A Wind in Cairo (13 page)

Zamaniyah barely paused to excuse herself. In silks and slippers and forbidden veil, she bolted in the eunuch's wake.

Khamsin had done nothing visibly perilous. He had simply eluded confinement to take up station in the courtyard. His head flew up when she came; he trotted to her, sniffed her arm, lipped it with utmost gentleness. He had wounds himself. Cuts, cleaned and tended; the swellings of bruises. He sighed. “Did you fret for me?” she asked him.

People had followed her. They were staring. Safiyah came through them.

Khamsin saw her. He whickered softly, softly. He had never whickered for Zamaniyah. Very gently he stepped toward Safiyah, setting each foot down with meticulous care, as if he feared to frighten her. His ears were erect, quivering.

She was not, it was apparent, a woman for horses. She lacked the touch; yet she lacked also the fear that so often went with inexperience. When he laid his head against her breast, she neither shrieked nor fled, but stroked it, smiling a smile of remarkable beauty. “Is he your strange one?”

“Isn't it clear to see?” asked Zamaniyah. She should have been pleased and proud. She was unendurably jealous. She had to fight hard to keep it out of her voice.

Safiyah did not hear it. “He is beautiful. So long a mane, and so thick; so silken a coat. And so docile.”

“He likes you,” Zamaniyah said. “Very much.”

He looked fair to swoon at the lady's feet. She, for all her queenliness, was doting on him. Had she spoiled her son with such blind tenderness? Small wonder then that he had come to a bad end.

As would Zamaniyah, if her father discovered where she had waited out the city's storm. With perseverance and the armor of a servant's foray into a much quieted street, she won her proper clothing and her host's leave to go. She offered due, and deep, respect, and thanks that were heartfelt. She was not at all sorry to see the last of that house and its inhabitants.

Khamsin was almost at peace. He had sought his father's house of his own will, for the sanctuary he knew he would find there, and despite the pain that had gone with the finding. His mother had not known him, and he had endured it. He was stronger than he had ever known he could be.

But before Allah, he would not, could not, do it again.

Zamaniyah did not let that first terrible riding deter her from taking him into the city, even beyond it. They had ample escort: a troop of her father's mamluks, armed and watchful. Sometimes one of them was a little smaller than the rest, riding a bay gelding and exchanging no speech with the others. Nor did they try to speak to her. Khamsin knew an understanding when he scented it; it interested him. He wondered how long either woman thought she could hide this trickery from al-Zaman.

The city was quiet again. The sultan's men had quelled the uprising swiftly and ruthlessly, but once it was quelled, they had withdrawn to simple vigilance. It was well done, people opined in Khamsin's hearing. Egypt had never lain content under Islam; the exchange of Turk for Arab had reminded its people of all their grievances. He had lowered their taxes. He had been forceful with the Christians and the Jews, but that sat well with Muslims of all sides. He was showing signs of great canniness and no little subtlety.

“That's his father,” a mamluk said as they rode beyond the walls. “Ayyub is a king of foxes, and his son has the wits to listen to him. Do you know, he's the only emir who has the right to sit in the presence of the sultan of Syria?”

Zamaniyah, in Khamsin's mind, was much too tolerant of loose tongues among her slaves. She not only forbore to reprimand this one; she circled Khamsin round to fall in beside him. His mare was distractingly lovely. For all of that, Khamsin heard his mistress say, “That right has been revoked, I think. Nur al-Din is hardly pleased to find his young servant made sultan of Egypt, and avoiding a return to him with constant and convenient excuses, and never quite sending him the tribute he asks for. My lord lost his fiefs in Syria when he won Egypt; his family fares no better there, though more than well enough here.”

“That's economy,” said the mamluk. Like all of al-Zaman's soldier-slaves, he treated Zamaniyah as if she had been a boy; free as his tongue was, it managed, somehow, to be respectful. “They're carving a kingdom, those Kurdish foxes. What will you wager that Yusuf stretches out his hand for Syria?”

“I won't wager anything,” she said, but not as if he had angered her. “My lord loves his lord in Syria. He tries to live as Nur al-Din lives, because he finds it admirable. It's only...Egypt is his now. He has to rule it as best he can.”

