Shadow Spinner (17 page)

Now the storyteller's eyes turned grave. “Could anyone have followed you?” he asked me.

“I ... I don't know,” I said, feeling foolish. I hadn't thought to look.

The storyteller said something in a low voice to Ayaz; the boy slipped out the front door. “We'll try to get you back in the harem,” the storyteller said, “but I don't know if we can do it today. You may have to spend the night—”

“We can't!” Dunyazad said. “Or I can't. I'm—”

“Your . . . sister would miss you?”

Dunyazad looked at me; I nodded. Our secret was out. No use trying to hide it. The storyteller had tossed out his guess about Zaynab, and we had confirmed it, and he had surmised the rest. We
had
to trust him now.

“She still keeps up the pretense that the stories are for me,” Dunyazad told him. “Without the pretense . . . I don't know what the Sultan would do.”

The storyteller didn't seem surprised. “Very well, then,” he said grimly. “We'll get you back by tonight. One way or another.”

Tonight? My insides went liquid with fear. What about the Khatun? The longer we were gone, the more certain she was to miss me. And last time, she had been
furious.
What she would do if she caught me out again . . . “It would be best to return
before
tonight,” I said. “We could send one of Zaynab's birds—”

“And how would that work, Little Pigeon? Shahrazad would have to send someone to fetch you here, or you'd have to wait someplace else for them to fetch you. And then . . . Does she have another way of smuggling you into the harem? Or are enough of the palace guards your . . . friends?”

I didn't know. I turned to Dunyazad. She shook her head.

The storyteller looked thoughtful. “Well,” he said, “then we'll have to do something else. When Ayaz returns, we'll know how things stand.”

He had an air of confidence that gave me hope. And yet it frightened me to think how much he knew.
Everything.
And we knew nothing about him. I wondered again who he was, and why he knew this story that only the Sultan seemed to have heard. I suddenly thought of that grocer, that grocer in the tale who wasn't really a grocer but a magician in disguise.

“Since you left, I've sent seven birds with bits of the story to Zaynab,” the storyteller said now. “I was about to send the eighth when you came. But perhaps I should tell as much as I can to the both of you, in case something should happen to the pigeons.”

Something happen to the pigeons?
There was another morsel to add to my soup of worries!

As the story unwound, I saw what Shahrazad had been saying about things balancing out. The evil Queen Lab and her scheming mother were balanced by Julnar and
her
mother, who were strong and intelligent and kind. And also there was Marsinah, the slave girl who took pity on Badar Basim. Finally, at the very end, Badir Basim forgave Princess Jauharah. After all she had done
to him—changing him into a bird and banishing him to an island with no water and nothing to eat. But he still loved her. Though they brought all the beautiful girls in the kingdom for him to choose from, he wanted only her.

“And when Princess Jauharah's father told her of this,” the storyteller said, “these were her words: 'Do as you wish, for sorrow and spite have come to an end, and I agree to be his wife.'”

The storyteller smiled. “We leave them in happiness! May Allah bring the same to you and all who stand in need.”

“That's all?” I couldn't help myself; I couldn't believe that was the end.

“The ending displeases you?” he asked.

“He just
forgave
her? After all she did to him? And she wasn't even punished?”

“Oh,” the storyteller said. “So you're an advocate of punishment.”

“Of
justice!”
I said. “And how could he live, lying beside her at night, knowing how she had deceived him?”

The storyteller looked off into the distance, combing his beard with his fingers. “Well, don't you think it best,” he asked at last, “for the Sultan to hear a tale that favors forgiveness?”

Slowly, I nodded. It would be a good lesson for the Sultan, forgiveness. Still, the ending didn't satisfy
me.

“How did you come by that?” the storyteller abruptly asked, staring at my foot, which poked out beneath my gown.

Hastily, I covered it. “An accident,” I said. Suddenly, my face felt hot.

