me.”
Ba’adem and the two boys left; Meryem lingered with Azzad. “My son told me you might say something of the kind. He will agree to keep one stallion to breed to Shagara and Harirri mares, but he says that you will take the other stallion and the two mares or he will be extremely angry.”
“Challa Meryem—”
“Abb Shagara has said it, and so it shall be.” Her lips twitched in a smile. “Relent, Aqq Azzad. Leyliah says she fully expects to see her sons riding horses when they’re big enough. And at the rate her first son by Razhid is growing—”
“She has a son?”
“A fine little boy with his father’s eyes. His name is Fadhil. And now I will have my bath, if it’s convenient.”
Azzad called for servants to escort Meryem upstairs to Jemilha’s old rooms. He sat a while longer in the maqtabba, planning the next several generations of horses. From Sihabbah to Hazganni and in every town between, people stopped and stared whenever Azzad and Fadhil rode through. In five years he would have horses enough to sell to rich men who wanted to travel swiftly and look like sheyqirs. And then, with the money and the influence . . . he fingered the hazzir at his breast, his thumb caressing the hawk. Retribution. Yes. At last.
Azzad gave Ba’adem Harirri and the Shagara cousins three fat, comfortable donkeys on which to ride home. They had grown familiar enough with horses to be chagrined at the alteration. As they rode away, Azzad hid a smile: they sat the donkeys as they would horses, pretending for their own pride.
Meryem intended to go with Azzad and Fadhil to Hazganni and ride back to the Shagara spring encampment from there. Accordingly, they mounted up, with Meryem on a white stallion Azzad knew could only have belonged to one of the executed Qoundi Ammar. He himself rode Khamsin, as always, and Fadhil spent the first miles out of Sihabbah struggling with one of the new mares.
“How did you ever manage these brutes all that way from the camp?” he asked, sweating as he fought the reins.
In answer, she removed the glove from her right hand and showed him a new ring. “All four of us have one of these, made by Abb Shagara personally.”
Turquoise brought luck and protected both horse and rider. Fadhil had been wearing a turquoise armband ever since leaving the Shagara, yet he was having trouble with the mare.
“My son is becoming adept at hazziri for horses and riders,” Meryem added.
Fadhil made a face. “He uses the blood of the horses as well as the riders,” he accused. “Is that not so? It’s the only way he could accomplish it.”
“Perhaps. Perhaps not.” She smiled sweetly. “But surely you’ve been riding so long that a little mare like that cannot be too much trouble!”
The residence of the al-Gallidh was in the finest quarter of Hazganni, a district of whitewashed three-story houses and high-walled gardens. Tiled roofs of red and blue and yellow and green—and sometimes wildly patterned with all of these—were shaded by palms and plane trees, and white-flowered oleander bushes that grew almost as tall as the houses. Oranges and lemons were in bloom. Pink and white and scarlet geraniums overflowed window boxes, and jasmine spread fragrance everywhere. Hazganni could almost have been Dayira Azreyq but for two things: There were no horses in the narrow streets, only donkeys; and there was no looming bulk of a palace always on the edge of one’s vision.
Meryem so far forgot her habitual poise as to exclaim in amazement at the variety of foliage, the bustle of the streets, the wares in the zouqs, the bright clothes of the citizenry. Azzad grinned to himself and made a mental promise to have Jemilha take Meryem shopping. The girl was nearly as accomplished as Azzad’s sisters at picking an entire market clean of bargains.
They were welcomed into the house of al-Gallidh by Bazir himself. When he learned the identity of his feminine visitor, he called for his niece to come and greet her. Jemilha, who had recently celebrated her eighteenth birthday, was as yet unwed and showed no signs of choosing a husband. Azzad worried sometimes that her husband would think breeding horses too risky a venture and convince her not to continue, but because he could do nothing about her choice, he shrugged his concerns away. Besides, with Abb Shagara’s gift, Azzad would have enough money to buy out her husband, if it came to it.
Bazir led them into his maqtabba. Meryem’s eyes went wide at the sight of so many shelves laden with so many books; seeing this, Bazir offered her anything in his collection. “Azzad has told me the Shagara ladies are learned indeed.”
Meryem shook her head, then gestured to the books. “
“Tell me your interests, lady, and I will do what I can to advise you. And my daughter will be able to suggest a few books as well. A new shop recently opened, specializing in foreign works. Perhaps you would like to visit this place with her during your stay.”
Thus was Meryem Shagara conquered. Azzad hid a grin as he sorted through messages. Bazir kept one basket for him and one for Fadhil; those waiting for the tabbib were from patients, and the notes for Azzad were from various ladies. He excused himself and went upstairs to his room to read them. Remembering Fadhil’s teasing about “one lady in particular,” he called up faces to go with the names. None stirred his blood beyond a fleeting memory of pleasure, and his heart was completely untouched. Which of them could Fadhil have meant?
The next morning, while Fadhil attended his patients and Jemilha took Meryem shopping, Azzad went to see the dead trees for himself. It had been difficult to convince people that trees were necessary outside the walls. What was obvious to all in Dayira Azreyq had been anything but obvious here. Trees held back the desert. It was that simple. On his first visit to the city, Azzad had been appalled at the nearness of the dunes that surrounded it. Even worse, every year a little more farmland was lost to the encroaching sand. Only the farmers understood the danger. In Hazganni there was water aplenty from several generous springs that supplied the city in a rather sophisticated plumbing arrangement. Because everyone had water in the home for kitchen and garden and bath, no one thought about water at all. As long as trees grew in their own gardens, who cared?
Every child in Dayira Azreyq knew the story of how the foreign barbarians had burned all the trees around the city, thinking to force it to yield. After the gharribeh had been defeated and expelled from Rimmal Madar, their legacy of scorched earth had resulted in torrents of sand and ash blown in by eastern winds to choke the city. The official story was that back then, the ancestor of Sheyqa Nizzira had commanded every man over the age of fifteen to march into the surrounding hills, uproot a tree, and bring it back to replant the devastated ground. But Azzad knew that it had been his own ancestor who had gone to the al-Ma’aliq lands and brought back the first hundred trees.
In time, the desert had been forced back. Trees, always more trees—added to bushes and succulents and herbs and anything that would root and hold and nourish the soil—these had kept Dayira Azreyq safe from the greedy sands. But Hazganni—
“Fools!” Azzad slid off Khamsin’s back and looped the reins around his hand, walking between rows of dead trees. Shameful, a scandal, an affront to Acuyib Himself, who had battled Chaydann Il-Mamnoua’a over a chadarang board to see how much of the land would be green. “I’ll replant these with my own hands if need be,” he vowed, “and stay with them until they’re established—and cut off the fingers, one by one, of anyone who neglects them!”
In his mind he saw a thousand trees, and another thousand, and the desert was forced back, and beneath the trees children played and young people flirted and old people dozed in the shade. There was a reservoir with ditches leading out from it to water the trees, and fountains splashing coolness into the air, and—and—
“And right now,” Azzad muttered, “all I’ve got is a hundred dead trees.” Khamsin tossed his head so the silver on his bridle jingled. Azzad faced him, caressing his ears. “But by next spring, Acuyib witness my oath, a hundred
Swinging up into the saddle, he rode back to the house of al-Gallidh, where he was privileged to see Meryem and Jemilha returning from the zouqs. Behind them, at a respectful remove, was a crowd of young men.
Azzad took the greatest pleasure in greeting the two ladies loudly and familiarly. “So few packages? I would have thought you’d buy out every shop, Meryem!”
“I was tempted,” she admitted, and the sparkle in her eyes told him she knew exactly what he was
