The Diviner (35 page)

He watched Mirzah's needle glide through Jemilha's tunic, and he knew he had not only a wife but a true Sheyqa.

Still . . .

“Why don't you have the servants do that?”

Her shoulders, covered by a white silk robe and draped in a flame-colored scarf, lifted in a shrug. She kept on with her sewing.

“For nearly two years you have been Sheyqa, and yet you do your own mending. Mirzah, my wife, not only are there servants to do it for you, but it truly need not be done at all. Jemilha and all the girls can have as many new clothes as they wish when their old ones wear out.”

“This is her favorite. I can hardly get her to wear anything else. And it's not worn out. The fabric is perfectly good. She merely tore a hole in it, climbing a tree.”

Since coming to live at the palace, none of the girls could be kept out of the trees. Alessid understood. He'd spent his childhood leading his little brothers up every tree in Sihabbah, much to their mother's anxiety. Jemilha, though, had a special reason for risking scrapes and bruises: She wanted the best possible view of everything, so she could draw its likeness. From the first moment pen and ink were set before her, she had scorned making letters for the more complex delights of making pictures.

“She could climb a hundred trees and tear a hundred holes in a hundred tunics, and—”

“That she may do,” Mirzah interrupted, her fierceness startling him. “You may call me Sheyqa of Tza'ab Rih, and we may live in this echoing great cavern with a hundred people waiting on us hand and foot—but if I want to mend my daughter's favorite clothes myself with my own sovereign hands, then by Acuyib I
will
!”

“You miss your own tent,” he said.

Another shrug, and another silence, and another series of fine stitches.

“I understand, Mirzah.” He was not overly fond of living in a palace, either, except for what it represented. And he had spent much time, effort, and money changing what it represented. Workers had spent half a year gutting it of Sheyqir Za'aid's atrocities. Most were merely ugly: tapestries of garish and improbable flowers, dreadful furniture with not an inch left uncarved. Some were truly ridiculous: the Sheyqir's own crimson porcelain commode, which had small braziers on either side so the royal member would not be chilled and a cushiony velvet seat so that the royal rump would not be chafed. A few of Za'aid's decorations were appallingly obscene: Alessid didn't like to think about the lewd paintings in the bedchamber. The seaside estate had been even worse. Mirzah had ordered the disgusting playground of the al-Ammarizzad emptied from cellars to roof tiles, and given it to her brother Fadhil to be turned into a dawa'an sheymma staffed with Shagara healers. For this alone, Tza'ab Rih praised their Sheyqa's name.

“I do understand,” he repeated, and she looked up from sewing long enough to give him a skeptical frown. “Come, leave that. I have something to show you.”

“I'm not finished.”

“Finish tomorrow. Jemilha can live for a day without her favorite tunic, and climb trees wearing something else. Come.”

He led her through the family's quarters, down a flight of stairs, and along a stone corridor to a large double door. The wood was carved with an intricate tree that disguised the juncture. On the left panel was a lion; on the right, a griffin. Both beasts wore crowns.

He saw that she comprehended the symbols at once. The lion that was his own name. the griffin that had become his personal icon, and the tree of life that was the Shagara.

“These will be your rooms,” he told her. “I had hoped to have them ready for your birthday, to surprise you—but I think tonight you need to see them.”

“My rooms now are perfectly adequate.”

“Mirzah, don't be so stubborn!” He opened the doors and heard her catch her breath. All the gaudy, tasteless al-Ammarizzad ornamentation had been removed. The entry hall was a soothing square of green tile floor and white walls and four rounded archways, with an intricacy of gilded plaster-work molding that spelled out excerpts from
The Lessons of Acuyib
dealing with family joys.

