The Steel Seraglio (25 page)

“With the bottled army once more in his pack, the young man strode on into the palace. It was by then three hours after midnight, and though some were still at their revels for the most part they lay asleep where they had fallen, overwhelmed by drink and other pleasures to the point where their bodies had finally surrendered.

“The young man knew of old where the former grand vizier had had his chambers, adjacent to those of the sultan and in a tower less lofty by the merest inch. He went there now, and walking past the swinishly dozing sentinels presented himself, with no announcement or fanfare, before Nilaf Brozoud himself.

“He said not a word, and the mischievous courtier stared at him for a long moment, first mystified by his presence there and then fiercely indignant. ‘Begone from this place!’ he commanded. ‘Or I’ll have you whipped until there isn’t an inch of unbroken skin left on your body.’

“The young man only smiled, and said ‘Will you so, Nilaf Brozoud? With my father you were able to work it so, because he was old, and had no strength left in his limbs. But I am not Isulmir Das. Take such a high hand with me, and you will rue the day you tried it.’

“Then the wicked vizier recognized the young man, and saw in his eyes on what business he came. He fell, then, to his knees, and begged with heartfelt sobs to be spared. ‘I have led a life of depravity!’ he wailed. ‘And surely if I die now, the Increate will set spirits of malevolence and pain to torment me! Oh let me live, that I might repent. Please, Anwar Das! Only let me live, and I swear I shall repent!’ And here, ladies, we come to the third sin.”

“About time!” Zuleika observed sourly.

“Anwar Das was a dutiful son, and he had sworn to avenge his father’s death. The Increate, who disapproves of murder, nonetheless smiles upon filial piety, and also upon the fulfilment of sworn oaths. Yet the young man, hearing the sobs and moans and whimpers of the wretched Brozoud, was moved to compassion, and deflected from his noble purpose. A father murdered, and yet he stayed his hand! Thus did he deserve his death a third time over.

“And now he turned, and walked back to the open door. But foul Brozoud, whose tears had been but feigned, rushed on him with a dagger and drove it to the hilt into his back.”

Anwar Das touched a spot low down on his left side, and Zuleika shook her head in scornful despite. “If he’d stabbed you in the kidneys,” she said, “you wouldn’t have walked out of that room.”

Anwar Das unfastened the knot at the neck of his shirt and let it fall from him. He turned so that all could see the ugly scar above his hip. There was a communal gasp, and then a communal silence. In truth, the scar that Anwar Das was displaying had been earned in a less than creditable enterprise, when the husband of a lady with whom he was enjoying some intimate converse returned home unexpectedly, but it served him well now as proof of probity.

“The young man,” he went on calmly, “felt a terrible, tearing pain in his side. But he did not fall at once; rather, the fury he felt at receiving such a cowardly blow empowered him, so that he turned on his enemy, wrested the dagger from his hand and slit his mischievous throat with it.”

“Good thing too!” cried Farhat. Then she blushed and fell silent again.

“But the act took the last of his strength,” Anwar Das concluded. “He fell into a swoon, and was found there, beside the vizier’s slain body. The fury of the sultan was immense. He gave order that the young man should be executed on the morrow morn. And until that time, he should be thrown into the dankest cell in the city’s oubliette, whose fairest apartments are famed for their dankness.

“That night was the longest the young man had ever endured. He wept for his fate, but rejoiced that he had at last kept the oath he made to his father’s ghost. He mourned that his life would be cut short, but contented himself that he had ended the career of a poisonous reptile who would have wrought even worse evil had he lived. And in such contrary extremes of emotion, without sleep to relieve them, the dark hours at last were passed.

“When dawn came, the young man was taken out to the royal square, where a platform had been erected for his execution. His sentence was read out before a huge crowd, all of them come to see the man who had slain the grand vizier. The executioner asked his victim’s pardon, as was the custom, and the young man gave it freely—the more so since he himself had taken a life a scant few hours before. He knelt at last and laid his head upon the block, and the headsman hefted his blade.

