Quiet Knives (3 page)

Teeth indenting her bottom lip, she unrolled
the second scroll next to the first, and saw that she had the
complete cipher.

Breathless, she groped behind her for the
box, and extracted a book at random.

Slowly at first--then more quickly as her
agile mind grew acquainted with the key--she began to read.

Illuminated by the cipher, it was found that
the volume geographical did not concern itself with mountain ranges
and rivers at all, but was instead a detailed report of a
clandestine entry into the city of Selikot, and a blasphemous
subterfuge.

I regret to inform you, oh, brother in arms,
that our information regarding this hopeful world was much
misleading. Women are not restricted; they are quarantined, cut off
from society and commerce. They may only travel in the company of a
male of their kin unit, and even then, heavily shielded in many
layers of full body robes, their faces, eyes and hair hidden by
veils. So it is that the first adjustment in our well-laid plans
has been implemented. You will find that your partner Thelma
Delance has ceded her route and her studies to a certain Scholar
Umar Khan. And a damnable time I had finding a false beard in this
blasted city, too. However, as you know to your sorrow, I'm a
resourceful wench, and all is now made seemly. Scholar Khan is
suitably odd, and elicits smiles and blessings wherever he walks.
The project continues only slightly impeded by the beard, which
itches. I will hold a copy of this letter in my field notes, in the
interests of completeness.

Farewell for now, brother Jamie. You owe me
a drink and dinner when we are reunited.

* * *

INAS WAS SLOW WITH her needle next morning,
her head full of wonders and blasphemies.

That there were other worlds, other peoples,
variously named "Terran" and "Liaden"--that was known. Indeed,
Selikot was the site of a "space-port" and bazaar, where such
outworlders traded what goods they brought for those offered by the
likes of Merchant Majidi. The outworlders were not permitted beyond
the bazaar, for they were unpious; and the likes of Merchant Majidi
must needs undergo purifications after their business in the bazaar
was concluded.

Yet now it seemed that
one--nay,
a pair
--of outworlders had moved beyond the bazaar to rove and study
the wider world--and one of them a woman. A woman who had disguised
herself as a man.

This was blasphemy, and yet the temples had
not fallen; the crust of the world had not split open and swallowed
cities; nor had fires rained from the heavens.

Perhaps Thelma Delance had repented her sin?
Perhaps Amineh, the little god of women, had interceded with his
brothers and bought mercy?

Perhaps the gods were not as all-seeing and
as all-powerful as she had been taught?

Within the layers of her at-home robes, Inas
shivered, but her scholar-trained mind continued its questions, and
the answers which arose to retire those new and disturbing
questions altered the measure of the world.

"Truth defines the order of the universe,"
she whispered, bending to her needlework. "When we accept the
truth, we accept the will of the gods."

Yet, how if accepting the
truth proved the absence of the gods? Why had her father given her
such a gift? Had he read the
curiat
before sending it to her? Did he know of the
hidden--

Across the room, from the other side of the
guest screen, Nasir's voice intruded.

"The Esteemed and Blessed Scholar Reyman
Bhar is returned home and bids his daughter Inas attend him in the
study."

* * *

HER FATHER WAS AT his desk,
several volumes open before him, his fingers nimble on the keypad
of the notetaker. Inas waited, silent, her hands folded into her
sleeves. The light of the study lamps was diffused into a golden
glow by the
ubaie
,
so that her father seemed surrounded by the light of heaven. He was
a handsome man, dark, with a masterful beak of a nose and the high
forehead of a scholar. His beard was as black and as glossy as that
of a man half his age. He wore the house turban, by which she knew
he had been home some hours before sending for her, and the
loosened braid of his hair showed thick and gray.

He made a few more notes, turned a page of
the topmost book, set the notetaker aside, and looked up.

Inas melted to her knees and bowed, forehead
to the carpet.

"Arise, daughter," he said, kindly as
always.

She did so and stood quiet once more, hands
folded before her.

"Tell me, did my packet arrive timely?"

