The Tower of Fear (8 page)

“No.”

“Let me know when it’s done.”

“Right.” Azel walked away from the old man. He tapped the lamp wick down and put it back where he had found it. Then he went out into the fog. He did a careful circuit to make sure no watcher had taken station while he was inside.

He believed in being careful.

*   *   *

Bel-Sidek stood staring out at the fog that covered most of Qushmarrah. He could not see much. On a night with a moon, that fog would have stretched like a sprawl of silvery carpet from which parts of buildings grew. To his right, on a slightly higher elevation, the blot of the citadel of Nakar the Abomination masked the stars. Funny. Six years and still a black odor leaked out of the place.

The Witch and her crew were still in there, still holding out, untouchable behind the barrier only Ala-eh-din Beyh had been able to penetrate. How the hell did they survive in there?

One popular theory held that they hadn’t. It contended that the Witch and all of Nakar’s people had killed themselves after their master’s fall.

Bel-Sidek did not believe that, though he had no evidence to the contrary.

From behind him Meryel asked, “Is it the old man?”

Without turning, he replied, “How did you know?”

“You only brood when you’re troubled by someone you love. I think you’ve made your peace with yourself about your son and your wife.”

Bel-Sidek’s son, Hastra, was another of those who had not come home from Dak-es-Souetta. As Meryel’s husband had not. Hastra, his only child, the star of his heart. For years he had brooded the what-ifs. What if there had been no Dartar treachery at Dak-es-Souetta? Win or lose, would the poisonous hatred still blacken his blood? Was he, like so many men he knew, hanging everything on the horns of the Dartar demon, so to evade taking any responsibility that was his own? He’d never worked that out, only come to realize that the brooding was as pathetic and pointless as the howling of a dog over the still form of a fallen master.

The wife was another story. The wife had nothing to do with win or lose or Dartar treachery. The woman, whose very name he strove to drive from his mind, had deserted him almost before his wounds had healed. With the connivance and blessing of her family. Almost unheard-of in Qushmarrah, a dowry abandoned.

But they’d had an eye for the main chance. And who wanted a cripple in the family? Political or physical?

“There’s you,” bel-Sidek said.

“I never give you cause to brood.”

True. Quite true.

The wife had run to one of the new breed of Qushmarrahans, that the Herodians were making over in their own image. The man had adopted all the approved dress and manners and had taken the conquering god for his own. And he had prospered, collaborating with the army of occupation. And then he had died of an inability to breathe, for which bel-Sidek had had no responsibility at all. He suspected the General had given the order. He had not asked, and never would.

“Is it something you want to talk about?”

“I don’t think so.” Out there, beneath that fog, men were moving. Some were villains and some were soldiers of the Living. There would be bodies in the morning. And who would know which had been slain by whom? The General, perhaps.

Let Fa’tad play his transparent games and take away the day. The night belonged to the old order, and would come out of the shadows someday soon.

“Maybe I do want to talk,” he said. He closed the filigreed doors to the balcony, turned to face his companion.

Meryel was seven years older than he. Her skin was too dark and her features too coarse for her ever to have been thought beautiful. Or even pretty. A generous dowry had helped her marry well.

She was too short and too fat and dressed with the eye for style of a goatherd. She drank rivers of date wine, proscribed by both Aram and the Herodians’ tempestuous god. She was, invariably, inevitably, an embarrassment in public. She said the wrong things at the wrong times and burst into giggles in the wrong places.

She was his best friend.

“He’s shutting me out. More and more, he’s hiding things from me. He didn’t used to send me away when he wanted to meet with somebody. But the last six months…”

“You distrust his reasons?”

“No.”

“Does he distrust you?”

“No. Of course not. How could he and live with me?”

“You don’t think it’s the normal course of security?”

“No.”

“You do talk where you shouldn’t.”

Bel-Sidek looked at her sharply.

“Here. To me.”

“I’m sure you’ve been checked every way he can imagine.” He knew she had, knew the General trusted her almost as much as he trusted her himself.

