A Wind in Cairo (12 page)

“Greed will hold them,” Jaffar said in her ear, “for a while.”

She nodded. She was still shaking, nor could she stop it, but she took no notice. She had lost her turban somewhere: she had not known it until Jaffar set his own cap on her head.

Close together, leading their mounts, they ventured out into the street. Khamsin blocked Zamaniyah's view of what passed there, mincing half ahead of her, eyes white-rimmed. She tried to pull him back, but Jaffar slapped his rump and drove him forward again.

At first she had dared to hope that they could do it. On foot, with Jaffar's cunning in the hunt to aid them, perhaps they might have. But the horses were conspicuous; and Zamaniyah would not abandon them. Not Al'zan's beloved bay, and not ever her Khamsin. His neck foamed with the sweat of his terror, and yet he went on steadily, lashing out at bodies that stumbled or fell against him. She had gripped his bridle tightly; she loosed it, freeing his head for the swift slash of teeth.

He was valiant, but he was a rich man's chattel, and the fellahin knew it. Like jackals in the wake of a kill, they began to close in.

This time she would draw her sword. A charge, a spray of blood, a blaze of battle rage—they might rend her limb from limb, but they might fall back.

Jaffar saw the baring of steel. His hand was strong. She fought it. She won, snatched mane, pommel. And Khamsin flung her staggering back into the eunuch's arms. For an improbable moment she thought that their eyes met; that Jaffar said, “You know the city, prince. Save us from it.” And that, most improbable of all, Khamsin had nodded with human understanding.

Jaffar had the horse's bridle. She found herself with the mule's, and Wiborada between them with the bay, silent, steady, admirable.

Zamaniyah's sword was still in her hand. She did not sheathe it. She had lost her bearings. It was all a black dream of tumult, jostling, violence. It was like war; but war was a planned thing. This was raw chaos. More than once she stumbled, or her foot caught on softness, or crushed what had been living flesh. One at least was still alive: he screamed. She could not stop. Something mad, that might have been human, sprang at her. She beat it away.

Instinct drove her to seize Wiborada's belt; Wiborada, wiser or swifter-witted, had caught Jaffar's already. In a straggling, stumbling, much-buffeted line, they made their way along walls and under awnings. They were perfect fools. They should have stayed in their sanctuary.

And been trapped there, and even killed.

What would happen to them here?

Jaffar must have been leading. It looked as if Khamsin was; and as if the eunuch insisted on it. Did they confer? She could not hear.

The mule screamed like a woman and fell, dragging her with it. Howling demons fell on it. Wiborada hauled at Zamaniyah, kicked her, cursed her in guttural Frankish. The woman vaulted to the bay's back. Jaffar flung Zamaniyah upon Khamsin. He had drawn his long knife. Wiborada had a dagger. She seemed to know how to use it. “Now!” cried Jaffar. “Run!”

The bay's rein cut into Zamaniyah's knee. It was tied to her saddle. Khamsin plunged, kicking, across the mass of struggling, smiting, looting human beasts.

He had aimed himself like an arrow to a target; another alleyway, but longer, crowded with huddling people, animals, a waterseller doing trade with remarkable aplomb. Beyond it opened a new face of the mob.

Khamsin checked, half rearing. His sides heaved. He gathered himself, plunged again, dragging the gelding and the woman, and Jaffar clinging to a stirrup.

Zamaniyah knotted her fingers in Khamsin's mane, shifted her grip on the hilt of her sword. Her mind had darkened. She knew the way at last. They were half the width of the city from home and safety. They could not go on as they went now. Khamsin would burst his heart; Jaffar would fall.

The stallion swerved. A wall loomed, a gate. It could not but be barred. He turned his back on it and kicked it down.

They tumbled together into a passage. It was black after the glare of daylight. Zamaniyah's skin knew the presence of men, weapons.

Jaffar's voice rose. “In the name of Allah! We mean no harm. We seek sanctuary.”

Khamsin stamped, echoing in the vaulted space. She could see his ears against light. He trumpeted, deafening, dragging them all into the sun.

It was a house like their own, gracious, with a wide green-rimmed court. Servants crowded there, armed, and at their head, of all things, a Frankish man-at-arms.

