Chapter 2 #2
I opened and closed my mouth, but I had no response.
Because that was just it: I had no response, no idea how to handle what Marjana’s future might look like, an adulthood that beckoned closer with each passing year.
There was nothing outwardly magical about Marjana, no hint of Raksh I could discern.
And yet, and yet . . .
My mother clasped my wrist. Her touch was warm.
“You fear too much for her, my beloved. I understand, I do—God knows the things you have done to my heart. But Marjana is not traipsing around the ocean, risking her life. We just want her to live, to breathe, like normal people. Even nobles who cloister their girls make sure their doors are open to other women. You are not some evil djinn out of a tale to lock away children.”
No, I was merely a supernaturally blessed treasure hunter who could see the magical world, was indebted to a bunch of bird people, and had a daughter with a chaos spirit. “Evil djinn” sounded simpler. Bet they wouldn’t have suffered this much guilt and indecision either.
And the hope in Mustafa’s face . . . I was unable to thwart it. “I need to feed our guest,” I grunted. “Go . . . go see this man tomorrow and get his price, yes? Then we shall discuss. Discuss,” I repeated firmly when my brother blinked in pleased surprise.
Mustafa grinned and despite his insistence otherwise, it was hard not to see the shadow of youth in his face, even if a few early sprinkles of silver speckled his beard.
He would always be the little brother for whom I had worked to protect and provide.
“I am sure we can come to some sort of compromise.” He winked.
“Believe it or not, I am a businessman.”
You are a soul na?ve of the worst violence humanity can deliver. But I forced a small smile as I retrieved the stone dish. “Then, safe travels.”
* * *
Though we’d made a home in those hills overlooking the sea, there was no denying that the crumbling fort we’d chosen to settle in was .
. . unique. A uniqueness that became more apparent as you descended from the pleasant roof with its salty breezes and the light-filled upper bedchambers into the murky reception room with its constantly leaking ceiling and the inner courtyard whose weeds not even my mother could tame.
A courtyard that smelled constantly of roses, though we not only did not grow them, we couldn’t after numerous attempts, as though the ghosts of flower bushes past would not allow it.
The cellar, however, made haunted roses sound quaint.
Consisting of a crude cavity hacked into the hillside and lined with ancient bricks, the cellar had likely been built before the rise of my own civilization, if the scrawled graffiti—with symbols resembling those found on Sabaean ruins—was any indication.
When the cellar’s heavy wooden door was shut and one managed to descend the crumbling steps without breaking their neck, no lamp was adequate to fight the darkness; indeed, the cellar’s shadows seemed to grasp at the light, hungry and consuming.
The damp, fetid air was smothering, the quiet so heavy it felt like the held breath of a hidden thief in the dark.
All this meant, of course, was that my “guest” had taken to the cursed, cramped, almost certainly haunted cellar like a fish to water.
“Dalila,” I complained, holding her dinner under one arm and an oil lamp in the other hand. “You are driving me mad.”
She didn’t glance up from the heavy table she’d made me drag down here. “To be fair, that is an easy task. You’re a very temperamental woman.”
I dropped the stone dish on the table, rattling her instruments and scattering her scavenged ingredients.
“Dinner. I estimate you have two more skipped meals before my mother insists on eating down here so you have company. Considering how you’ve pilfered her cookware to establish this godforsaken laboratory, that might be a fate best avoided. ”
Dalila stirred a simmering concoction in a stolen iron cauldron with a stolen wooden spoon.
Though she’d built her cookfire near the cellar’s entrance to take advantage of what little ventilation there was, the air was still smoky, the light from her candles hazy.
“The risks one must take for science,” she replied archly.
Coughing, I took a seat on the dirt floor. “When I invited you to stay with my family for the season, I imagined you would spend time with us, rather than breathing foul smoke in an underground chamber.”
She set aside the spoon for her writing board, carefully inscribing God only knew what on a crowded sheaf of parchment. “Your mother hates me. And I scare your sister-in-law.”
“Only because they do not know you,” I persisted.
Dalila glanced up with a skeptical look. “Not even you are a good enough liar to sell that tale.”
“At least eat while the food is still warm,” I grumbled, rubbing away a stiff spot in my knee.
“If it will cease your nagging . . .” Dalila put down her notes, giving her meal a cautious sniff.
“Woman, it has been two decades since we met. It is not poisoned.”
“If you make a task a habit, it is harder to accidentally slip.”
“You have never slipped in your life.”
Dalila scowled but dug into the food. I leaned back. The brick wall was oddly warm against my dress. Considering the cellar’s unsettling past, it was probably the nearness of demons, but it did provide a pleasant shield against the night’s chill.
“I doubt the house in Salalah has a haunted cellar,” I muttered.
Dalila spit a fish bone into her hand. “What house in Salalah?”
I waved a dismissive hand. “Eh, my brother and mother wish to move to town. Say it is too remote and lonely out here.”
Dalila extracted another fish bone from her mouth, laying it next to the one on her table. “Hard to argue with that. This feels like the sort of place a fugitive warlord would wait out plague.”
“That is why I favor it!” I replied. “Am I not still a fugitive? Rival bandits, warlords I’ve robbed, the pirate princes of Kish—even a former husband or two would not surprise.”
