Shadow Spinner (6 page)

Dunyazad moved toward me. I shrank away, clambered to my feet, stumbled backward, scattering dates and almonds on the carpet. But still Dunyazad came, until her face was just a finger-length from my own. “You're going to tell us, do you hear me? Everything you know about Julnar's son. Do you hear me? Do you
hear
me?”

“Stop it, Sister.” Shahrazad's voice was sharp.

“But she knows!”

“I don't think she does.”

“You're too trusting!” Dunyazad wailed. “You've always been too trusting!”

“Sit down, Dunya!” Shahrazad said firmly. “You, too, Marjan. We'll sort this through. Both of you! Sit down!”

Dunyazad set her mouth in a hard little frown, with dimples on either side. But she obeyed with a sudden meekness that surprised me. I sat down, too, carefully covering my bad foot with my gown. And then I had to tell them all about getting lost in the bazaar, about the blind storyteller, about how Auntie Chava had taken me away. I could see that Dunyazad still didn't believe I hadn't heard the rest of the tale. She sat unmoving, with her arms crossed, eyeing me hard.

But Shahrazad believed me—I could tell. “If storytellers in the bazaar are telling of Julnar,” she mused, “her story must be widely known. And yet I've never heard of her. She's not in any of my books—”

“Are you certain?” Dunyazad asked. “You have thousands of tales in your books.”

“I—like Marjan—would remember,” Shahrazad said. “I've read them all and, even though with some it was years ago, the Julnar tale doesn't sound remotely familiar. Besides, sorting through all my books for one particular tale would be like sifting the desert to find a grain of sugar. And we need it
soon.”

“Where did the Sultan hear it?” Dunyazad asked. “Did he say?”

“No. It was when he was a boy. His nurse is long dead. And we couldn't ask the Khatun—”

“Allah forbid!” Dunyazad said.

“None of the eunuchs were here then. Our father—”

“Maybe
he
knows it!”

“Maybe. But I don't know when he'll be back. Since he's traveling with the Sultans brother, they'll probably be stopping along the way to visit with his ministers in different parts of the kingdom.”

Their father, I knew, was the Sultan's vizier. He was in charge of supplying new wives. Auntie Chava once told me that he didn't like this—didn't approve of it at all. But the Sultan had banished his previous vizier for refusing to give him new wives to kill. This vizier—the old one—had been the Sultan's father's vizier and had known the Sultan all his life. The Sultan had trusted him above all other men. So the lesson was clear.

Even less had Shahrazad's father liked the idea of giving his own daughter as a wife to the Sultan. But she had begged him to let her try to end the killings, and at last he had relented.

“I can stretch out the part that Marjan told me for three more nights,” Shahrazad was saying now, “but after that. . .”

Dunyazad sighed. “Well, if
she
won't tell you”—she glanced at me—“you'll just have to tell the Sultan you don't know it. Surely he wont. . .” She swallowed. “Surely that will be all right. He's grown fond of you, Sister, I can tell. Just distract him with another good tale. You can get one from Marjan. Unless she refuses to tell you
anything,
and then we'll know for certain whose creature she is.”

“I'd be happy to tell you . . .” I stammered. “I know many tales, and I was thinking . . . There are five or six unusual ones that you might not know, and I'd be glad . . .” I trailed off, looking at Shahrazad.

She wasn't listening. She was looking down, hugging her pillow, biting her lower lip.

“What?” Dunyazad asked her.

Shahrazad shook her head.

“Sister,
what?”

“I ... I told him I knew it.”

“You
what?”
Dunyazad's voice was a whisper.

“Not in so many words. But he told me how he loved the tale about Julnar's son, and he asked me if I would tell it, and he seemed so eager, so happy about it. Like a child he seemed. Like an innocent child.” She sighed, gave a sad little laugh, then turned to me. “I was certain you'd know it. Though now that seems foolish. And I led him to believe . . . that I knew it. That I would tell it next.”

