The Lion of Cairo (29 page)

The vizier nodded. “Wahshi, double your patrols in the city. I am placing the urban militia under your command, as well. Use them to seal the gates after evening prayer. Shirkuh will likely try and send infiltrators in to spread rumors and lies. Have your men watch for agitators and the like. Turanshah, do what you must to make the palace secure.” From the corner of his eye, Jalal saw Mustapha signal to him. The vizier ended the audience with a sharp nod. “To your posts. I have other business to attend.”

Gokbori salaamed with a stiff formality that bordered upon mockery and, with his retinue in tow, ambled for the door, moving with the wide, rolling gait of a born horseman; Wahshi stood, bowed, and motioned for a slave to gather up his chair. The men of the Sudan laughed and chatted as they followed their Turkish comrades. The Jandariyah officers were the last to leave, silently filing out after their captain.

Jalal, his forehead creased in thought, turned to Mustapha; the old eunuch nodded.

“Your guest is here.”

“Did anyone see him arrive?”

Mustapha shook his head. “I had a pair of my most trusted eunuchs escort him here by way of the Daylam Garden, through the House of Memory. It is little used these days.”

“You are ever the soul of discretion, my old darling.”

“Are you certain this is the proper path, Excellency?” Mustapha said. Concern furrowed the old eunuch’s brow. “There is little delicacy in the course of action you are proposing.”

Jalal clasped his hands behind his back and gazed out over the garden, watching as a flock of pigeons alighted at the apex of the distant dome—smudges of gray against a fiery gold background. A warm breeze rustled sycamore leaves. “The time for delicacy has passed, Mustapha. It is decisive action or nothing.”

“This is certainly decisive.” The eunuch turned and clapped his hands; the vizier’s door wardens levered open the gold-arabesqued portals to allow a single man entry. Mustapha salaamed. “Sir Godfrey de Vézelay, Excellency.”

“Peace be upon you, Templar,” Jalal said.

“Lord Saracen,” Godfrey replied, offering his host a slight bow. The Templar had put aside the trappings of war for the evening. Under the white mantle of his order, emblazoned with a red cross, he wore a belted tunic of unbleached linen and trousers; a silver crucifix hung from a chain about his neck. “I was surprised to receive your invitation, though I am curious why it did not include my lord brother, Hugh. Are you hatching some heathen plot to divide us?” Godfrey looked around him, obviously smitten by the sight of so much easy wealth. No doubt his blunt mind was already designing schemes for getting hold of it.

“I will not dissemble with you, my friend,” Jalal said. He gestured for the Templar to take a seat on the divan as Mustapha served them wine. “A problem has arisen that threatens to undermine our alliance.”

Godfrey’s eyes narrowed. “What sort of problem?”

“The most delicate sort.” Jalal selected a goblet at random from Mustapha’s tray, sipped it, then put it back and took the other. “It concerns the Caliph. It seems he is no longer amenable to your lord’s offer. Indeed, he is pressuring me to seize you and your companion and have both of you executed.”

“What?” the Templar roared. “God’s teeth! We had your assurances, dog!”

“And you still do,” Jalal said hurriedly. “You still do. The Caliph’s reticence, his hostility, is something we must deal with, which is why I invited you here. I would ask a tremendous boon of you—of you, personally, Sir Godfrey. A boon that if properly executed will no doubt enrich us both.”

That piqued the Templar’s interest. Godfrey cocked his head to one side. “Enrich us both, you say? How so?”

Jalal shook his head. “Not so quickly, my friend. First, swear on your oath to God and the Temple that nothing I say will ever pass your lips, by accident or design, upon pain of damnation.”

Godfrey smoothed his mustache with one scarred knuckle. The vizier could see his mind at work, weighing intangibles and things unseen like a moneylender in the souk weighs copper against gold; of the two Franks, Godfrey possessed the loosest moral fiber—Jalal reckoned him the worst kind of infidel: a warmonger who only paid lip service to the tenets of his order, to the pronouncements of his Nazarene lord, and to his own oath. Still, his eyes betrayed all. Where the acquisition of wealth was paramount, Godfrey de Vézelay’s eyes declaimed the depths of his fidelity. Finally, the Templar nodded. “You have my word, Lord Saracen. Upon my oath to God and Temple.”

