The Crystal Empire (20 page)

With deliberate care
—
and both thumbs
—
she turned back the ha
m
mer of a small, two-barreled pistol. It was difficult. The thing had been made for a strong man. Trying not to think, she bent its muzzle upward, beneath her jaw, remembering at the last m
o
ment to put it in her mouth to avoid half-measures too hideous to contemplate. She tigh
t
ened both index fingers upon the trigger.

Almost too late, she heard the screams cut off.

Pulling the gun away from her face, she risked rising upon an elbow. B
o
dies—those of friends and enemies alike (including the man who had given her his pistol as a despe
r
ate last resort)
—
lay everywhere in the dry prairie grass. Others, a pitiful few, strained with her to see what had stopped the attack.

A cloud of yellow dust boiled upon the horizon with a thundering which might have come from the angry clouds overhead. In seconds, she could hear something else, a cate
r
wauling whine, like musicians tuning up in the bazaars of Rome
—
a paralyzing wave of homesickness chose that moment to wash over her
—
then she saw them.

In form, they were like brown helmet-crabs she had played with upon girlhood trips to the beach, they of the many tiny legs and long-barbed tail. These monsters were a hu
n
dred times larger. There were a score of them, skimming across the plain.

Heedless of broken gunfire coming from the few survivors they had left, the savages fled. One archer screamed as the leading creature drew him beneath its advancing carapace, then fell as silent as his own vi
c
tims.

He disappeared.

2

As usual, Ayesha awoke with a start.

“Merciful God,” she sighed to herself, “that was a strange one!”

Placing her small feet upon a parqueted floor beside the divan, she ran a hand across her forehead. One might believe, she thought, that a person would get used to waking up like this. She never had. For some reason, it was worse when she slept during the daytime, her dreams more alien and vivid, her awakening a hot and dizzy one.

She arose, tucking her day-robe about her, and, barefoot, crossed the comfortable study which was a part of her personal suite. Not waiting for a servant, she drew back draperies from windows which comprised one wall of the room. She was startled for a moment by the sight of one of the palace handymen outside, half naked, the skirt of a burnoose wound about his face, scrubbing at her window-framing with a dry brush. Removing old paint, she assumed. His box of cleaning supplies hung suspended by a strap over his shoulder.

She waved and smiled, a habit she was certain all of her father’s wives would have disapproved, then crossed to a huge brass-barred cage su
s
pended upon a gilt-threaded rope from the high ceiling. She tapped one of its bars with a dainty, short-trimmed fingernail.

“Sagheer, are you ready to come out now, little one?”

There was a stirring inside the cage.

Taking a key from the drawer of a nearby stand of ebony and inlaid mother-of-pearl, she unfastened a padlock hanging from the small cage door. It had been necessary to resort to this. Sagheer could unfasten ev
e
ry other sort of closure she had tried.

Inside, a brown, furry form reached tiny fingers toward her. Its eyes glistened in the shadows of a quilted satin cozy which covered half the cage. The animal leaped off its swinging perch, rushed to the door, for
c
ing it open with sheer weight as soon as Ayesha could remove the lock. No larger than her two fists put together, it jumped into her arms.

“Sagheer, Sagheer!” she crooned, smoothing the small, round head between rounded ears. The creature’s great eyes regarded her as it twined its fingers in her hair. From the drawer she took a peanut, offe
r
ing it to him. He slapped it from her fingers. It hit the floor, skidding beneath the stand. Most times, he took it in both hands, dismembered its hull with his teeth, which were tiny and pointed.

“
Chanaa muthachassibh
. I only meant it to be a little nap, Sagheer. Studying for examinations I shall never take is a stern test of one’s r
e
solve. I hope Father and David appreciate it.”

Sagheer looked up at her, almost, she thought, as if he could unde
r
stand what she was saying. A second offering he accepted. She laughed, then crossed the book-lined room in a different direction, passing a great globe of the world, a beloved and battered rocking-dog she refused to let them put into storage, to an enormous well-lighted desk, weighted down with volumes and implements of writing.

Scattering bits of broken shell behind him, Sagheer rode upon her shoulder as he had since Ayesha had been eleven. The pygmy marmoset had been a gift from her father’s friend, that fabulous merchant captain (some whispered pirate) Mochamet al Rotshild.

He himself preferred (as pirates were wont to do, she imagined) a parrot, a gray-white roc of a bird with yellow eyes, a shiny black beak, and a bright orange tail, which he sometimes brought with him when he came to the palace. It rode upon
his
shoulder, expressing sentiments, in its harsh, raucous voice, which would have embarrassed anyone else (save perhaps the captain, who must have taught him) even to
think
about.

Still, Ayesha’s one regret about Sagheer was that he could not talk to her. She loved her father, and he her. Yet he was the most important man in the world, not to her alone, but to every one of the Faithful. He had li
t
tle time to spare her. For a like reason, her father’s power, nobody offered open friendship to her, untainted with ulterior designs, nor could she have accepted if they had.

Even David, she had understood since she was a very little girl i
n
deed, must be careful to maintain a professional attitude toward her. He was a good friend, seeming unimpressed with anyone’s power, social importance, or wealth. What mattered to him was one’s intelligence, perhaps even more, one’s ethics. This made him even lonelier than she was, she su
p
posed (he had never married), and—for different reasons than any lack of intell
i
gence or ethics she might have suffered—kept the two of them at more than arm’s length.

