A Wind in Cairo (6 page)

His shoulder flexed where the worst of the old scars tended to tighten. It was not easy to see beyond the barrier of pain, the wall of the knife and the gelder's chair. But some madness drove him always to remember. He had been whole once, and young, and a fool. He had seen the awe accorded his grandmother who was a dreamer of power, his uncle who was a great worker of magic. He had coveted what they had. With a child's arrogance, a young male's impetuousness, he made great sacrifice. He commanded the gods to give him power.

They gave him power. They gave him war, the fall of his city, the slaughter of its elders and its fighting men, the taking of slaves. They took his family and his freedom and his manhood. And of all of it they granted him foreseeing, but clouded, veiled in incomprehension. To know, and not to know. To understand without knowing what he understood.

Vision skulked behind his eyelids. Out of knotted green, a burst of blood and fire. A stallion who was no stallion, who wore the face of a man.

No use to flee the power when it was on him. The sooner faced, the sooner over. He studied the creature which it cast up before him. All a man now, whitely and plumply naked, nothing like his own ebon slenderness. And yet, strangely, kin to him. Young, arrogant, blind to aught but his own perfection: the perfect image of a fool.

He addressed the dream softly in his own tongue, honey-sweet after the harsh rattle of Arabic. “You mean no ill. No more did I. But the gods have no care for what is meant. Only for what is demanded of them.”

The white boy could not understand. Jaffar would not give him the slavers' Arabic. Let him learn true human speech if he would converse in dreams.

Jaffar laughed soundlessly, lying there. And what did he call himself? The slave's name, the eunuch's name. Jaffar. The knife had taken his child-name. He had not presumed to give himself another.

The dream-youth melted into the red stallion.
Khamsin
, she called him.
Burning destroyer.
She was wise, this mistress of theirs, but no more than any earthly creature could she see through the shadows to herself.

“Nor can I,” said Jaffar. “I was given to her to be her thing; to serve her, to be owned by her. But never, I vowed to myself, to let her touch my soul. Nothing left living could do that. Until, all unwitting, she did.” He showed the stallion his white sharp teeth. “Be wary, wind of the desert, lest she win you as she won me.”

Never, the beast's eyes vowed. Never.

There was no Hasan. There was only Khamsin. Beast-mind and beast-will. Eater, runner, fighter. Taker of the simplest path. Which was, sometimes, obedience; and sometimes battle. Thought had no part in it. He simply was.

Habits: barley and cut fodder at dawn, cut fodder when the sun was high, barley and cut fodder at sunset. Sleep in the dark, wake to the wail of human voice: words and significance lost with Hasan, only sound left to touch him. And once every day between the barley and the fodder, human presence that lingered, touched, taught. Made him wear the halter, walk on the lead; then trot as she ran with him, slow stilted awkward human creature. He danced his mockery of her. She laughed and applauded him—and then he danced for joy of it.

He had no dreams. He refused them. He was all mindless beast.

Sometimes a man was with the she-human, his hand upon the lead, more potent by far than hers, and more ruthless. That hand tricked steel between Khamsin's teeth, fruit's sweetness soured with cold raw metal. It bound his tongue; it bruised his tender jaws. He flung himself away from it, tossing his head, battling pain, shock, confinement. Vain. It was part of him, and the man with it, strong on the rein, relentless.

He stopped. His sides heaved. His mouth was pure ache.

The man drew near to him, speaking softly. The pain eased. He recoiled.

Again the man approached. Pain lessened anew to discomfort, to the unwontedness of the bit in his mouth. Soft words grated in his ears. Soothing. Praising.

He lunged. Won agony.

The beast was wise. It submitted. It let itself be taught.

Bit, bridle. Band about his belly. Reins. The lead lengthened. He walked now free, yet bound, circling his human center. Yielding to human will. Because it was simpler. Because else he had no peace.

But even the beast set limits on its patience. Fought. Reared against bit, reins, line. Cried defiance upon puny humanity.

Which knew no better than to persist. To come back. To ask again and again, until he answered as, and only as, in its infinite idiocy it desired.

Why?
he wanted to rail at it.

But that was a human wanting, and he was not human. He could never be human. He was Khamsin.

