A Wind in Cairo (15 page)

She gave them no time to gainsay her. Khamsin was ready. More than ready. He threw up his head and neighed. She flung him into a gallop.

Aim. Nock. Cup first: simpler, steadier. Loose.

Metal rocked, rang. The arrow bounded wide. Groans chorused at her back.

Two together now: possible. If Allah willed. If her skill sufficed. The mast at arm's stretch, blurring to sight, knee burning with the closeness of it, passing, losing all: pride, honor, prize fairly won. But gaining—gaining—

Nothing.

Her body twisted in the light flat heretical saddle. Her eye locked on the mast's summit. The cup, glittering. The dove, sensing death, casting itself upward. The cord stretched taut between them: thin black line, frail as a hair.

Loose.

The arrow flew straight and clean and true. The dove hurtled astonished into the sun. The cup swayed, wobbled, stilled. Between them was empty air.

Khamsin slowed, wheeling. His head was high, his eyes on the vanishing fleck that was the dove. He halted, staring.

She slid from the saddle. Her anger was gone. Her mind was empty of aught but light and air and something remarkably like gladness.

Her knees bent to Allah who had willed it. She staggered up. Khamsin's body steamed; his sides heaved; but he was proud, proud, proud. He knew what they had done, he and she. He understood. She flung her arms about his neck.

The crowd roared. It sounded dim and far away. Someone was tugging at her. Come, she must come. Someone else was trying to take Khamsin. Al'zan, quietly persistent, until she knew him, let him tend her marvel of a horse.

The sultan was waiting for her. He would not let her bow to him. He refused her homage. He bowed—shockingly—to her. “To your victory,” he said.

Her nape knew the stab of eyes, her ears the mutter of voices. Where she could not see but could sense as utterly as sight, the man who would call himself victor stood in his robe of honor. “I have won nothing,” she said, “O my sultan.”

“Nothing,” he said, “and everything.” His voice lowered. “Every man with eyes knows who won the course. Everyone with wits admits it. A few can even comprehend what you did after.”

“I missed the shot.”

“Did you?”

“I lost my wager.”

“That,” he granted her, “you did.”

Her cheeks were burning. “My lord, I didn't—”

“Of course you didn't plan it. Shots like that are God's gift. People will remember, cousin: that you let a man have his petty rags of honor. He is content. The rest of us know which of you has won the victory.”

There was iron in that. As in the embrace with which he favored her, and the honor he accorded her in bidding her to feast with him when the games were ended. Then at last, for a little while, he had mercy. He let her go.

They were together on the field's edge, her mamluks, her eunuch, her master of horses with her stallion. And before them, one regally alone, a man not tall but broad and strong, with a full and handsome face and a faint, perpetual smile.

Her servants greeted her with words she barely heard. Her knees shook; but she bowed, child to father. He did not touch her, nor bid her rise.

“I suppose,” said al-Zaman, “that you know how suicidally reckless you were.”

“Father,” she said. “Shooting at targets is not—”

“Shooting at the mast with an untrained horse very certainly is.”

She snapped erect. “How do you know he isn't—”

“I told him,” Al'zan said.

She stood utterly still. Al'zan was pale. They were all pale, all her conspirators. They had known what she did. Because she could not rule her temper. Because anger was the truth, and all her meekness no more than a mask.

Her father's hand rose. She steeled herself for the blow which she had earned, and richly. None came. He tilted her chin up, compelling her to meet his stare. “Little fool,” he said. “Little madwoman. Little champion. Don't you know that there's no need to prove anything to me?”

“Except Khamsin,” she said, daring even yet to rouse his rage.

It did not even stir. “He proved himself the day he suffered you on his back.”

He had robbed her of speech.

“If he had not,” he said, “you may be most certain, I would have sold him well before he brought you to this. If he had harmed a hair of your head, I would have had him killed.”

Her hand quivered, wanting to seek ribs from which the ache had long since passed. Al-Zaman did not see. He embraced her, which was a ceremony before so many eyes. “You honor our house,” he said, clear to be heard. And softer: “Honor indeed; enough for a good long while. When next you do this, young hothead, you will ask my leave.”