"Father," she said softly, "it did. I am
grateful to you for so precious a gift."

He smiled, well-pleased with her. "It is a
curiosity, is it not? Did you mark the pattern of the errors?
Almost, it seems a farce--a plaything. What think you?"

"Perhaps," Inas said, her breath painfully
short, "it is a test?"

He considered it, black brows knit, then
nodded, judiciously. "It could be so. Yes, I believe you have the
right of it, daughter. A test devised by a scholar of the higher
orders, perhaps to teach discipline." He paused, thinking more
deeply. Inas, waiting, felt ill, wondering if he knew of the hidden
scholar's key and the blasphemies contained in the revealed
text.

"Yes," he said again. "A test. How well the
scholar must have loved the student for which it was devised!"

"Yes, Father," Inas whispered, and gathered
together her courage, lips parting to ask it, for she must
know...

"As you progress in scholarship, you will
learn that the most precious gifts are those which are more than
they appear," her father said, "and that hidden knowledge has
power." He bowed, seated as he was, scholar to scholar, which was a
small blasphemy of its own, face as austere as a saint's.

And so, Inas thought, she was instructed.
She bowed. "Yes, Father."

"Hah." He leaned back in his chair, suddenly
at ease, and waved her to the stool at his feet.

"Sit, child, and tell me how the
arrangements for your sister's wedding progress."

* * *

THE
CURIAT
BOUYED HER, frightened her,
intrigued her. She spent her nights with it, and every other moment
she could steal. She stored it now in the long-forgot sand-wood
drawer--the hidden pass-through where it stood long out of
use--where she could, if she wished, reach it as easily from the
garden or her room.

Thelma Delance--she heard the woman's voice
in the few hours of sleep she allowed herself--a loud,
good-natured, and unwomanly voice, honest as women could never be,
and courageous.

Inas read, and learned.
Thelma Delance had been a scholar of wide learning. There were
recipes for medicines among her notes; recipes for poisons, for
explosives, and other disasters, which Inas understood only
mistily; and lessons of
self-defense
, which held echoes of
her mother's name. There was other knowledge, too--plans for
establishing a
base
.

And there was the appalling fact that the
notes simply ended, and did not pick up again:

They're on me. I've got one more trick up my
sleeve. You know me, Jamie Moore, always one more trick up Thelma's
wide sleeve, eh? We'll see soon enough if it's worked. If it has,
you owe me--that's my cue. They're shooting...

There was nothing more after that, only the
box, and the wound it bore, which might, Inas thought, have been
made by a pellet.

She wondered who had wished to kill Thelma
Delance--and almost laughed. Surely, that list was long. The
priests--of a certainty. The scholars--indeed. The port police, the
merchant guild, the freelance vigilantes...

And Inas realized all at once that she was
crying, the silent, secret tears that women were allowed, to mourn
a sister, a mother, a friend.

* * *

THE DAY BEFORE HUMARIA was to wed, Inas once
again attended her father in the study, where she was given the
task of reshelving the volumes he had utilized in his last
commissioned research. By chance their proper places were in the
back corner of the room, where the convergence of walls and shelves
made an alcove not easily seen from the greater room.

She had been at her task some time, her
father deep in some new bit of study at his desk, when she heard
the door open and Nasir announce, "The Esteemed and Honorable
Scholar Baquar Hafeez begs the favor of an audience with the
Glorious and Blessed Scholar Reyman Bhar."

"Old friend, enter and be welcome!" Her
father's voice was cordial and kindly--and, to his daughter's ear,
slightly startled. His chair skritched a little against the carpet
as he pushed away from the desk, doubtless rising to embrace his
friend.

"To what blessed event do I owe this
visit?"

"Why, to none other than Janwai Himself!"
Scholar Hafeez returned, his voice deeper and louder than her
father's. "Or at the least, to his priests, who have commissioned
me for research at the hill temple. There are certain etched stones
in the meditation rooms, as I take it?"

"Ah, are there not!" Reyman Bhar exclaimed.
"You are in for a course of study, my friend. Be advised, buy a
pair of nightsight lenses before you ascend. The meditation rooms
are ancient, indeed, and lit by oil."

