Wait. Maybe not. Whatever had happened, it was over long since. And the enemy did not have that grim look he got when his own had been hurt. Someone would have gotten hurt had they found the General.
Still...
Still, it had been something that interested them a great deal. A great deal. That was Fa’tad al-Akla himself. The Eagle would not be out here for trivia.
Was he at risk here? Had they been found out? Was it a search?
No. Hardly. How would the old man know them in their present circumstances, after ten years, when he and the General had been but faces in the background when last they had crossed paths?
There was Raheb Sayhed and her daughter. Raheb spent her life planted on her mat there. Nothing escaped her. He limped over to the two women.
A smiling face peeped around Raheb’s skirt. Bel-Sidek grinned. “Ola, Stafa.” He liked the child. “Ola, Raheb. Laella.”
The older woman replied, “Ola, Khadifa.” She inclined her head almost imperceptibly, to show that she still honored him. She continued to stare at Fa’tad.
Bel-Sidek frowned his question at the daughter.
Laella said, “The foundations of her world took a shaking this afternoon.”
“What happened?”
“A child-stealing. Reyha’s son, Zouki. A Dartar patrol was right in front of the house when it happened. They tried to rescue Zouki. Three of them got hurt.”
“That explains Fa’tad.”
“Maybe. But I don’t think so. They weren’t hurt bad. I hear he’s here because they think the Living had something to do with it.”
“That’s absurd.”
“Is it?”
“Why would they take a six-year-old kid?”
“Why would they beat up shopkeepers and steal from artisans and leave their own people floating in the bay while never, ever, laying a finger on the people they’re supposed to be fighting?”
“You’re exaggerating.”
“Am I? Let me tell you something, Khadifa. There are ordinary, everyday, loyal people in Qushmarrah-people who hate Herod and Dartars as much as you do-who’re so fed up with the Living they’ve talked about maybe letting Fa’tad find out some names.”
“Laella.”
Bel-Sidek turned. “Aaron. How are you?”
“Upset. I have small children. It disturbs me that the Dartars seem more interested in their safety than do those of my own people who might say they have some claim on my sympathy. People who, by their nature, ought to have some insight into the problem if there’s a racket behind the child-stealing.”
Bel-Sidek understood. He did not like it. “I hear what you’re saying, Aaron. Here. Come. Walk with me to my house.” He began dragging the leg uphill.
The man turned his son over to his wife and followed. It did not take him long to catch up. Bel-Sidek asked, “Is it true, what she said?”
“You know how women are when they’re scared or mad. Say any damned thing that pops into their head.”
“Yes.” He glanced back at Raheb, still frozen in place. There was an omen as sinister as her daughter’s threat. “I know some people who know some people. I’ll say something to someone.”
“Thank you. How is your father doing?”
“He sleeps a lot now. The pain doesn’t bother him as much as it did.”
“Good.”
“I’ll tell him you asked about him.”
The old man wakened when the door slammed. It had to be slammed or it would not close all the way. “Bel-Sidek?” He winced as the pain shot down his side.
“Yes, General.”
The old man composed himself before the khadifa entered the dimness of his room. Only a part of the dimness was due to a lack of lighting. His eyes were growing feeble. He could make out few details of bel-Sidek when he appeared. “Was it a good day, Khadifa?”
“It began well. Three ships came with the morning tide. There was work. We needn’t worry about where our meals will come from for a few days.”
“But?”
“I encountered an unpleasant situation coming home. It was illuminating.”
“Political?”
“Yes.”
“Report.”
He listened carefully, with a feeling for nuance. His hearing was excellent. Time had been that kind. He heard not only objective substance but the implication that the khadifa was troubled in heart.
“The woman-Raheb?-bothers you. Why?”
“She had one son. Taidiki. Her sunrise. Her full moon. He went to Dak-es-Souetta with my Thousand. A brave lad. He held his ground till the end. He was one of the forty-eight of mine who came home. He came back in worse shape than I did. A lot worse. But he was a proud kid. He thought he’d done something. His mother cried for him, but she was proud of him, too. And of everyone who fought the odds at Dak-es-Souetta. Fanatically so.”
