A Path to Coldness of Heart (24 page)

“Of course,” he said. “Anything you want to know, God be praised. My father was Yousef the shoemaker of es Souanna. His father was… But wait! I remember you. We did this just a few days ago.”

“Hell, he’s right,” said another Invincible. “We did. He’s some kind of mummer. Weren’t you going to head on west with one of the caravans?”

Haroun recalled having had a hearing problem before. “Yes. But al-Mesali would not let me because of my infected ears. Which started healing as soon as it was too late. I am hoping for better luck next time. Meantime, I am surviving on wild greens salads. What’s up, anyway?”

“Nobody knows. The Lady and her eunuch heard something while they were passing by here. They went weird. We’re supposed to find somebody without knowing who we’re looking for.”

“Did you say lady? Your lips are hard to read because of your beard.”

“The Lady Yasmid, blessings be upon her. Daughter of the Disciple.”

Haroun tried to look awe-stricken. He had been that close to greatness!

He had been that close to disaster. He understood that, for the moment, he had eluded an arrow that he had not known was in the air.

The eunuch mentioned must be Habibullah, who had served Yasmid since she was a child.

It must be the banter that had betrayed him.

He asked, “Do you want to look through my things again?”

How stupid could one man be? And how lucky?

“No.”

“This is amazing,” Haroun said. “To think that I was that close. I wish I had known so I could have gotten a glimpse.”

“You wouldn’t have seen much,” the talkative Invincible said, moving away.

“Muftaq!” his remaining companion snapped.

“What? It’s no secret that she’s as homely as the back end of a camel.”

“You have no right to say such things in front of perfect strangers.”

Haroun muttered, “I’m definitely not perfect. I wouldn’t be in this fix if I was.”

The Invincibles moved on, leaving the traveler in furious thought.

...

“Could it have been?” Yasmid demanded. “He would have to be mad to be here. Wouldn’t he?”

Habibullah agreed, in private and aloud. “He would. But his madness has never been in question.”

Yasmid struggled to shed a maelstrom of conflicting feelings. “You did hear what I heard?”

“It was the exact singsong the fat man used when we were young. Minus the accent.”

“Can there be an explanation other than the one our foolish hearts want it to be?”

“In God’s eyes all things are possible. We’ll know for sure soon enough. The Invincibles will question everyone who isn’t one of them. Anyone suspicious will wind up at your feet.”

Yasmid said, “Uh-oh.”

Habibullah said, “I’ll put out a warning not to operate alone. If it is him he won’t scruple to kill a man for his robes.”

Yasmid said, “I don’t want him slain outright, Habibullah. I want to see him first.”

“I understand.”

Watching the door again. Habibullah knowing that. Her knowing that Habibullah had told her what she wanted to hear. She was a woman. She was weak. She would not do what needed to be done. If Habibullah got there first Haroun would die resisting capture.

Habibullah’s foolish heart did not share the hungers of her foolish heart. Habibullah nurtured an abiding and deadly grudge.

...

Haroun indulged in wishful thinking but did not waste time sitting still. Aza was compromised. Aza would be very popular soon. Aza had to evaporate off the desert like dew in the morning sun.

Haroun pawned his cart and contents, and his animals, with a one-eyed rogue known as Barking Snake, a parasite grown fat off desperate travelers. He smelled desperation when Haroun arrived in the night. He took every advantage. Haroun did not argue. He did make a point of remembering the fat face and greasy beard filled with a vulpine smile.

Haroun had just departed when a dozen Invincibles descended on Barking Snake’s establishment. He listened. The Invincibles were out rousting the usual suspects. Barking Snake lied smoothly, unctuously, while his underlings were still moving reluctant goats in the background.

Haroun allowed himself a grim smile. Unless he was slicker than he looked Barking Snake would soon be answering questions for which he could offer no satisfactory replies.

Haroun wore shabby clothing he had acquired from Barking Snake, still smelling of its previous owner, who may have died in it. As a disguise it would be useless soon. Once the hunters knew that Barking Snake had bought Aza’s things they would make him tell them what to look for.

