The Lion of Cairo (37 page)

“Wait,” the Caliph said. “I know you. You’re the daughter of Ishaq ibn Khusraw—may Allah’s mercy rest upon his soul—who was the staunchest of my father’s Persian allies.”

Parysatis raised her eyes in wonder, meeting his gaze for an instant before remembering her place. She bowed her head. “I … I am, Exalted One. His daughter and only child.”

“And Massoud and his men are here because of you?”

She nodded.

“As are the Turks, I’ll warrant,” the mysterious man at the Caliph’s side said, his cold eyes narrowed to slits. A flick of his chin encompassed the palace. “All of this is your doing?”

“A-after a fashion, perhaps.” Parysatis felt the hot blush of her cheeks treble. “Last n-night I … I overheard the vizier plotting against your life, Exalted One. He planned to seize power and ally himself with the Nazarenes against Damascus. I … I did not know what else to do, so I slipped into your chambers and tried to warn you. Mustapha, the vizier’s eunuch, had already drugged your wine and prepared a second draught laced with poison, one you were to drink upon waking. I could not rouse you, so instead I emptied the draught and replaced it with water.”

“That was you?”

“Yes, Exalted One. Then, this morning I confided everything to Harun al-Gid, who agreed to warn you. I showed him the secret way into your chambers.” Parysatis squeezed her eyes shut as tears welled unbidden. “I … I saw … I was in t-the passage when…”

The Caliph stiffened. “You saw al-Gid murdered?”

“And I could do nothing,” she sobbed. “I would have given in to despair had my handmaiden not saved me. She had gotten Massoud’s name as a man who was loyal to you, Exalted One, and who might be in a position to help. So, this evening we used the hidden passages to escape the harem and brought the amir news of your plight. Please forgive me, Exalted One! I did not know where else to turn…”

Smiling, Rashid al-Hasan clasped her hand in both of his. “There is nothing to forgive, dear Parysatis. Indeed, that you saved my life means I am in your debt. If we survive this night, ask anything of me, and if it is within my power it shall be yours.”

She returned his smile, nodding through a fresh round of tears. The sensation of a great weight being lifted from her shoulders left Parysatis deliciously exhausted. She relished the moment, reveling in the touch of the Caliph’s hand on hers, in the play of distant torchlight in his smoky eyes, until the grim voice of Rashid’s companion broke the silence.

“Time grows thin, my lord.”

Rashid al-Hasan blinked like a man waking from pleasant slumber, his smile fading as he gathered himself up. He released Parysatis’s hand. “You are right, Assad. We’ve tarried too long.” He turned slightly, his face growing ever somber. “Who leads the Turks, good Massoud?”

“My brother amir, Exalted One. Gokbori.”

“We must find him and exhort him to curb his followers’ murderous zeal. The Jandariyah will accept no leniency from me if they feel their backs are to the wall.”

Massoud nodded, looking askance at his Circassians. “It will be safer if I send a few of my men to seek Gokbori out and fetch him here to you, my lord.”

“My friend, the time to be safe has long passed. Now is the time for action.”

“He’s right,” said the man the Caliph called Assad. “Let him bring this Gokbori to you.”

Anger flared in Rashid al-Hasan’s eyes. “By God, man! I will not cower in the women’s quarters while others risk their lives for me! That’s how we arrived at this juncture in the first place! I must save myself, if it be Allah’s will!”

Assad shook his head. “My lord—”

“No! We’re wasting precious time!”

Parysatis took a hesitant step forward. In a quiet voice, she said: “I … I could guide you to him along the hidden ways, Exalted One. They riddle the palace walls, and though the path might take you as near to your enemies as I am to you, none will ever see you.”

Rashid’s anger evaporated. “An excellent idea! What say you, my councillors?”

Massoud raised an eyebrow at the scarred and dour stranger, Assad, who gave the barest hint of a shrug in return.

“It’s settled, then. We are in your care, Lady. Show us these secret paths, and quickly.”

Parysatis’s heart soared as the Prince of the Faithful clasped her hand again and motioned for her to lead the way …

14

Yasmina cleaved to the shadows like a creature born of Night. She made barely a sound as she trailed Musa and the leper, Djuha, down refuse-strewn alleys that reeked of despair and across dim courts hedged in by walls of age-gnawed mudbrick, each step taking them deeper into the labyrinthine heart of the Foreign Quarter. With practiced care, Djuha led them around the places where men gathered for their evening’s sport, the wine shops and pleasure houses with their guttering cressets and copper censers and drunken laughter. Places where one with his affliction would not be welcome.

