Reave the Just and Other Tales (9 page)

I complied. “‘In the name of the great father of djinn, let all those he loves be killed. Let him be readily loved—and let all those who love him die in anguish. Let all his seed and all his blood—’”

“Enough. I have heard enough.” He consumed more of the wine. Now it seemed to have no effect upon him. “I have received both decency and love aboard this vessel, and those who gave it to me have been poisoned. I must ‘start thinking like one of the accursed.’ Very well. Do your work, djinn. I will do mine.”

He did not speak again that night. The River Kalabras bore the ship of the dead through the dark, and he rode the vessel alone, as though he were its rightful master.

Two days later, the current carried
Horizon’s Daughter
past the teeming waterfront of Qatiis, the crystal city where the Padisha devoted himself alternately to civic virtue and imaginative perversion. Hailing assistance in the name of Haroon el-Temud, Fetim achieved a berth for his felucca among the wharves of the great merchants. The state of the vessel’s crew—by then as rank as the waters of the city—aroused considerable comment, and there was talk of summoning the Padisha’s civil guard; but Fetim deflected this threat by invoking Haroon el-Temud’s name with alarming freedom. This in turn incurred the rancor of the merchant’s adherents. They made Fetim their prisoner and hauled him up into the rich city, where they threw him at Haroon el-Temud’s feet as a suspected murderer.

Piqued by Fetim’s fearless manner and his air of knowledge, the merchant allowed the young man to speak. At once, Fetim revealed that Mohan Gopal and his crew had been killed by wine intended for Haroon el-Temud himself.

“Yet you survive,” the merchant observed. “It might be reasonable to assume, therefore, that the wine was poisoned by none other than yourself.”

“That assumption would be understandable, but faulty,” replied Fetim. “Your men will tell you that the felucca’s crew has been dead long enough to permit me an easy escape, which would have freed me forever from suspicion. I have risked your distrust because the name of Haroon el-Temud is known as far away as Niswan, and I have that to offer you which can profit us both.”

“What is it?”

With an eloquent shrug, Fetim indicated his bonds.

Haroon el-Temud considered. Surely it would be madness for a poisoner of wine to remain in the company of his victims as Fetim had done. And if Fetim were innocent, he had done the merchant a great service by making him aware of the death his enemies plotted for him. To this service Fetim added an offer of profit. And he was a remarkably handsome young man. The rapidly healing scars on his face, far from marring his features, served to give his appearance piquancy. Even the Padisha, in one of his lascivious phases, might be interested in such a man.

Nodding approval of his thoughts, Haroon el-Temud commanded Fetim’s release. Then he and Fetim reached a bargain favorable to them both: Fetim was granted a well-remunerated place in the merchant’s service; the merchant was made aware that
Horizon’s Daughter
carried unprotected saffron, which had not yet been delivered to its rightful buyer.

The profits which accrued to Haroon el-Temud from so much stolen saffron greatly increased his goodwill toward his new protégé.

Fetim had no particular aptitude for his work; he had no aptitude for any work. But he was pleasing in manner, at once unafraid and certain, deferential and modest. And he plied his attractiveness to good effect. He soon found himself accepted and busy among the merchant’s many adherents—accountants, clerks, couriers, and guards; odalisques and assassins, opium peddlers and spies—whose lives were devoted to taking advantage of the Padisha’s outbreaks of virtue and vice.

He was watched with suspicion, of course: Haroon el-Temud had not achieved such wealth through a lack of caution. But what was in Fetim’s heart was more convoluted than the malice which the merchant knew and understood. Haroon el-Temud’s spies remarked on the ease with which Fetim accumulated lovers; but neither the spies nor their master feared it.

Fetim, however, found the opportunity when his lovers were sated and happy to ask them interesting questions. And as more and more people chose to make him the repository of their secrets, he gained more and more knowledge. With a celerity which would have frightened the merchant, had he been aware of it, Fetim learned the names of Haroon el-Temud’s principal enemies, the locations and characters of their strengths, the parts they played in the balance of conflict which preserved the Padisha’s bizarre rule. Then, almost without discernible effort, he began to extend his amorous sphere beyond the circle of Haroon el-Temud’s adherents.