Her head bowed. It was easy, now that her anger had passed. “When next I do this, O my father, I will do it for you and not for the sultan.”

“On a horse which knows the way of it.”

“He will,” she said. “I promise.”

“‘Take her bow,' he said.” Wiborada danced with glee. “‘Fetch her arrows,' he said. ‘Boy,' he said. He never knew me. Never once!”

Zamaniyah did not want to listen. She was clean, stroked, oiled, and pampered. She did not need this barbarian to keep her from her sleep. Sleep she had earned, after the day she had had: not merely winning in all but the forfeited name, but having to rejoice in it, seated by the sultan, souring the stomachs of the men who feasted with him.

The Frank dipped and whirled, singing in her uncouth tongue. It was barely musical. It gloated shamelessly.

Zamaniyah reached, snatched, overbalanced her into a mound of cushions. She struggled out of it, grinning most unlike a lady. “Your manners are appalling,” said Zamaniyah.

“Yours are excruciating. Bow and grovel, grovel and bow.
O my lord
and
O my master
and
O my sultan.
God wills it; God always wills it; and everyone's wish is your command. How do you do it?”

“I'm civilized.”

Wiborada made a very uncivilized sound. “My uncle was a priest. He always said that your people were heathen savages.”

“You don't want to know what pious Muslims say of yours.”

“I've heard it. It's all lies.

“Or mostly,” she said, folding her hands under her chin. Her brows had drawn together. “He warned me against capture. I'd be destroyed, he said. I'd be borne away to a fate worse than death. He would never tell me what that meant. I think...it means this.”

“Is it worse than death?”

She pondered, sighed. Her eyes met Zamaniyah's; she smiled fleetingly. “A priest would think so. I'm a slave. I'm exiled from my church and my people. My body belongs to a turbaned infidel.”

“And you? What do you think?”

The blue eyes glittered. “I think it could be worse. Infinitely worse.”

“But also infinitely better.”

“I could wish,” mused Wiborada, “that he were a Christian. Handsome, I don't ask for. Or young, or even faithful. Men are men wherever they are, whatever the priests would like them to be.

“Are you betrothed?” she asked abruptly.

Zamaniyah, startled, could only shake her head.

“I was. He was old. Thirty at least. He was good enough to look at, for an old man: he had most of his hair, and more of his teeth than not. He was always kind to me. He used to pet me as if I were one of his hounds, and give me pretty things, and say that I was prettier than they. He would have made me a baroness.”

“Was he in Damietta?”

“He was in Jerusalem, guarding it for the king. He's never have me now. I'm worse than dead. I'm a Saracen's plaything.”

“You hate us,” said Zamaniyah, not surprised, not even frightened.

“No,” said Wiborada. “I should. Often I want to—oh, how I want to! But hate is too hot. It burns itself away. It becomes weariness. Then, before one knows it, it has become acceptance.”

Zamaniyah regarded her sidelong. One should never trust a Frank. But it was hard, with this one. Cool distance had become familiarity; a bargain born of pity had shaped itself, somehow, into full-fledged complicity. It struck her that this was not the first time they had lain together in the evening and talked, nor the second, nor the tenth.

She blinked. Could this be friendship?

Odd and uncomfortable, if friendship it was. But there was trust in it, and truth. She could ask, barely blushing. “Have you ever loved anyone? The way people love in stories?”

Wiborada wound a lock of hair about her finger, let it spring free. Her eyes were dark. “How do people love in stories?”

“Beautifully. Tragically, sometimes. Perfectly and eternally.”

“I thought I loved someone once. He was young and beautiful; all the women adored him. He never had eyes for us. All his love was given to a dark-curled jongleur from Languedoc.”

“That's sad.”

“It's silly. I was fifteen,” said Wiborada, as if that explained everything.

Zamaniyah bit her lip. “I'm fifteen,” she said.

Her father's concubine had the grace to be surprised. “So young?”

“So young,” said Zamaniyah, a little sourly.

