The Lion of Cairo (16 page)

“You marked him well enough, I gather?”

“Well enough that he’ll need a surgeon.”

Abu’l-Qasim nodded. “I know a good many of them. I’ll make the inquiries myself.”

“What of the bodies that were left behind?”

“I sent men last night to collect the corpses and feed them to the Nile. They recognized one of them, the Ethiopian. His name was Akeeba.”

Assad’s eyes narrowed. “Was he a rival of yours?”

The question brought a wide smile to the King of Thieves’ face. “Him?
Y’Allah!
He was a pig, a two-copper thug who terrorized the derelicts and degenerates of the Foreign Quarter. A rival? Bah!”

“Have your men ask around. See if this Akeeba might have boasted about his new employer. What of the urban militia?”

“What of them? They won’t interfere, but we have a different problem in that regard.” He glanced back at Zaynab. “Their new captain, Massoud, has noticed the Gazelle’s absence. He’s a Circassian, one of the White Slaves of the River. He also thinks himself a rakish cavalier. He’s heard rumors and has now decided to make finding her his priority. The man is a fool, but a dangerous fool.”

“Can your people deal with him?”

Abu’l-Qasim deferred to his daughter.

“Massoud is more than a good man and an ardent admirer,” Zaynab said. She walked away from the window. “When he served in the palace he was a conduit of information, though he did not know it. His concern is touching. I will handle him myself. I assume it’s not safe for me to return home?”

“Not yet,” Assad said. “Not until we have some idea who is behind this.”

Zaynab chewed her lip. “Then you make it difficult for me to allay Massoud’s concerns. I doubt, Father, that you’d allow him to pay me a visit in your den of thieves?”

“
Y’Allah!
Why not throw me to the jackals?” Abu’l-Qasim waved the suggestion away, scowling. Despite paying for their silence, the King of Thieves did not trust the militia or their new captain—the man’s admiration for Zaynab be damned.

“Of course not. I will need some time to devise a way of contacting Massoud. Speaking with him in person would be best, but regardless I will concoct a tale to answer his most pressing concerns. Perhaps we can even use him to deflect rumors.”

Assad nodded, turned to Farouk. “I want everything you can gather regarding the Templars—names, how many guards the vizier assigned to them, what portion of the palace they’re housed in, where their horses are stabled, everything.”

“Templars?” Abu’l-Qasim’s nostrils flared. “What’s this?”

“Two arrived last night, escorted by a detachment of Fatimid cavalry. I want to know their purpose.”

The Persian raised an eyebrow. “Have they become targets?”

“Inshallah.”

“This might be more difficult than you imagine,” Farouk said. “I have only limited resources inside the palace—a lesser steward, a man whose cousin’s cousin is a guard, but no one of particularly high rank…”

“I can be of service in this matter, as well,” Zaynab said. “My acquaintances at the palace run the gamut, from
mamelukes
to chamberlains to ladies of the harem. Let me try and get word to them. No doubt the appearance of Templars has stirred a hornet’s nest in their midst.”

Farouk inclined his head, a gesture of respect. “That would be most excellent, lady.”

“And while the rest of you are occupied with these tasks, I will see about getting close to the Caliph.”

Abu’l-Qasim shook his head. “I still say you are wasting your time with that notion, Assad. The vizier—Allah’s curse be upon him!—rarely lets the Caliph out of his sight. Like as not, his guards will skewer you before you can get too close.”

“Then perhaps,” Assad began, steel whispering on leather as he slid his
salawar
free of its sheath, “perhaps I’ll get close to the vizier, instead.” Cold eyes stared past the blade. “Have you a carpenter in your entourage, O King?”

Abu’l-Qasim frowned. “I can find one.”

“Do so, and quickly,” Assad replied. “I have an idea how I can hide this in plain sight…”

4

The old physician summoned to the harem found Parysatis huddled in her bed, damp browed and disheveled, the stink of vomit—of sour wine and cheese—fouling the air of her tiny room. He shuffled to her bedside and sat, a stoop-shouldered man with a bulbous nose whose hair, beneath a blue embroidered skullcap, was silver and sparse. The women of the harem knew him as al-Gid, Grandfather. “What troubles you, child?” he said, placing the rigid leather bag of his profession on the floor beside them.

