“Maybe so.” General Cado read the letter for the fifth time. It contained other speculations of interest. “Suppose Sullo is up to something? How do we catch him?”
“We don’t need to. I can manufacture evidence.”
“What are you thinking?”
“Suppose we have Rose send Sullo away in imitation of a Living execution, then the story of a deal with a khadifa of the Living, who reneged, gets out?”
Cado laughed. He got up and joined Bruda at the window. Bruda watched bidders of water slide down its outer face.
“You’re more devious than I suspected.”
“We’d be rid of Sullo, with the onus on the Living. They’d be discredited and chasing each other around trying to catch the villain.”
“A double kill. I like it.” Cado chuckled. “Give me a day to think about it and see what develops. You look for holes in it.”
In the Dartar compound, with security verging on the absurd, Fa’tad al-Akla closeted himself with his ten most trusted captains, all of them men who had ridden with him twenty years or more. He had digested the day’s reports from the Shu maze and was confident both that the myths he was feeding were groundless and that the denizens of the labyrinth were compressed just short of the point where desperation would overcome terror and they would fight back.
The Eagle told them what he intended.
They were appalled. They were aghast at his daring. They enthused. Their response delighted him. He was a mischievous old devil.
One of Joab’s brothers, Bega, sometimes a too-practical sort, said, “I’m no mason. Will the mortar set up properly in this weather?” The rains were light but steady now.
Fa’tad did not know. It did not seem a critical question. All but a few exits from the maze had been sealed already. Tomorrow the masons would close the exits to the roofs. And that would be that, except for the final, critical few.
In the Shu, Yoseh retreated from the mouth of Tosh Alley, found Nogah. “You’d better come look,” he whispered. “Something is getting ready to happen out there.”
In the citadel, Zouki wakened for the first time since his encounter with the Witch. He was confused and frightened though he did not remember much. The memories he did have seemed half alien. Dreams awake. Places and events he never saw. Everything too elusive to grasp. Something worming around inside his brain. Someone else. Terror.
Thunder crashed outside.
Merciful sleep took him again a moment later.
In his quarters, Torgo paced. He was worried. He was frightened. Something unusual had happened. He did not understand. He needed the Witch to tell him what to do. And she could not be wakened.
Azel had not yet come for the boy. He was late. Way late. And it was almost time for Ishabal to show. Should he carry out his orders?
In his home in the Shu, Sisu bel-Sidek asked his khadifas to put forward the names of men they considered worthy of becoming their equals.
In Char Street, Ishabal bel-Shaduk gave his henchmen the agreed signal.
14
The boys were over the excitement and asleep. The women were not. Aaron doubted he could fall asleep easily, either. But it was time. He had to work tomorrow. Weather permitting.
One more day. Then his day off. By the time he went back, he hoped, the Herodian managers would have worked out their political differences and everybody could get back to building ships.
He reached out to snuff the candle.
Someone knocked on the door.
He cursed softly. Then thought the hell with them. Then realized that the knock was much firmer than those of Reyha or bel-Sidek. He felt a little twirl of fright.
The knock came again. Laella, her mother, and Mish all sat up and looked at him.
There had not been a major crime in Char Street since the Dartars had become interested in the maze. Nobody would be dumb enough to try something with a dozen of them watching from Tosh Alley.
He went to the door, glancing bemusedly at the carving knife. He had forgotten to remove it. The women were not about to touch it. They were going to pretend he was lord and master for a day or two.
He slipped the latch, drew a breath to speak as he started to pull the door inward.
It slammed into him, knocking his breath out and hurling him back to land on his seat. Two men charged inside. One tripped over his outstretched leg and plunged headlong into the opposite wall. Two more charged in behind the first two. One stopped, held a knife at Aaron’s throat. He gaped up at the man, lost.
The women started screaming.
A man in the doorway snapped, “Hurry up and grab him, damn it!”
One inside said, “Where the hell is he? Ho. There.”
