The Steel Seraglio (7 page)

Numair knew very well on which side his bread was buttered, and on which side it was laid with poisoned caltrops. Without a murmur or a hesitation, he saluted and went off to find the little number, armed with her name and a rough description.

A minute later, a slight, demure form was standing at the entrance to the legate’s tent. Zuleika bowed to En-Sadim, not low but modestly. “You sent for me, Excellency,” she murmured. Her voice was deep, not musical but with a huskiness to it that was extremely arousing. En-Sadim nodded.

“Close the tent flaps,” he said, “and come here.”

The girl obeyed.

“You are Zuleika,” En-Sadim said to her.

“Yes, Excellency.”

“Do you play the buzuq, or the simsimiyya?”

“Excellency, no.”

“Some other instrument, then?”

“I have no instrument, Excellency.”

“Do you sing? Tell stories?”

“Neither.”

“But there must be something you can do?”

She raised her head and stared into his eyes—provocatively, En-Sadim considered, but right then he’d have thought it a come-on if she sneezed.

“Many things,” Zuleika said.

He touched her cheek. “Do the first of them,” he suggested. “And continue down the list until I tell you to stop.”

“Have you scented oils?” Zuleika asked.

Oils were duly brought, and she got down to business.

While the legate En-Sadim was being taken to the foothills of ecstasy, Captain Numair noticed a slender column of dust a few miles behind the caravan. To his practised eye, it suggested a single rider moving fast. The sun was still an hour from setting, and a single rider was more likely a messenger than a threat, but he deployed sentries and sent two men out to meet their uninvited guest.

They returned, some little while later, with Mehdad’s messenger riding between them.

The messenger dismounted, and presented himself to Captain Numair. He did so with a certain degree of smugness, because he wore the sultan’s colours on his sash, and the sultan’s seal was very prominent on the letter he carried. Anyone could see even at a cursory glance that he was a serious man on a serious errand.

“Where is the legate En-Sadim?” he demanded. “I bear orders from the enlightened one.”

“The most worthy En-Sadim is asleep in his tent,” Numair temporised. He knew that this was not the case: he had brought the beautiful young concubine to the legate’s tent a scant half hour before, and he expected that it would be at least an hour or so before the business that was between them was concluded. But he did not wish to mention these matters. While the legate’s sampling of the female merchandise was not expressly forbidden, it seemed unlikely that the new sultan would approve of it. At the very least, this was an awkward situation.

The messenger brushed the objection aside, making a great show of impatience.

“Wake him, then,” he barked. “My business cannot wait.”

Numair nodded reluctantly. “Very well,” he said. “Wait here, and I’ll bring him.”

“Wait?” echoed the messenger. “I wasn’t sent here to wait! Which is the legate’s tent? Tell me!”

The captain knew better than to point, but his eyes answered the question involuntarily. The messenger followed the direction of Numair’s gaze, toward the largest of the silk pavilions, and set off at a brisk stride in that direction. Abashed, Numair fell in alongside him.

“I’ll tell the most worthy En-Sadim that you’re here,” he said, drawing slightly ahead.

“I’ll announce myself,” the messenger riposted.

Numair thrust forward strenuously. The messenger, refusing to be outdone, broke into a run. They bolted together past En-Sadim’s startled bodyguards, who had retired to a discreet distance from the pavilion’s entrance, and broke through the tent flap in a frantic squall of curtailed ceremony.

“The messenger of the enlightened Hakkim Mehdad!” Numair blurted.

“Forgive my unmannerly intrusion!” the messenger cried.

They both stopped dead at this point, staring at the scene before them. Zuleika was on her knees before the legate, naked to the waist, pleasuring him with her hands. Various pots and jars of sweet-smelling oils stood about, with which her glistening fingers had been anointed. The scented smoke of a small brazier drifted gently around them, making a teasing curtain which yet did not hide one single detail of the unfolding act. Captain Numair blanched. The messenger floundered, faced for once in his life with a situation which no protocol appeared to cover.

