The Lion of Cairo (42 page)

The caravanserai Shirkuh took for his quarters gave evidence of this raucous nature. Broken crockery littered the courtyard amid a sprawl of snoring bodies—Turkoman
atabegs
and hetmans side by side with a few curious officers of the local garrison drawn in by the promise of koumiss, a strong drink of fermented mare’s milk not explicitly prohibited in the Qur’an. Yusuf shook his head, ashamed by the way his uncle parsed the Prophet’s words, teasing and tugging them out of shape in order to justify a beloved vice.

He found Shirkuh inside, upright and perched on the edge of a bench, his head cradled in his hands. Though long past his prime, Shirkuh ibn Shadhi was still a powerfully built man, the knots and cords of muscle lacing his hard frame sheathed in a layer of fat. He glanced up at Yusuf’s approach, his right eye dark and bleary; his left eye was as white and sightless as a boiled egg.

“By God, is it dawn already?”

“The second hour after,” Yusuf replied. “I bring news, uncle.”

Saying nothing, Shirkuh got to his feet and staggered over to a basin of water. He thrust his face into it, shaking his head, blowing and burbling before wringing the excess from his beard and onto his stained robe. “Where is our would-be vizier?” he said, turning back to face his nephew, oblivious to the water streaming down his chin. “Have you seen Dirgham this morning?”

Yusuf frowned. “He’s made a nice lair for himself in the citadel, where the merchants of Atfih can more easily fawn over him. He embraces his role as liberator too readily, uncle. You took Atfih without striking a blow, and yet Dirgham accepts the accolades that by rights should be yours.”

Shirkuh grunted, pushing away from the basin and going to the door. He squinted out into the courtyard. “Let him. Egypt is a country without
men,
Yusuf. The ease with which we took Atfih is proof of that. Let Dirgham dream his petty dreams of restoring himself to the vizierate. Let the fool bask in the adoration of dogs. I have other plans. We will rest here a day or two, and then march north to Cairo.” Shirkuh turned. “You said you had news?”

Yusuf’s smile returned. “A pigeon alighted upon the citadel at first light, uncle. A pigeon from Cairo.”

“And so?”

“It bore a message for the commander of Atfih’s garrison.” Yusuf paused, savoring the look of anticipation on his uncle’s face.

“By God, boy! What was the message?”

“Jalal al-Aziz is dead. Slain in an uprising … one sparked by the Caliph himself! Imagine the chaos, uncle! Their vizier is dead and an untested boy sits upon the throne! The Cairenes will likely capitulate faster than did the folk of Atfih! I wager they will open the gates for you themselves!”

Shirkuh’s face went blank for a moment, and then suddenly he roared with laughter. “By the Prophet’s beard, your news sits well with me, nephew! Does Dirgham know?”

Yusuf shook his head. “I decided it best if you learned of it first.”

“Don’t tell him! Let it be a surprise!” The Kurdish general whirled and stepped out the door, into the courtyard. “On your feet, you fatherless curs!” he bellowed. “Get them up, Yusuf! Roust out the trumpeters and have them sound assembly! I’ve changed my mind, by God! We march on Cairo today!”

4

The stink of Ascalon choked him. The stench of charred flesh and hot blood, pulverized rock and piss-soaked earth, wood smoke and corpses left to rot under the merciless sun. These were the smells of a city in its death throes.

A city whose murderers stood just beyond its gates, waiting to defile its body.

Beneath a yellowing sliver of moon, the young soldier walked the ragged battlements of Ascalon, not far from the crumbling Jaffa Gate. A breeze from the sea did little to relieve the heat, and the reek rising from the city’s heart made each breath searing agony. The soldier licked his cracked lips with a tongue swollen from thirst; hunger gnawed at his belly.

Beside him walked the son of a muezzin, a deep-voiced boy of fifteen who dreamed of martyrdom against the Infidel. “God damn them!” Clad in rusting mail and wearing his slain father’s ill-fitting helmet, the boy stopped and peered over the ragged battlements at the Nazarene camp. “May Allah smite them with a plague of flies! With boils! With—”

“You think Allah hears you?” the young soldier said, leaning against the still-hot stones of the battlement. Exhaustion and privation had loosened his tongue. “You think He cares what happens to you? To any of us?”

“Have you sided with the Infidel, now?” the muezzin’s son snapped.

