Alamut (47 page)

The lutestrings stilled. He raised his head. His eyes were dark, the color of his northern sea. “Why?” he asked her. “Why teach me at all?”

“Why not?”

“What if I grow stronger than you?”

She laughed, which pricked his pride terribly. “I don't think I need to fear that. But that we may be equals... that, I think very possible. I would welcome it.”

“Even knowing what I would do then?”

“Ah, but would you do it?”

He was mute, furious.

“My sweet friend,” she said, “if you were half as wise as you like to imagine, you would know what it means, that we move so easily in one another's thoughts.”

“It means that you will it, and I have no skill to keep you out.”

She shook her head and smiled. “You know better than I what it is. Remember your brother and his queen.”

He surged to his feet. “We are not so mated!”

He took care to lay the lute where it would be safe, before he flung himself away from her. She saw that; she saw quite enough apart from it. She allowed herself a long, slow smile.

32.

He had to get out. He had been holding up well; he had learned to live in his cage. But four of them were too many. And she — she pressed on him from all sides. Wherever he turned, she was there, not even watching, simply and inescapably present.

The worst of it was that he could not loathe the sight of her. Flatly, utterly, could not. When she was gone about her marketing — improbable domesticity, flitting about the world in search of a dainty or a bauble — he was restless; he could sit even less still than he usually did. And he was like that until she came back, when the knot in him loosened, and the world was in its proper place again.

He was like a man enslaved to a drug. He hated it, and he could not live without it.

She had done it to him. She, the witch, the spirit of air. Murderer, he could no longer call her. The word filled his hands with blood and his mind with memories it had long since buried.

He tried to turn her against him. He honed the memories; he gave them to her in hideous detail, heedless of what they did to his sanity. He taunted her with his body. He used her teaching, transparently, to seek out paths of escape.

Sometimes, to be sure, he made her angry, but never angry enough. Mostly, she only smiled.

oOo

He did not know what that smile cost her. She knew as well as he, that she could not keep him so. He was not to be tamed in a cage. It was a hard lesson to learn, and bitter to face.

Sayyida understood. “Ishak told me about falcons,” she said. “The taming is never complete until the falconer flies his bird free, and it comes back. You've caught this one, you've taught him to endure the jesses and the hood. You've been letting him fly a little, on the line.”

“The creance,” said Morgiana, but abstractedly, listening hard. “How can I let him fly? I
know
he won't come back.”

“Then you'll have to find a lure for him, won't you? What will win him for you?”

Sayyida's eyes narrowed. “Do you remember when you told me about him, and we talked about how a woman wins a man?”

“What good is that? I'm not a woman.”

“But you are! Isn't that the whole of your trouble? What have you done to show him that you're worth desiring?”

Morgiana shrugged angrily. “What can I do? He can see me. He can hear me. He knows what I want of him.”

“Of course he does. Do you think he likes to feel like a stud bull?”

Morgiana gasped at the coarseness of it. Sayyida went on unruffled. “If that's all you want, there are other and easier people to get it from. If you want more — if you want him — you're going to have to let him know that you're a woman.”

Morgiana looked down at herself. “It isn't obvious?”

Sayyida laughed, but she was a little annoyed. “Morgiana, you are so dense! Come with me.”

They went into the bath, drawing the curtain that would warn Aidan not to intrude if he came back from prowling the limits of his cage. Sayyida was ruthless. She made Morgiana strip, to the skin, and no pauses for modesty. No one had ever seen Morgiana naked, except the attendants in the baths, who were trained to see only what needed cleaning or stripping.

Sayyida examined her with a hard clear eye. “You're not as shapely as Laila,” she said, “but you'll do. Yes, the way Franks are made, and the way they admire thinness, you'll definitely do. Laila would kill for your skin. And your hair. Do you have any idea how beautiful you are?”

“I look like a starved cat.”

“Does he think so?”

Her teeth clicked together. “He never even looks.”

“I think he does.” Sayyida plumped Hasan at her feet. “Watch him. I'll be back directly.”

It was rather longer than that. Morgiana rubbed her arms, not for the chill — the cavern was richly warm — but for the feel of air on her bare skin.