Zuleika was not outfaced to find herself performing in front of an audience. She ignored the newcomers as completely as if they were not there. En-Sadim did not. He frowned at them thunderously, and after a moment or two, caused Zuleika to pause in her ministrations by touching her lightly on the shoulder. She bowed her head, falling into decorous stillness.

“What is the meaning of this?” En-Sadim demanded, in a portentous tone.

The messenger realised at this point that he had overstepped the bounds of his office. “I bear a message,” he said, his voice faltering, “from Hakkim Mehdad himself. He bade me not to wait, but to deliver it to you at once, by hand.”

This last was pure invention, but the messenger thought it might allay the anger he read in En-Sadim’s countenance. Belatedly he offered a bow of obeisance, the most ragged and unconvincing he had ever performed.

“A message?” growled En-Sadim. “You stride into my tent like a ruffian and offer me a message?”

“A most urgent message,” the messenger qualified, trying to cling to some little shreds of dignity.

En-Sadim’s eyes narrowed. “And what is the purport of this urgent message?” he asked.

The messenger looked at the scroll, then held it up for En-Sadim’s inspection. “It is sealed,” he pointed out.

“Then open it.”

The messenger did so, with fingers that shook more than a little.

“Now read it to me. And if its urgency matches the enormity of your insolence, I’ll spare you the flogging you’ve earned.”

The messenger flinched at the word
flogging
. He glanced toward the tent flap, and for a moment it seemed that he might turn tail and flee, but Captain Numair stood squarely in his way, arms folded, and in any event he knew that while he was in En-Sadim’s camp he was likewise in En-Sadim’s power. There was no getting out of this.

“To the legate En-Sadim,” he read, haplessly, “from His Excellency, the enlightened Hakkim Mehdad. There is in your charge, among the children of the seraglio, a legitimate prince of the bloodline of Bokhari al-Bokhari, formerly the ruler of Bessa, now execrated and not to be named . . .”

The messenger slowed, caught in a contradiction. Had he not just named the ex-sultan? And was that a sin? Surely not, since he was reading the words of the Enlightened One, which was a solid gold get-out-of-jail-free card.

The legate did not seem to have noticed the solecism. Behind him, though, and forgotten by all three men, Zuleika had raised her head and was listening intently.

“Continue,” En-Sadim snapped.

The messenger took a moment to find his place again. “This . . . this prince,” he read, “shall not be suffered to live. No more shall those who have sheltered him, in defiance of my edict. Kill the women of the harem forthwith, along with their children and maidservants. Let not one survive. Their bodies let the desert claim, and their names be fed to silence.”

These were the last words on the scroll, but the messenger continued to stare at it as though more words might appear. The sultan Hakkim had not signed off in the manner demanded by protocol, which gave him no graceful exit from the horrendous sentence he had just pronounced.

He should not have worried. The legate En-Sadim had already moved his attention elsewhere. He turned to Captain Numair, who came immediately to attention and stepped forward, shouldering past the dithering messenger.

“Gather your men,” En-Sadim said. His face and voice were grim, but he did not shrink from the commission: he was a career diplomat, and had seen and done worse things than this. “Give them their orders all at once, and in private, then have them divide the women and children into smaller groups, the better to ensure that . . .”

He stopped in mid-sentence, distracted by an unexpected occurrence. Zuleika, to the astonishment of all present, had chosen that moment to rise to her feet. En-Sadim turned to stare at her, perplexed.

“Resume your station,” he said, with something of gentleness in his voice. “You at least will not die until you have finished the offices for which I called you here.”

“Great sir,” said Zuleika, in a low voice, “let me entreat some mercy for my sisters, and for the children. If you were to let us go free into the desert, we would not return, and the sultan would never know that his orders had not been followed to the letter.”

En-Sadim looked stricken for a moment, then angry. “You must not speak before your betters,” he said. “Kneel. I will return to you shortly.”

“Great sir,” Zuleika essayed again, “I beg you not to do this thing. It is a terrible crime, and will stain your soul into eternity.”

The legate’s face darkened. He strode two steps forward, which brought him directly before the concubine, and he drew back his hand to strike her across the face.

This action was not destined to be completed.