Yet, Allah must have been smiling upon Yasmina, for at every turn—when habit caused Musa to glance behind them for any sign of pursuit—chance obstructions hid her from the beggar’s glowering eye. She kept just within earshot and just out of sight.

“How much farther?” Yasmina heard the one-eyed beggar snap. They paused near the juncture of two narrow streets; beneath veneers of flaking plaster, the ancient buildings on either hand still bore blackened scars of a long-forgotten conflagration, an inferno that likely gutted the whole neighborhood. Not a stone’s throw away, the Egyptian girl crouched in the lee of a jutting façade, in a well of gloom cast by crude
mashrafiyya
hanging precariously over her head. From these, faint voices chattered in a tongue Yasmina found incomprehensible while strains of alien music drifted on the still air. “How much farther, damn you?”

The rotting pander, who purred a constant litany of endearments to the filthy urchin serving as his crutch, was slow to answer. “Not far, now.” Even at a distance the sight of Djuha fawning over the boy, stroking his hair and caressing his cheek, sent waves of disgust shuddering through Yasmina; it must have been worse for Musa, who cursed under his breath as each obscene delay forced his hand closer to the hilt of his knife.

“So you’ve said before! Merciful Allah! If this is your idea of a jest—”

“Don’t be a fool, beggar,” she heard Djuha wheeze. “We might have taken a more direct approach, but all that would accomplish is to alert your mistress’s killer that we are watching. No, we must instead come upon him crabwise, to a spot where we might survey his lair from relative safety—which is, I presume, what you want.”

“You’re not even certain it truly is her killer.”

“The man I saw matched his description down to the slightest detail. Surely that must account for something?”

“Perhaps,” the beggar growled, his voice fading as they continued on down the street. Quietly, Yasmina emerged from her hiding place and followed.

“When did you see this man?”

“I have glimpsed him on occasion over many months, coming and going from his lair. I saw him last this evening, after sunset, returning from some errand. He had six other men with him, and between them they looked to be carrying—Allah smite me if I lie!—they looked to be carrying corpses.”

“Corpses?”

“Aye. Three of them. They—” Musa stopped abruptly. The leper paused as well, his head cocked to one side. “What goes, beggar?”

Yasmina froze, certain that Musa had gotten wind of her—perhaps he had heard something, or simply felt the intensity of her gaze. Regardless, she steeled herself, her mind already spooling convenient lies for questions he had yet to ask. But, rather than whirl about and confront her, the one-eyed beggar simply stood in the middle of the street, nodding from side to side and tugging his beard as though trying to work something out on his own. Yasmina took advantage of this pause, quickly sidestepping into the shelter of an open doorway.

“Three, you say? Allah! This cannot be coincidence!” Musa’s hand shot out, iron fingers digging into the leper’s arm without regard to his affliction. Djuha hissed and tried to pull free, but the one-eyed beggar dragged him closer. “Forget stealth, man! Get me to this lair, and swiftly!”

Djuha tore his arm from Musa’s grasp and staggered against the cowering urchin. “Do not touch me!” The leper glared at Musa. Slowly, he regained his balance, his composure, and gestured for the beggar to follow. “Come, then. It is not far.”

Nor was it. The winding street emptied into a ragged square, a hollow where moonlight picked out sparse detail in a faint wash of silver—the tall weeds and shattered chunks of masonry, the drifts of refuse like sand dunes piled against the foundations of a pair of ramshackle tenements. These jutted from the earth, misshapen fingers of crumbling brick and age-blackened timber, with crude keel arches and windows hacked into the walls almost as an afterthought. Both looked abandoned to Yasmina. Abandoned and ominous.

Djuha slunk to the right-hand side of the street and dared go no farther. “This place is called the Maydan al-Iskander, after an old Greek king. Do you see it?” he hissed, pointing. “There, between those two buildings…”

Yasmina sidled closer, cognizant of her every footfall, and tried to follow the leper’s gesture. A few hundred yards to the east—beyond the tangled streets—lay Cairo’s walls and the crenellated towers of the Bab al-Rum, the Foreign Gate. Its relative proximity afforded her little in the way of solace.

Musa leaned out. “I don’t … Wait! What is that?”