His garb was of Cairo, and of Cairo's Arab lords at that; and he spoke Arabic, rapidly, easily despite a heavy accent. “Down blades!” And truncheons and staves and what looked suspiciously like a pruning hook. He squinted at the invaders. What he thought, she could not read. His great sword lowered to the tiles; his body eased a fraction. His eyes scanned, pondered, settled on Zamaniyah. He bowed as Franks did, the head only, an inclination like a king's. “I grant you sanctuary,” he said, “in my master's name.” Servants, barked at, ran to salvage the gate. None too soon, from the sound of it.

Zamaniyah slid from Khamsin's back. Her knees buckled; she stiffened them fiercely, shaking off hands. “My horse. See to my horse!”

One of the servants exclaimed. “These are women!”

She was far gone enough to want to laugh, so swiftly did the guard change. Women flocked, and eunuchs. Only the Frank did not go. It was all she could do not to scream at him. “My horse. We are alive because of him. I pray you by Allah, by your own Christ, see to him.”

The blue eyes blinked once. Contemptuous? Amused? They ran over Khamsin. His hands followed, gentler by far than she would have expected. Khamsin shuddered under them, eye rolling. “Good horse,” said the Frank. He called: servants came. The gelding went docilely. Khamsin dug in his heels and shook his head and struck with his forefeet.

Zamaniyah wanted to lie down and howl. Khamsin had been a wonder and a marvel, a hero, a champion. Now of course he must be plain mad Khamsin again.

Jaffar had gone mad himself. He seized the bridle, held the rebellious head: he who had no skill with horses, and no love at all for this one. To the Frank he said, “I shall tend him here, if I have the wherewithal. See to my ladies.”

They needed seeing to. Wiborada was hurt: a great blackening bruise on her shoulder. Zamaniyah bled. She had not even noticed the knife that slashed her arm, though once she was aware of it, it hurt appallingly. Soft-handed women washed her, bound her wound, clad her as one of them. She could not muster voice to protest. They brought food, drink. She ate a little for courtesy, sharing with Wiborada who, unveiled, was paler than even a Frank should be.

But steady, and not at all like to faint. “You know this house?” she asked.

“Not at all.” Zamaniyah worked at being undismayed.

“Your horse seemed to,” said Wiborada.

“My horse has a mind of his own. As,” she added, “does my eunuch.”

“He is a good servant,” Wiborada said. And after a moment, “I never saw a eunuch before I came here.”

“What, none? Who guards the women?”

“Men.”

Zamaniyah was shocked.

“We have no harems,” said Wiborada. “Nothing so separate that it needs the guarding of geldings.”

Zamaniyah rose, wounds forgotten. “Never call Jaffar that.
Never
.”

The lady saved them both. A very beautiful lady, with a queenly carriage: a Circassian with skin as white as Wiborada's and hair the precise, burnished chestnut of Khamsin's coat. She greeted them with soft words and perfect courtesy, and gave them her name: Safiyah.

“Nahar,” said Wiborada, both wise and circumspect.

“Zamaniyah,” said Zamaniyah, bowing as deeply as her hurts would allow. “We owe you our utmost gratitude. It was deadly, what we fled from.”

The lady waved it gracefully away. “You are safe with us for as long as there is need.”

“Not overlong, with all due respect,” Zamaniyah said. “My father will be distraught.”

Wiborada's eye caught hers in profound agreement, and profound unease. Safiyah saw, and seemed to comprehend. “I think, perhaps, a message...a boy alone may pass where you could not. To whom shall I send him?”

“I shall go, madam,” said Jaffar, entering, bowing low. “If you will permit.”

“I do not!” snapped Zamaniyah.

His glance stopped her short. It was wild. It was trying to tell her something.

“You can't go,” she sad. “You'll die.”

He prostrated himself at her feet. “Mistress, I beg.” And under his breath in rapid, if abominable, Greek: “Stop it, little fool. Would you have them learn who you are?”

Her astonishment was complete. She had never known that he knew Greek. “But—” she began.

“This is your enemy. Her husband killed your brothers.”

She went cold. Her eyes darted before she could stop them. Wiborada was speaking to Safiyah—to Ali Mousa's wife. Gracious, beautiful, hated; and hating, if she discovered what she harbored. What had not merely accepted her hospitality but demanded it: eaten her bread, drunk her sherbet, become guests before the eyes of God and man.

