The Diviner (25 page)

“How did Meryem fail to discover your madness?” Azzad asked, and his voice to his own hearing was as an echo coming up from the valley far below.

“Madness?” His words came from blackening shadow. “Is it madness to kill you before the army of Sheyqa Nizzira comes—so that with you already dead, the land and the people will not suffer?”

Fadhil had chosen a vial from the litter on the ground, and forced it to Azzad's lips. “Drink. Quickly.”

He gulped, and coughed at the sour taste. Surely this could not be happening. Not to him. Not now. Not after all he had been through and all he had done—

“As for Challa Meryem—she knew nothing of my thoughts or my plans. None of them did. More fools,” he added with a shrug. “She and Challa Leyliah will be the first to admit their errors and accept me as Abb Shagara, or they will be the first to die.”

Fadhil sprang to his feet and cuffed him across the face.

Haffiz staggered, tripped over the Jemilha's little castle of pebbles, smashed it beneath his boot heel. He caught his balance, then coughed and spat out blood. “Another perversion. Would you sin against all Shagara by murdering a fellow Haddiyat?”

Azzad was not sure if the world was darkening because of the poisoned knife or the gathering dusk. But when his friend knelt before him and took both his hands, he knew. Even in the darkness he saw his own death in Fadhil's tear-filled eyes. Numbness had spread up his arm to his shoulder, across his back, and would soon find both his head and his heart. It occurred to him that the Mualeef boy would be finishing his book rather sooner than either of them had expected. Ayia, an interesting ending to an interesting life.

But it was not yet over, and there were things he must say.

“Even if Haffiz is correct,” Azzad said slowly, “and Nizzira's army spares the people, my wife and children will not be spared. See them safe, Fadhil. Please.”

“I will do it. After I kill Haffiz.”

“No. Do not break your ancient laws. He matters nothing.” He heard Haffiz suck in a breath at this insult. He wondered briefly why Haffiz was content to stand and watch Azzad die, then decided he must truly be mad, to think that killing a single man would solve all his problems, fulfill all his dreams, make him Abb Shagara. Fadhil was safe from him; Shagara tradition would not allow him to kill another Haddiyat.

“Azzad—” Fadhil's voice was cloudy with tears.

“Take Jemilha and the children away. Now. Tonight. Take all the horses. Leave—” His lips felt cold and stiff. “Leave only fire behind you. Especially the maqtabba. They must not know the names of those I employ in Rimmal Madar.”

“It will be done, al-Ma'aliq. I will make all appear as if everyone died in the fire.”

As his mother and sisters and aunts and cousins had died. Perhaps it would work. If Fadhil left talishann enough, the Qoundi Ammar would believe. He tried to say this, but his mouth was reluctant to form words. It didn't matter, anyway; Fadhil would know what to do.

But there was more he must say. He struggled, purposely biting his tongue to feel pain, refusing to be frightened when the response was sluggish and muted, and managed, “Children—tell them—”

“I will, Azzad. I will tell them how much you love them.”

A long while seemed to pass. He seemed to hear the shrieking of a hawk somewhere above the trees. He tasted blood, coppery-sweet, flooding away the bitter medicine, and then he could taste nothing at all.

Now, at the last: “Jemilha.”

“Yes, Azzad. I will tell her.”

Ayia, she was never “just any woman,” my Jemilha,
he thought, wishing he could smile. The numbness that had claimed his lips reached his heart, and then, through the gathering darkness, his eyes as he looked down at the tiny lights that marked his home, where his children were, and Jemilha. Fadhil would see them safe.

A
long and bitter journey it was from Sihabbah. Alessid spent much of it unable to see clearly for the tears that came to his eyes no matter how he fought them. Ayia, he was a man now and should be past childish weeping. But weep he did—though only at night, when Fadhil couldn't see him in the moondark wasteland.

They rested during the hottest part of each day and rode on at dusk, stopping at dawn to graze and water the horses. Of all that had belonged to the al-Ma'aliq in Sihabbah, only the horses were left—those, and Azzad's rings. Fadhil had shown them to Alessid, offered them silently in an outstretched palm. He shook his head sharply, refusing them.

He refused everything about his father now. He had to. Azzad al-Ma'aliq had been a fool—and Alessid knew that to be like him, to admire him, to love him still, would make of Azzad's son an even greater fool.

He had always adored his father. He had wanted to be just like Azzad al-Ma'aliq: tall and handsome, always smiling, beloved by his family, cherished by his friends. Alessid, during near-sleepless afternoons and long, starhazed nights, examined the events of his own scant fourteen years of life and determined that from now on he would work very hard to be as different from his father as possible.

I am alive
, he would tell himself when the tears blurred his vision.
I am alive, and everyone else is dead. My Ab'ya is dead, because he was a fool.

Everyone knew the story of how Azzad had been dallying with a mistress in the city of Dayira Azreyq when the al-Ma'aliq were massacred. He had survived by the Grace of Acuyib, not through his own cunning. It had happened differently for Alessid.

It happened again and again in his memory as he rode to the Shagara camp. Again, and again, and again . . .