The Lion of Cairo (11 page)

It was the eunuch’s turn to frown. He shook his head. “I … I have not administered it yet, Excellency. That was but raw poppy juice. I thought perhaps with the Damascus problem that you would—”

Jalal spun. Faster than Parysatis could follow, the back of the vizier’s hand cracked across the old eunuch’s mouth—a meaty sound that made Parysatis cringe. Mustapha staggered. Blood trickled from his split lip; he clutched the Caliph’s silver cup to his breast. “You thought?
You thought?
You do not think, Mustapha! You do as I say! Nothing has changed! By month’s end, I want that worthless son of a whore on his deathbed! Do you understand?”

Mustapha nodded. “Y-yes, Excellency.”

“Good.” Parysatis saw the eunuch flinch as Jalal clapped a hand to his shoulder. “Forgive my outburst. It has been a … trying day.”

“Perhaps you should rest, as well.” Mustapha daubed at the blood with the knuckle of his index finger. “I could give you a draught…?”

Jalal chuckled, as though something the eunuch said struck him as funny. “No, my old darling. I think not.” He walked beyond Parysatis’s field of vision. She heard the door open, heard harness rattle as the guards outside snapped to attention. “Admit no one. Mustapha, make sure your charge stays quiet for the rest of the night.”

“As you wish, Excellency.”

The door thudded shut. Mustapha stood there a moment longer, his face an unreadable mask, and then he turned and shuffled off in the opposite direction. He, too, left Parysatis’s cone of sight. She listened, not daring to breathe, to the sound of his retreating footsteps. Her whole body trembled. Already horrible beyond compare, her situation had just become immeasurably worse.
They do mean to kill him!

Seconds ticked by. Hearing nothing, Parysatis’s hands moved to the latch. “Allah, give me strength,” she whispered as she pulled open the secret door and peered out. She saw no sign of the eunuch; the antechamber was deserted. Quickly, Parysatis left the passage, trusting the door to close of its own accord. Her slippered feet made little sound as she crossed the antechamber and plunged through the arch, her mantle swirling behind her.

She reached the Caliph’s bedchamber out of breath, her heart thudding in her chest—so loud that surely the echo must reach back to the antechamber. The voices in her mind gibbered and howled in a blind panic. Fingers knotted in her shawl, she stepped over the threshold like a woman going to her doom.

Rashid sprawled atop the coverlet, pale as death. She saw his chest rise and fall; his muscles twitched as he responded to something in his dreams. Parysatis crept to the Caliph’s bedside, knelt, and clasped his cold hand.

“M-my lord!” Rashid started at the sound of her voice, his head moving back and forth. “My lord!” She put a hand on his chest and shook him lightly. Groaning, the Caliph writhed away from her touch. “Please, my lord! You must awake, I beg of you!” But the Caliph only sank deeper into the cushions of his bed, as though to hide.
He’s not asleep, he’s unconscious. Drugged.

Parysatis sagged. What was she going to do now? What
could
she do?
How can I help you if I cannot get through to you?
Her brow wrinkled in thought; idly, she reached out and stroked the Caliph’s hair, pushing it back off his fevered forehead. In her eyes, he was no longer the cold and remote figure of the Prince of the Faithful; no longer the True Successor of the Prophet. His weakness made him mortal. Rashid al-Hasan was a man in need of aid, in need of a friend. “I will find a way to help you, my lord,” she said, resolve replacing fear. Softly, Parysatis kissed the back of his hand. “As Allah is my witness, I—”

The young woman froze as sounds drifted down the hall outside the Caliph’s doorway: a muffled cough followed by the scuff of a slippered foot on stone.
The eunuch!
Parysatis shot to her feet, glancing frantically about for a place to hide.
Under the bed? Behind the potted ferns?
Then her eyes lit upon the latticework doors that led out to the courtyard. She bolted, barging through the doors then easing them back to where they merely stood ajar. Beneath an ivy-hung arbor, Parysatis pressed herself against the stone wall and waited; she peered through the lattice at the Caliph’s bed and the hallway beyond. Presently, Mustapha padded into the room.

