, unless it was a memory that had come with him into the world. A tribal memory bred into the Asharites, defining them. Ammuz and Soriyya, the homelands, as a presence in the soul. The deserts there. Wider sands, even, than those of the Majriti. He had never seen the Majriti, either. He had been born in Aljais, here in Al-Rassan, in a house with three splashing fountains. Even so, he was drawn to water when distressed, when something within him needed assuaging. Far from the desert, the desert lay inside him like a wound or a weight, as it lay inside them all.
The white moon was overhead, the blue just rising, a crescent. With the city lights behind him the stars were fierce and cold above the lake. Clarity, that was what they meant to him. That was what he needed tonight.
He listened to the waves striking against the pier beneath his feet. Once, a pause, again. The surging rhythm of the world. His thoughts were scattered, bobbing like the boats, refusing to coalesce. He was in some discomfort physically but that wasn’t important. Weariness mostly, some bruises, a gash on one calf that he had simply ignored.
The afternoon’s challenge in the lists had been effortless, in fact. One of the things with which he was having trouble.
There had been five against the two of them, and the Karcher had chosen four of the best captains in Ragosa to join him. There was a visible anger in those men, a grimness, the need to prove a point and not just about wages. It had been contrived as a display, an entertainment for court and city, not to-the-death. But even so, eyes beneath helms had been hard and cold.
It ought never to have been so swift, so much like a dance or a dream. It was as if there had been music playing somewhere, almost but not quite heard. He had fought those five men side-by-side and then back-to-back with Rodrigo Belmonte of Valledo, whom he had never seen in his life, and it had been as nothing had ever been before, on a battlefield or anywhere else. It had felt weirdly akin to having doubled himself. To fighting as if there were two hard-trained bodies with the one controlling mind. They hadn’t spoken during the fight. No warnings, tactics. It hadn’t even lasted long enough for that.
On the pier above the cold, choppy waters of Lake Serrana, ibn Khairan shook his head, remembering.
He ought to have been elated after such a triumph, perhaps curious, intrigued. He was deeply unsettled instead. Restless. Even a little afraid, if he was honest with himself.
The wind blew. He stood facing into it, looking north across the lake. On the farther shore lay the tagra lands where no one lived, with Jaloña and Valledo beyond. Where the Horsemen of Jad worshipped the golden sun the Asharites feared in their burning deserts. Jad. Ashar. Banners for men to gather beneath.
He had spent his life alone, whether in play or at war. Had never sought a company to command, a coterie of sub-commanders, or even, truthfully, a friend. Companions, hangers-on, acolytes, lovers, these had always been a part of his life, but not real friendship—unless one named the man he had poisoned in Cartada.
Ibn Khairan had come over the years to see the world as a place in which he moved by himself, leading men into battle when necessary, evolving plans and courses for his monarch when asked, crafting his verses and songs whenever the patterns of life allowed space for that, linking and unlinking with a succession of women—and some men.
Nothing for very long, nothing that went too deep. He had never married. Had never wanted to, or been pressured to do so. His brothers had children. Their line would continue.
If pressed, he would probably have said that this cast of mind, this steady, ongoing need for distance, had its origin on a summer’s day when he had walked into the Al-Fontina in Silvenes and killed the last khalif on a fountain rim for Almalik of Cartada.
The old, blind man had praised his youthful verses. Had invited him to visit Silvenes. An aged man who had never wanted to ascend the khalif’s dais. Everyone knew that. How should a blind poet rule Al-Rassan? Muzafar had been only another piece on the board, a tool of the court powers in corrupt, terrified Silvenes. Dark days those had been in Al-Rassan, when the young ibn Khairan had walked past bribed eunuchs and into the Garden of Desire bearing a forbidden blade.
It was not hard, even now, to make a case for what he had done, for what Almalik of Cartada had ordered done. Even so. That day in the innermost garden of the Al-Fontina had marked ibn Khairan. In the eyes of others, in his own eyes. The man who killed the last khalif of Al-Rassan.
He had been young then, rich with a sense of his own invulnerability and a dazzled awareness of all the shimmering possibilities the world held in store.
He wasn’t young any more. Even the cold, this keen wind off the water, knifed into him more sharply than it would have fifteen years ago. He smiled at that, for the first time that night, and shook his head ruefully. Maudlin, unworthy thoughts. An old man in a blanket before the fire? Soon enough, soon enough. If he lived. The patterns of life. What was allowed.
Come, brother, Rodrigo Belmonte of Valledo had said today as five hard men with swords had walked forward to encircle the two of them. Shall we show them how this is done?
They had shown them.
Brother. A golden disk of Jad on a chain about his throat. Leader of the most dangerous company in the peninsula. One hundred and fifty Horsemen of the god. A beautiful wife, two sons. Heirs to be taught, even loved perhaps. Pious and loyal, and deadly.
Ibn Khairan knew about that last, now. Only stories before. Nothing like it, ever, in a lifetime of combat. Five men against them. Trained, magnificent fighters, the best mercenaries in Ragosa. And in no time at all, really, they were down, it was over. A dance.