Small arms circled her leg. Hasan grinned up at her. He liked her this way.

“You are certainly male,” she said to him, sweeping him up. He did not want to be held; he wanted to try this new art of walking. She mounted guard over the pool, lest he fall in, and let him try his legs among the shimmering pillars.

She sat by the pool and, for something to do, combed out her hair. Once in a great while she cut it, to get it out of the way, but it seemed most comfortable when it was knee-long. Its color always made people stare. She would have been happier if it were black. Like his, thick and glossy, with blue lights. But she liked her skin well enough, purest ivory to his moon-pallor. Her lips were redder than his, her nipples a tender pink like light through a shell. Were her breasts small? They were large enough to fill her hands. And shapely. Not like the Frank's heavy swaying udders, with the blue veins thick in them, and their broad dark nipples, and the weight of milk dragging them down.

“Cow,” she said.

“Cow,” said Hasan, obligingly.

She laughed in spite of herself. There was little merriment in her, and a great burden of jealousy. That he could love that, and not this. That it should carry his child.

She could not bind him so. She knew it starkly, beyond hope of denial. They had not the human fragility, her kind, but neither had they human fecundity.

And could she wait until the woman died of her own humanity?

Or kill her.

No. That would lose him surely and eternally.

Sayyida came back laden with brightness: the sheerest of all the silks which Morgiana's fancy had gathered.

“No,” said Morgiana, growing alarmed. “I won't.”

“Do you want him or don't you?”

Morgiana bit her tongue. “But
this
— ”

“This is how to let him know that you're a woman. Men don't take to telling, haven't you noticed? You have to show them.”

“If he cares enough to notice,” she muttered.

“When I'm done with you, he will. Now stand still,”

oOo

The women were up to something. When Aidan came back from a long day's prowl among the ruins, Morgiana was nowhere to be seen or sensed, and Sayyida labored in the kitchen over what smelled and, from what he was allowed to see, looked like a feast. She came out only to thrust Hasan into his arms and command, “Play with him.”

He was glad enough to obey her. He went to wash, reconsidered, bathed all over, and Hasan too. Somewhere in the middle, his power twitched, too quick to catch, too light to be sure of. But he came out to find his Bedu rags gone, and in their place the silks and linen and fine muslin of a Saracen prince, with the dragon robe folded and laid under them all.

He could have demanded his own clothes back, but he chose to play their game. He put on what he was expected to put on, with Hasan for a small but highly appreciative audience. It was all white and gold but the long loose coat; there were rubies sewn with gold thread in the slippers and the cap.

A box appeared next to his hand as he reached for the cap. He stifled a start. Cautiously, though he sensed no danger, he lifted the lid. Jewels — a prince's ransom, at least, in rubies and pearls, gold and diamond.

“This is too much,” he said to the air.

It did not answer.

He hesitated, but the glow of the stones was more than he could resist. He chose a ring, ruby set in gold, and an armlet with a pattern of horses and trousered riders. The rest, he let be. He was gaudy enough as he was.

He came out warily. The lamps were lit in the hall, a cloth spread, dishes of silver laid out on it. Still there was no sign of Morgiana. Sayyida claimed Hasan and bore him away; not without a moment's pause to admire Aidan's splendor. It warmed him, the halt, the half-turn, the widening of the round brown eyes.

He sat on the cushion that had been set for him. He did not know what he was supposed to think, or do.

Except eat. He did that willingly, if nor entirely happily. Sayyida waited on him; her mind was silent. Veiled from him; as was, always, her face.

“You would think,” he said to her, “that by now I'd count as family.”

She continued calmly to fill his cup with honeyed wine. When she laid down the pitcher, she seemed to come to a decision. She let her veil fall.

She looked like Ishak. She had his profile, his slightly curved nose; even, suddenly, his smile. Aidan supposed that a Saracen would call her plain. He found her quite handsome.

He said so; she blushed furiously.

He never ate enough to make a human happy, although tonight he tried. He helped her afterward to clear it all away: she disliked it when he did that, especially now that she remembered his rank, but she had learned to put up with it. She all but dragged him out of the kitchen before he could begin the washing — ”In those clothes!” She was horrified. She was also determined to stay with him, to keep him sensible.

