The City of Silk and Steel Page 8

  But she was in the hands of the Increate now – it was already much too late for doubts or second thoughts. She endured the night, and the day that followed, with all the stoicism a fourteen-year-old can muster. The sun rose and fell again; the moon absented herself. The night was a quilt as thick as wool.

  Sasim was the first link in the chain, and Zuleika knew him, at least, very well indeed. So much so that when he arrived at the back door of the inn a little after midnight and confessed to her that he had forgotten to bring a knife, she handed him, without a word, a seven-inch carver from her father’s kitchen on which she had put an edge that could have parted a flea’s leg hairs. She also had a wooden mallet with iron bands wrapped around the head to weight it – a weapon her father kept stowed behind the bar for use on rowdy drunks. This she retained herself.

  They went together to the saddler’s house. Sasim was ready to pick the lock, but Zuleika tried the latch and the door opened at once. ‘Look,’ she said. ‘The fool has left his door unlocked!’ She stood aside deferentially to let Sasim enter first, as was only right and proper, then once inside she led the way, not to the saddler’s workshop, but to his bedroom. The door stood ajar: again Zuleika opened it wide and stood aside meekly to let Sasim precede her.

  He stepped inside, and found himself in pitch darkness. He stumbled on a sandal that was lying on the floor, and the saddler, lying awake in an erotic fever, sat bolt upright at the sound.

  ‘Sweetest of blossoms!’ he cried. ‘Come to me!’

  Sasim, when that huge bulk rose up before him in the dark, was almost petrified with fear. But he had a knife in his hand, and instinct took over. He ran at the saddler and stabbed him through the heart. The saddler fell back onto the bed with a sound like a broken bellows.

  Sasim had never killed a man before, and in the aftermath of the act he was rooted, for a moment, to the spot. In that moment Zuleika struck, hitting him a stunning blow on the head with the iron-chased mallet. Sasim collapsed in a heap on the blood-slicked floor.

  Zuleika ran to the saddler’s workshop and threw the five dinars she still had (the remainder of Rhuk’s diverted bribe) down on the floor beside the big vat. This detained her only a second, but she could already hear Sasim stumbling and cursing behind her; she had only dazed him with the blow, not knocked him unconscious. She threw the window bolt and slipped out into the night.

  Sasim had a shrewd suspicion that he had been betrayed, but he was still sold on the idea of the bag of silver in the saddler’s shop. Lighting the lamp with trembling fingers, he found the largest vat demonstrably empty, but a scatter of silver dinars lying on the ground beside it.

  These few coins told a clear story. Zuleika had been there before him, and had stolen the bag of silver!

  Enraged beyond reason at this duplicity, Sasim found his way back to the door, staggered across the courtyard and rounded the rear of the inn until he stood below Zuleika’s room. The shutters were ajar, and a lamp burned within. So the slut thought she was safe, did she? She was going to find out how wrong she was!

  Sasim had made this climb in the dark a great many times. Woozy though he was from the knock on the head, he made it again now, scaling the rough stones with the kitchen carver clenched in his teeth like a bandit in an old story.

  He slammed the shutters wide and jumped over the threshold, transferring the knife to his hand so he could bellow out the words that boiled in his chest. ‘I’m going to slice you thinner than paper, you filthy little traitor!’

  Vurdik the Bald did not enjoy being interrupted in the act of love. He was already rolling off Ehara’s voluptuous body and reaching for the blade he’d left under the bed before Sasim had taken three steps into the room.

  On the fourth step, as Sasim was slowing down in the realisation that he was not addressing Zuleika after all, the bandit’s scimitar came up and knocked the carver from his hand with a ringing clash of steel.

  There was no fifth step. The bandit’s blade swept across Sasim’s throat on the repass, and so keen was its edge that it all but decapitated him. The boy sank to his knees, his mouth opening and closing on voiceless protests and reproaches, and then fell face forward on the floor.

  ‘Why did he call me a traitor?’ Vurdik wondered, belatedly. ‘I don’t even know him.’