The old eunuch, his lip already beginning to swell, brought a fresh goblet laced no doubt with whatever poisons the vizier had commanded him to administer. Hovering over the Caliph, he tried twice—both times more forcefully than Parysatis—but still had no luck rousing him. She saw him frown and carefully place the goblet on the table by the side of Rashid’s bed where he was sure to see it if he awoke. Then, with a final glance around the room, the eunuch withdrew.

Parysatis leaned heavily against the wall, closing her eyes as she mouthed a silent prayer of thanks. She waited a few moments before prodding the doors open and returning to Rashid’s bedside. Curious, she picked up the goblet and sniffed its contents.
Khamr,
as she suspected, but its pungent aroma masked a faintly sour smell. An oily swirl stained its surface. She imagined the Caliph waking in the grip of a dreadful thirst; in her mind’s eye, she saw him reach for the goblet, drink from it, and unknowingly poison himself.

No, not this time!
Parysatis carried the goblet into the courtyard and poured its contents out beneath a flowering shrub. She rinsed it thoroughly in the lily pond, refilled it with cool water jetting from the fountain. As she did this, however, something caught her eye.

In the courtyard wall across from the latticed doors, moonlight illuminated a now familiar architectural feature: a scalloped niche, replete with geometric carvings, partially hidden by a poplar tree in a heavy terra-cotta pot. Parysatis frowned. Leaving the goblet on the fountain’s edge, she hurried over to the niche. It was identical to the others; with a prayer to Allah, she squeezed around the potted poplar and ran her fingers over the niche’s carvings, searching …

Her breath caught in her throat as a marble lozenge gave way with a sharp click. She pushed. Grating and groaning, the door swung inward on dry hinges to release a cloud of hot dusty air, the exhalation of a long-slumbering beast.
Another one!
But, where did this passage lead? The niche was in the east wall; east was the harem. From harem to passage to Caliph’s bed … Parysatis glanced over her shoulder. Had she found the secret way by which al-Hasan’s ancestors smuggled women into their presence without anyone becoming the wiser? Or perhaps was this a way for the Prince of the Faithful to spy upon his many wives? Whatever the reason, the palace’s current resident had long since forgotten its existence.

To Parysatis, it was as a gift from God.

She hurried back inside and returned the goblet to the Caliph’s bedside. He would wake, and at least his own terrible thirst would not be his downfall.
I
cannot do much, but I can do this.
She stroked his forehead.
So like a great cavalier.
He looked more restful than before—as though he knew someone was watching over him. The idea brought a hint of a smile to her face.

“I’ll come to you again,” she whispered, “and soon. Together, perhaps we can find a way to help one another.”

Reluctantly, Parysatis drew away; she closed the courtyard doors behind her and vanished into the newfound passage. No matter where in the harem it came out, it would be far better than having to cross the breadth of the East Palace …

13

“Where is it?”

He could not breathe. The dark-haired boy, barely thirteen, gasped as thick fingers dug into the juncture of his neck and shoulder, a thumb across his windpipe, forcing his back up against the unfinished wall of his tiny room; he smelled the reek of wine, the mingling of sweat and rich perfume. The boy writhed and fought against the hand trying to choke the life from him, but his struggles only served to anger his attacker even more.

“Where is it, you ungrateful little bastard?” the man hissed, foul breath steaming the boy’s cheek. “Your mother confessed you stole my dead brother’s sword, though I had to beat the truth from her! Hand it over and spare yourself her fate! Stop fighting!” An open hand cracked across the boy’s mouth.

“I didn’t steal it, Uncle!” he replied, blood starting from his lip. “It’s mine! You only want it back so you can sell it!” The boy’s uncle—his dead father’s brother, a
qadi
who dispensed Islamic justice from the halls of al-Azhar Mosque—was a rotund man, fond of wine and free with his coin. The fool had two wives, sisters hardly older than the boy, and both had a fondness for silks and gold, for perfumes and fine foods.
He might deny them their excesses,
he recalled Hakim saying,
if only his prick and his spine were not one and the same.

“Sell it? You little idiot! Of course I plan to sell it! Do you think the meat and bread you eat comes to you by the grace of Allah? There is a price to your upkeep … and the price is that accursed sword! Now, give it over, if you value your precious hide!”

