Reave the Just and Other Tales

  Jillet himself, who probably believed that he would love the widow Huchette to the end of his days, found he did not miss her. Nor, in all candor, did he miss Reave. After all, he had nothing in common with them: she was too wealthy; he was too stringent. No, Jillet was quite content without such things. And he had gained something which he prized more highly—the story; the idea.

  The story that he had struck the blow which brought down Kelven Divestulata.

  The idea that he was kinsman to Reave the Just.

  The Djinn Who Watches Over the Accursed

  Fetim of the al-Hetal made a serious mistake when he allowed himself to be caught in the bed of Selmet Abulbul’s youngest and most delectable wife. The mistake was not instantly obvious, however. Selmet was old and infirm: there was nothing physical he could do to Fetim, who was at least as strong as he was handsome. Furthermore, Selmet was unpopular, being a usurer: he had no friends he could call on to fight for him. Public opinion, in fact, would have applauded Fetim’s choice of cuckolds. And, sadly, the Abulbul clan was in decline. Selmet had no relations or children who might be persuaded to view Fetim’s action as a matter of honor. In short, he did not appear to be a man who could avenge insults.

  But Selmet Abulbul the usurer knew how to curse.

  While Fetim preened himself beside the bed, lacking even sufficient decency to be frightened, and the young wife pretended to cower among the sheets, Selmet called upon a few names which I am not permitted to record. He uttered several phrases which it would be sacrilege for me to repeat. Then, his voice quaking with rage, he explained what he wished the powers whose attention he had invoked to do to Fetim of the al-Hetal.

  “In the name of the great father of djinn, let all those he loves be killed. Let him be readily loved—and let all those who love him die in anguish. Let all his seed and all his blood be brought to ruin. Let horror cover the heads of all who befriend him. Let his friendship be a surer sign of death than any plague-spot.

  “And let the djinn who watches over the accursed protect him, so that his sufferings cannot end.”

  From such a curse, Selmet’s youngest wife was safe: she loved no one but herself. But the clan of the al-Hetal was prosperous in that town. Hearing his doom, Fetim should have found it in his heart to be frightened.

  He did not. “Are you done?” he asked politely. “We are taught that it is rude to leave a room while our elders are speaking.”

  Selmet’s youngest wife also did not understand curses. A snicker at her husband’s expense escaped from the sheets.

  “Go!” Selmet shouted as well as he was able. “From this day forward, you will never forget that you would be happier dead.”

  Bowing with sardonic grace, Fetim left the house of Selmet Abulbul. Although his sport with the woman had been interrupted, his spirits were gay. It was gratifying that others knew of his successes. And the vengeance which Selmet might take upon his youngest wife was amusing to contemplate. In such benign good humor, Fetim turned his steps toward the high mansion where he lived with his mother, who thought him flawless, his father, who doted upon him, and his brothers, who worked harder than he did.

  To his vast astonishment, he saw over the intervening rooftops that the mansion was in flames.

  Fetim of the al-Hetal was not a notably selfless young man. Nevertheless, he had a warm place in his heart for anyone who loved him as much as he loved himself. In a frenzy which resembled concern for his parents and family—and which did indeed include some concern among its other considerations—he tore his hair and ran to see what was happening to his home.

  Turmoil gripped the neighborhood. Men, women, and children raced in all directions, wailing. For some reason, the thought of water did not enter their heads, despite the fact that a history of fire had taught the town to respond promptly and efficiently. No one fought the blaze which tore at the walls and flailed from the windows of the fine mansion.

  The destruction of Fetim’s house was not a pleasant sight; but it was more pleasant than some of its details. He heard his mother scream and saw her in flames on the rooftop. Two of his nephews fell like stones to the street when one of the brothers’ wives in desperation threw them out a window. A favorite servant who had cared for Fetim and taught him a great deal of fun as a boy died trying to descend the outer wall.

  “Where is the fire brigade?” roared Fetim. But no one answered him. Everyone in the street was too busy running and yelling.

  Then Akbar of the al-Hetal, Fetim’s father, appeared before him. Akbar’s clothes were still afire, and his eyes were mad. Inspired by the curse, he cried, “This is your doing!”

  Fetim was so surprised that he did not defend himself when his father swung a cudgel at his head.

  I deflected the blow, and he was no more than stunned. He recovered his wits in time to see Akbar die in front of him.

  On this signal, the neighborhood commenced shouting:

  “There he is!”

  “He started the fire!”

  “He killed his own family!”

  “Stone him!”

  Stones began to fly. None of them struck him seriously—although I was confident that he would not soon forget the bruises they left on his body—but they were enough to make him flee.

  Led only by a desire to get away from the stones, he left the neighborhood and soon found himself at the gates of the town with a howling mob on his heels. The gates were open, as was customary on occasions of fire, in case the flames spread. The mob needed only a moment to drive Fetim out of the town where he had lived all his life—out onto the bare road which led into the desert.

  There it became clear to me that he would not be able to run much farther. His life of self-indulgence had not prepared him for these exertions. And the mob would surely tear him limb from limb when he faltered. Therefore I caused his pursuers to lose sight of him. Shortly, they retraced their steps and set to work quelling the fire.

