Jack Cloudie

‘He said that, did he, guardsman?’ muttered the old slave, her knowing eyes appraising him. ‘Well, he is right enough. Old Nudar was once wet nurse in the jahani academy and as much a mother as he and hundreds of other jahani ever had. My boys, my darling boys. All grown up now and scattered across the empire. No little jahani to bounce on my knee now. How is Boulous, little Boulous, so quick and clever?’

‘Not so little now,’ said Omar.

‘No, not so little. He’ll make old Nudar proud one day. He’ll rise further than them all.’ She grasped Omar’s hand suspiciously and turned it over in her fingers.

‘Can you read my future from my palm?’ asked Omar.

Her response was a gurgle like wet laughter. ‘No, but your past I find puzzling. Your hand is far too tanned to be that of a nobleman’s son and your sword practice calluses are new, yet formed across such skin as you only develop from years of manual labour. An aqueduct line worker?’

‘Water farmer,’ said Omar. He looked at the woman with a newfound respect. She was as canny as a witch, but could she really be trusted when the colour of her skin suggested she had come from Jackelian stock?

‘I was not taken by force from Jackals by slave traders,’ said the woman, seeing the direction of Omar’s gaze and running a prune-like hand along her chalk-white cheeks. ‘I was found on the slopes of a mountain by a caravan, abandoned as a baby, when they took pity on my cries. Oh yes, it’s not only our nomads that do that. Uplanders like big strapping sons to carry on their crofts too. Old Nudar was lucky, as are you, I think. There are not many ex- slaves among the ranks of those who patrol the palace — you are the first I have seen.’

‘There are few men in the guards with my prodigious talents.’

‘Well then, prodigiously talented one, what do you need my assistance for?’

Omar told her the story, or as much as he dared. Of his and Shadisa’s origins in the far-off town of Haffa and how he had to find Shadisa again to tell her the truth of how her wicked new master really treated his slaves.

Nudar shook her head in astonishment that Omar would risk so much for another slave. ‘I don’t know who is the bigger fool, a guardsman who would want such a woman, or a woman who would not want such a man?’

‘You will take me to her?’

‘Old Nudar knows a little more than Boulous in this matter,’ said the old woman. ‘The girl you seek is already as good as dead.’

‘I saw her this afternoon and she was as alive as you or I,’ protested Omar.

‘Those who would enter the grand vizier’s inner circle must first prove their loyalty to him,’ said Nudar. ‘It is not just the guardsmen who have an initiation ceremony, although I am sure yours is far more honourable than Immed Zahharl’s. The rite is murder and I have heard that a new initiate stands willing to take his place in the grand vizier’s retinue. The slave you would help escape, Shadisa, is to be the sweetmeat the brutes will toy with tonight in the library of the womb mages, and when they are done, her corpse will disappear into one of their acid vats and all you will be left with are your memories of her.’

Shadisa! How could she have ever thought that the grand vizier was a master who meant well for her? Who would care for her better than I could? Is she such a fool?

‘What is the name of the man who would do this to her?’ demanded Omar.

Nudar shrugged. ‘I do not know. It is not wise to inquire too closely into such things, not in a court where even the secret police’s killers can be made to vanish without a trace. I can try to find out for you …’

‘Do so, and take me to Shadisa,’ said Omar.

‘Even if you find the man and deal with him, there will be other initiates,’ said Nudar. ‘The only female slaves who are safe in this place have faces that have seen as many seasons pass as mine.’

‘She will not die tonight. I will see to it.’ I saved her before, that evening in the desert outside Haffa, and she did not thank me for it once; let’s hope history doesn’t repeat itself. It doesn’t matter, I’ll save her a hundred times if I have to, and carry her away from her murderous rich master screaming and kicking.

The woman laughed her wet rasping laugh again. ‘Well, why not? It’s been a long time since I saw such recklessness committed for a motive other than personal gain. Follow me and act as if you are assigned to the pavilion. Swagger, don’t waddle like a water farmer trying to conserve enough energy to get through a day’s labouring.’