Though young, the boy understood the sword’s worth. It was more than just an heirloom. The work of a master from Herat, its single-edged blade, slightly curved in the Turkish fashion, had the blessings of the Prophet inlaid in delicate gold calligraphy; its hilt was of fine wood and bound in twists of Persian leather, ray skin, and golden wire.
It was a gift,
his mother had told him, tears sparkling in her eyes,
a gift from a great
shaykh
whose life your father saved. In turn, it saved his life many times over in the wars against the Franks. We must keep it safe and well tended, to honor him.
The boy’s gaze flicked to the sword’s hiding place, beneath a loose board under the pallet he slept on, in the tiny room at the rear of his uncle’s mansion.

The boy’s uncle, who often boasted he could read guilt or innocence on the faces of those brought before him as surely as a learned man could read a book, followed his gaze and knew it for what it was. “Soho!” A wicked smile split his ruddy visage. He let go of the boy, turned, and flung the pallet aside. The board skewed, revealing the cloth-wrapped sword. The man bent and retrieved the weapon. “There you are, praise be to Allah.”

“Leave it be!” Tears of rage flooded the boy’s eyes; he lunged for the sword and received only the back of his uncle’s hand for his troubles. The blow knocked him into the tangle of his bedding. He flailed about as he sought to rise again, to continue the fight. The boy’s fingers brushed something metallic. Desperate, he tugged it free—it was the little dagger old Hakim had given him, its pitted blade thin and straight. The feel of it, its weight and balance, sent a thrill down his spine; it lent him strength, afforded him courage. With an incoherent scream the boy threw himself at his hated uncle, raking the knife across the man’s belly. The sensation of steel ripping cloth and flesh, the boy discovered, was more sublime than anything he could have imagined. So, too, his uncle’s reaction.

The man shrieked. He turned loose of the sword and stumbled back, eyes goggling with disbelief as his fingertips probed the wound and came away bloody. “You dare touch me?”

“You dare disrespect my father!” The boy scrambled over and caught up the fallen sword, knife held at the ready as Hakim had shown him. “And you dare disrespect my mother by trying to make her your whore!”

His uncle raged. “No, she was my brother’s whore! That ignorant fool had a weakness for well-used women! I thank the Prophet that he’s dead and no longer a disgrace to my family! And you, you misbegotten little cur, you’ll be my eunuch soon enough! Guards! My men will carve your pea-sized balls off! Then, when I’m done with you, I’ll sell you to the slaves in the quarries! You and your bitch of a mother, too!” The man reached for him. “Guards!”

The dark-haired boy stood his ground, his face screwed up in a rictus of hate as his uncle grabbed him by the throat. Before the
qadi’
s fingers could constrict, however, the boy struck back.

Steel flashed. With every scrap of power in his narrow shoulders, in his thin arm, the boy rammed the knife in beneath the hinge of his uncle’s jaw; angled upward, it punched through muscle and bone and lodged in his skull. The
qadi’
s eyes went wide. His hands flew to his own throat as he tried to speak, to breathe. Nothing came from his yawning mouth save a fine mist of blood. The boy spat in his uncle’s face and shoved him away as the bedroom door flew open.

It was Hakim. The gray-bearded old gatekeeper stood on the threshold and watched in stunned silence as his employer writhed at his feet, gobbling and choking on blood. His contortions weakened; soon, they stopped altogether. Quickly, Hakim shut the door. “What have you done, boy?”

“He … He tried to t-take my father’s sword, Hakim,” he said, the cloth-wrapped weapon tight against his chest. “P-punish me as you will, but I … I do not r-regret what I have done. It wasn’t his to take, and I will kill the man who tries to do it again!”

Hakim stared at the
qadi’
s sprawled corpse, his eyes pitiless, full of disdain. “No. I won’t be the one to punish you. Allah has made His will known. But, listen. You must flee Cairo. Your uncle, he has powerful friends; friends who won’t look kindly upon his murder. You have to go and go fast. Tonight.”

“W-what about my mother?”

“I’ll look after her, boy. I promise you, she’ll be safe and will want for nothing.”

“I … I don’t know where to go.” Tears welled in the corners of his eyes. His blood-spattered limbs trembled; he looked thirteen again. Thirteen and scared. “What do I do, Hakim?”

The man exhaled. “I have a cousin in Ascalon. He’s an ironmonger and he always has a need for new apprentices. I’ll send you to him. He’ll take good care of you, boy, as Allah is my witness.”