Zuleika leaned aside from the blow, her feet not moving at all but her upper body flexing like a coiled cobra. She caught the legate’s hand in both of hers, and bending it behind his back, broke it quickly and expeditiously at the elbow. En-Sadim crashed to his knees, unmanned by pain.

Reaching behind her, Zuleika plucked the brazier from its stand, holding it in her bare hand without seeming to notice the fierce heat. The legate’s mouth had opened by this time on what was presumably going to be a scream: the concubine emptied the red-hot coals and glowing ash directly between his parted lips and he spasmed in strangled silence, his head striking the ground as his spine folded forward.

The two other men responded to this astonishing event in very different ways. After one moment of stricken amazement, Captain Numair stepped in to save his master; the messenger, yielding to the same impulse that had almost possessed him earlier, turned to flee the tent and shout for help. Help might not be needed, since the captain would surely deal with this madwoman, but at least his own valuable person would be placed out of harm’s reach.

Zuleika leaned down, drew the dagger from En-Sadim’s belt, and threw it with whiplash swiftness. It was a ceremonial dagger, and poorly balanced. It struck the messenger in the back of the head, pommel-first, laying him out unconscious before he could reach the pavilion’s entrance.

This allowed Captain Numair time to reach the concubine, but he had not thought to draw his sword along the way. He punched her instead, a solid blow to the jaw which he thought would fell her. Zuleika did not even appear to feel it. She jabbed her fingers, as straight as a ruled line, into the Captain’s throat, and sudden agony spiked and splintered inside his gullet as though he had swallowed a draught of iron nails.

He opened his mouth on a bellow that would have brought the guards at a run, but no sound came from him. That first blow had ensured that the battle would be fought in silence.

The young concubine was upon him with such dizzying speed that she seemed to be three or four women occupying the same space, and only the Captain’s armour saved him from an instant and ignominious defeat. Well, that and a lucky prescience that caused him to raise his forearms
en garde
in time to ward off the rain of slashing blows she aimed at his unprotected eyes.

Then she danced away before he could respond, so light on her feet she might have been a child’s balloon, untethered from gravity. Numair did not think of retreating: this woman had assaulted his master, and it was his job to deal with her. Nor did he waste any further thought on the possibility of summoning help—he had no voice left to shout with, and he had seen what had happened to the luckless messenger when he had dared to turn his back on this termagant.

So he drew his sword and advanced, whirling the weapon before him in a wicked arabesque as he had been taught. Zuleika retreated, feinting left and right as if she wished to find a way past the whickering blade. Emboldened, Numair pressed her hard, his eyes only on her slender figure. She was in the corner of the tent now, with no more room to retreat.

The captain leaned forward to deliver the death thrust. Zuleika ducked under his blade and was for an instant on her knees before him. Then she came vertically upward. Her open palm caught Captain Numair under the chin and all the force of her rising body, her straightening arm, her flexing shoulders was somehow translated into a force that operated only at the base of her wrist. Numair’s neck snapped with an audible crack, and he fell, bewildered and disbelieving as he died.

Zuleika took the captain’s sword out of the air, as though the air had offered it to her, and cast her gaze downwards on En-Sadim. He was choking to death on the hot coals, his body wracked by terrible convulsions. Zuleika drove the blade into the legate’s back and slid it along the runnel of his fourth rib to slice his heart in two. The angel of death is the angel of mercy, also.

The messenger recovered his senses to find the young woman kneeling over him, the bloodied sword still smoking in her hand. “I only delivered the letter!” he whimpered. “As I was charged to do! I bear no blame!”

“I offer you none,” Zuleika assured him, and since he was watching the sword he did not see that in her other hand she had picked up the legate’s dagger. A cold pricking in the messenger’s chest made him gasp: looking down he saw that the hilt of the dagger now protruded from his flesh, where the blade was buried deep. The concubine leaned down as if to embrace him, and covered his mouth with her hand as he expired.

Nonetheless, the guards outside had heard some sound—the falling of the brazier, perhaps, or of one of the bodies, or the frenzied movements of En-Sadim as he was choking. Their footsteps approached the pavilion’s entrance, uncertainty written in their halting cadence.