The City of Silk and Steel Read online

  The attack came two days later. A column of dust appeared down the road leading to the main gate. Rumour said it was an army, perhaps from the hill tribes, or some far-off enemy of Hakkim who had been biding his time till now. The soldiers were made ready with astonishing speed – before sunset a seemingly endless column of men in black scarves had assembled and marched out of the Northern Gate. A wave of townspeople ran to the walls to see them leave, and Rashad ran with them despite Mayisah’s warning. Women crammed the gateway, many with their baskets from the market still on their arms. Then, as the last of the long column of men headed over the rise of ground and out of view, the women moved after them as one mass, into the gateway. Two of them pulled the gates shut and hoisted the heavy wooden bar across to seal them. More of the women followed, and some of them had pulled off their veils. They reached beneath their robes and into baskets, and the red sun flashed off metal. Rashad saw them splitting into two groups, pulling at the doors of the guard towers, before the inner gates clanged shut. From one of the towers there was a hoarse scream. From the other, only silence, then a dull thudding as of a body falling down stone stairs.

  Rashad would have fled then, but his feet seemed unable to move. The crowds had melted away, but he scarcely noticed the emptiness around him, the sudden quiet. His whole mind was fixed on the towers, with their blind windows. And then there was shouting from the wall high above him, and two black-scarfed archers came running along it towards the towers – and dropped, both of them, without a sound, before either had loosed an arrow. One sprawled on the stones where he had fallen, a leg dangling high above Rashad’s head. The other staggered, and plunged to the ground a few feet away. And a woman emerged from the tower with a sword to look down at them.

  Rashad found himself running, his blood sounding in his ears like boiling water. It seemed to him he would never reach the palace walls, but then he was there and through the wicket gate which led to the kitchen. The women had shown themselves uncovered. They had killed Hakkim’s men. They had had knives, swords. His head whirled so that he had to sit down on the stone floor. The tall woman who had appeared at the top of the tower . . . had that really been Lady Zuleika?

  Once again, he sat with Karif and Suleiman as night fell, staring at the walls and wondering. But this time there were no flames, and they heard no screams. Just scuffling, running to and fro, and as the moon rose, a great yelling of women’s voices.

  7. Sesame Sweets

  Heat two cups of white sugar with a cup of water until melted.

  When the sweet smell begins to rise, take two good handfuls of sesame seeds and sprinkle them in, stirring until they are smoothly mixed. Add some pistachios and walnuts, if available.

  Brush the sides of a broad, shallow bowl with nut oil and pour the mixture in till it covers the bottom. Leave to set. When it is cool, you can use a sharp knife to divide the mixture into squares or other shapes. When hard, it will break into sweets along the lines you have drawn.

  Just before the sweets harden, decorate them with more nuts, or with sugar.

  There was nothing to make a celebration meal, but Rashad felt that some gesture, at least, was essential. As soon as he knew it was safe to go outside, he walked to the homes of each of the kitchen boys and told them they had their jobs back. Then he sent them out – there would be no one yet in the market, but he knew people – to buy nuts and sesame and raisins. The big jar of sugar was still where it had been for the past four years, standing in its dark corner. He had told the soldiers it was a preservative.

  Suleiman and Karif went out in the streets to join the festivities, but Rashad stayed in the kitchen. He would not admit even to himself that he was waiting, not until Lady Gursoon came in. She was shorter than he remembered, and her hair was entirely grey. Forgetting all propriety, he ran to embrace her.

  ‘But see who I’ve brought, Rashad!’ she said, and only then did he look behind her.

  The boy was standing in the shadows, shy, taller than Rashad could have imagined. When they saw each other, his face lit with an uncertain smile. He still had his mother’s eyes.

  The Taking of Bessa, Part the Second

  Soraya, Zufir, Fernoush, Nasreen and Huma sat in tense silence at the bottom of the right-hand tower of the Eastern Gate, and listened to the sounds of the conflict above them. They had heard the long, terrible screams from the north watchtowers a few moments ago, and even though the voices of the dying had clearly been male, the knowledge had done little to reassure them. Zufir was rigid and trembling, and Soraya and Huma clutched each other in voiceless terror, flinching at each fresh shout. Nasreen and Fernoush sat in front of the younger girls and the boy, reviewing with them the details of the plan.

