A Wind in Cairo (25 page)

“At least I can bring back her body!”

“How?” he demanded. “Do you think the Franks will let you come and go as you please?”

She barely hesitated. “I'll trust to Allah to keep me safe.”

“And what then? What then, little idiot? If she's dead, maybe she prefers a burial among her own kind. If she's alive, accepted, welcomed, what makes you think she'll even want to acknowledge your existence, let alone come back with you?”

“If she is alive, if she hasn't been accepted, how am I to live with myself if I don't come to help her?”

“How can you help? Be a slave with her? Let them rape you while she watches?”

She struck him. She had never done it so, hard, flat-handed, ringing in the small enclosed space.

There was a long silence. Slowly he backed away, into the blinding sunlight. More slowly still, she followed.

She could not have hurt him badly. Not in the flesh. But the stiffness of his back, the glitter of his eyes, made her want to cry aloud.

She would not. Could not. “Whatever she may have reckoned me, I reckon her my friend. I can't abandon her to cold prudence.”

He set his lips together. She knew that look of his. It boded most ill.

He said nothing. But Khamsin was not there to be saddled; her saddle was nowhere visible; when she strode grimly toward the horselines, her father's mamluks stood in her path. They did not speak. They would not let her pass. When she would have broken away and seized any beast she might, they hemmed her in. “Jaffar,” she said with vicious softness. “Jaffar!”

Better and more useful to curse the wind. With one ill-considered blow she had lost all claim to his indulgence.

They guarded her like a prisoner, her eunuch and her mamluks. She could go wherever she pleased. After the first day she could even ride: but guarded always, surrounded always, and never an opening that stayed for her.

Jaffar was as immovable as stone. He did not even threaten to tell her father. He did not need to. His vigilance was more than enough.

Hours stretched into days. With each day that passed, hope retreated further. Wiborada was lost now, lost utterly, whatever had become of her.

On the third day Jaffar gave her a gift. He won her father's leave for her—guarded as always—to enter Hama.

She was not given to sulking in her tent. There was too little profit in it. She offered no gratitude, nor felt she owed any; but she took the gift. Knowing what he meant by it. Refusing to be taken in.

Grief and rage huddled on the edge of her mind. But it was hard to center on them in the cool sweetness of Hama's gardens, or in the manifold splendors of its market. In spite of herself she began to soften, even to take pleasure in her wandering. She found cloth for a new coat and a belt for her sword, and a saddlecloth and a tasseled neckband for Khamsin. He preened in them. She found herself smiling, though not, and never, in Jaffar's direction.

Others of the army were abroad in the city, notable for their arms and armor and their proud carriage. Some she knew; some greeted her, freely, as one of them.

She paused by a sweetseller's stall. While Jaffar chaffered with the merchant, she wandered from among her mamluks. Khamsin was much interested in a fruitseller's wares. She bought him a handful of dried apples, but though his nostrils quivered, he turned his head away. She shook her head and sighed. “What, do you keep Ramadan too?”

He showed no sign of understanding. She sighed again. Sometimes there was no pleasing him.

She knew what her damnable eunuch would have said to that. She tucked the apples away and wandered back toward her jailers.

Another small company seemed to have conceived a desire to spice their nightmeal with sweetness. The chief of them was young, though still rather older than herself, and most pleasant to look at. He carried himself lightly, with remarkable grace; his face was very fine, less a Turkish face than a Persian, with brows that met above his kohl-dark eyes. They caught hers. She looked quickly away. Her cheeks were hot.

Like her, he had a servant to do his bargaining for him. Unlike her, he left his mount to a groom: a stallion as handsome as himself, of the Barbary breed that was broader and thicker-bodied than the strain of Arabia. It suited him. He was no slender reed of a youth; he had a fine breadth of shoulder in his scaled and gilded corselet.

A thought struck her. She shook it off, though it clung, tenacious. That would be too mighty a coincidence.

Unless he had followed her.

He was too splendid. He could not be Abd al-Rahim.

She glanced sidewise. He was doing the same. A smile betrayed them both. She bit hard on hers. This was ridiculous. Worse: scandalous.

She busied herself assiduously with a tassel of Khamsin's bridle. It had, most conveniently, begun to unravel.

