Dark Empress (2 page)

Samir smiled and winked as he dropped into a crouched position, his muscles bunched and his tendons twanging. Asima nodded and turned to her other side. Ghassan was already is position as he turned to smile at her. Samir’s brother was, while officially a twin, nothing like his smaller sibling. This was good according to the traditions of the desert people from whom the boys’ paternal line had sprung. Twins who were too similar were bad luck; bad magic. It was not unknown for the nomads to leave children to die in the sands because of their tragic similarity; but Ghassan was different, for sure.

Already a head taller, Ghassan had a slight curl to his hair and some parts of it jutted out in random directions. No matter how much their mother flattened, brushed, waxed or washed it, parts of Ghassan’s hair were untameable. His skin was marked from an illness as a baby and yet the marks did not make him ugly or ruin his appearance; somehow, the imperfections added to the rugged power of his appearance and lent him a gravity he would otherwise have lacked. Where Samir’s mouth turned up to a smile, Ghassan’s was straight and flat, his expression serious. He was handsome in a way that appealed to some of the girls of M’Dahz, and mothers nodded sagely as they foresaw an eminently marriageable boy there. And yet, somehow, while Ghassan’s clothes were almost identical to Samir’s, on the taller boy they hung like badly sewn bags. Asima almost laughed as she nodded and faced forward, dropping to a crouch herself.

The girl was already pretty and was coming to realise it even at this young age. She had perfect skin, with a creamy texture that required surprisingly little upkeep, though her father chided her anyway for the amount of time she spent primping. Her almond eyes were beautiful, dark and warm, her lips a perfect bow. Her hair was long and carefully combed and pinned back, never cut more than a shaping trim as was the tradition of the Pelasians, for Asima had Pelasian blood on her mother’s side. The only fault that marred her appearance in any way was her fingernails. Her mother, before she had passed last winter, had disciplined her repeatedly for the damage she was doing biting her nails down to the quick, though it had never stopped her. She was dressed, in a manner that would cause her father’s heart to skip a beat, in just a white cotton vest and knee length trousers of the same thin material, her feet bare and her sparse jewellery removed and lying on the pile of more acceptable clothing by her feet.

She had jested time and again with the boys that her father would marry their mother one day and so she could never kiss them since they would end up being her brothers. But it was friendly banter and they all knew it. While the boys’ mother was a handsome woman still in the bloom of late youth, she was poor almost to the point of slavery, eking out a living as a washer woman for the mercantile classes. Indeed, it was at their mother’s work where Asima had met the boys, her father being a factor for a Pelasian trader of fruit and having paid their mother a little extra to keep his daughter busy while he sorted problems with deliveries. Her father was far from a rich man, but his business kept him well enough that Asima really should not have been socialising with the likes of Samir and Ghassan.

But in that timeless fashion, the universe over, such boundaries of class meant nothing to the children, and forbidding them to play together merely drove them closer and closer. For the last year the three had become inseparable and even their parents had thrown their hands in the air in defeat and allowed the friends to continue their association, albeit restricted to times that neither adult was in sight.

And so here they were. The boys’ mother worked her fingers raw in the cleaning vats beneath the blanket roof of the cloth market, despite the heat of the day, while Asima’s father, busy as always, met with the captain of a ship newly arrived from Germalla across the sea to the north.

And the three unsupervised children?

“Go!”

As Asima shouted, the three figures, crouched and tense on the flat roof of the copperware shop in the street of a hundred martyrs, raced off across the dusty and hot surface, their bare feet hardened to the extreme heat radiating from the roof. Each week the route of the race changed, chosen by a different competitor, the three making sure that each of them had a fair say, though it was becoming clear that Samir was playing with them in designing his routes. The last two occasions that Samir had laid out the plan, both his companions had drawn a worried and surprised breath at some of his decisions.

The first jump was simple: across the three roofs to the next street, the street of the northern dunes. Northern dunes was a narrow alley and the carpet covering was only four feet below the rooftops here as a safety net. Ghassan was first over, his long and powerful legs giving him the thrust needed to easily clear the gap, coming down with a light thud and hardly breaking his pace before he sped up and was off again toward the tower of the Pelasian temple. Asima was next across, her small frame light and lithe. She landed awkwardly and stumbled for a moment, but was quickly up and off again. Behind her she heard the telltale thud and rumble of Samir landing and smoothly rolling to his feet once more without a halt in pace.

Across the rooftops they ran, gradually increasing in altitude as per Samir’s route. The temple tower passed by on their right as they leapt across the nine sisters stairway, one of the few jumps with no carpet safety net and one of very few places on their run that could conceivably cause serious injury. By now Samir was at her heel like a terrier, while Ghassan maintained a short but convincing lead. Asima was trying to picture the path ahead, to identify any place where she could use her intimate knowledge of the town to gain the lead. Where would…

She was so surprised when Ghassan lost his footing and tumbled to a heap on the flat roof that she almost fell over him, leaping into the air at the last moment and performing a graceful manoeuvre as she skipped twice and then used her new momentum to clear the next street. She laughed as she landed on the other side and turned to see her lead over Samir had widened and that Ghassan, having pulled himself to his feet was now clearly at the rear of the group.

Turning her attention back to the terrain ahead, she drew a deep breath. She was in the lead now and had to maintain her advantage. She had only won two races this year and they had both been on routes she herself had set. To maintain face, she had to win one of Samir’s routes. Asima could hear the laboured breathing of the smaller brother close behind her; so close.

Biting the inside of her cheek, she ducked sharply to the right, around the upper storey of the temple-hospital of Belapraxis, with its roof herb garden full of plants with bitter-sweet smells and healing properties. It was oh so tempting to stop for a moment in the blessed shade cast by the extra level of plaster wall, but there was too much at stake today.