Zamaniyah's chin set. “Pardon, madam. My eunuch stays with me. If your boy will go, he need only say that I have found sanctuary in the house of a friend.”

“And your father?”

Jaffar's eyes burned. Zamaniyah stared them down. “Yakhuz al-Zaman.”

There was a brief but impenetrable silence. The lady broke it with a slow sigh, the merest shadow of a shrug. She bowed her head. “It shall be done,” she said.

Her courtesy abated not at all. Wiborada, who knew nothing, still had the wits not to include herself in the message. Her own tale was long since spun: an excursion to the baths, with maids well and, Zamaniyah could hope, thoroughly bribed.

It would have been pleasant here, had it not been the house of an enemy. Safiyah was a great lady; she seemed kind. There was a sadness on her as there had been on her husband in the sultan's diwan. It deepened, perhaps, as she perceived who her younger guest was. A daughter, an heir. Zamaniyah found no blame in her, no hatred, though another might have laid on her husband's great enemy the blame for her son's loss. It would have been a just revenge.

This forbearance was, perhaps, worse. It took all of Zamaniyah's strength to sit still, to maintain a quiet face, to listen as Wiborada told the tale of their riding. The Frank told the truth, of which she had no shame; Safiyah was not visibly shocked to hear it, although she was appalled that they had done it through a mob.

“The horse led us,” said Wiborada. “He brought us here.”

“Truly?” Safiyah was exquisitely polite. “A wise beast.”

Not so wise, if he had led them here of all houses in Cairo.

“He is most unusual,” Wiborada said. “Mad, people at home will tell you. He will accept no stall. He lives in a courtyard with an entourage of cats; he lets no one touch him but the young mistress.”

“He sounds like a tale in the bazaar,” said one of the women about Safiyah. “Like an enchanted prince.”

Zamaniyah glanced at Jaffar. His expression was utterly strange. Then it shifted; it was his own again, blankly placid.

The women were smiling. None but Safiyah seemed to have heard the name of al-Zaman. One said, “We know of enchantments. One night a Jinni broke down our gate and roared through the house; we held him at bay in the garden. Then our master came and blessed him, and he ran away.”

“Truly?” asked Wiborada.

“Most truly,” said another of the women.

“What did he look like?” Zamaniyah asked, to spin out the tale, to free her mind from its circling about the name and house and sins of Ali Mousa.

“Why, lady, he looked like a horse. A horse made of shadows, with a thunderbolt on his brow. But surely he was a Jinni. He opened our gate; he let no one touch him till the master came. He knew our master. He yielded to the blood of the Prophet, on whom are blessing and peace.”

“Blessing,” they all murmured devoutly, “and peace.”

Jaffar was fixed like a hound at gaze. Zamaniyah could not see why. It was only a story, even if Safiyah seemed inclined to indulge it. “My horse is quite mortal,” she said, “if somewhat odd. He had no training till I bought him, and he was no colt then. He does,” she conceded, “have a great deal of intelligence. Too much, I sometimes think, for his own good.”

“One might say the same of children,” Safiyah said, sighing.

“I had,” answered Safiyah, “one.”

Zamaniyah leaped before Wiborada could worsen it. “Maybe the streets will have cleared a little. We should go, truly we should. My father—”

“Please,” Safiyah said. “Linger yet a while. I would not wish you to be lost, when you could have been safe here.”

Trained hate drew taut the skin between Zamaniyah's shoulderblades, cried
Treachery!
behind her burning eyes. But her heart regarded this woman and knew no ill of her but her name and her husband. It was a great pity, Zamaniyah's deeper self observed, that Safiyah had had none but the single worthless fool of a son. Her beauty and her dignity deserved better.

“A woman does not of necessity choose her husband.”

“Nor need she choose to be the enemy of his enemies,” Safiyah said.

Zamaniyah started, blushed. She had not known that she spoke aloud. Safiyah's smile was gentle. “We are women,” she said, as if that explained everything.

It was hard to hate a woman for what her man had done, when she was so perfectly, royally kind. Having given hospitality before she knew her guests' names, she did not stint it after. Her conversation was much less dull than Zamaniyah might have feared. She was educated. She knew the poets; she knew music, and philosophy.

She was also tactful. She did not mention her husband's name. No more did she speak of al-Zaman.

And yet the servant's coming was a rescue. “Lady,” he said. “The horse—”