Throne of the Crescent Moon (12 page)

The old man took another big swallow of wine and turned back to Raseed with a troublemaker’s smile. “You’re as bad, sometimes, as those Humble Students you respect so much! Perhaps you should join their stupid little sect! Scandalized by ale and dancing and such!” He poked a reproving finger at Raseed. “Remember what the Chapters say: ‘God speaks through these Chapters, not through the mouths of priests. His scriptures are not written upon papyrus, parchment or vellum. They are marked in men’s memories, stamped on men’s hearts, engraved in men’s souls.’ Yet your Order and the Humble Students act as if the Chapters were written on their lips.”

He took another drink. “Before their glory faded from Abassen, the ghul hunters’ ways were unbending in some things. But at least they never claimed to be holy men. God is the Most Beneficent Host, boy! When you’ve forgotten that, you’ve forgotten why we fight!” His tirade over, the ghul hunter threw his hands up in exaggerated exasperation.

For a while then there were only the sounds of eating and the old man’s heavy breath. When the meal was done they sat there silently. Then the Doctor’s too-loud voice shattered the silence.

“Speaking of fighting,” he said as if ten minutes had not passed, “I have been wondering something, Zamia. If, God willing, we find this damned-by-God servant of the Traitorous Angel and we defeat him, what will you do then?” Zamia felt the pleasant haze of the wine burn away in an instant.
Why does he bring this up now?
It sounded to her as if the ghul hunter already knew what her answer would be, and disapproved of it.

“All that matters is that I kill whoever or whatever has done this. Likely I will die doing so. This is as it should be. Martyrdom for me, vengeance for my band.”

The winey cheer was gone from his voice. “Martyrdom? Are you so eager to die, Zamia?”

She came to her feet and hissed at the old man. “Why should I wish to live? Everyone I know is dead! My band is dead! I can only pray that my fate is to avenge them before I die myself!”

The Doctor stared at her, and his gaze was hard. “Remember that
even fate has its forking roads. Your father saw the touch of the Angels upon you and chose you to be Protector of the Band, though you are female. He understood the Chapter that reads ‘Only so many fates for each man, but always a choice.’”

The Doctor poked idly at the single bean on his plate—the only bit of food that remained there. “But enough grim talk for now. We must see to what we city folk call your sleeping arrangements—and what the Badawi call ‘some random patch of sandy dirt.’ Oh, I am sorry, girl, I only jest. But of course we would not shame you by having you sleep in the house of a man not your husband or father. I donȎ g I dont doubt my neighbor—the old woman who brought our dinner—will set a pallet for you. For a young woman such as—”

Zamia growled. “I am not a girl, Doctor. My father
did
choose me for Protector of the Band, and that is what I am. The Protector sleeps where he must. If you would be so kind to set a pallet here at the foot of the stairs, that will be fine.”

Beside her, the dervish made a strangled noise.

Zamia ignored him because she could not afford to lose control of herself. “What I want to know,” she asked, “is whether we are truly safe here, Doctor. I do not wish to wake to the feeling of my ribcage being cracked open. The one whose ghul pack we fought—what is to stop him from striking us here?”

The Doctor yawned and smiled patronizingly. “Sneaking ghuls about within a city is no easy matter, child. And besides, my home is charmed so that no ghul can cross its threshold.” The old man shoved his dirty plate rudely in Raseed’s direction and got up from the table. His lazy expression grew urgent again. “Listen to me.
One
of the Banu Laith Badawi still lives. When
she
dies,
then
your band is dead. Until that day, girl, your band lives.” He waggled a big finger at her and left the room.

She turned to where the dervish had sat, afraid but excited to be alone with him. But when she turned, the little man was gone. Something inside her twisted and untwisted in disappointment and relief.

A little while later, a great storm of things flew through Zamia’s mind as she lay on her pallet seeking sleep. The sight of her brother with
his heart torn out and his eyes shining red. Her father’s hand, clutching a dagger. The sound of ghuls hissing. The smells of this strange city. Raseed’s brief smiles.

And the Doctor’s admonitions.
Your band lives,
he had said. She had already counted herself half-dead, she realized. She’d been acting as if the band of Nadir Banu Laith Badawi were gone from God’s great earth forever. The ghul hunter, with his city man’s love of this one building he called home, did not understand her people. He did not understand what she had lost. But he had started her thinking nonetheless.

Home
, Zamia thought. For the nomadic Badawi, it was not a place. The strains of one of her people’s most important songs forced its way into her head. It would start with the boys singing,

Home is where my father is! I am a true Badawi!

Then the men would take their turn, singing

Home is where my sons are! I am a true Badawi!

Then all would sing together:

Home is where my band’s tents are! I am a true Badawi!

The song was a boastful one, intended to flaunt her people’s superiority to the soft villagers and city folk. But now it took on a mournful irony. Her father had joined her mother in death. She had no sons or daughters. The isolation of her band meant that
no other band would take her in. How could she ever know a home again?

The burning need for revenge had pushed her far. But her body felt as if it would melt from exhaustion. There was nothing more she could dwi she couldo tonight. Nothing that is, but mourn all she had lost. And so, sure that she was out of the hearing range of her new-found allies, and more tired than she’d ever been, Zamia Banu Laith Badawi, for the first time in years, very quietly cried herself to sleep.