“But at the last moment, the young man bethought him of the miniature army in the bottle, which he still carried in his pack. He owed them much, and did not wish them to be buried with him, and lie in the dark throughout the future ages of the Earth. He begged the headsman to grant him another minute of life, which the headsman vouchsafed to do, thinking that the young man wished to utter a last prayer for forgiveness.

“The young man took the bottle from his pack and set it down at the edge of the platform, opening the stopper so that the soldiers could leave it when they chose. He thanked them for the help they had already rendered, praised their courage and ingenuity, and blessed them for all the many kindnesses they had shown him.

“In that moment, a sound like a fearsome thunderclap filled the air, and a light like the shining of a thousand suns flared upon the scaffold. When the light faded, the whole of the royal square was filled with armed and armoured men, who quickly overpowered the sultan’s guards.

“I leave you to imagine the young man’s astonishment. He had not known until that point that he was of the royal lineage of ancient Treis, and that therefore his blessing would be potent enough to end the immemorial curse upon the bottled army. Now, as they freed him and lifted him on their shoulders in triumph, he realised that this must be the case, and he thanked the Increate in his heart for engineering such a miracle.

“The soldiers would have made the young man sultan, but he had no interest in power or politics. He embraced them all—it took several hours—and took his leave of them with many touching displays of affection. Then he went back to the thieves, who had been his first saviours when he wandered in the wilderness, and towards whom he still felt a great debt of gratitude. Perhaps, ladies, that is a fourth sin—that he was determined to cleave to these rogues, although he knew that what they did was wrong. That he was loyal, even to wicked and lawless men.

“But I leave the final count, and of course my fate—the fate of all these men who kneel here—to you.
Baraha barahinei.
And may your days on Earth be strewn with blessings as thick as blossoms in spring.”

A smattering of applause broke out among the women, and voices could be heard returning Anwar Das’s blessing. Discomfited, Zuleika fell back to confer with Gursoon.

“I’m going to lose this vote, aren’t I?” she muttered.

“I think it’s very likely,” Gursoon said. “And you could argue that he’s paid us back in our own coin. We took them in with a story—and here he’s done the same thing to us.”

“It’s only because he’s good looking! I should have let one of the ugly ones speak.”

“It’s partly because of that, but also because of his ready tongue.”

“Yes,” Zuleika agreed gloomily. “I’m sure many of them are thinking of his ready tongue.”

“He could be an asset to us,” Gursoon pointed out.

“He could be a pain in the arse,” Zuleika countered.

They both had many weighty matters on their mind right then, and might have come to other conclusions if they had had the leisure to think longer on the matter. But they were both right.

In the evening of the same day, the seraglio had its first meeting. An outcrop of flat rock outside what had previously been the bandits’ cave formed a natural stage, and when the air cooled, the concubines, the serving women, all twelve bandits, and Issi and his team all congregated in front of it, sitting on the sand, which was still warm from the sun’s heat. Gursoon climbed heavily onto the rocky platform and addressed them all in a voice that remained loud and carrying, despite her age.

“We have come far today,” she said. “This morning, we had nothing but our thirst. Now, we have a home, or at least something that will serve as one for the time being, and”—and here she gave Anwar Das and the brigands a meaningful stare—“some new allies, who have promised us their aid.”

A few of the girls blushed and giggled at Gursoon’s words. The thieves had already attracted considerable attention, and Anwar Das, with his charming smile and winning manners, was proving particularly popular. Standing together towards the back of the group, the brigands were beginning to reconsider their earlier reluctance to surrender to a bunch of women, and swelled a little at getting a mention in the lady’s speech. Some of them were returning the interested glances of the women around them with what they optimistically hoped was a smouldering animal magnetism.

Gursoon, as far away as she was, noted this with a wry smile. The closer the group became, the easier it would be to prevent friction and schisms when the difficulties of their new life began to bite. She continued, however, in a stern tone. “Let me be clear about our situation, and what it means: we are in the middle of the desert. The very nearest village is many days’ journey away. Out here, those of us who were in the sultan’s seraglio are no longer concubines. The term has no meaning any more.