“And if Syria sets out to drain Egypt dry—what then?”

“Then,” answered Zamaniyah, “my lord does as he must.”

Khamsin did not know why he listened. He had too much else to fret him. The mare; and the woman in mamluk's clothing, riding just ahead. The stallion in him snorted and preened before the great-eyed grey. The man remembered beauty unveiled, a mouth like a flower, skin like milk and roses.

He was beginning to suspect that something in his enchantment was subtly, cruelly awry. All that was native to this body, he had. Hasan would have scorned the barley which he ate with such relish, which was given only to beggars and to beasts. Hasan would have recoiled in horror from the thought of taking pleasure with a mare. And yet this creature that he was could gaze with longing at both the mare and the woman, and yearn equally for both.

His mistress gave him something blessedly, cursedly new to divert his mind. He hated new lessons: they were difficult, and sometimes he could not understand, and always he raged that he could not learn them perfectly, absolutely, all at once.

Hasan had been nothing short of lazy, body and mind. Khamsin, in body, was anything but that. But his temper had not changed at all, his utter impatience with anything that did not bend at once to his will.

Cajoled and often frankly seduced into doing as Zamaniyah commanded, he gave obedience, but he made her pay for it. Her patience was not infinite. Yet it stretched beyond belief, and it almost never broke. She could even laugh when he fought her, light upon his back as he bucked and plunged, clinging it seemed by sheer will.

This time he did not fight. They had come to a wide level plain between the river and the hills, empty even of birds though it was early yet, the heavy heat of day in Cairo's spring barely begun. The mamluks unburdened their horses of odd bundles which Khamsin had barely noticed, and raised them: targets. He shied more from what they meant than from what they were.

Zamaniyah rode him round and about them, gentling him, explaining considerably more than he wanted to know. “Everything you do,” she said as he snorted and sidled, and she stroked his neck and urged him relentlessly on, “is to make you, in the end, a warhorse.” She was speaking Greek. He cursed himself for understanding it. “You have a gift, though your temper mars it; you have fire, and you have intelligence.”

He bucked, angry. He did
not.
A dim-witted beauty he had been born, and a dim-witted beauty he would quite happily die. And he most emphatically did not want to carry her while she shot at targets. Targets, it was true, could not shoot back. Men could.

She would not go to war. Even al-Zaman was not that perfect a madman.

He had calmed in spite of himself. He trotted, then cantered, through the staggered circle of targets. He was almost disappointed when she did no more than that. Why did she drag it out? Could she not smite him with it all at once?

That was not the way of this Greek mummery. Slowly, slowly: Al'zan lived by that wisdom. It was the wisdom of seduction. Gentle degrees, lulling him into peace; and then, all at once, he was won. It humiliated him. He was a man, not a beast; and he had done his own fair share of seducing. He should have known what was being done to him.

Perhaps he did know. Perhaps he wanted it.

They went back to the plain. Not every day. Some days Zamaniyah did not come at all. Often there were exercises on the familiar practice ground, exercises ever more like a dance of horse and rider, precise, cadenced, captivating. At first they came close to hurting. They were hard, and Zamaniyah relentless, pressing him always to his utmost.

Then the truth struck. She never pressed him harder than he could bear, whatever he might have thought before he did it. And it grew easier. He was lighter. He was stronger. He was wonderfully, joyfully supple. He who had always only watched the dancers, he was one of them, one with them, on his four feet with music beating in his brain. His own music, but not his alone. She shared it. She as much as he set its cadence. She was part of him. One mind, one will, one dawning delight.

Ramadan passed in fasting and prayer. He fasted, he prayed as best he could. The river flooded amid rejoicing; the land shifted as it had since days began, and begot anew the riches of Egypt.

In the lessening heat of autumn, Zamaniyah rode her stallion among the targets. Her bow was strung, her quiver full. He was eager, dancing and snorting.

Her hand on his neck quieted him a little. He felt her gather herself, heard her draw a breath. She drew up the reins in her right hand. Her escort watched, her father's concubine among them, more interested than perhaps she knew. Some of the mamluks had wagers riding on her marksmanship.

