The Lions of Al-Rassan

They brought him home from Cartada to their house in his long-since chosen city of Fezana. They had more than enough to sustain themselves; indeed, by any measure at all they were wealthy. In Silvenes, in Cartada, in his private practice here, Ishak had been hugely successful, and as much so in business ventures with Kindath merchants trading east in leather and spices. Almalik’s last bounty merely set the seal on their worldly success. They were, it could have been said, blessed by the moons with great good fortune.

Jehane bet Ishak, child of such fortune, walked into her father’s room, laid her candle down on the table and pulled back the shutters of the eastern window. She pushed open the window as well, to let the late afternoon trace of a breeze come in with the soft light. Then she sat in the wooden chair at the table as was her habit.

The book she was in the midst of reading to Ishak—the text of Merovius on cataracts—lay open by her elbow. Each afternoon, at the end of her day’s work, she would come into this room and tell her father about the patients she had seen, and then read aloud from whatever text she was studying herself. Sometimes letters came, from colleagues and friends in other cities, other lands. Ser Rezzoni wrote several times a year from Sorenica in Batiara or wherever else he was teaching or practising. Jehane would read these to her father, as well.

He never responded. He never even turned his head towards her. It had been so from the night he was marred. She would tell him about her day, read the letters, read her texts aloud. She would kiss him on the forehead when she left to go down for dinner. He never responded to that, either.

Velaz brought Ishak his meals in this room. He never left this room. He would not—unless they forced him—ever leave this room, Jehane knew. His voice had been deep and beautiful once, his eyes clear and blue as the river in sunlight, bright doorways to a grave depth of thought. The grace of his mind and the skill of his hands had been bestowed without stinting or hesitation upon all who asked or had need. He had been proud without vanity, wise without trivial wit, courageous without bravado. He was a shell, a husk, a blind, mute absence of all these things in a room without light.

In a way, Jehane thought—looking at her father, preparing to say goodbye—pursuing this vengeance, however belated, against Almalik of Cartada was the most obvious thing she had ever done.

She began. “Market day today. Nothing too difficult. I was about to see a quarry laborer with what looked to be gout—if you can believe it—when I was called away. I wouldn’t have gone, of course, but it turned out to be Husari ibn Musa—he was passing another stone, the third one this year.”

There was no movement in the deep armchair. The handsome, white-bearded profile seemed a carving of a man, not the man himself.

“While I was treating him,” Jehane said, “we learned something terrible. If you listen you may be able to hear shouting in the streets beyond the Quarter.” She did this often, trying to make him use his hearing, trying to draw him from this room.

No movement, no sign he even knew she was here. Almost angrily, Jehane said, “It seems that Almalik of Cartada sent his oldest son and the lord Ammar ibn Khairan to consecrate the new wing of the castle today. And they have just murdered all those invited. That’s why we can hear noise in the streets. One hundred and forty men, Father. Almalik had their heads cut off and threw the bodies in the moat.”

And there, quite unexpectedly, it was. It could have been a trick of the light, slanting in through shadows, but she thought she saw him turn his head, just a little, towards her. I don’t think I’ve ever spoken Almalik’s name to him, Jehane realized suddenly.

Quickly, she went on, “Husari was meant to be one of them, Father. That’s why he wanted me to come so quickly this morning. He’d hoped to be able to attend at the castle. Now he’s the only one who wasn’t killed. And it’s possible the Muwardis—there are five hundred new troops in the city today—may come after him. So I’ve arranged to have him moved here. Velaz is bringing him now, in disguise. I asked Mother’s permission,” she added.

No mistaking it this time. Ishak had turned his head perceptibly towards her as if drawn against his will to hear what was being said. Jehane became aware that she was near to crying. She swallowed, fighting that. “Husari seems … different, Father. I hardly know him. He’s calm, almost cold. He’s angry, Father. He plans to leave the city tonight. Do you know why?” She risked the question, and waited until she saw the small inquiring motion of his head before answering: “He said he intends to destroy Cartada.”

She swiped at a treacherous tear. Four years of monologues in this room, and now, on the eve of her going away, he had finally acknowledged her presence.

Jehane said, “I’ve decided to leave with him, Father.”

