The City of Silk and Steel Read online

  The last, and by far the most surprising of those who volunteered was Imtisar. Zuleika narrowed her eyes as she saw the older woman approach the group, which had clustered at the side of the cave mouth.

  ‘When last we spoke on this theme, you said that you could not abide by the decision to go to war,’ Gursoon said sharply.

  ‘I know,’ Imtisar replied. ‘That makes it even more important that I have some say in these proceedings.’

  ‘If you are coming to try and change our minds,’ Zuleika began in a warning tone, ‘then we have voted and it’s clear—’

  The courtesan cut her off. ‘Of course not. I won’t interfere with the decision of the group. But nor will I leave all the decision-making to the warmongers. No, if I am forced to stay, then I will help to lead this campaign. Not because you want my opinion – you’ve made that clear enough – but because you dearly need it. I’m the only one on this council with enough good sense to save us all from suicide.’

  So saying she stalked off, casting a last contemptuous look over her shoulder at the group, who watched her leave in stunned silence.

  ‘Not her,’ Zuleika said, in something like horror. ‘We’ll never get anything done!’

  ‘You did make an open appeal,’ Gursoon reminded her. ‘Besides, it’s an improvement on her former position.’

  Zuleika scowled at the woman’s retreating back, but Gursoon’s expression was more circumspect. She had noticed that Imtisar was wearing the flawed ruby on her finger.

  ‘I have a feeling that organising this war is going to be like herding camels,’ Zuleika remarked that night, as she and Rem sat in her tent. They had decided to hold the reading lessons in the evening, the cool air being more conducive to mental application. Rem nodded her agreement, smiling wryly.

  ‘Gursoon was right though. It’s better that Imtisar should join the council than refuse to recognise it.’ She glanced down at the sloping sentence that Zuleika had scratched out tentatively on the parchment in front of her.

  ‘That’s a good start.’

  ‘It’s wrong, isn’t it?’

  ‘It’s not wrong. You’ve only misspelled a couple of words. Look, I’ll show you.’

  As Rem took the parchment from her, Zuleika shifted her position, peering over her shoulder while she worked. Rem could feel the other woman’s skin pressed lightly against her back, her breath brushing her cheek. She felt her thoughts begin to disintegrate. A minute passed, then another.

  ‘Rem?’ Zuleika frowned. ‘You haven’t written anything down.’

  ‘Sorry, I’m a little tired.’

  ‘Should we continue tomorrow?’

  ‘Oh, no, I’m fine.’

  In fact Rem was almost overwhelmed by the sense of Zuleika’s presence. It filled the tent like thick incense, muddling her thoughts and clouding her mind. Zuleika was charged with significance for her, so permeated with the residue of future emotions that she seemed to blur as she moved, leaving a trail of after-images wherever she went. As in every case concerning her own life, Rem’s sight did nothing but confuse her on the subject of Zuleika. Raw feelings, shorn of context and chronology, assaulted her whenever she so much as thought of the beautiful assassin. She could not see her as she was through the intoxicating haze of what she would be; each version obscured the other, so that Rem could not say what Zuleika would one day mean to her, or what she meant to her now.

  The first meeting of the council of war was held the following morning. Most of it was taken up with further discussion of the djinni’s bewildering gifts, which were placed in the centre of the large tent set aside for the meeting. The council members sat around them in a circle while they talked. Gursoon told the story of the ruby again, and Zuleika repeated the conclusions she had reached about the significance of the pen and the word on Rem’s arm, but they could make little of the other objects. They discussed the comb without success. Initially the stable yard key caused some excitement as a possible means of entering the palace, but this hope was dashed when Issi told them that the stable yard gates were locked from the inside.

  ‘That leaves the water skin,’ Gursoon said.

  So far Jamal had been ignored by all present. His desire to speak had grown so strong by now that he swelled visibly with the pressure of his unspoken opinions. About most of the gifts he had as few ideas as did the rest of the council, though this had not dampened his urge to contribute to their discussions. On the subject of the water skin, however, he had formed a decided view. It had been his gift, and he felt that this gave him a greater insight into its meaning. Now, he could contain himself no longer.