“To the right are your reception chambers,” Alessid told his wife. “To the left, your private rooms. And straight ahead—”

He guided her toward the far portal. Beyond a carved folding screen was an indoor garden, but without plants. Instead, artisans had created a cool, inviting haven of rich color and gentle sound. From a central fountain water chirruped into a shallow square pool tiled in a whirl of blues. The raised edge was green, as were the floors and the walls as high as Alessid's knees; a winding maze of gleaming trellises rose ten feet high, dappled with flowers. Above this the tiles were blue again, darker and darker as they rose to the ceiling: a deep sapphire dome misted with tiny silver stars. From the dome's apex depended delicate silver hazziri on nearly invisible chains that chimed counterpoint to the fountain. An arching alcove in the north wall contained a carpet, a real one, of blue and green and rose, matching pillows, and a small recessed shelf for a lamp and books.

“This, too, is yours,” Alessid said softly.

Mirzah glanced up at him. “Mine?”

“Yes—and any guests you care to share it with.” He slipped an arm around her waist and drew her toward the softly carpeted alcove. “I was hoping to be the first... .”

She froze beside him. “No. There will be no more daughters to sell off in marriage—and no more Haddiyat sons that I will outlive.”

He touched her cheek, trying to soothe her. She jerked her head away. Telling himself to be patient, he began, “Kammel's death—”

“—came too soon, even for one of his kind. How long will his brother live? Shall I go on having babies to replace the sons I will lose?” Her voice rose, her words quickened. “I'm young enough still. How many do you want, husband? How many sons and daughters does the al-Ma'aliq require?”

“Mirzah, you don't mean this.”

“I mean it with every bone in my body, Alessid.”

“Ayia,” he said coldly, “then I will trouble you no more. There are other beds, after all.”

“Ayia,” she responded in the same tone, “and should I learn that you have lain down in one, I will divorce you as is my right and take my children back to the Shagara tents.”

Alessid al-Ma'aliq was not accustomed to being thwarted; still less was he familiar with being threatened. For a full minute he simply failed to react.

In that time his wife turned on her heel and left the ever-blooming garden he had created for her delight. He heard the soft whisper of her slippers on the tiles. The opening and closing of the doors. The mindless chatter of the fountain and the maddening tinkle of the hazziri. He looked around at the shining tiles—a mimicry of living things and glinting stars, a chill illusion.

To the unreality, he said, “Does she think I do not grieve?”

He left the cold tile garden and never set foot in it again.

 

Ra'abi el-Ma'aliq and Zaqir al-Ammarizzad el-Ma'aliq duly met, and genuinely liked each other despite the promptings of their parents' ambitions. She was pleased by his looks, his manners, his elegance, his education—and his deference to her greater position here in Tza'ab Rih while never behaving as anything less than the sheyqir he had been born. For his part, he was pleased that not only was she as lovely as his brother Allim had said, and as clever, but her words were as interesting as they were abundant. In 654 they were wed, and a year later she bore a son. Mirzah wept when she was told the child was a boy, but by the time she went to see him her eyes were dry and she was smiling.

Mirzah remained Alessid's Sheyqa, capable and conscientious, but she was no longer his wife. He was discreet about his infrequent pleasures. He might have taken an official concubine, of course, but as deeply as Mirzah had injured him, he would not injure her dignity by putting another woman in the palace. Indeed, he never took a woman inside its walls. Instead, when he traveled Tza'ab Rih—which he did often, showing himself to the people and familiarizing himself with their lives and problems—he invariably chose a young widow who never afterward remembered who her lover had been. Kemmal had been most obliging.

The young man had explained himself to his father on the night he offered the talishann. “I understand my mother's pain. I understand the guilt she feels. Because of her, I am gifted with that which makes me honored among the Shagara, that which allows me to do what other men cannot. But because of her, I will never father a child, and I will be dead at an age when other men are not even old.”

“You may understand, but I do not. Other women have borne Haddiyat sons—Meryem, Leyliah—”

“She suffered greatly, losing Kammil so young,” Kemmal murmured. “Forgive me, Ab'ya, but I think I may be the only one who knows what she feels. He was my twin brother, as close to me as my own thoughts.”

Stung, Alessid said, “He was my son, too.”

“I do not think she ever allowed herself to acknowledge that Kammil or Addad or I might be Haddiyat—just as she does not speak of it regarding her brother Fadhil. But now she cannot escape the knowledge.”