  Down below, in the inn’s kitchen, abandoned at this hour, Zuleika lit a lamp and waved it three times out of the window – left to right, right to left, left to right. Watching for her signal, Sergeant Rhuk ordered his men to move from hiding and surround the inn. The door of the Blue Wheel was knocked down with a wooden ram, and watch officers poured into the building.

  In vain, Kishnothophur the innkeeper protested and remonstrated, pleading both that he was innocent and that he was up to date with his bribes. Rhuk ordered a search of the inn’s many rooms, and although it yielded no whores (the whores having been warned by Zuleika to leave quietly on the midnight hour, except for Ehara, who Zuleika swore to the officers was her mother), it did produce one bandit chieftain, just as Rhuk had been promised. Vurdik injured three officers before he was subdued, but finally a thrown club laid him low. He was arrested for multiple thefts and murders, and Kish for harbouring a known desperado.

  The double execution was held on a market day, and was therefore very well attended. Seeing his daughter in the crowd, Kish cursed her with sobs for her treacherous heart and her whore’s lies. Zuleika took out an apple and ate it slowly, in his sight, until the trapdoor fell open and the last breath caught in his throat.

  The stone under the kitchen floor that was too heavy for Zuleika to lift offered no problem to a dozen determined women. Ehara counted Kish’s hoard carefully, in full sight of the other whores, and then divided it into twelve equal portions. She wanted to give Zuleika a share too, the more so because Zuleika had given her father’s inn, in perpetuity, to Ehara to own. But sergeant Rhuk had been as good as his word, and passed on to the girl a full quarter of the reward he won for the capture of Vurdik. Zuleika already had all the money she needed, and a little over.

  The time had come to part. Ehara asked Zuleika, not for the first time, to stay with her and be her daughter. Zuleika embraced the older woman fervently, and thanked her for all her many acts of kindness, but she had no intention of staying in Ibu Kim. Through many tears on both sides, she promised to return and visit often.

  The next morning, on a fine camel bought with her share of the reward money, she left the city alone and took the direction of distant Perdondaris. Many things can befall a woman alone in the deep desert: Zuleika feared none of them so much as she feared dying in the city where she had been born.

  Imad-Basur was surprised to see her, but listened with rapt attention to her story. He admitted, when it was done, that Zuleika had certainly succeeded in the challenge he had set her. Two men hanged, and two others dead by the blade: it was a tally that few of his students could claim for a single night’s work.

  ‘Then will you teach me?’ Zuleika asked him bluntly.

  The caliph of assassins thought long before replying. To train up a woman in the arts of death! Such a thing defied all convention, all propriety. But clearly this was a most unconventional woman – and Imad-Basur had never thought propriety worth a turd.

  ‘I will teach you,’ he told her. ‘And I believe you will make me proud.’

  The Cup Lands Upright, Part the Second

  Zuleika surveyed the carnage in the legate’s tent with a frown. An onlooker might have thought – assuming he lived long enough to think anything – that she was mourning the dead. She wasn’t; she was only considering what had to be done next, and how best to do it.

  If the legate’s body was discovered, the situation would quickly become impossible. Not only would she herself be killed for what she had done, but the other concubines and their children would soon fall victim to Sultan Hakkim’s edict. Other people besides the guard captain must have seen the messenger arrive; they would either return to Bessa or send a
rider there to know the sultan’s pleasure. That must not be allowed to happen. And if it was to be prevented, Zuleika had to carry out a lot more killings in very short order. Doing so was going to present a serious logistical challenge.

  There were some thirty guards in the caravan, and they were widely scattered along its length. Some had presumably been posted as sentries, a good way out from the camp. They all had to be dealt with, and in such a way that none of them was forewarned by seeing or hearing the deaths of the others. Zuleika was good, but she wasn’t that good. Nobody was that good. However the feat was to be accomplished, she was going to need help, and she knew in what quarter it must be found.

  Having reasoned the thing through to this point, Zuleika forgot all doubts and equivocations and got down to business. She dragged the bodies of the guard captain and the messenger into a corner of the tent, out of any line of sight from the entrance. The legate’s corpse she propped up in a chair, with his back to the tent’s entrance.

