Alamut (28 page)

The House of Ibrahim was a city within the city. Here at last even a western nobleman could see what power was in a kingdom of trade: in its hand upon the caravanserais, and its holdings in the city, and its strength to rule as it chose without regard to the one who held the citadel. Where the caravan passed, no one presumed to hinder.

Yet the house itself, though large enough, did not ape a palace. It had begun as a simple dwelling, a house of a single court with a garden at its back. Years and need and the swelling of its dependents had stretched its boundaries, until its wall enclosed a fair half-dozen lesser houses and their gardens. But its heart was still the house of Ibrahim the seller of spices, Abraham the Jew as he had been then, before the dawn of Islam.

For Joanna it was another face of home. Hakim the porter was at his post as he had always been, a shade greyer, perhaps, a shade more dry and sinewy, but still the guardian of the gate. The gap in the arch where one of the cousins had proven his prowess with a sling had never managed to get itself mended. The broken-backed pomegranate tree still shaded the first court, laden now with fruit, with a boy to drive away the birds. There was, as always, a cat on the fountain's rim and a servant or three trotting from sun to shade, and a gathering of cousins escaped from duties to see who had come.

They had an eyeful: twelve mamluks in scarlet with hands to weapons, and a Frankish prince in the robe of a Damascene emir, and Joanna with her maid as drab as peahens in the midst of them.

This time, she knew without asking, Aidan was going to be difficult. On the road he had been no more restive than he ever was; he had seemed as glad as she, to be free to ride together by day and to lie in one another's arms at night. But since Aleppo came in sight, he had been as twitchy as a cat.

Even in the few moments between surrendering his horse to a groom and facing the uncle who had come to give them formal greeting, he could not stand still. He prowled to the pomegranate tree and back, pausing to exchange stares with one of the youngest cousins, gathering up the cat that had come to weave about his ankles. He was a lodestone for cats, always. He came to stand at Joanna's back, as the cousins scattered and their elder advanced like a ship in full sail: Uncle Karim, no less. They were being honored.

Though Aidan might not think so. She willed him to keep quiet, to stand still, to let her do the talking. Uncle Karim was not an easy sight for Frankish eyes, nobly rotund as he was, attired as always in the extremest height of fashion, with a beard dyed blacker than any natural beard could be and curled extravagantly, and a turban of truly astonishing dimensions. One's first impulse was always to goggle, and then to laugh aloud.

People who laughed at Uncle Karim usually lived to regret it. He had a mind like a Damascus blade, and a propensity for repaying slights in the purest unadulterated gold coin.

Aidan was not laughing, that she could hear. She could not in courtesy twist about to see if he was grinning. Those of his mamluks whom she could not see, seemed to have frozen in mid-goggle. She could not, unfortunately, see the two she was most afraid of. The Kipchak imps were behind their master, doing God alone knew what.

She was free at least to accept her uncle's greeting, all of it, in all its intricacy. But it was heartfelt; his embrace had a quiver in it, and while his tongue ran on, his eyes took in every travel-weary inch of her. And her escort. And, narrowly, her prince.

Then at last she could turn. Aidan was not grinning. His face was marble-still, his voice soft and careful in acknowledging his host. The cat was on his shoulder, purring thunderously. It made him no less alarming to look at.

She hardly heard what they said to one another. Will had met strong will, and found its match. Grey eyes and dark crossed, clashed, disengaged.

Uncle Karim smiled. The slight inclination of his head had more respect in it than all the bowings and effusions before it. “Come,” he said, “if you will, and rest, and take refreshment. All that is here, is yours. May your sojourn with us be long and blessed.”

Aidan did not want to go where the plump hand beckoned. She could not touch him, not under all these eyes, but she said, “Go. It's safe. I promise you.”

He shook his head tightly, lips set. Her heart constricted. Not a battle, dear God, not here.

He seemed to catch her thought. He went stiffly where he was led, but he went without argument.

Her breath left her in a long sigh. She loved him; she ached with wanting him. But he was not a comfortable companion. If he ever took it into his head to run wild, nothing in the world would stop him.