The young emir was in the corner of her eye again. He seemed to have discovered a stain on his sleeve. A tall jar of water stood near her, loosely covered, set there for defense against fire. The emir approached it with every appearance of casualness, lifted the lid. It slipped.

She caught it. They were face to face, just close enough to touch. He was blushing under the down of his beard.

That shocked her out of her own silliness. He was only a boy. Bold enough to set a trap for her, too shy to close it about her.

This time she did not try to swallow her smile. “Have we met?” she asked him.

His face was as scarlet as his coat. He shook his head; bit his lip; looked so furious and so nonplussed that she could not help herself. She touched him. Only his arm, meaning to speak, to give him comfort.

Khamsin, forgotten, sank his teeth into her shoulder. It was armored, but his jaws were strong. She reeled back. The emir leaped, sword drawn. She flung her arms about her stallion's neck. “No!”

Khamsin's ears were flat, his teeth snapping in the emir's face. She hauled him back, winced at what it did to her shoulder.

They glared at one another, man and beast. The sword, at least, was sheathed.

“Mistress,” said Jaffar, cool and sweet and oblivious. “Come, choose. Will you have halwah or sugared almonds?”

Neither!
she wanted to cry.

Khamsin pawed, snorting. He had taken an appalling dislike to the emir.

She tried to apologize with her eyes as she dragged him off. The emir did not follow. His anger was fading: that much mercy he gave her. With an effort that wrenched at her center, she turned away from him.

Zamaniyah's shoulder bore a shocking bruise. More shocking still was Jaffar's response to it. He barely even frowned. He laid cool cloths on it and bade her rest, and never said a word against her stallion.

That hurt worse than any wound. He had stopped caring what happened to her. She had made him hate her.

She cried out in rage and pain. “
Damn
you, Jaffar! Don't you turn against me, too.”

He had been withdrawing to his corner. He paused. His face bore no expression at all. “I, mistress? Have I ever given aught but loyal service?”

“Too loyal,” she shot back, “and not loyal enough.”

He bowed at her feet. “I am your servant, mistress.”

Her hand flew up. She caught the blow before it began, seized him instead, pulled him up to face her. “Why do you hate me so much? Because I hit you? I repent it with all that is in me. I swear to you, I'll never do it again.”

His head shook. He looked surprised; even a little dismayed. She throttled a stab of satisfaction. She was not calculating this. Not altogether. “Mistress,” he said. “I could never hate you.”

“You despise me, then. You torment me with cold courtesy. You make me pay and pay and pay for that one moment's folly.”

“You make yourself pay. I have done no more than keep you from folly greater still.”

Her lips tightened; she tossed her head. “Stop it, Jaffar. I can't bear it. That the only friend—the only friend I have in the world—”

She appalled herself. She clutched at him. “Don't you go, too. Promise me, Jaffar. Promise!”

She was too close to see his face. His voice was quiet. “I promise,” he said. “Never, in life or in death. I will never leave you.”

A small wind traced her spine, waking a shiver. She pulled back. Her shoulder throbbed; she did not heed it. His eyes burned upon her. “Never,” he repeated with all the force of a vow.

Khamsin paced a restless circle about his mistress' tent. His mood was black. Part of it, to be sure, was hunger. This body could not fast as a man's did. He was harming it, his groom had told him. He had to eat or he would sicken. He ate, but not, if he could help it, when the sun was high. The boy was resigned to his feeding at night and in the dawn.

This close to sunset, he was all one great yearning for sustenance. But that, he could bear, if not happily. Something else made him snap and strike at unresisting air.

That man—that popinjay—that mincing Turk with his Persian face. How dared he cast his eye upon Zamaniyah? How dared he dream of touching her?

She was her own woman. She was no rutting man's.

He stopped, stamped. He would not have it. He would—

What? Challenge the man? Order him off? Claim her for his hooved and speechless self?

He raised his head and cried his helpless rage.

She came out to him. He noticed little more than that she was there; she bridled him, saddled him. Her eunuch watched as if he would object, but said nothing. Nor did she. Even when he attached himself to her stirrup and would not let go.