Usually he could remember each individual movement, every feint and parry and thrust of a battle for a long time afterwards. His mind worked that way, breaking down a larger event into its smaller parts. But this afternoon was already a blur. Which was a part of why he was so unsettled now.
He had looked at Belmonte after, and had seen—with relief and apprehension, both—a mirror image of that same strangeness. As if something had gone flying away from each of them and was only just coming back. The Valledan had looked glazed, unfocused.
At least, Ammar had thought, it isn’t only me.
There had been uncontrolled noise by then, delirious, deafeningly loud. Screaming from up on the walls and from the royal stand by the lists. Hats and scarves and gloves and leather flasks of wine sailing through the air to land about them. It had all seemed to be coming from a long way off.
He had tried, out of habit, to be sardonic. “Shall we kill each other for them now, to set a seal on it?” he’d said.
The men they’d defeated were being helped to their feet, those who could rise. One man, the Karcher, had a broken arm from the flat of a sword. Another was unable to stand; they were carrying him away on a litter. A woman’s pale blue scarf, drifting down through the sunlight, had fallen across his body. Ammar could only vaguely remember having faced the man with the broken arm. It had been at the very outset. He could not clearly recall the blow, the sequence of it. Too strange, that was.
Rodrigo Belmonte had not laughed at his attempted jest, or smiled, standing beside him amid that huge and distant noise.
“Do we want a seal on it?” he’d asked.
Ammar had shaken his head. They had stood alone in the middle of the world. A small, still space. Dreamlike. Clothing, flowers now, more wine flasks, flying through the autumn air. So much noise.
“Not yet,” he’d said. “No. It may come, though. Whether we want it or not.”
Rodrigo had been silent a moment, the grey eyes calm beneath an old helm with the figure of an eagle on it. From the king’s stand a herald was approaching, formally garbed, gracious, deeply deferential.
Just before he reached them, the Valledan had said softly, “If it comes, it comes. The god determines all. I never did anything like this, though, in all my life. Not fighting beside another man.”
A star fell into the darkness of the hills west of the lake. Ibn Khairan heard footsteps behind him. They paused, and then withdrew. One person. A watchman. No danger. There wouldn’t be danger here, in any case.
He was very tired, but his mind would not allow him rest. The high white moon laid a shining, rippled track on the water, the blue crescent cast a faint one from the east. They met where he stood. This was a property of water at night. Light flowed along it to where one stood.
I earned a goodly portion of my wages today, he thought. Wages. He was a mercenary soldier now, in the service of a king who would be happy to see Cartada in ruins. Who might decide to send an army west to achieve that in the spring. Ammar, by his contract, would be a part of that army, a leader of it. He wasn’t used to such shiftings of allegiance.
He had killed Almalik. Twenty years’ companion. The slow rise and then the swift rise to power together. Men changed over the years. Power ebbed and flowed, and did things to them. Time and the stars turned and men changed.
The man he’d slain was the only person he could ever have called a friend in the world, even though one didn’t use that word of kings. He’d sung his lament tonight. Mazur ben Avren’s request, meant to wound. A subtle mind, that. But he’d already been working on the verses during the ride east with Zabira. Had offered them this evening to a banquet hall of Cartada’s enemies. A room with a stream running through it. Water again. Ashar’s dream amid the desert sands. It was an affectation, that banquet room, but impressive nonetheless, and tastefully done. He could come to like Badir of Ragosa, he told himself, could respect Mazur ben Avren. There was a life beyond Cartada, with scope and sweep.
Where lesser beasts now gather . . .
He shook his head. Turned away from the lake and started back, with the wind and the moons behind him now.
From the shadows by the oak-timbered wall of a warehouse she saw him leave the water’s edge and the outthrust arms of the city walls. She had retreated here to wait, after walking almost to the pier. As he approached she saw—her eyes by now adjusted to the moonlight—an odd, inward look to his face and she was half-inclined to let him pass. But even as that thought formed she realized that she had stepped forward into the street after all.
He stopped. His hand moved to his sword and then she saw that he knew her. She expected something ironic, a jest. Her heart was beating rapidly.
“Jehane bet Ishak. What are you doing abroad at night?”
“Walking,” she said. “The same as you.”
“Not the same at all. It isn’t safe for a woman. There’s no point to being foolish.” She felt a useful flare of anger.
“I do wonder how I’ve survived this long in Ragosa without your guidance.”
He was silent. He still had that strange look to him. She wondered what had driven him to the lake. She hadn’t come out to quarrel, although she couldn’t have said why she had come. She changed her tone. “I am known here,” she murmured. “There is no real danger.”
“In the dark? On the waterfront?” He raised his eyebrows. “You could be killed for your cloak or merely because of your religion. Where’s your servant?”
“Velaz? Asleep, I hope. He’s had a long day and night.”
“And you?”
“Long enough,” she said. “Where you injured I tried to heal. I’ve come from the infirmary.” What was it, she asked herself, that kept causing her to challenge him?