  In the aftermath of the blaze, the neighborhood discovered that the damage had been confined to the clan of the al-Hetal, its dependents and friends. But of that sizable group of people, Fetim was the only survivor.

  Because he did not know what else to do, he continued trudging along the road until nightfall. Then he threw himself down in order to bemoan his lot.

  “It is unjust,” he protested. “I am blameless. Any man would have accepted the invitation that woman gave me. Am I to be punished because she gave the invitation to me rather than to another? Selmet should not have married that heartless trollop. Yet his folly is inflicted upon me.

  “Has there ever been a man as unfortunate as I am?”

  “Actually,” I replied, “it seems to me your family and friends are considerably more unfortunate.” I spoke thus to provoke him. “You’re merely accursed. They’re all dead.”

  Apparently, he had believed himself alone. He gaped foolishly about him, as though I might be visible. “Who are you?” he asked.

  “Think about it. You’ll figure it out.”

  Who I was did not yet interest him, however. “You are wrong,” he said. “Their deaths were painful, perhaps, but swift. And I will be blamed for it, although I am blameless. Also, they are free from misery. I must die slowly, alone and lost. I have neither food nor water. I have no camel. I know not where to go. I am entirely pitiable, and my sorrows are greater than any man has ever suffered.”

  “If you keep talking like that,” I said, “I’m going to get bored in a real hurry.”

  “You cannot fault me! It was not I who pronounced the curse. It was Selmet Abulbul, punishing me for his own errors.”

  “‘His own errors,’ indeed. Do you want me to believe he forced you into his wife’s bed against your will?”

  “She invited me!”

  “You accepted.”

  “It is not my fault!”

  “So you keep saying.”

  Pretending to ignore me, Fetim of the now-defunct al-Hetal wept for a while to prove how miserable he was. T
hen, instead of dying, he slept.

  The next day, he continued down the road. After all, he was young and handsome. Surely the world loved him too well to prolong his travail. And, in fact, this seemed to be true. Before midmorning, an entire caravan caught up with him. By that time, he was dirty and tired, and in no good humor; but the caravan master chanced to like handsome young men with a thick sweat on them, and he offered Fetim a ride to the city of Niswan.

  If Fetim had bothered to think about his circumstances, he might have believed that I had arranged this fortuitous offer for him. He would have been mistaken, however.

  He did not find the caravan master’s attentions especially pleasant, but he endured them. On the one hand, he preferred women personally. On the other, he could not be surprised by the fact that he had been found attractive. And he had no money—as well as no taste for work. How else was he to travel in comfort? It was only a journey of some few days to Niswan, he had been assured. Then the unpleasantness would be over, and he would have the whole city before him in which to make his fortune. The prospect excited him boyishly.

  Unfortunately, some few days were all the caravan master required to conceive intentions of his own concerning Fetim. His name, when he chose to use it, was Rashid, and a number of years had passed since he had last shared a bed with a young man whom he considered as succulent as Fetim. Being neither shortsighted nor weak-minded, he grew jealous well in advance of Fetim’s opportunities to merit such a reaction. First he began to plot ways to keep the young man with him when Niswan was reached. Then he began to consider how he might keep other men away.

  The outcome was that, after the caravan had wound its dusty way past the gates and the guards of Niswan deep into the city’s teeming bazaar, and the camels were at last stopped for unloading and profit, Rashid knocked Fetim on the head and sequestered him.

  At first, this was a highly successful arrangement from Rashid’s point of view—less so from Fetim’s. The caravan master now had at his whim a handsome young man made even more tasty by the occasional savors of truculent resistance and abject beggary. Nevertheless, Fetim’s sequestration was not long. The multitudes who thronged the bazaar naturally included many men and women of dubious virtue, individuals who reflexively coveted anything which anyone else kept hidden. One night, Rashid leaped out of bed and grabbed at his knives too late to prevent himself from being gutted like an ox in an abattoir. A remarkable amount of blood splashed onto Fetim. Then he was dragged away.

  Before dawn, he found himself sold into slavery as a desirable—if temporarily blood-sotted and noxious—catamite.

  His purchasers tolerated no resistance. In any case, he had little to offer, being accustomed to seek his own pleasure rather than willingly to undergo pain. Therefore he submitted. It seemed conceivable that with the right degree of complaisance and cunning his life could still be quite pleasurable. Perhaps freedom was not too high a price to pay for homage to his desirability. A few baths, a few perfumes, a few hints, and he was set to work at love in a luxurious stable of young men resembling himself.

  The resemblance was only superficial, of course: the other young men had not been cursed by such a proficient as Selmet Abulbul. Rich merchants, minor sheiks, and occasional grande dames discovered in Fetim an attractiveness which plucked at their hearts. They were less aware of the fact that after a night or two with Fetim they were prone to die horribly.

  For some time, this caused him no difficulty. He was more conscious that as an object of lust he found lust to be less and less interesting. He was constrained to humble himself: the practices which brought him love took on the flavor of degradation. This, he thought, was the true meaning of the old usurer’s curse.

