The Lion of Cairo (23 page)

Yasmina’s face was grim. “He was a good man. Parysatis showed him a secret way into the Caliph’s apartments, but before al-Gid could do much more than rouse him one of the vizier’s lackeys knifed him cold.”

Zaynab cursed.

Farouk leaned back, eyes closing as he pinched the bridge of his nose. “A viper’s nest, indeed, and soon the nest will be surrounded by an army of vipers. This cannot end well.”

Musa looked from one to the other. “So, what do we do?”

In the distance, the ancient muezzin atop al-Azhar Mosque sang the first notes of the
adhan,
calling the faithful to the noon prayer. Across the city, others picked it up. Farouk smiled. “Prayer might make a fine start.”

“Mistress,” Yasmina said. “Parysatis is alone in the palace, and she’s fallen prey to despair. I’ve covered her tracks as best I can but she needs your help.”

“And she’ll have it.” Zaynab clasped the young Egyptian’s hand.

Farouk’s smile faded. “Have you a plan, lady?”

Zaynab did not say anything right away, but her face lost any hint of feminine softness and her eyes glinted like dagger tips. “It is only by the grace of Allah that the vizier’s influence doesn’t yet reach far beyond the palace walls. The bulk of Cairenes still profess loyalty to the Caliph, and Jalal knows it. Thus his need for secrecy. What would happen, I wonder, if knowledge of his perfidy became the talk of the bazaars? Would it ruin his bid for a sultanate?”

“Or would it instead spark riots and unrest?” Farouk’s brows beetled. “Loyal though they may be, the folk of Cairo are not known for their restraint, lady. By feeding the rumormongers and the gossips, we could be doing more harm than good.”

“Darkness abhors light, my good Persian. Yasmina has risked much to bring us this ember; now, it is our duty to nurture it and keep it alive, to coax it into a roaring fire. But, you are right. We must do this gently. Musa, can you find my father?”

The one-eyed man nodded. “He made mention of joining Assad after noon prayers.”

“Finding them together would be providence, indeed. Go to the Gray Mosque and await them. Tell them all you’ve heard, Musa.”

“And what of us?” Farouk asked.

The Gazelle’s fingers intertwined with Yasmina’s; she met the Persian’s level gaze with one of her own—rigid and unyielding. “You and I will see Yasmina back to the palace, and then I have a meeting with an amir of the Circassian
mamelukes
to prepare for,” she said. “I daresay he can rally enough of the White Slaves of the River to threaten the vizier’s hired soldiers, if not crush them outright. And if he needs more of a reason, then as Allah is my witness, I will give him one!”

16

The echoing call of the
adhan
brought a swarm of congregants to the Gray Mosque. Assad watched them from the corner of his eye: men of a dozen nations bound by faith, men of influence drawn to Cairo for reasons of their own design. The Assassin spotted a delegation of black-clad Maghribis, envoys of the Almohades of Andalusia, walking arm in arm with dispossessed Seljuk princes in fine silks and gold; he saw Turkish
atabegs
and Bedouin
shaykhs;
stern sharifs of Mecca and brooding mullahs from the Persian hinterland; Sudanese captains and Egyptian admirals; scholars and judges; merchants and commoners. Men who would be at one another’s throats on any other day, in any other place, put aside their disagreements in order to make their submission to Allah.

The Faithful fell into formation like veteran soldiers, kneeling on their rugs, their serried lines stretching across the courtyard. The eldest among them, those poor of sight and hard of hearing, sat in front and faced the mihrab, the niche indicating the direction of Mecca; beside the mihrab, a pulpit of gilded and arabesqued wood towered over the congregants. From its height, the prayer leader—today a venerable cleric from Upper Egypt—would deliver the sermon.

Assad expected the Prince of the Faithful to arrive under a banner of spectacle. Instead, the Assassin witnessed only a slight flurry of activity as servants laid cushions and intricate rugs to one side of the pulpit, in the shade of the colonnade; even before they had finished, a knot of grandees filed in—eunuchs in muted silks who hemorrhaged jewels from throats and wrists—followed by a man whose hawkish and demanding manner fit well with what Assad knew of the vizier. Bringing up the tail of the cortege was the Fatimid Caliph Rashid al-Hasan li-Din Allah.