He looked at her. The steady, unrevealing gaze. The pearl in his ear gleamed palely in the moonlight. He said, “It’s too cold to stand here. Come.” He started walking again, back towards the center of the city.
She fell into stride. The wind was behind them, cutting through her cloak. It was cold, and despite what she’d implied, Jehane was unused to being abroad this late. In fact, the last time had been the night of the day she met this man. The Day of the Moat. She had thought it had been his savage device, that slaughter of innocent men. All of Al-Rassan had thought so.
She said, “I remember what you said in Fezana. That it was none of your doing.”
“You didn’t believe me.”
“Yes, I did.”
He glanced at her. They continued walking.
She had seen him go by earlier, from the doorway of the infirmary. Her two patients had been sleeping, one drugged against the pain of a shattered arm, the other still deeply confused, a contusion the size of an ostrich egg on the side of his head. Jehane had left instructions that he be awakened after each of the night bells. Too deep a sleep tonight carried a risk.
She had been standing near the open doorway, breathing the night air, struggling against fatigue, when ibn Khairan went past. She had put on her cloak and followed him, without thinking about it, no reason save impulse for justification.
They had done something astonishing that day, he and Rodrigo Belmonte. Two men against five and had she not known better it might have seemed that the five had consented to be cut down, so swift and crisply defined and elegant had it been. She did know better, though. She was treating two of the five tonight. The Karcher with the broken arm was struggling to deal with what had happened. He was bitter, humiliated. Not a man accustomed to losing battles. Not that way, at any rate.
Stepping out into the street after ibn Khairan Jehane had been awkwardly aware that there were other kinds of women who did this sort of thing, especially after what had happened today. She half-expected to see some of them trailing behind the man, adorned, perfumed. Pursuing the hero of the moment, approaching to touch—to be touched by—glory, the shimmer that clung to fame. She had nothing but contempt for such women.
What she’d done in following him was not remotely the same thing, she told herself. She wasn’t young or bedazzled; she wore a plain white cloth cap to keep her hair from her eyes while she worked, no jewelry, mud-stained boots. She was level-headed, a physician, and observant.
“Weren’t you hurt this afternoon?” she said, glancing sideways and up at him. “I thought I saw you take a sword in the leg.”
He looked dryly amused, an expression she remembered. “A scratch, truly. One of them caught me with his blade when he fell. It is kind of you to ask, doctor. How are your patients?”
She shrugged. “The broken arm will be all right. It set easily enough. The Batiaran that Ser Rodrigo felled was still having trouble remembering his mother’s name before he fell asleep.”
Ibn Khairan grinned, the white teeth flashing. “Now that is serious. If it were his father’s name, of course, I’d call that normal for Batiara.”
“Go ahead and jest,” she said, refusing to laugh. “You don’t have to deal with it.” A silly thing to say.
“I’m so sorry,” he murmured, all solicitude. “Did I add to your burdens today?”
She winced. She’d asked for that. It was important to watch what one said with this man. He was as sharp as Mazur was. At least as sharp.
“How is your father?” he said, changing tone. She glanced over in surprise and then away. She had a clear memory, as they walked through the dark streets, of this man on his knees before Ishak last summer, their hands clasped together.
“My parents are well enough, I thank you. My father . . . has dictated some letters to me since that night in Fezana. I believe that . . . speaking with you was of help to him.”
“I am honored that you think so.”
No irony in the voice now. She had heard his lament tonight. He had slain a man she herself had sworn to destroy. Had made her own vain, childish oath the meaningless thing it always had been. She had actually been close to grief, hearing the ca
denced verses. The sorrow behind the sword.
She said, “I had intended to kill Almalik myself. For my father. That’s why I left Fezana.” As she spoke the words, as she told him, Jehane understood that this was why she had come out into the cold of the night.
“I am not surprised,” he murmured, after a pause. A generous thing to say. Taking her seriously. A Kindath woman. A child’s rash vow. “Are you angry that I forestalled you?”
She hadn’t expected that either. She walked beside him a while in silence. They turned a corner. “I’m a little ashamed,” she said. “I did nothing at all for four years, then came here and did nothing again.”
“Some tasks take longer than others. As it happens, it was a little easier for me.”
Disguised as a slave. She had heard the tale from Mazur just before the banquet this evening. Poison on a towel. The royal son entirely complicitous, then exiling ibn Khairan. There had to be pain there.
They turned another corner. Two lights shone ahead of them now at the end of the street, outside the infirmary. Another memory rising suddenly, against her will. That same summer’s night in Fezana, the same room. Herself with this man at the window, rising on her toes to kiss him. A challenge.
I must have been mad, she thought. She stopped at the entrance to the infirmary.
And as if he could actually trace the course of her thoughts, Ammar ibn Khairan said, “Was I right about the chancellor, by the way?” A revealed edge of amusement again, infuriatingly.
“Right about what?” she temporized.
He would have seen where she had been placed tonight, at the banquet. He would have duly noted the fact that she was there at all. She hoped, fiercely, that he could not see her flushing. She almost regretted now that she had come.
He laughed softly. “I see,” he said. And then, mildly, “Are you looking in on your patients, or going home?”