Chapter 17 #2
The shiver down my spine had grown to violent shaking. But had strangers not always commented upon me, chroniclers spinning wild and lewd tales of my body and physical prowess?
Yes, but now some of those tales dart nearer the truth.
I offered a self-deprecating smile. “I doubt a demigod would be so easily wearied by a blow to the head. Though I do come from a line of very tall women. My mother, God bless her, towers over even me.” Then I changed the subject. “I hear you visited my ship.”
“I did,” she agreed readily. “A maimed beauty. I am indeed curious to discover whether she might finally be the vessel able to thwart the curse seemingly trapping us all here.”
Again those words seemed closer to Khayzur’s story about an imprisoned sorceress than a queen concerned about her land’s isolation, but a clever and cautious response could not make it through the fog that mired my mind.
God, but I cannot think clearly! Nor was I the only one; I’d been keeping an eye on my men and a drowsy spell seemed to be taking hold of them as well. Between the intoxicants, exhaustion, and amorous caresses, it wasn’t surprising to spot a few lounging upon cushions.
I forced myself to sit up straighter, taking a sip of water and a deep breath of the fragrant air.
A handful of servants had brought in silver incense burners, sending up plumes of purple-hued smoke.
I couldn’t identify the scent, a mix of musk and the sweet aroma of citrus flowers, but it was thick on the air, on the tongue. Uncomfortably so.
Only now did I realize I hadn’t responded at all.
One of the men spoke up. He’d introduced himself as a poet, a fact that immediately made me forget his name.
He was pretty if decidedly not my type: too young, too slight, and with pale green eyes that spoke of sweetness rather than mischief.
“I think perhaps we should let the captain find her bed. I would be most happy to escort her.”
The queen laughed. “No doubt you would, my friend, but I fear your admiration would go no further. The captain has a husband.”
Now, that snapped me from my haze. “Who told you such?” I asked sharply.
She was all innocent surprise. “But your men, of course. You and Dalila are to be our guests, and we wish to know how to best provide comfort. For many new arrivals, that involves companions.” She shrugged.
“We were told that among your people, a woman will not touch a man other than her husband and that you are most fastidious in this.”
I was profoundly not in the mood nor state of mind to discuss my husband or religious prohibitions. “I suppose we all have our rules.”
“A shame,” the poet pouted. “I’ve never had a sea captain.” His gaze fell on Dalila as the musicians kicked up to a faster beat, a drummer joining in. “Would you like to dance, Doctor?”
Dalila looked like she’d rather shove her carving knife through his eye. “No.”
But one of the women trilled at the prospect. “Oh, yes, let us dance! Your captain is recovering, but surely you can join us.”
Dalila’s face was even more set. “I do not—”
“You wish to work with us, no?” It was the other physician who spoke, a challenging air to the question.
Perhaps I should have said something, assisted her.
But the provocation on the matter of husbands seemed to have taken the last wind from my sails, the smoky incense lulling me into forced idleness.
Everything seemed dreamlike, figures moving as though entrapped in amber honey.
I swayed, praying another vision didn’t take me.
“I shall dance with her.” It was Lab . .
. or at least, I believed it was. A slender hand was offered across the table, rings glittering in the firelight.
Then they were moving, bodies swirling, kicking and clapping as the drums grew louder.
There was an excited cheer, then another, circles of dancers moving around the table, clasping hands, clasping bodies.
Ghosts. The word came to me unbidden through the haze of my mind.
Woolen shrouds drifting and spinning as though caught in the wind.
It all made me dizzy and I suddenly found myself dropping my head upon the wooden table, scattering cups and platters.
It must have presented quite the scene, but I found I could not bring myself to care. All I wanted to do was shut my eyes.
Just for a few minutes, I told myself, as the sounds of the feast continued, perfumed smoke tickling my nose. I’ll just close my eyes for a few minutes.
* * *
A sharp pinch jerked me awake.
“Hold still,” Dalila warned.
I was so shocked that I obeyed, bewildered by the scene around me.
Gone was the lavish, dreamy feast. I was back in my bed, the bright light of midmorning streaming through the windows.