Assad studied Alamut’s potential ally with a critical eye, seeking outward signs of the sort of decay that might prove him unfit to rule. The Caliph’s physical appearance did not foster hope. Too thin by far, al-Hasan had a sallow complexion and sunken eyes that stood in stark contrast to the resplendence of his dress: a
khalat
of crisp white linen, pearl-sewn and girdled in cloth-of-silver, and a snowy turban sporting a brilliant spray of peacock feathers held in place with an emerald brooch. Slight tremors ran through the young man’s body, and sweat beaded his brow; still, despite his obvious ill health the Prince of the Faithful showed signs of life—he muttered something to his vizier, shook off the hand seeking to guide him by the elbow, and made his own way to the cushions his servants prepared for him.

With an upraised hand, Rashid al-Hasan acknowledged the men who gathered to pray. He allowed his gaze to drift from face to face; those he recognized received a cursory nod by way of greeting, while others were satisfied with simply being in the Caliph’s notice. After a moment, Assad felt the young man’s eyes on him.

In any other setting, the demands of protocol meant men of all ranks must abase themselves, to show their respect for the descendent of the Prophet through an endless parade of bowing and scraping. In the mosque, however, all men were equal before God. Thus, there was no affront when a rustic holy man of the Hejaz caught the Prince of the Faithful’s eye and held it, nor was there disrespect in the slow inclination of the Sufi’s head. Rashid returned the gesture; his brows knitted as though the sight of Ibn al-Teymani inspired … what? Was it consternation or fascination? Did he see through the Sufi to discover the Assassin underneath? Assad doubted that, but he had little chance to deliberate it further. As one, the congregation followed the prayer leader’s example and clambered to their feet.

The venerable cleric from Upper Egypt, raising his hands to either side of his face, called out:
“Allahu akbar…”

17

To Gamal’s eye, the streets surrounding the caravanserai of Ali abu’l-Qasim were nigh deserted; even the Berber guards had withdrawn to the interior courtyard, no doubt to make their submission to God alongside their fellows. All that remained of the robust ebb and flow of foot traffic from the Nile Gate to the Qasaba were a handful of ragpickers, miserable men reduced to abject poverty using the lull brought on by the demands of Moslem piety to root through the middens and trash heaps of a rivals’ territory. Gamal’s lip curled in a sneer of contempt.

This same absence of traffic which aided the ragpickers forced Gamal’s fedayeen to remain still and inconspicuous so as not to draw attention to themselves. Even he had trouble spotting them. One stood just inside the shadowed mouth of an alley; another crouched down beside a jumble of old wicker panniers; the remaining two loitered on the far side of the caravanserai, using the terrain to their advantage just as Badr had taught them.

Gamal himself lurked in a low-roofed alley across the street from the caravanserai, sheltered from view by a latticework door; its twin at the far end stood open, creating a breezeway between the two buildings that stank of animal dung and ancient brick. He leaned his shoulder against the alley wall and dabbed at his watery eye with the sleeve of his burnoose, wincing at the discomfort.
Cursed sand!
Like the heat and the oppressive stench, there was no respite from the powdery grit. It swirled on the slightest breeze and invaded every crack, crevice, fold, and wrinkle; sand clogged his nostrils, flayed his throat, and abraded his eyes. More than anything, it made him long for the fountains and gardens of his native Damascus. He—

Gamal froze. He felt a presence behind him; heard a whisper in his ear that was both colder and sharper than the knife blade laid suddenly across the back of his neck. “Have you forgotten our master’s teachings, Gamal?” the Heretic purred. “Death comes on black wings for those who give in to discomforts of the flesh.”

“I … I’ve not forgotten,
ya sidi,
” Gamal replied, his voice grim. “It was careless of me to lower my guard. I deserve the death which awaits me.” Closing his eyes, Gamal tilted his head forward. It would have taken nothing, a simple motion on the Heretic’s part, to rip the killing steel across Gamal’s neck, to slice through muscle and bone and sever his spinal cord. But the blow never came.

“Give thanks to Shaitan that I need you alive.” Badr al-Mulahid sheathed his dirk. “What have you found?”

Gamal exhaled. “We followed them to this place,” he said. “I made inquiries. A man called Ali abu’l-Qasim dwells within. It seems the Gazelle is his daughter.”

“You’re certain?”

“I’ve not laid eyes on her, but the man I questioned was fairly adamant. He called her Zaynab.”

The name provoked a rare response in the Heretic: a smile, though humorless and thin.

“The name means something to you,
ya sidi
?”

“It means you’ve done well. Keep your men in place and out of sight while I work out a stratagem by which we might gain entry; failing that, we need a way to flush the Gazelle from her bolt-hole. I am done with waiting.”

