Jack Cloudie

Omar fought down the rising sensation of confusion, all his certainties, collapsing around him. ‘But why?’

‘There was one week, Omar, when you didn’t wear that perpetual foolish grin of yours. It was a few years ago when you went down to Haffa’s graveyard to try and find the tombstone of your mother.’

‘It was not there,’ said Omar, remembering. But then, mother had just been a slave. How few there were left in the house to remember her after the plague had struck Haffa.

Marid Barir walked to the window and pointed to the hill at the side of the house. ‘You will find her out there.’

‘That is the House of Barir’s family graveyard,’ said Omar.

‘I buried the best of them out there, Omar, after the plague. My wives, my daughters, my sons, my brothers. All of them, but one.’

‘I-’ Omar started.

‘It is not fitting for the last of this house’s blood to die in bondage, Omar Barir. Not even the foolish result of a dalliance with one of my wife’s maids.’

‘But …’ Omar looked at Marid Barir. The great, wealthy Marid Barir, so shrunk by age, by the worries of freemen. My father. Omar was rendered nearly speechless. All these years, he had known he was not fated for the life of a slave. But this? He had never imagined this. ‘Am I to inherit the water farms, the great house, to lead our people?’

‘You misunderstand my intentions, Omar. I have granted you your freedom. I do not intend to shackle you with anything else, least of all running the House of Barir.’

‘You do not intend to …’ The implications of the man’s cold words struck Omar in his heart.

‘My father,’ said Marid Barir, ‘your grandfather, was a renowned caravan master, but he left me nothing. I raised the money to lead my own caravan. I parlayed one trade route into twenty, and then multiplied that into enough to buy a seat on the guild of water farmers, to pay for the first womb mage with the guild spells for our salt-fish. I did this by myself. An ancestor’s wealth is a gilded cage, a curse you cannot escape. Your grandfather was wise enough not to trap his sons in such a cage. This is the gift I pass along to you. It’s a most valuable one.’

‘Then I cannot stay on the desalination lines?’

‘I could not demean the family’s name by having the last son of Barir toiling alongside nomads and slaves.’

‘Then what shall I do?’

‘What is it that you are always saying? Something will come along …’

Omar gawked at his master. No, not my master. My father. Who would have guessed that freedom would feel so uncertain?

‘Congratulations, my son, you have discovered the joys of independence, the consequence of being a freeman. If I had known it would silence your prattling so effectively I might have done it years ago.’

Omar waved his ownership papers at the man, no longer his master. ‘What shall I be?’

‘We are what heaven wills us,’ said Marid Barir.

‘What shall I do? Tell me what I should do now!’ Omar begged.

Marid Barir tapped his greying hair. ‘Think.’ He barked an order and the house manager opened the door. ‘And go.’

Omar looked at the scroll of paper in his hand. It had all the weight of a length of steel pipe from a salt-fish tank.

The house manager shut the door as Omar — Ibn no more — Barir stumbled out.

‘You managed to remove the grin from his mouth, master.’

‘For an hour at least,’ said Marid Barir. ‘Now then, we must make time to prepare.’

The house manager nodded sadly and began to unfurl documents from the satchel he had with him, laying them across the marble table.

Omar blundered down the corridors of the fortified house, all thoughts of the views the pavilions’ windows and gardens afforded an idler forgotten as he struggled to come to terms with his new status. Free. Every certainty of his life broken into pieces. Is this what greatness feels like?

Glancing up he saw Shadisa at the end of the corridor, walking serenely with one of the house cooks, an icebox of fish under her bare arm. Shadisa, the most beautiful of all the women in the house. And he was free. Free to marry her. Surely her scowling-faced father could not object now? Why, if anything, he should thank his stars that the last son of Barir favoured his lowly daughter!

Omar sprinted up to her and held out his ownership papers as if they were a talisman. ‘Shadisa! I am a freeman. I have my papers.’

She looked at Omar as if he had gone mad.

‘Do you not understand? I am not just any freeman. I am the blood of Marid Barir, and he has-’ Omar hesitated, about to say, cast me off. ‘I am my own man.’

Shadisa took the ownership papers Omar was proffering with her spare hand, scanning the contents, and then thrust them back towards Omar as if she was furious at him. ‘You are a fool, Omar. It is you who do not understand.’

‘But …’

‘He has not done this for you,’ said Shadisa, ‘but for himself. It is only to ease his conscience.’

‘I may seek your father out now,’ pleaded Omar. ‘As a freeman.’

Shadisa’s full lips pursed and she forced the papers into Omar’s hand, shaking her head. ‘Go away Omar.’ She turned and fled down the corridor, leaving Omar more confused than ever.

‘Stay away from the house, water farmer,’ warned the cook. ‘Blood of Marid Barir,’ she grunted. ‘After all of this time, to acknowledge you now. Such a fool, such a cruel fool.’

‘Where am I to go?’ Omar nearly yelled out the words.

‘Go back to your wild nomad friend and your stinking salt tanks,’ spat the cook, running after Shadisa.

Omar looked at the crumpled roll of paper in his hand and smashed a fist into the wall, shouting a roar of frustration. Free and poor. Is that why she has rejected me?

He stalked off in search of Alim. In reality, the old nomad had been more of a father towards Omar than Marid Barir ever had. Old Alim would know what was to be done.

For a second, Omar thought that the water traders had changed their minds and returned to the farm. But there were no water-butt laden sandpedes among the group on the rise of the dunes behind the desalination lines, only camels and tall white-robed figures sitting high and proud in their saddles, the bells of the milk goats they kept with them jingling. Alim was walking towards the newcomers, without even the protection of a rifle.

‘Alim! Alim!’ Omar cried. The old water farmer spotted the young man and turned back, orange sand spilling down in front of his boots.

‘Who are these people?’ demanded Omar as Alim drew close.

‘My people,’ said Alim. ‘Tribesmen of the Mutrah.’

‘But you said they would kill you if you walked among them again.’

‘The family of the chief I duelled and killed are all dead now,’ said Alim. ‘Slain in another feud. There are new princes of the sands riding under the moon, men who remember me more kindly. I may return to their fold.’

‘You can’t leave, Alim. I am a freeman. Look. I have my papers.’

‘He finally recognized you?’ Alim sighed.

Omar stared in disbelief at the old nomad. ‘You knew?’

‘Any man too blind to look into Marid Barir’s face and see his eyes in yours could feel your back and know you for what you are from your lack of slave scars.’

‘I can still work with you, Alim. Not here, perhaps, but we can travel to the water farms down south. They are as short-staffed as we are after the plague. They will welcome two expert workers.’

‘I am called,’ said Alim. ‘This is my farm no longer. Wait here, boy. I will speak for you.’ He walked back up the hill and Omar watched the old nomad talking to the tribesmen and pointing back down the dunes towards Omar. The conversation became heated and Alim returned, followed by an old crone with a large hump on her back, bent to the side and filled with water — the result of womb magic. Perhaps her own? Is she a witch of Alim’s people?