A Wind in Cairo (16 page)

Perhaps he believed her. He did not cry falsehood. He did not even smile. She embraced him suddenly, loving him for it. He was warm, familiar, gentle as he held her, his strength not a woman's but not yet a man's. She breathed his faint sweet scent, a little like new bread, a little like spices, and listened to the beating of his heart. Her eyelids drooped. “I wish,” she murmured. Already it was eluding her. “I wish—”

I wish you were my mother.

I wish you were my brother.

I wish...

The foal without a father came early, as far as anyone could judge; but it seemed sturdy enough. The first to know of it was the lad who, entering the stall to fee the mare, met a whirl of hooves and teeth. From the safety of the passage, he and his master, and Zamaniyah come early to her training of Khamsin, could discern the small tottering shape beside the large watchful one. It was red, as its dam was: no revelation there. It turned its head.

It had a bright eye, even so young. It had a fine profile. It had a most distinctive marking. A star, it began to be. It slipped, slid downward in a narrow stream, broadened to pour over the half of a nostril, trickled to a halt upon the lip. It was unusual. It was not, alas, unique in the world.

“A filly,” said Al'zan, entering the stall with serene confidence. The mare laid back her ears but suffered him. His hands ran over the newborn body. “A little narrow before,” he said. “A little weak behind. But fire enough, and strength. She'll be a beauty.”

Zamaniyah swallowed hard.

The master addressed the mare, whose pride was conquering her temper. “She's her father's daughter, I think. Though how you did it, you two…”

“He couldn't have!” Zamaniyah burst out. “It wasn't long enough ago.”

“Did I ask you?” he inquired mildly.

“He's my horse.”

“Ah! You have a question about your stallion?”

She was beginning to understand. But she could not leave it so. “What will you do with her? You won't sell her?”

“That is for your father to say.”

“I want her,” said Zamaniyah.

She had not thought about it before she said it, but she did not try to take it back.

“Your father may intend otherwise,” Al'zan said.

“She won't be sold. Promise me, Alexander Hippias.”

“You know I can't.”

She stamped her foot, which she had not done in a very long while. It was, she knew when she had done it, an error. He was smiling as one does at a petulant child.

“A foal,” he said, light, almost idle, “needs its mother for a substantial while. Then it requires weaning, and that can be difficult. If in that time it proves itself worth keeping—if truly it is its mother's child, and its father's…”

Her breath caught, choking her. She was furious. He was being—damn him, he was being Byzantine.

“You, of course,” he went on at his maddening leisure, “can't own her. You've sworn to have no horse but Khamsin.”

“This is Khamsin's get!”

“Is it? Can it be proved? Was it you who brought him to this mare just as she came into her season, when she was meant for al-Ghazal the prince of racers, to found a new line for your father's pride? Do you want your stallion, after all, to pay the price of his trespass?”

“But if she has no father at all—”

“She seems none the worse for it. Once she's proved her quality, if she has any to prove, who knows? Lineage alone has never won a race. Or a battle. Or,” he added, “a contest of archery.”

Her head wanted to bow to superior wit. Yet she was still angry, more at herself than at Al'zan. She kept her chin up. “I may, at least, assist you with her. There are so many foals to look after this year, after all, and so many still unborn, and a stable full of horses needing your care. Surely, one less filly, if she proves as difficult as her parentage portends…”

At last she saw the gleam of his approval, subtle as it was, masked in the semblance of reflection. When he had stretched it out quite long enough, he said, “Help is always welcome. Provided, of course, that you don't neglect Khamsin.”

She was no subtle Byzantine. She grinned, embraced him quickly, spared mother and daughter a last long glance, and went rather more than dutifully to train her stallion.

Zamaniyah's scent proclaimed excitement, and eagerness, and joy that was more than half fear. It infected Khamsin. He was hard put to pay heed to her teaching. His body wanted to dance and snort and battle the bit. She did not rebuke him. It was not patience; it was impatience with the exactions of art.

