She gave him a sweet smile. “I hope you’ll be very happy together.”
“Jemilha!”
“Good—my name. Now we make a start.” She entered his room, leaving the door open, and sat on the chair beside the window. A breeze through the carved wooden shutters plucked at the scarf and toyed with tendrils of her black hair. “Uncle Bazir told me that you and he talked yesterday. Now you and I will talk. Yes, I have it in mind to marry you. My uncle and my father approve of my choice. I know you do not love me, and neither do I love you—but love is nothing to the point in such matters, don’t you think?”
“I—”
“A moment, Azzad, I’m not finished. Uncle Bazir told you why he and Father approve, but I will tell you two other things. I trust in your capacity for friendship—Fadhil and Meryem are devoted to you, and they are both persons of quality, so there must be something substantial to you after all. And the second thing is that I think you and I will make very interesting children.” She folded her hands in her lap and looked up at him expectantly. “Ayia, I’m done. Your turn.”
His tongue wasn’t just tied, it was tethered. “L-Lady—”
“I thought we had decided that I do indeed have a name.”
He knew how to accomplish a seduction. The self-possessed girl sitting before him now was, to all appearances, not seducible. “Rubbish!” snapped his grandfather’s voice. “Any woman who isn’t dead below the neck—”
But this wasn’t any woman. This was Jemilha of the tart tongue and untidy hair and—and the huge dark eyes and lithe quick body and—
—and a father and an uncle who would do unspeakable things to him—and very slowly, too—if he hurt her in any way.
“Jemilha,” he said at last, “are you certain you want me? You could have any man.”
“You are not just any man, Azzad.”
He crossed to her, holding out both hands. She allowed him one of hers. It was small and warm and dry, and the pulse in her wrist was perfectly steady. He could hear his grandfather’s cackling laughter in the back of his mind: “You’ll soon change that, boy, or you’re not my grandson!”
“Jemilha, it would be a greater honor than I deserve if you would consider taking me for your husband.”
She looked up at him through thick, blunt lashes. “Would you consider taking me for your wife?”
“Did I not just say so?”
“No.”
Up until now, he’d had the uncomfortable feeling she was secretly laughing at him. The expression on his face evidently made keeping the laughter secret impossible. Hers was not a girl’s giggle, but a woman’s full-throated chuckle. For a moment he was annoyed. But as her lips parted to reveal dazzlingly white teeth, fine and even but for a bottom front tooth set slightly askew, he found himself thinking two things. First, that he hoped Jemilha laughed at him often, for she had a lovely laugh; and second, that he wanted nothing more in this world right now than to run his tongue over that slightly crooked tooth.
Ruefully, he smiled back. “I wish very much for you to be my wife.”
All at once her mirth vanished and she bit her lip. “Azzad—”
“Yes, Jemilha?”
“I risk much in telling you this—you may lose all respect for me—”
“Never.”
The dark eyes flashed up at him. “Don’t interrupt me when I’m trying to tell you I’ve thought of nothing but marrying you since I first set eyes on you!”
He gaped at her again. “You have?”
“Yes. And I accept you as my husband.” But as he bent to press his lips to her wrist, as a proper lover ought, she drew her hand away. “Now that it’s settled, there are other things to discuss. What are your plans for the new horses? And what about all those poor dead trees? And—” Here she fixed him with a pair of suddenly fierce dark eyes. “—and I tell you now, Azzad al-Ma’aliq, that if ever you think to amuse yourself with other women—even Bindta Feyrah, whom I rather like—I will have your testicles served to you on a golden plate with white wine sauce.”
He stared; she really meant it. Wordlessly, he nodded.
“Just so we understand each other. Now, sit down, Azzad—no, not so close to me, we’re not yet wed—and tell me about planting trees.”
Azzad and Jemilha were wed that summer. By the next summer Azzad greeted his first son, Alessid. In 617 Jemilha bore him a second son, named Bazir for the uncle who—despite all Fadhil’s efforts—lived only long enough to learn he had a namesake. Two years later, Kallad was born, and Zellim after him. Next came two daughters, Azzifa and Meryem, and then Yuzuf.
By then Jemilha’s father too was dead, and Jemilha inherited all that the al-Gallidh owned. In 621, the year of Zellim al-Gallidh’s death, this included 62 half- and quarter-breed horses. By 627, the year of Yuzuf’s birth, due to the sale of these and other horses, the total alGallidh wealth had tripled.
And yet Azzad is not known as Il-Izzahni, the Bringer of Horses. Instead, history has named him Il-Kadiri: the Bringer of Green. For as his fortune and his influence increased, he used both to purchase land around Hazganni. On this land he planted trees. He did so in other towns as well, and after a time the wisdom of trees was accepted. The forests and groves and orchards everyone now takes for granted are Azzad al-Ma’aliq’s enduring legacy.
As he neared his thirty-seventh year, he possessed great riches, magnificent horses, fine houses, a wife he had grown to treasure, and seven children he adored.
What he did not yet have was his vengeance.
8
“Husband,”said Jemilha, “I don’tlike this.”
Azzad glanced up from the account books. There were seven large leather-bound volumes, one each for notes and figures on timber, crops, orchards, trapping, mining, fishing, and horses. An eighth book, twice the size of the others, was written in Jemilha’s precise and dainty script, recording trade in all these things. Beside the desk was a carved wooden lectern holding a ninth ledger; this was for the yearly total of profits and losses in all endeavors. In the years that Azzad and Jemilha together had managed the al-Gallidh estates, there had been no entries under Losses.
Jemilha resettled the matron’s silk shawl across her shoulders—a new fashion introduced by traders from Rimmal Madar, with whom Azzad did much business using the al-Gallidh name. At thirty-one, Jemilha was seven times a mother and looked as if she had borne not a single child. Azzad no longer wondered why he had felt compelled to marry her. He would have been a fool not to. She had given him more happiness than he had ever thought to receive and more good advice than he deserved. Something in him that was wiser than his brain had prodded him into marrying her. Now—thirteen years, five strong sons, and two beautiful daughters later—he thanked Acuyib daily for that wordless certainty. She was worthy, and more than worthy, of the pearls he had placed around her slender throat on their wedding day. Back then, the necklace had been his only wealth. But in that instant, his wealth had become Jemilha. He adored her even when she laughed at him . . . but she was not laughing now.
“I don’t like this idea of yours,” said his wife. “And once more I must warn you against it. The Sheyqa has obviously forgotten all about you—why can’t you forget about her?”