She watched. No movement, no sign. But then, slowly, his head turned back away from her until she was looking, again, at the profile she had watched all these years. She swallowed again. In its own way, this, too, was a response. “I don’t think I’ll stay with him, I don’t even know where he’s going or what he plans. But somehow, after this afternoon, I just can’t pretend nothing has happened. If Husari can decide to fight Almalik, so can I.”

There. She had said it. It was spoken. And having said this much, Jehane found that she could say nothing more. She was crying, after all, wiping away tears.

She closed her eyes, overwhelmed. Until this very moment it might have been possible to pretend she was about to do nothing more than what her father had done many times: leave Fezana to pursue contracts and experience in the wider world. If a doctor wanted to build a reputation that was the way to do it. Declaring a course of vengeance against a king was a path to something entirely different. She was also a woman. Her profession might ensure her some measure of safety and respect, but Jehane had lived and studied abroad. She knew the difference between Ishak going into the world and his daughter doing so. She was acutely conscious that she might never be in this room again.

“Ache ve’rach wi’oo.”

Jehane’s eyes snapped open. What she saw stupefied her. Ishak had turned sideways in his chair to face her. His face was contorted with the effort of speech, the hollow sockets of his eyes trained on where he knew her to be sitting. Her hands flew to her mouth.

“What? Papa, I don’t …”

“Ache ve’rach!” The mangled sounds were anguished, imperative.

Jehane hurtled from her chair and dropped to her knees on the carpet at her father’s feet. She seized one of his hands and felt, for the first time in four years, his firm strong grasp as he squeezed her fingers tightly.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry! Again, please. I don’t understand!” She felt frantic, heartbroken. He was trying to speak clearly, his whole body twisting with effort and frustration.

“Ve’rach! Ve’rach!” His grip was fierce, willing her comprehension, as if sheer intensity could make the tragically distorted words intelligible.

“He is telling you to take your servant Velaz with you, Jehane. Under the circumstances, a wise suggestion.”

Jehane wheeled as if stabbed, springing to her feet as she turned to the window. Then she froze. She could feel the blood leave her face.

Sitting sideways on the broad window ledge, regarding them calmly, knees bent and both hands wrapped around them, was Ammar ibn Khairan. And of course if he was here they were already lost, because with him he would have brought—

“I am alone, Jehane. I don’t like the Muwardis.”

She fought for control. “No? You just let them do your killing for you? What does liking have to do with it? How did you get here? Where is—” She stopped herself just in time.

It didn’t seem to matter. “Husari ibn Musa should be approaching the Kindath Gates just about now. He’s dressed as a wadji, if you can imagine it. An eccentric disguise, I’d say. It’s a good thing Velaz is there to vouch for him or they’d never let him in.” He smiled, but there was something odd about his eyes. He said, “You have no reason to believe me, but I had nothing to do with what happened this afternoon. Neither did the prince.”

“Hah!” Jehane said. The most sophisticated rejoinder she could manage for the moment.

He smiled again. This time it was an expression she remembered from the morning. “I am duly refuted, I suppose. Shall I fall out of the window now?”

And just then, for Jehane the most utterly unexpected event of an appalling day took place. She heard a gasping, strangled noise behind her and turned, terrified.

To realize, after a moment, that what she was hearing was her father’s laughter.

Ammar ibn Khairan swung neatly down from the window and landed softly on the carpeted floor. He walked past Jehane and stood before her father’s heavy chair.

“Ishak,” he said gently.

“Ammar,” her father said, almost clearly.

The murderer of the last khalif of Al-Rassan knelt before him. “I had hoped you might remember my voice,” he said. “Will you accept apologies, Ishak? I ought to have been here long ago, and certainly not in this fashion, shocking your daughter and without leave of your wife.”

Ishak reached out a hand by way of reply, and ibn Khairan took it. He had removed his gloves and rings. Jehane was too stunned to even begin to formulate her thoughts.

“Muwaari? Wha happ?”

Ibn Khairan’s voice was grave. “Almalik is a subtle man, as I think you know. He wanted Fezana quelled, obviously. He also seems to have had a message for the prince.” He paused. “And another for me.”

Jehane found her voice. “You really didn’t know about this?”

“I wouldn’t bother lying to you,” Ammar ibn Khairan said precisely, without even looking at her.

