Reave the Just and Other Tales

  “We had an assignation!” this man cried to Fetim in jealous chagrin.

  “You arranged this?” demanded Haroon el-Temud.

  “Yes,” Fetim replied. “Your wine killed the woman I would have wed.”

  In a rage, the merchant struck at Fetim. The new arrival drew a blade to defend his lover. Haroon el-Temud only had time to shout for his waiting guards before his blood was spilled on the bed.

  The guards charged into Fetim’s quarters. The jealous lover in turn called out for help. More men came to the fray. Qatiis was a city in which no man or woman dared pass out of earshot of assistance. Cries echoed into the streets. Realizing the location of the struggle, Fetim’s lovers converged on each other, each bringing strength for battle. Shortly Haroon el-Temud’s house and the houses of his enemies were engaged in full-scale war.

  Amid this war sat Fetim, contemplating havoc. Because of the curse, much of the violence turned toward him; but he made no effort to defend himself or flee. While blades flashed at him from all sides, and blood gushed everywhere, he murmured only, “Do your work, djinn,” and remained where he was.

  My work was not easy. It would have been simplified if he had been willing to move. Or—since I must speak honestly—if I had been willing to coerce him to move. I chose, however, to let him be. I covered him with myself and turned every blade and blow aside.

  Before the night was over, Qatiis had been cleansed of several powerful merchants who had traded upon the vices of the rich and the flesh of the weak. When at last the Padisha’s civil guard was able to beat back the turmoil, they found Fetim still seated on his bed. From that vantage, he surveyed the bloodshed as though he had become accustomed to it.

  Naturally, the guards raised their scimitars to strike him down. But it was not his intention to destroy civil rule in Qatiis; his plans were more insidious. He spared the guard by raising his hands and saying in a voice of command, “Hold. What I did, I did at the command of Babera, the Padisha’s vizier.”

  Because the vizier Babera had a hand in suggesting and effecting many of the Padisha’s treacheries and counter-treacheries, Fetim’s assertion was plausible enough to be dangerous. The men drew back their swords. Instead of attempting to butcher the cause of so much death and damage, they took him prisoner. While conflicting forces sought to find a new balance by defeating each other, and most of the city’s strength concentrated on protecting Qatiis itself from riot and ravage, and beggars and pickthieves scurried to loot the undefended warehouses, Fetim was dragged ungently through the streets toward the gold palace of the Padisha.

  His ploy succeeded: he was hauled before the vizier Babera rather than the vizier Meyd.

  The Padisha was served by two viziers, whose fortunes rose and fell as his phases alternated. The function and protection of the city, the command of the civil guard, the regulation of the marketplace to preserve at least a semblance of honesty, all were the province of the vizier Meyd, whose loyalty and probity were the qualities which kept the Padisha on his throne. Conversely, the vizier Babera was the master of the Padisha’s revels and plots. He it was who conceived the vices and debaucheries, the extravagances and perversions, which gave the Padisha’s life its exotic flavor.

  Presented to the vizier Babera, Fetim acted swiftly: he spat in the vizier’s face.

  Babera’s instant reaction was to order Fetim’s head lopped from his shoulders. A moment’s reflection, however, suggested a better fate. In recent days, the Padisha had developed a taste which was difficult to satisfy, even for the cunning vizier: the Padisha desired fornication with someone—man or woman, as occasion supplied—while that individual’s neck was being broken. The snapping of the spine and the spasm of death brought him to climaxes which were greatly coveted. Seeing that Fetim was handsome, Babera concluded that he would make an appropriate victim for the Padisha’s concupiscence.

  Therefore Fetim’s death was not attempted. Instead, he was drugged into a state of languor and acquiescence, and presented to the Padisha.