He was close to it now. She almost broke away from the women who were leading her to the harem and its bath, and ran back to him. But she mastered herself. She would only make it worse.

oOo

Even with all her troubles, the bath was heaven. The aunts and the cousins were all there to spoil her, to hover about her, to make her feel loved and pampered and protected. They had all the gossip ready for her: who was married and who was pregnant and who was at odds with whom, both within the harem and out of it. It was all a warm and steady stream, like the water, the soap scented with roses, the oil rubbed into her skin.

Languid, at peace, with fear driven deep into the shadows of her consciousness, Joanna could look at herself and see what she had been blind to for so long. She was surprised. She had a shape again. Her waist would never win back its maiden smallness, but it was less thick than it had been. Her breasts were tender still, but their milk had dried; though their high round firmness was gone, this new fullness was not unpleasant to see. Her hair had darkened, gone from oak-gold to bronze, but it had won back its luster; it tumbled about her face, softening the long strong lines of cheek and jaw, widening her eyes and deepening their cloudy blue to misted violet. She stared at herself in the silver mirror, astonished. She looked like a woman with a lover.

She hid her flush behind the curtain of hair, attacking it with a brush until someone interfered. She looked into the withered face of the oldest aunt, and eyes that saw all there had ever been to see. A gnarled finger prodded her breast. When she flinched, Aunt Adah grinned, baring her toothless gums. “So, little one. Is it another baby we'll be raising for the House?”

Joanna's teeth clicked together. No. Oh, no. “No! I had one. He was taken away from me. I'm still — not — entirely — ”

Aunt Adah nodded altogether too willingly. “Yes. Yes, of course. Poor little one. Franks are barbarians, to take babies away from new mothers and leave them all alone.”

Slowly Joanna's heart stopped trying to leap out of her breast. She was not deluding herself. She was being sensible. Her courses had not begun yet: her body was still off balance after Aimery. She was not carrying another child. Which could not possibly be Ranulf's. Which would not likely be human at all.

And if she were...if she were...

No. She turned her back on the thought and slammed the door. She set herself to be welcome and welcomed, bathed, fed, laid to rest in a high cool room full of the song of wind and falling water.

oOo

Aidan did not want to be quiet. He did not want to eat. He did not want to rest. His mamluks were taken away from him, led away to some inner fastness of servants and of lesser guests. His lover was locked in the harem. He had walked open-eyed into a city of Assassins, and he knew that he had been mad to dare it.

He lay on the mat in the room which he had been given, not because he wanted to lie there, but because the patchwork cat, coiled on his middle, was content. Its purring rumbled through him; its peace stilled the worst of his compulsion to leap up and bolt.

And why, except for the cat, did he not do just that? Why did he not fly, if he was minded to? He could. It was there in him, the power.

The cat butted his hand. He rubbed its ears, aware of its bliss, as a murmur on the edges of his rebellion.

He had done nothing that a mortal man could not do, except blur the truth of his face, and walk in a mind or two, and sustain the wards against the Assassin — ill as that had served Thibaut — since he left Rhiyana. In all else, he had wielded no power. He had made himself human.

It had seemed prudent enough when he began. This was a mortal world, and mortal fear could kill. He had seen the threat of it in Jerusalem, in the whispers that he was the Assassin, that he was worse, that he was the devil's own.

But he was not mortal. He was not human. Here in Islam, which not only accepted the possibility of his kind but granted it the hope of salvation, he was perhaps not safe from fear, but he was less likely to be burned at the stake for it. And his power chafed in its confinement.

He uncurled a tendril of it, delicately. Nothing so common to his kind as wards or mindsight; those had had use enough. But the deeper power, the fire that was his name and his essence, woke with joy. A flicker, only, for a beginning. A wash of flame over his body.

The cat regarded him wide-eyed. He was clothed in fire. He raised his hand, each finger like a candle, crowned with a flame. He laughed for the freedom of it.

The edge of his awareness ripple. Presence, and human. He damped the fire. The cat sneezed. He sat up to face the man with the ridiculous turban and the blade-keen wits.