“Is there a punch line to this story, Khadifa?”
“A year ago Taidiki went into the street and started telling anyone who would listen the same things his sister said today, only he spoke more straightforwardly. He said hard things about our class and the Living. He said the Dartar tribes were not the traitors of Dak-es-Souetta, that Qushmarrah had betrayed them first by ignoring them in their need. They had done only what they had to do so their children could eat. When one of the Living tried to hush him, he denounced the man. When the man resorted to threats, Taidiki’s neighbors-our neighbors-beat him senseless.”
“I’m still waiting for the punch line.’’
“Taidiki took his own life afterward, as a protest. He said Qushmarrah had murdered him already and he hadn’t had sense enough to lie down.”
“The point?”
“That was the moment I first realized there were people of Qushmarrah who were less than enchanted with our efforts.”
“And?”
“A more dramatic incident occurred in the Hahr day before yesterday. The Dartars rounded up eighteen ground-level members. They had been denounced anonymously. The Dartars did not bother interrogating them. They just executed them there in the street. Some of the onlookers cheered.”
“I see.”
“Do you? Some of the brethren have been feathering...”
“I said I see.” The General reflected for several minutes. “Khadifa, your father has just had another of his spells and thinks he’s dying again. You round up your brother and cousins and have them here later tonight so they can be given their legacies.”
“Yes sir.”
“Fa’tad is in the street out there?”
“Yes sir.”
“Help me to the door. I want to see him.”
“Is it worth the risk, sir?”
“Is he going to recognize a man who’s been dead for six years?”
He did not get his fuzzy glimpse of the enemy. Fa’tad al-Akla and his tribesmen, and the Herodian infantrymen, had gone. Char Street had become its normal twilight self.
2
“What’s this?” Aaron asked, looking at the concoction Laella had set before him. He shifted on his cushion. The aches of work and the terror of the afternoon were fading. His question was one of honest inquiry, not complaint.
“What does it look like?”
“Haifa yellow squash with stuff baked inside it.”
“Can’t put anything past you when you put your mind to it, can I?”
Arif said, “I don’t like this stuff, Mom.” Stafa echoed him immediately. The younger boy was just into that stage.
“You haven’t tried it yet.”
Aaron didn’t think he would like it, either, but it turned out to be good. The boys did right by their portions, too.
Laella had filled the partially baked squash halves with a mix of chopped and sliced vegetables, and slivers of mutton, in a heavy, spicy brown sauce. There were mushrooms and nut meats in there, too. And dates promised for afterward for boys who ate their supper.
Old Raheb worked on her meal without speaking. Hers had been cooked longer so meat and vegetables
would be easier prey for toothless gums. Tonight she worked every mouthful twice as long as usual. Aaron pretended not to notice. Nobody could get quite as fixated as Laella’s mother. If one of her fixations won an audience it could turn into years of high drama.
Look at Taidiki. She had been mourning Taidiki since Dak-es-Souetta. He might not have broken had she not been there wailing all the time.
Aaron needed distracting himself. “What do you think of it, Mish?”
Tamisa, Laella’s fourteen-year-old sister, completed the household. For a time after Dak-es-Souetta there had been other sisters. They had gotten married one by one. The latest had gone just before Taidiki’s mad gesture.
Maybe that had contributed to Taidiki’s despair. All those sisters to dowry and no other relatives to soften the blows to his patrimony.
Raheb did not mourn her husband, did she? He had fallen at Dak-es-Souetta, hadn’t he? But she hadn’t so much as mentioned his name since moving in here.
Tamisa said, “It’s all right.” Howling praise. About as definite a statement as anyone could get out of her these days. She had changed over the eight years Aaron had known her. Sometimes he felt vaguely guilty about that, though he did not see how he could be responsible. Too much time spent close to her mother, he thought.