  The Padisha met the vizier Babera’s offering with intense approval. At once, he called women to arouse him, boys to toy with him. He consumed aphrodisiacs to make him manly. He inhaled incenses which heightened the senses; he drank herbs which sensitized the skin. At the same time, Fetim was bound hand and foot into an upright frame designed so that the Padisha might penetrate from one side while his bodyservant, a hugely muscular eunuch, clasped the victim’s neck from the other.

  Drugged, Fetim suffered this indignity without alarm. He only murmured at intervals, “Do your work, djinn. I will do mine.”

  When the Padisha was ready, he began to exercise himself upon Fetim’s body. Swiftly, the moment of climax approached. The eunuch wrapped his great hands around Fetim’s throat.

  But when the Padisha was engorged and aching, and the signal was given, the eunuch’s hands unaccountably jerked from one neck to the other. It was the Padisha himself who met death in the moment of bliss.

  Horrified by the consequences of what had just happened, the eunuch fled for his life, rampaging like a maddened bull through the palace. The vizier Meyd entered the Padisha’s disporting chamber, took one look at his master’s body, and commanded his men to arrest the vizier Babera.

  Babera’s supporters resisted; the civil guard was called into action. While violence echoed in the halls of the palace, propelling the vizier Meyd to the rule of Qatiis whether he desired it or not, I released Fetim from his bonds, swept the drugs from his mind, and guided him to a safe egress.

  As we journeyed together away from the changed city, I said, “You learn well.”

  “Learn?”

  “You learn to think like one of the accursed.”

  “Thank you,” he said. He did not sound notably happy. Yet he faced the desert ahead of us without quailing.

  “You fill me with pride,” I said. “You have exceeded all my expectations.”

  “Give me time,” he returned. His tone suggested mockery of my former manner of speaking. “I might have some more surprises for you. The world has a lot of opportunities.”

  Had I been mortal, I would have laughed. If he continued to learn at this pace, he would eventually become one of the djinn.

  The Killing Stroke

  When he was returned to the cell we shared, he retained nothing except his short, warrior’s robe and his knowledge of shin-te. The years of training which had made him what he was despite his youth had not been taken from him. Everything else was gone. His birthplace and family, his friendships and allegiances, his possessions and memories—all had been swept aside. The faces of his masters and students had vanished from his mind. He could not have given an account of himself to save his life—or ours. Not even his name remained to him.

  I was familiar with his plight. As was Isla. We had experienced it ourselves.

  The look of bereavement in his eyes did not augur well for him. It had settled firmly into the strained flesh at his temples and the new lines of his cheeks, causing him to appear almost painfully youthful and forlorn. He might have been a small boy who had grown so accustomed to blows he could not avoid that he had learned to flinch and duck his head reflexively.

  Weariness clung to his limbs, burdened his shoulders. His ordeal had been immeasurably arduous.

  Still his skill, and the rigor behind it, showed in the poise with which he carried himself, in the quick accuracy with which he saw and noted everything around him. He had presumably been dealt a killing stroke, with blade or fist. Yet he remained lithe of movement, prompt of gaze—and centered in his qa.

  So he had returned on previous occasions. That he could continue to move and attend as he did, in spite of defeat and death, moderated his air of bereavement.

  His throat was parched from his various exertions. Studying us with his incipient flinch, he tried to speak, but could not find his voice at first. With an effort, he swallowed his confusion and fear in order to clear his mouth. Then he asked faintly, “Where am I???
?

  It was the same question he had asked each time he entered. With repetition, his voice had grown husky, thick with doubt, but his mind continued to arrange its inquiries in the same order.

  That also did not augur well.

  As she had each time before, Isla shrugged, glowering darkly from her smudged features.

  As I had each time before, I spread my hands to indicate the cell. Its blind stone walls and eternal lamps, its timbered ceiling, its pallets and cistern and privy, were the only answer we could give.

  Frowning fearfully, he asked his second question. “Who are you?”

  Isla turned her glower toward me. Behind its grime, her face might have been lovely or plain, but she had long since forgotten which, and I had ceased to be curious. The shape of her mouth was strict, however, and the heat of her qa showed in her eyes. “Does he never get tired of this?” she demanded.