Dalila was at my side, pressing a tin pan against a small gash in my elbow.
Blood blossomed, dripping into the container.
I jerked back, the movement making me dizzy. “Why are you collecting my blood?” I rasped out.
Dalila stopped her vial with a piece of cork, a crimson drop gleaming wetly at its entrance.
“Your lymph node is enlarged. You have been lethargic and ill, so I am going to make you an elixir, but I’ll need your blood.
” She said it all like this was something normal, a task she did every day, and I was being foolish.
But unless her skills had vastly diversified, this was news to me.
Dalila did, indeed, have some healing knowledge, but this?
However apothecary experiments were not my most pressing problem.
I glanced around, still stunned to find myself in bed.
My captain’s robes and weapons belt were gone, replaced with a simple tunic, and my hair was uncovered, damp and clean.
But I had no memory of getting this way.
Last I recalled was the feast, exhaustion sending my skull thudding onto the table.
“What happened? How did I get here . . . like this?” I flushed, deeply uncomfortable at the prospect of strangers, even if they’d been female servants accustomed to the task, undressing me and handling my hair and my body—it was simply not my people’s way.
“Last night . . . did I pass out?” A worse thought occurred to me. “The wine—”
“Not a sip passed your lips,” she assured me.
“I watched everything you, Majed, and Tinbu consumed. It was the incense. The queen herself told me when we were dancing.” An expression of horrified contempt twisted across her face.
“They are apparently very enamored with perfumery in Khatti Ugal and use it to influence mood, encourage harmony,” she said this word with even more distaste.
“They claimed they didn’t realize we would have such a strong reaction. ”
“And the crew?”
“Already gone when I woke.”
I swore, deeply embarrassed. “I should have seen them off.”
“You are in no shape to be seeing anyone off. Just rest, for once in your life. And drink this,” she added, pushing a steaming cup in my hands.
It smelled like bone dust. Making a face, I watched as she placed the vial of my blood on a platter. “I do not like you having that,” I said. “Jamal would be appalled. There are likely all sorts of malicious magics one can do with another’s blood.”
“No one will be handling it save me, and I care nothing for magic.”
“But how do you mean to even use it? I understand you can make tisanes for pain and salves to prevent infection, but you speak of advanced medicine.”
“It is not that different from the poison arts,” she defended.
“I doubt you would be as trusting if you woke with a blade nicking your skin.” Realizing that blood had continued to drip from the incision, I ripped a section from the bottom of my tunic, binding it tightly.
“No more taking ingredients from my person. I spot you near my chamber pot and I’m going to turn it over your head. ”
Dalila rolled her eyes. “Fine.”
My belly rumbled, but I ignored it. “So it was incense? No wonder Majed said the inhabitants appear to be half asleep. If their perfumery can knock out even the Mistress of Poisons . . .” She glared and I held up my palms in surrender.
“I tease. At least the queen told you the truth. While you were dancing. A scene I would have paid a fortune to witness.”
Dalila glowered, spots of color blossoming in her cheeks. “It won’t be happening again.”
“A shame. What are your thoughts of her?”
“You mean, do I think she’s an immortal sorceress?
” Dalila sucked her teeth, seeming to consider it.
“I don’t know what I believe just yet. She is unlike any person I have ever met, but so is this entire place.
In all our misadventures, I have never interacted with her level of royalty.
Petty princes, nobles with royal blood, sure .
. . but Lab? She reminds me more of people like Harun al-Rashid and Bilqis. ”
“Like a queen from a story,” I said softly.
“Last night definitely called to mind Jamal’s tale,” Dalila agreed. “Though she was hardly some wanton seductress. But men like to get inventive with those details.”
I understood what she meant all too well.
“I met a nakhudha in Calicut who claimed to have been shipwrecked when he was a youth on a tiny spit of land entirely inhabited by flame-haired maidens. He claimed the cost of their assistance was constant sexual pleasure, to the point that the other survivors died from exhaustion.”
Dalila burst into laughter, a sound I had not heard for a very long time. “And how did he survive such torment?”
