The Crystal Empire (19 page)

The latter continued. “As for those such as Marya and others you have been keeping an eye upon, We want them left where they are. They can be trusted, too, in their own way. Better a spy you know...”

Jamela suppressed an astonished gasp, recovering her cup before it spilled in her lap. So this was why the old bastard had forced her to be here, acting like a servant wench for this...this tradesman. Her husband put a hand up, stifling Mochamet al Rotshild’s protest before it could be uttered.

“That is Our best security, Mo, friends—and enemies—who can be trusted.”

Had he turned his gaze upon her for a moment when speaking the word “enemies”?

“Venerable as you are—Our age, almost to the day, as We recall—you are much like the best of Our personal guard, but better. Yet, for all that, ‘merely’ a merchant.”

Mochamet al Rotshild grumbled, “Mine was a rough upbringing, Bu. Good preparation. A merchant learns to defend himself, in places where every other hand may be turned against him. He has motivation; no one will do it for him half so well as he himself.”

“Indeed. A life of far-reaching voyages, rising from forecastle to quarterdeck, thence to owner of a trading fleet with business and polit
i
cal conne
c
tions around the globe. Success. A testament not alone to self-defense but to many skills. We hope you will retain them all where We are about to send you.”

Mochamet al Rotshild subsided, resigned to a change of subject. “We have spoken of this before. Yet, Bu, in all that time, I never before lan
d
ed upon the
western
coast of the Savage Continent. Nothing crosses into that land or ever seems to come out of it. One hears fascinating, horrible tales.”

“And sees, We gather, fascinating, horrible things?”

The merchant nodded. “Bu, let me tell you a story. I was offshore upon one occasion when...

“But I should explain. As a youth, I sailed upon many vessels, practicing at many positions. A merchantman I had signed upon was captured by a squa
d
ron of Mughal corsairs, those of us who survived their shelling and subs
e
quent boarding pressed into service for a time until we died or could escape.

“Upon this voyage, a cooper’s apprentice had already died, of some pox he had picked up from a dancing-girl in Hindi, so they told me—
charjooh,
I beg your pardon, Lady Jamela, for a rough old sailor’s anecdote. Little good it did him, for he was a Mughal, with no need of death as an alternative to escape!”

The merchant laughed, as if this were a great joke. The Caliph m
o
tioned for him to go on.

Nanam,
yes, well, I was appointed cooper’s helper, and spent much time thereafter making barrels. I believe I could still do it today, were there a need. Our squadron sailed about the Greater Ocean, from Attu down to Hawaii, thence to the Island Continent, doing a little trading and a deal of adventitious plundering, until a storm blew up one day, driving us hard upon the coast we spoke of earlier.”

Mochamet al Rotshild shivered at his memories.

“I swear to you the storm had cleared and skies were sparkling as we made for what we took to be an uninhabited island where we could lay up to patch our bodies and our boats. Of a sudden, we were struck by ligh
t
ning—not a brief blue-yellow flash as one is used to, but a long, blood-colored stroke which carried yards away as a feather singes in the hearth. It sank every one of seven ships in our squadron, leaving me the sole su
r
vivor. The very ocean boiled about the place where our ships had gone down.”

The merchant rose, pacing as he spoke.

“I clung to a barrel I had hidden in during the onslaught. New white oak it was, lined with copper sheet for holding oil. Then I snagged a drifting lifeboat. I rigged a sail, making back for the last of those islands we had called upon. A long voyage it was, nor was I much welcomed when I got there, having helped to burn their largest town. I swore to them by God and by His Prophet that I had been a slave. Whereupon I found myself fashioning barrels for them until a Saracen vessel ha
p
pened to call there. I eventually returned home.”

These words had brought him to the window. He stood, his hands locked behind him, his back to the room, staring at the rain. Then he turned back to the Caliph and his wife.

“No one believed me about scarlet lightning, but I saw it myself. I r
e
member it as if it were yesterday. The barrel which saved my life was r
e
duced to charcoal outside. What it did to a squadron it could have done to a fleet.

“What was it, you ask? I have no idea. An act of God? Black magic? Forgive me, Your Holiness, Lady Jamela, but in all truth I do not believe in either one. A freak of a storm long past? I do not know. I have seen many other strange things, in my long life, but nothing like that before or since. I would like to know what it was.”

The Caliph had arisen to join his friend. He placed a hand upon M
o
chamet al Rotshild’s shoulder. He turned his face, however, to Jamela.

“Indeed, such a thing might end a war. This is our hope. And now Mochamet al Rotshild, old man that he has become in service to his C
a
liph since last seeing the western shore of the Savage Continent—yet not an old man in spirit—is about to serve Us once again by embarking upon another voyage, by sea
and
land, this time a diplomatic mission to the very center of that barbarian world.”

To Mochamet al Rotshild: “For a subtle, multifaceted trader, this need not be an altruistic venture in entire. Nor, for the sake of its su
c
cess, should it appear so.

“You may leave Us, Jamela. You have heard that which We would have you hear. Doubtless you have errands of your own you wish to see to. We shall stay here a while, making plans. Send Ayesha to Us, will you? We b
e
lieve her advice might prove helpful.”

Jamela rose. “
Massach chalhghayr,
Your Holiness; good day, M
o
chamet al Rotshild.”

“
Massach chalhghayr,
Lady Jamela; may God, most Merciful and Compa
s
sionate, go with you.”

3

As soon as she was able, Jamela returned to her own apartments, ticking liabilities and assets off upon her fingers as her slippers scuffed down the thick-carpeted hallway.

