Alamut (33 page)

“I'm worse than that. I'm a Frank.”

Aidan had not thought those eyes could widen any further. They were almost round, black and shiny as olives, and completely unafraid. “A Frank.” Ismail let his breath out slowly. “So that is what a Frank looks like. Your hair is the wrong color. It ought to be yellow.”

“Rhiyanans are dark. We're black Celts, you see. It's true Franks you're thinking of, and Northmen. We're the old people, the folk they tried to drive into the sea.”

That meant nothing to a Seljuk prince whose cousins still rode wild in the outlands of the east: the drivers, and never the driven. He looked at Aidan as one looks at an exotic beast in a cage, and sighed in pleasure. Clearly he had not been so well diverted in time out of mind. “Now I see why you have no manners. You know no better. You should learn, if you want to leave with a whole skin. My atabeg is very strict.”

“Maybe he makes exceptions for princes.”

“But you see, you aren't a real prince. Real princes are civilized.”

“Truly?” Aidan asked. “Is that what it is to be civilized? To be rude to strangers?”

“You're mad, I think,” said Ismail, as if it explained everything.

“My thanks,” Aidan said.

“Mad,” Ismail repeated. He leaned closer. “Why are your eyes like that?”

Aidan veiled them, unthinking; but his will opened them wide. He smiled. “I was born so.”

“Are you human?”

“No.”

Ismail nodded as he had expected it. Aidan was sure of it then. The boy was simple. No idiot, certainly, nor by any means dull-witted, but something in him had not grown as it should. He knew, from training, when to be wary, but it made no mark on him. He regarded Aidan in open and fearless fascination. “Franks are very strange,” he said.

“I'm strange for a Frank.”

“You must see well in the dark.”

“Quite well,” said Aidan.

“I should like to be able to see like that,” Ismail said. “Can you do magic, too? My nurse used to tell me that Franks are sorcerers, and that they take their powers from Iblis. Are you a slave of Iblis?”

“Certainly not,” Aidan said, but without heat. “The last of my names is for the archangel who defeated him. I'm not likely to bow down before him.”

Ismail was disappointed. “People always talk about magic, but nobody ever does any. Sometimes they pretend, but I can see. It's all a trick.”

“Not all of it,” said Aidan. “I didn't say I couldn't do any. Only that I have no pact with the devil.”

“But that's where it comes from.”

“Not mine.”

Ismail eyed him, wanting to be convinced, unwilling to be gulled yet again. Aidan gave him a handful of fire.

oOo

“Ismail!”

The voice was high, but it was not a woman's. Ismail looked round sullenly but with trained obedience. The creature who swept down upon him was as attenuated as a Byzantine angel, sweet-scented as a woman, bearing the remnants of what might have been a remarkable beauty. But it was all stunted and soured, like a frostbitten fruit.

It was not the atabeg. After the first shock, Aidan saw that clearly enough. He quenched a sudden surge of pity. For Ismail; for the people whom Ismail had been bred to rule.

The eunuch snatched his charge away, sparing Aidan only a single, outraged glance. Ismail seemed to lack the will for resistance. All his self was bent upon the fist which he pressed to his heart, and to the cool strange fire that quivered in it. It would fade, but not for a while. And he would always remember that he had had it; that he had held magic in his hand.

As the boy disappeared through an inner door, Aidan's own summons came at last. He did not think that the coincidence was intentional. The child had escaped his wardens and wandered out of his accustomed bounds. Aidan hoped that his punishment would not be too cruel.

For his own, he cared little. He rose as the chamberlain beckoned, his guards rising with him, their glances as darting-wild as the Nubians' had been. They had heard his colloquy with Ismail; some had the wits to understand it. He smiled at them and followed in the chamberlain's wake.

The regent of Aleppo was, like Ismail, a Turk: amply and impressively fleshed, but solid for all of that, and strong. There was a sword across his knees as he sat in his hall of audience; the hand that rested on its hilt bore the calluses of a swordsman.

And yet the weapon itself was almost too rich for the wielding, crusted with gems and gold. Likewise the atabeg. His splendor put even Joanna's Uncle Karim to shame; Aidan's eyes were dazzled. One jewel alone, the ruby that burned in his turban, could have purchased a respectable fief in Francia.