  ‘I think I’ve divined what that means,’ he burst out. ‘When I accompanied the party who visited the djinni, I ran out of water. With nothing to drink, I became weak, and therefore vulnerable. The same logic works with an entire city.’ He paused, his face flushing a little with the brilliance of his deduction. ‘The djinni’s will is clear enough: if we are to retake Bessa, we must poison its wells.’

  There was a communal intake of breath, followed by absolute silence. Jamal tried to suppress his smile of pride. He should, he felt, maintain an expression of solemnity during this weighty occasion. After all, now that he was finally taking his rightful place at the head of discussions, he must assume the role with the proper dignity. His level gaze faltered a little as he saw the shock and disgust on the faces that looked back at him.

  ‘What is it?’ he asked, in genuine surprise, ‘It seems obvious to me that—’

  Gursoon’s slap was not particularly forceful, but the shock of it nearly knocked Jamal over. He reeled in pain and astonishment, his mouth opening on a gasp of outrage.

  ‘Jamal,’ Gursoon said fiercely, ‘you must never mention that vile idea again. Do you understand?’

  ‘But—’

  ‘I said never!’ she roared. ‘A city without water is a city of ghosts. Nothing could justify such an act, and nothing could expiate it.’

  Jamal opened his mouth to protest further, but Gursoon cut him off. ‘I think it best that you leave this council now,’ she said icily. ‘There is nothing more you can say to us.’

  Jamal looked for support from the rest of the council, but found none; the eyes that met his gaze were cold and comfortless. No one, not even the most barbarous of the nomad tribes, who fed their enemies’ innards to their dogs, would ever consider poisoning a well. Even the thought of it was taboo. Jamal would find no sympathy in the seraglio. He stood up, breathing hard. Though he had pretensions to the contrary, he was still a child, and for a moment his eyes filled with tears. Then, wiping his face with an aggressive motion, he walked shakily from the tent. The council watched him leave, their expressions varying from outrage to horror.

  ‘That boy has a nasty mind,’ Issi muttered, his face dark.

  Over the following months, the council of war met on alternate evenings. Zuleika divided her time between these gatherings and her reading lessons with Rem, but the best part of each day she devoted to training the army. It was a large force: all but the oldest women and the children of the seraglio, as well as Issi’s camel-drivers and the bandits.

  Zuleika started the fighters off with sword drills, teaching them basic thrusts and parries before she moved on to more advanced techniques. For the first month they drilled with sticks rather than swords. This was partly because the trading parties whom Zuleika had sent to purchase weapons in Jawahir, Gharia, Perdondaris and Ibu Kim had not yet returned, and partly to limit the severity of any injuries sustained. In the early days of the training, such injuries occurred with moderate frequency, as each member of the army adjusted to the unfamiliar movements of combat. Even the thieves, who considered themselves competent swordsmen, had a lot to learn from Zuleika. Most of the women had never held a weapon before, let alone used one.

  Gradually, however, a change was being wrought in the camp. While at first the women of the seraglio held their weapons nervously, eyeing them with a deep mistrust, soon they could wield
them with the sort of practised ease which looks like carelessness to an untrained eye. A week after the vernal equinox, Issi returned from a journey to Beyt Kirim with a cargo of longbows, and Zuleika began to instruct the fighters in archery as well as swordplay. Umayma proved particularly adept at this new discipline, her days of hunting oryx with Issi’s boys having perfected her aim. But there were few in the army who found any of the skills Zuleika taught difficult to master. For the most part, they learned swiftly, growing in experience and confidence every day.

  The same could not be said of the war council, where setbacks were numerous and progress slow. Although its meetings involved a much smaller number of people and no weapons whatsoever, they were far more aggressive and easily twice as loud. Zuleika had envisaged the council as a way of gathering ideas, with all final decisions being hers alone, but she soon discovered that such an arrangement was much easier in theory than it was in practice. Once set in motion, the council of women had a momentum of its own which was difficult to arrest.