Laella shrieked, “Arif! No!”
Mish came flying across the room, landed on the back of the man threatening Aaron. Aaron staggered to his feet while he was distracted. He tried to slam the door. It smacked into the man standing in the doorway.
Old Raheb smashed a heavy crock down on the head of the man who had charged into the wall.
Aaron grabbed the carving knife and stuck it into the man who had threatened him. He did not remember anything they had taught him in the army. There were no thoughts in his head, just rage and terror. He stuck the knife in and it lodged between ribs.
One of the two still standing flung Laella across the room. The remaining man grabbed Arif, turned, kicked Raheb in the stomach, headed for the door while his companion tried to lift the man the old woman had crowned.
Aaron grabbed at the knife dropped by the man he had stuck. The man carrying Arif saw him blocking the way and in his eyes Aaron saw the dawning fear that he was not going to get out of this place.
The edge of the door slammed into Aaron’s back. The man carrying Arif struck him in the side of the neck with a clumsy blow and bulled past. Outside, somebody yelled, “Ish! Trouble!”
The last man dumped his burden and charged. He kneed Aaron in the face, viciously, before going out.
After a moment, Aaron recovered himself, seized the knife. Bleeding from mouth and nose, he stumbled into the street, chasing the screams of a boy crying for his dad.
Yoseh and Nogah were near the mouth of the alley when the screaming started. They stepped out, looked down the street, saw what was happening. Nogah whirled and yelled, “Come on!” into the alley, then headed for the action.
A man popped out of shadow, yelled, “Ish! Trouble!” and tried to head them off.
Nogah cut him down with his saber.
Yoseh carried a javelin. He flung it a moment later, at a man who came into the street carrying Arif. He threw without worrying about the boy, a perfect cast that struck the man square in the center of the chest.
Another man grabbed the struggling child. Another came out the doorway. More charged out of the darkness downhill. Dartars poured out of the alley behind Yoseh.
The man with the child went to his belt in exactly the way that man in the alley had the other day. Yoseh threw his forearm across his eyes and tried to shout a warning to the others.
Intense light. Screams. Yoseh flung his arm down and ran forward. The man with the boy dropped his own arm, was astounded to find he was being rushed by a Dartar with a knife.
His hand went back to his belt.
Yoseh covered up again. The din rose to a ferocious level as Dartars from the alley, come out too late to be blinded, attacked anyone not wearing black. Men screamed. The child-stealers did not have weapons to fight swords and javelins. Nogah yelled, “Don’t kill them all! Take some prisoners!”
There was no second blinding flash. Instead, Yoseh took a blow to the belly like the kick of a mule. He went down, gagging, unable to draw a breath. His stomach emptied. Even after there was nothing more to throw up the heaves continued.
He was vaguely aware of the villain moving away, of Medjhah arriving just in time to keep Kosuth from skewering Arif s father, of a quick passage at arms in which Medjhah and Kosuth murdered another of the child-
takers, then he was on his feet again with the help of the boy’s father.
The man who had Arif ducked into the first alley downhill, on the north side of Char Street. Yoseh yanked his javelin out of the man he had hit earlier. He and the boy’s father took up the chase, stumble-running like a couple of drunks in the direction of Arif s screams.
Azel shook his head as the Dartars came piling out of Tosh Alley. That dumb shit Ishabal did not know they were there. Fool. Why hadn’t he scouted the area again before he made his move? Now he would pay.
Ishabal used some flash. Big deal. That wasn’t going to change anything now.
Whoa! What was this?
Four men charged into the chaos from up the street.
Azel chuckled. Those were Bruda’s boys, come to see about the ruckus. They must have followed Ishabal’s men when they’d lost him.
The Dartars didn’t give a shit who they worked for. They weren’t wearing black. They piled on.
Ha! Ishabal had given up on flash and changed to punch. He’d opened a clear path out, downhill, and he wasn’t wasting it.