It said something for the man, that Aidan had seen his splendor second, after his face and his warrior's hands. And only after all that, did Aidan recall the significance of a Muslim without a beard. Gumushtekin, like Ismail's nursemaid, was a eunuch.

His voice might have been a light tenor: male enough, and deep enough, for the purpose. His eyes held none of the mute endurance which Aidan had begun to regard as the mark of his kind. They were clear, hard, and subtly bitter, facing this world which had robbed him of his manhood, and daring it to master him. Indeed, he had mastered it. He who could have no sons of his own, was father in all but fact to the rightful Sultan of Syria. And if that sultan lacked aught of will or wit, then Gumushtekin would supply it, and rule as he chose in the child's name. Higher than that, no eunuch might hope to rise.

Aidan shivered. There were no eunuchs in Rhiyana. He was too keenly aware, now, of how delicate a creature a man was, how easily he could be unmanned.

Perhaps Gumushtekin comprehended Aidan's discomfiture. Having dismissed all but two of the phalanx of guards, he seemed to forget that he had summoned the Frank, and turned back to the attendants who waited upon his pleasure.

That, Aidan could understand, and easily contend with. He sat unbidden, at his ease, letting his eyes take in the beauties of the chamber. Its tiles were gold and blue and sea green; its pillars were like young trees wound with vines; high on its walls flowed a
surah
of the Koran, wrought in black and gold on silver tiles. He puzzled it out, word by word.

The atabeg was well versed in calculated insolence, but Aidan was older than he, and wilder. It was Gumushtekin who spoke first; it was Aidan who took his time in replying, who in fact did not hear or heed him until one of the guards raised a hand to strike. He flexed like a cat before the blow, eluding it with fluid ease, lowering his eyes and his mind to the mortal man who had brought him here. The guard let his hand fall, flinching, though Aidan had not even glanced at him. Aidan's eyes were on the atabeg. He raised a brow, and waited.

Gumushtekin smiled thinly: a tribute to a master of his own art. “You are, I presume, the Frank with the outlandish name, who suffers himself to be called Khalid.”

“I am Aidan of Caer Gwent.”

“Just so,” said Gumushtekin. “You are also, therefore, the servant of the leper king, and the spy of the usurper in Damascus.”

Aidan smiled very slightly. “I allow you your interpretation of Saladin's position, but pray allow me a little of the truth. I'm no spy.”

“You would be a fool to admit it,” said the atabeg. He clapped his hands.

A new company of guards conducted new prisoners into the regent's presence. Three of them. Even beneath the bruises and battering and one gloriously swollen eye, Aidan knew them. Arslan was the least sorely wounded and the most nearly contrite as he met his master's stare. The Kipchaks grinned broadly; Timur revealed a gap where a tooth had been.

Aidan rose slowly. The grins lost somewhat of their luster. Arslan had the grace to pale under his bruises. “Well?” Aidan asked them.

They glanced at one another. Even Arslan seemed disinclined to begin. It was the atabeg who said, “These gentlemen have waxed somewhat heated in their defense of your honor and that of your master in Damascus.”

“And why not?” cried Timur. “People were spitting on our sultan's name, my lord, and calling him a liar and a thief. We sat still for it, my lord. But then they called you a skulking Frankish dog. Were we to endure that, my lord?”

“He forgot,” said Ilkhan by way of explanation, “and let out our old battle cry.” He glanced at Gumushtekin. “The one that refers to his lordship's...attributes.”

Or lack thereof. Aidan drew his brows together.

“That brought the watch,” Timur said. “Ilkhan lost his temper. He started singing the song we used to sing when we were riding herd on the siege engines outside Aleppo. They recognized it, of course.”

“And hauled us in,” said Ilkhan. “They think we're spies. Now, I ask you. Would any spy be as obvious as that?”

“They were,” said Gumushtekin, “in a shop which is known to sell wine.”

Timur grimaced. “It's horrible,” he said. “Worse than Egyptian beer.”

Aidan regarded them all. His eye fixed on Arslan, who alone had said nothing. “And you, sir? Where do you come into this?”

“Late,” answered Arslan, “and unavailing. I found the battle in full fly; I was netted with the rest.” He bowed his head, which had lost its turban. “My fault, my lord. I should never have let these two off the leash.”

