The Steel Seraglio (20 page)

There was so much, and I could not put it away. At first I howled because I did not understand. Then I howled because I did.

I scarcely felt my mother’s arms around me. She knelt with her face pressed against mine, shaking me with her cries which I could not hear. After a time she took my shoulders and stared appalled into my weeping eyes. Black. Black tears. Her own face was streaked with them.

“What have you done?” she screamed at the djinni.

“We have granted your wish,” the speaker said. “But we did not give the gift to you.”

Rahdi shrieked curses at the shadowy figures, forgetting all her awe and terror. The speaker seemed to ignore them.

“She will see,” it said, and now its form and voice were that of the veiled woman, calm and withdrawing. “She will understand, and remember, and record.”

It turned its head to me, the white light shining for an instant through the veil and into my eyes. Was there pity in its voice, for that one instant?

“All things will unveil themselves to her,” it said. “Except those which touch her most nearly.”

And it was gone, all of them were gone. My mother and I faced a blank rock wall. We held each other in silence, as her shaking subsided and the black tears dried on our faces.

And then? I had been marked, but there was no great destiny to take up; the world went on as before. Only my mother and I were changed. She talked to me as we journeyed back, and I replied. A few nights later we left my faithless father, taking with us his cashbox and all my clothes, and walked back to the town where my mother was born. Her own mother had died, but we stayed for a while with my grandfather; long enough for me to understand that my new gift was best viewed as an affliction, and to learn some of the skills of concealment. When he died, we travelled to Bessa, where my mother found a job at a pastry cook’s shop and I spent my days in the market, and discovered the written word. And so embarked on the path that would lead me here, into the desert.

Was it all preordained? I can’t believe that. I foresaw this end, of course, but only as one of a hundred outcomes. Not all of them could happen to me: some, I think, will never happen because others took their place. In any case, once I learned some measure of control over my visions, I would never dwell on the uglier ones, preferring, like most people, to be soothed rather than disturbed. And how could I recognize that splayed, ravaged figure in the sand as myself?

At the end of my trial Hakkim Mehdad had given me one look in which contempt was mixed with a kind of horror, before he turned away. “Let her die slowly,” he had said, his back turned. And so they led me out into the desert. We travelled for two days, away from the beaten tracks, Captain Ashraf of the Ascetic cult and two of his men. I went with them quietly—what else was there to do? The three men rode, and I walked behind Ashraf, roped to his camel. It was the rule of the Cult to acknowledge no obstacle that was merely physical in nature, so we travelled through the heat of the day, halting only briefly when the sun was at its height. To give Ashraf his due, he rode slowly enough to save me from stumbling, and allowed me water and would not allow his men to rape me when we stopped for the night.

None of them would speak to me, but I was able to distract myself as I walked with memories and imaginings. The books I had hidden were safe, I thought, and the others might yet be rescued. As for myself, I don’t think I really believed I would die then. There was so much else I had seen: my sense of a future was still strong. But that changed when the men stopped at the end of the second day, in the middle of a plain that had no end in any direction.

“Here,” Ashraf said, and the men dismounted and took down wooden stakes and mallets from the backs of their two camels. At the sight, the terror I had kept back flooded over me like the bursting of a dam. I suppose my face whitened, and I began to shake. The men saw and laughed, but Ashraf’s face never moved. He directed his men to drive the stakes into the sand. When they threw me down I was too weak with fear to resist, and only tried to curl up on the ground like a child. They tied me hand and foot, I remember Ashraf’s look of distaste as he seized my legs to pull them out straight. One of the men tore off my scarf. The other ripped my robe with his sword and made to strip me, but the captain stopped him with a motion.

“Leave her!” he said. He looked down on me with the same blend of contempt and horror that I had seen on the face of Hakkim Mehdad; then like his master, he turned away.

I could not see them as they mounted and rode off. I don’t know if any of them looked back.