Flushing, Jehane realized that it was, of course, quite true. Why would he care what she thought? But in that case, there was another obvious question, and she wasn’t especially inclined to accept rebukes from men who climbed in through the windows of their home: “What are you doing here then?”

This time he did turn. “Two reasons. You ought to be able to guess at one of them.” Out of the corner of her eye Jehane saw her father slowly nodding his head.

“Forgive me, I’m not disposed to play at guessing games just now.” She tried to make it sting.

Ibn Khairan’s expression was unruffled. “It isn’t a game, Jehane. I’m here to ensure that Husari ibn Musa is not killed by the Muwardis this evening, and that the physician, more brave than intelligent perhaps, who is assisting him to escape, is likewise enabled to live beyond tonight.”

Jehane felt suddenly cold. “They are coming for him, then?”

“Of course they are coming for him. The list of invited guests was known, and some of the Muwardis can read. They were instructed to execute every man on that list. Do you think they’d forgo the pleasure of killing even one, or risk Almalik’s reaction to failure?”

“They’ll go to his house?”

“If they aren’t there by now. Which is why I went before them. Husari had already left, with Velaz. The servants and slaves had been sent to their quarters, except the steward, who was evidently trusted. A mistake. I demanded of him where his master was and he told me he’d just left, disguised as a wadji, with the Kindath doctor’s servant.”

She had been cold before; she was as ice now.

“So he will tell the Muwardis?”

“I don’t think so,” said Ammar ibn Khairan.

There was a silence. It was not a game at all.

“You killed him,” said Jehane.

“A disloyal servant,” said ibn Khairan, shaking his head. “A melancholy indication of the times in which we live.”

“Why, Ammar?” Ishak’s question this time was astonishingly clear, but it might mean many things.

This time ibn Khairan hesitated before answering. Jehane, watching closely, saw that odd expression in his face again.

He said, choosing his words, “I already carry a name through the world for something I did in my youth for Almalik of Cartada. I can live with that. Rightly or wrongly, I did it. I am … disinclined to accept the responsibility for this obscene slaughter—as he clearly intends it to fall upon me. Almalik has his reasons. I can even understand them. But at this point in my life I do not choose to indulge them. I also found Husari ibn Musa to be a clever, unassuming man and I admired your daughter’s … competence and spirit. Say that it … pleases me to be on the side of virtue, for once.”

Ishak was shaking his head. “More, Ammar,” he said, the sounds labored, dragging a little.

Again ibn Khairan hesitated. “There is always more to what a man does, ben Yonannon. Will you permit me the grace of privacy? I will be leaving Fezana myself tonight, by my own means and in my own direction. In time my motives may become clearer.”

He turned to Jehane, and she saw by the candle and the light coming in through the window that his eyes were still altered and cold. He had said enough, though; she thought she knew what this was about, now.

“With the steward … unavailable,” he was saying, “it is unlikely the Muwardis will come here, but there must be nothing for them to find if they do. I would advise you to forgo a meal and leave as soon as it is dark.”

Jehane, grimly subdued, could only nod. With each passing moment she was becoming more aware of the danger and the strangeness of the world she had elected to enter. The morning market, the treatment rooms, all the routines of her life, seemed remote already, and receding swiftly.

“I also have a suggestion, if I may. I do not know what ibn Musa intends to do now, but you could both do worse than go north to Valledo for a time.”

“You would send a Kindath to the Jaddites?” Jehane asked sharply.

He shrugged. “You lived among them during your studies abroad, and so did your father in his day.”

“That was Batiara. And Ferrieres.”

He made an exaggerated grimace. “Again, I am crushingly refuted. I really will have to leap out the window if you keep this up.” His expression altered again. “Things are changing in the peninsula, Jehane. They may start changing very quickly. It is worth remembering that with the parias being paid, Valledo has guaranteed the security of Fezana. I don’t know if that applies to internal … control by Cartada, but it could be argued, if ibn Musa wanted to do so. It could be an excuse. As for you, I would certainly avoid Ruenda and Jaloña if I were a Kindath, but King Ramiro of Valledo is an intelligent man.”

“And his soldiers?”

“Some of them are.”

“How reassuring.”

She heard her father make a reproving sound behind her.

His gaze very direct, ibn Khairan said, “Jehane, you cannot look for reassurance if you leave these walls. You must understand that before you go. If you have no plans and no direction, then serving as a doctor under the protection of Valledo is as good a course—”

“Why would you assume I have no plans?” It was curious how quickly he could anger her.