Omar followed the old woman into the pavilion, a series of chambers and courtyards, walls inlaid with abstract frescoes in the traditional style, channels running with water threading through the corridors before veining out to opulent fountains that flaunted the grand vizier’s wealth. Omar wondered how Shadisa would react to his presence here. She has to listen to me this time, doesn’t she? Once he explained the true nature of her duplicitous owner, surely she would feel some gratitude towards him? Trust him enough to spirit her away from the wicked designs of Immed Zahharl?

Omar’s thoughts were interrupted by a ripple of awareness that seemed to pass like a breeze through the courtiers and staff in the courtyard he was walking through. Before he could question Nudar as to its cause, he caught his first sight of a phalanx of seven-foot-high grey-skinned giants advancing down a side corridor towards them.

‘The Caliph Eternal,’ hissed Nudar. ‘To your knees, boy.’

All around the courtyard, the staff were dropping to the floor in reverence, and Omar followed their example. Two of the giants were carrying a sedan chair, the windows on either side covered by purple curtains. The other grey-skinned creatures formed a bodyguard marching in a protective square around the ebony-black carriage. The caliph’s august presence was heavily concealed, which was just as well, as the stories of those commoners who had lost their heads for staring upon him were legion.

A green-robed courtier marching in front of the sedan chair banged a jewel-headed staff on the marble tiles, making the courtyard echo. ‘Make way for his most esteemed majesty, Caliph Eternal Akil Jaber Issman — Emperor of Cassarabia, thunderbolt of heaven, immortal prince of princes, eternal sword of the Holy Cent and protector of the hundred faces of the one true god.’

The caliph’s bodyguards might have been dressed as guardsmen in their golden yellow armour, but their phenomenal size and lumpen ugliness indicated they were anything but. Their eyes swept over the courtiers around them as they marched. As well as their swords they carried crossbows so large they wouldn’t have looked out of place in the outer circle of a city siege.

Suddenly it came to Omar where he had seen such hides before. Such ugliness briefly surfaced on the waters around Haffa in the hour when the town’s fishermen threw the spoiled share of their day’s catch back into the harbour. The harbour thrashing with the grey muzzles of … ‘Sharks!’

‘Quiet!’ whispered Nudar furiously.

One of the creatures broke away from the caliph’s bodyguard and loped towards where Omar and Nudar were kneeling. The shadow of the huge creature fell over them as Omar felt the monster’s hand land on the guard of his scimitar, drawing it out an inch as if to check it was genuine. The two nostril slits along the side of its muzzle sniffed at the nape of Omar’s neck, warm fetid breath blowing against his hair. The creature made a low grunting noise, as if satisfied, and loped back after the retreating sedan chair.

Omar watched the back of the column disappearing deeper into the pavilion. ‘What was that thing doing sniffing my hair?’

‘Your sweat,’ whispered Nudar, her eyes glancing up from where they had been fixed to the tiles with such intensity that he might have believed the secrets of the world to be engraved on the floor. ‘The beyrog was checking that you were a guardsman and authorized to carry a weapon in the palace, not an assassin waiting to attack the Caliph Eternal.’

‘How could it know that from my sweat?’

‘Your rations up in the fortress carry hidden ingredients,’ said Nudar. ‘That is why you are confined there for so much of your training. It takes time for your body to begin to sweat like a noble guardsman, giving you command of draks other than the beast that is born from your own blood. Beyrogs can smell steel and the charges of a gun, they can smell poison, and some say that they can smell treason itself. If it had smelt such a weapon on a mere slave like old Nudar, it would have torn me apart.’

That’s why my training draks became more compliant the longer I stayed at the citadel. And I thought they were just getting used to me.

‘Biologicks,’ said Omar, not able to hide his distaste of the dark magic. ‘I was not daunted by them, do not think that I was, not even for a moment.’