If Karim had seen or sensed the wildfire, he had chosen to reckon it a delusion. He bowed with grace astonishing in a man of his girth, in the exact degree due the second son of a king. Aidan acknowledged it with a raise of the brow and an inclination of the head. It was more than he would have given a merchant at home.

But, having acceded to the proprieties, this merchant recalled that he was Aidan's equal in the kingdom of trade, second heir after his sister. And that was strangest of all, that a woman could inherit, and rule, in her own right, when there was a man of years and strength to do it for her.

Karim established himself in comfort where the breeze was coolest, near the door that looked on the garden. His robe was of sky-blue silk. His slippers were scarlet, embroidered with crystal and gold; their toes turned up with elegant extravagance.

Aidan, barefoot in cotton drawers, sighed for his dignity and kept to his mat. The cat drowsed in his lap.

Karim spared it a glance. “You have a friend in the house, I see,” he said.

“But not, God willing, the only one.”

The merchant smiled in his curled beard. “You are welcome here,” he said, “as the kinsman of our kinswoman, and as a lord of Rhiyana. That is pearls, no? And a little tin. And a beautiful fine woolen cloth that sells for a princely price in the proper places.”

“And a very little metalwork, though maybe that is not well thought of here, where the smiths are the best in the world.”

Karim was not in the least discomforted. “And, as you say, a craft in gold and silver and somewhat in iron, and a rare art in the cutting and setting of gems. The King of Jerusalem's emerald is known even here.”

“Is it?” Aidan smiled. “And so it might be. The stone came from your caravans, though it was cut and carved in Caer Gwent.”

“Such is the kingdom of commerce,” said Karim.

“I begin to see the extent of it,” Aidan said. “That you should know our little country...have you kin who trade there?”

“A distant cousin, and an ally or two. They speak of a country well ruled, prosperous and at peace: a haven for the gentler arts.”

“But not fair prey for any barbarian with an axe and the will to use it.”

“Certainly not,” said Karim. “Even, I trust, without the marshal of its armies.”

“My royal brother is at least the soldier I am, and twice the general.”

“Then he must be remarkable indeed.”

“His failing,” Aidan said, “is that he let the monks corrupt him. He lets everyone else claim the praise, and takes the blame on himself. There is such a thing as an excess of Christian charity.”

Karim could not in courtesy answer that.

Aidan nudged the cat from his lap and drew up his knees, clasping them. The cat contemplated sinking claws into his ankle, but reconsidered. It turned haughtily and stalked out.

“I am not,” he said to the final fillip of its tail, “the Christian that my brother is. Nor have I his patience. Tell the lady of this house that I shall do my utmost to wait upon her pleasure, but my temper is uncertain at its best. Which, now, it most certainly is not.”

Karim regarded him in grave astonishment. “Sir! Have we failed of our hospitality?”

“I have been at the mercy of the caravan since it left Jerusalem. Now the caravan is ended. The one whom the Lady Margaret charged me to guard is locked away from me in the harem. I have nothing to do but wait, and look for death that comes out of the air. As it will, Master Karim. As it most assuredly will.”

Karim looked long at him, with no fear that he could discern. After an endless moment the merchant rose. “Rest,” he said, “if you can. I shall see what I may do.”

oOo

It was better than nothing, Aidan supposed. He had trampled on every rule of eastern courtesy; but he was, truly, out of patience. He did not intend to cool his heels in this city of Assassins, until Joanna died for Muslim propriety.

If they did not let him guard her, he would find his own way there. Soon. Tonight. The air was limpidly clear, the air of Aleppo on the threshold of autumn, but beneath it was a tension like the gathering of thunder. It was going to break. And when it broke, it would break in blood.

He put on the garment that had been laid out for him, a light silken robe, and went out to the gallery. The garden lay below, green and empty. The rooms beside his own were likewise untenanted, their inhabitants gone now about the business of the House of Ibrahim.

He swung over the rail, dropped lightly down. Beyond the wall he heard children's voices, and a woman's raised in remonstrance. He walked along it, hand resting lightly on it, as if to promise that he would conquer it.