From her vantage Yasmina saw it, too, though just barely: a long black cleft in the ground between the two tenements, still showing raw earth and fresh growths of weeds around its edges.

“A cellar entrance, perhaps,” Djuha said.

“That’s where they took the bodies?”

“It is, and that’s where I have seen the one you seek—coming and going into the earth like a djinn.”

Musa raised a hand as though to grab on to the leper, then thought better of it. “I would ask a favor, Djuha … return to Abu’l-Qasim’s caravanserai by the quickest road possible. Tell him what we—what you—found here! By Allah! Bid him gather his Berbers and come with all haste!”

Cloth rustled. Djuha shook his diseased head. “No, no. I have done all I set out to do, beggar. Now, I must see to my own business as you must see to yours.”

“Goddamn you, man! Forget your cursed business! Abu’l-Qasim will make this worth your while!”

Yasmina, though, had heard enough. Even before Djuha could answer, she left the relative shelter of the open doorway and glided in the direction of the two men, her movements as silent and deadly as an emir of
al-Hashishiyya
. She was within arm’s reach before either man noticed her.

“Leper,” she said, in a voice harder than stone. Both men whirled; the urchin squeaked, clutching at Djuha’s legs. Musa had his knife half drawn before he recognized the slender figure.

“Yasmina? What the devil…?”

She ignored him. “You, leper. This man you say you saw so often—what manner of weapon did he carry?”

“What goes?” Djuha glared at the one-eyed beggar, who shrugged and eased his blade back into its sheath. “Who is she?”

“One of Mistress Zaynab’s companions.”

Yasmina stopped in front of the Bedouin, her head barely reaching the level of his sternum. “Answer me, damn you!”

Djuha frowned. “He … He sported a knife—long and straight with a Frankish hilt. Why do you ask?”

Yasmina nodded. “Leave us,” she said, turning to Musa. “He is the man we seek.”

Musa glanced at the leper, indicating with a sharp jerk of his chin that he should take the urchin and go. Djuha, his eyes burning slits of suspicion, draped an arm around his boy and did as he was told.

“You were right to trust him,” Yasmina said, returning her attention to the square that lay before them. “Wait here. I’m going in to flush our quarry out.”

“I’ll decide what we will and won’t do, girl! You shouldn’t even be abroad this time of night. It’s—”

Yasmina turned to face the beggar. “We failed her, Musa. You and I. Her father. We let
him
take her from us. It’s time to settle accounts.”

“Don’t be a fool, girl.” Musa exhaled. His voice was heavy, pained; the voice of a man forced to confront a harsh reality. “We didn’t fail her. She fell victim to her own ridiculous pride. She should have known her enemies would try and use
that
against her! No, girl. By not thinking her actions through properly—as her father damn well taught her—Zaynab failed us, not the other way around. We can talk about this later. You wait here and keep an eye out. I’m going back to fetch Abu’l Qasim—”

Yasmina cracked the back of her slim hand across the beggar’s jaw. “Hold your tongue!”

The blow filled Musa’s vision with dancing motes of light. Anger suffused his pox-scarred visage as he shook his head to clear it, wiped at the trickle of blood starting from his split lip. “Damn you!” Musa snatched her up by the scruff of the neck. “You’re just as foolish as she was! I don’t know what will come to pass, if Abu’l-Qasim will send his Berbers to deal with the killer or if he will come himself, but I do know this: you’re going back to the palace where you damn well belong! This is a matter for men, not a scrap of a girl like you!” Musa shook her for emphasis.

Yasmina’s eyes were aglow with the lambent flames of madness, her lips curled in a rictus of hate as she tore free of the beggar’s grasp. The speed of her movement caught Musa wholly off guard. Before he could so much as raise a hand in his own defense, Yasmina’s fingers closed on the knife at his waist. The blade sang free, flashed in the gloom, and then sank hilt-deep into Musa’s abdomen.

The one-eyed beggar howled. He stumbled back, hands clawing at Yasmina’s arm as she sawed the blade upward. Blood spurted over her fingers; it soaked the fabric of her gown as she wrenched the knife free.

Musa staggered and fell, curling his body around the gaping wound in his belly. Hands slick with blood clawed furrows in the hard-packed filth of the street. He glared up at her, tears streaming from his good eye, and tried to curse, to scream, to pray, but waves of white-hot agony allowed for a single gasping plea: “W-why…?”