Asima slowed as she neared the edge of the roof. Between this wall of the hospital and the grocer’s at the other side of the street, a single beam ran across carrying the water pipe that fed the hospital from a cistern at the highest point of the town. With the increased altitude of the buildings here, the carpet ceiling was a good fifteen feet below and the fall would hurt even if she landed well; a bad landing on one of the supporting struts would be crippling if not deadly. Really, Samir’s routes were getting crazy. Taking a deep breath and offering up her prayers to the four Gods whose names leapt easily to mind, she stepped out onto the beam and began to slowly inch across, placing her bare feet close in front of each other.

Almost half way across, she paused and dipped her feet in the open section of water channel to clean and cool them. Samir was close enough behind her she could hear him breathing tightly as he traversed the beam. There was no sound from further back than that. Biting her cheek once more, she risked turning her head to gauge her pursuit. Samir was perhaps twelve feet behind her. His short legs went against him in a straight run, but his cat-like grace and reflexes allowed him to pick up the pace in places like this.

Of Ghassan there was no sign.

Where had he gone? Surely he had not been so slow that they had lost him? She swallowed nervously. The alternative was unpleasant. Had he fallen at one of the jumps? If so, then dear Gods please let it be a good fall at one of the places where the carpets were close. There was no time to worry now; Samir was closing.

Turning carefully, she set off once more, her cool feet refreshed. Her grip would have been lessened by the slippery wet were it not for the interminable dust that settled on every surface of M’Dahz and gave her good purchase on the wood. She concentrated hard. Staying ahead of Samir was important, but so was making it across safely.

Finally, after what seemed like an age, she reached the hot white roof of Jamal’s grocery store and stretched gratefully for only a second before setting off at a run on the last leg of the route.

Up over a low dividing wall, past another roof garden and a quick, though awkwardly-angled jump, across the alley of the coppersmiths. A quick ‘S’ shape between the locked stairway entrances of three buildings and then a sharp corner next to a long drop… curse Samir for his insane routes. One more flat roof brought the last jump, a wide but straight leap across the stairway of Sidi M’Dekh. She smiled. There was no way Samir could catch her now; she was home free. She began to laugh wildly as she rounded the last corner to see the pole with the red rag that marked the end of the race.

And her face fell. Ghassan grinned back at her where he stood casually, holding the rag and leaning against the wall in the cool shade.

How had he done that? She racked her brains to try and work out where he had gone. How had he taken a short cut? It was theoretically a cheat, but there could have been no quicker way to get back up to the roof if he had fallen than the route they had both taken.

“How?” she demanded.

Ghassan’s smile, all the more genuine for its rarity, held her for a moment as he bowed and proffered the red rag to her.

“I would turn the world upside down to see your face from this angle, Asima.”

She blinked for a moment and then smiled as Ghassan burst out laughing.

“You should have seen your face when you turned the corner and found me!” he howled.

She shook her head as Samir arrived and patted her on the back.

“No, I don’t know how he does it either. It’s that brain of his.”

The three children collapsed to the floor in the shade and scanned the rooftops at this, one of the highest places in M’Dahz. The Pelasian bell tower was just visible around the edge of the building, as were various turrets and high rooftops, but the main obstruction on the skyline here was the Palace Compound and it was the looming and intriguing walls of that forbidden complex that captured the gaze of the three runners.

“One day.”

Both Asima and Ghassan turned to look at their companion. Samir shrugged.

“We’ve been almost everywhere there is to go above the town, but we’ve never set foot in the compound. Before the summer’s out, I want to walk on the governor’s roof.”

Asima and Ghassan nodded sagely, each privately considering the almost negligible chances of that ever happening. But there was something in Samir’s eye that afternoon in the high places of M’Dahz; something that made Asima certain that nothing in the world of human endeavour was beyond Samir’s reach if he put his mind to it.

Nothing.

In which changes occur

A year had passed. The rooftop chases had tailed off in the late wintertime, though not due to the conditions. After all, in M’Dahz the deepest winter was almost indistinguishable from high summer to all but the natives. No, somehow the thrill had gone without them ever having set foot on the governor’s roof as Samir had vowed. Oh, they still ran occasionally; perhaps once a month now, and it was always Samir who set the routes these days, but when the joy of the rooftops had palled a little, the three had sought out new thrills. Games had come and gone as the seasons turned, and had culminated in this, their latest test of nerves.

The port district of M’Dahz was a maze of warehouses, offices, palisaded yards, harbours, dry docks, houses and taverns. Every open space seemed to be filled with people, busily striding around with papers, boxes and sacks. Local merchants on business errands, factors visiting ship captains, dockers loading and unloading vessels and filling and emptying warehouses. And, of course, there were the fascinating visitors. Few of the foreigners that landed at the port made it into the depths of the city, staying close to their ships and cargoes and to the drinking pits that entertained them.

Among the busy and narrow thoroughfares, where ropes coiled around bollards and crates lay in abandoned unruly piles, Asima, Samir and Ghassan picked their way carefully, repeatedly ducking back and dodging the unheeding feet of sailors and slaves. The boys, dressed in the clothing of peasants, would be entirely unnoticed in the streets under normal circumstances, but Asima wore a shabby cloak over her good cotton clothes and had removed her jewellery once again so as not to stand out.

Ahead lay the warehouse complex of master Trevistus, owner of four merchant galleys, native of the Imperial capital and probably the richest man to currently walk the streets of M’Dahz. Asima swallowed nervously as the three of them ducked once more into the shadowy recesses of an unknown building out of the press of sweaty workers.

“This may be stupid, Samir.”

The lithe young man turned and grinned at her.

“Your definition of stupid is a little looser than mine. Getting caught would be stupid.”