After a moment, Jalal nodded in return. “I accept your oath. Our problem, you see, is one of religion—the Caliph is refusing to join with Nazarenes against his fellow Moslems, not considering that these selfsame Moslems condemn his Fatimid ancestry at every opportunity, and they have pledged loyalty to the Caliph of Baghdad. He does not see the folly in that sort of blind faith. An enemy is an enemy, regardless of in what direction they pray.”

“Then put him aside and find a more agreeable Caliph,” Godfrey said, with accustomed bluntness.

Jalal smiled. “Indeed, we see eye to eye on this, you and I. And in the same breath know that this is the boon I would ask of you.”

The Templar’s head snapped around. “Christ and the Saints, man! What are you saying? You want me to—”

“Nay,” Jalal said, raising his hand in a gesture of warning. “Speak it not aloud, my friend. You know precisely
what
I am saying. We agree there is a delicate task at hand and, in all honesty, who else can I trust? Certainly not another Moslem, for we hold the Caliph inviolate. A Jew, perhaps? Maybe a Maronite beggar from Fustat? No, my friend. I need a man I can rely on—as much for his skill as for his discretion. You, Sir Godfrey.”

“I’m no martyr, Lord Saracen,” Godfrey put in. “Nor am I in the mood to be torn apart by a Cairene mob.”

The vizier shook his head. “Nor am I. But, hearken—what if I tell you I have a way to smuggle you into his presence with no one the wiser? That my men will be slow to respond to any sounds of a struggle, giving you time to withdraw unseen? And more to the point: what if I tell you I have a ready scapegoat in mind should word escape prematurely? Your name, your order, will never be associated with this deed.”

The Templar swirled the wine in his goblet, staring into its depths as he grappled with the implications of what the vizier was saying. “I see now why you didn’t include Sir Hugh in this conclave,” Godfrey said, glancing at Jalal through narrowed eyes.

“No doubt he is a very fine man, and worthy of renown, but he lacks your sense of self-preservation. You understand as well as I that it is only the outcome that matters, not the way in which it is achieved.” Jalal leaned back, his legs thrust out before him. In the distance he could hear the first strains of the
adhan
drifting over the city. The time for evening prayer was at hand.

“You do not rush to your knees like the others,” Godfrey noticed, draining his goblet.

“Allah understands the needs of those who rule and accords us leeway.”

The Templar stroked his beard. Already, the vizier could see the scales of acquiescence tipping in his favor as Godfrey balanced the iron weight of greed against the feather of risk. The Frank’s eyes gleamed. “If I do this thing, what am I to receive in return? You spoke of enrichment…?”

Jalal spread his hands, encompassing the whole of the palace—perhaps the whole of Egypt. “What is your heart’s desire? Gold? Jewels? Horses? Slaves? Name your reward, my friend, and you shall have it. But, this task—it must be done soon.”

“How soon?”

“Tonight.”

Godfrey pursed his lips then gave a slight sideways nod, acknowledging the vizier’s need for alacrity. “He will be alone?”

“No. He will have a guest with him. A holy man. And make sure you dispose of him, too, Sir Godfrey.”

The Templar frowned. “I’m no fool to leave alive a witness.”

“Oh, he is more than that.” The vizier of Egypt grinned at his own cleverness. “We must have his corpse to put on display if the folk of Cairo are to believe their beloved Caliph met his doom at the hands of a murderous Sufi.”

The Fourth Surah

KNIFE’S EDGE

1

“Careful!” Yasmina snapped at the two harem guards, each of whom carried one end of the rolled-up rug from Parysatis’s alcove. “It’s Persian,” she added quickly.

The guards, both eunuchs, grinned at the fastidious young Egyptian. “Where you want it?” one asked in thickly accented Arabic.

“That old storage room across the way.” Yasmina gestured across the courtyard. “I’ll leave it there tonight so it won’t sour the air in my mistress’s room. Tomorrow, I’ll fetch the laundry slaves to give it a good cleaning.”

The eunuchs, Ethiopian giants in white silk and mail vests, shrugged to one another as they shouldered their burden and set off toward the storage room, muscles bulging through smooth layers of fat. Dusk had faded in swift progression to star-flecked night, leaving the courtyard deserted; most of the women had retired to the hammam for an evening bath, while certain favorites dined with the Caliph’s aunts in their more intimate fountain court—no doubt to apprise the old bitches of the day’s goings-on and to entertain them with fresh scandals. Yasmina heard faint peals of laughter coming from both venues.