  ‘Show me your keys,’ Nasreen instructed the group. Three trembling hands produced three keys from around necks and looped through belt strings.

  ‘Good,’ Fernoush said, ‘very good.’ She caught sight of the fear on Zufir’s face, and leaned down to take his hand. ‘Don’t worry,’ she told him softly, ‘Zuleika and Umi are going to cover us all the way. No one’s going to get a shot at us while they’re watching our backs.’

  ‘Yes,’ Nasreen chimed in with forced cheerfulness, ‘It’s Hakkim’s guards who should be worrying, not us!’

  As the oldest of the volunteers, they were doing their best to reassure the others. But Nasreen and Fernoush were two of the youngest aunties, and the children had always looked on them more as older sisters than authority figures. Back in the seraglio they had been popular with the sons and daughters of the other concubines because of their willingness to join in with the younger ones’ games, or take their part when an older auntie scolded them. Zufir had always admired Nasreen, with her shining waterfall of hair, and Fernoush’s beautiful voice, far more than all the wisdom of stern old Gursoon. Here, however, both women seemed suddenly younger and less dependable, their smiles of comfort shaky and their embraces brittle with tension.

  Umayma clattered down the stairs. ‘We’ve taken the walls,’ she announced, before she had even made it into the room. ‘Layla has an arrow in her leg, but no one’s dead except the guards.’ At the sight of his mother, Zufir sagged to his knees, as if all that had been holding him upright was a string which her arrival had severed. His nervous tension flooded out in a sob of relief.

  ‘Zeinab’s fine,’ Umayma reassured Soraya as the girl stepped forwards, her face taut with worry. ‘She came over from the Northern Gate just a moment ago, told us the order’s going out to fall back.’

  Soraya’s expression relaxed, though beside her Huma still fretted. Her mother was stationed on the water gate, and she would not hear news of her until the women had taken the palace.

  ‘Everyone’s pulling back to the palace now,’ Umayma continued, her arms wrapped around her son in an uncharacteristically fierce embrace, ‘so Zuleika should be here any minute.’

  ‘Have you seen Rem?’ Fernoush asked her.

  Umayma shook her head. ‘We’re going to have to do this one runner short, I’m afraid.’

  Zuleika and Rem ran along the battlements, crouching low to avoid the arrows which occasionally made it over the high ramparts and onto the walkway at the top.

  ‘Got your key?’ Zuleika asked.

  ‘What?’ For a moment Rem looked blank. Then her expression cleared. ‘Oh. Yes. It’s here.’ She twitched her robe aside to reveal the key hanging from her belt. It was dwarfed by a sheathed sword, and partially eclipsed by three curved daggers. Zuleika looked at her curiously.

  ‘Those weapons will throw you off balance,’ she cautioned. ‘And they’re not necessary – I’m providing covering fire.’

  ‘I’ll need something to protect myself with once I’m inside.’

  ‘True enough, but not all those. So many will slow you down.’

  ‘I’m just coming prepared.’

  ‘You have too many weapons,’ Zuleika repeated with emphasis.

  ‘I know what I’m doing,’ Rem snapped back. Z
uleika shot her a harassed look, but made no further comment. The wall curved round towards the Eastern Gate, and soon they had reached the watchtower where Umayma waited with Yusuf Razim to begin the second phase. She raised her eyebrows when she saw Rem.

  ‘I’d started to think you weren’t coming,’ she said. ‘What kept you?’

  ‘Complications,’ Rem replied.

  While Umayma ran back down the stairs to fetch the rest of the volunteers, Yusuf Razim got into position, kneeling at the side of the watchtower which bordered the wall to the palace. Zuleika touched Rem’s arm, gently pulling her down into a crouch.

  ‘We should stay low,’ she said softly, ‘in case the guards spot us.’

  Rem nodded, her face blank.