He stopped. “Forgive me.”

“Where?”

She would not have answered Ammar ibn Khairan, for any number of reasons, but she had to tell her father. He had not spoken a word to her in four years before this afternoon.

“Ragosa,” she said quietly.

She had never even thought of it until ibn Khairan had begun his speech, but once the name of the city was spoken it seemed to Jehane as if she had always been heading there, east towards the shores of Lake Serrana, and the river and the mountains.

“Ah,” said ibn Khairan, thoughtfully. He rubbed his smooth chin. “You could do worse than King Badir, yes.”

“And Mazur ben Avren.”

She said it too defiantly. He grinned. “The Prince of the Kindath. Of course. I’d be careful there, Jehane.”

“Why? You know him?”

“We have exchanged letters and verses over the years. Books for our libraries. Ben Avren is an extremely subtle man.”

“And so? That is a bad thing in the principal advisor to the king of Ragosa?”

He shook his head. “Tonight you are asking that particular question of the wrong man, actually. Just be careful if you do get there. Remember I told you.” He was silent a moment, half-turned to the window. “And if you are to get anywhere, not to mention myself, we must bring an end to this encounter. I believe I hear voices below. Husari and Velaz, we’d best hope.”

She heard the sounds now, too, and did recognize both voices.

“I’ll leave the way I came, Ser Ishak, with your permission.” Ibn Khairan moved past Jehane to take her father’s hand again. “But I do have one question of my own, if I may. I’ve wondered about something for four years now.”

Jehane felt herself go still. Her father slowly tilted his head up towards ibn Khairan.

Who said, “Tell me, if you will, did you know what you risked when you delivered Almalik’s last child in the way you did?”

In the stillness that followed Jehane could hear, from the courtyard below, her mother’s calm voice inviting ibn Musa into their house, as if he were no more than an awaited dinner guest on an ordinary night.

She saw her father nod his head, a sound emerging from the ruined mouth like the release of a long burden. Jehane felt herself suddenly on the edge of tears again.

“Would you do it again?” ibn Khairan asked, very gently.

No delay, this time. Another affirmative nod.

“Why?” asked Ammar ibn Khairan, and Jehane could see that he truly wanted to understand this.

Ishak’s mouth opened and closed, as if testing a word. “Gareeruh,” he said finally, then shook his head in frustration.

“I don’t understand,” ibn Khairan said.

“Gareeruh,” Ishak said again, and this time Jehane saw him place a hand over his heart, and she knew.

“The Oath of Galinus,” she said. It was difficult to speak. “The Physician’s Oath. To preserve life, if it can be done.”

Ishak nodded once, and then leaned back in his chair, as if exhausted by the effort to communicate after so long. Ammar ibn Khairan was still holding his hand. Now he let it go. “I would need time to think, more time than we have, before I would presume to offer any reply to that,” he said soberly. “If my stars and your moons allow, I would be honored to meet with you again, Ser Ishak. May I write to you?”

Ishak nodded his head. After a moment ibn Khairan turned back to Jehane.

“I believe I did say I had two reasons for coming,” he murmured. “Or had you forgotten?” She had, actually. He saw that, and smiled again. “One was a warning of danger, the other was to bring you something.”

He walked past her, back to the window. He swung up on the sill and reached out and around the side to the ledge. Without stepping down again he turned and offered something exquisite to Jehane.

“Oh dear,” she said. “Oh dear.”

It was, of course, her urine flask. Her father’s flask.

“You did leave in rather a hurry from ibn Musa’s,” ibn Khairan said mildly, “and so did Velaz and Husari. I thought you might want the flask, and perhaps make better use of it than the Muwardis when they arrived.”

Jehane swallowed and bit her lip. If they had found this …

She stepped forward and took the flask from his hand. Their fingers touched. “Thank you,” she said.

And remained motionless, astonished, as he leaned forward and kissed her on the lips. The scent of his perfume briefly surrounded her. One of his hands came up and lightly touched her hair.

“Courier’s fee,” he said easily, leaning back again. “Ragosa is a good thought. But do mention Valledo to ibn Musa—he may do better with King Ramiro.”

