A Wind in Cairo (34 page)

With every glance her spirits sank lower. At every white turban her heart would jump; at every long white beard her eye would catch. None was both long and red, and branded with white.

Of course they were not there. They were mindful of their promises. They had gone as far from her as they could go.

Her eyes yielded at last to her will. Her hands knotted in Abd al-Rahim's cloak. She fixed her gaze on them.

As if from very far away she heard the sultan dismiss the emirs. Some protested. “Later,” he said, sharp and imperious. But to her he was most gentle. “Here, sit, where it's quiet, and out of the sun. Or if you'd rather—my tent—”

“It's better here, my lord,” she said. He had set her in his own place, under his canopy, banked in cushions. One of his servants set a cup of sherbet in her hand. She touched her lips to the rim but did not drink. As unobtrusively as she could, she set the cup aside.

The sultan sat by her. She saw her father's face beyond him, caught between obeisance and resistance; and Abd al-Rahim seeming not to know whether to be outraged that he must share his new possession so conspicuously, or transported with joy at so potent a proof of the sultan's favor. Neither could sit until he bade them, and he was intent upon her, simply and purely glad to see her there, alive, solid to his touch.

A flash of green caught her eye. Someone was coming toward them through the ordered tumult of the camp. A Hajji's turban, a magus' face, though blurred with distance. He had companions. An old man and a young.

Her breath came short. The sun was too bright. She could not see them clearly. But the young one—no wild man, that. He looked like any young man of breeding, walking a discreet step behind his lord. His turban was white, and modest. His robe was dark and simple. His beard was short, hardly more than a shadow on his cheeks; its white brand was shrunk to a glimmer. He was all changed, all a prince, with a tang of magic in the swiftness of it.

He moved like an Arab stallion still, light and smooth, with a long, flowing stride.

Al-Zaman could not see them: they were behind him. With all the will she had, she looked away from them.

The sultan was calmer than he had any right to be, with flint and steel coming inexorably together before him. “My lord,” she tried to say.

He turned to her, brow raised.

She could not say it. She scowled at the cup beside her foot and waited for the fire.

It was very cleverly done. They did not see one another until the newcomers had reached the shade of the sultan's canopy; and then they could only stop, stiffen, glare.

Khamsin—Hasan Sharif—would not look at her. Even bowed, his head was haughty. The shadows loved the planes of his face.

As he went down in obeisance, she saw the braid beneath the turban. And he no Turk at all, but Arab of the royal Meccan line. Vanity? Or defiance?

She must not think of him. She could think of Abd al-Rahim, who was going to marry her. Or of her father, who was deathly close to forgetting where he was and what he had sworn.

Or of the Hajji, whose design she saw written plain in every turn of this tangle.

She knew when al-Zaman crossed the edge. Her fault: she had let her startlement distract her. She tried to catch him as he started forward, but he was beyond perceiving so light a weight as hers.

She braced herself for a roar of rage. But once he had moved, he seemed to collect himself. He bowed with rigid correctness. “O my sultan,” he said. “I am always and faithfully your servant. Yet, now that you have won your victory, I beg your indulgence. Give me leave, my lord. Free me now to take my daughter to her rest. Free us both, my lord, to prepare her wedding.”

His audacity was breathtaking. Abd al-Rahim smiled at her, a warm and peaceful smile, the smile of a man who has gained his heart's desire.

Only one of them all had the wits to say the proper words. “I wish her happiness,” said Ali Mousa. His bow was for her, and his long grave glance. She could not guess what he was thinking. Whether he wondered at the suddenness of it: he who knew better than any what his son had been most famed for.

He did not wield that weapon against al-Zaman. She was in his debt for it.

“And this, I presume,” he said, “is the fortunate young man.”

Abd al-Rahim bowed. “Indeed, my lord, I am the most fortunate of men.”

“Allah willing,” said al-Zaman.

“And what,” asked the sultan, “does the lady say to that?”

He sounded strange. He looked much the same as he always did, neither smiling nor scowling; merely a little worn. He must have been deathly weary.