  Zuleika looked at her, caressing Rem’s right forearm where, underneath the dark cloth of her robe, she knew her name was written in shaky letters.

  ‘In and out, remember,’ she said. ‘You go straight to the stable yard and open the gates. Don’t try to fight.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Rem replied, offhand. ‘I know the plan.’

  ‘Rem?’ Zuleika pulled her closer, her brow creasing in concern. ‘Stick to what we agreed.’

  Rem saw the anxiety in Zuleika’s eyes. Her own expression softened in response, and she leaned in, taking Zuleika’s free hand in hers and stroking it gently. Still, when she spoke, it was only to repeat what she had said before.

  ‘I know the plan. Don’t worry about me, Zuleika.’

  At this point Umayma and the volunteers arrived at the top of the stairs, and the watchtower became a whirl of frenzied activity. Rem and Zuleika broke apart as the group raced to their stations, Rem and the other wall runners forming a line in front of Yusuf Razim while Zuleika and Umayma fitted arrows to their bows, training them on the single palace window which faced in their direction. It was from this window that the volunteers would come under heaviest attack from the palace guards within. It was also the one through which they would attempt to gain ingress. There was a breathless pause. Umayma gave Zufir an encouraging smile. Huma and Soraya glanced at one another. Rem, at the front of the line, readied herself to spring.

  Then Zuleika spoke: ‘Go.’

  There were no steps connecting the right eastern watchtower to the battlements beneath it, so when Zuleika gave the signal to start, Yusuf Razim had to boost each of the volunteers over the parapet and onto the wall below. The first to go was Rem. She stumbled a little as she hit the ramparts and shot out her arms to steady herself, leaping from ridge to ridge on the crenellated wall as she had practised. When she had put five paces between herself and the watchtower, Nasreen followed. She swayed wildly from side to side for the first few steps, and it seemed that she would fall. After she jumped the first crenel, however, she regained her balance, straightening up just as an arrow flew past the spot where her head had been a moment before. The next arrow came so close to Rem that she felt the breeze as it whistled past her ear. Something warm trickled down the side of her face, and she knew that it had drawn blood. Zuleika was swift in her response, shooting the archer between the eyes before he had time to fire a third time. As she pulled another arrow from her quiver, the next guard stepped up to the window. Umayma hit him squarely in the chest, and he staggered back. Zuleika killed his replacement where he stood in the shadows of the room beyond, before he had even assumed his post.

  This part of the seraglio’s plan depended on Umayma and Zuleika killing as many of the palace archers as possible before the first of the volunteers reached the end of the wall. While one fired, the other readied her bow, dispatching the guards so quickly that few of them lived long enough to spot the two women firing on them from above. The runners kept going, only lowering their heads as the arrows whizzed past them, and Yusuf Razim continued boosting people over the side of the watchtower. After Nasreen came Soraya, who bounded along the wall with the agility of a young ibex. Next was Huma, less graceful but equally surefooted. The women ran carefully, never slowing enough to lose their footing, never going so fast as to catch each other up. The arrows from the palace were coming less frequently as Umayma and Zuleika got fairly into their stride. Zufir landed on the wall with a high-pitched squeak of terror. For the rest of his run, he was too full of gratitude that Jamal had not been around to hear him even to think about the archers and the sheer drop.

  By the time Fernoush, the last of the runners, had cleared the parapet, Rem had reached the palace window. She flung one leg over the sill and ducked inside, staring blindly into the room as her eyes adjusted to the dark interior. It was empty, except for the dead guards lying in a heap at her feet, but even as Rem set down her foot another man ran into the room from the stairs at the far end. He caught sight of her and raised his bow, and Rem threw herself to the ground. The arrow missed its mark, sailing through the window and along the wall. It took Nasreen through the throat. The girl’s eyes widened in shock, and she gave a choked gasp. Slowly, her legs buckled beneath her. As she toppled sideways Soraya screamed, but Nasreen was already unconscious, and fell from the wall as into a swoon. She was there, her body flung out from the battlements at an impossible angle, and then she was gone. Umayma’s next arrow hit the guard who had killed her in the eye. He staggered back, fell and lay still; no other men remained to pull his corpse away. Soraya witnessed all of this and kept running, too stunned to cry.