She babbled somewhat, telling him of a mare she called
al-Saqla,
the Kicker. An inauspicious name for a mare. The lady had, it seemed, committed an indiscretion; its consequence had fulfilled itself. A filly foal, a little beauty, the very image of her sire.

Khamsin stopped short, very nearly losing his rider.

He had not forgotten. Never. But he had put it out of his mind. He had not paid for his transgression with the red queen—kicker, was she? She had been most gentle with him. He had hoped with waxing confidence that he would never need to pay.

He moved forward at the touch of the whip, bucking his displeasure. His mind was less than half on it.

A daughter. He had a daughter.

A man would have preferred a son. A stallion could beget nothing more precious than a daughter. Colts were a nuisance. Fillies grew into mares, swift in the race, peerless in battle, mothers of champions.

He had never known how joyful it was possible to be, and still be trapped in this enchantment.

Or how very desperate he could be, to speak, to voice his gladness, to demand to see her.

His throat filled with words. They burst forth. A rumbling whinny mocked his ears. It bore no faintest resemblance to a human voice, or to the pure Arabic of which, once, he had been so proud.

Trapped, mute, helpless, he let himself be ridden, cooled, left alone. Zamaniyah barred the door behind her. The rattle of the bolts was eloquent, and inescapable.

He gathered himself to kick down the damnable thing.

Paused.

Plodded slowly to the farthest shaded corner of his prison. Turned his back on temptation. Schooled himself, painfully, to patience.

Speechlessness had never been as bitter as it was now. He had fancied that he was resigned to it. Fancy indeed. He had never needed to speak.

Zamaniyah doled out tales in tantalizing fragments. How the little one took to the halter, how she ran among the foals, how she was proving headstrong yet amenable to reason. None of it was enough.

Of course he could not see her. What did a stallion care for his progeny? She was never in sight when he passed through the stable. Sometimes he thought he scented her: a hint of newness, the sweetness of milk, mingled with the remembered scent of her mother. Remembered more keenly as al-Saqla drew closer to her foal-heat.

She was guarded unceasingly. Zamaniyah told Khamsin so. This time they were not to be thwarted. The mare of royal lineage would go to none but the royal stallion.

Even she could say it, arrogant as every human was, recking nothing of what it did to him.
His
mare.
His
consort. And some brute beast would have her, some mindless animal, fit only for begetting animals.

And what could he do? If he escaped again, took her again, they would cure him of his trespassing.

When he was calmest, he could see irony in it. The horsedealer could have lied. Could have given him a proper lineage and spared him this humiliation. Any other would have done just that. The Hajji had been most careful, and most merciless: he had sold his victim to the only honest horsedealer in the world.

But Allah, unlike the Hajji, had mercy. Khamsin, who had doubted it, was given time to rebuke himself for a blasphemous fool.

He was on the practice ground. He had just completed a round of exercises, and been praised for excellence. Zamaniyah was trusting him: he stood unbound, reins on his neck, while she freed him of the itching bonds of the saddle. His mouth had readied itself for the sweetness of the fruit she always gave him once the saddle was disposed of.

The gate was open. It always was; he never tried to escape. Where could he go?

Swift hoofbeats startled him. Zamaniyah did not seem to hear them. They were very light. Their maker was very small, trotting through the gate, dancing, curvetting: red wickedness in infancy, escaped from her mother and cocky with it.

His presence astonished her. She sprang into the air and came down stiff-legged, poised, staring with her whole body.

He knew her. She was part of himself.

His neck arched. He uttered the softest of sounds, a bare flutter of the nostrils.

She raised her head, whickered back.

Her bravery must be of her mother; Allah knew, he had none. She came to him, bold, fascinated. Surely she had never scented anything like him before.

Zamaniyah snatched the bridle. He spun free. His daughter followed. Ah, her body said, delighted: this large one was a marvel. He liked to play.

She was lighter, but he was surer of his feet. She danced in circles about him. She ventured an impudence: a flashing nip, a flick of heels. He laughed as he eluded them.

A scream spun them both about; and a clamor beyond it, human noise, meaningless.