Khamsin had a companion. A cat that hunted in the rich fields of the stable had decided that the lone red horse was fit to bear it company. It slept in the hollow of his bed. It stalked flies and the odd lizard in his shadow. It kittened, one long night, in the manger, and was most fierce when the lad came with Khamsin's barley.

Khamsin was fierce in the cat's defense. By sunset he had a second manger and the cat a roof over her own.

“One would think that you were their father,” Zamaniyah said into the twitching red ear. He was meeker in his harnessing than he had been, but little the easier for that: his whole body was intent on the small mewling creatures in the manger. She smoothed the mane on his neck, smiling at his fascination, which had not waned in all the days of it. The cat would even let him breathe gently on her children, although Zamaniyah bore scars of her own attempt to touch them.

“Are you lonely?” she asked him. Foolishly enough. Stallions always lived alone. They fought with one another. They were perilous among the mares; and this one more than most. Bad enough that she had bought him and persisted in keeping him. She did not need a stableful of halfblood foals.

She ran the reins from bit to bellyband, bound the long line to the band about his muzzle. Greek sorcery, her father called this. Useless mummery. A bit like a broken bar, no force in it, worse than none at all; a tangle of bands and lines and harnesses, and no Frankish cart to hitch behind. And she would stand all unprotected at a mere spearlength's remove, trusting to one thin line and a wand of a whip to subdue this spawn of Iblis.

“It works,” she said, balancing whip and line. “Come, sir. The cats will wait for you.”

He moved willingly enough, upon persuasion. “There may be hope for you,” she told him, “after all.” He cocked an ear at her. It was more by far than he was wont to give her. “What, my lord! Am I then to be granted the honor of your attention? So, then. Smartly, if you please.”

He fought her but once, and that for but a moment. He came when she bade him, accepted praise, stroking, a handful of fruit. “O splendid,” she sang to him. “O beauty. Do you see how simple it is to learn to dance? Can you feel the joy that is in it?”

His eye rolled toward her. Warmth? At last? His head lowered. His breath was warm in her hand. She cupped the velvet of his muzzle.

The earth rose up in revolt.

It was the cat. Jealous, perhaps, or weary of her duties, or simply adventurous. She lofted herself lightly to his back. He started. She wailed as he shifted; dug in claws. Khamsin remembered his name.

He surged to his full height, flinging Zamaniyah from her feet. For a terrible moment she flew. Earth's weight claimed her with redoubled force. He plunged down. Hooves flailed. Teeth seized cloth, tore, snapped at flesh. Dark whirled close: too close even for fear. She clenched into a knot and prayed.

Stillness.

Shouts, cries, tumult enough, but the madness of hooves and teeth had passed.

With infinite care she uncoiled.

Froze.

Four legs like the corners of a cage. Round barrel over her. Stallion scent about her, more sweet than rank, but horrible in its closeness.

Beyond her prison, men hovered, helpless for all their armor of whips and rods. And one, foremost and furious, with a drawn sword.

“Father.” It was the barest whisper.

She set her life in Allah's hands. She finished her uncoiling. She rolled to hands and knees. She crawled from beneath the stallion.

He did not move. He could not. Khamsin had burned himself away. Hasan woke at last and saw the face of murder.

Small, thin, thick with dust. Her hair was snarled from its plait, her coat and shirt half torn from her body. She was nothing to delight a young man of taste, but she was certainly not a boy.

He had almost killed her.

With a hand that shook only a little, Zamaniyah gripped his bridle. Instinct flung up his head; will checked it. Slowly, gently, she stroked his cheek and ear and his neck. “I know,” she said. “It was the cat. I know you never meant to hurt me.”

“Did he not?” Al-Zaman's rage was heavy in the air, acrid, like naphtha burning.

“He was frightened,” said Zamaniyah.

“He is a rogue and a killer. I saw his eye. I saw the blood in it.”

“Fear,” she insisted. “He was working well, Father. He was beginning to be obedient.”

“Viciousness,” said al-Zaman. “A Greek sorcerer I may not be, but I know a bad bargain when it tramples my only child. Go now, I'll deal with him.”

“No,” said Zamaniyah.

Al-Zaman's hand was blurringly swift. The blow rang in Khamsin's ears. Zamaniyah rocked against him.

Blind hate, red rage; but human hate and human rage. He lunged.