Even through the veils about her mind, he could sense the swelling of excitement. She filled his cup again.

“You can't get me drunk, you know,” he said.

“I didn't think I could,” she said calmly.

It was true that wine could not intoxicate him, but it could warm him, and ease the knots out of his muscles. He drained the cup, began another. It was good wine.

The lamps dimmed. Sayyida produced a pipe from somewhere in her swathings of garments. She set it to her lips and began to play. After a measure or two, a drum joined it, beating light and swift.

He knew no fear, not even apprehension, only a kind of lazy anticipation. The wine's doing. He stretched out, propped himself on his elbow, settled to enjoy whatever the conspirators had prepared for him.

Only the music, at first, in a very old mode. Persian, perhaps, and older than Islam. The lamps had all gone out, but for the cluster nearest where he lay. The shadows were black, impenetrable even to such eyes as his.

She came out of the blackest of them, not dancing, not quite: setting her feet down with delicate precision. They were bare, touched with henna over their whiteness. There were jewels above them, and the chiming of tiny bells. Her trousers were of silk as green as her eyes, as sheer as gossamer. Her broad girdle dangled a hundred bells, each hung on a thread of gold. Her bodice was green and gold. Her arms were bare, and jeweled. Her hair was hidden in a veil of sea-green silk. Her brows were bound with gold and silk, and coins of gold set in the bands. Emeralds swung glittering from her ears, but her eyes were more brilliant than they. A dagger hung from her girdle.

If he must die now, he would be glad. He smiled. She seemed not to see him at all. She poised; her head fell back. The music quickened. She began to dance.

“There is a tale,” a soft voice said. Sayyida's; and yet the piping went on without pausing. “They tell it in the souks of Cairo and of Damascus; they sing it in the courts of Baghdad. How once there was a man who learned a great secret, a cavern of treasure in the hands of forty thieves; and he tricked them and won their wealth, and one of their number died for it. And that is a fine tale and a true one, as Allah may witness it, but we shall not hear it here.

“No; my tale is the tale of the poor man, grown now into a prince, and the most deadly of the thieves, who was their captain. By sleights and slyness and magic, in the heat of his vengeful hate, he learned the name of the man who had robbed him and slain his fellow, and swore to destroy him in return.

“Thus, upon a day, one came to the house of the pauper who was become a prince: a merchant from far away, a stranger to the city, a trader in olives and fine oils; and he had with him a caravan of mules bearing great laden jars. Our prince was pleased to give him lodging, for is it not written that every man should extend charity to his brother? And being a generous host, he offered his guest all that his house could offer. The merchant was gracious in acceptance, but that he declined a single thing: the mingling of bread and salt. He had taken a vow, he said; he begged pardon, but he dared not break it. His host was more than pleased to indulge him, for he was a pleasant companion, both witty and wise.

“Now, our prince had a slave whom he trusted well, a Circassian whom he had raised from a child and whom he regarded almost as a daughter. She was as wise as she was beautiful, and she was learned, because even as a pauper, our prince had believed devoutly in the power of the Book. It was her duty to prepare the feast; in the midst of her preparations, she discovered that she had omitted to provide oil for the dish which she was making — the delicacy which they call
the imam swooned
, because when his wife made it for him, it consumed in a night the oil which he had meant to suffice for a year.

“The slave was, not unnaturally, distraught, until she bethought herself of the merchant's wares. Surely he would not begrudge a dipper of oil out of so many. She took her dipper and crept out into the courtyard.”

Sayyida paused. Morgiana's dance had matched her words. For the prince, a lordly gait, weighty with good feeding; for his guest, a merchant's self-important stride; with a gesture, a curve of the body, she envisioned the whole of the feast. And then she was the slave, the clever, the learned, the beautiful; but young, and quite human enough in her predicament, battling her conscience to a standstill. Boldly but softly, with dipper in hand, she passed from the lights and steams of the kitchen into the dimness of evening in Baghdad, last night or a thousand nights ago.