Throne of the Crescent Moon (17 page)

Raseed’s blood began to race, but he quickly felt the fool as Litaz’s sober instructions slid into a snicker.

“Hee! Oh, forgive me, Raseed! I am only teasing you. No, no, do not be angry with me. It is just that there are so few occasions for jest in my life these days. But God’s truth be told, the determination I saw in the set of your jaw is a tribute to your valor.”

Raseed accepted this compliment without comment and set aside his annoyance at being teased.

“In fact,” Litaz went on, taking up charcoal and paper and writing as she spoke, “you need only go six streets over to the Quarter of Stalls. Just past the Inspector’s stall you will see the shop of Doctor Zarqawlayari on the left. You will know it by the green-painted door. Give him
this. He will fill my order and charge me later.” The alkhemist handed him the note and ushered him out the door and into the warm afternoon air.

As he walked, Raseed thought he heard the voices of the Doctor and Dawoud coming from around the corner behind him. But he figured that they would wish to be left alone, so he headed on without stopping. The late afternoon sun half-dazzled his eyes as he walked. He passed a man making water against the stone wall of a shop, and another man who was healthy enough to work begging for alms. He noted each of them with contempt and walked on.

The tempting scent of frying earth-apples welcomed him to the Quarter of Stalls. Raseed passed the row of rough-hewn food stalls, ignoring his stomach-rumbling hunger. A few minutes later he reached the green painted door Litaz had described.

It sat half-open, and he stepped inside, knocking once to let the shopkeeper know of his arrival. The room was unfurnished, save for a shelf of neatly sorted bottles and boxes against the far wall and a worktable not unlike the one in Dawoud and Litaz’s shop.

A middle-aged Rughali man in a tight-fitting turban—Doctor Zarqawlayari, no doubt—looked up from the worktable in distracted annoyance. As he took in Raseed’s blue silk habit with a surprised look, however, he straightened and then bowed formally.

“God’s peace, Master Dervish. Well, this is an honor! One does not see many men of the Order in this city. I…what may this humble and unworthy shopkeeper do for you?”

Though the praise or scorn of mere men should mean nothing to a true servant of God, Raseed found himself quite thrilled to be treated with such respect. The people of Rughal-ba were less lax in such matters than the Abassenese. Not for the first time in his life, Raseed wondered whether he’d been born in the wrong realm.

You were born exactly where Almighty God decreed—now keep to your business,
the reprimanding voice within him scolded.

“God’s peace to you, sir,” Raseed said. “I have been sent here by Lady Litaz Daughter-of-Likami.” He handed the man Litaz’s note.

The shopkeeper read the note slowly in silence, then looked up with an apologetic grimace. “Ah, yes, Lady Litaz. A good woman, and one of my best customers, even if she is sometimes late in paying her accounts. But I regret that I must disappoint you both, Master Dervish.”

Raseed arched an eyebrow in inquiry.

Again Doctor Zarqawlayari grimaced in real-seeming regret. He scratched at his goatee nervously. “Left and right, men are preparing for the worst, and thus crimson quicksilver is in even greater demand than normal these days. It is a rare solution in the best of times, and these are not the best of times. I’ve but the one vial left. And a Tax of Goods has just been announced in the name of the Defender of Virtue himself. The Inspector of Shops will be visiting tomorrow morning to collect his levy, and I must save this vial for him.”

For a moment Raseed found himself struck dumb. Finding and defeating a vicious ghul-maker. Saving Zamia Banu Laith Badawi’s life. Surely these were crucial things in God’s eyes. That something so simple, so profane, as the vagaries of trade and politics could interfere seemed impossible.

“But…but we need that vial!” he finally managed to say. “There are lives at stake!”

The shopkeeper spread his hands in a gesture of helplessness. “I
am
sorry, Master Dervish. Truly I am. But there are lives at stake on my end of the stick as well. If I don’t hold the required portion of my goods for the Khalif’s requisition, they’ll throw me in the gaol. My family would starve. What am I to do?”

But without crimson quicksilver, Zamia will die. And we will be no closer to finding the foul killers we hunt.
Raseed pictured walking back into Dawoud and Litaz’s home empty-handed, and something within him snapped.

