The Steel Seraglio (53 page)

“She wants to see you,” Anwar Das said shortly to Rem and Zuleika as he emerged. He did not indicate which of them he meant, so they went in together.

Gursoon was still alone, leaning against her pillows, eyes closed. But as they approached they heard her gasp, as if in pain. It came to Rem with a sudden horror that the old woman was crying, and she left Zuleika’s side and ran to embrace her.

“How can I leave you?” Gursoon sobbed. “War is coming again—after all I tried to do—and I don’t think we can keep them out. I could have done more. Why must I go now?”

She looked into Rem’s face, and Rem knew she was asking for reassurance. She wished with all her heart that she could lie convincingly.

“We won’t . . . the future’s not fixed,” she stammered. “We may yet drive Jamal off.”

Zuleika knelt at Gursoon’s other side. “It’s no time to despair,” she said with surprising gentleness. “We have a strong army, we’re well supplied, and we have good people, who will make the right decisions and know what to do. You’ve taught us well. You’ve built a city that can go on without you.”

Gursoon seemed a little comforted. She had stopped sobbing, but her eyes were still bright with tears.

“It’s true,” she said. “And yet, Bessa will fall.”

“Yes,” Rem said.

Zuleika looked at her in shock. But she knew what to say now. The words flowed from her as smoothly as prophecy.

“It will fall, in time, as all things fall, and the sand will close over it. That happens to all cities. But Bessa is not like other cities: nothing like it was ever seen before. It won’t be forgotten. We’ve brought a new possibility into the world; that’s your achievement.”

Gursoon sighed.

“I spent my life holding back the sandstorm,” she said. “I suppose that’s an achievement too.” Her voice was growing weaker. “Well, then, that’s how it will be.” She gave an irritable twitch. “But I can’t move my arm. Wipe my eyes for me, dear. And then send my family in.”

Lady Gursoon, Speaker of the Council, was given the kind of funeral previously reserved for sultans. All of Bessa, it seemed, wanted to attend. The procession wound through the four main streets and finished in the Jidur, with addresses by the council, her daughter and friends, and anyone else who wished to speak.

“She said not to make a fuss,” Danyar complained as he watched the crowd file past his mother’s body. “She didn’t want any of this carrying-on. No more did my dad!”

His eldest granddaughter, who had been clinging to his hand with both her own, turned up a tearstained face.

“But everyone else wants to honour them,” she said. “And they both deserved it.”

Imtisar came out of the crowd, walking slowly on two sticks. Mayisah came forward and helped her to a seat beside them.

“Thank you for your generous words, just now,” Danyar said to Imtisar.

The old woman made a dismissive gesture. “No more than her due. I have something for you here.” She fumbled in her clothes, and handed something to Mayisah. “I always meant to give it back to her. I delayed too long. But it was only ever borrowed.”

“Her ruby,” Mayisah said in wonder. “The one the sultan gave her.”

Imtisar nodded. “The diplomacy stone,” she said. “Did your mother ever tell you the story of how it came to her? It could have no better owner.”

The mourning had to be short-lived: there was too much work to be done. Zeinab took over Gursoon’s role as Speaker, and she and Huma consulted widely on the state of Bessa’s defences. In some ways, they were robust. The palace, though it had been allowed to fall somewhat into disrepair, was still for the most part intact. With the Jidur’s approval, Huma commissioned repairs so that it could serve as a final redoubt if the need arose. The walls, though, were another story: they had been neglected during the long years of the peace, as other civic building programmes continually took precedence. Now that there was so little time left to work in, it became apparent that in some areas the damage and dilapidation were more severe than had ever been imagined. The Southern gate, which at one point had been converted into a cock-fighting pit by one of the city’s dodgier entrepreneurs, was scarcely defensible.

There was the problem of the water supply, too, but here it seemed little could be done. As the city’s population had grown, it had come more and more to depend on three new wells dug some quarter of a mile outside the walls. Those wells would become unreachable on the first day of a siege, and from that day onward the city’s daily needs would outstrip its secure supply by some two thousand gallons.

Zeinab gave orders for water to be drawn from the external wells and stored in tanks and jars in the warehouses left depleted by the Lion’s raids. Grain not yet quite ripe was nonetheless being harvested and stored too, and rationing had already been introduced in anticipation of the coming siege.

