Chapter 9 #5
Anger flashed in the sheikh’s eyes but then he laughed.
“God, Dalila, you truly are the coldest of cunts. You could have risen so far had you not betrayed us.” Sasan leaned closer, almost heedless.
“Did you think I had forgotten you? Think twenty years would make a difference? My dear, it only gave me more time to dream. To contemplate the various poisons that I might inflict on you. Something that would hurt long enough so I could savor your pain, but not so lingering that you might find a way to escape its clutches.” He sighed.
“You had so much potential. You could have been leading your own company. And now? Foolish enough to return to the Persian Gulf on a mission for your nakhudha? She must be very precious to you.”
Dalila didn’t even look my way. “No one is precious to me. And you are a fool to believe anyone in the guild believes differently. The Banu Sasan are no different than any other criminal gang. The tricks may be better, but in the end, loyalty is a scam.”
“A traitor would say that.” He gestured at me.
“And what if I told my men to kill her? A mighty warrior she may be, but you are terribly outnumbered. Perhaps I shall have her take your place in the cell? We shall compete for her life. I brew the poisons, you the antidotes.” He tilted his head, sizing her up.
“Only, if I recall, you were never very skilled with antidotes. Killing people, ah, that was easy. Saving them?” He clucked his tongue. “I do hope you’ve improved.”
Dalila said nothing, her eyes lit in silent challenge, and it dawned on me she might be contemplating it.
Sasan glanced at Raksh. “No argument from the devoted spouse?”
Raksh shrugged and reached for my untouched cup. “I have made my wife an offer of reconciliation. Whether or not she takes it is her decision.” He took a sip and then spat the drink out, his expression twisting in disgust. “What foul swill is that?”
The audacity of this man to steal my drink and then complain. I jerked my head at the barkeep. “Why don’t you go get your own? Perhaps they’ve palm wine.”
But the young Banu Sasan accompanying their sheikh interpreted the exchange in a very different light.
Before Raksh or I could speak again, they reacted with astonishing speed, one plucking away my cup with a handkerchief, the other jerking Sheikh Sasan back.
The first man took a careful sniff of the drink.
Not a single one of the poisoners spoke aloud, the glances between Sasan and his acolytes all the communication they needed. He nodded.
In the blink of an eye, the Banu Sasan who’d been guarding the door had rushed the barman. They dragged him toward our table.
Sheikh Sasan’s voice was frighteningly calm. “It takes one either very foolish or very cunning to poison another in my presence. So which are you?”
The barman’s voice rasped out, “Was not meant for you, my lord!”
“Obviously.” Sasan beckoned to his men. “Remove his veil.”
They jerked the facecloth down, and I gasped. “Ishaq?”
My second husband—a man I’d not seen since we divorced at knifepoint—glared back.
Ishaq and I had met during my wildest years in the Persian Gulf and brought out each other’s worst impulses.
Older than me and dangerously good-looking, he’d been an accomplished killer back then, running with pirate gangs since he was ungodly young.
He’d distinguished himself for his way around boats, blades, and beds, and I suspect we both viewed the other as a conquest in a way.
“Oh, now you recognize me,” he said hoarsely. God only knew what had happened to his voice: disease, vice—maybe someone had tried to strangle him. Ishaq was a violent, unpredictable man, my worst marital mistake before Raksh. “You ruined my life,” he accused. “You made my name a humiliation.”
“You should be grateful I settled for throwing you off my ship. Another captain would have keelhauled you for attempted mutiny.” I nodded at his missing hand with open scorn. “Too incompetent a thief to regain your reputation?”
Ishaq’s eyes flared in outrage. “This the newest one?” he asked, jerking his head at Raksh. “You always were a greedy whore.”
“An embarrassingly common insult,” I replied.
“Can you not be cleverer?” Sheikh Sasan tried to interrupt, looking deeply annoyed, but I pressed on.
I didn’t particularly care to trade insults with my foulest ex-husband, but I was looking to both delay the sheikh and provoke a distraction.
“Or perhaps you cannot. After all, judging from the glazed visage and suicidal schemes, I assume you’re still eating too much hashish to please a woman.
” I shrugged. “True pity about the hand, then. It must have been as though losing half your lovers—”
Ishaq lunged. He had not a chance, of course, but the threatening motion was enough to draw the rest of the Banu Sasan from the door. They hauled Ishaq away from our table, my ex-husband cursing and snarling.