I had the strangest sensation then, as if my heart were cracking in my chest, as if it were crumbling apart like dried clay.

The Sultan abhorred deception. He was famous for it. There was a saying in the city:
like lying to the Sultan.
Eating poison was like lying to the Sultan. Stepping into a nest of cobras was like lying to the Sultan. Plunging a dagger into your heart was like lying to the Sultan.

I had so wanted to help Shahrazad; I had felt so good
thinking
I had helped her. But I had only made things worse.

Dunyazad broke the silence. “When? When did you tell him that? Not when you told the story. Not when I was there.”

“When he summoned me later this morning. To see our new son.”

“But why did you
say
that? That you knew the rest of the tale?”

Shahrazad shrugged. “He seemed so pleased with me . . . with the baby. And he mentioned the tale again. He asked me straight out if I knew it. I didn't want to displease him. Didn't
dare!
You know that, Dunya, how careful I have to be.” She turned to me. “When I tell him certain tales, I must do it in the most delicate way, wrapping stories inside of stories, so he can learn without knowing that I'm teaching. Or at least—without either of us having to acknowledge it. And he's never requested anything from me before now. If I were to refuse him his only request—”

“Only
request!” Dunyazad cried. “Save that you keep him entertained to his satisfaction every single night, without ever repeating yourself, whether or not you've even given
birth
that day, or he'll—”

“Hush! Keep your voice down, Sister! Walls have rats and rats have ears!”

I cleared my throat; they both looked at me. “Maybe,” I ventured, “since it was so long ago when the Sultan heard the tale, maybe he's forgotten exactly how it goes. And I could . . . make up a story about Julnar's son.”

Shahrazad looked at me wonderingly. “You can do it
just like that?” she asked. “Make up a whole new story?”

I shrugged. “You can, too.”

“For me it's hard. And my stories aren't very good.”

“But I'm sure they
are”

Shahrazad laughed. “I'm human, Marjan—just like you. I'm better at some things than others. But it would be unwise for either of us to make up a story about Julnar's son. The Sultan will know the right one when he hears it. It's like that name . . . the name with the two D's or two
B's.
When you forget a name like that you don't really forget it, because when you hear it again you know it instantly. It'll be that way with this tale. If you came up with something far different from what he remembers—as you'd be bound to do—he'd be suspicious.
Angry.”

“What about the other women in the harem?” I asked. “One of them must have heard it.”

Dunyazad snorted.
“They
won't help.”

“They're . . . afraid of the Khatun,” Shahrazad said. “They live and die at her whim. So they're very . . . cautious around me.”

“Even though my sister's saving all their lives,” Dunyazad said. “The young ones, anyway. They're cowards!”

Shahrazad sighed. “Well, things are dangerous for them, too.”

“I still don't understand,” I said, “why the Khatun—”

“She
hates
my sister!” Dunyazad broke in. “She's a witch!”

“Shh!”
Shahrazad put a finger to her lips.

“Well she is!”

“If only I could get
out”
I said. “I could find that beggar—I know it. They usually stake out the same places for years.”
If,
I added to myself, he was still alive.

'You can't get out,” Shahrazad said. “No one can get out.”

Dunyazad jolted erect, turned to her sister.
“She
can't get out,” she said. “But. . .”

Shahrazad and her sister locked gazes. I could tell they were thinking the same thing. What it was, I hadn't an inkling.

“Don't tell
her,”
Dunyazad warned, looking at me. “It isn't safe.”

Shaharazad nodded. “Some things are dangerous to know,” she told me—though I was sure that was not what Dunyazad had meant. Shahrazad rose, and I stood, too. “Thank you, Marjan,” she said, “for all you've done. Can you find your way back to your room?”

“I think so,” I said. Dunyazad had taken me by a direct route with no secret passageways—much simpler than the way we had come before.

“We'll speak later,” Shahrazad said.

And I was alone again.