The first pain is only from the ropes which cut into my wrists and ankles. I struggle, try to loosen them, but they hold me fast. Then the sun is directly in my eyes and I must close them, seeing the pulsing redness through my eyelids. The cramps begin then, first aching, then agonizing. It can’t get worse than this, I keep thinking, but it does. At some point I know that I am screaming. It’s dark now, the darkness pressing on me and no one to hear. The voices in my head are silent, for the first time in fifteen years; I can’t even call up the sense of them. Later the pain goes somewhere further off, my legs and shoulders are numb, and my mind too. It’s cold now, I begin to shiver, and then to shudder so violently that I think I will pull the stakes out of the ground, but they hold still. When the shuddering stops, for a while I don’t feel anything at all.

I wake to see grey light, and feel something brushing my face. An instant later there’s a stabbing pain in my cheek—a black bird, its beady eye glaring into mine. My scream makes him recoil, and I find that the night’s dew has given some slack to the ropes: I can thrash my arms enough to scare him away. I do this for a long time, while he and his companions gather around me, making exploratory stabs until I manage to hit one directly on the beak and they all take off with harsh cries. I have a moment of idiotic triumph, before I remember where I am. And then the sun rises, and the air starts to burn.

Maybe memory becomes less sharp now, or at least less defined. There is a torture of thirst, and the skin baking and splitting on my face and exposed arms and legs. The ropes tighten again, pulling my body apart, and I cry out until I have no more voice. I can’t weep. My eyelids are squeezed shut, and I have a fear that they will shrivel in the heat, turn to ash and leave my eyes exposed to the merciless light. I hear again the harsh cries overhead, and think not of the carrion birds but of the djinni and their birdlike laughter. And see them again, as clearly as I did in childhood, when they gave me the gift that has doomed me. For the first time I wonder: what was it for? I saved the books, was that it? Did they take and shape a woman’s life, just so that she could preserve the words of others, not to make any stories of her own? And I remember my mother’s words: who can understand the ways of the djinni? The waste of it fills me, not with rage, but with a vast and empty sadness.

When the ground begins to shake beneath me, I take it for an illusion. I have borne enough sun to strike me mad a dozen times over. The shaking intensifies, comes closer, and now I hear voices, outside my head. They are women, and they seem to be arguing. This is so unlikely that perhaps it strikes me even then. But I’m beyond wonder. I keep my eyes shut. I listen to the voices.

Part of my gift is to understand words, all words, in whatever language. But try as I may, I can’t recall one word of what they say. I hear the voices: pity, astonishment, warning. And then a shadow comes between my eyelids and the punishing sun, and I feel hands on mine, cutting the ropes that bind me. And I open my eyes, and see her.

It took another eight days of travel for them to reach the foothills of the mountains. They did not attempt to negotiate the pass, which as Issi had said, was barely wide enough to take two camels abreast. Instead, Zeinab led them to a spring a few hours further away, not large but well-hidden, among so many rocks that it was hard to find any greenery. It was the farthest her parents had ever taken her.

“Even coming this far was a risk, twenty years ago,” Issi said. “The hills were full of bandits in those days. I hear it was better after Vurdik the Bald was caught, but by then most of us had found different routes.”

“And how safe is it now?” demanded Imtisar. “Have we come this far to be murdered in our beds? Not that we can call them beds.”

“There’s much less traffic through the pass these days, and none this far west,” Issi assured her. “We’ll be safe enough now.”

The rocks provided more shade than they had seen for days. The camels huddled discontentedly on the sand while the children, and then the women and men, scrambled over the stones to drink. The sun was near the horizon before all had drunk their fill, but even after the beasts were watered, the little spring still bubbled up clearly. Gursoon looked at it in satisfaction.

“This is a good place,” she said to Farhat. “Zeinab and Issi did well. We’ll stay here for a few days while we decide what to do next.”

They brought water to the sick woman, Rem, whom Farhat had adopted as her personal charge. The girl was improving day by day, though her face was still so burned and blistered that it was hard to make out her features. For the first two days she had been too weak to eat, and even now that she was gaining strength she moved slowly and painfully, and spoke little. But she stirred when she saw Farhat, pulled herself upright on the litter and took the drinking cup in her own hands, wincing only a little. She murmured her thanks, and sank back as if the effort had exhausted her.

