Chapter 8 #2
“And the next?” he blurted out. When I hesitated, he pressed further. “Nakhudha, I could help. Dealing with dangerous magical aspects is my family’s very calling.”
“I know, but . . . I cannot make such a promise, Jamal.” He sighed and I reached out, squeezing his shoulder. “Live a bit longer,” I urged. “You are so young, and you’ve had such a short taste of this new life you’ve dreamt of for so long. After what happened to your father—”
“You did not kill my father, nakhudha. His choices did.” There was a trace of bitterness in Jamal’s voice, the words similar to what he’d said when I’d told him the truth of Asif’s death.
I had softened the circumstances as much as possible, taken the blame entirely—or tried to—and yet Jamal had seen only reckless selfishness in his father’s decision to barter his soul.
Maybe Asif’s dreams and his willingness to go to dangerous lengths to achieve them struck too close for the youth to admit.
Or perhaps a child’s anger at their parent abandoning them to go to sea struck too close for me to delve into.
“Sit this one out,” I said more gently. “Please. Should Queen Lab not rewrite all our lives and turn us into gazelles, should you still desire a taste of magical madness, and if the Fourth Transgression is a bit less lethal . . . I shall take you with me on the hunt for it.”
Jamal grumbled but I saw acceptance in the defeated line of his shoulders.
“Fine—but only for Marjana’s sake. And I shall fill her ears with stories of mischievous princesses, sea djinn, and magical islands of cats and mermaids until you get back, so make haste should you not wish to have a permanent stowaway. ”
“As long as she does not go out traipsing about Baghdad by herself, tell whatever tales you wish.” I hesitated. “But keep a close eye on her, yes? Closer than you would if . . .”
“If Raksh were not her father?” Jamal prompted. He gave me a knowing look. “You may not have told me all your secrets, but I can work out dates reasonably enough.”
“There is such a thing as too much cleverness,” I grunted.
“God forbid,” he said lightly. “She doesn’t know, does she?”
I pressed my lips together, the instinct to hold my secret close overwhelming. But then I shook my head. I could scarcely entrust him with my daughter’s safekeeping and then lie about it.
“Oh, nakhudha.” He set down his bag, a couple of incantation bowls spilling out. “That is quite the secret to keep.”
It was and yet I had no idea how to begin unraveling it, my sole attempt leaving Marjana in even greater distress.
“How do you tell someone what their father is if you don’t know?
A ‘spirit of discord’?” I scoffed, picking up one of the ceramic bowls with its tiny beast trapped by swirling lines of script.
“That’s an overly poetic insult, not an answer. ”
Jamal was silent a moment, as if considering his response.
“I looked for mention of them when I started organizing the texts,” he finally replied.
“The spirits of discord, I mean. After what you told me about my father . . . I wanted to know if he was truly doomed the moment he met Raksh or if there might be some way his soul could still reach Paradise.”
Oh, Jamal. His words gnawed at my heart; he might not blame me for Asif’s fate, but it was a guilt I would always carry. “Did you find anything?”
“No. They are not mentioned in a single text. My uncle has never heard of them. None of the historians, none of the linguists, none of the occult scholars . . . no one in our entire—very extensive—circle has ever encountered any mention of a creature like Raksh.” Jamal hesitated and then, apparently deciding that he hadn’t crushed my spirits enough, continued.
“I cannot impress upon you enough how uncommon that is.”
“Yes, the despair in your expression is doing enough impressing. No one knows what Raksh is.”
Jamal picked up a stick, tracing shapes in the dust. “He may be as he said, nakhudha. A creature so old that his name is forgotten.”
I gazed at the words inscribed in the incantation bowl in my hands.
As a measure of peace between us, I had inquired about them with Abu Gharib the other day and he’d been delighted to share that it was an ancient magic, the spell conceived before the rise of Baghdad, before the Arabic we spoke to each other had likely left its tribal roots.
And yet, we knew this to be Aramaic on the bowl.
Jamal and his uncle knew its purpose and the demon it contained.
Raksh was older than even this ancient magic. Incomprehensively older.
“You think he’d be less ignorant,” I said in a poor effort at a jest. “Isn’t age supposed to bring wisdom?”