He considered becoming one of the hunters. But that would be impractical except as a momentary expedient. The old warriors here all knew each other and were working in groups.

He could not return to being a pilgrim. No Believer would hide him.

Patrols came close. They failed to catch him mainly because they had no real idea of what they were supposed to find.

Haroun considered fleeing Sebil el Selib. It was the logical course. But he could not reach the pass back to the east and he was not equipped to survive the desert. With a couple of water bags he could make it to el Aswad.

They would think of that right away.

It might be a useful false trail to lay down sometime.

The need for constant evasion pushed him toward the Disciple’s tent.

He rested in a shadowed dip fifty feet from that absurd sprawl of canvas. There was activity at its entrance, but only out of curiosity. The guards and staff refused to get caught up in the broader excitement.

The idea seemed obvious enough. If he could get inside… Rumor said that the interior mostly went unused. A company of horsemen could hide in there.

Out of adversity, opportunity?

Why had the place not been picked clean by thieves?

If you were a Believer, perhaps, the Disciple’s presence made it holy and immune.

Haroun did not see the man as a god descended to earth, but was willing to profit from such thinking.

He used shaghûn skills several times, always at the weakest intensity. Still, that should have attracted attention. Did they not have anyone watching for sorcery? Was the Disciple’s ban on witchcraft and wizardry actually observed at Sebil el Selib?

Excellent. He could be more bold. But not now. For now he had to remain a ghost.

He reached the tent unchallenged. This sector was quiet. These people were their own worst enemies.

Shadows embraced him as he explored.

He never saw a patrol, though there was a path beaten alongside the tent, maybe laid down by those who made sure pegs and ropes remained properly set and taut. The bottom edge of the tent was secured by iron spikes at two foot intervals. Haroun oozed along for a hundred feet without finding even one of those missing.

That was a lot of iron. He could not imagine why some villain had not taken every other one and sold them to Barking Snake, who could have a blacksmith hammer them into a slightly different shape before he sold them back as replacements.

He had to pull this off without leaving evidence. He had to penetrate a space he could explore only with a shaghûn’s senses. His skills were not infallible when he had to keep watch in a dozen directions at once.

Maybe there was a sorcerer out there. The excitement was collapsing slowly toward him rather than expanding.

...

Yasmid and Habibullah had just taken the latest confused reports from several baffled and weary Invincibles captains. Some of the elderly, hard-line imams had come to poke their noses in. They could not be denied.

Yasmid murmured, “Please, God, make this a false alarm. Better, make these old coots keep their mouths shut and their ears the same.”

Habibullah broke her heart by whispering, “The man in the pilgrim camp is the one we want. And he sounds like the man we don’t want.”

She understood. “Yes. He’s the one.” The fact that he had become a ghost was evidence enough. “But he isn’t Haroun bin Yousif.”

Habibullah surprised her. “I concur. This is someone who wants us to believe he might be a dangerous dead man. But he hasn’t affirmed it with the patterns of death that are the signature of the King Without a Throne.”

Yasmid considered Habibullah. What nonsense was this? Haroun never tried to leave the survivors thinking what a clever murderer he was.

Elwas reported, “He must have fled into the desert. There is no sign of him.”

Yasmid sighed. She could not conquer mixed feelings. She yearned for the door to spring open and those powerful arms to sweep her up… Waiting for that villain to miss a step and fall foul of men who had hungered for his life for two generations.

She loved him hopelessly.

She hated him with a deep and abiding fervor.

The coldly calculating eyes of the imams were hungry, too, since rumor had it that the invisible pilgrim might be the King Without a Throne. Yasmid met the gaze of Ibn Adim ed-Din al-Dimishqi, her most virulent detractor. She put into her gaze her absolute willingness to snuff his irksome candle.

Elwas went. Other Invincibles came. They had nothing good to report. “If you could give us a better idea of what you want us to find,” one said. “That would be an immense help.”

Another suggested, “Dawn isn’t far off. We should rest until we can see what we’re doing.”

That did sound sensible. Rushing around in the dark, someone was sure to get hurt.

There had been no contact with the pilgrim since two Invincibles interviewed him during the first few minutes of excitement.