T
HE GUARDSMAN DID NOT KNOW how many days he had been held in the red lacquered box.

The lid opened and the gaunt man’s hard hands pulled him, naked and whimpering, from the box. The gaunt man threw him to the dirt floor. The guardsman lay there, his throat burning with thirst, trying to remember his name. All he could remember was that he was a guardsman, born in the Crescent Moon Palace and sworn to service there. That the other guardsmen served under him. The gaunt man and his shadow-creature would not let him forget that.

And he remembered the street thief and the beggar. The gaunt man had killed them both slowly, letting their blood spatter onto his already filthy kaftan. He had made the guardsman listen to their pleas. Made him smell their waste as they soiled themselves in fear.

He did not know where he was now. A room. Rafters and scrabbling rats. A cellar? A cell?

Then he heard the squealing in his mind, and the jackal-thing’s voice was in his head again.

Listen to Mouw Awa, once called Hadu Nawas, who speaketh for his blessed friend. Thou art an honored guardsman. Begat and born in the Crescent Moon Palace. Thou art sworn in the name of God to defend it.
All of those beneath thee shall serve.

Listen to Mouw Awa, who is unseen and unheard by men until he doth strike! Who doth laugh away sword-blade and arrow! Who was remade by the Jackal God and freed from his prison by his blessed friend.

Listen to Mouw Awa and know no hope. Know that none shall save thee. Mouw Awa doth use his powers to sneak and smuggle and kill his blessed friend’s enemies. The fat one, the clean one, the kitten.

The shadow-jackal-man continued to whisper in the guardsman’s mind of blood and bursting lungs. Again he felt hard hands under his ar
mpits. The gaunt man dragged him to the other side of the dark room, where a great black kettle bubbled and hissed and smelled of brimstone, though there was no flame beneath it. The liquid within the kettle looked like molten rubies, and the red glow of it lit the gaunt man’s black-bearded face.

He felt himself being lifted and plunged into the kettle. He felt his skin being scalded. And somewhere he heard the shameful screaming and pleading of a man who had once been strong.

Z
AMIA BANU LAITH BADAWI breathed in the scent of her family’s death again. She bolted awake, screaming and growling and reliving that horrible night when she’d found her band.

No, it was just a dream. This is a new night.
She was not in the desert. She was lying on a pallet in Doctor Adoulla Makhslood’s townhouse.

But that cruel crypt-scent was still there.

Not just a dream!
Out of the corner of her eye, Zamia saw motion. Something lunged at her. Only her Angel-touched reflexes and the years of training with her father saved her. Something—something almost man-shaped—smashed into the pallet where she had lain a breathspace ago.

No! Mouw Awa the manjackal is unseen and unheard by men until he doth strike. But the kitten hath scented him!

The thing before her was shadow-black, save for glowing red eyes. Somehow she heard its words with both her ears and her mind. The creature held a vague shape—something like a jackal walking about on a man’s two legs. But the edges of its outline whipped and wavered like tent flags in the wind.

The reek of her band’s death wafted from the creature. The smell of burnt jackal-hair, and of ancient child-blood. Its eyes. They were a brighter version of what she had seen in her dead bandsmen. And looking at the abomination before her, Zamia knew that it was this thing that had eaten the souls of her band—of her father.

She screamed in fear. The thing lunged at her again, and she barely managed to dodge back from its shadow-wrapped fangs. She shouted.

“RASEED! DOCTOR! ENEMIES!” It came out lioness-loud, louder than any girl’s shout could be, as she took the shape. When she was younger, she had needed to
try
, over and over again sometimes, to take the shape. But now it came without thinking, in the space of a breath. One moment she was a woman, the next a great golden lioness. One moment a girl’s fear filled her, the next her veins raced with sunlight.

With the claws and fangs and gold coat came confidence. She dodged another lunge and growled at the creature. “Whatever you are, you have murdered the Banu Laith Badawi. I’ll tear out your throat!”

The thing before her made a sickening whine, between a dog’s and a vile man’s.
Mouw Awa is alone no more. He hath been found by his blessed friend. And he shall slay the kitten and the fat one and the clean one for his blessed friend. Mouw Awa doth shiver, knowing how salty-sweet will be the kitten’s soul-of-two-tastes!

Hearing this thing’s voice in her head was disturbing, but her father had taught her years ago to pay attention to an enemy’s body rather than their words. Zamia roared again to rouse her allies. Then she leapt at the foul creature before her.

Even as she did so, she tried to understand what this monster was. Could her claws cut a shadow?

Zamia raked out a left paw and found her answer. The foul thing—
Mouw
Awa
, it had called itself—spit and whined and danced back in pain.

The kitten hath
cut
Mouw Awa! Savage as her father, the cruel cutter of Mouw Awa’s blessed friend!

The sheer speed of the creature as it leapt at her caught Zamia off guard. She managed to stay a half-step ahead of one snap of its maw, then another. But she was tiring already and all signs were that this creature was not. And she was not used to fighting in these cramped conditions.

She scrabbled back and tipped over a small bookstand, which pinned her rear paws.
God help me!
The creature closed, and its scent threatened to overwhelm her.

A streak of blue flew at the thing that called itself Mouw Awa.
Raseed!

The dervish’s sword was out, and he slashed at the creature, drawing its attention away from Zamia. Once, twice, and thrice Raseed’s forked sword cleaved into the thing, but it made no mark.