“I heard a story some years ago,” he said, “of a woman who had a young daughter and feared for her, so—”

I cut him off. “Don't put me in one of your stories!”

Silence, again. My angry words hung in the air. I saw that Dunyazad was looking at me with startled eyes. At last, the storyteller spoke. “We all have our demons to deal with, Little Pigeon. Its when we cherish them—cradle them to our breasts and feed them day after day—that's when they curdle our souls.”

*  *  *  

Just after sunset prayers, Ayaz returned. He whispered something into the storyteller's ear and handed him a heap of clothing. The storyteller divided the heap, gave half to Dunyazad and half to me. The cloth was coarse-woven, like Auntie Chavas cloaks. But brightly colored. Garish. With stains, I saw, and patches. I held up the garments one by one to see what they were. A bodyshirt, a cloak, a winding-scarf for a headdress. And not a veil among them.
Boys'
clothes!

“A family of musicians is going into the harem tonight,” the storyteller said. “Four brothers and their sons. They have consented to let you go with them and pretend to be part of their family. Once inside, you can break away from the group. Now, go into the next room and change.”

“But. . .” I looked at Dunyazad. “I thought they didn't let men into the harem.”

“Sometimes they bring in entertainers,” she said. “We watch through slits in the curtains, so they can't see us.”

“But. . . they'll see
us,”
I said. “You and me. Unveiled!”

“It's the only way,” the storyteller said. “It'll be dark, and these men can be trusted.”

I hesitated.

“Princess Budur did it,” Dunyazad said, “and so can we.”

*  *  *  

It was
not
dark—not quite—though shadows lay thick upon the streets. All the light in the world seemed to have wicked up into the sky, a luminous sapphire blue. A soft breeze cooled the air.

I kept my head down as we followed Ayaz to the musicians' cart. But Dunyazad didn't. She had cast off her unnatural meekness and stood tall again, striding powerfully after Ayaz. At last she was dressed as a boy, like Princess Budur. As we approached the cart, she drew me aside. “Stand up straight, Marjan. You don't
look
like a boy, with your eyes downcast that way.”

I didn't feel like a boy. I just felt
strange
in these clothes. They were rough against my skin, after the soft gowns I'd grown used to. Worse, my long braid was knotted up on my head, secured with pins and my garnet comb, and tucked into the headdress. I was afraid my hair would come unpinned at any moment and slither down my back. But worst of all by far, I was walking around on the streets with no veil, with the outside air touching my neck and ears. I felt
naked.

Ayaz nodded good-bye to us, his eyes carefully averted. We climbed up into the cart, setting the burlap-wrapped bundles of our harem clothes in our laps, and sat on the floor among the musicians. One handed Dunyazad a small drum and said to me, “You're a singer.” Then he shifted, turned away from us—as all the others had done.

We rode in silence through the narrow alleys and
streets. At last, I saw the bulk of the palace looming before us. Moonlight frosted its domes and silvered the outlines of the trees beyond. We stopped near the southern door. The musicians picked up their instruments and stepped out of the cart. Dunyazad and I followed.
Walk smoothly! Don't limp!
I told myself. It was good that the cloak was overlong and hid all but the toes of my bad foot. Two helmeted palace guards stood on either side of the massive arched door, their hands on the hilts of their scimitars. Most of the musicians went before us, but three of them waited to go behind. I held my breath as Dunyazad neared the guards, moved into the flickering patch of torchlight between them.

Then she was past.

My turn now.
Don't limp.
I looked down, watched my toes. Just as they moved into the light, one of the guards stepped forward, stopped me. “What's in the bundle?” he growled.

My heart was pounding in my throat. “Change of costumes,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady, trying to deepen it a little. I remembered to stand tall—like Dunyazad, like Princess Budur. Then, with all the boldness I could muster, I looked straight into the palace guard's eyes. A woman would not do that. No woman would ever do that.

