The Steel Seraglio (21 page)

“It’s true, I wasn’t bred to your life,” Zuleika said. “But what of it? Did I not do everything that was required of me?”

“That’s not what I mean and you know it,” Gursoon said coldly. “Five years studying the art of murder, Zuleika? Were you telling me you were some kind of assassin?”

“Yes. That’s what I was.”

“Then, in the name of the Increate, what were you doing in a seraglio?”

“You can’t trust me unless you know this?”

“No.”

Zuleika sighed.

“If I tell you, I’ll be false to my oath. But I suppose it was already broken. Well then: I came to the seraglio to kill someone. And I stayed because I changed my mind.”

She waited for an answer, but Gursoon was suddenly silent, staring at her as if something she had long dreaded had at last come to pass. Zuleika sighed again.

“Sit down here,” she said. “I’ll tell you everything that happened.”

There was once a woman who was trained as an assassin. She lived quietly and alone, in a small house on the edge of the town, and was known to her landlord and her neighbours as the widow of a prosperous merchant. This was a lie, but the neighbours believed it for two reasons. Firstly, she asked for neither work nor charity from the women of the town, and therefore must have a legacy. And secondly, though she was still young and beautiful, she kept herself as strictly veiled as any old widow, and discouraged her inevitable suitors so effectively that none ever came to her door more than once.

The way the woman lived was this.

Within the town, at some distance from her home, was a school where assassins were trained and from where they might be hired. It was an extraordinary establishment, created and ruled by an extraordinary man, the so-called Caliph of Assassins, Imad-Basur.

A steady trickle of men came to the door of the school at night, seeking the removal of insults, business obstacles or otherwise intractable problems. Imad-Basur offered a discreet and efficient service, and further assured his clients that no assignment was too large for his skilled staff. (Given the scale of their charges, the question of a job being too small had never arisen; the assassins took lives, but not lightly.)

On occasion, however, a commission might arise that required particular discretion: where the target was hard to approach, say, or unusually suspicious. On such occasions, a messenger would be dispatched from the school to the home of the woman at the edge of the town. Over several years she had built up a reputation for reliability, and in recognition of this, and of her status outside the school’s official auspices, she was allowed to keep three-quarters of the payment for her work.

At that time, the desert kingdoms were wont to war among themselves for power and prestige. Every year or so, an army of hot-blooded young men would be sent out against some city, to avenge some or other insult. They would return in tatters, or else tear a hole through the city’s army and return with booty. The following year, the defeated city would retaliate. In this way the treasure of the various cities was kept in circulation, and the population of hot-blooded young men kept within manageable limits.

One sultan, however, had for many years avoided war, thus keeping his treasure to himself and his army relatively strong. This man, Bokhari Al-Bokhari of Bessa, had moreover extended his influence over the neighbouring cities through the judicious use of bribes, and through regular and lavish hospitality. The power he had thus acquired in the region had, of course, earned him several rivals, who found to their dismay that he was not to be provoked into fighting. With the traditional means of conquest denied to them, it was only a matter of time before one such rival approached the Brotherhood of Assassins.

Here an immediate problem arose. The sultan was old and cautious: he kept himself surrounded by bodyguards at all times, and only relaxed his guard in the company of his family, or among his concubines. Accordingly, the master of the assassins sent a messenger to the woman at the edge of the city, who agreed to meet the client. His proposal was for her to enter the sultan’s seraglio, from where she would be able to fulfil the commission without interference.

The woman did not immediately accept the assignment. Her hesitation had nothing to do with the eminence of the intended victim—the assassins made no distinctions of rank, except in their scale of charges—nor with any concern about difficulty. It was simply that she had not been among women for a long time, and had forgotten how to act in their company. Also, her client behaved toward her with more than customary arrogance, brushing aside her questions about the palace with a curt order to be quiet and follow instructions. But she reflected that her calling required flexibility—and besides, a girl had to live. She demanded a hefty retainer, counted it out to the last dirham, and consented to be brought to the palace by a silversmith in the client’s pay, posing as his cousin from Yrtsus. She was skilled in dealing with men—the sultan was charmed, and immediately entered into negotiations to acquire her.

So the assassin entered the seraglio.

She was unmoved by the perfumed rooms, the silk hangings, the gardens of fig and apricot trees, and the surpassing beauty of the inmates, any of which would have overwhelmed most interlopers. But she was not prepared for the life of the women’s court, nor for her treatment there. She found a perpetual quiet hubbub: women arguing, gossiping, swapping hair-combs, pins and stories, while children played freely around their feet. And she was accepted at once as one of them.

Since her fifteenth year the assassin had lived among men and, since she entered her training, with little human contact of any kind. It pleased her now to be spoken to as an equal, and to feel herself, for a while, part of a community. And since she felt no great sense of urgency about her allotted task, she resolved to delay its commission for a day or two.

That night the sultan sent for her to visit him in his chamber. Her plan had been to break his neck at his moment of ecstasy or smother him as he slept afterwards, and make her escape the same night. She did neither. Instead she bore the man’s attentions patiently, and returned next day to the women’s quarters.

Over the days that followed the assassin became accustomed to life in the harem. She spoke with the other women, questioning them about how each had come to this place. All of them had been sold to the sultan by their families or guardians, and some wept as they told of betrothals forcibly broken, or of beloved friends and sisters never seen again. But most seemed content enough with their lot. This puzzled the assassin.

“You were bought and sold like slaves,” she said. “Turned over for life to a man who can give you no pleasure.”