  He was mistaken, however. In the same irrational way that Akbar of the al-Hetal had pronounced his son responsible for the ruin of the clan, the family, friends, supporters, and adherents of Fetim’s butchered patrons concluded that the stable which owned him was to blame for the deaths. One night when he was especially miserable, a throng of sheiks, swordsmen, and rabble burst into the richly appointed establishment and began slaughtering everyone present.

  This was naturally not an action which the owners of the stable could permit to pass unchallenged. In the bazaars of Niswan, no man or woman dared make a shekel’s profit without guarding it in some way. At once, forces which had been retained for precisely this sort of emergency were called out. The conflict quickly escalated, and in a short time the gauze-curtained cubicle where Fetim had pleased his patrons became the effective center of a fervid and bloody battle.

  Maimed and dying boys and women and bystanders screamed. And Fetim screamed as well, although he was unhurt. He knew almost nothing about defending himself. In any case, he was unarmed. I was forced to work quickly to keep him from being cut apart at any moment.

  When I opened a corridor for him through the bloodshed, he found his legs and ran.

  As he did so, both sides of the battle turned their enmity in his direction and followed.

  By this time, the entire city had been roused. The King’s forces marched to suppress the conflict—and joined Fetim’s pursuit. Brigands and looters sought to take advantage of the chaos—and found themselves chasing a young man they had never seen. In self-defense, good men and respectable families armed their servants—who immediately snatched up torches and plunged into the tumult.

  The great father of djinn himself must have been listening when Selmet Abulbul had cursed Fetim of the al-Hetal. I was hard-pressed to keep my charge alive.

  I accomplished it by driving him into the sewer, which an enlightened king of a previous generation had caused to be dug under the length of the city.

  The stench and density of Niswan’s effluvium eventually proved to be stronger than the curse. While I dragged Fetim through the sewage—keeping his head above the surface largely without his assistance—his pursuers one by one lost interest in what they were doing and retreated. Before we passed under the wall and emerged into the fetid swamp which Niswan used as a cesspit, we had left behind everyone who wanted him dead.

  Unceremoniously, I dredged him from the far end of the swamp. Then, because he still did not wish to make an effort on his own behalf, I let him fall to the dirt.

  Once again, he sobbed like a girl. This time, however, his emotion was composed of revulsion and fear: his grief was for himself. After a while, he raised his head and said, “They deserved what happened to them. I wish I could have stayed to watch them die.”

  “Deserved it?” I asked. “What makes you say that?”

  He blinked his eyes stupidly for a moment. “You are the djinn who watches over the accursed.”

  “Good for you. I knew you would figure it out eventually.”

  “I wish that you had rescued me sooner.”

  I ignored this inane remark. “Now that you know who I am, why don’t you explain how all those dead and damaged people back there came to deserve what happened to them?”

  “They enslaved me. They forced the most disgusting acts upon me. They took advantage of my loneliness and my helplessness to sate their foul lusts. Do not accuse me, djinn. I know my innocence.”

  “Good for you again. How did you resist them?”

  “How could I resist them? They were many and strong. I am alone and weak.”

  “It’s easy,” I insisted. “You just say no. Then you keep saying no until they give up.”

  “Easy!” He snorted derision.

  “All right, for you it wouldn’t have been easy. You’re too weak and helpless. What about Rashid?”

  “Rashid?” Fetim had already forgotten the caravan master.

  “Did you tell him you didn’t want to be his catamite? Did you offer to work for your ride to Niswan? You did not. You saw that gleam in his eyes, and you thought, ‘Here is another who will do all I wish and ask nothing because I am adorable in his sight.’ He would have treated you honestly if you had done anything to deserve honesty from him. And then all tho
se poor people in Niswan would still be alive.”

  “Go away,” he replied, cutting to the heart of the matter. “Go away and let me die. Then you will have no more cause to reproach me.”

  He did indeed appear pitiable as he huddled upon the verge of the swamp. Though I knew it to be a false kindness, I granted him silence.

  In fact, he could have died. He was ignorant of any roads—and little able to care for himself. After a long and rancid night, he took to his feet with the dawn and walked out into the desert as though intending to exhaust himself and thereby hasten the end of his sufferings. Soon he was thirsty. And soon thereafter he was hungry. He had come away from Niswan without sandals, and the pressure of the sand began to wear sores on his feet. The sun blistered him. His needs took on the strength of rage. They expanded until they filled the horizons. Under the weight of the desert sun, his misery increased until it became as great as his self-pity. Then he collapsed into the sand.

  Nevertheless a great journey lay ahead of him, which he must not shirk. It was not my task to make him comfortable. I did not permit his thirst to kill him, however. I kept his hunger within limits his flesh could bear. I did not allow the sores on his feet to become infected enough to threaten his life. And when he lay himself down with the avowed intention of not rising again, I reached into his mind and found enough fears to goad him back to his feet.

  Gradually, his physical distress ground his self-pity and his revulsion and even his pride away: he had no strength for them. He had only his pain, his fear of death, and me.