Throne of the Crescent Moon (33 page)

To Adoulla’s surprise, that shut the boy up. Behind them, more of the Prince’s men filed quietly into the kitchen.

The Falcon Prince put a big hand on Mother Midnight’s shoulder. “Auntie, I swear by my soul that in half a day’s time you’ll be able to ask the sack of scum yourself. Though I fear the only answer you’ll get will be the sound of his head hitting the executioner’s leather mat!”

He turned to Adoulla. “I don’t see that there are any monsters here, save the one I’ve come a-hunting, Uncle. But two rooms from this one lies the man who is strangling our city. I give you and yours one more chance to choose. Follow me into that room and live with the consequences, or go back down that well—under my men’s guard, of course—and sit this adventure out, despite your wild warnings of ghuls. Either way, the dervish’s words make me wary. I will have your oaths before God that you will not betray me,” he said, looking pointedly at Raseed, “or you will go no further with us.”

The heretic who asks for oaths,
Adoulla thought bitterly, and saw his wry expression reflected on his friends’ faces as they each said “I swear it before Almighty God.” All except Raseed, whose face may as well have
been carved from marble for all that it revealed.
He knows, as I do, that this Orshado
will
show himself, and that it is his holy duty to help me stop such a man. And no doubt another part of him wishes to watch over the tribeswoman.

The boy said nothing. Adoulla cleared his throat. Mother Midnight, who’d been busy stuffing the guardsman’s split-skulled corpse into an oven, tapped her foot and said, “We haven’t time for this, Pharaad.”

Adoulla gripped the dervish’s elbow and squeezed. He saw Raseed’s gaze dart once in Zamia’s direction before the boy whispered, “I swear it before Almighty God.”

Following the master thief, they moved from the kitchen into a room with intricately engraved white walls. The light scent of pleasant perfumes—more subtle than incense and no doubt disbursed by wafting-spells—filled the space. An ebonwood door in the opposite wall was the only dark mark in the room. Before Adoulla could begin to think about what a monumental moment he was partaking in, the Prince and a knot of his men had crossed the room and slit the throats of two guardsmen. The Prince kicked in the big doors with a seemingly impossible strength and flew into the far room. There was nothing Adoulla and his friends could do now but follow.

The Velvet Chamber, Mother Midnight had called it, and it was obvious why: ceiling, Bk="1eigwalls, floor, and a great canopied couch were dripping with the plush purple material. And in the center of it sat a lean, youngish man dripping with jewelry and resplendent robes, staring in stupefaction at one of his guardsman who had just cracked open the skull of another.

By the time Jabbari akh-Khaddari, God’s Regent-in-the-World, found voice enough to scream, the Falcon Prince had already dashed about the room again with that glowing blue powder of his. Clearly, the sound of the screams was reaching no one.

“You…you’re…how did…?” the Khalif stammered without one whit of court-phrasing in his speech. “No intruder could have made it into…” He fell silent, clearly at a loss. He looked at Dawoud, and his kohl-lined eyes grew even wider. “You! Where did—?”

“No questions, tyrant!” the Prince shouted, his mad eyes ablaze with crazed purpose. “But
I
have a question for
you
! How does it feel to—”

The Prince’s words were cut off as the Khalif touched one of his rings and a flash of light filled the room. Adoulla, sensing danger in that way that had become second nature over the decades, dashed toward the Khalif, and he saw Pharaad Az Hammaz do the same. Something slid into place behind him, and before him, he saw a thick panel of wood slide down from the ceiling, cutting him off from the Khalif.
False walls
, he realized, and they had cut him off from his friends as well.

The Falcon Prince stood beside him, pounding on the panels with the pommel of his sword. “God’s balls!” the thief shouted, “These are made of ensorcelled wood. That sneaky son of a whore! Though in truth, I suppose it’s no great matter. Dispatching him first would have helped, but he is not my true quarry anyway. In a sense, this makes things easier for us—he is cut off from the Heir.”

“Easier for
you
perhaps, you damned-by-God madman!” Adoulla fumed. “My
friends
are on the other side of this thing! I won’t leave them.” Adoulla pounded on the wooden wall and shouted for his friends, not caring whether he was drawing down the attention of the guardsmen. He knew Dawoud and the others would be doing the same on the other side of the panel. But he heard no shouts, felt no pounding from the other side of the thin wood.
More magic at work
.