His duty was to run as smoothly, dart as swiftly, obey as perfectly as he could. When he was minded to oblige, she shot very well indeed. She could bend a stronger bow than her slightness might have hinted at; her eye was straight, her judgment sound. Her mamluks, who did not bestow praise easily, called her an archer.

Her heels touched his sides. He bunched, resisting because it was his habit to resist. “Now,” she said. He sprang forward.

She spoke to him: a subtle speech of leg, hand, shifting weight. She called the steps of the swift complex dance. Arrows sang from the string, over his head, his neck, his croup; to right, to left, as he wheeled, as he swerved, as he galloped headlong from target to target.

It was sweeter than wine, headier than the smoke of hashish. She commanded, he obeyed; he the body, she the brain. His feet spurned the earth. His lungs drank the wind.

It ended too soon. He protested her hand that halted him. She flung her arms around his neck. “O marvelous! O splendid! You have it now—you have it!”

“He does indeed.”

Caught up in the joy of the dance, she had never seen the swelling of her escort, nor felt the doubled and trebled weight of watching eyes. She started like a deer. The sultan leaned on his pommel and gave her his best grin, somewhat to the shock of his companions. Who were many. Who were princely.

He swept a bow before she could gather wits to move. “A fine morning, cousin, and a fine horse to do it honor.”

“My lord,” she said stupidly. “You were riding in the wars.”

“I was,” he said. “Now Cairo has me again.” He urged his mare closer. Khamsin was duly fascinated: he arched his neck and rumbled in his throat. Zamaniyah smiled in spite of herself. The sultan smiled back. “Once or twice, while we raided, we paused to hunt. We would have welcomed your archery.”

Her face was on fire. She mumbled something. He had not been away so very long, but it had been quite long enough. She was heart-glad to see him again; she wished that he had never come back. It had been quiet without him. Peaceful. She had let herself sink into her old solitude.

Now he would end it. He was beckoning, wanting her with him, admiring her stallion. By that art of his which was princely, he won from her the whole tale, even to her father's unbending disapproval. “And now,” her tongue babbled on its own, “it's a year exactly since I bought Khamsin, and you see what a warrior he is already; but Father remembers that once, when he was frightened, he nearly trampled me. Fathers are unreasonable.”

“They are,” agreed the sultan. “It's their nature. As it is the nature of children to try the limits of everything, and most particularly of their fathers' love.”

Khamsin jibbed, tossing his head. She soothed him.

The sultan smiled. “You see? He understands.”

She ran her hand down Khamsin's neck. “Khamsin understands much too much.”

“They do, these servants of ours.” The sultan watched Zamaniyah's mamluks retrieve the targets. His eyes had sparked. She wondered what had come into his head so suddenly, that made him look so youthfully eager.

He turned to her as if she had spoken aloud. “Games,” he said. “A contest. Races, contests of arms, polo. Archery, of course, mounted and afoot. You and your red warrior...”

She shrank inside herself. “No, my lord. Oh, no. I couldn't.”

He had not heard her. “A holiday. A celebration of our return. And for you, proof to your father that you chose wisely in this your stallion.”

“But I am—I am not—” She could not say it. Too many ears strained; too many eyes glittered, daring her to speak the truth. She was a woman. She had no part in anything that befit a man.

Her head bowed, lest she fling it up in sudden temper. The sultan was full of his new game. He had drawn the others in; it would happen for all that she could do. She could not even slip away. She was trapped beside him, her silence unheeded in the flurry of plans set in motion, orders given, suggestions taken, servants sent at a gallop to begin what must be begun.

The day of the new moon, they chose. Time enough to call in champions and to ready the field. No time at all to prepare the green novice who was Khamsin; or the greener novice who was Zamaniyah.

“I shall go,” said Wiborada.

Her Arabic was better now that she had Zamaniyah to talk to. Her manners were subtly worse. She wanted to ride out far too often for safety, and she was, Zamaniyah feared, growing careless in concealing what she did. Sight of the sultan seemed to have robbed her of the last vestiges of good sense.