“He may be so profoundly different from humans that it is impossible to truly comprehend one another,” Jamal said with an earnest, scholarly air that immediately killed both the joke and my spirits.
“And is that what I am to tell my daughter?” I asked bleakly. “My daughter who already fears she is unusual?”
Jamal touched my hand. “Do not most children secretly hope to be magical? If you’d told me at eleven that I was descended from a mysterious supernatural enigma, I would have imploded with delight.”
“Perhaps this Queen Lab will murder me and save me the trouble. Then you can tell Marjana what she is.”
“Don’t speak like that,” he chided again. “But do tell her, nakhudha. Sooner rather than later.”
“Speaking from the experience of being a stubborn teenager?”
He rolled his eyes. “I suspect I am more docile than you ever were at my age. But I will take care of her while you’re gone, I promise. I will watch over her as if she were my own sister.”
I would have still preferred Marjana safely at home, rather than in the company of a teenage scholar who’d once run off with a Frankish sorcerer, but seeing how Jamal had established a new life here, I did feel slightly better.
And truthfully, it might be a good experience for Marjana.
It was anathema to the way we typically raised our girls—safe and sheltered under the watchful eyes of family members. But Marjana was not an ordinary girl.
Perhaps she needed to see how those of us who were not ordinary could build a life.
“Are you content here?” I inquired softly. I’d been wanting to ask since we arrived but struggled to find the right moment, remembering how shy and uncomfortable he’d been in our discussions when I first rescued him.
Jamal seemed to take the question in stride.
He glanced down at his dusty thobe, ink staining the cuffs.
“It does not entirely pair with how I think of myself, but I am not certain anything would. More importantly, being Jamal is allowing me to live a life I could only have dreamed of growing up.” He squeezed my hand again.
“I am content, nakhudha. God be praised.”
“Then I am content.”
We sat in companionable silence for a time, the steady drone of insects and the song of the river gulls a pleasant melody. After a while, Jamal shaded his eyes again.
“Ah, that is the messenger. Let me send these off.”
I helped Jamal repack his bags while a solitary figure on a slender gondola drew closer.
He waved me off when I went to rise and so I stayed in my shaded respite, watching as he greeted the courier and exchanged his saddlebag for another, far less bulging one.
He made his way slowly off the dock, riffling through his messages, then frowned as he plucked out a parcel.
“This has your name written on it,” he called as he approached. “Could it be from Dalila?”
I eagerly took the parcel. It was the size of my hand and well wrapped in oilcloth. “God, I hope so. Perhaps she’s come to her senses and is on her way.”
“Perhaps she was successful and has sent you Raksh’s heart.”
“Please do not suggest such a thing in front of Dalila. You will give her ideas.” I unrolled the parcel.
A heap of cloth fell out. Its ribbons were stained crimson and its tiny glass ornaments shattered. It wasn’t Raksh’s heart.
It was Dalila’s bloodied headdress.
* * *
Dalila’s headdress lay on the ground between the four of us, Marjana and Jamal’s uncle swiftly hastened from the house on a made-up errand.
The bloodstains must have dried some time ago, but they were extensive, covering the pale blue lining of the cap and encrusting the silver coins.
Crimson-brown spots dappled the long ribbons where she would typically hang her various poisons and other mysterious substances in tiny decorative glass baubles or fake gemstones.
Every single one had been smashed, the lethal contents neutralized.
Looking close to tears, Tinbu finally broke the silence. “Do you think she’s dead?”
“I believe that’s the question this is intended to provoke, yes.
” My voice was flatly neutral, my emotions burning like a banked fire.
There was no place for feelings right now, for the fear and rage that might shake my concentration, the guilt that might make me rush headlong into ill-planned action.
Not with the caliber of enemy I was apparently facing.
“I do not understand . . .” Jamal glanced at the short note that had been rolled up inside the headdress and gave us a bewildered look.
“Who is Sheikh Sasan?” he asked, referencing the name signed at the bottom.
“Is that supposed to be an alias, some sort of joke? Surely that cannot be referencing the Banu Sasan.”
“I fear that is exactly who it is referencing.”
Jamal—the youth who studied djinn and demons for the love of God—abruptly paled. “They’re real?”