“She’s a strange one,” Gursoon said as the two women withdrew. “Did I tell you, Farhat, that she knew we’d find water, that first day we found her? She told me we had to leave at once, and walk on after dark. She was right.”

“She has the sight,” Farhat said. “I’ve heard of such a gift before, but never seen it. But yes, I believe the girl knows things.” She stopped, looking around to check that no one could overhear. “Mistress Gursoon . . . There was something she told me that’s been weighing on me. But I don’t want to offend you.”

Gursoon was taken aback. “How long have we known each other, Farhat? Am I so easily offended? Come now, we’re friends.”

“I hope so.” The seamstress’s face was still uneasy. “Yesterday, then, while I was feeding her. She spoke to me, called me by name, though I hadn’t told it to her.”

“That’s strange,” Gursoon agreed. “But not alarming, surely.”

“I don’t know. Some of what she said was plainly wild talk; she’s not over the sunstroke yet. She spoke as if she knew me, and said she admired my work, as if I were some kind of artist. I told her the only work I did was with the needle, and she just nodded.” Farhat laughed. “She said I was a master of my craft. So I told her again she was mistaken, I was just a servant. Then she seemed to realise what she’d been saying:—she looked confused, and begged my pardon. But as I left, she said something else, something that has stayed with me. I wasn’t sure I’d heard her right, she speaks so softly. But I think she said, ‘You’re not servants now.’”

Farhat darted a look at her mistress. Gursoon had dropped her hands to her lap, a sign of attention, but she did not seem shocked. “She said that to you?”

“Maybe to all of us. And I think she’s right. Look at where we are, how we’ll all have to live from now on. I’m not a servant here. None of us are.”

There was a silence between the two women. Around them, the women of the seraglio were making camp for the night. Most of the serving girls were helping to fasten tents or chivvying the children. Imtisar was scolding one of them for slowness. Nearby, Najla and Jumanah giggled together while two maids brushed out their hair, for all the world as if they were sitting on divans back in the palace, rather than on a barely shaded rock. For a moment they all seemed to Gursoon like children: little girls playing a game, as if they could raise the sultan’s palace in the desert by pretending they were still there.

“You’re right,” the older woman said at last. “Yes—we all have to change now. There’ll be arguments, of course. Probably screaming.” She looked out again over the busy camp. Maybe it was only a game, but it was a calm and orderly one, at least. For now, each woman had a role to play, and seemed content to play it.

“Farhat,” she said, “do you think we could keep this from the others for a day or two? Just till we can work out where we’re going.”

Gursoon spent an hour in conversation with Zeinab and Issi, questioning each of them closely on what they knew of the mountains and the land beyond. Issi had traded sometimes in the northern lands, and found them rocky and inhospitable, with few settlements and cold winters. Zeinab knew only that fear of brigands had kept her father from ever venturing north of here.

“Well,” Gursoon said, “even brigands must have needed food and shelter. If they’ve gone now, maybe we can find where they lived.”

“But what if they’re still here?” demanded Zeinab.

“In that case,” Gursoon conceded, “we’ll have to plan more carefully.”

She went to find Zuleika, and told her some of what she had in mind.

“It seems to me,” she finished, “that a woman of your abilities could be useful to us in this situation. But there are one or two things I need to know first.”

“You need to know whether the bandits still live here,” Zuleika said, “and their numbers and strength. Was there something else?”

“Yes. It concerns you.”

Zuleika’s face was impassive. She tilted her head, inviting Gursoon to continue.

“In the next few days, we have to decide our own fate. Whatever we do, lives will be at risk. And if I’m to trust you in this task, I need to know who you are—what you are.”

“A few days ago, I saved the life of everyone here,” Zuleika said quietly. “Does that not lead you to trust me?”

“No. One day, if we live, we’ll all honour you for what you did then. But no, it doesn’t make me trust you. How long have you lived with us, Zuleika: three years? In all that time, you never quite seemed to belong. You’d walk into a room as if there was an enemy there. You could sit for an hour, quite still, as though you were waiting for something. And whenever you spoke to one of the guards, you looked him in the eye. No other woman would do that, not even me. I used to wonder about it sometimes. Now it seems I know why.”