The Lions of Al-Rassan (51 page)

“With my enemies!” A young man’s voice now, the control slipping, a boy’s words.

Ibn Khairan felt something twist within him like a soft blade. He knew this part of the man. Of the king. He said, “It seems we live in a world where boundaries are shifting all the time. This makes it more difficult for a man to do what is right.”

“Ammar, no. Your place is in Cartada. You have
always
served Cartada, striven for it.” He hesitated, then set down his glass and said, “You killed a khalif for my father, can you not at least come home for me?”

It seemed that with understanding there so often came sadness. This one was measuring himself, still, against a dead man, just as he had when his father lived. He would probably do this all his life, whether long or short. Testing. Comparing allotments of love. Demanding to be cared for as much, and more.

It occurred to ibn Khairan, for the first time, to wonder how the young king had reacted to the lament Ammar had written for his father.
Where lesser beasts now gather . . .
He also realized, in that same moment, that Zabira had been right: ’Malik would not have suffered the concubine who had loved his father to live.

“I don’t know,” he said, answering the question. “I do not know where my place is now.”

Somewhere inside him though, even as he spoke those words, a voice was saying:
This is a lie, though once it might have been true. There is something new. The world can change, so can you. The world has changed.
And in his mind, amazingly, he could hear her name, as if in the sound of bells. There was a momentary wonder that no one else in the room seemed to notice this.

He went on, straining to concentrate. “May I take it that this visit is intended to convey a rescinding of my exile and an invitation to return to my position?”

He made his words deliberately formal, to pull them back from the raw place where the king’s question had taken them.
Can you not come home for me?

The young king opened his mouth and closed it. There was hurt in his eyes. He said, stiffly, “You may take it as such.”

“What position, precisely?”

Another hesitation. Almalik had not been prepared for a negotiating session. That was fine. Ammar had not been prepared for any of this.

“Chancellor of Cartada. Of course.”

Ibn Khairan nodded. “And your formally declared successor, pending marriage and legitimate heirs?” The thought—monstrous thought!—had only come to him in this moment.

One of the Muwardis shifted by the fireplace. Ibn Khairan turned and looked at him. The man’s eyes locked on his this time, black with hatred. Ammar smiled affably and drank slowly from his glass without looking away.

Almalik II of Cartada said, softly, “Is this your condition, Ammar? Is it wise?”

Of course it wasn’t wise. It was sheerest folly.

“I doubt it,” ibn Khairan said carelessly. “Leave that in reserve. Have you begun negotiations for a marriage?”

“Some overtures have been made to us, yes.” Almalik’s tone was awkward.

“You had best accept one of them soon. Killing children is less useful than begetting them. What have you done about Valledo?”

The king picked up his glass again and drained it before answering. “I am receiving useless advice, Ammar. They agonize, they wring their hands. They advise doubling the
parias,
then delaying it, then refusing it! I took some measures of my own to stir up Ruenda and we have a man there, do you remember him?”

“Centuro d’Arrosa. Your father bought him years ago. What of him?”

“I instructed him to do whatever he had to do to cause a mortal breach between Ruenda and Valledo. You know they were all to be meeting this spring. They may have done so by now.”

Thoughtfully, ibn Khairan said, “King Ramiro doesn’t need his brother’s aid to menace you.”

“No, but what if he is induced to ride against Ruenda, instead of against me?” Almalik’s expression was that of a schoolboy who thinks he has passed a test.

“What have you done?”

King Almalik smiled. “Is it my loyal chancellor who asks?”

After a moment, ibn Khairan returned the smile. “Fair enough. What about Fezana itself, then? Defenses?”

“As best we can. Food storage for half a year. Some of the walls repaired, though money is an issue, as you will know. The additional soldiers in the new wing of the castle. I have allowed the wadjis to stir up anger against the Kindath.”

Ammar felt a coldness as if a wind had come into the room. A woman was hearing this, out on the balcony.

“Why that?” he asked, very quietly.

Almalik shrugged. “My father used to do the same thing. The wadjis need to be kept happy. They inspire the people. In a siege that will matter. And if they do push some of the Kindath out, or kill a few, a siege will be easier to withstand. That seems obvious to me.”

Ibn Khairan said nothing. The king of Cartada looked at him, a close, suspicious glance. “It has been reported to me that you spent time on the Day of the Moat with a Kindath physician. A woman. Was there a reason?”

It seemed that answers to the hardest questions life offered might come in unexpected ways. In the strangest fashion, that cold, narrowed gaze came as a relief to ibn Khairan. A reminder of what had always kept him from truly loving the boy who had become this man, despite a number of reasons for doing so.

“You had my movements traced?”

The king of Cartada was unfazed. “You were the one who taught me that all information helped. I wanted you back. I was searching for ways to achieve it.”

“And spying out my activities seemed a good method of enlisting my willing aid?”

“Aid,” said the king of Cartada, “can come for many reasons and in many guises. I could have kept this a secret from you, Ammar. I have not. I am here in Ragosa, trusting you. Now your turn:
was
there a reason, Ammar?”

Ibn Khairan snorted. “Did I want to bed her, you mean? Come on, ’Malik. I went to find that doctor because she was the physician of someone invited to the ceremony. A man who said he was too ill to come. I had no idea who she was until later. She was, incidentally, Ishak ben Yonannon’s daughter. You’ll know that by now. Does it mean anything to you?”

Almalik nodded. “My father’s physician. I remember him. They blinded him when Zabira’s last child was born.”

“And cut out his tongue.”

The king shrugged again. “We have to keep the wadjis happy, don’t we? Or if not happy, at least not preaching against us in the streets. They wanted the Kindath doctor to die. My father surprised me then, I remember.” Almalik gestured suddenly with both hands. “Ammar, I have no weapons against you here. I don’t
want
a weapon. I want you as my sword. What must I do?”