“Apparently so. Dalila claimed to have spent her life amongst the Banu Sasan: a guild member trained in poison and deceptions. When we found her years ago, she was on the run.” A lump grew in my throat. “She would never go north of Basrah, insistent that they were still hunting her.”
“They must have extended their reach to the Persian Gulf ports,” Majed said softly, his gaze not leaving her headdress. “This is a trap, Amina.”
Yes, obviously. I read the note again, as though reciting its short missive a twentieth time would reveal what in God’s name had gone wrong and whether or not my friend still lived.
To the nakhudha Amina al-Sirafi,
Peace and blessings upon you. Apologies for the brevity of this letter, but your sister is ill, and I fear she does not have much time.
A former acquaintance of yours has reached out and offered treatment but insists upon a meeting with your person.
Should you wish to assist her, make all haste to Sarilaglag.
I trust that you know the way.
Sheikh Sasan
“It’s Raksh, isn’t it?” Jamal asked, sounding ill himself. “The ‘former acquaintance’?”
I swallowed. “I fear so. If he was in the Persian Gulf, boasting about treasure and throwing around my name, and the Banu Sasan were watching for Dalila . . . they must have worked out long ago that the ‘Mistress of Poisons’ attached to me was their quarry. We are each of us notorious.” I swore.
“God, I wish she had not gone after him.”
“I don’t understand how they could have caught her,” Tinbu persisted. “She never slips!”
“She is still human, Tinbu,” Majed argued. “You’re the youngest of us—give it another few years and see how sharp you are. Dalila hides it best, but she’s had issues with her sight since we reunited. And the Banu Sasan—” His voice hitched.
“They were the only people she was ever afraid of,” I finished. And we had teased her for it, said she was paranoid. Granted, Dalila had returned the favor, rolling her eyes over the enemies I was convinced hunted me, but still. The thought of my friend caught and alone . . .
Tinbu was pacing in agitation, uncaring of the limp that slowed his pace. “We cannot leave her in Sarilaglag. The Third Transgression be damned, she’d walk into a trap for us!”
I studied my friend, fast as ever with a bow and with his tools, but there was no more swiftly fleeing city streets on foot for Tinbu.
Then I glanced at Majed. My old navigator was still staring, stricken, at Dalila’s headdress, and a feeling of helplessness stole over me; no matter how willing both men would be to risk their lives to save Dalila’s, neither was going to be battling any hardened thugs.
In our physical prime—with Dalila’s assistance—stealing from and fleeing an enemy like the Banu Sasan would have been a stretch.
Now? It seemed impossible.
Fighting Falco once seemed impossible too, remember? And it had been Dalila to encourage us, to remind us that what we did best was not fighting: It was tricking our adversaries. Outwitting them.
Majed stood up, holding Dalila’s headdress. “It’s not right that this should be bloodied. I am going to get the stains out. She will want it back.”
I watched him go, then read the letter again.
Sarilaglag. Oh, I’d find fighters there to aid us, but they were likely to be outweighed by foes.
While my companions and I had gained infamy across the Indian Ocean.
I’d spent my earliest, wildest years in the Persian Gulf, sowing mayhem on both shores.
Call it youth, call it recklessness—to say nothing of the worst years of my reliance upon wine—all combining in a great many acts I’d rather not remember save when atoning for them.
There was a reason I’d never fought Dalila on her reluctance to dwell in the region; it was not a good place for me to do business when I had a whole slew of ex-husbands, double-crossed business partners, and smuggling rivals who’d be happy to see me hang.
Dalila’s cutting assessment drifted across my mind. 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.
Ah.
The words simmered another moment, brewing about in an exceedingly dangerous concoction. “Jamal . . .” I started, thinking fast. “Is your courier network as impressive as you claim?”
The young scholar blinked, looking taken aback by the question.
“We are scarcely sultans or generals, but our work requires speed. If the King of Kollam demands a magical square drawn before his wedding, you best believe we get it there on time. However, if you need to get a message to . . . What was the place in that letter?” He glanced at the missive and frowned.
“Sarilaglag? Is that some sort of code? I have never heard of such a place.”
“No, you wouldn’t. But I do, indeed, know the way,” I said with a grimace.
Tinbu met my gaze. “You have a plan.”
I exhaled. “A dreadful one.”