Larger than Parysatis’s alcove, the L-shaped storage room held an array of items, from linens in need of mending and extra cushions to sun-faded parasols and the pieces of an old pavilion. The space served as a receptacle for things no longer used but still not quite ready for the trash heap. Its most striking feature, however, was the beautifully scalloped niche at the top of the L.

Yasmina winced as the two eunuchs hauled the rug inside and dropped it heavily against the back wall. The girl gave each a gold coin as they filed past, nodding and whispering her thanks; she paused outside the door to the storage room. Watching from the corner of her eye, she exhaled in relief as the two eunuchs returned to their posts without as much as a backward glance. They rounded a far corner …

Yasmina darted back inside the storage room. Crouching, she quickly untied the cords binding the rug and unrolled it as best she could in the room’s tight confines. With a final shove, Parysatis tumbled into view, disheveled and breathing heavily as she writhed against the rug’s clinging folds.

“Y’Allah!”
the Persian gasped.

Yasmina caught her hand. “Not so loud.”

Parysatis was clad in plain garb: billowy pantaloons and an embroidered shirt of Damietta cotton beneath a long blue mantle. Her hair she had bound up in a turban, now askew, and she wore a scarf to veil her features. With luck she might pass for a boy or a slender eunuch. “A devilish idea,” she muttered, climbing unsteadily to her feet. She shook dust from her mantle and straightened her turban. “You say it’s been done before?”

“By an ancient queen of Egypt. She hid in a carpet to escape the madness of her brother, the king. Once free, her lover, who was a prince of djinn, bore her far away, beyond Samarkand, some say.”

“I pity her if she traveled that distance wrapped in a carpet.” Parysatis made her way to the rear of the storage room, to where the scalloped niche gleamed in the faint light. This was the first such door she had found, over a year ago, its catch discovered by accident when she stumbled against it. The passage itself had several branches—including the one she had taken to reach the Golden Hall the night before. No doubt one of them would eventually lead to the Mad Caliph’s sanctuary, his fabled and blasphemous False Kaaba. She turned to Yasmina. “Are you certain you can find us a path out of the palace?”

The young Egyptian nodded. “The same one I used earlier—through the kitchens and out a small gate in the herb garden wall. From there, we head almost due north into the Soldiers’ Quarter. The Gazelle will meet us at the Inn of the Three Apples, and together the two of you will speak with Amir Massoud.”

The confidence in Yasmina’s voice reinforced Parysatis’s own. She triggered the door’s hidden catch—a carved rosette worn smooth from use—and watched the portal swing inward on hinges she had greased herself. “Lead the way, and pray no one realizes I am gone.”

Yasmina did just that.

2

Assad squatted on his haunches at the mouth of a narrow alley running between two tall tenements, one quiet, and the other alive with the lights, sounds, and smells of an extended family gathering for their evening meal. Children played ball in the street by the light of iron cressets; their fathers, uncles, and elder brothers sat on cushions and carpets around the doors to the tenement, talking of the day’s events while the sharp tang of hashish drifted on the night air. Though they were unseen, he heard the women murmuring as they shared the duties of the kitchen. None of them—men, women, or children—had the slightest inkling of the doom riding ever closer.

Two armies! Merciful Allah!
That was what Musa had told him before he left the caravanserai; that was the news Zaynab’s spies had brought out of the palace—the two Templars were here to broker a deal: Jerusalem would add its forces to Cairo’s against the Sultan of Damascus, who had sent an army at the behest of the deposed vizier, Dirgham; like a fish lunging for a baited hook, Jalal went for it without hesitation. Why? And what did Jerusalem hope to gain? A foothold in Egypt? No doubt Amalric meant to double-cross Jalal even while the vizier sought to play Moslem against Frank and barter for himself a more dominant position. Assad marveled at the vizier’s appalling arrogance. Despite defenses more porous than wet linen and an army prone to self-destructive fits, Jalal still reckoned he had leverage over Damascus and Jerusalem; in a way, he did. The vizier had the wealth of the Nile to draw upon.

Assad shook his head, still disbelieving. Allah! He doubted the vizier’s death would change anything now. But, such was not for Assad to decide. His task had not changed: protect the Caliph, secure his throne, and cement an alliance between Cairo and Alamut. To make that happen, he would kill the vizier—and anyone else who got in his way.
I only pray I’m not too late.