He worried endlessly that Arif and Stafa would drift down the same pathway to a life of quiet despair. He worried about his sons too much, he knew. Children survived childhood. He had. It was being grown-up that was lethal.
Laella said, “When we’re done I want to go see if I can do anything for Reyha.”
“I thought you might.”
“Mish can clean up.”
“Of course.”
“We’ve known each other a long time. We went through labor together. There was still fighting in the streets.”
“I know.”
“We lay there holding hands and listening to people killing each other outside, not sure that somebody wouldn’t break in and do something to us.”
“I know.” There was a part of Laella that could not forgive him for having been a prisoner of the Herodians on that critical day, unreasonable as she knew that to be.
“Zouki came only a minute after Arif. It was the last day of the war. The day Ala-eh-din Beyh broke the barrier and killed Nakar the Abomination.”
“I know.” He knew the preamble was all because he would have to take her if she was to go see Reyha. And he loathed Reyha’s husband, Naszif.
Naszif was an ironwright and prosperous. The Herodians had plenty of work for metalworkers and gave Naszif all he could handle. Aaron and Naszif had been in the same artillery engineers troop. Aaron was convinced that Naszif had betrayed them during the siege of the Seven Towers in Harak Pass.
Three of the towers had been reduced already. There was never a doubt that the Herodians would break through. The defenders were supposed to buy time until the defeated of Dak-es-Souetta, the new levies, and the allies could gather on the Plain of Chordan. The lords of Marek, Tuhn, and Caldera were sending seventy thousand men.
But someone heeded either cowardice or the Herodian offer of rewards and unsealed the tower’s postern. The treachery advanced the Herodian cause sufficiently that they were able to reach the Plain of Chordan in time to keep it all from coming together.
“When we heard, we both had the same crazy idea. Name our sons Peace,” Laella said.
“I know.”
“Why don’t you like Naszif? You were in everything together.”
“That’s why. I know him.” He had told no one what he believed about Naszif. Not even Laella.
“But...”
“I was there and you weren’t. The subject is closed. Get yourself ready if you’re going to go. Arif, Stafa, one story from Nana, then go to bed.”
In one year the coast as far as Caldera had fallen to Herod. Not, Aaron was convinced, because of the great and so close thing at Dak-es-Souetta, but because of one traitor in one tower in Harak Pass.
When he started brooding about it he got himself out of the mood by mocking himself for thinking someone as insignificant as he could have been so near the heart of any crucial historical event.
Yoseh lay on his cot with his hands behind his head, staring into the darkness between the ceiling beams. The burn on his face hurt. The ointment didn’t do much to help.
“Why so thoughtful tonight?”
Yoseh looked up at Nogah. He replied with complete honesty. “That man in that alley. He could have killed us if he’d wanted. All of us. Easy.”
“Probably. But he didn’t.”
“But he did want to. I could see it in his face, behind the fear and surprise. He hated us and wanted to kill us but it was more important to keep that little boy under control.”
Nogah looked at him a moment, then nodded. “Come on. Fa’tad wants to ask you about it.”
The muscles across Yoseh’s stomach tightened till he felt like he was having cramps. His eyes began blinking. He could not stop. “No. I can’t.”
“Come on, Yoseh. He’s only a man.”
“He’s only Fa’tad al-Akla. He scares the Demon out of me.”
Nogah smiled. “It’s about time somebody did that, little brother. You’ve always had too much brass for your own good. Come on.”
Yoseh rose. He followed Nogah, wondering if this was how men felt as they went to the gallows.
The Dartar compound was outside Qushmarrah proper, beyond the Gate of Autumn, on a field where the city’s soldiers once trained. A thin curtain wall twelve feet high surrounded it. All the buildings within abutted against this, their roofs forming a platform for defenders. Everything was crudely constructed of mud brick painted to protect it from the rain. The wall enclosed about three acres.