In fact, he began to extend his amorous sphere into the domains of his patron’s enemies. The knowledge he sought with such diligence was simple: he wished to know who had poisoned Haroon el-Temud’s wine.

Initially, he was baffled to learn that the merchant knew the name of this particular foe—and declined to act on the information. This seemed improbable to Fetim: Haroon el-Temud was neither forgiving nor forbearant. Nevertheless, persistence brought the young man better understanding.

In cycles of both virtue and vice, the Padisha enjoyed games of power. He played the strong men of Qatiis against each other, setting one merchant at another, shifting favor between traders, hatching treacheries back and forth. Thus he deflected challenges to the manner in which he reigned over his city.

Haroon el-Temud’s wine had been poisoned by a trader who by that gambit rose high in the Padisha’s munificence.

Fetim’s expression became increasingly difficult to interpret. Armed with his knowledge, he formed a resolution. Then he approached his master and offered to put the extensive network of his lovers at the merchant’s service.

Haroon el-Temud greeted the suggestion with relish. After only a moment’s consideration, he asked the young man to glean a certain piece of information.

For the first time since he had joined the merchant’s adherents, Fetim showed a spark of passion. It was unsettling to witness because it seemed to arise from a wildness which Haroon el-Temud had not expected and did not know how to read. Nevertheless, the young man did and said nothing wild. Instead, with his strange blend of boldness and modesty, he began to bargain. In exchange for using his bed to his patron’s advantage, he desired neither money nor position. Rather, he desired Haroon el-Temud himself in that same bed.

Accustomed to buying love instead of receiving it, the merchant was at once flattered by and suspicious of Fetim’s proposition. He let himself be persuaded, however, by the spice of Fetim’s handsomeness and desire—and by that hint of wildness, which augured well for Haroon el-Temud’s particular lusts. He and Fetim kissed to seal their bargain. Then the young man went away.

That night, after the call to prayers had echoed over the gilt minarets and crystal domes of great Qatiis, the merchant went to Fetim’s bed. There, after a bout of love which left Haroon el-Temud nearly insensible, he was roused by the arrival of one of the men on whom he had wished Fetim to spy.

“We had an assignation!” this man cried to Fetim in jealous chagrin.

“You arranged this?” demanded Haroon el-Temud.

“Yes,” Fetim replied. “Your wine killed the woman I would have wed.”

In a rage, the merchant struck at Fetim. The new arrival drew a blade to defend his lover. Haroon el-Temud only had time to shout for his waiting guards before his blood was spilled on the bed.

The guards charged into Fetim’s quarters. The jealous lover in turn called out for help. More men came to the fray. Qatiis was a city in which no man or woman dared pass out of earshot of assistance. Cries echoed into the streets. Realizing the location of the struggle, Fetim’s lovers converged on each other, each bringing strength for battle. Shortly Haroon el-Temud’s house and the houses of his enemies were engaged in full-scale war.

Amid this war sat Fetim, contemplating havoc. Because of the curse, much of the violence turned toward him; but he made no effort to defend himself or flee. While blades flashed at him from all sides, and blood gushed everywhere, he murmured only, “Do your work, djinn,” and remained where he was.

My work was not easy. It would have been simplified if he had been willing to move. Or—since I must speak honestly—if I had been willing to coerce him to move. I chose, however, to let him be. I covered him with myself and turned every blade and blow aside.

Before the night was over, Qatiis had been cleansed of several powerful merchants who had traded upon the vices of the rich and the flesh of the weak. When at last the Padisha’s civil guard was able to beat back the turmoil, they found Fetim still seated on his bed. From that vantage, he surveyed the bloodshed as though he had become accustomed to it.