Gamal leaned forward, peering through the latticed door. “Perhaps a fire?”

The Heretic weighed the idea of a conflagration, but then dismissed it with a terse shake of his head. “Leaves too much to chance. Without a proper cordon in place she could use the chaos to slip our grasp, and that cannot be borne.”

“A diversion, then? Some odd goings-on in the street for the guards to focus on? While they’re distracted, our fedayeen could enter through the back or cross from an adjacent roof.”

Again, Badr al-Mulahid rejected the idea. “No. If the Emir of the Knife also hides within he will see through our ruse and we will become the hunted. In close confines and on unfamiliar ground, it can be easier for one man to kill many than for many to kill one. No, we need a way to lure the Gazelle…” Badr al-Mulahid trailed off in mid-sentence. He glanced sidelong at Gamal, then over his shoulder; his eyes narrowed to slits.

“Ya sidi?”

A sudden zephyr of air through the breezeway brought a familiar stench to Gamal’s nostrils, and one not easily forgotten: rank sweat and rotting garlic. The smell of the Mad Caliph’s Mosque and the beggars who dwelled within. Though ham-handed, their attempts at stealth—betrayed by the crunch of a heel on sand and the faint wheeze of pleuritic lungs—meant he doubted they had come as allies. Had the fools gotten it in their minds to try and rob him?
Ignorant wretches! Do they think I carry a whore’s weight in silver on my person?
Gamal squelched the urge to whirl round and curse the beggars for their impudence. Instead, he followed the Heretic’s lead and remained motionless …

Then, with a barely perceptible nod, Badr al-Mulahid wheeled; steel flashed in the gloom of the breezeway as he drew his dirk. Three men sought to take them unawares; three beggars, scabrous and filthy, their weapons makeshift cudgels and knotted strangle cords. The speed of the Heretic’s movement caught them by surprise, but it came too late to alter their plans.

In the tight confines of the alley, the three beggars rushed in to die.

Faster than the eye could follow, the Heretic sidestepped, one callused hand catching a cudgel in mid-descent. Its wielder—a lean, hatchet-faced Arab with a matted beard—gawped as Badr wrenched the weapon from his grasp and struck him a backhanded blow across the face. Bone crunched, and the man dropped like a felled tree.

A second beggar skidded on his heels, stumbling to avoid the body of his fallen comrade. The fellow opened his mouth; his lungs racked as prelude to a bellowed warning. The Heretic gave him no chance to voice it. Lunging like a swordsman, Badr drove the end of his purloined cudgel into the beggar’s mouth with savage force, snapping his head back. Blood spewed from broken teeth.

Beside them, Gamal grappled with the third beggar, a sinewy Ethiopian who tried to loop a strangle cord around his neck. The fellow was slippery, his limbs covered with sweat and a thin film of oil. Cursing, Gamal rammed him up against the alley wall; four times he elbowed the African in the belly before the man doubled over, gasping for breath. Gamal took advantage of his adversary’s weakness. He stripped the cord from the beggar’s hands, reversed it, and drew it round his thin neck. The Ethiopian’s eyes bulged. He thrashed and kicked as Gamal tightened the garrote.

“I want that one alive,” the Heretic growled.

Gamal nodded; he throttled the Ethiopian to the brink of unconsciousness before easing back, allowing him to gulp a lungful of air. The Heretic slit the throats of the two he’d cudgeled for good measure. Wiping the blade clean on a torn galabiya, he turned to their unfortunate captive.

“I will ask you only once: why are you here?”

The Ethiopian had no fight left in him; he rolled his eyes up, indicating Gamal. “Him,” he croaked. “S-seller of carpets.”

“What about him?” the Heretic said.

“S-she … She w-wants him … alive … d-doubled his offer…”

“She? The Gazelle, you mean?”

The Ethiopian nodded.

“Wily bitch,” Gamal grunted, perturbed at being a marked man. “Al-Hajj’s informants must have come running to her.”

“No matter. This display of proud spite has given us the perfect avenue to reach her. Finish him, then give me your robe.”

The Ethiopian opened his mouth to plead for his life, but before he could utter so much as a syllable Gamal planted a knee in his spine and cinched the strangle cord tight, sawing the knots deep into the flesh of his throat. This time, there would be no reprieve. While the beggar died, the Heretic stepped out where Gamal’s men could see him; he raised his hand and gave the signal to regroup.