Genuine sympathy lit the Prince’s eyes, but his tone was practical. “Do as you must, Uncle. But unless I miss my guess, breaking this wall down would be a whole day’s work even for a master alkhemist such as the Lady Litaz Daughter-of-Likami.”

Some part of Adoulla’s mind noted that the Prince knew his friends’ reputations as well as he’d known Adoulla’s.

“Your most guaranteed gamble,” the thief continued, “is to follow me. Without me by your side, you’ll have trouble with both the guardsmen and my people, not to mention with finding your way through this monstrous maze of a palace.”

The man was right, of course.

In frustration, Adoulla kicked the wooden wall that separated him from his friends, getting a stubbed toe for his trouble. He looked up in time to see Pharaad Az Hammaz tear down a velvet curtain and dart through a stone passageway that was hidde Bky gwall than behind it.

The master thief had clearly memorized the layout of the palace, for he strode through confidently, making left and right turns down passageways and through rooms so quickly that Adoulla could not keep up. Adoulla huffed out, “I’ll catch up,” but the Falcon Prince was wild-eyed with purpose and paid Adoulla little mind anyway.

Adoulla followed through another long hall, dashing past a pack of skirmishing men in livery. The combatants looked up at him in surprise but were too busy trying to kill each other to bother with trying to kill him. He caught a glimpse of the Prince darting through a set of great ornate doors, thrown open. He followed.

He stepped into a huge room lit by perpetually burning magical lamps. In the uncanny glow of the flames he could see, lining the left and right walls, dozens of great cases of gold-lined glass. Each of them held a huge turban.
The Hall of the Heavenly Defenders
! The legendary symbolic resting place of the dead Khalifs, each of which was represented by a resplendent turban. Purple silversilk, peacock feathers, pearls the size of a child’s fist. Adoulla forced himself not to gawk and strode on.

Another grand room near as big as a city block. The ceiling was worked with pearl, platinum, and gold. Brilliant tapestries depicting the Ministering Angels hung from the walls. Adoulla huffed his way past columns of rose marble, cunningly carved so that the waves and veins spelled out the Names of God.
These Khalifs really do believe they are God’s Regents-in-the-World! Everywhere this palace calls out His Names,
Adoulla thought,
yet His work is nowhere to be found.

From somewhere in the palace men were now shouting, and a loud bell was clanging an alarm. Much closer by, he heard the clash of weapons. Adoulla rounded a corner just in time to see Pharaad Az Hammaz exchange a brief series of sword strokes with two men who were guarding a small bronze door.

His broad-bladed saber feinted and parried like a masterfully made rapier. It glowed golden as it stabbed at the guardsmen.
Weapon magic
. The kind that cost a fortune. Again Adoulla marveled at the depth of Pharaad Az Hammaz’s coin purse. The guards were dead within seconds, and the Prince flung open the door. Adoulla followed him in.

The room was smaller and daintier than most of those he’d seen in the palace, as if in reflection of its occupant: a frail-looking boy of nine years, wearing optical glasses and gemthread robes that must have cost as much as Adoulla’s townhouse. He looked up and blinked as they entered.

The boy had the same face-shape as the Khalif.
The Heir.
Little Sammari akh-Jabbari akh-Khaddari sat cross-legged on a cushion in the center of the room, a huge illuminated book open before him. His mild expression was replaced with shock as he seemed to suddenly notice the mad racket filling the palace. Adoulla guessed that there had been a silencing spell cast on the brass door.
So much money and magic wasted on sheltering these fools from unpleasantness
.

“You— You are— You are
him
,” the boy stammered with a bit more grace than his father had. “The Falcon Prince!”

“INDEED I AM, O TYRANT-IN-TRAINING!” the Prince boomed, advancing with his sword still drawn on the timid-seeming boy, who was practically bowled over by the sound. “I am the Falcon Prince, and my wrath is terrible! I ha Banheyx201Dve come to—”

“You are my hero,” the boy said quietly, brushing a strand of long black hair from his face.

“I warn, you, spawn of a—eh?” Pharaad Az Hammaz blinked, his bombast dropping away. It was the first time Adoulla had seen the thief look unsure of himself. “What did you say?”