Naturally, the guards raised their scimitars to strike him down. But it was not his intention to destroy civil rule in Qatiis; his plans were more insidious. He spared the guard by raising his hands and saying in a voice of command, “Hold. What I did, I did at the command of Babera, the Padisha’s vizier.”

Because the vizier Babera had a hand in suggesting and effecting many of the Padisha’s treacheries and counter-treacheries, Fetim’s assertion was plausible enough to be dangerous. The men drew back their swords. Instead of attempting to butcher the cause of so much death and damage, they took him prisoner. While conflicting forces sought to find a new balance by defeating each other, and most of the city’s strength concentrated on protecting Qatiis itself from riot and ravage, and beggars and pickthieves scurried to loot the undefended warehouses, Fetim was dragged ungently through the streets toward the gold palace of the Padisha.

His ploy succeeded: he was hauled before the vizier Babera rather than the vizier Meyd.

The Padisha was served by two viziers, whose fortunes rose and fell as his phases alternated. The function and protection of the city, the command of the civil guard, the regulation of the marketplace to preserve at least a semblance of honesty, all were the province of the vizier Meyd, whose loyalty and probity were the qualities which kept the Padisha on his throne. Conversely, the vizier Babera was the master of the Padisha’s revels and plots. He it was who conceived the vices and debaucheries, the extravagances and perversions, which gave the Padisha’s life its exotic flavor.

Presented to the vizier Babera, Fetim acted swiftly: he spat in the vizier’s face.

Babera’s instant reaction was to order Fetim’s head lopped from his shoulders. A moment’s reflection, however, suggested a better fate. In recent days, the Padisha had developed a taste which was difficult to satisfy, even for the cunning vizier: the Padisha desired fornication with someone—man or woman, as occasion supplied—while that individual’s neck was being broken. The snapping of the spine and the spasm of death brought him to climaxes which were greatly coveted. Seeing that Fetim was handsome, Babera concluded that he would make an appropriate victim for the Padisha’s concupiscence.

Therefore Fetim’s death was not attempted. Instead, he was drugged into a state of languor and acquiescence, and presented to the Padisha.

The Padisha met the vizier Babera’s offering with intense approval. At once, he called women to arouse him, boys to toy with him. He consumed aphrodisiacs to make him manly. He inhaled incenses which heightened the senses; he drank herbs which sensitized the skin. At the same time, Fetim was bound hand and foot into an upright frame designed so that the Padisha might penetrate from one side while his bodyservant, a hugely muscular eunuch, clasped the victim’s neck from the other.

Drugged, Fetim suffered this indignity without alarm. He only murmured at intervals, “Do your work, djinn. I will do mine.”

When the Padisha was ready, he began to exercise himself upon Fetim’s body. Swiftly, the moment of climax approached. The eunuch wrapped his great hands around Fetim’s throat.

But when the Padisha was engorged and aching, and the signal was given, the eunuch’s hands unaccountably jerked from one neck to the other. It was the Padisha himself who met death in the moment of bliss.

Horrified by the consequences of what had just happened, the eunuch fled for his life, rampaging like a maddened bull through the palace. The vizier Meyd entered the Padisha’s disporting chamber, took one look at his master’s body, and commanded his men to arrest the vizier Babera.

Babera’s supporters resisted; the civil guard was called into action. While violence echoed in the halls of the palace, propelling the vizier Meyd to the rule of Qatiis whether he desired it or not, I released Fetim from his bonds, swept the drugs from his mind, and guided him to a safe egress.

As we journeyed together away from the changed city, I said, “You learn well.”

“Learn?”

“You learn to think like one of the accursed.”

“Thank you,” he said. He did not sound notably happy. Yet he faced the desert ahead of us without quailing.

“You fill me with pride,” I said. “You have exceeded all my expectations.”

“Give me time,” he returned. His tone suggested mockery of my former manner of speaking. “I might have some more surprises for you. The world has a lot of opportunities.”

Had I been mortal, I would have laughed. If he continued to learn at this pace, he would eventually become one of the djinn.