The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, 2012

Madam, I want to say, there is a secret passage. Miss Jenkinson cannot show it to you. But there is, there is.

RAMPION Alexandra Duncan

When the sands whip my face or the rag boys kick my feet out from under me, I ask myself if it was worth going blind, having laid eyes on her. If only I had clapped my hands to my ears when I first heard her singing. Had I not tethered my horse and waded across the river to pluck oranges from the trees growing wild around her estate, I might be riding the country still, surveying my father’s holdings and reveling in the sweet, unformed yearning I felt that day before I crossed the river.

This morning, as all mornings, I grip my walking stick, secure my tattered, sweat-grimed taqiyah on the crown of my head, and pick my way over the swept cobblestones of the Plaza Asad. When I had my eyes, I only cared if the roads were kept well enough to allow my mother’s horse and escort smooth passage, but now each narrow street has its own topography. I navigate by the jutting stones, the smells of marzipan, meat—fresh lamb at the halal butchers, jamon serrano at the Christian shops—and the waft of dank water steaming from the sewers. The fishmongers, newly fetched up from the Guadalquivir, shout over each other. Their voices mix with the clang of steel, the rush and tang of the forge-fire consuming the air, and above all, the distant cry of the muezzin calling us to prayer.

A stone lion crouches by the western spoke of the fountain at the heart of the plaza. I rest one hand on its warm grained head and dip the other into the fountain pool to cup up a drink. Then quickly, I splash another handful over my face and head and hope that will suffice to please God in place of proper ablutions. I can do no better.

A crowd of men mill around me on their way to prayer. A year ago, a throng would have packed the plaza, men and their wives and children meandering down to the mosque together. But today it’s only men’s voices I hear. Most of the women and children hide away indoors; what few there are huddle in dense pockets of silence. A year ago, these men—scribes, poets, merchants—would have talked the price of geldings, the weight of a bolt of cloth. They would have complained about their slow progress translating Sophocles from the Greek, while their wives’ voices bubbled under the din. But today Berber mercenaries ring the plaza, looking out for Northern spies and keeping an eye on our impiety, all at the behest of our vizier, Sanchuelo ibn al-Mansur, who every year tugs another corner of power loose from the caliph. The men speak in low voices of the Christian chieftains’ incursions into Moorish territory, our vizier’s bloody reprisals, and the weakness of the throne.

“…said the Catalan forces took their orders from the Pope…”

“…cut off their hands and feet.”

“…mercenaries set fire to the library…”

And then, in the middle of it, a name drops into my ear like a stone.

“Adan Hadid.”

I lock to the voice that said it, a man’s lilting, nasal tone that catches behind the speaker’s teeth. My ear marks him a Castellano, ruby-blond and reedy, with pale skin, like all men from the North. Trolling the plaza for gossip and bargains, keeping friendly with the Jewish and Moorish merchants so his trade name stays good. Before I lost my sight, I had friends like him, advisors and artisans of his faith in my employ. My mother and I strolled with them by the tinkling garden pools at the palace of Madinat al-Zahra, played ajedrez with them, presented their wives with gilt and mother-of-pearl fans, took down the tapestry maps in our halls so they could examine them. I brought Northerners to tea shops in the city where the air hung full of smoke and spice and men’s voices, the floor was soft with raw-silk pillows, and the proprietors kept my comings and goings to themselves. And always, the captain of my guard, Adan Hadid, stood silent in the shadows of the room with his hand on the pommel of his sword.

“Hadid, I heard the caliph laid a death sentence on him,” the Castellano says. “If he’s ever found.”

“Are they saying the Umayyad prince is dead now? Are they sure?” asks another man, a native Cordoban by his accent.

A third man, older, makes a sputtering noise with his lips. “What do you think? They found his horse with its throat gored out.”

“And Hadid never seen since that day,” the Castellano adds. He clucks his teeth. “He’s a Jew. What else do you need to know?”

“I heard,” the older man says. He lets his voice sink even lower. “Hadid was acting on orders from the vizier.”

“No?” the Castellano says, urging him on.

“Yes,” he says. “Think on it. Without an heir, who does the caliph name as successor?”

“He’ll never agree to it,” the Cordoban puts in. “I heard the caliph’s turned stubborn since the prince disappeared. Told the vizier to send some of his Berbers back.”

I push myself to my feet, my blood hot and calling me to fight. I want to grab the Castellano by his shirtfront, shout out my name to the crowd. But in my blindness, I stumble. Misery and shame flare up in my old wounds, and I remember how I brought this fate on myself, on Adan, on her. Why I must forever bite my tongue. I grip my walking stick and hobble into the crowd, away from the gossip blackening Adan Hadid’s good name. My arms and back tremble with unspent rage, as if I am bearing a terrible weight. This talk of the prince dead, my—his horse dead, makes me feel naked to the world.

I am so tired. I speak to God, though I don’t know whether the words leave my mouth. I should be riding out to hunt, walking with my young wife through the topiary gardens, teaching our child the curve of his first letters. But none of those things have come to pass, and my youth crumbles.

The crowd pulls me to the courtyard of orange trees outside the Great Aljama Mosque. I let the flow of men carry me inside. There, I can crouch to pray in the soft dark without drawing the pity or stares that dog my footsteps in the daylight, only another man among thousands kneeling in the mosque’s candlelit womb.

Afterward, when I feel my way back into the sunlight, it is like being born. In my good eye, I see light, sometimes, and blurred colors, but mostly light, and it is never so bright as when I step out of the cool dark into the grit and glare of the everyday world. I siphon a bit of peace from the thought that no one has found Adan, not yet, and that means he is safe. And perhaps even she is safe, and maybe he is with her.

That night, I dream of killing my horse, my Anadil. My hands are steady as I draw the blade across her throat. She is hurt; it is a mercy killing. After it’s done, I cradle her head in my lap. But when her blood pools hot in my hands, I see she isn’t injured after all. She is whole, except for the gaping line of red at her throat. Anadil rolls her eyes up at me. I try to hold her flesh together, but it’s too late. Her black coat is thick with blood and my hands are slick with it. There is nothing to be done but to watch her bleed into the dirt.

I wake with my heart hammering. The open night hangs black around me, heavy and tight with a wet chill that signals the hour farthest from dawn. My bad leg pains me. I reach inside my shirt and clutch the thin braid of hair I wear tied around my neck, stroke it with my thumb. Even after all this time, it is still silk-whisper smooth, though I am beginning to forget its color. Is it tawny brown, the way I remember her hair spread over the bed cushions? Or bright as copper when the sun beams through it, as it was the day we met, when she leaned from her window and it fell loose around her shoulders? Or does it shine like burnished gold in the candlelight, elegantly twined, as on the night she first brought me to her bed? I am even beginning to forget her face. We have no images of each other, exchanged no portraits, and even if we had, I could not stoke my memory with her likeness. Is it possible, then, she remembers me at all?

Ojala que me recuerde. God will it she remember.

From the mouth of the alley, the sound of a man pissing on the brickwork trickles its way to me. I press my body against the wall, trying to make myself small and unseen.

“… por la zorra que me mato la alma,” the man sings, hushed and then suddenly loud, the way drunks do. At first, I don’t recognize the voice.

“Eh, Gemel, Lope, hermanos, ?adonde vais?” he calls after someone on the street.