All was bustle and activity, and on the surface it was hopeful and purposeful enough. Beneath that surface, though, and not a long way beneath, there was a great knot of fears and forebodings, a sense that the city was facing a crisis it was ill-equipped to weather, and that the Increate (for whatever inscrutable reasons) had turned His face from Bessa.

“Bugger the Increate with an iron bar,” Zuleika snarled when she heard such thoughts expressed. “The Increate doesn’t live locally.” Because she was much admired, it was an opinion that was much quoted. But the fears and forebodings persisted, nonetheless.

On the day before the Lion’s army was expected to come into sight, Zuleika held a final meeting. It was closed to those outside the circle of the lawmakers, not because there was any great fear of spies within the city but because some of what was on the agenda had profound implications for morale. Present were Zuleika herself, Imtisar, Anwar Das, Farhat, Zeinab, Huma, Umayma (by then Zuleika’s deputy) and the master builder Mir Bin Shah, who had been made responsible for overseeing the repairs to the walls and fortifications.

Mir reported first, and the others heard him out without interruption. He was a somewhat overweight man in his late forties, with a hectic red complexion and a tendency to sweat heavily, which combined to give him, perpetually, the look of a man who had just finished a five-mile run—but since his alarming appearance was matched by a keen mind and an absolute discretion, he had come in recent weeks to inherit a set of responsibilities far outside his usual area of expertise.

“We’ve got a good ways along with the walls,” he told them. “To the north and east, they’re sound—very sound. The other stretches are all fair, even the west reach by the cattle market that was more or less down. That’s all built up new, and with a few more months to bed in, it’d be stronger than the old stuff. But the mortar dries in three stages, the masons told me, and the last stage needs a summer and a winter before you can say for sure it’s done. So right now, though it looks solid, they’re afraid that if someone hits it hard enough, it might give more easily than the rest. So we followed the advice of the ambassador here—” with a nod to Anwar Das “—and that seems to have done some good.”

“What advice was that?” Imtisar demanded.

Anwar Das shrugged. “I suggested that buckets of slops from the inns and eating houses on the streets adjacent to that stretch—and dung from the cattle market—should be dumped over the wall and allowed to accrete there. The staining to the wall makes it less obvious from a distance that it’s new, and the noisome mound at its base discourages closer inspection. It’s a crude ruse, but it might work.”

“There were also some buildings over in the west there,” Mir resumed, “what had gone up outside the wall and touching onto it. Like ladders, it was—like we’d already put up siege ladders for them to climb. We tore them all down, and we took the rubble inside the city, so there’s nothing there that could be used against us.”

Umayma raised her eyebrows, and seemed to be about to raise her voice, too. “We compensated the people who lived there,” Zeinab told her. “And we moved them all inside the walls. Nobody was made homeless.” She nodded to Mir to go on.

“Then there’s the gates,” he said, “and the news isn’t so good there. If they come at the South Gate with anything more than a harsh word, it’ll give. We’ve repaired the obvious damage, and we’ve banked it up inside with timber baulks, but the whole structure’s rotten and there wasn’t anything like time to tear it down and rebuild. To do the job properly would have taken months, so we did what we could and there’s nothing left to do now but pray.”

Anwar Das shot Zuleika a surreptitious glance. He had heard her current opinion of the Increate, and wondered if she would offer any remarks upon the subject of the efficacy of prayer, but she let that comment sail by without acknowledgement. “With regard to our military readiness,” she said, her voice clipped and cold, “we have two thousand guard who I would be happy to call trained and ready. We have, besides, almost one thousand raw recruits, who range in training and readiness from some who are rough but plausible to others who are unable to lace up their own sandals without sustaining a nosebleed. If you were to call our full muster two and a half thousand, that would be fairly accurate.”

“Three thousand,” Anwar Das said, and Farhat, Zeinab and Huma gasped in fervent relief. Since the answer was obviously coming in any case, Zuleika didn’t ask the question, but Imtisar stiffened and stared at Anwar Das. “What have you done?” she demanded.

“Ten days ago,” the ambassador said, “I entered into negotiations with the Caliph of Perdondaris.”

“Kephiz Bin Ezvahoun,” Umayma said.