Aidan did not try to deny it. Nor did he voice a rebuke. Arslan did not need it; the imps would not heed it. And Gumushtekin was waiting, silent, clear-eyed, and dangerous.

“Spying,” said Aidan, “is not our purpose here.”

“Perhaps not,” the regent said. “But sedition may be. You are a Frank; you come from Jerusalem, you tarried in Damascus. These mamluks who proclaim themselves to be yours, have ridden under the upstart's banner. Why should you not undertake at your leisure to search out our secrets? Both Damascus and Jerusalem would pay you handsomely.”

Timur laughed. His voice was barely broken, and sometimes it slipped; he sounded like a child. “Oh, sir! You don't know my lord at all. He's a Frank. He'd die before he'd dirty his fingers with money.”

“He'd die before he thought of it,” Ilkhan put in. “He's horribly impractical. It would never occur to him to sell anybody anything.”

“Spying is for commoners,” said Arslan. “Our lord is a prince.”

Aidan broke in on their chorus. “My lord,” he said to the atabeg, “would you trust these young idiots with anything that smacked of a secret?”

Gumushtekin's lips twitched. Very much in spite of himself, he was amused. “I might not. But you are not I.”

“Nor am I that magnitude of a fool.”

The ruby flamed as the atabeg inclined his head. “Perhaps you are not. But the reputation of your race, and the inebriation of your servants, would argue against it.”

Timur squawked in outrage. “We never got as far as the wine!”

Arslan was quieter. “Are you calling our lord a skulking dog of a Frank?”

“That might not be wise,” said Gumushtekin, “even if it were true.” He turned his gaze on Aidan, the laughter in it like light on deep water, and dark things moving beneath. “I speak no word of dogs or of fools. But of skulkers...Do you deny that you serve the upstart in Damascus?”

Aidan sat again where he had been, cross-legged on the carpet, and let them all wait. When every eye was on him, every mind leaping with impatience, he said, “I serve myself, and my given word. That I have been known to the Lord Saladin, I will not deny; nor that he has looked on me with favor. But I have never been his servant.”

“Yet you came from him to us; you made no secret of it.”

“Should that not prove that I tell the truth? I am kin to the House of Ibrahim; I came here with its caravan, as guard to my kinswoman, who has come to sojourn among her mother's people.”

“It is said,” said Gumushtekin, “that you are more than kin to her.”

Aidan clenched deep within, but his face was calm. “In strict fact, I am rather less. Her mother was wife to my sister's son.” He smiled his sweet deadly smile. “Are you going to condemn her too as a spy?”

“I condemn no one,” said Gumushtekin. “I merely seek the truth. It is not common for a Frank to enter our city; still less for him to enter it companioned by a troop of our enemy's mamluks. Surely I can be forgiven a modicum of suspicion.”

“That depends on what you suspect.”

The atabeg shifted his bulk. A servant sprang to aid him; he accepted a cushion, frowning, his mind fixed on the prisoner before him. “I suspect danger to my city and ill-will toward the lord in whose name I hold this office. All that you are, proclaims you enemy.”

“So I am,” Aidan said. “But not to you, unless you hinder me.”

The black eyes narrowed. “You dare to threaten us?”

“I tell you truth. I am a hunter, lord atabeg. My quarry is none of yours, nor shall I linger long in your domain.”

“What do you hunt?”

Aidan showed a gleam of teeth. “Assassins.”

The air chilled and tautened. Gumushtekin was still; and Aidan, in the center of it.

Aidan let his eyes wander, as if idly, in the silence. There was more than fear here, or even hate. There was a sharpening of awareness; a fixing of will upon him, a taste on the tongue like cold steel.

His body eased, secure in its element. He smiled with lazy pleasure. “There are, he said, “three of them here.”

Gumushtekin's jaw flexed. He had been aware of one.

Aidan smiled wider. His eyes found each. The one who was obvious: the youth in white that here was the color of death, with the eyes of a dreamer or a madman. The two who had been hidden: the chamberlain in his silks and his servility, and the guard who was closest to the atabeg's person, most cherished and most trusted of his servants. Aidan inclined his head to the last. “Tell your master,” he said, “that I shall come to demand an accounting. For my kinsman; for the child who died untimely.”