Jehane felt the rush of color to her face already beginning to recede. What followed, predictably, was something near to anger. Her father and mother, Velaz, Ser Rezzoni—everyone who knew her well—had always warned her about her pride.

She took a step forward and, standing on tiptoe, kissed Ammar ibn Khairan in her turn. She could feel his sharply intaken breath of surprise. That was better: he had been much, much too casual before.

“Doctor’s fee,” she said sweetly, stepping back. “We tend to charge more than couriers.”

“I will fall out of the window,” he said, but only after a moment.

“Don’t. It’s a long way down. You haven’t said, but it seems fairly obvious you have your own plan of vengeance to pursue in Cartada. Falling from a window would be a poor way to begin.” She was gratified to see that he hadn’t been prepared for that either.

He paused a second time. “We shall meet again, I dare hope.”

“That would be interesting,” Jehane said calmly, though her heart was beating very fast. He smiled. A moment later she watched him climb down the rough wall to the courtyard. He went through an archway towards the gates without looking back.

She would have thought she’d won that last exchange, but the smile he’d offered, just before turning to climb down, made her less certain, in the end.

“Care, Jehaa. Care,” her father said, from behind her, echoing her own thoughts.

Feeling frightened again, by many things, Jehane went back to his chair and knelt before it. She put her head in his lap. And after a moment she felt his hands begin to stroke her hair. That had not happened for a long time.

They were like that when Velaz came for her, having already packed for the road—for both of them. He had arrived, of course, at his own decision on this matter.

SOME TIME LATER, when Jehane was gone, and Velaz, and Husari ibn Musa, the silk merchant who had become, however improbably, a declared conspirator against the Lion of Cartada, strange sounds could be heard emanating from the study of Ishak ben Yonannon, the physician.

His wife Eliane stood in the corridor outside his closed door and listened as her husband, silent as death for four long years, practised articulating the letters of the alphabet, then struggled with simple words, like a child, learning what he could say and what he could not. It was fully dark outside by then; their daughter, their only child, was somewhere beyond the walls of civilization and safety, where women almost never went, in the wilderness of the wide world. Eliane held a tall, burning candle, and by its light someone watching could have seen a taut anguish to her still-beautiful face as she listened.

She stood like that a long time before she knocked and entered the room. The shutters were still folded back and the window was open, as Jehane had left them. At the end of a day of death, with the sounds of grief still raw beyond the gates of the Quarter, the stars were serene as ever in the darkening sky, the moons would rise soon, the white one first tonight, and then the blue, and the night breeze would still ease and cool the scorched summer earth where men and women breathed and walked. And spoke.

“Eyyia?” said her husband, and Eliane bet Danel heard the mangling of her name as music.

“You sound like a marsh frog,” she said, moving to stand before his chair.

By the flickering light she saw him smile.

“Where have you been,” she asked. “My dear. I’ve needed you so much.”

“Eyyia,” he tried again, and stood up. His eyes were black hollows. They would always be hollows.

He opened his arms and she moved into the space they made in the world, and laying her head against his chest she permitted herself the almost unimaginable luxury of grief.

AT APPROXIMATELY THE SAME TIME, their daughter was just outside the city walls negotiating with a number of whores for the purchase of three mules.

Jehane had known, in fact, of several hidden exits in the city walls. Some of them were too tenuous for a man of Husari’s girth, but there was a place in the Quarter itself, at the northwestern end, where a tree hid a key to a low passage through the stone of the city wall. It was, in the event, a near thing, but Husari was able to squeeze through with help from Velaz.

As they came out and stood up on the grassy space before the river a woman’s voice—a familiar voice, in fact—said cheerfully in the darkness, “Be welcome, pilgrims. May I lead you to a Garden of Delights such as Ashar only offers to the Dead?”

“He doesn’t offer it at all to the Kindath,” Jehane replied. “Tonight you could almost tempt me, Jacinto.”

“Jehane? Doctor?” The woman, scented and gaudily bejewelled, stepped closer. “Forgive me! I didn’t recognize you. Who called for you tonight?”

“No one, actually. Tonight I need your help. The wadjis may be after me, and the Muwardis.”

“Plague rot them all!” the woman named Jacinto said. “Haven’t they had enough blood for one day?” By now Jehane’s eyes were accustomed to the night, and she could make out the slender figure in front of her, clad only in the thinnest, most revealing wisps of cloth. “What do you need?” Jacinto asked. She was fourteen years old, Jehane knew.