Azel prized himself up off the roof and bounded away, muttering because his muscles had stiffened up in the few minutes he had lain there in the cool and damp.
It was easy to figure what a man was going to do when you knew what he had to do. Ishabal had to shut that kid up or he wasn’t going to get away. And he had to do it without hurting the kid or the whole exercise was pointless. He would need a lead, which he had, then a place where he could get his back to a wall for a minute.
Azel knew a perfect place. If Ishabal had done his scouting right, he would know it, too, and would be headed there right now.
Azel took the shorter, straighter route over the rooftops.
The place was a cul-de-sac between buildings, three feet wide and ten deep, black as Nakar’s heart inside, a deathtrap that would be avoided by anyone not armed with the confidence that came of having flash and punch and whatever else at hand.
Azel dropped into that place and folded himself up in a ball in the back, waited, wondered if he would stiffen up too soon.
Ishabal came, a vagueness moving in blackness. He faced out of the narrow place and went to work doing whatever he needed to do to quiet the brat down. Azel used the last of the racket to cover whatever sound he made unwinding and moving forward.
He did something to give himself away. The vagueness that was Ishabal stiffened, started to react an instant before Azel set the point of his knife against his spine and said, “Don’t.”
Ishabal froze. “Azel?”
“You really screwed it up, Ish. Going to have the whole city going crazy, trying to figure it out. And they’re going to figure it once they start digging.”
“I told them. They don’t care. She says this kid is the one she wants. Look, we got to get out of here. They aren’t that far behind me.”
Ishabal was pretty good. Azel almost missed the minuscule warning hitch as he went to his belt. Almost.
Azel thrust. Ishabal bucked away from the killing blade. The flash packet flew from his fingers unopened, hit, spilled a few grains, began to burn slowly instead of exploding. Azel pushed the dying man away and squatted to collect the now unconscious boy.
A foot scraped. He looked up into the eyes of the same Dartar he’d run into twice before.
He clamped down on the rage that seized him, surged upward, flung the boy toward the sky, so that the upper half of his body landed on the roof and held him there. Then he faced the Dartar and his companion in the light of the smoldering flash.
So. He would leave them here with Ishabal. It would make a fine puzzle for whoever found them, the three of them all dead and the boy gone.
“You just got in my way one time too many, camel boy. This one is the last time.” He moved forward.
In response the Darter uncovered his face. Hell. He wasn’t nothing but a kid. A shaky kid carrying a knife in his left hand, with his right hand tucked up behind him like he was wounded or something.
Azel moved in.
The Dartar’s hand came out thrusting with a javelin.
Azel dodged and blocked just well enough to keep from getting killed. The head of the javelin sliced along his left cheek and ruined his ear. He grabbed the javelin’s shaft and pulled.
The Dartar hung on and kicked violently with his left foot. Azel turned his hip to take the blow but it came higher than he anticipated, struck squarely on his right elbow, numbing his arm so badly he could not hang on to his knife. He kneed the Dartar and at the same time flailed the numb arm hard enough to knock the knife out of the boy’s left hand. The Dartar pulled himself in and clung. Azel started to crush him in a bear hug.
The second man’s knife came in and ripped along his ribs, a hairline of fire.
The kid was trying to hold him while the other man killed him.
He kneed the Dartar again and felt his grip go watery with the pain. Azel shoved him back into the other man, backed away, jumped.
First try, his still half-numb arm betrayed him. He slipped back. He jumped again. As he went up, the Dartar’s companion buried a knife in his right calf and tried to pull him back down. He kicked the guy in the head with his right foot, pulled himself onto the roof. He yanked the knife out of his calf, dragged the brat all the way onto the roof so nobody could grab a leg and pull him back down.
Azel heard nothing stirring below. He lay there panting and hurting for a minute, till he heard cautious voices approaching in the darkness. Then he got himself up, picked up the brat, and started moving.
He ignored the fires in his cheek and ear, his calf and side. He told himself he was too good to let a little pain distract him.
