The Diviner

The hiss of the blade, the fingers snarling in his hair—the sinewy wrist in his grip, the crunch of his fist against bone—and they were on the floor, rolling, tangled and tumbling like a rapist and a furious virgin, all in silence. It was not a knife the assassin wielded but an axe that skittered away, ringing as it hit a brass tub in the corner. Azzad kicked and struck, overturning a table, and felt liquid splash on his face as a pitcher went flying. He heard clay crack against the central tent pole and shatter. Shaking his eyes clear, he grunted as a knee drove into his belly and knocked the wind from his lungs. Desperately, Azzad pushed off with a foot and rolled the pair of them over and over again until his ribs hit the tent pole.

Suddenly the hands were gone from his throat. Gasping for breath, he staggered to his feet. The man’s lips were parted in a soundless cry, his eyes gaping wide with astonishment, his hands twitching limply—and his legs moved not at all. Azzad kicked him onto his side and saw a thick shard of the pitcher’s broken handle protruding from his spine and a small spreading bloodstain on his white bedshirt.

Not in all his time here had Azzad ever sensed that the tent was guarded by night. He’d been a fool to think otherwise, he realized, when a golden-skinned face appeared at the tent flap, wide-eyed. Azzad waved a casual hand at him to indicate he was unharmed, and the boy vanished.

Wearily, he sat on his carpets and worked on catching his breath. It seemed he wasn’t quite as recovered as he’d thought. He kept an eye on his assailant, curious about how long it would take him to die.

A little while later, Fadhil came into the tent at a run. “Azzad! What happened?”

“As you see,” he managed, irked that he was still so exhausted. After this paltry exertion, he was as wrung out and sore as if he were a rug and a servant had just washed and beaten him. He wondered how long the Shagara would give him to sleep it off before they sent him on his way.

“Who is this man?” Fadhil demanded.

“Your other patient. Not just that, of course.” He watched as Fadhil finally noticed the shard sticking out of the man’s spine. “Perhaps Chal Kabir is needed,” he suggested mildly.

“I—yes, of course, you’re right,” the young man stammered. “I’ll find him at once.” He cast one last appalled look at the dying man and fled the tent.

A little while later he was back, with Kabir and two women who could only be Challa Meryem and young Leyliah (both were beautiful, Azzad noted). They scarcely had time to exclaim in horror when Abb Shagara himself burst in.

“What has been done here?” Meryem demanded.

“Ask him,” Azzad advised. “If he can still talk.”

She knelt to examine the wound, the breath hissing in her teeth.“He will live a cripple—”

“If we allow him to live,” said Abb Shagara. Drawing a loose white robe more closely around him, he went on, “Azzad, tell me what happened.”

“He tried to kill me.” He nodded toward the corner. “His axe is right over there.”

Kabir went to pick it up, turning it over and over in his hands before giving it to Abb Shagara with a significant arch of his brows. They all looked grim-faced at the gleaming steel blade set in a haft of carved bone.

“I wish to know,” Akkil Akkem Akkim Akkar intoned, “how did this man enter the dawa’an sheymma with this in his possession? How did a man who is not sick feign illness so well as to fool the most accomplished of the Challi Dawa’an? How did this man outrage our tents by attempting the life of my friend Azzad? And how,” he finished harshly, “did a Geysh Dushann come into the camp of the Shagara undetected?”

“Well?” Meryem asked, slapping the agonized face below her. “Speak!” As his lips drew back in a ghastly grin, she slapped him again. “Speak, and I promise I’ll kill you quickly.” When there was no response, she leaned closer and said with gentle ferocity, “I can make you live. But you will never again walk, never again have strength in your hands, never again enjoy a woman. Speak and die quickly—or stay silent and live to be very, very old.”

Azzad gulped, and blinked, and was very, very glad Abb Shagara liked him.

“This al-Ma’aliq—his death is my honor,” the man rasped. “He lives. I have no honor. Kill me.”

“Why must he die for your honor?” Abb Shagara asked.

“The Sheyqa our sister—” He coughed, and the spasm widened his eyes with fresh agony.

“I know the rest,” Azzad said. “I had better tell you. Sheyqa Nizzira of Rimmal Madar obliterated all my family in a single night. There was a banquet at her palace. The al-Ma’aliq men not killed by poison were slain by sword and axe. As for the women and children—they were burned alive inside Beit Ma’aliq. To my shame and sorrow, I escaped—through no cunning of my own. But now I am the only one left.” He glared at the assassin. “And I will be avenged.”

Kabir caught his breath. “This Sheyqa of your country—she is Geysh Dushann?”

“I’ve never heard ‘dushann’ refer to anything but the smoke from a fire. As for a ‘geysh,’ an army—I can tell you only what I know. Her ancestor came from a tribe called Ammarad and termed herself Ammara Izzad.” He shrugged. “A reminder of the crimson harvest of barbarian blood.”

“The Geysh Dushann,” Kabir said heavily, “are all of the Ammarad.”

Azzad rubbed an aching shoulder and said nothing.

“What did your family do, to incur the wrath of this Sheyqa?” asked Abb Shagara.

Softly, Fadhil said, “Power, envy, money, land, greed.”

Azzad nodded.

“But to murder a whole tribe—” Abb Shagara shook his head. “To poison men inside her own tent, to slay them with swords and axes, to burn women and children in their home—this Sheyqa is a monster.” Pausing, he bowed slightly to Azzad. “I am honored, Azzad al-Ma’aliq, that our enemy is also your enemy. I now accept this Sheyqa Nizzira as the enemy of the Shagara.”

Azzad knew the enormity of this declaration in his own country. It sounded very much as if things were the same here. And he knew what was required of him in return. Rising unsteadily to his feet, he said the words gladly. “I am honored, Abb Shagara, that my enemy is also your enemy. I now accept your enemies as mine own, forever.”

“Wait.” Meryem rose lithely to her feet. “I shall have something to say about this. Or does the Abb Shagara think he rules this tribe alone?”

“Mother—” the boy began.

Azzad stared, but he managed to keep his astonishment unspoken.

“My son, if Azzad has made an enemy of this woman, and if this woman is of the Ammarad, and if we accept all of them as our enemies, and if—”

“Mother! Do you question the righteousness of—”

“And if,” she repeated undaunted, “we all wish to live our lives without constantly looking over our shoulders, then we had best think hard and talk harder about this matter. We Shagara heal anyone who comes to us. We have never denied the dawa’an sheymma to anyone, not even the Geysh Dushann. If you declare the whole of the Ammarad enemy, my son, and not just the Geysh Dushann, you will tear the desert apart.”

“But Ammarad beget Geysh Dushann!”

“Yes, and train them to come and work their evil and then drift away like the smoke they are named for. If it becomes known that we refuse an entire tribe our healing, one of two things will happen: either the Za’aba Izim will accept the Ammarad as their enemies and make war upon them, or they will fear that one day we will deny them, so they will make war upon us.”

“Never,” Kabir stated. “We are their protection.”

“And if they do battle with us wearing our protections around their necks and on their arms and beaten into the grips of their swords?”

The old man shrugged. “Ayia, other tribes will come to our defense.”

“And thus, as I have said, tear the desert apart.” Meryem folded her arms. “Now, should this happen, and I believe it could, think of this Sheyqa who is a sister to the Ammarad. There is a whole nation behind her, not just a tribe. She ordered the butchery of an entire family, and it was done. How many al-Ma’aliq died, Azzad? Hundreds? Thousands? And yet there was no outcry from the people?”

“None.”

“Ayia,” Meryem said heavily, “they did not protest the injustice. They do as they are told. My son, could we