The Diviner

was.

But even if a caravan or other hunters found the bodies, it was of no real consequence; when armband and knife were taken to be sold and the key taken to be melted down, someone among the city’s merchants would know. He was—had been, he reminded himself—popular among the crafters of Dayira Azreyq, lavish in his spending on trinkets for himself and his mistresses. The clasp in particular was unique to a certain jeweler, who would certainly remember Azzad. And if there weren’t enough pearls left to make the necklace the clasp had originally adorned—well, it was dusty here, and windy, and there were excuses enough for their absence. There was the key, as well: the most identifiable item of all, for its design incorporated the graceful leaf of the al-Ma’aliq. Someone would recognize it. He was certain.

It seemed his dissolute ways, deplored by his family, might save his life twice. Visiting one woman had spared him on the night of the massacre, and giving jewels to the others could confirm his death. Never had he been so glad—or so ashamed—of his misspent youth.

And how odd it was, he reflected, that at twenty years old, he considered youth irretrievably gone.

Khamsin’s hoofprints to and from this place would lead riders off the main road to discovery of the scene. As he rode away wearing the dead hunter’s clothes, bow and quiver on his shoulder, he apologized to his horse. “I know you’d never leave me, not even if I really was lying there dead. But we have to make it look as if you did.”

And then it occurred to him that the horse was more loyal to him than he had been to his family.

Ayia, what good would it serve if he too had died? Who would be left to avenge the al-Ma’aliq? The new granddaughter? Not even if Nizzira allowed her to live. Indoctrinated from her first breath, taught to despise half her heritage—

No. Azzad had been spared for a reason. And as he rode brashly through the pass in the gathering heat of the day, he thought of his family for what he swore must be the last time until he was ready to exact retribution for their deaths. When word filtered through the city that he was dead, there would be no one to mourn. Never again would he watch with hawk’s eyes as his friends blushed in his sisters’ silked and scented presence. Never again would he see his mother arch a sardonic brow at his latest exploit or listen to his father and uncles recite The Lessons of Acuyib at dawn prayers. And never again would his grandfather peer at him from beneath bristling white brows and bark, “Well, boy? Which pretty charmer have you seduced now? Would I have risked my venerable balls for ten minutes alone with her?”—and then laugh until he choked on his glee.

Azzad arrived at the tents of the Ammarad the next day. The vast mass of the encampment was denied him; he was not allowed past the outermost tents, which were reserved for travelers who had no shelter of their own. As the laws of hospitality required, the wound on his thigh was tended by the tribe’s chief tabbib, a grizzled old man whose treatment seemed to rely more on incantations and the pattern of thrown stones on a carved wooden plate than on any medicines in his satchel. But the chants did no harm, and the wrappings he used on Azzad’s thigh were clean and smelled of a spicy salve. Khamsin was fed and watered, Azzad was shown a corner of a tent to sleep in, and everyone appeared to believe his story of going out to prove his worth to his father by hunting down a sand- tiger—which had so vehemently left its mark on his leg.

It rankled to accept their food and drink, but he did just that for three days. For Khamsin’s sake, he told himself. He could guess what lay ahead of them in the desert.

“And where do you go now?” the elderly tabbib asked as he prepared to leave.

“East,” Azzad lied.

“I know all the tribes who make their camps in the east, Zaqir.” The unspoken question was From which do you come?

Azzad had called himself falcon, for he intended to fly as free and swift as a hawk and kill with utter ruthlessness. But he had not mentioned a family name. “I would not disgrace my tribe by naming them,” he said slowly. “I failed in my quest.”

A shrug of bony shoulders. “That you did not succeed in taking the rimmal nimir’s pelt is no dishonor, Zaqir. You have the marks to prove you faced the beast. And I am certain your mother will be just as glad that you lived to tell of it.”

Azzad gave a nod and a slight smile of thanks. He thought about the tabbib’s words as he rode away to the west. His mother would indeed be glad he had survived, he knew that—but what would she think of his means of survival? He’d paid more heed to an illicit tryst than to a royal command, and then he had run away. Still, he was alive, and to squander that gift would be to dishonor those who had died. Azzad vowed to be worthy of survival— and put back on his finger the al-Ma’aliq ring before turning Khamsin south, to the Devil’s Graveyard.

“But who can he be?”

“Besides a fool, you mean?” A clucking of tongue against teeth. “You tell me, Leyliah. What do you learn from looking at him?”

“Rich, of course—”

“His clothes were ragged.”

“But the ring—”

“Stolen.”

Azzad opened his eyes and denied it strenuously—or thought he did. Leyliah’s voice was young; the other woman’s was older. Both were lilting, liquid voices, oddly accented around the r sounds, but he understood them readily enough.

“The horse was stolen, too?” Leyliah asked shrewdly.

“Sometimes you are my favorite student, and at others you make me despair that you will ever learn how to trim a hangnail! Don’t look at the things, Leyliah. Look at the man.”

There was a pause. Azzad called frantically on every muscle in his body. Not a single one responded.

“His hands,” Leyliah said at last. “There are no old calluses—only new ones, from recent blisters.”

“Very good. What else?”

“His feet are rubbed raw where very soft, very fine boot leather has worn away.”

“Therefore . . .”

“Therefore he must be rich, as I said before!”

“Or he stole the boots as well.”

Sightless, frustrated in his need to move, he was forced to use his other senses. Scents of dry wool and sensuous spices; taste of skin-stored water flavored with an herb he couldn’t identify; and, past the voices of the two women, the faint ring of hammers on metal and a light breeze ruffling wind chimes. Not much information; nothing to comfort him. Except that they hadn’t killed him. Yet.

“You were right,” the older woman admitted, “but using the wrong evidence. The ring and the horse and the boots could have been stolen. The clothes tell us nothing. The things tell us nothing. But the body, this tells us all. We have here a spoiled, wealthy, feckless young fool who tried to cross the Gabannah. He has paid for it with heat sickness, scorched skin, feet that will not carry him for at least fifteen days, and the festering claw-marks of a rimmal nimir, bandaged by either an ignorant fool or someone who wanted him dead. Now, the next thing we ask ourselves is why he would attempt so dangerous a journey. He was not ill before he began it, so he cannot be one of those who seek our healing. Have you any answers?”

“None, Challa Meryem. Unless he truly is crazy—in which case we’d better tie him to the tent poles to prevent his doing us or himself any damage.”

“Pampered men such as this one do not stir themselves to folly without good reason. Deadly reason, I suspect. Even a fool must be aware that the Gabannah is death to those who do not know it intimately. So perhaps there is another death behind him, chasing him—one he feared more than the death that nearly found him here.”

Leyliah’s voice dropped to a whisper. “Do you think he killed someone?”

“Ayia, more likely someone wants to kill him. And by the look of him, for seducing a wife or daughter or sister.”

“I’d wondered if you’d noticed! Long eyelashes, long nose, long legs, long—”

Azzad felt sudden heat in his face; had he been able to, he would have turned away in embarrassment. Not