She swallowed. Her throat was dry. What she could have said in his simple presence swelled to bitter labor before these others. That one other. Who had never, even once, spared her a glance.

“The lady,” she said, rough-throated as a boy, “is her father's obedient daughter.”

Khamsin's head flew up.

She would not look at him. She had said nothing to be ashamed of. Her words were modest, and they were proper. If they lacked passion, that was only fitting in a maiden of good breeding before a gathering of men.

“Zamaniyah,” the sultan said.

She turned at her name. His eyes were very steady. “Do you remember,” he asked her, “what you promised me?”

She nodded.

His tension did not ease. “This is your free will?”

“My lord does not approve the match?”

“The match is excellent.” He was fighting to keep the sharpness from his tone. She wondered if the others could hear it. Not, most likely, her husband-to-be. He was rapt in bliss. “I ask if you do this because you want it. Or because you are weary, and new come from death, and trapped by the swiftness and cleverness of it; and because you cannot but be obedient to your father's will.”

“I—” This was battle. So many of them, listening. Her father mute, strangely subdued. As if his will were not unshakable. As if…

“Perhaps,” said the Hajji, “my lord al-Zaman will explain why he has done what he has done.”

Al-Zaman's chin rose with his pride. “Is she not my daughter?”

The Hajji said nothing, did nothing.

Al-Zaman's throat convulsed as he swallowed. His anger could not seem to rise high enough to content him. “Damn you, magus! Without you I would never have done it. You forced it on me. Telling me that she wanted to be a woman. Proving it with that defiler of virgins. All but commanding me to give her the choice: to be woman and wife, or to be as she has always been.”

“But she refuses to choose. She buries her will in yours.” They all wheeled about. Khamsin faced them. His robe was silk; it shimmered, for he was trembling. “Tell them, O my mistress who was. Tell them why you do it.”

The sight and sound of him were purest pain. His beauty; his fire. The scorn which she heard in his words, which smoldered in his eyes.

She said what he defied her to say. “Yes. I am a coward. I always have been. I'm afraid of what I can be when I forget myself.”

“And therefore you give yourself up. You bind your body in silk; you submit it to the will of a man. Do you hope that your soul will quench its fire, once you make yourself a slave?”

She forgot that there was anyone else in the world. She screamed at him. “What else is there for me?”

“Everything!” he shouted back.

“Everything but you!”

The silence was thunderous. A slow flush crept up her body. She saw eyes. Everywhere, eyes. And shocked faces. And Khamsin.

They were face to face. It was most improper. And he was so proper now to look at. A perfect young gentleman. With his Arab face and his Turkish braid and his eyes that saw nothing but her. Nothing, ever, but her.

She tried to push him away. Her hands knotted in silk. They remembered skin that was silk. “We can't,” she said.

Someone was angry, somewhere. “This is unspeakable!” he kept saying.

It was. Khamsin had her face in his hands. He was going to kiss her. He was taking a very long time to get to it.

“Do you want me?” he asked in the softest voice in the world.

“We can't,” she said again.

“Do you?”

She nodded between his palms. It was nothing of her doing. “But I
can't!”
she cried desperately. “There's too much hate. One of our fathers will kill the other, and mine will almost certainly kill you, and—”

“And for what? They bought your life with the promise of a truce. If they break that promise, you are forfeit. And I won't allow it.” He wheeled upon their fathers. “I won't allow it! I'll die first, or go back to the shape I wore when I was hers.”

“Are you—” Al-Zaman choked on it. “Are you asking for my daughter?”

“I ask for nothing,” said Khamsin, stiff and haughty and perfectly calculated to enrage al-Zaman. “This is a free woman. I will not have her used as a counter in your games.”

“You will? You will not? What right have you even to touch the hem of her garment?”

“I love her.”

Al-Zaman snarled. It was the Hajji who caught him before he sprang. “I think,” the magus said, “that this has gone on long enough.”

He waited, stern, until they had all sat down. Khamsin was as far from Zamaniyah as the circle, and the emirs, could contrive. Abd al-Rahim was close to her. Uncomfortably close. Nor could she move away: her father was there, rigid as a wall.