“Should I be flattered? Is it just that your feelings are hurt, then?”

“No. Maybe. I guess that’s part of it. But I’m worried for him, too.”

“And have you considered the chance that his ego is involved, too?”

“How so?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know what he’s up to. I do know he thinks enough of you to have made you his adjutant. Of all those who would have taken it. To me that says he values your opinion. Maybe that’s why he’s shutting you out.”

“I don’t follow that.”

“He’s a sick old man. He doesn’t have much time. He knows that. He’s desperate for results before he goes. Maybe he has a scheme he knows you wouldn’t approve.”

“That’s possible.”

She really was quite a remarkable woman, so inept in some ways and so damnably competent in others. In a culture wholly dominated by males she had established her independence, if not equality. She had managed that because she understood money, power, and the power of money.

The one truly daring thing she had done was, on hearing the first grim whispers from Dak-es-Souetta, to assume that her husband was among the dead. She had moved instantly to assume an iron grip on both his fortune and her dowry, and had not been the slightest bit hesitant to use force and terror to stay the claims of both families. They said she had had her own father beaten.

And yet … she could not cope in the society into which her wealth had propelled her.

Nor did she care, apparently. Apparently all she wanted was the power to make half the human race leave her alone.

Amazing contradictions these days, bel-Sidek reflected. Meryel was a boil on the face of all the old man held holy, yet he must approve of her, if not for bel-Sidek’s sake, then for the sake of the coffers of the Living. She was one of the movement’s strongest supporters.

What a tangle of ethics and traditions had come out of one day’s dying.

“That could explain it,” bel-Sidek admitted. “But I don’t like it.”

“Of course you don’t. If you were going to like it you’d know everything there was to know already. Wouldn’t you?”

“I suppose.” He opened the filigreed doors and stepped out onto the balcony. Qushmarrah had not changed in his absence. The tide of fog had risen a little higher, that was all. The air was so damnably still that the boundary between fog and not-fog was as sharp as a saber’s edge. As he watched, a man came striding up out of it like some thing of dark legend marching out of the mists of nightmare.

What a turn of mind tonight, he thought. The man was probably a baker on his way to work.

Meryel said, “Since you aren’t in a mood for anything else, why not talk business? I have two ships coming in from Benagra. I’ll need reliable men to unload them.”

It was how they had come to meet. He was khadifa of the waterfront. She had strong interests in shipping, gently helped to grow by the gentlemen of the Living. Her captains imported the arms that dared not be smithed anywhere in Qushmarrah.

*   *   *

As Azel strode up out of the fog he was thinking that there was still a chance he could get some sleep tonight, but he’d have to forget about getting away for any fishing or hunting. He had been out of touch in several directions and it looked like things were going to happen. A week away and he might return to a chaos he could not unravel.

He glanced at the hulking blot of the citadel, wondered if the Witch was getting any sleep tonight. Probably. She thought she was like the citadel itself: above the dirt and turmoil of Qushmarrah.

She might end up learning the hard way.

He crested the hill, putting the harbor side behind him. Ahead lay the Hahr, the most prosperous quarter of the Old City. Behind lay the Shu, the poorest and most densely populated quarter, where sons had stacked homes beside and atop those of their fathers till half the quarter was like some enormous mad mud daubers’ nest where anyone who lived off the thoroughfares first had to climb up to the sunlight and cross the rooftops in order to reach a street. The labyrinth underlay it all, sometimes open all the way to the sky, more often built over and now with old doorways sealed lest doom slip up by that route. The maze was so deadly that even the most desperate homeless seldom stole in for shelter. That territory belonged to the boldest of the bad boys.

Azel had met people in there who made
him
nervous. Weird people. Crazy people. People you had to deal with harshly to get your message across. And some who just could not learn.

Azel had grown up in the Shu. At seven he had been orphaned and left homeless. He did not remember much about his parents except that his mother had cried all the time and his father had yelled almost as much and had beaten them all a lot. He had a notion that it might have been he who had set the fire that consumed them—except that he had an equally fuzzy recollection of his brother giving the old man fifteen or twenty good ones to the head with a hammer before the fire.