  Her protest was not a reference to the young man standing before us.

  “Or she?” I retorted. The debate was of long standing between us. It meant nothing, but I maintained it on the general principle—oft repeated by my masters—that we could not escape our imprisonment by making unwarranted assumptions.

  The young man swallowed again. “He? She?”

  That question, also, he had asked more than once.

  No doubt deliberately, Isla chose to violate the litany of previous occasions. “You answer,” she ordered me. “I get tired, if he doesn’t.”

  Simply because I enjoyed variations of any kind, I tried to provoke her. “How are you tired? You do nothing except pace and complain.”

  “Tired,” she snapped, “of being the only one who cares.”

  Her defeat had predated mine—although neither of us could measure the interval between them. In fact, she had preserved my heart from despair. I could not have borne my own ordeal alone. But my gratitude did neither of us any good.

  And she was not the only one who cared.

  Smiling ruefully, I faced the young man. “I am Asper.” For entertainment’s sake, I performed a florid bow. “This uncivil termagant is Isla. We are here to serve you. However,” I admitted, “we have not yet grasped what aid you might need.”

  Isla snorted, but refrained from contradiction. She knew I spoke the truth.

  A small tension between the young man’s brows deepened. He may have been trying to anticipate the next blow. For him the litany remained unbroken. He had not moved from the spot where he had appeared in the cell.

  “Have we met before?”

  Since Isla had elected to vary the experience with silence, I continued alone. “Several times.”

  He did not ask, How is that possible? His masters had trained him well. He remained centered in his qa—and in his thoughts. Instead he observed hoarsely, “A mage has imprisoned us.”

  This was not an assumption. If it were, I might have challenged it. His conclusion was inescapable, however, made so by the perfect absence of a door through which any of us could have entered the cell. And by the fact that we yet lived.

  Keeping my bitterness to myself, I shrugged in assent.

  His sorrow augmented the weariness which burdened his spirit. In the unflinching lamplight, he appeared to dwindle.

  Sadly, he asked, “What are you?”

  The same questions in the same order.

  “By the White Lords,” Isla swore, “he learns nothing.”

  There my temper snapped. My own memory had been restored to me after my last defeat. I recalled too much death. “And what precisely,” I demanded of her, “is it that we have learned?”

  She answered at once, crying at the walls, “I have learned hatred! If he makes the mistake of letting me live, I will extract the cost of this abuse from his bones!”

  I understood her anguish. We both knew that neither of us would ever see the light of day again, if this shin-te master did not win our freedom for us.

  Still I was angry. I did not allow her to leave her place in the litany.

  Smiling unkindly at the young man, I performed a small circular flick with the fingers of one hand—a gesture both swift and subtle, difficult to notice—and at once a whetted dagger appeared in my palm. Without pausing to gauge direction or distance, I flipped the bladepoint at Isla’s right eye.

  My cast was true. Yet the dagger did not strike her. Instead it flashed upward and embedded itself with a satisfying thunk in one of the ceiling timbers.

  She adjusted the sleeve of her robe.

  We both gazed at the young man.

  Curling his hands over his heart, he accorded us the shin-te bow of respect. “Nahia,” he said to me. And to Isla, “Mashu-te.”

  In our separate ways, we also bowed. We could not do otherwise. He had named us, although he remembered nothing.

  “Your mastery is plain,” he observed unhappily. “You must have answered better than I.”

  Opening his hand, he indicated what lay beyond our cell.

  “If that were true,” Isla snapped, “you wouldn’t be here.”

  For myself, I added, “Neither would we.”

  There was nothing for which we could hope if his mastery did not prove greater than ours.

  Fortunately, he appeared to understand us without more explanation. We had none to offer. Nothing had been revealed to us. If our captor had placed any value on our comprehension, we would not have been deprived of our memories while we fought and failed.