The boy looked ashamed that he had spoken, but he repeated himself. “I said ‘you are my hero.’” The Heir looked at Adoulla, but only seemed to half-see him. An alarm bell clanged again.

It was quite a thing, Adoulla thought, to see the loudmouthed Falcon Prince speechless. It only lasted for a moment, though. The Prince
turned and closed the brass door behind them, cutting off the sounds of chaos. With an effortless strength he dragged a heavy ebonwood couch over to bar the door.

“Hero?” The Prince asked at last.

“Yes!” the Heir said, closing his book and growing more excited.
The Thousand Tales of the Pirate Pasha
, Adoulla noted. Probably the most expensive edition of the cheap, tawdry book that had ever been scribed. The Heir stood up. “Yes! A hero like those in the books! Feeding the poor. Vanquishing villains with a sword and a smile. My advisors say there are no such men, but I know better. Almighty God willing, someday I will do the same!”

Adoulla thought that, if the Prince had been a pious man, he would have dropped to his knees right there and thanked Beneficent God for this bit of kind fate.

As it was, the master thief smiled from ear to ear and clapped a big hand on the boy’s shoulder. “Well! It would appear my spies don’t know everything about what goes on in the palace after all.
You
are certainly a better fruit than the rotten tree you fell from, boy. Not nearly the insufferable, power mad little shit I expected you to be.”

The Heir smiled the smile of a child that had never been allowed to be naughty. “You don’t call me Young Defender! I like that. Do you know that even my playmates called me that when I was a little child?”

“When you
were
a little child?” Adoulla sputtered. “You
are—
”

The Prince cut him off. “Well,
you
don’t call
me
Pretender or Madman. We shall get on splendidly, boy!”

The Heir’s glowing smile slipped. “But, uh, what is going on here, O Prince? Do you mean to kill me? Have you killed my father already?” To his credit, the boy did not sound frightened.

Pharaad Az Hammaz gave the boy a long look. “I will not lie to you, child. I am here to seize the Throne of the Crescent Moon. It holds grand magics locked within its marble, magics with which I can help the good people of Dhamsawaat. And I mean to seize the palace, too. There are sick people who need the medicines kept here. Starving people that might feast on the palace granaries.”

The boy smiled sadly. “When I speak of such things to my tutors they say it is the will of Almighty God that some have and some have not. And that I should not admire you because you are not a prince at all, but a murderer and a bringer-of-terror.”

Pharaad Az Hammaz took a deep breath, and then his voice took on a booming tenor again. “
I
am a murderer? And what of your father, who dares call himself ‘Defender,’ but has others do the fighting and bleeding and killing and dying for him? Beggars and street-widows starve to death while your father’s grainhouses are bursting, but that is the ‘will of God,’ eh? Cartmen and porters waste away from fevers that your father’s physicians could cure! But
I
am the violent one! The bringer of terror! I have felt both hunger and the sword, my young friend! I would rather die of the sword. It is kinder. Faster. I’ve killed men, yes, but with my own hands, looking them in the eye. Your father, though, is the weak and lazy sort of killer. The kind who pretends he is not a killer. Is that what
you
wish to become?”

“No,” the boy said, strong and clear as one of the alarm-bells that was still ringing away outside the room. “But what of my father, O Prince? What of me?”

“Your father has the blood of many men and women on his hands, Sammari akh-Jabbari akh-Khaddari. But if you aid me in this, I will let you and him go peacefully into exile, perhaps to—”

“No,” the boy interrupted with an air of easy command that belied his bookish appearance. “If you want my help with this, O Prince, you must kill my father. I have sworn an oath before God that I would see him dead.”

Adoulla watched the Prince gape at the boy and didn’t doubt that he was gaping also.

“I…but.…Why…?” Pharaad Az Hammaz stammered.

“You are wrong about my father’s laziness in killing, O Prince. Perhaps you have heard that my mother, God shelter her soul, died from a fever. She did not. I watched my father strangle her because he thought he had seen her make sugar-eyes at one of his aides. When I tried to stop him, he beat me. He said I would understand when I
grew older. This was five years ago, before he became the Khalif. All I have come to understand in that time is that it is my sacred duty to see him slain.”

Behind them, the couch blocking the door creaked and began to split as someone tried to force their way in. The familiar bloodlust lit Pharaad Az Hammaz’s eyes. His saber was at the ready.