The Hajji folded his arms and surveyed them all. At last he said, “This was not wholly of my contriving. Allah is greater by far than I, and subtler. Let us say that I hoped for such a consequence as this. That—yes—I knew how my magic would end, if it did not fail.”

“Why?” Khamsin dared to ask, with more heat than courtesy.

“I have a certain interest in the matter,” said the Hajji, which quelled Khamsin into white-faced silence. “And I am averse to enmity among princes; and I am my sultan's servant, and he has need of you all.”

Khamsin was upon him, but not before Zamaniyah was. Not touching. Simply facing, bristling, searing him with soul-deep anger. It was she who said it. “You have bespelled us. It is tidy. It is unforgivable.”

“Tidy,” said the magus serenely, “yes. But there is no spell upon you beyond what won you from the black angel. Whatever is between you is yours alone.”

“Swear to it,” said Khamsin.

The Hajji raised his hands. “By the Hidden Name of God, it is so.”

Her eyes slid. Khamsin's eyes were sliding likewise. Suddenly she was excruciatingly shy.

“I will not have it.”

Both their fathers spoke. Both at once. Concurring in enmity, as never in a thousand years could they concur in amity.

Laughter bubbled. Khamsin's eyes had sparked, though he bit his lips until they bled. Her hand moved to meet his. It had been just so when he was enchanted. One will. Very nearly one body.

It terrified her.

He was trembling.

“What can we do?” she cried.

“Whatever you will,” said the sultan.

“But I don't know— What do you want of me? What does any of you want of me?”

“It doesn't matter,” the sultan said. “I said, whatever
you
will.”

“I can't do that,” she said.

“Why?” Khamsin demanded. “What do you want to do?”

Her teeth clenched. She wanted—she wished—

She had always done as she was told.

They were telling her to do what she wanted.

What she wanted—was—

Abd al-Rahim sat lost and stricken and stunned. She willed him to rise, speak, claim her. He never moved.

None of them would move. Khamsin least of all.

She spun to face the Hajji. “If I told you that I want my stallion back, would you do it?”

Even that could not shake his calm. “The gentleman might object,” he said.

“I don't think,” said Khamsin slowly, “that I would.” He was steady under all their stares, even before his father's sudden, piercing pain. “What am I fit for here? I know how to carry a rider in battle. I can dance the Greek dance, a little. That is all. Unless you count my mastery of tavern-crawling.”

“You're worth a little more than that,” said Zamaniyah. “I trained you once. I could train you again if I had to.”

“You wouldn't need to. I remember everything.”

“Not as a horse, idiot. As a man.”

She has shocked even herself. She had told him—a man—a prince—a sharif—

He was the only one who did not seem taken aback. He nodded as if it made sense. As if it pleased him to contemplate her insolence.

She forsook the last feeble remnant of her wits. She faced him. She let him see her exactly as she was: bare feet, borrowed cloak, hair loose and tangled and falling down her back. No beauty in it, and little enough dignity. She said, “I want you.” The light of him nearly felled her. She held up a hand that struggled not to shake. “If,” she said, “and only if, you want me as I am. I won't take the veil. I won't live in the harem. I won't stop riding to war. I won't ever be like other women.”

His eyes had drifted past her. Despair settled leaden in her middle. Its claws were cold. Even he could not accept that she could not change.

He seemed to be exchanging glances with someone. But there was no one there. Only shadow.

His head bowed, rose. The corner of his mouth curved upward: a small, wry smile. It was certainly not for her. Was he mad, after all?

His eyes found her again. She gasped with the force of them. With grace that she had only seen in dancers, he sank to his knees. It was not submission. It was high and royal pride that chose, of its free will, to lay itself in her hands. He bowed; he kissed the carpet at her feet.

If he became lord of the world, he would never honor her as greatly as he honored her now.

She pulled him up. “Don't be ridiculous,” she said roughly. “You've got yourself a soldier, not a queen.” She faltered. “If anyone will let me soldier for him again.”