He hadn’t seen his brother since.

There was nothing he wanted to remember from those days, no little heirloom he carried around and treasured.

At fourteen he had gone to sea and had gotten to know most of the ports around the rim of the sea. He had survived them all and most of them had survived him. At twenty-one he had returned to Qushmarrah.

It had not been long before he had fallen in with the remnants of the Gorloch cult. Its grim philosophy appealed to him, though he took from it only what suited him and discarded the rest. He was not weak. He had no higher god than himself.

Soon he caught the eye of the High Priest, Nakar. The sorcerer gave him odd jobs. He handled them swiftly, efficiently, no matter how difficult or cruel. In a moment of humor Nakar had begun calling him Azel after the demon who carried Gorloch’s messages to the living world. Azel the Destroyer.

Never did he commit himself to the god or to the man. Not entirely. Azel could not give himself wholly to anyone but Azel.

He had missed Dak-es-Souetta. He hadn’t been trapped in any of the towers at Harak Pass. He hadn’t participated in the rout on the Plain of Chordan nor had he been there for the hopeless defense of Qushmarrah after the pride of her youth and manhood had been slaughtered or scattered, chaff driven by the hot breath of Death.

His absence did not shame him. It would not have shamed him had he done nothing for the city that had done nothing for him. He knew nothing about shame. But he had in fact been doing something. He had been in Agadar, west along the coast, where the Herodian armies had landed. His few carefully struck blows against Herodian commanders had—unfortunately, as it had developed—delayed the invading armies the month necessary for Fa’tad al-Akla to gather his tribal warriors and race to Dak-es-Souetta.

Thus do the Fates conspire.

Azel paused across the street from the house that was his destination. Almost the instant his feet stopped moving the door opened over there. Azel eased back into deeper shadow.

Could it be?

Of course not. The Fates neither loved him so well nor hated Sagdet so much. He sank down onto his heels, tucked his hands in, turned his face down, and watched under his brows. The man passed within ten feet without seeing him.

It was the one called Edgit. Perhaps the old man would want to know that he had been here.

Azel moved almost before Edgit was out of sight. He had scouted the house. The best way in was through the front door. If he got there quickly whoever had let Edgit out might think the guest had returned for something.

He knocked. In seconds the door opened. An irritated voice started to say, “His Lordship…”

Azel shot his left hand to the man’s throat, gripped. He brought his right around in a hook to the temple. A brass knuckleduster took the impact. The man sagged.

Azel lowered him to the floor, easing him out of the way of the door, which he closed but did not latch. Quickly, but with care because he did not know the interior layout, he passed through the house to the back, then to the east side, to unlatch the doors there and open alternate avenues of retreat. Only then did he approach the one room from which sounds of life could be heard.

The door was not latched. And the sounds were what he’d suspected them to be: those of a man and woman rutting.

Gorloch be praised! Or the Fates, if it be deserved. The woman was astride, facing away, and the man had his eyes closed. Azel slipped into the room. He picked up a discarded sash as he crossed the room, wrapped one end around his left hand, let the other fall free.

The woman sensed his approach in the last step, started to turn. His blow stilled her curiosity before she caught a glimpse of him

No stopping the man from seeing him and loosing a startled, squeaking, “You! What the hell are you doing?” as he thrashed out of his entanglement with the woman and started to flee on all fours. “Who sent you? The General? Is he trying to scare me? I don’t have to put up with this!”

Fat jiggled olive skin. Absurd broad buttocks humped and swayed. He gained ground. He reached the corner where Azel wanted him, scrabbled at the walls to get to his feet, spun with a mouth full of bluster and threats.

None of which got spoken.

“Oh, Aram! You mean it! Damn it, man.… I’ll back down. Tell him! I’ll do it his way. You don’t have to do this! We can deal!” He raised pudgy hands, pushed at the air. “Don’t! What do you want? I’ve got money.… Please?”

Azel was close enough. Leaving one imaginary opening to his right, he feinted with the sash in his left hand.