  Next, she repaired her own appearance. She used what was left of the massage oils to remove En-Sadim’s heart’s blood from her hands and face, her bare breasts and belly, very thankful that she had disrobed before she began to go to work on him. Wiping her hands dry on the messenger’s cloak, she dressed quickly. Though there were some dark red stains on her leather sandals that she could not remove, she was confident that she could pass a casual inspection.

  She retrieved the sultan’s letter from where it had fallen. Zuleika had never learned to read, and the import of this fell heavily on her now. If En-Sadim had not insisted on hearing the letter read aloud, all of this would have transpired very differently.

  She tucked the scroll into her bodice and stepped boldly out of the tent. Letting the flap fall to behind her, she stood there, framed against the pure white of its fabric, as the guards outside turned to look at her.

  Zuleika was breathing heavily, and her face glistened with sweat. She might have disguised these things, but instead she exaggerated them: under the circumstances, they would be seen as signs of passion rather than clues to murder. She looked like a woman who had just surfaced from the most abandoned and extreme throes of love. She met the gaze of each guard in turn, without shame, before finally and belatedly bowing her head – the wanton, reassuming the demure look of a respectable woman. She shuddered as though the cooling evening air, hitting her super-heated flesh, caused an involuntary chain reaction.

  ‘They are discussing,’ Zuleika said, her voice thick, ‘things. Important things. They don’t want to be disturbed.’

  She held the pose a moment longer. Her hands smoothed the fabric of her dress, as though unaware that in doing so they emphasised the curve of waist and thigh.

  She walked away, swaying her hips in age-old and unambiguous provocation. Every eye was on her, and every thought was one of incredulous envy.

  So much for the circus. It would hold for a while, but not for long. Sooner or later, some situation would arise that compelled one or other of the guards to seek his captain’s approval for something, or to take orders from the legate, or consult his wishes in some trifle. Zuleika had to be done before any of those things happened.

  She went to Gursoon, who was talking to the children at the campfire – telling them another story, perhaps. There was really no other choice. Perhaps there were other women in the harem who were Gursoon’s equal in intelligence, but there were none who carried so much authority. Only Gursoon could make the other women act within the narrow window that they had.

  The older woman saw Zuleika approaching, and moved up a little to make room for her at the fire, but Zuleika did not sit. She handed Gursoon the letter. ‘I think you should read this,’ she said.

  Gursoon unwound the scroll and read it in silence. Zuleika waited.

  It was impossible to tell, from the woman’s face, how she felt about the letter’s contents. She remained impassive; her expression and her breathing did not change. When she had reached the bottom, she read it again, the second time more quickly with her eyes flicking from line to line.

  Finally she rolled the letter up again and tapped it against her knee.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Thank you for showing me, Zuleika. That’s interesting news indeed. Soraya, it’s time for bed now. Take the younger children to their tents and see them settled in.’

  Zuleika could never tell the children apart, but the young girl Gursoon was addressing identified herself by being the first to protest. ‘But you didn’t finish the story, Auntie! And the sun is still up!’

  ‘The sun will go down soon enough,’ Gursoon said grimly. ‘Do as you’re told, dear. Now. And tomorrow . . . well, tomorrow we’ll see how it all came out.’

  The children were gathered up and led away. All but one – a skinny whippet of a boy with a face of almost feminine beauty, who was staring at the two women with naked suspicion in his eyes.

  ‘What’s happening?’ he demanded.

  ‘Nothing,’ said Zuleika. ‘Go away, boy.’

  The brat stayed where he was.

  ‘Jamal,’ Gursoon said, a little more gently, ‘go and look after the little ones. They’re still afraid, and it will comfort them to see you watching over them.’

  The boy hesitated a few moments longer, his gaze flicking from one of the women to the other, and Zuleika pondered the wisdom of sending him running with a smack around the head. But he left of his own accord at last, and she turned her attention back to Gursoon.