“Three mules, and your silence.”

“You’ll have them. Come, I’ll bring you to Nunaya.”

She had expected that. If anyone exerted any sort of control over this community of women and boys outside the walls it was Nunaya.

Nunaya was not someone who wasted time, or words. Men in a hurry knew this, too, or they learned it soon enough. A client who came to visit her was likely to be back inside Fezana’s walls within a very short span of time, relieved of certain urges and a sum of money.

The purchase of the mules was not a difficult transaction. For several years now Jehane—the only woman doctor in Fezana—had been the trusted physician of the whores of the city. First in their district inside the eastern wall and then out here to the north, after they had been pushed by the wadjis beyond the city gates and into one of the straggling suburbs by the river.

That event had been but one in a series of sporadic outbursts of pious outrage that punctuated the dealings between the city and those who traded in physical love. The women fully expected to be back inside the walls within a year—and probably back outside them again a year or two after that.

Given, however, that the women and boys one could buy were now mostly to be found outside the walls, it was not surprising that hidden exits had been established. No city with citizens—legitimate or otherwise—dwelling beyond its walls could ever be completely sealed.

Jehane knew a good many of the whores by now, and had, on more than one occasion, slipped out to join them for an evening of food and drink and laughter. Out of courtesy to the doctor who delivered their children and healed their bodies of afflictions or wounds, clients were not welcome at such times. Jehane found these women—and the wise, bitter boys—better company than almost anyone she knew in the city, within the Kindath Quarter or outside it. She wondered, at times, what that suggested about herself.

It was far from a serene world out here among the dilapidated houses that straggled beside the moat and river, and as often as not Jehane had been urgently summoned to deal with a knife wound inflicted by one woman on another. But although the three religions were all present here, it was obvious to her that when quarrels arose it had nothing to do with whether sun or moons or stars were worshipped. And the wadjis who had forced them out here were the common enemy. Jehane knew she would not be betrayed by these people.

Nunaya sold them three mules without so much as a question in her heavy-lidded, heavily accentuated eyes. This was not a place where personal questions were asked. Everyone had their secrets, and their wounds.

Jehane mounted up on one of the mules, Velaz and Husari took the others. A lady was supposed to ride sidesaddle, but Jehane had always found that silly and awkward. Doctors were allowed to be eccentric. She rode as the men did.

It was summer, the flow of the river was lazy and slow. Moving across, holding her mule on a tight rein, Jehane felt a heavy drifting object bump them. She shivered, knowing what it was. The mule pulled away hard and she almost fell, controlling it.

They came up out of the water and started north towards the trees. Jehane looked back just once. Lanterns burned behind them in watchtowers along the walls and in the castle and the tall houses of Fezana. Candles lit by men and women sheltered behind those walls from the dangers of the dark.

There were headless bodies in the castle moat and the river. One hundred and thirty-nine of them.

The one hundred and fortieth man was beside her now, riding in what had to be acute discomfort but uttering no sound of complaint.

“Look ahead,” Velaz said quietly. It was very dark now all around them under the stars.

Jehane looked where he was pointing and saw the red glow of a fire in the distance. Her heart thumped hard. An unshielded campfire on the grasslands could mean many different things, obviously, but Jehane had no way of deciding what. She was in an alien world now, on this exposed plain at night, with an aging servant and a plump merchant. Everything she knew and understood lay behind her. Even the ragged suburb of whores next to the city walls seemed a secure, safe place suddenly.

“I think I know what that light must be,” said Husari after a moment. His voice was calm, the steady sureness of his manner a continuing surprise. “In fact, I’m certain of it,” he said. “Let us go there.”

Jehane, weary for the moment of thinking, having got them out safely and mounted, was content to follow his lead. It did cross her mind that this adventure, this shared pursuit of vengeance, might end rather sooner than any of them had anticipated. She let her mule follow Husari’s towards the fire burning on the plain.

And so it was that the three of them rode—not long after, just as the white moon was rising—straight into the encampment of Rodrigo Belmonte, the Captain of Valledo, and the fifty men he had brought with him to collect the summer parias, and Jehane came to realize that a very long day and night were not yet done.