The soldier shook his head. “The truth has no side, you idiot. Look around you. We stand on the floor of Hell. God has abandoned us.”

“ ‘Allah is the master of His affairs,’ ” the boy replied, quoting the exalted Book. “If we suffer here, then we suffer because it is His will. Who can know the mind of God?”

“Then we suffer for no reason.”

“That it is the will of Allah is reason enough!” Mail rattled as the muezzin’s son stalked off, leaving the soldier to stand alone.

“Enough for you, perhaps,” he muttered, listening to the sounds that rose from the city below—the screams of the wounded as crushed limbs were amputated, the sobbing prayers of women who sought their sons and husbands in the rubble, the cries of children orphaned by the plague. “But not for me. Not for me.”

“Do you believe what you say,” a voice said from the darkness behind him, “or do you simply parrot what others have told you?”

The young soldier wheeled, his hand going to the worn hilt of his sword—a fine Turkish saber that had once belonged to his father. Unlike his mail hauberk, looted from the body of a dead infidel, the sword was well tended. “Who’s there?”

The man who emerged from the shadow had the woolen cloak of a Sufi wrapped around his thin shoulders; his beard was sparse and gray, and from beneath a tattered green turban a tangle of silver hair fell to his shoulders. His eyes were sharp but not unkind.

“You should not be up here, old father,” the soldier said. He relaxed his guard but his hand remained perched on his saber’s pommel.

“Answer my question. Do you believe what you say?”

The young soldier exhaled; he glanced through an embrasure at the lights of the Nazarene camp below and spat. “I would not say such things if I did not believe them.”

“You are not like these others, are you?”

The soldier’s eyes narrowed. “What do you mean?”

“You appreciate the artistry if it. Of
this
. The artistry of death. Nay, boy, do not look at me so. I have seen this appreciation enough in my life to recognize it for what it is, though it has never plagued me as it must plague you.”

The young soldier turned fully toward the embrasure. On the plains below the walls the hellish machines of the Templars swarmed with workers; lanterns and torches bobbed as Genoese engineers inspected ropes and capstans, gears and winches, preparing for the Infidel king of Jerusalem’s order to resume the bombardment. Above their heads, the black-and-white standard of the Temple fluttered. “I cannot control this, these machines. They kill without rhyme or reason. But in the breach, facing the blades of my enemy, I am in control. When the spears shiver and the swords clash, my fate resides here”—he raised his right fist—“and not in the lap of some uncaring God.”

“I have seen you at the walls, boy,” the old Sufi said. “Where you go, men die. But it is not enough for you, is it?”

The soldier looked away from the Nazarene camp, turning around to face the torn and bloody heart of Ascalon. The near-constant bombardment from the Templar machines had toppled minarets and cracked open domes; once pleasant gardens yet smoldered, embers gleaming like the eyes of
ghuls
amid the wreckage. “What honor is there in death when it serves no higher purpose?”

“My master believes in the same things. Oh, he could make much of you, my boy. From you he could forge a weapon that would strike fear into the enemies of Islam, both within and without. He could give you such a purpose as you have never dreamed of.”

“Who is your master?”

The Sufi leaned closer. “He is a
shaykh
of storied lineage who dwells on a mountaintop by the shores of the Caspian Sea, and he would very much like you to live, my young lion…”

5

“Assad?”

The Assassin’s eyes snapped open, his hand falling to the pommel of his
salawar.
The tang of hatred flowing from the ivory hilt brought with it a sense of crystalline awareness. He reclined still on the divan, on the dead vizier’s favorite portico. Outside, night had fallen …

“Assad? Are you here?” He recognized the voice. It belonged to the Circassian amir, Massoud. An instant later, the man’s silhouette loomed in the open archway of the portico.

“Aye,” Assad replied, forcing his hand to let go of the blade. “I’m here.” He swung his long legs off the divan and stretched, rolling his shoulders and cracking the tendons in his neck. He reached for his sash and turban. “What goes? Is there something wrong with the Caliph?”

“No, the Prince of the Faithful is resting, finally. The Lady Parysatis watches over him, and the White Slaves of the River guard his chambers, as well they should.” Pale light flared as a slave shuffled in front of Massoud, carrying an oil lamp of blown glass and gold to a low table by the divan—a table strewn with pieces from a
shatranj
board. The slave set the lamp down, but the Circassian waved him away before he could gather up the fallen game pieces. “Leave us.”