This had gone on too long, ibn Khairan realized. It was painful, and there was greater danger the longer it lasted. He carried no blade either, save the usual one taped to his left arm. However calm Almalik seemed, he was a man who could be pushed to rashness, and the Muwardi tribesmen would dance under the desert stars if they learned that Ammar ibn Khairan of Aljais had died.

He said, “Let me think on this, ’Malik. I have a contract that ends at the beginning of autumn. Honor may be served by then.”

“By autumn? You swear it? I will have you—”

“I said, let me think. That is all I will say.”

“And what should I do in the meantime?”

Ibn Khairan’s mouth quirked with amusement. He couldn’t help it. He was a man who found many things in life inexpressibly ironic. “You want me to tell you how to govern Cartada? Here and now? In this room, during Carnival?”

After a moment, Almalik laughed, and shook his head. “You would not believe how badly I am served, Ammar.”

“Then find better men! They exist. All over Al-Rassan. Put your labors into that.”

“And into what else?”

Ibn Khairan hesitated. Old habits died very hard. “You are probably right: Fezana is in danger. Whether the Jaddite army in Batiara sails this spring or not, there is a changed mood in the north. And if you lose Fezana, I do not think you can hold your dais. The wadjis will not allow it.”

“Or the Muwardis,” said Almalik, with a glance at the guards in the room. The veiled ones remained impassive. “I have already done one further thing about this. Tonight, actually, here in Ragosa. You will approve.”

Odd, odd and sometimes frightening, how a lifetime’s instincts could put the soldier in one on such instantaneous alert.

“Approve of what?’ he asked, keeping his voice calm.

Later, he would realize that he had somehow known, though, even before the king of Cartada answered him.

“As I told you, six others came with me. I’ve had them find and kill the Valledan mercenary Belmonte. He is too dangerous to be permitted to go back to King Ramiro from his own exile. It seems he never left his room tonight; they know where he is, and there is only one guard at the street door.” Almalik of Cartada smiled. “It is a useful blow, Ammar. I hurt Badir and Ramiro both, very badly, by taking this man away from them.”

And me,
Ammar ibn Khairan was thinking then, but did not say.
And me. Very badly.

They had defeated five men together, in a display last autumn. Rod-rigo would have been alone tonight, however, and not expecting an assault. There were people costumed as Muwardis all over the city. Six silent killers, one frustrated guard at the street door. He could picture how it would have been. It would be over by now.

Even so, there were things one did, movements shaped without actual thought. The drive towards action as a blocking of pain. Even as the king of Cartada finished speaking, ibn Khairan had spun back to the door of his room, and was pulling it open. As he did so, in the same smooth movement, he ducked down low, so the blade thrown at his back embedded itself instead in the dark wood of the door.

Then he was out, running down the corridor, taking the stairs three and then four at a time, knowing that if Almalik had told him about this it was much too late already, but running, running.

Even in his haste, he remembered to do one thing before hurtling out the door and back into the street.

“Fool!”
Jehane heard the king of Cartada shout. “What were you doing with that knife? I want him
with
us, you worm!”

“He will not be.”

The other man, the Muwardi, had a desert accent and a voice deep as an old grave. She could see none of them. Just out of sight on the double balcony, Jehane felt a grief heavy as a smith’s anvil pulling on her heart. She clenched her fists, nails biting into palms. She could do nothing. She had to wait for them to leave. She wanted to scream.

“He
will
come back,” she heard the young king rasp. “He is upset about the Valledan, a comrade-at-arms. I thought he might be, but ibn Khairan is not a man who makes decisions based on such things. He would have been the first to
tell
me to plan a stroke such as this.”

“He will not be with you,” the other man said again, blunt, quiet, sure.

There was a short silence.

“Kill this man,” said Almalik II of Cartada calmly. “This is a command. You were under orders not to harm ibn Khairan. These orders were violated with that blade. Execute him. Now.”

Jehane caught her breath. Then, more quickly than she could have imagined, she heard a grunting sound. Someone fell.

“Good,” she heard the king of Cartada say, after a moment. “At least some of you are loyal. Leave his body. I want Ammar to know I had him killed.” Jehane heard footsteps. The king’s voice came from farther away. “Come. It is time to leave Ragosa. I have done what I could. We can do nothing but wait on Ammar now.”

“You can kill him,” the second Muwardi said in a soft, uninflected tone. “If he refuses you, why should he be permitted to live?”

The king of Cartada made no reply.

A moment later, Jehane heard them going out, and then down the stairs.

She waited until she heard the front door open and close again, and then she raced to follow—through the second bedroom, and out into the corridor. She spared one quick glance into Ammar’s chamber. There was a man lying on the floor.

The doctor in her compelled a pause; for too many years this had been an instinct. She rushed in, knelt beside him, felt for a heartbeat. He was, of course, dead. No blade remained, but the wound was in his throat. The Muwardis knew how to kill.

Rodrigo would have been at his desk. Writing a letter home. Expecting carousing friends, if any knock had come.

Jehane scrambled to her feet and sped down the stairs into the entranceway. She looked for her mask on the small table. It was not there. She froze.

Then she understood. Ammar had taken it: that the Cartadans not see an owl mask and surmise the presence of a woman here. For all she knew, King Almalik might even have understood the symbol of the owl as physician: he had been Ammar’s pupil, hadn’t he?

Which was a part of the grief that now lay like a stone at the center of a spinning night. She pushed open the door and ran out, unmasked now, into the roiling street. She began forcing her way through the crowd towards the barracks. Someone groped for her, playfully. Jehane twisted away and kept moving. It was difficult, people were everywhere, amid torches and smoke. It took her a long time to get through.