Yoseh and Nogah had to cross the enclosure to reach Fa’tad. Stars had come out. The air overhead was unusually clear. Camels and horses, goats and cattle mumbled to one another. The smell of hay and crowded animals was strong. “It must be about time to send a herd south,” Yoseh said.
“Any day now. There are enough men whose time is up to take them.”
“You’ve been here five years, Nogah. Why do you stay?”
“I don’t know.”
“Foo. I’m your brother, Nogah. I’ve known you all my life. You would’ve thought about it a lot each time before you signed on again.”
“Maybe I can do more good here, earning the ferrenghi silver that buys the herds. Down there I’d be just another mouth.”
“Not to mention that while you’re up here you don’t have to keep butting heads with Father.”
Nogah snorted. Then he chuckled. “No. Up here I have Fa’tad al-Akla, with whom there is no arguing. Father you can wear down sometimes.”
“Before I left he almost broke down and became human. ‘Four sons I send to Fa’tad now. And none of them come back. You come back when your time is done, little Yoseh. You come home.’”
“That sounds like him. And I’m sure he sent some blustery message to his prodigals.”
He had, of course, but Yoseh hadn’t bothered to report it. “Yes.”
They walked a few steps. Nogah said, “So?”
“He said, Tell my Nogah, my firstborn, to come home. Tell him I am one step ahead of the dark angel and beginning to limp. An heir’s place is beside his father in his last hour.’”
“His last hour, eh? One step ahead of old Death?”
“He said it. I didn’t.”
“And he just took another wife.”
“Yes.”
“That’s the third one since I came north.”
“There are a lot of women who can’t find husbands because so many of the young men don’t come back from duty in Qush-marrah.”
“So Father is easing the shortage.”
“His duty to the tribe, he told me. If he hadn’t taken the poor girls in, their fathers might have put them out of their tents. They might have starved.”
“No doubt these foundling
waifs come without dowries, too.”
“Are you kidding? He’ll take ugly but he won’t take poor.”
“And they always call him that charming old rogue Mel-chesheydek.” They reached the opposite side of the compound. Nogah said, “Nogah, Yahada. We’re here.”
“I’ll tell him.” The guard posted outside Fa’tad’s quarters stepped inside.
“It’s a serious problem, Nogah,” Yoseh said. “The old men are talking about making it so nobody can join Fa’tad who hasn’t already taken a wife and at least gotten her with child.”
“Those sour old bellies must be full, then.”
“What?”
“They didn’t talk that way when they were starving. Then it was send the boys whether they want to go or not.”
Yahada opened the door. “Come in.”
Yoseh preceded his brother, his knees starting to shake. His first glimpse of Fa’tad did nothing to reassure him. Those eyes... Grey as iron and cold as the bottom of a well. There was no anger in them, but still he felt like a clumsy child.
Fa’tad nodded infinitesimally, “Nogah.” The old man sat cross-legged on a small cushion. He had filled the room with the appurtenances of a cave shelter. They did not hide the truth. “This is your brother Yoseh?”
“Yes sir.”
“I overheard what you said a moment ago. Is it true, Yoseh, that they intend to meddle with me down there?”
Yoseh did not know how to answer. The question sounded like one with a snare built into it. He chose his words carefully. “They want to encourage the young men to return home more quickly.”
A specter of a smile twitched Fa’tad’s lips. “Oh, yes. As they so quickly did when they were young auxiliaries scouting for Qushmarrah’s armies. You were right, Nogah. Their bellies are full, and sour with memories of what they lost with their youth. Yahada, find Barok. Tell him he needn’t worry about how he’s going to get all that livestock safely to the mountain.” Fa’tad smiled a genuine smile. He looked at Yoseh as if he were speaking to him alone. “They need to be reminded that the drought is still with us.” His face clouded, then lost all expression.
Eight years of drought. There was nothing to match it in Dartar history.
“Your brother told me what happened this afternoon, Yoseh. Now I want to hear your part of it from you.”