  Zeinab had warned Zuleika that no one would follow her orders unquestioningly, and her prediction held true. Zuleika’s tactics were disagreed with often and vocally, and almost every meeting featured at least one attempt to call a vote, usually led by Imtisar. The plan of attack was not developing smoothly: after several weeks of debate, the council had not even agreed upon the best direction from which to approach Bessa’s walls.

  The constant arguments and delays of the council frustrated Zuleika, and she looked forward more and more to the evenings that she spent with Rem. Though she found reading as difficult as ever, she liked and respected the librarian, who was patient with her mistakes, and as reserved in her nature as Zuleika herself.

  Yet although Zuleika felt at ease in Rem’s company, as the reading lessons continued she began to notice something distinctly strange in the other woman’s manner. She seemed strained, somehow, self-conscious and constantly on edge. She sometimes lost her train of thought when they spoke, trailing off into silence and seeming to forget what it was she had been saying. She stiffened, almost imperceptibly, when Zuleika came near her. None of these reactions were obvious, but in Zuleika’s line of work acute observation was second nature. She felt sure that she recognised something in Rem’s behaviour, but she could not place it.

  In the end, the answer came to her in one of those seamless shifts in perception that make optical illusions clear, the invisible rendered plain by the lifting of some barrier from behind Zuleika’s own eyes. Rem quivered with unspent passion: she had been doing so for some time, but Zuleika had never noticed it before. Now, for the first time, she saw it in all its startling intensity.

  Rem was not the first woman that Zuleika had encountered whose passions inclined towards others of her sex. Many of the concubines had lain together at some point in their lives, and Jumanah and Najla had been lovers ever since they arrived in the harem. In her early days with the seraglio several women had made such advances to Zuleika, but she had declined them all, at first because any relationship she embarked on would interfere with her commission, and then, later, due to a simple lack of interest.

  The thought of lying with Rem had never occurred to her before, but she could see now how the woman burned for her, and saw no reason not to satisfy her desire. Besides, it was beginning to interfere with the reading lessons.

  The next time Rem came to Zuleika’s tent, the incense which filled it was real. Zuleika met her outside. She slipped her hand into Rem’s, tugging her gently towards the open tent flap. Rem’s eyes widened. Zuleika seemed to sharpen into focus before her, the blurred images of her present and future selves suddenly coming into perfect alignment.

  She followed Zuleika into the tent, and within its scented interior, for the first time since the library, she revealed the secrets of her body to another. Zuleika had expected to satisfy Rem’s desire, not her own, but when their lips touched she felt again that dissolution of self that she had encountered the first time they kissed, and with it the stirrings of a hunger that surprised her with its strength. Rem’s body, covered in its cursive script, fascinated and aroused Zuleika. That evening, her reading lesson was from the poetry that twined around Rem’s arms and rose and fell on the slope of her breasts.

  Long into the night, the tent was filled with murmurs, Rem’s soft whispers merging with Zuleika’s voice, musical yet hesitant as she stumbled over the new words on this new body, so unlike any she had lain with before.

  After that day, a closeness sprang up between Rem and Zuleika such as neither of them had experienced before. They lay together frequently, their reading lessons melting into their lovemaking as evening melted into night. Together, they taught each other the pleasures of words and flesh that each had been denied, and each had surfeited on. Zuleika was surprised by how much she enjoyed her first embraces with Rem, and how strong her appetite became to renew them. She discovered a pleasure in Rem’s company that she had forgone for so long she had forgotten its existence, and found, moreover, that she could talk to her as she had never done to the women of the seraglio.

  The two women could converse for a watch at a time. They discussed the preparations for battle, spoke of their histories, and of their hopes. On many topics they differed considerably. Zuleika could not understand why Rem had risked death to save the contents of Bessa’s library, while Rem was baffled and more than a little alarmed by Zuleika’s casual mentions of her time as an assassin, and the complete lack of compunction she showed about the act of murder. Yet their conversations continued in spite of these differences, as did the joining of their flesh, so that by the time half a year had passed they thought of themselves as lovers, if that mysterious thing which lay between them could be given a name.