“I must speak with you,” Parysatis whispered in Persian, a tongue she knew he spoke. “Alone.” She looked past him; he followed her gaze. The Chief Eunuch of the Harem, a native Egyptian called Lu’lu, stood in the doorway of Parysatis’s cell—a tyrant molded of tawny fat who swathed himself in gold, silks, and linens as fine as any worn by the women in his care. Piggish eyes outlined in kohl and green malachite held a glimmer of distress. Though not, Parysatis decided, over her health. No, the Chief Eunuch’s sole concern was decorum: he insisted that his charges be demure, lovely, and, above all else, quiet. Sickness, which was ever the enemy of good order, ruined his equilibrium.

Behind him, several women pressed close along with a gaggle of lesser eunuchs and servants. An illness in their midst was as much a cause for concern as it was for speculation. Had a rival poisoned her? Maybe she had tried to poison herself? Perhaps she wasn’t ill at all, but with child? In hushed voices, like the twittering of so many birds, the women wagered on the outcome, betting bits of jewelry on which vicious rumor would prove true.

The physician frowned. “Leave us. All of you.”

“Go away, my flowers!” The Chief Eunuch waved the gawkers away. “Go! We must have privacy!”

“You, too, my friend,” al-Gid said, his tone sharp.

Lu’lu scowled; fleshy lips writhed, peeling back in a grimace of displeasure. Despite being a slave, the harem’s master wasn’t accustomed to taking orders from anyone less than the vizier himself. For a moment Parysatis thought he might rebuke the physician for his impudence, or worse—summon his guards and have the old man beaten. Ultimately, however, Lu’lu held his tongue. Even he knew better than to trifle with al-Gid.

The old physician watched in silence as the eunuch backed out of the room and pulled the curtain closed with a savage tug. Al-Gid grunted, a dismissive sound, and then turned to Parysatis. “That one has grown too large for his own pantaloons,” he muttered in Persian. Gently, he placed the back of one wrinkled hand against the young woman’s forehead, feeling for a fever. The sleeve of his crisp white galabiya smelled of incense and old herbs. “So, child? We are alone…”

“I … I m-must ask you a delicate question.”

The physician raised a bushy eyebrow. “Must you?”

“Have…” Parysatis flushed, stumbled over her words. “Have you seen him? The Caliph, I mean? Perhaps within the last week?”

“A delicate question, indeed.” Al-Gid propped his elbow on his knee and tugged at the small tuft of hair beneath his lower lip. “What concern is this of yours, child? Did you have a dream?”

“Please!” Parysatis’s fingers plucked at the hem of his sleeve. “Please, Grandfather, have you seen him recently?”

“I saw him last week, during Friday prayers at the Gray Mosque, but I was not allowed near.”

“And how did he seem?”

Al-Gid sighed; absently, he patted her hand, his brows knitting together in concern. “Not well, God’s mercy upon him. In truth, his eunuchs and guards have kept him sequestered from me for some time, now. Though for what reason, I cannot say.”

Parysatis squeezed her eyes shut, afraid of what her next words would conjure. Had she misjudged him? Would this kindly old man be her savior, or would he become her executioner?
Allah preserve me!
“It’s not his eunuchs or his guards who are to blame,” she said in a small voice. “It’s his vizier.”

“Are you addled, girl? What do you mean? Here, look at me.” He grasped her shoulders and gave her a light shake. “Look at me, child. Why would the vizier wish to keep me away from the Caliph? What purpose could…?” But al-Gid did not finish his sentence. In a twinkling, apprehension gave way to cold clarity—while the years may have palsied the old man’s hands, they in no way dulled his mind. It remained as sharp as ever as the cogs and mechanisms of suspicion shuddered into place. He knew of only one reason a vizier might wish to keep the Caliph’s physicians at arm’s length; an age-old reason that did not bode well for young Rashid al-Hasan: Jalal, like his predecessors, had ambitions to rule. All traces of warmth drained from al-Gid’s features; his frown deepened and his eyes narrowed to slits of black fire. He leaned closer. “How do you know this, child?”

“I overheard him talking to the old eunuch who rules over the Caliph’s apartments.”

“Yes, Mustapha,” the physician said, nodding. “And you are sure? You are sure
this
is what they talked about? What you accuse them of, child, is an abomination before God! Could you have misunderstood what was said…?”