3

“Princess?”

Late that afternoon, as outdoor light had begun to fail her, Ayesha was surprised by a timid rapping at the arched frame of the open door between her study and the sitting-room connecting with the family-quarters corridors outside her suite. She turned from her book to see Marya standing in the doorway.

“Princess,” the woman offered with uncharacteristic diffidence—she had never bothered to knock before, either—“your presence is requested in the Caliph’s library as soon as is convenient. I am instructed to a
c
company you there.”

What was that odd look in Marya’s eyes, Ayesha wondered. Smu
g
ness, perhaps, mingled with what...fear? Perhaps it came from being comman
d
ed by too many high-placed masters. Marya was her servant, to be ordered about by no one else. She had exchanged well-measured words with Lady Jamela over this very topic not many days ago. In any event, it was certai
n
ly an unattractive combination of expressions.

Ayesha arose from her desk, brushing at her robe, which had become wrinkled from long hours of sitting, cupped a palm over the chimney of a reading lamp she had just lit, blowing it out.

“Have I time to change, Marya?”

The woman swallowed. “Princess, I have relayed to you all the me
s
sage I was charged with.”

Ayesha nodded. “
Jayyit,
let us assume, then, that good manners are still called for.
Min bhatlah,
please lay out my green velvet with gilt at the shou
l
ders. Perhaps Father has company. In any case, I should want to look my best for him.”

Through the curtain Ayesha had redrawn when night began to fall, neither of them noticed the turbaned handyman, removing something from the glass, making minute adjustments within his shoulder-slung toolbox. Satisfied, he climbed down from the window, leaving the vici
n
ity of the Princess’ quarters as they did.

4

When she arrived at her father’s library, not more than half an hour later, Ayesha saw that her guess had been correct. In addition to herself and Marya, and a lieutenant-of-the-guard, there were His Holiness hi
m
self, the Lady Jamela, the Lady Shaabbah, Rabbi David, and the “Co
m
modore,” Mochamet al Rotshild.

He had not brought his parrot.

Curtsying, Ayesha glanced at each person in the room, attempting to divine from their expressions why she had been called here. Observing Mochamet al Rotshild, whom she knew least well of all those here, she would have described his expression as studiedly neutral. He was seated in a high-backed chair beside her father’s, a steaming mug of coffee in his enormous, freckled hand.

David stood behind the old pirate, not leaning against the bookcases. There was an odd look upon his face which she could not interpret, but the gloating in Jamela’s eyes was unmistakable. Seated upon a hassock by the Caliph’s right knee, she had broken all precedent by bringing Ali with her, dressed in his finest, which he had soiled sometime in the last few minutes. He sat upon the carpet at Jamela’s feet, sucking a finger and whimpering a little around it.

Her father’s bearing was dignified, betraying no sign of his sense of humor. He wore another of those unadorned uniforms he had taken to wearing since war had been declared. He was sitting in his own chair, almost at attention. It was as if he were, for some as-yet-unspoken re
a
son, hiding grief.

This frightened her very much. What had she done?

Marya curtsied. “The Princess Ayesha, Your Holiness, as you co
m
manded.”

Abu Bakr Mohammed VII grunted, for a moment something of his true self showing through his stiff exterior.

“We did not command, girl, We requested. Even with a Caliph, there is a difference. Now We command you to be seated and be quiet. You are enjoying this too much, and We shall not forget it.”

He extended a broad hand, palm upward. “Our daughter We
request
to sit—Rabbi, kindly get her a chair, will you?—for We have cons
e
quential matters to discuss with her, nor do We relish watching her pa
r
ticipate upon her feet.”

Stepping around Mochamet al Rotshild, David Shulieman brought her a straight-backed but comfortable wooden chair which her father himself had fashioned. He then returned to his original place, giving her no sign of what was about to happen.

The Caliph glanced at his senior wife, failed to suppress a sour e
x
pression, then turned back to Ayesha.

“Ayesha, you are an intelligent, farsighted individual. You have been educated all your life to anticipate what it might mean to be the Caliph’s daughter, to serve Almighty God, His Faithful, and their civilization as We serve them.”

Ayesha nodded, still not understanding. “
Nanam,
yes, Your Holiness, I have, indeed, been thus educated.”

“
Jayyit,
very well, then. There has, this past month, come to Our a
t
tention a unique opportunity for you to perform that service, an oppo
r
tunity which could end this war we endure, impose a lasting peace upon the entire globe. Such is a worthy cause upon which to spend a life. Such is the cause upon which, in service of Almighty God, His Faithful, and their civ
i
lization, We now command you to spend yours.”

Afterward, she was never able to describe the feeling which started in the center of her being, spreading along her limbs into the tips of her e
x
tremities. It made her scalp prickle.

“
Chanaa la chabhgham,
I do not think I understand, Father. Am I to die, then?”

The look of anguish which swept across the Caliph’s face was undi
s
guised. “
Laa,
daughter, no. Although you may very well
risk
death in pe
r
formance of this service. That is sometimes the lot of a woman. You are—and We assure you We take no pleasure in decreeing that it should be so—to go away from Us, into a foreign land, there to be married to its r
u
ler, that an alliance might be forged to overcome the Mughal. For such were you born, child, for such were you ordained.”