I could simply take what we need here.
The thought pierced his heart like a poisoned arrow. He felt sick just thinking it.
Our need is great, and our cause is just. Would God
—

Behind him, the shop door slammed shut, rattling the bottles on shelf and table. Even before he turned, Raseed sensed the presence of
other men. He spun around and saw three rough-looking figures fill the other end of the room.

A small man with a face like a rat’s brandished a long knife. He was flanked by a burly man with one eye wearing a brass punching glove and a tall red river Soo with a fighting staff. “Ahh, God’s peace again, Doctor Z!” the rat-faced man said. “You know why we—eh? Who’s this fool?”

The shopkeeper spoke in frightened tones. “Damned-by-God extorters! This is the second time this month they’ve come for my goods. Please, Master Dervish, help me!”

Raseed felt uncertainty fly mercifully from his heart. This was thievery, and he knew what he had to do. He drew himself up and faced the t offaced therio. “If you are here to take that which God has not given you, this will not go well for you. I suggest you leave now, wicked ones.”

The one-eyed man spoke, his voice like a blacksmith’s bellows. “‘Master Dervish,’ huh? Look, we got no bones to pick with the Order, boy. This business is between this greedy son-of-a-whore and our Prince. So why don’t you just make your scrawny ass scarce before we grown men have to spank it, eh?”

The Soo man spit once, smiled, and thumped the steel tip of his staff against the stone floor.

At last, something that makes sense again. A clear path of action.
“Defend yourselves,” Raseed said softly.

Then he leapt.

There was too little room in the confines of the small shop to draw his sword. Instead, Raseed lunged at the rat-faced man first, palm-punching him in the face and breaking his nose. In the same motion, he grabbed the man by his throat and tossed him at the one-eyed man, sending both of them down in a heap.

Raseed spun just in time to dodge a staff-blow from the third thug, who was having a hard time wielding his weapon in such tight quarters. With a chop of his hand, Raseed split the astonished man’s staff in two, then sent him flying into the wall with a spinning kick.

One-eye was back on his feet now, and he stood back warily, looking
for an opening. The man threw out a punch but found only air. Raseed drove his elbow up, shattering the man’s jaw, and he collapsed.

Rat-face, who was still on the ground nursing his broken nose, tried to stab Raseed’s leg. Raseed snaked back and stomped on the man’s wrist, which broke with a satisfying crunch. The little man dropped his knife and curled into a ball, whimpering in half conscious pain.

The Soo threw his staff halves at Raseed, yanked the shop door open, and ran. Raseed started to pursue, but first turned back to make sure the shopkeeper was safe.

The man’s mouth hung open, a gratifying look of awe on his flushed face. “Oh, thank you, Master Dervish, thank you! And God’s blessings upon you! Those thugs were—”

Raseed heard a noise. Without warning, his feet were swept out from beneath him. He fell hard onto his back, the wind knocked out of him. Above him a light flashed in his eyes, and he felt suddenly nauseated and disoriented.

Sorcery of some sort. These villains had accomplices outside the shop,
he realized and cursed himself for being ambushed so easily by common criminals.

He fought past the sickness in his stomach and the after-light still dancing in his vision and started to rise to his feet.

And suddenly a sword was at his throat.

Raseed looked up past the light motes swirling in his eyes to see the suede- and silk-clad Falcon Prince, holding a small mirror in one hand and a saber in another. The edge of the blade grazed Raseed’s neck.

“We meet again, friend of Adoulla Makhslood! And you’ve damn near killed two of my men!”

Raseed said nothing, but waited for his dizziness to fade and watched for a momentʺl moments inattention in order to knock away the thief’s blade.

“Boys!” the impossibly tall bandit said to his men, his eyes and his sword alike still glued to Raseed. “No shame in getting whipped by this one—he fights as well as any man I’ve ever seen, save perhaps myself. But stop your groaning and moaning. Grab that jar of blue powder
there and get out of here! A thousand apologies, O noble shopkeeper, but we must, in the name of the good people of Dhamsawaat, confiscate your supply of nightpetal essence. Worry not, though—I swear to you in God’s name that it will find a loving home in the hands of my master alkhemist, who will make good use of it.”

Thievery, mockery, and vain Name-taking all in one swoop of his tongue!
It was disgusting, and Raseed’s blood burned at not being able to do anything to stop it.