“He claimed to have asked for a plait of hair after each ‘service.’ Then he used the hair and fallen coconut branches to construct a raft.” I shook my head with a chuckle. “Ludicrous, but that man could spin a yarn.”
“Ever see him again?”
A bit of my good spirits drained away. “No. I heard from a shared acquaintance that he didn’t survive his next shipwreck.”
“It is the life,” Dalila said solemnly, repeating Majed’s phrase. “Death awaits us all; it is merely a matter of timing.”
It was a grim truth and yet I could not help the next question that slipped my tongue. “I am worried about you, my friend. All of us are. You have not been yourself since Sari—”
“I don’t want to talk about Sarilaglag,” she said, immediately cold. “God willing, Sasan and his supplicants all perished in the fire and burn in hell as we speak.”
“Dalila . . .”
“I mean it.” Her face had closed off, the brief warmth between us vanished. “Tell me instead about this ‘incident’ yesterday. We didn’t have a chance to discuss it with the Khatti Ugalans eavesdropping all around us.”
I hesitated. I had not intended to confide my visions to another; Majed’s response already made me feel as though I was losing my mind, and I needed no one else learning that their captain was struggling to ascertain reality.
But considering Dalila and I were to be alone here with the court for weeks, perhaps it was best I had someone closer to keep an eye on me.
And if it kept our conversation going rather than her withdrawing into silence yet again . . . “I had a vision,” I confessed. “My second—no, my third, I suppose, since we arrived in the city.”
A stilted expression flitted across her face. “A vision?”
Her reaction didn’t inspire much confidence, but I pressed on. “Yes. It is as though I see a different world layered over the existing one. A ruined garden populated with haunted echoes of people in place of a bustling one; a harbor of shipwrecks replacing an empty sea.”
“Could it be a glimpse of the Unseen Realm?”
I was already shaking my head. “The Unseen Realm feels different, like a hook in my heart. And my glimpses of it don’t leave me vomiting on the ground.”
Alarm blossomed in Dalila’s eyes. “You’ve been vomiting? And this is when the hallucinations are occurring?”
“I’m not quite ready to call them hallucinations . . .”
But Dalila stood up, pacing. “So you’ve had three hallucinations in less than two days, along with vomiting, headaches, and lethargy. Anything else? Pain in your joints? Fever? Melancholy?”
All three. However, I held my tongue, not liking the way she was ticking them off as though she suspected something worse.
But Dalila was always suspecting something worse. “I fear that to tell you yes will lead to more bloodletting.” When my poor effort at a joke failed to provoke her usual upbraiding, I grew concerned. “Are those particularly troublesome symptoms? Especially so shortly after a blow to the head?”
She hesitated, and the fact that Dalila, my most talented liar, was struggling to devise a way to reassure me was truly frightening. “I . . . Yes. Yes, they can be. Your brain could be inflamed, your blood hot.”
“You think my brain is inflamed?” I drew to sit up.
But Dalila pressed me down. “It’s not as dire as it sounds. And there are tonics that can help. But far more importantly, you need to rest, Amina. I will bring you food and tell the queen you require the next few days free of court.”
Incredulous, I argued, “I cannot rot uselessly in this bed. The queen was clear we are to earn our keep. More, I need to come up with a plan to search for the spindle.”
“Forget the spindle,” she said, exasperated and oddly flustered. “Just rest. I will speak to the queen.”
I stared at my friend, not understanding the urgency she seemed to be barely concealing. Her hands trembled, just slightly, and when I tried to meet her gaze, she deftly avoided my eyes. “Is something else going on, Dalila? If you feared I was truly in danger, you would tell me, yes?”
At that, her fervor seemed to recede. She met my gaze, her expression calm.
“You’re going to be fine, I swear. But you need your rest. You are no longer young, and from the sound of things, we’re to be stuck here for several months.
So let me sell the physician lie, yes?” Unexpectedly, she reached out to squeeze my hand, the affectionate gesture out of character.
By the Most High, either I was dying or Dalila had been replaced by an imposter. But what else could I do other than agree? This was the most amicable she had been in weeks.
“Of course,” I said, trying to resettle myself on the bed and taking a sip from the steaming cup. “I trust you.”