Mieli ignores him, closes her eyes and prays to the pellegrini.
25
TAWADDUD AND THE COUNCIL
The next day, before they bring her before the Council, Dunyazad comes to see her in her cell, a tiny cube- shaped room, where the air is hot and thick with Repentants. Before Duny enters, she stands at the door and watches her for a long time. She is formally dressed in a Gomelez muhtasib robe, dark cloth embroidered with Secret Names. But to Tawaddud’s surprise, she is not wearing her qarin jinn jar around her neck.
‘Do you know why I became a muhtasib?’ Duny says.
Tawaddud says nothing.
‘Because I wanted to protect you from this.’ Duny speaks a Secret Name, and then Tawaddud is in her sister’s head.
She watches the city from her tower. This is the first duty of the muhtasib, always: the other Sirr where the jinni live, watching the flow of Seals and sobors, listening to the pulse and the breath of the city in the athar. Nieve is there with her, of course, painting the night city for her stroke by stroke, whispering to Repentants who bring her information, racing along wires and patches of athar untainted by wildcode, to show Duny the shadow of reality.
After a night spent in the tower she always feels like the Other City is the real city: this is where she adjusts things, reaching into its virtual image, touching a node, feeling it in her grasp, between the fingers of Duny/Nieve, embodied both in the shadow and the flesh.
She thinks about Tawaddud and her love of monsters, of things she does not understand, wonders if her sister understands the monstrosity of the muhtasib and their dual nature. One part rooted in the brain, the self-loop that remembers the games she played with her sister up on the Wall, and the Nieve part, the part she carries in the bottle around her neck, the soul that races through the night and yearns for a body.
Her father gave her to the entwiner when she was seven. Too old, the man said, stroking his beard. Why now? It will never take root.
Her father’s hands rested heavily on the man’s shoulders, jinn rings pressing into the flesh of his neck. She is a Gomelez, her father said. She must have a qarin. His voice had a trace of anger that echoed with the fights he had had with her mother. Duny would sneak in to listen when they fought, using the words Chaeremon had taught to make her silent. Tawaddud slept all the way through it, always.
A few more months, her mother said that night. I cannot let them go yet.
It is time, her father said. It is already too late. He paused. Perhaps one would be enough. Can you choose?
How can I choose?
Foolish woman. The qarin is not a thing of evil. It is a sign of glory, of power, a new soul. It gives you strength to serve the city.
But there is more to it, her mother said. It changes you, they say. I have seen you with Chaeremon. You become different.
I’ll do it, Dunyazad said.
Her parents looked at her.
My mouse, my flower, you do not know what you are saying, her mother said. You should go back to bed. Mother and Father are talking.
I heard what you said. I want to do it.
Her father looked at her seriously, with dark eyes that he got when thinking deeply. Then maybe the decision is made for us, he said.
Nieve the jinn comes back to her like a touch of the chill, and she is again a different being, the one who feels the ragged fragments of wildcode in the athar, a mind extended into the foglets of the air, the cool shell of the Seal in her own cells. She is not just Dunyazad the child, but a cloud of fireflies around her, and the memory feels foolish, suddenly. This is where she belongs, this is why her father brought them together, this is why the entwiner made her temples burn with the helmet on her head, made her dream of Nieve, made Nieve dream of Dunyazad.
How did she ever doubt that it was right?
‘It is not always right,’ Dunyazad says. She holds her jinn jar in her hand.
‘I never knew,’ Tawaddud says slowly. ‘Why tell me now?’
‘Because they are going to throw you off the top of the Shard and Father is going to go along with it, to get his precious vote through. Even when there are alternatives.’
‘The zoku,’ Tawaddud says.
‘Yes. I can see you have been talking to Sumanguru, or whatever his name really is.’
‘Why them?’
‘Because I don’t
Tawaddud shakes her head. ‘It’s not like that.’ She tells her sister the story of Sumanguru, and Abu Nuwas, and what they discovered. Duny listens carefully.
‘So, if Abu Nuwas reaches the jannah, none of it matters anymore,’ Tawaddud says. ‘The hsien-ku will stop playing nice. It will be a Cry of Wrath times ten. And this time, they will win.’
‘I believe you,’ Duny says. ‘You are a beautiful liar, but you have never been able to lie to me.’
‘So, what are we going to do?’
‘This could play in our favour. This could give me the leverage to propose an alliance with Supra City, to get a zoku embassy established here. But we need proof. Otherwise, they will never believe us. Nuwas is far too influential. Is there any way to link him to the murders?’
‘The Axolotl did not know how it was done. He gave Nuwas his story, and then he woke up in Alile’s mind. No one would listen to him anyway.’ Tawaddud squeezes her temples. ‘I wish I could
‘No one would accept an entwined testimony either, not with the Axolotl involved. And it’s just too perfect, with you as the scapegoat. The black sheep of the Gomelez family who has been working with the Devil himself, to bring down Sobornost and all that it represents, because her mother died in the Cry of Wrath.’ Duny pauses. ‘The bastards could not have planned it better. But it’s not all lost. I can get you out of here. I have contacts—’
‘I need to try, Duny. I need to testify.’
‘All right,’ she says and embraces her, long and hard. ‘I will be there, too. I will speak for you. Perhaps it will be enough.’