“Are you in love with someone?”

Zamaniyah blushed furiously. “No! I only...I'm fifteen.”

“Ah,” said Wiborada. “You know what I should say to that. Your father might be wise to find you a husband.”

“I don't want one.”

“Of course you don't. A husband would lock you away. You need a lover.”

This was getting out of hand.

“Men have them,” Wiborada said. “Boys younger than you are given slaves to slake their passions.”

“They are men,” said Zamaniyah.

“Aren't we women? Don't we have bodies? Don't we have desires?”

“We're weak. We have to learn to rule ourselves.”

“Nonsense. Look at you! You ride and shoot better than any boy; you're brave, you have a high heart, you can be captivating when you try. But when a man opens his mouth, what do you do? You crouch and cower like an obedient slave.”

“Not always,” said Zamaniyah.

Wiborada clapped her hands. “Indeed not! And you sound
ashamed
of it. You should be proud. Sometimes you have a mind of your own. Sometimes you see what fools these men can be. They're no stronger than we are, and certainly no wiser.”

“Maybe. But Allah has set them over us. They can kill us if we stray.”

“Not if we're careful.”

Zamaniyah's eyes narrowed. “Are you proposing—”

She was glad to see shock in Wiborada's face. “Of course not!” But then the madwoman said, “I haven't seen anyone worth the price.”

“And if you did?”

“I'd give him to you.” Wiborada laughed at her expression. “Did you think I'd keep him? I'm not as mad as that. Besides,” she said, and her voice softened, perhaps in spite of itself, “what I have is enough. I'll give myself to no other Muslim.”

There was a silence. Wiborada rose in it. Zamaniyah did not try to stop her. She went to her Muslim; and Zamaniyah lay alone, discomfited, and distressingly wide awake.

“Should I take a lover?” she asked Jaffar as he went about his nightly duties.

He was not shocked, or even much surprised. “Do you want one?”

“No,” she said quickly. “I don't think so. I don't know.”

He nodded, as if that were an answer.

“If I were a boy, I could ask for a concubine. My father says I'm to be treated as his son. Should I ask him?”

“Is it a woman you're wanting?”

She could have hit him. “Is that all it is to you? Something to laugh at?”

His face was as sober as a
qadi
's. “Am I laughing?”

“You think I'm being ridiculous.”

“Now you are.”

Her fists clenched. She said it all at once, before she could get her temper back, and thereby lose her courage. “Tell me what it is that I'm wanting. Tell me what a man does with a woman.” And in his silence, with the passion of shame: “No, I don't know!”

He looked down. He was too dark; she could not see if he blushed. Briefly, piercingly, she regretted that she had asked him.

He answered levelly, as if it had been a question like any other. “You've seen the stallions with the mares.”

Her insides flinched. “Like
that?”
Great teeth closing in one's nape, great loins thrusting in one's tenderest center, screams that were like rage...

She must have been bloodless. Her hands were icy. Jaffar seized them, seized her. “Not all like that! Men aren't animals. It can be gentle. It can be the sweetest pleasure in the world.”

Her teeth set. Her head shook of itself. How could she want that? How could her knees melt for thinking of it?

“I know,” said Jaffar. His voice was rougher than it was used to be, more like a man's; though it was never precisely like a woman's. “You frighten yourself. It comes hard, sometimes. And you're where you can see men, and talk to them, and be free with them.”

“That's why women are secluded,” she said. She had heard it more often than she could remember. She had never known what it meant. “To keep them from doing what I want to do. It doesn't stop them, does it? It never stops them from wanting it.”

“I've never noticed that it did,” he said dryly. “Frankish women tramp about like men, and never veil their faces. I've counted no more virgins among the slaves your people have taken, and no fewer, than among your own. When the will is strong enough, it finds a way.”

“And gets a child. I know that much.” She drew a shuddering breath. “It's hard, Jaffar. It's starting to—it's
pleasant,
this pain.”

“Is it anyone in particular?”

Her mind saw the sultan's face. She shook her head. “No one. Just... No one.”