  Rem, too, lay for a moment deprived of speech. As with all events in which she was a factor, her inward vision had been clouded and unclear. She had not seen this coming. Nasreen’s body as it fell, twisted and transfixed by the arrow, was a vision she seemed unable to shake. It lingered before her eyes, an after-image of remembered horror, and wherever she turned it was before her.

  Recovering herself slightly, she scrambled to her feet and glanced around her, checking the fallen guards for any signs of movement. She saw none, and scanned the room again, this time looking for the door. She found it at the far end of the narrow chamber, and darted towards it. Soraya was just reaching the window as Rem pulled the door closed behind her and raced down the stairs. She found herself in a corridor lined with doorways. From here, Bethi, with her intricate knowledge of the palace, had plotted the volunteers a route through the servants’ passages, narrow corridors which threaded the larger spaces reserved for the palace’s richer inhabitants. They were ancient, and frequented only by servants, so Bethi reasoned that they were their best chance of getting through the palace unseen.

  According to the map that Bethi had drawn on the inside of Rem’s palm, the quickest way to reach the stable yard was to follow the corridor to its end, and take the winding stairs she found there. From there a door on the right would lead to a further staircase, down to the level of the palace’s immense dining hall. Thence, through a curtain on the left, to a final flight of stairs, this ending in a squat archway. Beyond this archway lay the kitchen gardens and the stable yard. The instructions Rem had been given were meticulous, and both she and the other volunteers had been drilled in them many times. So it was with deliberate care, rather than any confusion or uncertainty, that she turned from the path she had been shown and pushed open a large wooden door that lay directly to her left.

  The day that Rem volunteered to join the runners, a thought she had long carried in her mind hardened into an intention. It was this intention, and not the purpose shared by the other volunteers, that she had held before her as she trained to run the wall. She listened with patient attention to the plan she was to follow, but her mind was elsewhere, threading a different set of corridors to a different destination. When Soraya reached the bottom of the stairs to find the passage in front of her empty, she assumed that Rem had run on ahead of her. But Rem was long gone.

  Hakkim Mehdad sat alone in the throne room. A little after he received word that Captain Ashraf’s soldiers had departed for the Northern Gate, reports had started coming in about disturbances on the watchtowers. He had dispatched a man to each of them, to identify the source of the tro
uble. When he heard the bugle blasts and then the screams from the Northern Gate, he dispatched another. A few moments later, the guard stationed at the top of the palace ran in to tell him that the walls had been breached. Hostile forces, he said, were attempting to enter the palace through the upper windows. Hakkim sent the remainder of his personal guard to deal with the aggressors. Neither his scouts nor his soldiers had returned. Clearly, the situation was degenerating, but Hakkim did not panic. He sat entirely still and contemplated his position. There was a part of him that wanted to run outside and join the battle, to defend his rule with his own hands. He loathed this passive waiting for an outcome outside the sphere of his control. Yet he hesitated to leave the palace, not because he was afraid of death, but because he still had a mission to fulfil. It was imperative that he live to reveal the truth within him to the world.

  As he sat thus in inner debate, a slight figure slipped through the curtain at the far end of the room. It was a woman, he saw, and, aberrant as the sight was, she carried a sword. Hakkim was unarmed, but this did not worry him unduly. His training was such that he could kill just as readily with empty hands. He could turn the woman’s blade upon herself or, if the mood took him, snap her neck or strangle her.

  As she drew closer to him, something in her height and bearing made him think that he had seen her before. He studied her face. Four years had elapsed since he had last seen her, and he had passed sentence on many during that time, but still Hakkim recognised her as the heretic librarian whom he had condemned to death when he seized control of the city. He checked his impulse of surprise, keeping his face expressionless as he regarded her.

  ‘The concubines saved me,’ Rem said, answering Hakkim’s question before he voiced it. ‘One of them was known to you already, as the cousin of Imad-Basur. She slit your guards’ throats, and now I am come to slit yours. The desert is not so wide as you thought.’