  Shouldering his dismay as well as he could, he asked the question which must have given him the most pain.

  “Who am I?”

  Because we were familiar with his distress, both Isla and I faced him openly so that he could see that we had no reply for him. We knew only what he had told us—and he remembered only shin-te.

  For the first time, he varied our litany of question and response himself. Slowly, he raised his hands to wipe tears from his eyes. His struggles had exhausted his flesh. Now his repeated return from death had begun to exhaust his spirit.

  That also did not augur well.

  When he spread his hands to show us that they were empty—that he was defenseless—we recognized that he had come to the point of his gravest vulnerability. So softly that he might have made no sound, he voiced the question which haunted us all.

  “Why?”

  We would have answered him kindly—Isla even more than I, despite her hate. We knew his pain. But any kindness would have been a lie.

  “Presumably,” she told him, “it is because you failed.”

  As we had failed before him.

  Despite his training, he allowed himself a sigh of weariness and regret. That, too, was a slight variation. He had sighed before. With repetition, however, it had begun to convey the inflection of a sob.

  His last question contained little more than utter fatigue.

  “Is it safe to rest?”

  I might have answered sardonically, “We survive the experience, as you see.” But Isla forestalled me.

  “We will ward you with our lives,” she assured him. “While you are here, we have no other hope.”

  He nodded, accepting her reply. Carefully, he moved to the nearest pallet and folded himself onto it. Within moments he had fallen asleep.

  As before, I found no satisfaction in his willingness to trust us. I knew as well as he did that his weariness left him no alternative.

  He had endured altogether too much death.

  _______

  Folk like myself might have said that we had already seen enough to content us. After simmering and frothing for the better part of a decade, the Mage War had at last boiled over three years ago, spilling blood across the length and breadth of Vesselege until all the land was sodden with it. For reasons which few of us understood, and fewer still cared about, the White Lords had scourged and harried the Dark until only one remained—the most potent and dire of them all, it was said, the dread Black Archemage, secure among the shadows and malice of his granite keep upon the crags of Scarmin. Even then,
however, the victories of the White Lords, and the withdrawal of the Archemage, did not suffice to lift the pall of battle and death from the land. The reach of a mage was long, as we all knew. During that war, we learned how long. A hundred leagues from Scarmin’s peaks and cols, hurricanes of fire and stone fell upon Vess whenever—so we were told—Argoyne the Black required a diversion to ward him from some assault of the White Lords, and of Goris Miniter, Vesselege’s King.

  Vess was Miniter’s seat, the largest and—until the Mage War—most thriving city in the land. So naturally I lived there, within a whim of destruction every hour of my days. By nature, I think, I had always enjoyed the proximity of disasters—as long as they befell someone else. Certainly, I had always been adept at avoiding them myself. And that skill had been enhanced and honed by my training among the nahia.

  My poor father, blighted by poverty and loss, had gifted me there after my mother’s death. Though I had squalled against the idea at the time, I had learned to treasure it. When my masters had at last released me, I was a gifted pickthief, an impeccable burglar, and an artist of impossible escapes and improbable disappearances. I was also a true warrior in the tradition of the nahia. Faced by a single antagonist, I might leave him dead before he realized that I was not the one being slain. Confronting a gang of ruffians, I could dispatch half of them while the other half hacked at each other in confusion and folly.

  Despite the visitations of power which blasted one section of the city or another at uncertain intervals, I lived rather well in Vess, I thought. Unfortunately, late in the third year of the War, some mischance or miscalculation must have brought me to the attention of one mage or another. The life I knew ended as suddenly as if I had severed it at the base of the neck. Without transition or awareness, I found myself in a stone cell with Isla and no door. When my memory was restored, I recalled days or weeks of bitter combat. I felt myself die again and again, until my spirit quailed like a coward’s. Yet I remembered nothing of how I had been taken from Vess—or why. And I had nothing but assumptions, which my masters abhorred, to tell me where I was.