Azzad did not tell her the one secret he had kept from her all these years. It would not do to worry her about the Geysh Dushann contrivances he and Fadhil had foiled. Ayia, it had mostly been Fadhil, truth to tell, who was as fiendishly clever as the assassins sent to fulfill the Ammarad contract with Sheyqa Nizzira. Azzad’s houses, horses, and person were firmly protected. Though several times there had been near misses—a rockslide when he was up in the mountains inspecting the mines, a new design of fish trap that had almost redesigned Azzad’s face, for instance—nothing had so much as caused a stubbed toe.
But he wasn’t about to tell Jemilha that.
Azzad leaned back in his chair and sighed. “Do you remember, Jemilha, when your uncle died, and then your father? Do you remember what I said to you then? I had sworn when I was younger that I would not marry unless the girl had no father, uncles, brothers, or cousins to interfere with my freedom. I told you then, wife, when Zellim and Bazir were gone, that I mourned your father and uncle as I mourned my own—and if I could give them back to you, I would gladly give up my freedom and spend the rest of my life in the Sheyqa’s darkest prison.”
“Nothing will bring any of them back to us,” she replied. “You’ve made a new family, a new life. Is it not good? Are you not happy?” It was as close to a plea as this proud woman would ever utter.
“You know that I am.” Rising, he went to where she sat on a tapestry couch, knelt before her, took both her hands. “But Nizzira destroyed my family. All the women, the men, the children, even the babies.”
“What about our babies?”
Resolutely, he went on, “It was not only those of the al-Ma’aliq name. She massacred our servants, and the fallahin who worked on our lands, everyone who had any connection with the al-Ma’aliq. She deserves punishment. Surely you must see that she deserves it. Acuyib in His Wisdom would not have let me live if I were not to be the instrument of that punishment.”
Jemilha shook her head. “That is vanity, Azzad, and you know it. It’s more reasonable that Acuyib spared you to come here and be my husband, and father my children, and—”
“Qarassia,” he said, kissing her wrists, “I believe this, too. But I believe just as strongly that I am meant to make Nizzira pay for the ruin of my family.”
“We are your family now,” she countered stubbornly.
“Our children are al-Ma’aliq,” he pointed out.
“Yes, al-Ma’aliq—of Sihabbah and Hazganni,” she insisted. “Not of Dayira Azreyq.”
He stood, looking down at her with a spark of annoyance. He had heard all this too many times, though the manners instilled in him by his father forbade him to say so. Still, her dark eyes ignited with barely repressed rage as surely as if he’d reprimanded her out loud.
“You know what I think, Azzad, you know how I feel—in every other matter, my thoughts and feelings are important to you. But not in this. In this, I am ignored as if I were any other woman and not your wife!” She took a moment to calm herself, then continued, “Don’t you see? If you do this, if you carry through the plans you have been making this last year—ayia, don’t think I don’t know all about this! If you succeed, the Sheyqa will have no choice but to retaliate. Dearly as I love Fadhil and clever as he is, I don’t think even his most powerful hazziri will protect us—or our children.”
“I understand your will on this, and will consider it most carefully.” It was a standard formula and they both knew it. And because he knew himself to be a breath away from rudeness, he walked out of their maqtabba without speaking another word.
Crossing the courtyard to the stables, he nodded to Mazzud and went to look at the latest foals. As ever, his heart swelled at the sight of them: brown and golden, silvery and white, gray and black, ranging from almost exact copies of Khamsin at that age to the sturdier half-breeds, to quarter-breeds nearly indistinguishable from their purebred cousins. In the years since Khamsin’s first get had come as such a surprise, Azzad had learned how to produce foals with exactly the combination of strength and speed he wanted. More importantly, rich men from cities as far away as the coast wanted them, too, and paid vast sums for the privilege of looking like sheyqirs on horseback. Sihabbah had profited as well, for the finest saddles and bridles were made here, along with boots and blankets and everything else necessary to riding. Azzad had done well by his adopted home.
Not only in Sihabbah but in Hazganni and fifty other towns and villages his name was blessed. The destruction wrought by the hideous tza’ab azzif of 623—during which Jemilha had given birth to Azzifa, named for the storm—had finally taught everyone the wisdom of trees. Twelve days of unrelenting wind, like the breath of every damned soul exhaled from hell, had heaped sand and rubble from one end of the land to the other. A whole new industry had sprung up in the five years since, of foresters and gardeners and other experts in horticulture, and when Azzad rode through the land and saw the green, he gave thanks to Acuyib—and to the al-Ma’aliq who had planted the first hundred trees in Dayira Azhreq.
All these things, and the family he had sired, were reasons why he had been spared on that horrible night long ago. Jemilha was correct in this. He had done well and lived well. She did not understand, though, that his life was as yet incomplete. Riches, lands, respect, renown, family, friends—he had everything any man could desire. But, as his wife had told him the day he’d asked for her hand, Azzad was not just any man.
He watched his horses for a time, picking out which would be sold and which he would keep. The more placid ones were easy to sort; those with the finest conformation he kept for breeding. But the others, the ones who raced about the field, kicking and leaping for no reason at all but sheer joy—care must be taken in their training and sale, for to match a spirited horse with an indifferent rider was to hold out one’s arms to embrace disaster.
But the rider he had in mind these days was an expert—who had learned, undoubtedly, on al-Ma’aliq horses, and may Acuyib curse him and his forever. Azzad left the paddock and crossed behind the stables to the pasture. Of the more than fifty horses grazing there, he picked out the three-year-old colts that might suit his plans. One was dapple gray, one sandy gold, and the third coal-black with a white blaze on his forehead. Beautiful, long-legged, swift and strong, spirited without the unruly and sometimes thoroughly evil streak that plagued some of the half-breeds—his only problem was to decide which horse to use. Which of them would appeal most to an al-Ammarizzad accustomed by now to the finest horses in the world: the al-Ma’aliq horses seized seventeen years ago this autumn?
Annif, Mazzud’s brother, came running up to him from the stables. “Do you have need of anything, al-Ma’aliq?”
“Yes,” he muttered. Then, because Annif would not understand his real need, he said, “Qama’ar, Nihazza, and Najjhi—separate them out this evening, please, and put them in the small enclosure. I will train them myself.”
“As you wish, al-Ma’aliq. Zellim has his eye on Najjhi, I think. And Bazir’s is on Nihazza. They know horseflesh.”
Being Azzad’s sons, they would.
“Alessid, of course, wants Zaqia.”
Azzad laughed. “Does he, by Acuyib’s Beard?” Twelve years old, growing fast toward manhood and brash with it, Alessid was Azzad’s eldest and favorite son. Jemilha preferred the steady, good-hearted Kallad; everyone adored Bazir’s playfulness; earnest Zellim took after his grandfather of the same name, the scholar of the family even at barely six years old; Yuzuf was only a baby with as yet no distinctive personality beyond a winsome smile. Azzad loved them all most devotedly, but in Alessid he saw himself, as most fathers will do with one in particular of their sons.