The mare saw horror. Her daughter escaped, lost, abducted; and a stallion. Hooved death barring her way to her child. She hurtled upon him.

He retreated rapidly. The little one, baffled, bleated a question. The mare examined her from nose to tail. Sighed. Glared at Khamsin. Paused.

His skin quivered. Her scent was that most wondrous of all scents. Sweeter now, more enchanting, for that it was of the foal-heat: the foal he had begotten.

Her daughter was patently unharmed, safe at her side, nuzzling a nipple. She was aware, all at once, of what a stallion was good for.

She remembered him. He saw it in her eyes. She knew her lover who had come to her in the night, who had taken her maidenhood.

She did not soften as a woman might. She was al-Saqla, the swift one, the fierce one, the one who endured no taming. But she ceased to glare. She tilted an ear. She bade him court her.

Humans circled, baying. She showed them her heels. They crowded back. “Allah,” someone was praying, or cursing.
“Ya Allah!”

Khamsin courted as she commanded, arming all his beauty, laying it at her feet.

“Khamsin!” A new voice, clear and desperate. “
Khamsin!”

The bit in his mouth, the rein on his neck, the will that dreamed it mastered his own.

They meant her for a stranger. His mare. His consort. His body's beloved.

He shared the sweetness of her breath, tasted the sweet sharpness of teeth. Her threat was all love.

“He's still bridled.”

“Pull them apart.”

“Ropes—a whip—”

“Catch the foal!”

“Aiee!”

The mare's heels had caught that one. She was no human's chattel. She was Khamsin's. She turned, offering. Demanding.

One did not refuse one's queen.

A stallion screamed. Khamsin wheeled. Rage flared, red as blood.

A human wielded the enemy, the rival, the interloper. Great grey stormcloud of a beast, no mind in him, no wits, no will but lust and hate and battle.

Khamsin would give him battle. Free as he was not, wise as he would never be, drinking death with the wind and the sun and the hot sweetness of desire. My mare! Khamsin shrilled. Mine!

Mine! bellowed the grey.

Take her, human wisdom cried. Take her now, before any of them moved to end it.

Any
of them.

His body lunged, hating. His mind stood still, small and cold and passionless. Seeing a mare, a pair of stallions closing in war, humans milling, shouting, tangling in confusion.

He could conquer the grey. He knew it with perfect certainty. He was smaller, but he was quicker, fiercer, wiser in battle. He could kill if he must. He could even elude the nets that waited for him. Fool, did they take him for, to be trapped twice alike?

And then?

The mare.

And then?

Implacable, this mind of his.

And then, the price. He would have his mare; and they would geld him for it.

He could not even bargain. Surrender the mare, if only he might keep his daughter.

That was not a stallion's bargain.

He was not a stallion. He was Khamsin.

He scrambled to a halt. The grey lunged against his bonds, mad with fury. The mare watched, coolly interested, awaiting the victor. The humans babbled like geese in a den of foxes.

Every grain of blood and bone cried battle. His head snaked about, seeking. His mistress stood alone and silent in the tumult, clenched fists, set face, wide wounded eyes. His mare watched, guarding his daughter.

His enemy screamed a challenge.

He screamed back, mocking them all. He leaped, curvetted, flourished his heels. His daughter mirrored him; he laughed though only he could hear, with tenderness, with pride in what he had wrought. He sneered at the stallion. His body drew him toward the mare, helplessly, inescapably.

He tore it away, shouting with the pain of it. Trotted, cantered, charged the knotted men. They scattered. Only one did not move. Only one mattered. He bowed his head before Zamaniyah, and nudged her, not too gently. Not as if he yielded to anything but will and—of all things—wisdom.

For a deadly moment, he knew that she would fail him. The will was strong, but the body had not seen the end of it: a mare in heat, a stallion in rage, and battle beckoning.

She freed him from it. She took his bridle, stroked his neck, filled his nostrils with scent that was nigh as sweet as any mare's. Wisely, wordlessly, with wonder in her every move, wonder that was alarmingly like awe, she led him away.

The old fox was dead.