The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, 2012

“Of course.” The lady smiled.

“As to what brings me,” I said, “I can only say the vizier is happier when I keep myself amused away from court, and when he is happy, we all prosper.”

“Have you no duties there?” She raised her eyebrows. “Shouldn’t you be learning the arts of state at your father’s hand?”

“My father and the vizier agree, there’s no need for me to learn the messy particulars. Not with such an able administrator in our employ.”

“I see,” she said.

“And your name, lady?” I prompted. “Or have I not yet satisfied your thirst?”

“No, my lord, I am perfectly satisfied,” she said. “I am called Sofia de Rampion.”

“Thank you,” I said. “And you must call me Ishaq.”

“Yes, my Lord Ishaq.”

I held up her embroidery. “May I return this to you?”

Her face fell. The levity that had buoyed her so briefly fled. “You cannot enter the house. My grandmere would tell my brothers.”

“Should I leave it here for you?” I asked, looking around at the dusty courtyard below her window.

“Wait,” she said. “I have it.” She disappeared from the window and returned with a little porcelain water pitcher tied to a length of flax string. She pointed to the olive tree below her window. Its upper branches disappeared into the spill of vines. “Climb up.”

I hoisted myself up onto the sturdiest bough, reached out for the pitcher, dangling level with my head, and tucked the delicate piece of embroidery into its neck.

Sofia drew it up. “Thank you, my lord.”

I swung down from the tree. “May I come to you again? I could bring more news, better news next time.”

She traced an invisible design on the windowsill with her finger. “I think not, my lord.” She raised her eyes and I could read regret written all over her face. “I have loved our talk. Truly, it has brought me joy. But my family —”

“—will not object to what they don’t know.” I finished for her and smiled.

She ducked her head to hide a small, mischievous smile aimed back at me. “You live up to your reputation, Ishaq ibn Hisham. And for your part, won’t you boast of me as one of your conquests?”

“Believe me, lady, I am better at keeping confidences than you’ve heard,” I said. “Not even the captain of my guard knows where I’ve come today, and he is my dearest friend.”

She paused and stared at me, taking my measure.

“May I come again?” I asked.

Slowly, so slowly I would never have noticed had I not been watching every movement of her body, she nodded her consent.

“You will not regret it, lady,” I said, walking backward into the trees. “I will bring you news from all over al Andalus, from the halls of Cairo, from Baghdad, from every corner of the known world.” I nearly tripped over a fallen branch and righted myself. “Even from Damascus itself!”

She laughed, and the sound rang so lovely, so light, I thought nothing of the small sliver of darkness between the shutters of the window beneath her room, or how it disappeared as they pulled themselves shut.

Lazaro snorts in his sleep, jarring me out of my reverie. I push aside the thought of leaving his throat slit by his own knife and drag myself up out of the shadow of the stairs by my walking stick. It will take the rest of the night to reach the city’s outer gates at my limping pace, and the good part of early morning to beg a place in Lazaro’s caravan going north to Catalunya. For now that I know where Sofia is, it is as if God has touched His lips to my ear. It does not matter if she remembers me, or that I am blind and will likely die on my way to her. Some of my youth returns to my limbs. I grasp the braid around my neck and the kite string pulls tight once more.

I am coming to you, I swear. I am coming to you.

Adan found me in the library at Madinat al-Zahra late at night the Friday after I first met Sofia. Parchment bearing architectural designs for the Great Mosque lay thick over my lap and on the table before me. A smoking hashish pipe dangled absently from my hand. My father and I had returned from prayers at our private chamber within the mosque earlier in the day, when the sun stood at a right angle over the palace gardens. Kneeling there before God, I remembered Sofia’s fears. It had come to me how this private chamber, the palace, our reliance on the vizier only turned our heads from the trouble around us, though all the while it lapped at our necks. I had come straight to the library and instructed the scribes to bring me all the plans for the mosque from the time it was rebuilt from an old Visigoth church to the most recent additions under my father. I had also asked for the annals of the golden reign of my great-grandfather, Abd al-Rahman III.

By the time Adan came looking for me, daylight had fled the room. He carried an oil lamp. “Night’s full on, brother. Shouldn’t you be sleeping? Or at least visiting that pretty minister’s daughter, what’s her name? Iuliana?” He stopped beside me at the table and lifted the sheaf of papers. “What’s this?”

“Doesn’t your Shabbat keep you from laboring over these questions?” I said, rubbing my palms over my face.

“Don’t tell me you’re thinking of adding to the mosque again, Ishaq,” Adan said, letting the papers fall with a slap. “There are other ways to distinguish your reign when it comes, you know.”

“No,” I said. I was too tired even for our boyish needling. “I was thinking of knocking down walls, not building new ones.”

“What do you mean? Not destroying the mosque?” Adan pulled out a chair and sat beside me. His face pulled back in horror. “You would have a mob at your gates. Do you realize the city is already—”

“No, no.” I laid my hand over his arm to calm him. “Only the walls to the royal enclosure at the head of the mihrab. I dislike this praying separately from the people. I’ve been reading about my forefathers. They were great men, Adan. They never would have let a common warmonger like Sanchuelo….”

“Hssst,” Adan hissed. He jerked me up by my arm and dragged me after him through one of the library’s horseshoe-arched porticos, out into the night. Past the overlapping arcs of the fountain pool, past the torchlight’s radius, and into the thick of the shoulder-high hedge maze surrounding the gardens. I let him thread us deep into its bends before I pulled my arm from his grasp and stopped in my tracks.

“Are you mad?” Adan checked over his shoulders and leaned in close to my face. “Are you simple?”

“I’m the heir to the Umayyad caliphate, which you seem to have forgotten,” I said, straightening my sleeve.

“Oh, Ishaq.” Adan sounded weary. “You are truly God’s fool.”

I opened my mouth to protest, but Adan cut me off. “You think you will rule the caliphate when your father dies? Have you ever sat down with a minister of state? Helped plot any of the military campaigns? Drafted a mandate for the emirs?”

My face went hot, despite the cool air of the garden. “Of course I—”

“No,” Adan interrupted. “The vizier tolerates you because you fall prey so easily to women and fine horses and smoke. You are a pretty face for minor diplomats and their daughters. You’re no threat to him. But if you start speaking this way….” He let his words trail away.

I said nothing, my arms locked to my sides, my hands in fists.

“I tell you these things because I’m your friend, Ishaq,” Adan said. “You trust me, don’t you?”

I tried to swallow the ire crushing my windpipe. “Yes,” I said.

“If you want your throne back from Sanchuelo, I’m with you. But wait. Watch. Make allies. Sanchuelo is too strong now.”

I breathed the anger out of my lungs. I nodded.

“Good,” Adan said. “And in the meantime, go see that girl again, whichever one it is you’ve been mooning over all week.”

I stalked to the stables, forgetting my cloak and the book of poetry I had laid by my bedside to take with me when next I returned to Sofia. The wind ripped the taqiyah from my head and turned my hair wild as I rode. I only slowed when the orange groves appeared silhouetted against the bright moonlit sky. I dismounted and walked Anadil down to the river again. She snorted softly, the sound lost in the bubbling of the current. I stroked her muzzle and whispered to her, “Calm, Anadil, easy. I’ll be back.”