She did not ride far or fast. She did not even leave the camp. By the sultan's tent, among the guards and the princes and the petitioners, men with untiring voices chanted the Koran. She stopped to listen.

It mattered little what words they were. They were holy. They comforted.

“‘There is not an animal in the earth,'” sang the clearest of the voices, “‘nor a flying creature flying on two wings, but they are peoples like unto you. We have neglected nothing in the book of Our decrees. Then unto their Lord they will be gathered...'”

Even what was neither man not beast? he wanted to ask them. Even what had lost its wits for a silly chit of a girl?

Because he had. For all that he was and had been, he was worse than geas-bound. He had never even known that he was falling, until he woke and found himself cast upon his face.

This was worse than lust. Lust could die. This was immortal.

He was hers beyond even wanting to be free.

And by Allah, that popinjay would not have her.

It was late when Zamaniyah came back to her tent. Jaffar had led Khamsin there long since; she had broken the day's fast with the sultan, at his insistence. She had had stomach for very little of what he offered her.

Her father had been there. She had not been able to speak to him, lest he ask for his concubine; lest she break, there where everyone could see, and shame them both.

Her tent was warm with lamplight, her pallet spread, her eunuch waiting patiently in his corner. She barely acknowledged him. She wanted to crawl into her blankets and hide from all her follies.

There was someone there, in the shadows, watching. She whipped about. Jaffar had not moved. His eyes were glittering. She would have said that they were angry; but that was over. She had given him no new cause that she knew of.

She turned again, more slowly. The shadow had eyes. Blue eyes, reddened now, black-shadowed.

Zamaniyah leaped. Caught solidity. Pulled Wiborada into the light. She was dusty, draggled, her coat torn, her face bruised and scratched. Zamaniyah clutched her close; thrust her away, holding her at arms' stretch, shaking her, glaring through a fog of tears. “Why, Wiborada?
Why?”

Wiborada's head shook. Her Arabic had deserted her. She swayed when Zamaniyah loosened her grip.

“Jaffar.” Zamaniyah's voice was passionate in its stillness, in all that it was willing itself not to say.

He spoke without fear; without emotion altogether. “She won't let me touch her.”

Zamaniyah eased her down. She went as if she had no will for resistance.

Zamaniyah fought a brief battle with modesty. Damned it. Uncovered her. There was no great wound on her, but bruises in hideous profusion; and her feet won a gasp from Zamaniyah, and a sharp breath from Jaffar who had crept up unheeded. He retreated rapidly.

In a little while he was back with water, cloths, his box of medicines. Some of the water, cool in a jar, was for Wiborada to drink. Zamaniyah cajoled it into her.

Jaffar gave a name to each hurt as he tended it. Perhaps it was his own peculiar kind of atonement. “Walking far in boots meant for riding. Falling on stones. Thorns, stinging flies, the sun's fire.” He hesitated, said it too levelly. “Men's hands. A fight.”

Wiborada shuddered. Her head tossed. Her hair was matted and dulled with dust. Slowly, gently, reining in every flicker of grief or anger, Zamaniyah began to comb it out.

Wiborada's hands clamped shut about her wrists. The blue eyes were wide and staring. She spat out a stream of Frankish.

Zamaniyah sat still through the flood. It stopped abruptly. Wiborada's face twisted. Her mouth worked. She spoke again, laboriously, in Arabic. “They were not fighting. They wanted—they tried—”

It was hard to comfort her with both hands going numb in her grip. Zamaniyah tried. Her words were feeble, forgotten as she uttered them. Wiborada never heard them. “I left,” she said. “I saw the banners before Hama, and I knew. I was of them. I had no place here. I waited for night. I lied to you. I put on my plainest clothes, I stole a horse from your father's enemy, I rode away. It was simple to perfection. No one even saw me.”

Zamaniyah tried to speak. Wiborada rode over her, relentless. Tearing Zamaniyah's soul with the telling, with the proof of all Zamaniyah's forebodings; gaining from it, perhaps, some surcease from the pain. “It was a good horse I stole. By dawn it had carried me to the Franks' lines. They were trying to rest, with infidels harrying them: letting them settle, then raising a clamor out of hell, clashing spears on shields, shrieking war cries, shooting the odd arrow over their heads, but melting away when they tried to strike back.