Parysatis shook her head. “I heard the vizier as clearly as I hear you now, Grandfather. By month’s end, he wants the Caliph on his deathbed! He ordered this Mustapha to see it done. Later, that scoundrel brought the Caliph a goblet of tainted wine. By the grace of God, I was there to pour it out. I replaced the wine with water from the courtyard fountain before—”

Al-Gid cut her off. “You did all this under the noses of his guards and his chamberlains? As Allah is my witness, child, lie to me again and I will hand you over to the Chief Eunuch to be punished!”

Parysatis bolted upright, nostrils flaring. “I have not lied to you, old man! I did these things!”

“How? The Jandariyah allow no one inside the Caliph’s apartments without the vizier’s permission! How did you—”

“You have heard the tale of the False Kaaba, Grandfather? The eunuchs speak of it, but in whispers and then only to frighten us,” Parysatis said. Her anger ebbed, and she sagged back against her pillows. “They say once a mad Caliph ruled over Cairo, and in his madness he ordered passages cut into the walls, into the foundations of this very palace. Where these secret paths intersected, the eunuchs say, he caused his slaves to build a pleasure kiosk, a blasphemous mockery of the most holy Kaaba of Mecca. Those who knew of its existence he had strangled, their bodies buried in a cellar beneath his kiosk. For the remainder of his reign, this Mad Caliph would kidnap his newest concubines from the harem and drag them down into this hell he had created, there to despoil and brutalize them. Those who survived he either handed over to his loyal
mamelukes
or he drowned them in a marble pool of wine.”

“And it was his own sister who finally ended his madness,” al-Gid said impatiently. “Yes, I know it well. A fabulous legend, like something from the
Book of a Thousand Tales
. But what does that have to do with anything?”

“The Mad Caliph’s passages exist, Grandfather. The palace is riddled with them. That’s how I overheard the vizier’s plans.” In short order, Parysatis unburdened her soul, relating everything to the dumbstruck physician—from how she’d accidentally discovered the first door over a year ago, in a deserted storeroom, to her nocturnal wanderings through those narrow paths between the walls where men once spied upon their fellows. “At first,” she said, “I sought ways out of the palace, ways to escape Cairo and return to my home in Persia. Later, when flight proved fruitless, I merely sought ways to escape the boredom of the harem.” Further, she told him what she had seen and heard in the Golden Hall, in the Caliph’s apartments, and of the courtyard door that brought her back to the harem. “It exits in an old bathing chamber the women no longer use, not a hundred paces from here.”

“Merciful Allah!”

Parysatis’s voice grew thick with emotion; tears welled at the corners of her dark eyes and spilled down her cheeks. “He is so close, Grandfather! So close, and I know not how to help him! Even now, I cannot say for certain I am doing the right thing by telling you any of this. But I do not know who else to trust or where else to turn! I risk everything, for you need only say a word to the vizier and it will be as though I never existed. The Caliph will drink their foul poison and all will be for naught…!”

“No, child,” al-Gid said, his face solemn. “You have done the right thing. I owe nothing to Jalal—may Allah’s curse be upon him! The man is a scheming jackal who thinks himself well beyond his station. I do, however, owe my life, and the lives of my daughters, to Rashid’s grandfather. He died before I could repay his many mercies; his son, too. Thus has his grandson inherited my gratitude, and my need to make things right in the eyes of God. I must get in to see him, child. Will you guide me by these secret ways of yours?”

Parysatis jammed the knuckles of her hand against her teeth; she dared not breathe for fear of upsetting the delicate balance.
Had she found an ally?
“Can … can you t-truly help the Caliph?”

“Inshallah,”
al-Gid said, placing his palm over his heart. “I will try.”

Tears cascaded down the young woman’s cheeks; she sobbed and flung her arms around the physician’s neck. “Bless you, Grandfather!”

“Hush, child. We have much to do, yet.” He disengaged from her embrace and nodded. “Dry your eyes. Good. Now, lie back and feign illness. Nothing too dramatic.”

Parysatis sank down and composed herself. Her dark hair was in disarray, her eyes red and puffy, and her skin pale: one could surmise that she perhaps suffered from a fever. Al-Gid nodded again.

“Allah’s mercy upon us,” he whispered. Joints creaking, the old physician gained his feet and made his way to the door. He yanked the curtain aside, revealing a bevy of impatient and expectant faces—the Chief Eunuch prominent among them.

“Well?”

“She is very ill, my friend. The poor girl has a fever which has caused a serious imbalance in her humors.” The physician glanced back over his shoulder in mock concern. “I will need to bleed her.”