pools of blood.
After half an hour there, Jebel wanted to burn the place to the ground. It was even worse than Fruth, which he would have thought impossible just thirty minutes earlier.
“They live like animals,” he stormed to Tel Hesani, watching naked children chase a chicken down the middle of a street overflowing with sewage. When they caught the chicken, they ripped its head off and squirted each other with blood.
“Worse than animals,” Tel Hesani agreed.
“I can’t understand how they don’t all die from disease,” Jebel said.
“Many do,” Tel Hesani said. “Dozens die each week and are tossed into large pits on the outskirts of the town. If rumors are to be believed, local butchers raid those pits and feed cuts of the dead to their customers.”
Jebel almost vomited. “Did we bring food of our own?” he asked.
“We have strips of dried meat and canteens of fresh water,” said Tel Hesani. “We’ll find an inn and eat in our room.”
“Can’t we push on immediately?” Jebel asked.
“It will be night soon,” Tel Hesani said. “The border rats from Abu Nekhele and Abu Safafaha — traders who do not wish to pay a tithe or who are transporting illegal goods — try to sneak around Shihat in the darkness. Soldiers hunt for them — it passes for sport up here. We would probably wind up with our throats cut and our bodies dumped in a marsh. Or worse.”
Jebel shuddered at the thought of ending up on a butcher’s hook. “So be it. But try to find a clean inn.”
“I will do my best, master, but it might be easier said than done.”
The pair spent the next hour trudging the grimy streets of Shihat, going from one rundown inn to another. All were overflowing with rowdy traders and ugly, leering women. Alcohol flowed more freely than water — in some inns they didn’t even bother with water except to mop up the blood and mess.
“Let’s just take a room here,” Jebel said eventually, as they were about to pass another filthy hovel. He had seen men staring at them and figured it was only a matter of time before someone stabbed him and laid claim to his slave.
Tel Hesani opened the door for Jebel and bowed as the boy entered. Then he hurried in after him. Tel Hesani had traveled widely, but he’d never been in a place as foul as Shihat, and he felt almost as edgy as Jebel did.
They found themselves in a large, squalid room. There was a bar at one end, where a group of men and women stood, chattering loudly and drinking from grimy mugs. Tables were set in rows in the middle of the room. A dead pig lay across one of them. Its stomach had been sliced open a day or two ago, and three bloodstained, cackling children were rooting around inside its carcass, searching for any juicy tidbits that had been overlooked.
Closer to the door, people lay on mats and tried to sleep. It was difficult, what with drunks stumbling over them and cockroaches scurrying everywhere. There were cleaner mats by the walls, set on benches, but these were more expensive, and only a few were occupied. One person on a mat was dead — an old woman with skeletal limbs. Her body would be moved when the mat was needed and not before.
“Maybe we should take our chances with the border rats,” Jebel muttered.
“I’m tempted to agree with you, my lord,” Tel Hesani said. “But as disgusting as this hovel is, our chances of surviving the night are better inside than out.”
Jebel sighed. “Very well. Let’s get mats by the wall and make the best of things.”
“If I might make a suggestion, sire,” Tel Hesani murmured. “I think we should ask for a mat on the floor. We don’t want people to know that we’re wealthy.”
Jebel didn’t like the thought of sleeping on the floor, where cockroaches and other foul insects would have an easy time finding him, but he knew that it was sound advice. Nodding glumly, he fell in behind the slave and followed him as he headed for the bar to haggle for a mat.
As they were picking their way past the tables, a large man with a half-shaven head and two stumps where his little fingers should be put a hand on Tel Hesani’s chest and stopped him. The man was an Um Safafaha — every male in that country of savages had his little fingers amputated when he came of age. Looking up slowly from the card game he was involved in, the man sneered, “We don’t let slaves sleep here.”
Tel Hesani said nothing, only looked at his feet. There was nothing he could do in this position. Slaves had no rights in Abu Aineh. If the savage decided to kill him, only his master could fight or argue on his behalf.
“Please,” said Jebel quietly. “We don’t want trouble. We just want a mat.”
The Um Safafaha glared at Jebel, then looked around. Seeing no one else with the pair, he smiled viciously. “Are you traveling alone, boy?”
Jebel gulped. Like any honorable Um Aineh, he tried never to lie, but he sensed this wasn’t a time for the truth. “No,” he wheezed. “We’re part of a trading party.”
“I don’t think so,” the Um Safafaha said. The other men at the table had carried on playing, but something in the savage’s tone alerted them to the possibility of bloodshed. Since a good fight was the only thing better than a game of cards, they focused on the young um Wadi and his tall, silent slave.
Jebel was afraid, but he thought fast. In a fair fight, he wouldn’t stand a chance. He could try to bribe his way out, but if the Um Safafaha knew about the gold and silver they were carrying, he’d kill Jebel and take it all. If they ran, they’d never make it to the door. He thought about calling for the law, but he was sure that soldiers were well paid by the innkeepers to turn a blind eye to matters such as this.
Jebel decided to try a bluff. If he joked with the Um Safafaha and offered to get him a drink while they waited for the rest of his party to turn up, he might buy them some time. The savage would probably return to his game and lose interest in Jebel and Tel Hesani. But before he could chance the bluff, somebody spoke from the table beside him.
“I would be very careful, good sir, if I were you.”
“Most cautious indeed,” said another voice.
The Um Safafaha and Jebel both glanced sideways. They saw two sharply dressed men, one clad in a long green tunic, the other in a red shirt and blue trousers. The pair were eating from a basket of exotic food and supping wine from crystal glasses. They raised the glasses and said, “Your health, sir.”
The savage squinted. The men were of slight build, with delicate hands, the sort of people he’d normally knock over rather than walk around. But there was something about these two which made him wary.
“It don’t pay to poke your nose into other people’s business,” the Um Safafaha growled.
“That is the truth of truths, wise sir,” the man in the tunic agreed. “The very truth, indeed, by which my partner and I lead our modest lives. In your position, we would under any other circumstances take a grave view of one who presumed to interfere in our private affairs.”
“But in this case, my noble friend,” the other man said, smoothing back the hairs of a light mustache, “we feel compelled, in the spirit of cross-border relations, to intercede. We have spent much time in your country and developed something of a… I hesitate to say love… a fondness for your people.”
“In short,” the first man concluded, “we would rather not see you killed. Especially since you are so close to us that the spray of your blood might stain our recently purchased finery.”
The Um Safafaha blinked dumbly. Jebel and the rest of the card players stared. Tel Hesani kept his head down. The two men at the neighboring table just smiled.
“You think this Um Aineh pup could kill me?” the Um Safafaha finally roared. “That’s an insult!”
“Not at all,” the man in the trousers tutted. “I am guessing you have not spent much time in Abu Aineh. You do not know how to interpret their tattoos.”
“The boy bears the brand of a quester,” the man in the tunic said, pointing to Jebel’s arm. “It is the mark of one questing to Tubaygat — Tubga, as I believe it’s known in your fair land.”
The Um Safafaha’s gaze lingered on Jebel’s coiled tattoo. When he looked up at the boy’s face again, he was less aggressive than before. “You’re going to the fire god’s mountain?” he asked.
Jebel nodded. The savage with the half-shaven head spat on the floor. Then he put his bare right foot on the spit and smeared it into the boards. Jebel knew enough about the man’s customs to recognize this as an apology.
“I was only having fun with you,” the Um Safafaha grunted.
“That’s all right,” Jebel said, trying not to stutter.