“You and all your enemies . . .” Dalila rolled her eyes. “You are far too paranoid to be shrinking from shadows everywhere you go.”
I stared at her. “I’m paranoid? You’ve not gone north of Basrah in twenty years, convinced the Banu Sasan are still after your blood!”
“We are not hunted by remotely the same class of people,” she pointed out.
“The Banu Sasan do not forgive those who break their oaths, though it may be fifty years since. They cannot, it is how they terrorize their members into loyalty. Your enemies? Rival pirates and petty smugglers? You all backstab and ally in such dizzying fashion it is a wonder if one can keep it all in their mind. Half are likely too drunk to plot revenge.”
“Lady Salima certainly believed I still had enemies willing to hunt me down,” I argued, my cheeks growing a bit hot. Did I think too highly of my infamous reputation?
“She was also planning to offer a hefty bounty.” Dalila made a face. “The bread is burned. You must have baked it.”
“Ay, then why don’t you leave this dungeon and come cook if you wish to be so critical? And what are you doing with those fish bones?” I asked, perplexed as she set aside a fifth one.
“Making up for a lack of ingredients. There is only so much I can pilfer from your pantry, and these bones have quite expansive uses once ground and mixed with alum.”
I wasn’t certain how to respond to that; I’d accepted long ago that Dalila’s “science” was beyond my comprehension.
Truthfully, between her ability to pick up languages and her capabilities as an apothecary, it seemed a shame she had not been born a wealthy, connected man.
Her fate might have led her to Baghdad’s grand academies rather than the streets of the Banu Sasan.
Still, I persisted. “What are you working on?”
“It will only make you mad and for nothing. I am not having much success.”
“That only intrigues me further, and you know it.” I nodded at her parchment. “Whatever it is must be lucrative enough to tempt you into taking notes. I thought you didn’t like to reveal your formulas.”
Dalila scowled. “Such discretion is the luxury of youth. As much as I hate to admit it, my memory is not as sharp as it once was and to err now might prove dangerous. Your mother will hate me even more if I fill her home with poisonous fumes.”
“Now you must tell me.”
She finished her meal, wiping her mouth. “I am trying to re-create Mithridates’s preventative.”
That rather shocking claim—and its implications—took a few minutes to untangle in my mind; Dalila wasn’t the only one dealing with the mental fog of middle age.
Besides, a few years ago, such a statement wouldn’t have surprised me.
After all, re-creating Mithridates’s preventative was as common a goal of pharmacists as turning copper into gold was of alchemists . . . with similar rates of success.
But Dalila had a much, much closer source.
I had risen to my feet before I realized it, my head grazing the cellar’s low ceiling. “You did something with the mortar before I gave it to Khayzur,” I accused. “Have you lost your mind? It is cursed to kill the one who uses it!”
“Which is why I only took a scraping from the mortar’s interior,” Dalila replied, as though that made everything better. “I couldn’t use it now even if I wished. You said Khayzur destroyed it.”
“And you’re willing to risk your life on such a gamble? What if we translated the warning incorrectly?” I looked at her table with new eyes, and anger rushed through me. “What if my daughter or nephew wandered down here?”
“I would never put your family at risk. I lock up every time I step out. And what I took is hardly worth this panic. It was a few crumbs to see if I could isolate what might have been in a mortar a millennium ago. It was more an act of prayer than anything.”
“I doubt the peris would see the difference. I was warned not to use the Transgressions, Dalila. Threatened. Those creatures attempted to throw me to my death merely for washing up upon their shores. You do not wish to come to their attention.”
“Says the woman wearing a supposedly celestial blade. You do not think that will come to their attention?” Dalila pointed out, gesturing to the strange Egyptian dagger sheathed at my waist.
With a sigh, I sat back down. “My friend, I speak only from concern.”
Dalila seemed to retreat as well, an uncharacteristically yearning expression softening her face.
“You’re not the only one who still dreams of being a legend.
Who desires a bit of immortality as the years race by.
” She kicked my sandal. “Did helping Jamal not make it clear? You cannot cloister those you care for behind the highest walls in hopes of keeping them safe—not without also becoming their jailer.”
I flinched. “I do not know another way. How does one endure the kind of life we have, witnessing the violence we do, and not live in a constant state of panic, fearing that it is only a matter of time until such devastation visits us?”
Dalila was silent for a long moment before finally speaking. “Do not ask me. The devastation visited long ago and all it taught me was to avoid such attachments.”
Her reply pierced me like an arrow—my words had been careless. “I’m sorry,” I said softly, then hesitated. Dalila had always been firm in her refusal to discuss the past, but I could not help but try. “But that’s no way to live. And God willing, you have plenty of years left. Surely—”
“This is the only legacy I desire,” Dalila insisted, nodding at her experiments. “Though as my dearest attachment, Amina—”
“Friend, Dalila. That is the term people use.”
“As my friend, then,” she said, exaggerating the word. “May I offer some advice?” When I nodded, there was no missing the flash of pain in her face. “Heed your family’s pleas. If God forbid the worst happens . . . you will not want to remember being a source of their misery.”