When the uproar broke out outside, Zenobel growled, “What the hell?” and headed for the door.
“Hold it!” bel-Sidek snapped. “Kill the lamps. Whatever it is, we don’t want it getting interested in us.”
By the time the lamps were out and bel-Sidek had gotten to the door and had opened it a crack, the uproar was that of a battle. Bel-Sidek said, “It’s a band of Dartars slaughtering a bunch of Qushmarrahans.”
Carza asked, “Why?”
“How should I know?” bel-Sidek was troubled.
Zenobel asked, “What are Dartars doing in Char Street at this time of night?”
“Why don’t you go ask?” bel-Sidek backed away so the others could take turns peeking. Zenobel ended up being the sentinel at the crack who reported to the rest, sitting there in darkness. “They’ve gotten a torch lit. Collecting up the dead and wounded. Looks like three prisoners and seven dead. None of them Dartars. Make that eight dead. They just brought in another one. Looks like they’re getting ready to question the survivors. Some more around a doorway down there, talking. Funny. Nobody’s come out to see what’s going on.”
Bel-Sidek said, “It isn’t strange, here where the night belongs to the beasts of the maze. Close it. They aren’t interested in us. Let’s keep it that way. Light a lamp, King. Just one. Can’t anybody think of an alternative to Hanno bel-Kaifa?”
Salom Edgit asked, “Why don’t you trust him?”
“I trust him, Salom. That’s not the problem. I don’t like him. The dislike is so strong I think it would affect my ability to work with him.”
Zenobel took another peek outside. He planned to sneak another in a minute. He held the door closed with his hand instead of latching it.
It exploded inward.
The Dartars helped Aaron out of the alley. By the time they reached Char Street he could move under his own power.
Mumbling, he invited them to bring Yoseh into his home so they would have light to look him over.
Aaron stopped in the doorway. A Dartar with bare saber stood guard inside. The fallen invaders had been removed. Laella, battered but apparently all right, knelt over her mother, in front of the hearth. Across the room Mish sat against the wall and held Stafa tight against her breast. She sobbed softly.
Laella look
ed up. Aaron shook his head. Her face turned to stone. She rose, came to examine his injuries. He moved aside so the Dartars could bring Yoseh in. They invited themselves to bring all their injured. Laella did not protest.
She touched his face. He winced, asked, “How is she?”
“I think she’s hurt inside.” There was an edge of hysteria in her voice.
“Take it easy. What about you? How about Stafa and Mish?”
“We’re all right.” She leaned against him. “What did we ever do to those men, Aaron? How could they do that?”
“I don’t know. I’m going to find out.” He pushed her away gently, went to his toolbox, and took out a heavy, bronze-headed maul.
“What are you going to do?”
“Go break bel-Sidek’s other leg, then twist on it till he tells me the truth.” And he actually meant it when he said it, though it sounded absurd a second later.
“Aaron...”
“They’ve got Arif, Laella. Just like they’ve got Zouki. I can’t stand still.”
He started for the doorway. On his way he tapped Yoseh’s two brothers. “Come on.”
Bel-Sidek was completely boggled by the apparition in the doorway. The carpenter looked like he had been beaten half to death. He looked incredibly ferocious with a huge hammer in his hand. “Aaron?”
“I want my son back, bel-Sidek. Your men took him, and killed his grandmother, and if you don’t get him back to me I’m going to see that whatever is left of you when I get done hangs from a Herodian gibbet.”
Bel-Sidek felt the bite of fear. He understood the threat. The carpenter knew or suspected enough to do the movement irreparable harm. “Calm down, Aaron. I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t have your son.”
“Just like you don’t know anything about Naszif s son, Zouki, but you can show him to Naszif anytime you want to make him do something.”
What would the General have done in this situation?
The carpenter was getting a little nervous, his crazy anger deserting him. He had not expected to break into a room full of hard-faced men. He did not know what to do next.