“Alas, no. That worthy man is now in his final sickness, and his nephew, Garudh, has selflessly stepped in to supply his place.” Anwar Das’s expression and tone had an exemplary blandness about them, and he met nobody’s gaze while he spoke these words. But he cleared his throat, as though they might have stuck there for a moment, a little unpleasantly. “The subject of my discussion with the . . .
acting
Caliph was the purchase, or as it might be the hire, of mercenary soldiery.”

The faces around the table now all mirrored Anwar Das’s careful lack of expression. Taking on mercenaries had been discussed for many hours in the Jidur—hours of bitter argument, furious denunciation, shameless attacks on character and reputation and at least one actual fist fight. For many in that assembly, the thought of emptying the public purse to purchase the services of killers (Zuleika was never considered under that heading) was anathema; for just as many, the thought of allowing foreign fighters inside the city walls to examine its approaches and defences was just as distasteful. Between the conscience of the former and the paranoia of the latter, the debate had stalled. Therefore, any words that Anwar Das had exchanged on this topic with the Caliph of Perdondaris, or with his nephew, had been unauthorised adventurism of a kind that could easily lose him his post.

But there was no arguing with results.

“Five hundred mercenaries,” Zuleika mused. “If they’re seasoned, they’ll be well worth having. I’m assuming the price was pretty steep, though?”

Anwar Das shook his head, looking a little grave now. “You mistake me, Zuleika. The Caliph’s answer was no. He refused to become entangled in our small war—perhaps fearing that to offer us aid might turn the attention of the Lion towards himself.”

“But Perdondaris could roll over the Lion and squash him flat!” Imtisar protested.

“That’s most likely true. But the assessment of risk is a subjective science. And why take on any risk at all, when you don’t need to? The Caliph weighed the money I was offering against the benefits of strict neutrality, and went with the latter.”

“Dirty yellow bastard,” muttered Umayma.

“But in that case,” Zuleika asked Anwar Das, “where did these five hundred fighters come from?”

“I’m glad you asked,” the ambassador said gravely. “I followed a hint given to me by the Lady Gursoon.”

There was silence for a moment. The loss of Gursoon was still raw—it seemed outrageous to invoke her name lightly, in support of a scheme that might still prove disastrous. Both Imtisar and Farhat looked ready to protest. But Anwar Das held up a hand.

“I spoke to her just before she died,” he said. “She suspected I would make an advance to Perdondaris, and advised against it; she had, perhaps, a clearer understanding of the situation there than I. But she made another suggestion. You remember that Fouad was a member of a nomad tribe: his family often came here to trade, and she met them several times after his death. She reminded me how many of the nomads, Fouad’s people and others, have had to move aside as the Lion’s army passed, or flee ahead of it. How many have lost their livelihoods—the goats they herded, the horses they bred, the tents they lived in. And she reminded me of what Fouad used to say, that should you quarrel with a plains nomad, you’d better have ten good men to back you up if you want to go home with both ears.

“So when the Caliph turned me down I took a circuitous route back to the city, through a dozen or so of the largest encampments I could find. Most, obviously, were on the move, and had scant time to listen to my tenders. Still, in each I was given at least a cursory hearing. I promised that any man or woman who agreed to fight for Bessa in this conflict would be given afterwards if he or she survived ten goats or three horses and a sum equal to the yearly pay of a labourer. If they died, a like sum would be paid to their families. And in each case, after I’d spoken, a few people came to me and joined my train—two here, three there, perhaps as many as ten in the larger camps.”

“Ten times a dozen doesn’t add up to five hundred,” Zuleika pointed out. She was staring hard at Anwar Das.

“No,” he agreed. “It doesn’t. But one morning, having retired to sleep at the usual time and after consuming only a moderate amount of wine to quench the fires of the day, I awoke to find my tent surrounded by silent, grim-faced warriors on horseback. They were dressed in jerkins and breechcloths of faded leather, without adornment. They wore no swords at their sides, but each instead had three long spears strapped to his back. At least, the men were so accoutred; as for the women, each bore a curved dagger and a leather bolas. Their skin was so dark it was more black than brown, and therewithal it shone like polished wood. Their faces were like the death masks of princes: fine of feature, but with a cold and forbidding immobility. They outnumbered my retinue by more than ten to one, so as you may imagine I waited most politely to hear what they had to say for themselves.