dreamed all my life of a blue rose, a true blue, one that would rival sapphires in color and the most expensive perfumes in scent.” So my expectations were also his. “And we have heard in the west that you have grown such a thing.”
The emir made a slight motion of his hand, and a man stepped out of the shadows at the edge of the courtyard to bring the king a pillow, on which he settled himself gratefully.
“You then ask to see such a rose?” asked the emir. One of his spotted cats gave a long yawn, full of teeth, as though in disdain. I looked toward the grower, worrying that he might be offended by the king’s implied insult to his best blue, but he only beamed as though proud to have brought the emir such an amusing guest.
“I seek even more, glorious one,” said King Haimeric. “Even we in the west know that an emir’s power, to help or to harm, to raise up and to cast down, is unlimited. I would like the rootstock of such a rose for my own.”
At this the emir began to laugh, in what looked to me genuine amusement. “And this is your only request?”
“I do have other requests, glorious one,” the king continued, undaunted. “We would like to inquire if you have perhaps seen friends of ours, a group of four westerners including a wizard. The wizard has red hair.” The emir’s smile disappeared abruptly.
There was a brief, very tense moment in which I could have sworn the air crackled. Ascelin nudged me with his foot and let his hand rest, as though casually, on his hilt. I kept my eyes on the silent automaton behind the emir and put together the first words of a lifting spell, to transport the king up and out of here.
But then the emir smiled again. It did not look to me like the same smile. “I am delighted to help such amusing guests. And you
IV
The emir clapped his hands once, and half a dozen young women darted into the courtyard. Their faces were veiled so that only their eyes showed, but the rest of their clothing was very brief, and their loose, silken trousers did nothing to hide their legs. They whisked us to our feet with gentle touches under the elbow and escorted us, wordless but giggling, out of the courtyard, down more passageways, and into a low-ceilinged outer room whose single window led to a balcony looking down over the sun-drenched city and the Dark Sea. An open doorway led to a white-tiled room where hot water was already beginning to steam. The women left us for a moment but were back almost immediately with a tray of fresh fruit, a hot pitcher of what I assumed was tea, bread, and salt.
Ascelin plunged his finger into the salt and licked it off. Maffi joined him. “It’s all right now,” Ascelin said in a low voice when King Haimeric opened his mouth to reprove him. “They wouldn’t share salt with us if they meant to kill us.”
“But why should they want to kill us?” asked the king.
“The emir has seen my father,” said Hugo in a tight voice.
“We were greeted as something to amuse a bored old man,” said Ascelin, “but everything changed as soon as you mentioned Sir Hugo.”
Maffi nudged Ascelin. “Not in front of the slave girls, my masters,” he murmured.
The slave girls stood across the room, watching and whispering to each other. “Thank you,” said the king to them. “We’ll call if we need anything else.” They trooped out, giggling again, and one winked over her shoulder at Hugo.
“They are slaves?” said Joachim to Maffi. “I fear I did not recognize them as such. I wonder what sort of ‘duties,’ degrading and debilitating to the soul, they are expected to perform in a place like this.”
Ascelin closed the door carefully behind them. I poured a cup from the pitcher. It neither looked nor smelled like tea.
I hesitated, but Maffi took the cup out of my hand. “It’s coffee, my masters,” he said with a grin. “We of the desert were drinking coffee long before traders to the far East began bringing back tea. Tea is such an insipid brew in comparison; I’m not sure why you westerners ever took it up.”
He began an explanation of where coffee came from, somewhere far to the south of the desert where dry sand gave way to wet jungles, but I was not listening. Instead I stood quietly to one side, probing with magic. Even though I had snapped at Ascelin, I trusted his hunter’s instincts more than I trusted anyone in the emir’s employ.
I could find no one actively working magic in the palace, though the presence of the automatons made it hard to make sense of all the magical currents. But outside, either in the city or perhaps even beyond the city, I sensed a disturbance in the forces of magic, suggesting someone-or something-of enormous power. I came back to myself with a start, not wanting to let whoever or whatever was there knew I had spotted them. Either Kaz-alrhun, I thought, or an Ifrit.
“Is my father here?” asked Hugo in a low voice at my shoulder.
Since I had never met his father, I would not recognize his mind even if I touched it, but I knew his wizard. I let myself slide along the surface of the forces of magic, slipping past the minds of all those in the palace, a long process as there seemed to be a remarkable number of people here. But I did not find Evrard. “Not here,” I said at last.
Hugo nodded glumly. “I hadn’t expected it would be that easy. At first I hoped that if the emir liked King Haimeric he’d be willing to assist us, to command his dependents to help us investigate their disappearance. But as soon as the king mentioned the red-haired wizard and I saw the emir’s face change, I knew he
The king sampled the coffee and declared it strong, quite unlike tea, and much better than he expected. I tried some as well and agreed with his assessment. The aroma slipped into the consciousness as delicately as a distant melody, and a long hot swallow made one feel rather abruptly awake. I wondered if King Haimeric was planning to take home to the queen some of the leaves or berries or whatever it was brewed from.
The sun had set, touching the Dark Sea with fingers of gold, when the emir sent for us. I had spent the afternoon making further desultory and unsuccessful attempts to unravel the spell on the onyx ring. Back in the emir’s courtyard of old age, candles had been lit inside paper lanterns, giving everything a fairy glow. The air was no longer hot but still warm, and lay on our arms like a sensuous touch.
Freshly bathed, dressed not in our goat’s-hair desert robes but in the cleanest clothes from the bottom of our packs, we reclined on padded benches while the slave girls brought us iced sherbet and almonds. The last place we had had an iced dish had been at King Warin’s castle, tucked into the foothills below icy peaks. I tried to calculate the nearest place from which the emir could obtain ice, and how expensive the transportation would be, and gave it up.
A tune then arose from within the arcaded shadows beyond the light of the lanterns, and the girls began to dance, swaying back and forth, twirling around each other in a complicated pattern that I couldn’t quite follow. Their bare feet moved quickly and surely, and dark eyes flashed at us from above their veils. Then the music paused and again they served us, this time with diced lamb and pickled eggplant.
“If the old man is a prisoner somewhere,” commented Hugo to me with a grin in his voice, “I hope he’s got entertainment like this.”
At last the emir spoke. “So you have come all this way in search of a blue rose, western travelers? I would have thought it would have been simpler to send a message to your agents in Xantium than to make such a difficult journey yourselves.”
If any of the western kings kept agents in Xantium, the royal court of Yurt certainly never had. But King Haimeric did not respond to this part of the emir’s remark. “Agents and messages are no use when one wants to see a blue rose oneself. It was messages and rumors that told me there might be such a thing here, but if you have really developed a blue rose I thought it unlikely that you would be willing to sell the rootstock, or even if the