“Deal with him outside,” Sheikh Sasan said curtly, as though handling an unwelcome party-crasher. He turned back to Dalila and me. “Now, nakhudha. If you would . . .”
But there were already other people making their way through the door.
“I do not care if Gog and Magog are preparing to end the world,” a voice loudly blasphemed from outside. “If that horse-thieving harlot is here, I will have her.” The reed doors burst open, a trio of men charging inside before Ishaq could be dragged out.
My gaze went first to their weapons, a ghastly array.
All were armed with hooked poles, grappling irons, and daggers, but then each held an additional lovely surprise.
The man to the left hefted a heavy mace with a spiked iron ball the size of my head, his fellow toying with a vicious, barbed whip large enough to wound an elephant, and the third interloper bearing a towering spike with a double-headed steel axe.
Wearing coarse tunics, plain head wraps, and braided armor, they could have been from anywhere.
But then the man in the lead stepped forward, one eye milky and his entire left side mottled with scars from Rumi fire, and I recognized him.
“Al-Uqab.” I grimaced. “You were one of the ones I hoped wouldn’t be here.”
“Al-Sirafi,” he snarled, driving the end of his spike into the floor. “You fucking cunt. I’m going to tear you in half and leave your entrails dripping from the roof.”
At that the number of Banu Sasan guards seemed to abruptly double, several of the seemingly unrelated folks sitting around now standing up to reveal weapons and put themselves between al-Uqab and their sheikh.
A hint of misgiving played across Sheikh Sasan’s face, though he still appeared implacably unimpressed; I suppose he preferred his weapons in colorless liquid form. “Another former adversary?” he asked me.
I kept a careful watch on al-Uqab and his men. “We had some disagreements over cargo in my early years.”
“Disagreements?” Al-Uqab’s face went red, a vein popping in his forehead. “You stalked my route every season for five years! You set fire to my ship!”
“You left my scout in a well to drown,” I returned coldly. “You should be fortunate that all I did was burn your ship. And what sort of fool returns to the same route after being beset more than once? You deserved to be robbed.”
He hefted the spike. “I don’t see much crew around now to save you.”
“And yet you are outnumbered,” Sasan pointed out, gesturing to his dozen fighters. “I have business with the nakhudha and do not care what sea squabbles you’ve come to contest.”
“And we arrived before all of you,” one of the young women in the blue vests interrupted. She rose to her feet, her sash of tusks jingling, and I noticed an odd glimmer to her garments. The silvery fibers in the vest seemed to glow and catch in the light.
Azarshost. Those were the garments of an arsonist—woven in part with the fire-resistant fibers of mysterious mountain rocks. I didn’t know of any arsonists with enmity toward me, as far as I could recall—not even in my wildest days was I foolish enough to invite such danger.
But the young woman wasn’t looking in my direction. Her gaze was focused only on Sasan as she spoke again. “I know your reputation, Sheikh, and respect you enough to have given you time to negotiate with the nakhudha. But we’ve been hired to retrieve her, and we will not be leaving empty-handed.”
Al-Uqab sneered. “You won’t be leaving with al-Sirafi at all. You’re welcome to whatever bits of her are left after I get my revenge, but bits will be all your client receives.”
She scoffed. “You are but three men. You will not even overcome the poisoners.”
“And you are but a handful of little girls,” al-Uqab shot back. “I could best you all by myself.”
A hint of madness blazed in her eyes. “I am Taumuriya of the Burning Grasses, and you are welcome to try.”
“Enough of this!” Sheikh Sasan snapped, alarm in his voice for the first time as he appraised the arsonists.
He seemed to be reassessing his plans; there was a reason the arsonists’ canal was set back from the rest, and that was because not even the most cunning of bandits wanted to ensnarl themselves with a bunch of wild fire-starters.
“Taumuriya?” A Malay forger shot to his feet, looking outraged.
“You infernal demoness; ’twas you and your vipers who burned down the treasury in Temasek!
My crew was still inside—you cost me a fortune!
And slew them all!” he added, a half second too late.
But his current troop didn’t seem to notice his half-hearted grieving for they flew to their feet, brandishing a sudden flurry of small blades clearly smuggled on their bodies.
Sheikh Sasan turned to me, his expression icy with suspicion. But before he could speak, screaming came from outside. A bloodied Mamluk guard rushed in from a back entrance.
“Pirates!” he cried. “There are at least fifty of them coming out of the marshes and two ships approaching.”