Yesterday two of the Qoundi Ammar were dispatched to The Steeps. I saw them ride out myself. What this must mean, I believe you also know.

He would be five times a fool if he didn’t. There was more to the letter—inventories, business dealings, the usual—but after a quick perusal Azzad returned to the best news. He read it again and again. The proud sheyqirs slinking into the palace by night. The tabbibi summoned to confirm that the deed was hopeless of remedy—and threatened with death if they spoke of it. The marriage alliance that would not be—all the marriages that would never be. The sending of emissaries to the Geysh Dushann to demand revenge. And especially—ayia, especially!— the helpless rage of Sheyqa Nizzira. Worst of all, her favorite son, her beautiful, poetic Reihan, light of her heart and joy of her old age—

“And so,” his wife said, standing in the doorway of the maqtabba. “At last you have your vengeance.”

“Yes,” he replied with a humming sigh of satisfaction. “I have it.”

“Is it sweet to the taste, husband? Does it fill you the way a new child fills me now?”

Azzad sprang to his feet. “Jemilha—!” He rose to embrace and kiss her, but she eluded him, holding out two shiny objects.

“I asked Fadhil to make these. One set for you, and one set each for all of us. Say you will wear them always, and I will never speak of this matter again.”

His gaze fell from her adamant face to a pair of wide silver armbands studded with a rainbow of tiny gems. Purple amethyst, blue turquoise, sea-green beryl and spring-green peridot, golden topaz, red-orange carnelian and crimson garnet—a dozen of each, set around complex talishann, and a single owl for watchfulness. He didn’t remember all the meanings of all the jewels, but he did recognize one because Fadhil had once said it was extremely rare.

“Peridots. These must have cost as much as Khamsin’s best foal.” He eyed his wife sidelong. “But a small price to pay for protection against my own folly—is that the way your thoughts run, Jemilha?”

“Will you put these on, Azzad? And never take them off? If you promise, this will be the last you’ll ever hear from me about what you did to Nizzira’s sons and grandsons.”

“I promise.” He clasped the silver hazziri onto his arms and again tried to embrace Jemilha. Again she avoided him, turning on the heel of one white velvet slipper. In the whirl of her movement the sleeves of her bedrobe shifted at her wrists, and by the lamplight he saw the bracelets that were a match for the armbands. “Qarassia—”

“Sururi annam, husband,” she said over her should as she left the room. And he wondered if she would ever sleep sweetly again.

Ayia, this was all nonsense. Nizzira would know who was responsible, but what could she do about it? Send her army? It would be an invitation to the northern tribes to attack. Send the Geysh Dushann? Likely, but not all that worrying. Azzad glanced around the maqtabba. Shagara safeguards were all over the house in Sihabbah, the house in Hazganni, at the perimeters of all the al-Gallidh holdings. Even if assassins got past these, there were the protections on his person. He held up his arms, admiring the gleam of silver and jewels by lamplight. He and his were safe.

And there would be a new baby in the new year—a sixth son or a third daughter. It would be a daughter, he decided, a sign of Acuyib’s approval. He’d name the girl Oannisia, for Acuyib had indeed been merciful to Azzad, and just.

The evening shadows deepened, and Azzad was lighting another lamp so he could read the letter yet again and gloat over it when Fadhil came into the maqtabba. His golden skin looked pallid and fragile, drawn tight across fine bones by worry, lined with sorrow.

“What is it, my friend?” Azzad asked, rising.

“Khamsin,” was all Fadhil said.

He would never know how he got to the stables. He only knew that one moment he was surrounded by books and the scent of fragrant lamp oil, and the next he was in Khamsin’s stall with the reek of medicine in his nostrils.

“It’s no use, al-Ma’aliq,” said Mazzud, tears unnoticed on his weathered cheeks. “He is old, and it is his time.”

Fadhil crouched beside him. “I’ve done all I can. Mazzud is right. It’s his time.”

He knelt there all night, remembering how he had done the same when Khamsin was newborn, so that Azzad would become familiar and beloved. He remembered all the years since—twenty-two of them—that had taken him and Khamsin from the ancestral castle of the al-Ma’aliq to the city streets of Dayira Azreyq, from the brutal climb of The Steeps to the camp of the Ammarad, from the tents of the Shagara to the sweet mountain meadows of Sihabbah.

The stallion’s heart stopped just before dawn. There was a final sighing breath, and a slight movement of the head against Azzad’s caressing hands, and then the last gleam faded from the huge eyes.

“No,” Azzad said, and buried his face in Khamsin’s neck and wept.

Despite the commands and the threats of Sheyqa Nizzira that no one—no one—know of the mutilations, rumors spread. What was whispered in the streets about why, and how, and by whom, was voiced aloud in the secure seclusion of private houses—though softly still, and with caution, and only to those one trusted absolutely: “Azzad lives! An al-Ma’aliq yet lives!” And without Azzad’s knowing of it, his name became the stuff of ballad and legend.

It also began to be whispered that there yet lived another alMa’aliq—if not by name, certainly by blood. Her name came to adorn ballads and legends, too. But, unlike those songs and stories about Azzad, which dealt with past deeds, the name of the young Sayyida el-Ammarizzad was coupled with hope for the future. The daughter of Ammineh al-Ma’aliq listened, and smiled.

—FERRHAN MUALEEF, Deeds of Il-Kadiri, 654

10

The Geysh Dushann renewed their attacks. They cared no more for subtlety. For their pride’s sake, it no longer mattered to them whether or not the Shagara knew who killed Azzad al-Ma’aliq.

But Azzad was not killed. And if he had had any lingering doubts of the effectiveness of Fadhil’s hazziri, he had none at all after one would-be assassin fell from a second-floor balcony and was gutted by his own ax. Viewing broken railings the next morning, Azzad traced with one finger the talishann painted on the wood. For a few moments he debated asking Fadhil to tell him exactly what protections had been added to the house, but two things stopped him. The ways of the hazziri were the deepest secrets of the Shagara, and he didn’t want to put his friend in a position where he must refuse to answer. Also, he recalled very well what Fadhil had told him long ago: If one knew the hazzir’s precise meaning, too much trust would be placed in it, and the wisdom of ordinary caution would fly away. “Not even the Shagara can protect against stupidity.” Azzad concluded that whereas belief could increase the power of the magic, one could in fact believe too much.

The Geysh Dushann came, singly and in pairs, openly and in disguise. Every one of them failed. Jemilha was true to her word; no reproach ever passed her lips for the danger. But her eyes grew larger and larger in her weary face with the strain of her fear and the new pregnancy.

Fadhil made new hazziri for her and the children. He repainted the protections in and around the house in his own blood. He sent to Abb Shagara informing him of events, and by way of reply came six young Shagara men, who worked for eight days reinforcing Fadhil’s work with their own. A letter from Abb Shagara said that if the noble Lady Jemilha grew bored in Sihabbah, she was very welcome to visit his tents and stay as long as she liked. A note from Meryem was less tactful: She recommended that Fadhil tell Azzad not to be more of a fool than Acuyib had made him and get his wife and children out of Sihabbah at once. Azzad sent a letter back with the six young men, thanking Abb Shagara for his care. But he did not leave Sihabbah.

There were attempts at the house, at the stables, in the town. The Geysh Dushann sabotaged saddles and

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