  Meanwhile, the business of the camp went on. The fighters continued to train, and the council to argue. The impasse in the formation of tactics, however, gave way one day as suddenly as a break appearing in clouds. It was some months into the preparations for war, during a meeting of the council, and most of the women were engaged in a debate about the approach to Bessa.

  ‘If we arrive at night, the guards will be less likely to see us,’ Issi was saying. ‘At any other time, the dust cloud will give us away.’

  The gifts exchanged at the djinni’s cave remained in their place at the centre of the tent, and as Gursoon, half listening to the conversation going on around her, let her gaze play over them vacantly, her eye chanced to fall again on the wooden comb that Imtisar had given her. She looked at it with renewed interest, studying its long teeth and wooden handle with a thoughtful expression.

  ‘Imtisar,’ she asked, cutting across the noise of the group, ‘what was it you said to me when you gave me this comb?’

  ‘That it was useless,’ the courtesan replied, barely turning her attention from the debate in hand.

  ‘That’s not all you said,’ Gursoon murmured.

  She thought a little longer, and then held up a hand for silence. When she had the attention of the rest of the council, she rose to her feet and spoke.

  ‘We’re planning this battle on too small a scale,’ she told them, ‘focusing on the city and forgetting the space around it. Bessa is surrounded by desert, nothing but flat sand for thousands of leagues. Those kind of distances can be deceptive.’

  Gursoon motioned for Rem to pass her the scroll of parchment she was using to record the decisions of the council, and a stylus. For a few moments there was only the noise of the pen scratching on the paper. Then she straightened up, and displayed what she had drawn to the watching group. They examined it.

  ‘It looks like a salad tong,’ said Rem.

  This observation was met with puzzled looks.

  ‘It’s a comb,’ Gursoon said, ‘and I think it may be the answer to our problems.’

  Gursoon explained her idea, and it was greeted, for the first time in months, with general agreement on both its merits and its feasibility. Warudu was called, and the following day she construc
ted a prototype model from acacia wood. As per Gursoon’s instructions, the shaft was about eight spans in length, and widened at the top into five immense tines, thick and curving. By the end of the month mass production of the combs had begun, and the seraglio knew how they would take the city.

  The only question remaining was that of the sultan’s palace. All allowed that capturing it would be a gargantuan task. It was a stronghold, heavily fortified, and though its back wall formed part of the city’s battlements, precautions had been taken to ensure that it was virtually inaccessible from Bessa’s walls themselves. The sections of the city fortifications to either side of the palace were nothing but narrow, crenellated ramparts, no wider across than a single span.

  The only way to take the palace from the outside would be through a prolonged and quite possibly bloody struggle, and it was here that contention arose in the council. Imtisar was of the opinion that a battle for the palace must be avoided at all costs, with the massive loss of life it would entail on both sides. She argued for leaving the palace untouched and simply stationing soldiers around it, starving Hakkim and his guard of power and provisions, and so forcing their surrender.

  Zuleika was equally adamant that this plan would be their downfall. A ruler under armed guard, she argued, was still a ruler, and in this case a trained assassin as well. The palace was large, and stocked to withstand a lengthy siege. Hakkim would mount a counter-attack from within the safety of its walls, and defeat them even as they celebrated his overthrow.

  As with the debate over how to take the city, ultimately it was one of the djinni’s gifts that provided the council with a solution to their predicament. Ironically, it was Issi who first suggested that they use the stable yard key to enter the palace.

  ‘I know that in our first meeting I told you all that the key couldn’t help us,’ he admitted, ‘but I’ve been thinking about it, and perhaps I was wrong. Our problem is that the palace is hard to breach from the outside, but it would be much easier for one person to get in than a whole army. If someone could do it – and I’m not saying I know how they might – but if they could, and get down to the stable yard in one piece, then they could unlock the gates and let everyone else inside. And then there’d be no siege.’