Chapter 20 #2
Dunya’s eyes lit in teenaged outrage. “I will want for everything . He is more than twice my age and already has wives and heirs. My grandmother says he chose me because I am reputed to be
clever, because he desires a wife with whom he can discuss history and science without leaving his bedchamber. Never mind
that I will lose everything I am once I step foot in his house.” She met my gaze. “Would you have agreed to that at my age?”
“Dunya, when I was your age, I had just lost my father and my family was a week from starving. Our circumstances could not
have been more different. But regardless... how did meeting with Falco turn into running off with him to look for the Moon
of Saba? I saw your library. You could have offered any number of objects you had on hand, gotten your money, and been done.”
“That was the original plan. But when we got to talking, he... he listened to me, nakhudha.” She blushed in embarrassment.
“It was the first time anyone listened to me like that. I tried for years to get my grandmother interested in our family’s legacy, but all she wanted to do was sell it off, piece by piece. ”
I frowned. “What legacy? Your grandmother mentioned your ancestors collecting some occult items as curiosities but nothing
further.”
“ Curiosities ? Is that what she called them?” Dunya sounded even more incensed at that word than at the prospect of marriage. “We were
not mere collectors, nakhudha. We were guardians . Stories of my ancestors date back to before the birth of the Prophet, peace and blessings upon him. We were priests and
exorcists in the old world, the binders of demons and the protectors of childbirth.”
Her words made my skin prickle, the mention of “the old world” reminding me far too much of Falco’s rantings. “Perhaps your
grandmother wished to keep you from that which is forbidden, child. There is a reason we call those centuries the jahiliyyah.”
“It was an age of knowledge as well as ignorance,” Dunya said fiercely. “My ancestors sought to safeguard people from demons
and from the harm that evil magic could do. They were scholars, not power-seeking murderers like Falco.”
“All right.” I pinched my brow, unwilling to fight about this with a traumatized teenager. I didn’t know if Dunya’s forebears
were the magic-working scholar-warriors she believed—though it would certainly explain that library—but it didn’t speak well
of her grasp on reality if she believed no one with access to that kind of power would abuse it. “Getting back to your meeting
with Falco...”
“As I said, he complimented my work. Said how clever I was, said someone of my intellect could not be shut away as a rich
man’s wife.” Dunya dropped her gaze to her lap. “He claimed he needed me at his side and that together we would travel the
world and make all sorts of wondrous discoveries. So I offered the most impressive thing I knew.”
“The Moon of Saba.”
“The Moon of Saba,” she confirmed, still staring at her hands. “Falco promised that I would be rewarded, that I would be free. I-I know how ridiculous that sounds now. But when he was offering these things... it felt like I was under a spell.”
She probably all but was. Dunya had been rash in meeting with Falco, but an ambitious girl dreaming of scholarly adventure
and about to be pressured into an unwanted marriage would have been clay in his hands. “I take it that’s when you ran away?”
She nodded. “When we first departed, it was like a dream to be on the open ocean, searching for places out of legend. Falco
had so many texts and artifacts he had collected, items he was eager to let me study and translate. I shared everything I
learned—I felt like I owed him that.”
“You owed him nothing,” I said intensely, my desire to keelhaul Falco increasing with every wave we crested. “Men such as
him will prey on your kindness like a parasite.”
“I know... or rather, I discovered who he really was when the ship was approaching Socotra.” Dunya squeezed her eyes shut.
“It’s all my fault. I thought he was just after treasure. I didn’t realize he actually wanted to use the kind of spells I read about. I didn’t think anyone would be so foolish.”
“What happened?”
“I did not have a clear view; Falco kept me in the cabin most of the time, claimed it was for my safety. He was ranting to
the men about loyalty, about which ones would be willing to bind their souls to his in a new world. Whatever he was asking
them to do... it must have been heinous, because a number of the crew refused.” She swallowed loudly. “So he summoned a
sea beast to devour them. To devour half the ship.”
“Yes, we found that ship. What remained of it anyway,” I added grimly, recalling as well the shrieking I’d heard on the beach,
the crashing black water and starry night implying a leviathan of monstrous size. I could only pray again that it and Falco
were gone. I did not want to imagine going up against such a threat. “What happened after it attacked?”
“The rest of us got to the dunij, but we barely escaped with our lives. When we landed on the beach, some fishermen from a local village came to help and Falco...” Dunya began to weep. “I thought he was just a scholar. I thought I was just translating poems.”
“Poems that said what ?”
Her teary gaze met mine. “There was a spell for knowledge. Knowledge that could be obtained by siphoning the lifeblood of
an elder.”
I jerked back. “ You were behind what happened at the village?”
“I didn’t know!” she choked out. “I know that doesn’t make it any better. I know God will judge me for what happened, but
I never imagined someone would kill people because of things I read on a tablet!”
“Oh, Dunya...” I forced myself to check my tongue. The girl was sixteen. She had grown up the pampered, sheltered orphan
of an overprotective noble grandmother. She likely knew little of the world outside her books, little of the evil that lurked
in men’s hearts. Hell, I had run afoul of the magical world myself.
But her ignorance had gotten people killed. Far more people than she likely realized, in horrible, brutal ways. I had little
doubt it was her translations that led to the ghastly scene in the cave after she fled.
She is going back to Aden . It was no love match, but better a rich husband with tall walls and plenty of guards than her library of lethal magic and
a head that had gotten her caught in the misdeeds of a monster.
Dunya was still staring at me, shame flaming her cheeks. “I know you must be cursing me. You are right to. I wish to God I
had not told Falco the things I knew. I wish I had thrown myself from the ship before it landed.”
“And yet you stayed with him,” I pointed out with a bit more force than necessary. “You must have been excavating at the cave
for weeks.”
“I had little choice. I feared I had already told him too much about the Moon of Saba, and I did not want to risk him discovering
it.”
Considering that in the past week I’d seen evidence of a snake large enough to swallow ten men and had the foul potion of a possessed sea scorpion shoved through my lips, perhaps I should not have balked at the nonchalance with which Dunya spoke of the possibility of Falco discovering the Moon of Saba.
But I did, stammering out, “Wait—the Moon of Saba is real ?”
Dunya nodded with a scholar’s grave air. “Oh, yes. Or at least... that is what my research indicates. But on that I have
some good news. A breakthrough that makes it unlikely Falco would recognize the Moon even if it were dangled before his eyes.”
“Which is...” When she hesitated, I snapped my fingers. “Out with it, girl.”
Her shoulders rose and fell dramatically. “Sorry... it is just... I fear I will sound ridiculous. But in truth, the
Moon of Saba is not a pearl.”
“Then what the hell is it?”
Dunya’s eyes were shining with wonder. “A washbasin .”