A sudden bright trill sounded behind me. I glanced back. A piper, and now a drummer, were playing. As the guard turned to look, a bell-ringer shooed me quickly past.

I hastened after Dunyazad and the other musicians as they followed a guard through a long colonnaded corridor. He stopped at a wooden door and spoke to a eunuch;
Dunyazad and I huddled in the middle of the group. And then the eunuch was moving through the doorway, calling out, “Withdraw!” We followed him through the empty kitchens, their high, vaulted ceilings blackened with smoke. Dunyazad pulled on my arm, tugging me into an alcove. She pushed on a wooden panel; it opened. She nudged me inside. I stood in the dark, listened to the
click
of a closing door. I heard her beside me, breathing hard. Then her voice, near my ear: “Change into your harem clothes. Leave the other ones here; I'll get rid of them later.”

It was black as ebony; impossible to tell what things
were
except by feel. I fumbled about and once tripped on my sash and nearly fell. Nearby, I heard soft grunts and rustlings, then a muttered curse. At last I was dressed—as well as I could manage. I unpinned my hair and tucked in my precious comb.

“Where are you, Marjan? Hold out your hand.” Dunyazad patted down my arm to my hand, grasped it, pulled me along behind her. “There's not much time,” she said. “Make sure people see you, so they know you re here. I have to get to my sister.”

She led me a long way in the dark until at last, we stopped. “Go out here. You'll know the place. I'll see you in the morning.”

I did know it: the room where she had taken me into the passage the day I had escaped in the chest. Some way off, I could hear strains of lilting music. Maybe if I just slipped into the crowd watching the musicians, no one would know I'd been gone.

I could
hope.

Following the sounds, I found a group of women
gathered around a curtained wall that divided a large room in half. They were peering through slits in the brocaded fabric. I crept into the room, stood just behind them. No one turned around. No one had seen.

I let out my breath in a sigh.

“Marjan!”

I spun round. Ashraf! She grabbed my arm, yanked me toward the door. “The Khatun wants to see you,” she said.

“Now.”

A
shraf gripped my arm and pulled me down the hallway toward the stairs. I stumbled, lost my footing, but she didn't stop—didn't even slow down. She just kept on dragging me until I was sure my arm was going to wrench out of its socket, until my feet, scrambling around, finally got themselves underneath me again.

My mind froze in terror around the image of the Khatun. I couldn't think. I gave a hard, twisting yank with my arm, slipped out of Ashraf's grasp, and fled away from the stairs. I landed wrong on my bad foot, stumbled, and Ashraf was there again. She grabbed my braided hair and hauled me to the steps, then up. Pain jolted through my neck, burned like fire in my scalp. I tried to keep up with her to ease the fury of the pain, but she was moving fast,
moving through courtyards and hallways and up another long flight of steps until at last we came to the Khatun's quarters.

The smell again. The sickly sweet, rotten smell. I couldn't see her, could see nothing but the dark carpets because of the way Ashraf held my braid. As we drew deeper into the dim room, the smell grew stronger, flooded my nose and throat until I was choking with it.

“Here she is,” Ashraf said. She flung me to the floor; I hit hard and stayed, my face just inches from the Khatun's feet. Tiny feet—shod in perfect bejeweled slippers, with pouches of fat mounding up around their rims. “I caught her going to see the musicians,” Ashraf was saying. “I have no idea where she's been.”

“Get. . . up
.” That voice. That soft, hoarse voice.

I rose slowly, studying the Khatun's face. Though the bloated surface of it seemed calm, I could see something in her eyes, something deep and raging. Behind her, in the shadows, Soraya looked different. There was a soft, wounded look about her. Her eyes were red and puffy, as if she had been crying.

“Where were you?” the Khatun demanded.

“I was—” I started to say
with Zaynab.
But maybe they had searched there. “I was here and there, around the harem.”

Her hand whipped out at me before I saw it coming. The slap stung, brought tears to my eyes. I rubbed at my cheek, tried to blink back the tears.