Along and bitter journey it was from Sihabbah. Alessid spent much of it unable to see clearly for the tears that came to his eyes no matter how he fought them. Ayia, he was a man now and should be past childish weeping. But weep he did—though only at night, when Fadhil couldn’t see him in the moondark wasteland.
They rested during the hottest part of each day and rode on at dusk, stopping at dawn to graze and water the horses. Of all that had belonged to the al-Ma’aliq in Sihabbah, only the horses were left—those, and Azzad’s rings. Fadhil had shown them to Alessid, offered them silently in an outstretched palm. He shook his head sharply, refusing them.
He refused everything about his father now. He had to. Azzad al-Ma’aliq had been a fool—and Alessid knew that to be like him, to admire him, to love him still, would make of Azzad’s son an even greater fool.
He had always adored his father. He had wanted to be just like Azzad al-Ma’aliq: tall and handsome, always smiling, beloved by his family, cherished by his friends. Alessid, during near-sleepless afternoons and long, starhazed nights, examined the events of his own scant fourteen years of life and determined that from now on he would work very hard to be as different from his father as possible.
I am alive, he would tell himself when the tears blurred his vision. I am alive, and everyone else is dead. My Ab’ya is dead, because he was a fool.
Everyone knew the story of how Azzad had been dallying with a mistress in the city of Dayira Azreyq when the al-Ma’aliq were massacred. He had survived by the Grace of Acuyib, not through his own cunning. It had happened differently for Alessid.
It happened again and again in his memory as he rode to the Shagara camp. Again, and again, and again . . .
Mother was greatly annoyed when Father and Fadhil did not return for dinner. Later, after everyone had gone up to bed, Alessid was awakened by the sound of footsteps in the hall. Thinking that his father had at last returned, Alessid went to his door—about to open it and warn that Mother was very angry. Then he realized there were far too many footsteps, and a voice he didn’t know said, “Two more boys, and the two girls. The infant will be with the woman. Pay heed to their hazziri—we don’t know what Fadhil made for them.”
Geysh Dushann—again. But how had they entered past the protections? And how did they know Fadhil’s name? Alessid ran to his balcony, flung open the carved wooden screens, and shinnied down the flowery trellis to the ground. Moonlight shone on the garden and the pastures beyond—but brighter was the red glow from his parents’ windows. Before he could do more than blink, the glass burst and fire gushed outward like Chaydann’s gloating laughter from a fissure in the earth.
Alessid sprinted for the door of Uncle Bazir’s maqtabba. Within, he coughed on smoke gushing down from the upper floor. His mother, brothers, sisters—where was Father? Had he and Fadhil returned? Did they burn, too, in the inferno overhead?
Alessid heard more footsteps, and peered from behind the maqtabba door. Six men clattered down the stairs a mere jump ahead of the hungry flames.
“Ayia, we shouldn’t have been so merciful,” grumbled one man, “to kill them and all their servants before the fire took them. The walls have been silenced. No one would have heard them scream.”
Another man snorted. “More merciful than the Geysh Dushann would be—or the soldiers of Sheyqa Nizzira.” He paused to cough smoke from his throat. “Hurry. We must set the rest afire before we meet Haffiz at the boundary stone.”
“Did we get them all? The biggest boy was wearing no hazziri that I could see.”
It was then that Alessid knew that Addad, son of his mother’s favorite maidservant, his friend and playmate all the fourteen years of their lives, had been mistaken for him and had died in his place. Their rooms were not so far from each other, a circumstance that had allowed for much midnight mischief in the past. Knuckling his eyes, Alessid slipped out the back door and looked upward. The whole top floor was burning. The roof above his parents’ chambers fell in with a horrific crash. And just as al-Ma’aliq had died nearly twenty years ago, so al-Ma’aliq died tonight.
Alessid could see moving shadows through silk curtains on the ground floor. He dragged a heavy wooden bench over to the doors, blocking them. Only then did he see the runes drawn over Fadhil’s subtle and beautiful patterns, like smears of spoor marking a trespassing animal’s usurped territory.
He ran back to the garden doors and to barricade them toppled two of his father’s prized potted orange trees. For the kitchen door, he used a bench and a pile of large wooden toys the younger children had left in the yard—Zellim’s painted wagon, Azzifa’s rocking horse, Meryem’s doll-cart. At the front of the house, he put his shoulder to the stone pedestal and bronze basin where guests washed their hands before entering the house. None of these barriers would hold for long, but he didn’t need much time.
He ran for the stables. Mazzud and Annif, who slept above, surely should have awakened by now. So, in fact, should the whole of Sihabbah. Silencing the walls was one thing; disguising the sudden blaze of flames and the acrid smell of smoke was quite another. Alessid recalled his father’s tales of how empty the streets of Dayira Azreyq had been, how he had seen no one but the royal guard. There had been no spells then, but there was magic here tonight. The assassins were not Geysh Dushann, and not of the al-Ammarizzad—and they had