Let old men worry themselves, she thought, about global politics. Scarlet lightning, indeed! Toys—fantasies of children. Her problem, as always, was a domestic one. Her husband had called her there for but one reason: to let her know he knew that for the sake of her son, his only legal heir, she schemed against his favorite Princess at the risk of his displeasure. Abu Bakr Mohammed might think he valued that crazy li
t
tle brat of his for her strange visionary “wisdom.” Jamela knew better.

Jamela always knew better.

Ayesha was the very image of her absent mother. Shaatirah had not only been the Caliph’s first wife but his first love, as well. Retiring her, even in an elegance which she had refused—such had been a letter of the law to which a ruler is more subject than any of his citizens—had aged him by decades.

Even the name of Malta, whither she had been sent, was, by mutual agreement among inhabitants of the palace, forbidden to be mentioned in the Caliph’s presence.

Ayesha’s presence, then, the reminder she represented, weakened the power, not just of Jamela herself, but of others with whom she was e
n
gaged in a shifting complex of alliances. Ayesha, too, must be “retired,” some
proper
use found for her.

Perhaps an advantageous marriage, or as a suitable token in the ma
k
ing of a treaty.

Nodding to a hallway guard, Jamela entered her own door.

Tea had been laid there by a servant, but this she ignored, going first to an adjoining room to look in upon her son.

Twenty-year-old Ali sat in his pen, a diaper about his loins, playing with a carven butterfly suspended from the ceiling on a cord. At the sound of the door opening behind him, he twisted his fat neck around and favored her with a gummy, crooked smile.

The ever-present nurse-servant sat knitting in a corner. Jamela walked across the carpet, leaned into the pen, and tousled Ali’s hair. His eyes were tiny, his ears very slightly pointed and carried low upon the sides of his overly broad head. He smiled again and reached for her. She leaned back beyond his grasp—he was immensely strong.

She wondered if this thing she felt for Ali might be love. She had never felt the like for anyone else. A fierce protectiveness, mingled with the knowledge that, whatever else he might be, Ali was the Caliph’s o
n
ly heir—had she not bribed and blackmailed enough midwives, and at terr
i
ble risk, to be sure of it?

With an aged Caliph out of the way—he was an old man, after all, and could not last forever—Jamela would be Ali’s regent. These thoughts and feelings were so mixed in her, love, hate, greed and pity, that she examined them but seldom.

She refused to do so now.

Returning to the first room, she strode to a locked cabinet, whence, by means of a key suspended from a fine gold chain about her neck, she r
e
moved a small lacquered box.

Throwing herself upon a pile of cushions, she took from the box a small packet of white papers, a pouch containing dried, shredded leaves of an illegal and unholy weed. With deft fingers she rolled both into a slender cylinder, placing it between her lips. She thrust its other end into a brazier beneath the teapot.

The feel of nicotine surging through her blood was a benediction, a
f
ter so many hours without it.

Now she could think. Even an absolute ruler, Jamela reasoned, must bow to the necessity of keeping peace in his own household. The C
a
liph’s objections to a rational disposition of his bothersome girl-child should prove easy to overcome.

Again she considered assets she could bring to bear upon her pro
b
lem. Marya’s failure this morning was another reminder, one which could not have come too soon. Pretty little Shaabbah might serve, the Caliph’s wily and seductive youngest wife. She would do as her senior bade her. Perhaps not
gladly
—but she supposed Jamela alone knew of her affair with the C
a
liph’s guardsman.

Other obstacles?

Ayesha’s teacher,
maa ismugh
, what was his name again? Shuli
e
man-something.

“Shulieman counts for less than nothing,” she heard herself saying aloud. “He is only a hireling Jew.”

Hirelings, she thought, often were required to travel with those they served. If he truly loved her, if a rigorous journey sapped him of resolve to conceal that love...Either way, he could be disposed of as easily as the girl.

Ayesha’s own protests, should she be foolhardy enough to give voice to them, could lead to her more direct undoing.

At long last, Jamela poured herself a cup of tea, settling back. Ligh
t
ing her second
seekaaragh,
she began sorting through her mind for names of foreign dignitaries—
thapnan,
also their children, of course—of a marriag
e
able disposition.

And the further away, the better.

“Whomsoever God will, He leads astray, and whomsoever He will, He sets him on a straight path.
”
—
The
Koran,
Sura VI

Prairie stretched in all directions, much like the south of Faransaa, infinitely empt
i
er, A tireless wind bore the same rich spices. The sky had the same look: bleak where it was still clear, cloud-mountains clenched in towering fists, blue-black, seamed by ligh
t
ning.

She lay in soap-odored dirt, breathing hard from terror and exertion, tr
y
ing—for her life—to keep still. Yellow flies buzzed about, drawing crusty patches of blood where they bit. Her clothes were drenched with the effort of doing nothing. Figures either side of her lay even more still, splintered war-shafts protruding from their bodies, scarlet mingling with alkali soil.

High above, upon widespread fringe-tipped wings, scavengers ci
r
cled, wary and patient. It was not yet their time. A random arrow thu
d
ded into the dirt, a finger’s width from her side. She lay still, trying to control her fear.

“Ayeeeah!”

Her world filled with an idiot screaming for the fifth time that afte
r
noon, the gloating whoop of victory-to-come, savage voices raised into falsetto. Through the earth at her ear, she heard the pounding of many feet. She lay with her arms beneath her body, something small and hard folded in her hands.