“Oh, come now,” Pharaad Az Hammaz said, speaking again to Raseed as his men made their escape. “Don’t look so upset, young man. You’re only on your back now because I resorted to dirty tricks. When I saw how well you fought, I wasn’t about to take a chance on face-to-face foolishness. I had to use all my stealth and my very last dazzle-glass.” He tossed the small mirror to the stone floor, where it shattered.

“Your sight and stomach will return to normal in an hour’s time. Just lay there for a moment and catch your breath. As for me, well, I must be elsewhere. But perhaps our paths will cross again.” The bandit backed away and toward the shop door quickly, keeping his sword pointed in Raseed’s direction until he was out the door and out of sight.

The moment the sword edge left his throat, Raseed tried to stand. He was still disoriented from the effects of the thief’s magic mirror and, as he came to his feet, he barely managed to keep himself from being sick.

An hour to recover, the bandit had said, and Raseed did not doubt that was the case for normal men. But Raseed was a weapon of God, not some hapless watchman. Ignoring the whimpers of the still-shocked shopkeeper, he forced himself to take step after step and moved, as fast as he could, out the green-painted door and after the bandit.

Stepping out onto the street Raseed scanned the crowd and saw a knot of gawkers staring and pointing at the side of a townhouse. There he saw Pharaad Az Hammaz climbing to the building’s roof, obviously aided by the same remarkable leaping magic he’d used after thwarting the execution in Inspector’s Square.

Shoving his way through the crowd, Raseed grit his teeth against his
rioting stomach, took a few soul-focusing breaths, and leapt up to a second story window box. His feet and fingers found holds in the wood latticework of the building’s window-screens, and he climbed as quickly as he could. For a moment his head swam in dizziness, and he thought he would fall. But he called on all the strength he had, kept climbing, and finally hoisted himself over the edge of the rooftop.

He stood and, on the other side of the flat roof, saw the Falcon Prince, his brawny arms crossed and an impudent grin on his moustachioed face.

Raseed drew his sword.

“
Most
impressive, young man!” the bandit boomed. “God’s balls, I’ve never seen a man recover from the dazzle-glass’s magic so swiftly! frwiftly!D; Suddenly the man’s saber was in his hand.

Despite his dizziness, Raseed sped at the thief, swinging his sword. Pharaad Az Hammaz parried one blow, then another, and another.

Steel sang out loudly each time their weapons met, and with the impact of each blow Raseed thought he would vomit. But he grit his teeth and fought on, pressing the attack, looking for an opening in the thief’s defenses.

There was none. The Falcon Prince was sweating now, but the smile never left his face. “Do you know, I think you might have had my head by now, if you weren’t still sick and dizzy,” he shouted. “But you are. And so—”

The bandit darted back, dodging yet another of Raseed’s blows. Then, with a speed Raseed would have thought impossible, Pharaad Az Hammaz kicked a booted foot into Raseed’s midsection. Raseed fell backwards, his stomach emptying, and his sword flying from his hand.

This is it, then,
the voice within him spit.
Death at the hands of a common criminal. And you dared to call yourself a weapon of God!

But, instead of closing in for the kill, Pharaad Az Hammaz reached into his tunic and produced a small object, tossing it at Raseed.

“I’ve no more time for this,” the thief bellowed, “but I leave you with a gift. Catch!”

Acting purely on reflex, Raseed caught the small glass bottle the
thief tossed at him.
What new trick is this?
he wondered, seeing the bright red liquid that sloshed and sparkled in the late afternoon sun.

“Doctor Zarqawlayari’s last vial of crimson quicksilver, young man! It’s yours, now—take it with my blessings. I heard your plea to the shopkeeper before my men made their presence known. The Falcon Prince is in the business of saving lives when he can. Better that you and yours should have it than that tyrant the Khalif.”

As the man babbled, Raseed started to go for his sword, which lay a few feet away.

“The seal on the vial has been broken, though,” the thief continued, edging back toward the opposite side of the rooftop. “Open air is slowly creeping in now, which means you have less than an hour to get it to Lady Litaz. We can do our little sword dance up here all day, if you wish. Or you can save whomever’s life it is you came here to save.” The bandit
kept backing away as he spoke, making his escape.

Raseed came to his feet and looked toward his sword.

“You can thank me later!” the Falcon Prince shouted mockingly, and he leapt effortlessly—sorcerously, no doubt—to another rooftop, leaving Raseed staring stupidly at the vial in his hand.