  ‘Where did you get this?’ Gursoon asked her, holding up the letter.

  ‘From En-Sadim,’ Zuleika said, ‘who had just received it from the sultan’s messenger. I killed them both – along with the guard captain. As things stand right now, nobody but you and me knows what’s in that letter.’

  Gursoon’s brow creased. ‘Killed them?’ she echoed, as if she was certain she must have misheard.

  ‘Yes. Killed them.’

  ‘But then, if the bodies are found—’

  ‘—we’re all lost. Yes. We can’t go on, and we can’t go back. Only death waits in either direction. The guards have to die, and we have to leave. To go where they can’t find us.’

  Gursoon was silent for a few moments longer. Zuleika also said nothing, allowing the older woman time to check her logic.

  ‘You’re right,’ Gursoon said at last. She shot Zuleika a shrewd glance. ‘A question, dear, before we begin. How does a young woman kill three armed men?’

  ‘Clean living and regular exercise, Auntie. Also, five years of training in the arts of murder.’

  Gursoon smiled thinly, mulling over the holes in this answer. ‘And can you kill the rest of them?’ she asked at last.

  Zuleika didn’t bother to boast or dissemble. ‘Only if they have no idea what’s happening. These are trained soldiers, and some of them have bows and slings as well as swords. The last one has to fall before the first knows what’s happening. That’s the only way.’

  Gursoon immediately rattled off some names. ‘Nafisah. Rihan. Firdoos. Dalal. Umayma. Zeinab. These women will be the most useful to you. But I don’t know whether they’d be able to do any of the killing themselves. What we need, I think, is a stratagem which allows you to kill one man at a time, while keeping the others in ignorance of his fate.’ A thought occurred to her, and she looked up at the setting sun. ‘There’s no way that this can be done until darkness falls,’ she said. ‘That gives us half an hour. Come. Let’s spread the news and build our trap.’

  Each of the named women, and three more besides, was approached and recruited. All were distraught and terrified when they heard the news – Rihan fainted, and Umayma vomited out of pure shock and terror – but all declared their willingness to help. Gursoon was no fool, and had factored into her choice the fact that all these women had children in the caravan. She knew they’d fight to the death, if necessary.

  Sitting a little aside from the fire, with En-Sadim’s tent directly in their view, they discussed various plans before settling
on the simplest. The sun sank slowly behind the horizon as they talked, and Zuleika stared with unblinking eyes at the entrance to the legate’s pavilion, knowing full well that if any man entered, all bets were off. In that case she would leap up, kill the nearest guard and take his sword. What happened after that would be whatever the Increate willed, but it would certainly involve widespread slaughter.

  Briefed and prepared, the women went to their places.

  The guards who were actually on duty, and therefore stood alone at their stations, were targeted first. Each was approached by one of the women and told a tearful story about a snake in one of the tents which might or might not be venomous. Happy to take the role of rescuer, and to show off in front of these beautiful but inaccessible ladies, the man would usually need little persuasion to leave his post for a moment or two and step into the nearby tent – where Zuleika, standing inside the door with dark-adjusted eyes, drew a sword across his throat. Two or three of the women then helped her to hold the man immobile and silent while he died, and two or three more added the corpse to the growing pile at the back of the tent. Some of the women wept after the first and second killings, but by the third they were inured to the work and put their backs into it quietly and efficiently until it was finally done.

  There were now two groups of enemies left to consider: the knot of a dozen or so off-duty soldiers who were talking and dicing around their own fire, and the sentries who had previously been dispatched by Captain Numair to remoter distances from the camp’s perimeter.

  The sentries had to come first, Zuleika decided. They would certainly see and hear any disturbance in the camp, and would have far too many options as to how to react.

  Zuleika was hampered by not knowing how many sentries there were, but she had a very good memory and made a rough guess based on the faces that were missing from around the fire. She armed her assistants with swords and daggers, but instructed them to keep the weapons well hidden. They should only be used if the relaxing guards ventured into En-Sadim’s tent, discovered its grisly contents and came armed against them. She hoped that she would return before that could happen.