"Do you say so?" Scholar Hafeez exclaimed,
over certain creaks and groanings from the visitor's chair as it
accepted his weight.

Inas, forgotten, huddled, soundless and
scarcely moving in the alcove, listening as the talk moved from the
meditation rooms to the wider history of the hill temple, to the
progress of the report on which her father and Scholar Hafeez had
collaborated, not so long since.

At some point, Nasir came in, bearing
refreshments. The talk wandered on. In the alcove, Inas sank
silently to her knees, drinking in the esoterica of scholarship as
a thirsty man guzzles tea.

Finally, there came a break in the talk.
Scholar Hafeez cleared his throat.

"I wonder, old
friend--that
curiat
you bought in Hamid's store?"

"Yes?" her father murmured. "A peculiar
piece, was it not? One would almost believe it had come from the
old days, when Hamid's grandfather was said to buy from slavers and
caravan thieves."

"Just so. An antique from the days of
exploration, precious for its oddity. I have no secrets from you,
my friend, so I will confess that it comes often into my mind. I
wonder if you would consider parting with it. I will, of course,
meet what price you name."

"Ah." Her father paused. Inas pictured him
leaning back in his chair, fingers steepled before his chin, brows
pulled together as he considered the matter. In the alcove, she
hardly dared breathe, even to send a futile woman's prayer to the
little god for mercy.

"As much as it saddens me
to refuse a friend," Reyman Bhar said softly, "I must inform you
that the
curiat
had been purchased as a gift for a promising young scholar of
my acquaintance."

"A strange item to bestow upon a youth,"
murmured Baquar Hafeez, adding hastily, "But you will, of course,
know your own student! It is only that--"

"I most sincerely regret," Scholar Bhar
interrupted gently. "The gift has already been given."

There was a pause.

"Ah," said Scholar Hafeez. "Well, then,
there is nothing more to be said."

"Just so," her father replied, and there was
the sound of his chair being pushed back. "Come, my friend, you
have not yet seen my garden. This is the hour of its glory. Walk
with me and be refreshed."

Inas counted to fifty after the door closed,
then she rose, reshelved the two remaining volumes, and ghosted out
of the study, down the hall to the women's wing.

* * *

HUMARIA'S WEDDING WAS BLESSED and beautiful,
the banquet very grand to behold, and even the women's portions
fresh and unbroken, which spoke well for her new husband's
generosity.

At the last moment, it was arranged between
Reyman Bhar and Gabir Majidi that Shereen would stay with her
sister for the first month of her new marriage, as the merchant's
wife was ill and there were no daughters in his house to bear
Humaria company.

So it was that Scholar Bhar came home with
only his youngest daughter to companion him. Nasir pulled the sedan
before the house and the scholar emerged, his daughter after him.
He ascended the ramp to the door, fingering his keycard from his
pocket--and froze, staring at a door which was neither latched nor
locked.

Carefully, he put forth his hand, pushing
the door with the tips of his fingers. It swung open onto a hallway
as neat and as orderly as always. Cautiously, the scholar moved on,
his daughter forgotten at his back.

There was some small disorder in the public
room--a vase overturned and shattered, some display books tossed
aside. The rugs and the news computer--items that would bring a
goodly price at the thieves market--were in place, untouched. The
scholar walked on, down the hall to--

His study.

Books had been ripped from their shelves and
flung to the floor, where they lay, spine-broke and torn, ankle
deep and desolate. His notepad lay in the center of the desk,
shattered, as if it had been struck with a hammer. The loose pages
of priceless manuscripts lay over all.

Behind him, Scholar Bhar heard a sound; a
high keening, as if from the throat of a hunting hawk, or a lost
soul.

He turned and beheld Inas, wilting against
the door, her hand at her throat, falling silent in the instant he
looked at her.

"Peace--" he began and stopped, for there
was another sound, from the back of the house--but no. It would
only be Nasir, coming in from putting the sedan away.