I
made my way back to my room, stopping at a pool to make ablutions, and then belatedly making up for the noon prayers I had missed. Still quiet. Everyone still resting. It seemed like a week since I had left Auntie Chava, but it was only midafternoon of the very same day. I unrolled the mattress and tried to sleep. I
was
tired—my face ached the way it always does when I haven't slept well or enough. But I couldn't sleep. Sweat beaded on my temples and trickled into my hair. This room, so far from the outside air, was suffocating.

I told myself my story about my mother; sometimes I can sleep after that. But it only stirred up my mind. I kept
worrying about Shahrazad—how she was going to get the rest of that story, and if the Sultan would really kill her if she didn't. And what were Shahrazad and Dunyazad planning?
“She
can't get out,” Dunyazad had said, “but. . .”

Was she thinking of someone who
could
go out of the harem? Who? A eunuch, maybe? Or a woman who came in to sell trinkets and cloth? Or a man who delivered food for the kitchens?

Some things are dangerous to know,
Shahrazad had said.

Because of the Khatun.

Was everyone in the harem her
creature,
as Dunyazad had put it?

My glance strayed to the corner where the chest stood in the shadows. The chest with the dead girl's things. Had she been the Khatun's creature? What about all the hundreds of women in the harem who had lived here and been killed—had they been her creatures, too?

What had it been like here, back then, in the old days before the killings? When the harem had been full of women? I got up, opened the chest, fingered the fine cloth of the garments, cradled the dead girls prayer stone in my palm. I could almost hear the whispers, the pad of slippered feet on the floor. I could almost feel the faint swishing breezes stirred by silk gowns as they passed. I could almost smell the swirling eddies of perfume.

I flung the stone into the chest, shut the lid. This place was haunted! I had to get away!

I couldn't leave the harem, but I could at least get out of this room. Air. I needed fresh air.

I pushed aside the curtain and tiptoed down the hall.
Maybe I could find a courtyard open to the sky. Or a roof terrace. There must be a terrace somewhere.

I didn't know if I was allowed to explore other parts of the harem—but no one had told me
not
to. What harm could it do?

I wandered through a maze of silent hallways lined with closely spaced, curtained doorways. I couldn't resist peeking into one. Slowly, I pulled the curtain aside . . .

Abandoned. Cobwebs festooned the corners; the floor cushions and chest were buried in drifts of dust.

Ghosts.

When you want to find a roof terrace, it's a good idea to look for stairs. I found my way to an open courtyard, then took a wide glazed stairway up. Through a half dozen corridors and stairways and courtyards, I lost my way. From time to time I heard murmured voices behind curtains, and once I heard a child's cry. Then I turned a corner and came face-to-face with two crimson-robed eunuchs guarding an arched doorway. The Khatun's doorway! They stared at me; I whirled around and hurried away.

Though I was relieved that the guards didn't come after me, a deep, aching loneliness was welling up inside. I had come to help Shahrazad, but I had made things worse, and now there was nothing for me to do. No one to help, no one to talk to . . . No one even to sit in the same room with me, to stir the stagnant, perfumed air with breath.

Air. I had to get fresh air.

I came to the end of a corridor, then went down a flight of stairs to yet another courtyard with yet another beautiful fountain. I had seen so many beautiful fountains
and beautiful arches and beautiful carpets and beautiful friezes that they were almost beginning to bore me.

Then I caught a glimpse of bright light beyond a wide latticed window at the top of a short stairway. There was a stone parapet, with blue sky beyond.

I ran up the steps—clunking, forgetting to go graceful and silent. I could see it now through the lattice: a terrace. There was a heavy wooden door in the wall; I rattled at the latch, but it was locked.

I peered again through the lattice. In the afternoon sunlight, I could see a graceful pattern of tiles on the floor, and potted flowering bushes, and a haze of trees beyond. The part that I could see was square, but there appeared to be a narrow arm of terrace that stuck out to the left, along the railing. Someone must have been there not long before. A carpet was spread out with damask cushions strewn upon it. At one edge lay a silver tray with glass drinking vessels and a sprinkling of crumbs and seeds.