Al-Zaman scrambled back, stumbling, dropping his sword. Khamsin laughed at the fallen jaw, the hand flung up in feeble defense, the stink of fear. Such a strong brave man. What thought he now of striking children?

His foot turned; he toppled. Khamsin bestrode him, snapped teeth in his face. He cowered.

A hand tugged at his halter, pulling his head about. Zamaniyah wanted to be angry: it was in her voice. But her scent was half fear, half perilous mirth. “No, Khamsin.
No.”

He tossed his head, but gently, forbearing to break her grip. She pulled harder. “Come, my sultan.”

He did not want to, but her hand was firm and her fear was swelling. Not of him. For him. He had turned on the lord of the house. For that, he could expect no mercy.

She was crying, and trying not to. “Please, Father. Don't kill him. He was defending me.”

Al-Zaman rose stiffly. His face even to horse-sight was terrible. “Dogs defend their masters.”

Khamsin snorted at the insult. Steel flashed before his eyes; he stilled. The Turk had his sword again.

The beast wanted to crouch and tremble. The man gathered himself to die as befit his lineage.

Zamaniyah stood between her stallion and her father. She trembled, but she was immovable. “Very well, Father. Kill him. But if you do, mind this well. I will play no longer this game you force upon me. I will seclude myself in the harem, in another man's if need be, and be all utterly a woman.”

That gave him pause. But he said, “You will not. I forbid it.”

“I will do it.”

She would. Al-Zaman, it seemed, had the wits to know it. And wisdom learned at Khamsin's hooves, not to beat her into submission. “This beast will kill you.”

“He won't. You'll see. He'll be the wonder of Cairo.”

“Zamaniyah, little pearl, it's for your life's sake that I do this. Leave him to me; I'll dispose of him quietly. I won't kill him, since you treasure his life so much. I'll sell him. I'll buy you the best horse in Egypt, a royal horse, a horse fit for a sultan.”

He was crafty, but she was adamant. She shook her head. “I want no horse but Khamsin.”

The Turk's mask cracked; he all but shouted at her. “Then
have
no horse but Khamsin! He and he alone is yours. None other may you have. Not one. Do you understand me?”

She bowed, understanding, accepting.

He trembled, fists knotted, grinding his teeth. “What under Allah do you see in him?”

“Splendor,” she answered. She wound fingers in Khamsin's mane. “I heard a Bedouin say once that the will of God grants every man three perfect gifts: a horse, a friend, and an enemy. This is my horse. When the world was made, we were matched, he and I.”

“He is more than your perfect horse. He is your perfect enemy.”

“Inshallah,”
said Zamaniyah
.

They went away, as humans did. Khamsin was alone. The cat, who bore him no rancor for her brief wild ride, purred in her nest.

He wearied his body in plunging about his prison. His mind was not so simply vanquished. It had slept too long; it had come too terribly awake.

Night came. He ate to quiet hunger, drank for his body's sake. He lay in the bed which his body remembered.

To these eyes, darkness was but a dimmer day. He stared into it, and faced what he must face.

He had tried to kill Zamaniyah. True, and appalling. But the truth ran deeper than that. She was his enemy, the daughter of his enemy. She, who was all that and woman too, had dared to set her will upon him. He was geas-bound to serve her.

And he could not hate her for it. He did not want to be her slave, but he wanted still less to be her slayer. She could not help what she was. She tried, in her own way, to show him respect. She was worthy at least of his patience.

He would not lose himself again. That was a vow, and solemn. He swore it as best he could, standing in the courtyard, head lifted to the moon.

Its light was pure and cold. Its scent was wondrous. He cried his oath to it; his tongue sang in astonished delight. He could taste it. Finer than the finest sherbet, cool and heady and icy-sweet. It was better than any wine he had ever known. He drank great draughts of it. He danced, to honor his oath, to honor the vintage.

The sky was full of stars. They sang; and the wind sang with them, and the night, and the creatures of the night.

The moon's wine reft him of fear. He saw the dance of Jinn above the earth: winged like great shining birds but shaped like men, with faces too bright to meet. They were too high to take notice of one enchanted boy, but they suffered him to stare. He yearned for wings, to dance with them. He made what shift he could with what he had. Perhaps, for a moment, he found a shadow of their grace.