‘I’m not dragging that thing again,’ I said, glad to be off my own camel. ‘It’s been carried twenty days and more, it can be carried for the last mile.’
Rattling a few coins soon found a toothless old rogue with a donkey willing to help us along to the caliph’s palace. The beast looked as ancient as its master and I fully expected its legs to fold beneath it as the three of us lowered the trunk to its back. It proved as contrary as Balky, though, and just hee-hawed its complaints whilst the old man secured the load.
Standing in the heat, sweating while I watched the old man work, the worries that eluded me in the emptiness of the desert returned in force. Since that moment in the Kutta java house when I understood the nature of the trap, it seemed that like Brother Hendrick, impaled on that Conaught spear, I had been driving the blade deeper. Sensible hope of revenge, not that it ever had been sensible, had gone out the window as soon as I realized they knew me, realized I was anticipated. Now in the midst of a desert that could hold me prisoner on its own, I aimed my path at the enemy’s court, set no doubt just a few score yards above the dungeons I would soon rot in.
‘Here’s to you, Brother Hendrick.’
‘Your pardon?’ Marco poked at the brim of his hat to peer at me.
‘Let’s get this done,’ I said, and started walking. Beneath desert robes the copper box, the gun, and the view-ring all rubbed at me, uncomfortable in the heat. It seemed unlikely that any of them would offer salvation.
Broad streets, where the wind scoured only a whisper of sand, brought us past bathhouse and library, law court and gallery, to a steeper dip where beneath the steel sky of the desert a wide and flawless lake reflected the caliph’s palace. Between us and the waters the pillared ruins of an amphitheatre rose from a scattering of rubble. Some work of the Romans, unimaginably old.
‘And what’s that?’ I pointed to a tall tower, the tallest in Hamada, set apart from the palace yet casting its dark shadow down across high walls into the heart of the compound.
‘Mathema,’ the old rogue said over his gums.
‘Qalasadi?’ I jabbed my finger at it.
‘Qalasadi.’ He nodded.
‘We’ll go there first,’ I said. Revenge had brought me here. The need to strike back when struck. Ibn Fayed owed me a debt of blood, but Qalasadi, his debt had a face on it and I would settle that first.
‘Go where you like, Sir Jorg,’ Marco said. ‘My business is at the palace.’
‘And what business is that, Marco? Come now, friend, you can tell Brother Jorg. We’ve travelled many a mile together.’ I showed him my teeth.
‘We’re not brothers—’
I fished into my robes. For an instant Marco flinched, as if he thought I would pull a knife on him. Instead I drew out Yusuf’s die.
‘On the road we are family, Brother Marco.’
I knelt and set the die spinning on the flagstones, whirling like a top on one corner.
‘I’ve come to collect a debt,’ he said. ‘From Ibn Fayed.’
The die rattled across the ground. A two.
‘Go with God, Brother Marco,’ I said.
I came alone to the door of the mathmagicans’ tower. No guard stood there, no windows overlooked it. The tower reached a hundred yards above me, an elegant spire, maybe twenty yards in diameter at the base. The first windows opened about halfway up its length, stepping in a spiral toward the heights of the spire, the stone too smooth for scorpion or spider.
The door had been fashioned of black crystal, flaws glimmering in its upper layers where the sun reached in. I knocked and where my knuckles struck, a circle of numbers appeared, written in gleams, the ten digits the Arabs first gave us.
‘A puzzle?’
I touched one digit, the ‘two’, another grew brighter, the ‘four’. I touched that. The circle vanished. I waited. Nothing.
A harder knock, but my knuckles made no sound against the crystal, just summoned the circle of numbers again. I pressed, chasing the glowing numbers in ever-quicker circles, trying to read the patterns, keeping track for a few seconds then losing the thread.
‘Damn it, I didn’t come to play games.’
The place lay deserted. A few figures moved among the distant ruins, Marco and other visitors toiled up the broad steps before Fayed’s palace, and a thin crowd loitered around the sandy margins of the lake, but not a soul lay within earshot.
I tried again. Then again. Clearly whatever it took to be a mathmagician I wasn’t made of the stuff. The glowing numbers danced their perimeter, fading as I watched. I scowled at the door, and that didn’t work either. More out of frustration than judgment I knocked again and as soon as the number circle appeared I tore the view-ring from its thong and slapped it dead centre. Immediately the procession of numerals sped up, sped again, and blurred into a circle of light. The door began to emit a hum, high pitched and rapidly scaling the octaves. Small lightnings started to fork through the crystal, spreading from the points where the view-ring touched it. My fingertips buzzed with the vibration. Hum became whine became shriek. Vertical became horizontal. And I found myself trying to rise amongst jagged black chunks of what had been a most impressive door.
With ringing ears and numb fingers I located the view-ring amid the sparkling rubble and hastened through the doorway. A corridor led straight ahead, appearing to divide the ground floor. At the far end I glimpsed steps – presumably the stair that wound around just inside the tower walls. Half a dozen young Liban men in white tunics headed toward me from arches to either side of the corridor, their looks those of scholars, astonishment rather than anger on their faces. I drew my knife and let the sleeve of my robes