“Ah. Jirbash is here. This could be interesting.”

Jirbash al-’Azariyah was a protégé of Elwas bin Farout al-Souki. His background was equally dubious. His brains and ferocity made him a terror to enemies of the Believers. He ran a contemptuous eye over the three old men and the slightly younger Ibn Adim. Only al-Dimishqi did not sway back.

Jirbash had been the architect of their humbling. He remained openly unhappy because he had been denied permission to bury them.

He stepped up to Yasmid and Habibullah, offering each a precisely calculated bow. He did not go to his knees. Yasmid had forbidden the practice. Only God Himself rated that level of obeisance.

“Report,” she said.

“We have been examining the effects of the criminal Farukh Barsbey al-Fadl, called Barking Snake. We are solving a great many criminal mysteries. Al-Fadl did take the pilgrim’s livestock and property in pawn, at a discount violating the usury laws. He claims to know nothing about the man, who called himself Aza. I believe him. Tonight’s events have shaken him. He never thought he would attract the attention of the religious authorities. He thought he was protected.”

Habibullah asked, “This news helps us how?”

Jirbash showed no impatience. “Even a void says something. It says there is nothing here. Go look somewhere else.”

A slight pinking appeared in Habibullah’s cheeks. “I see.”

“The villain Farukh al-Fadl says the pilgrim asked for water bags, which al-Fadl could not provide. He asked if there had been reports of dangers along the road to el Aswad. Al-Fadl says he advised the pilgrim not to go that way because the road is haunted by ghosts from the battle on the salt pan.”

Yasmid said, “El Aswad. The springs still flow there.”

Habibullah said, “There were early reports of disappearing water bags.”

“Jirbash. Catch Elwas. Tell him you two will catch the pilgrim on the road to el Aswad. Subdue him and bring him back alive.”

Behind her Habibullah offered subtle expressions assuring Jirbash that the alive part was not critical.

It was a boys’ conspiracy, entered into because the girl was too soft.

...

Haroun found himself in a part of the tent that appeared not to have been visited in years. His weak spirit light revealed that it was storage for plunder. The leather goods were dried out and starting to crumble. There was mold all over one heap of camel saddles, despite the bone-dry air. No one had cleaned the blood off.

The plunder “rooms” were vast and unorganized. Those who had stored the goods had not cared. Worthless stuff had been thrown everywhere. It took Haroun only minutes to create a hiding hole and disguise its entrance.

...

Elwas told Yasmid, “Lady, mentioning el Aswad was a diversion. Had he meant to run that way he would have done so straight from the criminal’s place. And he would have kept his mule.”

“You’re sure?”

“We looked. He didn’t go that way. Not even scavengers travel that road anymore.”

“Then he did what he does so well, again.” She vacillated between convictions. Right now she was convinced that she had passed within yards of her own Haroun before fate made it impossible for them to meet. No one had any idea where he had gone. El Aswad? Into the desert? Back across the Jebal? Some other direction? Or had he used sorcery to disguise himself as someone she saw every day?

Haroun bin Yousif. Her husband. The father of her only child. Her beloved. The man she hated so much.

Habibullah’s conviction of the moment was the opposite. Each report left him more certain that they had become entangled in a popular fantasy that would never wither completely. Too many people wanted it to be true.

“I am not pleased,” Yasmid said. “This pilgrim made fools of us all.” Who but her husband had the will and the skill?

“Back to the beginning. The man was here for days, camped where he should be, visiting shrines and memorials like any pilgrim. Evenings, he put on puppet shows for the children. Right?”

No one disagreed.

She asked, “Why wasn’t he doing anything? Wouldn’t a man with a sinister purpose make an effort to forward it?”

Jirbash suggested, “He was waiting for the right time.”

Yasmid wanted to believe that moment was one where he could see her alone. “Indeed? Could he have been just some Royalist spy?”

Jirbash said, “We can’t answer that without knowing who he was.”

Always the fantasy of a revenant Haroun returned to one pair of eyes.

Yet again, Yasmid demanded, “Why was he here?”

Ibn Adim suggested, “The demon came here because this is where he would find his mate.”