“If all is well, then why are you here?”

“I bring a message.”

“From?”

Massoud tugged at a scrimshaw bead woven into the end of his mustache. “Ali abu’l-Qasim. You know him?”

“The self-appointed King of Thieves,” Assad said, a faint smile touching his lips. “Yes, I know him.”

“One of his Berbers waited most of the day to get into the palace, and he was only allowed through al-Mansuriyya Gate because my name was invoked. When I went to investigate, he told me he carried a message from Abu’l-Qasim for the Sufi, Ibn al-Teymani.”

“Where is this message?”

Massoud fished a square of paper from inside the breast of his
jazerant
and handed it to Assad. It bore a seal of red wax, pressed with the face of a dirham minted in the name of the Caliph. “Did you know Abu’l-Qasim’s daughter, Zaynab, whom men called the Gazelle?”

Assad broke the seal on the paper; yet he paused before unfolding it. “I knew her only in passing, but well enough to know she thought highly of you.”

“And I of her, despite her father’s unsavory reputation.”

“Her …
calling,
it did not give you pause?”

Massoud’s gaze softened. “I am a slave, the bastard son of a Circassian outlaw and oath breaker. Who am I to cast aspersions? No, I would have taken Zaynab as my wife if only she had permitted me. As Allah is my witness, I will miss that dear woman.” He paused. “She was…”

“Enchanting.” Assad finished for him, brows knitted in a deep frown as he remembered the silvery sound of her laughter—heard once, but impossible to forget. “She was enchanting.”

A bitter smile twisted Massoud’s thin lips. “Exactly so.” He turned and made to quit the portico for the quiet of the garden beyond, nodding to Assad. “I pray I am not the bearer of bad tidings.”

“Massoud,” Assad said. The Circassian paused, glancing over his shoulder. “Zaynab al-Ghazala’s murder will not go unanswered. You have my word on this.”

Massoud studied Assad’s scarred face. “Who are you? Not a Sufi, surely. I have never known a holy man with your skill. Nor have I known a Sufi to hate the Nazarenes with a zealot’s passion or to promise retribution for a slain courtesan. So who are you, Assad ibn al-Teymani of the Hejaz, if indeed you are a true son of the Hejaz…?”

“It is enough that I am a friend.”

His gaze inscrutable, Massoud stared at Assad for a moment longer before simply shrugging and stepping out into the garden.

By the light of the oil lamp, Assad read Abu’l-Qasim’s message. The script was formal, a scribe’s hand, and the missive itself was predictably terse and without embroidery:

More blood has spilled.

Return to the caravanserai with all possible haste.

Assad’s eyes narrowed to slits of cold black fire. He read it once more, then reached out and touched a corner of the paper to the flickering flame in the oil lamp. Its edge blackened, charred, and crumbled to ash. He let the burning note fall to the stone flags and finished dressing.

Massoud tarried in the garden, leaning against the bole of a willow tree and staring off into the star-flecked heavens. He turned at the sound of Assad’s approach.

“I have business I must attend to outside the palace,” Assad said, settling his long Afghan blade into the sash about his waist. He clapped Massoud on the shoulder as he passed. “Can I expect trouble at the gates?”

“I will ensure the guards know your name, and know not to restrict your comings and goings. For now, use al-Yazuri Gate; it is closest and my own men command it this night. Is there aught else I can do?”

Assad stopped, turned back to the Circassian. Dappled moonlight filtered through the willow boughs, shadow and silver light playing across the hard planes of the Emir of the Knife’s visage. There was no compassion in his dark eyes, no sense of warmth or human empathy. “Guard the Caliph as though your life depends upon it.”

6

From al-Yazuri Gate, which opened on the neighborhood of Barqiyya, Assad made his way south and west, crossing the nigh deserted Qasaba even as the final
adhan
of the evening drifted out from the minarets of al-Azhar Mosque. The sonorous call to prayer echoed from quarter to quarter; it whispered down wide streets and noisome alleys. It rang across empty rooftops and off shuttered windows, through souks and stalls where on any other evening merchants would have clamored for the night’s last custom. As Assad reached the road leading to the Nile Gate, the final stanza of the
adhan
faded and Cairo fell silent once again, a city afraid to move, afraid to breathe—afraid the slightest misstep would spark a holocaust of bloodshed and retribution among its factions. Cairo, Assad reckoned, had grown afraid of itself.