“But that is not the only thing which has no meaning. Farhat, Bethi, Thana.” The serving women stirred in surprise as they heard some of their number mentioned. “If I am no longer a courtesan, then you are no longer servants. We all of us served the same master, in our different ways, but he is dead, and the man who killed him would have killed all of us, too. His rules do not apply to us here, and neither do the hierarchies he created for us. In order to survive, we are all going to have to work until our fingernails bleed, and if the hundreds of us who were concubines sit around waiting for the few of us who were servants to do all the work, whining at them to brush our hair and put up our tents, then we’re lost before we start!”

Gursoon’s voice had risen towards the end of her speech. Some of the girls, she noticed, had bowed their heads in shame at the sharpness of her rebuke. “From this point on,” she concluded, speaking more gently, “we are all equals. Now, we must decide what we are going to do next.”

“And I suppose you’re the one to tell us, are you?” Imtisar’s voice cut viciously through the crowd. She had been seething throughout Gursoon’s speech, first at the way Gursoon had swept in and taken control, then at the personal insult she had felt implied in her comments. Imtisar remembered all too vividly how she had told Bethi off for waking her roughly that morning, and then shouted at Thana for drinking from the spring before she herself had had her turn. What was more, she felt that she had every right to act in this way, and bitterly resented Gursoon’s interference. What could a dancing girl know of the correct way to treat servants?

“Actually, I was going to suggest that Zuleika give her counsel,” Gursoon replied mildly. “Without her presence of mind, we would be in a shallow grave right now. She has protected us this far, and I think she will have more idea than I of how we should proceed.”

Zuleika needed no further encouragement. “We need to find a new city,” she said, striding to the front and mounting the stage as she spoke. “A city which will take us in, and which is far enough from Bessa that we will not be sought there.” This was met with a general murmur of assent, though there were those who looked a little disappointed. Umayma’s face fell at the thought that she was so soon to relinquish her newfound freedom, but she held her peace in deference to Zuleika’s wisdom. Zuleika noticed Zeinab getting hesitantly to her feet.

“Zeinab?” She motioned for the girl to speak.

“If we need to find a city that’s far from Bessa, then our best chance of success is Yrtsus,” she said shyly. “It’s a good six months’ journey to the east. Even my father has only been there once.”

Her announcement caused consternation. The murmurs of agreement turned into alarm, and several people stood up at once to speak. Imtisar was first.

“Yrtsus? Are you sun-struck? That’s leagues away, you stupid girl!”

“We can’t go all the way there,” Layla wailed. “We would die on the journey!”

“If we don’t try it, we’ll die here!” Zuleika silenced the group with a motion of her hand. “What do you think will happen if we go to Perdondaris or Agorath? Do you really think that Hakkim will stop looking for us? We have with us an heir to the throne!”

Jamal glanced up in sudden interest from where he was sitting by the cave mouth, surrounded by a small circle of other children. The meeting had already moved on, however, so he returned to impressing them with tales of his father’s power.

“Zuleika is right.” Gursoon spoke from where she sat, on the edge of the stage. “Agorath has always had strong diplomatic relations with our city, while Perdondaris cares for nothing save its own security. If we looked for sanctuary in either, they would send us straight back to Hakkim. But Yrtsus has hardly any dealings with Bessa. In all the time I spent at Al-Bokhari’s side, listening to the reports of his envoys and watching him receive foreign visitors, I never met anyone from there, or even heard the place mentioned. It’s a small city, forgotten by most.”

“Then it’s perfect for our purposes,” Zuleika continued, “But such a long journey will be extremely arduous. We must prepare carefully. We need enough food and water to get us fairly on our way. Buying that many provisions will be costly.”

Zeinab stood up again. “I know how to drive a bargain. My father was a tradesman. Let me sell some of our camels in the market at Agorath. We have a few more than we need, now,” she said, though she shuddered slightly as she thought of the men who had once rode those spare camels, and their grim fate. “If we sell them off we can use the money to—”

Issi stood up hastily. “Zei, those camels are not yours to sell,” he interrupted. He had already admitted to his men what had really happened on the night the guards disappeared, and to his surprise, their reactions had contained more anger at the sultan’s cruelty than at him for lying to them earlier. A few of them had been chosen by the women of the seraglio as their companions, and other bonds had grown up between them over the few weeks they had been travelling.