“You mean to say that if she could be guaranteed only daughters—”

“Yes. Only watch her with Mairid. The joy of a girl-child is unencumbered.” Kemmal paused a moment, then said, “I know that you cherish my mother. I know you would prefer to be her husband rather than another woman's lover. To go from woman to woman reminds you too much of your own father, and the tales told of—”

“Be silent!”

“Forgive me, Ab'ya. All I would add is that for your own health, you should not be emulating Sa'ahid the Chaste, content to chant
The Lessons
every night until dawn.”

And then he had presented his father with appropriate hazziri and instructions as to how they worked.

 

With Ra'abi happily married to Zaqir, Jemilha was next. She chose Ka'ateb Tallib from the young men presented as suitable. Her sister Za'arifa, barely fourteen, decided at the wedding that Ka'ateb's younger brother was the man for her and made the next year unbearable with her impatience.

There was never any further question about where his daughters' husbands would live. Not only were the girls Shagara, who therefore did not leave the tribe, but one did not marry a son into the family of the Sheyqa of Tza'ab Rih and then negate the advantage by keeping him and her in the desert. The young men were their families' conduits to influence, and they all knew it.

The day after Za'arifa's marriage, a delegation from Ga'af Shammal begged audience with Alessid. Invited to the wedding for courtesy's sake, they made the long journey for curiosity's sake and were dazzled by all they saw. In the audience hall they came straight out with it: they wished to become part of Tza'ab Rih.

Their unmannerly directness offended Mirzah. Standing at her side where she sat in the plain wooden chair she insisted on, scorning the silver throne left here by the al-Ammarad, Alessid felt her fingers claw stiffly into his wrist, and placed his hand over hers in warning.

She spoke before he could draw breath. “You are independent of any ruler. You have ever been so.”

“Yes, great Sheyqa,” said the al-Arroun who headed the delegation. “And have paid for it in our blood. When the Qarrik came, and the Hrumman, and the barbarians from Granidiya and elsewhere—ayia, we survived them all, but we are weary. We must waste the time and strength of our young men to guard the northern border when they ought to be adding to our wealth by crafting goods and tilling fields and tending sheep.”

Living could be dangerous in Ga'af Shammal. Raiding barbarians sacked towns and stole livestock. They did not attempt to take the land, only to take from its people the fruits of it and their labors.

“You have an army, glorious Sheyqa,” al-Arroun continued, “mounted on strong horses.”

“Ayia, I do,” Mirzah told him. “And you propose what, precisely?”

Alessid bowed his head to her, saying, “Your permission, Sheyqa?”

Compressing her lips, she nodded briefly. He was always scrupulously polite about the fiction that she ruled Tza'ab Rih's exterior as well as interior affairs. He knew she hated him for it.

“We are not just neighbors but kinsmen, if I am not mistaken,” he said. “There is more than one al-Arroun in the al-Gallidh line of my mother, is there not?”

“Perhaps another marriage can be arranged,” Mirzah said cuttingly. “We have one or two daughters yet unwed, do we not, husband?”

Alessid forced a noncommittal smile onto his face. Mirzah seemed to care less and less about the manners she showed
him
.

Al-Arroun's eyes—dark green, legacy no doubt of some invading barbarian ancestor he was ashamed to acknowledge—had rounded like dinner plates with the prospect of alliance with the al-Ma'aliq. “It would not need that,” he said hastily, “to bind our loyalty. We have all of us talked long and worriedly about this. There are those who dislike the prospect of becoming part of your realm—no insult to Your Highnesses intended. But they dislike even more seeing their houses burned and their work destroyed and their sons carrying swords. If it is agreeable to you, we would welcome you as our Sheyqa.”

And so it was that Mirzah went to Ga'af Shammal, and met her new people, and set with her own hands the boundary stones that marked the borders. Alessid and five hundred of his cavalry went with her, and two hundred laborers to construct barracks in ten different locations, and ten Haddiyat of the Shagara to work the runes and icons that would seal the safety of Tza'ab Rih on this new borderland.