“True,” agreed the woman she spoke to. She was one of the oldest members of the harem, and the most respected by the others; she had taken an interest in the newcomer and spent part of every day in her company, teaching her the rules of her new life. “That was our misfortune,” she said, “and yours too, now. But we’ve built ourselves a life here. We’re free from want, and our children grow up in safety. And we do have a measure of power.” She smiled at the other’s expression of disbelief. “We know the sultan’s moods, and his weaknesses,” she explained, “the means by which he can be guided. He’s a man of whim, quick to take offence. In his younger days he would start a war for an imagined insult. But treated with care, he can be calmed and diverted. For twenty years now we have kept him peaceable, and in that time the city has flourished.”

This was certainly true: in fact it was the reason for the assassin’s presence there. But she could not speak of that.

The same night, she was summoned once more to the sultan’s chamber, and once more spared his life. The next day she spoke again to the woman who had befriended her.

“What would happen to you,” she asked, “if the sultan should die?”

The older woman frowned. “It’s true that we fear his loss,” she said. “The crown prince is as hot-tempered as his father was twenty years ago, and far more foolhardy. He’d send all us older women away, of course, and his wives are empty-headed creatures. Those of us that were left would have to begin the work all over again.”

The assassin was thoughtful for some time after this conversation. The sultan’s death would certainly lead to an invasion, and even if his sons won the resulting war, the city would return to the old cycle of battles and preparation for battles from which the women had rescued it. And either way, her new friend and many others with her would be cast out. She knew what this would mean for them. She had seen at first hand the fate of women who were owned and used by men, when they were no longer wanted. And it came to her that this was unjust, and not to be borne. The old concubine was both more honest and more intelligent than either the sultan or his enemy; furthermore, she reminded the assassin of one who had shown her kindness in her youth. She said to herself that these women deserved her protection, even at the cost of breaking her code.

If an assassin refused a commission after taking payment, he was barred from the Assassins’ Brotherhood forever. Because of her sex, the woman had never been admitted to the Brotherhood in the first place; still, she had sworn an oath, and accepted the protection and patronage of the master. These she now renounced.

She made enquiries and found a messenger whom the women of the harem sometimes entrusted with gifts of money and valuables to their families. She satisfied herself of his reliability by her own means, and sent him with a package to a private house in the city. The house belonged to Imad-Basur, and the package contained the bag of silver that she had taken as her retainer, together with a gold bracelet that would more than cover the cost of any down payment her client might have made to the master himself. The woman had never learned to write, and so could send no message, but the master assassin was an intelligent man: he would understand from the gift both her refusal of the commission and her acknowledgement of some remaining obligation to him.

So the assassin became a concubine. Her duties were not arduous; the sultan’s love-making was irksome, but her profession had inured her to necessary discomforts. Most of her energies were given to the task she now set herself: the protection of the man she had sworn to kill, and through him, of the women of her new community.

As she had expected, the sultan’s next feast was attended by her rejected client, who risked both his own life and hers by arranging a private meeting with her. She was able to convince him swiftly, and without leaving any mark upon his skin, that he could not compel her to do his bidding. She could not persuade him, however, to abandon his designs against the sultan. Over the next year or two she was fully occupied in spotting and thwarting the fresh assassins he sent. They showed varying degrees of skill, and had all, she assumed, been warned about her, but not one of them took the warning seriously until it was too late.

And so she lived, protecting an unworthy man for worthy reasons. Until finally an enemy arose that she could not overcome despite all her vigilance, and with his army destroyed the sultan and all his family. On that day she accompanied the women—now her sisters—into exile in the desert, all of them concubines no longer. And what she would become next, this tale does not tell.

Zuleika finished her story, and fell silent. She had used far fewer words than are given here, but still, Gursoon had never heard her speak at such length. And she had seldom felt less ready with an answer.

At length she said, “So the envoy from Arakh—the one who died of apoplexy at the feast—that was you?”

Zuleika nodded. “I switched their glasses.”

“And the guests two summers ago? The ones who killed each other in a duel in the palace grounds?”

“It wasn’t a duel. He’d sent two men in the hope that I would miss one of them. That was harder to arrange.”

“But . . . there were others?”

“Five other attempts. The earlier ones came in as servants, or merchants.”

Gursoon looked at her sharply. “I don’t remember five other deaths.”

“I only had to kill one other,” Zuleika said. “I made the sultan’s guards believe that one of the princes had stabbed the man while drunk; they buried him secretly. All the rest I persuaded to run away. It seemed best to avoid too high a body count.”

“It seemed best to avoid . . . ?” Gursoon began. She stopped. She began to chuckle, looking at Zuleika’s calm face, then leaned back against her rock and laughed for a long time.

“You’ve done well, Zuleika,” she said at last. “We’re all in your debt, far more than I had realised. And yes, I trust you. Will you take our lives in your hands for a third time?”

Before first light the next day, Zeinab and Zuleika crouched among the rocks on a ridge high above the oasis, squinting into the dim shapes of the other side. Each of them wore a makeshift grey cloak and hood, sewn hurriedly together from sacks.

“When can we go down?” asked Zeinab for the second time.

“Maybe not at all,” Zuleika said. “For now, we watch. If there’s someone there, they won’t stir before sunrise.”

Zeinab stared unhappily down into the valley, where new humps and hollows were emerging in the first grey light. She sighed and shifted her knees to a new position on the stony ground, then started.

“Keep still, girl; how many times?” Zuleika began. But her companion was staring at one spot far below them, her eyes suddenly wide.

A slender shape in the greyness moved, walked and revealed itself to be human. It moved towards them across the valley, to the foot of the rise where they were concealed. Both women froze.

The figure stood beneath them, and seemed to be reaching for something in its clothes. At that moment the first light of the sun shot through a gap in the hills ahead, nearly blinding them, and, below, reflecting gold off a bright arc of piss.

“At least a dozen men,” Zuleika reported to Gursoon that evening. “We saw no more than a few at a time, but they were cooking for as many as that when we left. Maybe twenty, though I’d say less.”