“Indeed I am.”
Their destination was a cottage just outside town—one of the prettiest properties in all Sihabbah, in fact. Nestled beneath a stand of towering pines, with a view down the whole valley, it was the home built for Feyrah this spring when she had given over the entirety of the family business to her daughters and nieces. She and her sister now lived there, tending for amusement and pleasure a garden of exotic herbs that Azzad had ordered for them from the barbarian lands to the north.
Except for trees, which were the most important of all Acuyib’s gifts, plants rather bored Azzad. He appreciated flowers because of Jemilha’s delight when he gave her a bouquet; he acknowledged the usefulness of herbs for healing; he had his favorites among the spices that flavored his food; he valued the grains that fed his horses. But all these required constant care and cosseting, season after season. A tree, once established, settled down and went about the business of growing. If not an eternal thing, the way a mountain’s bulk or a desert’s vastness was eternal, a tree was as permanent as a mere man could wish to see. It simply was, and continued, and for reasons he didn’t understand he found this notion a comfort.
But this garden of Feyrah’s interested him, and the interesting thing about it was the fascination it inspired in Alessid. The boy liked nothing better than to ride up here after lessons and help the ladies tend the plants. For someone as physically restive as Alessid, a liking for the gentle occupation of gardening was perhaps the last thing one might expect. Azzad had asked him about it once, and received a muddled sort of reply that boiled down to: I like to find out the differences and the samenesses. An interesting boy, to be sure. Azzad sometimes wasn’t quite sure what to make of him, but knew he’d enjoy watching what the boy made of himself.
The ladies welcomed their visitors with all the usual warmth, plus that bit extra always reserved for Fadhil. A new harvesting of herbs was produced and exclaimed over; there were significant hopes for a powerful painkiller from an infusion Fadhil spent a great deal of time discussing with Feyrah, and this told Azzad much about the reason for this long walk today.
As qawah was served—outside on the patch of grass, for it was a lovely day—and the newest recipes for smallcakes were sampled, Azzad watched his old friend with worry in his heart. Fadhil moved with a kind of studied grace these days, as if his brain must constantly remind his body what walking and reaching and shrugging looked like to others so that no one would notice his pain. It was only when the younger ladies arrived for their daily visit that Azzad pushed aside his concern and exerted himself to be charming.
They had news for him.
“Yet another one, al-Ma’aliq, we can scarcely credit it!” Yaminna told him as he selected the choicest cakes for her as a gentleman ought. “He wasn’t like the one who came this winter—”
“His hair didn’t have that reddish cast,” Lalla interrupted. “I mean, it did, but it was obviously hennah.” She giggled suddenly. “Yaminna, do you remember the time you had a notion to become a redhead—”
“And I had a terrible time correcting the damage,” Fadhil said. “Shame upon you, Yaminna, trying to improve on the glory Acuyib gave you.”
“I repented, Chal Fadhil,” she replied, laughing. “Ayia, how I repented!”
“Something else about this man,” Lalla said. “He had dyed his skin as well as his hair. The brown was all over his body, but in a few places not as well applied as in others. If you understand what I mean! But the point is that he was a stranger, though not one of them, even though he tried to seem so. His natural skin was golden, like Chal Fadhil’s.” She sat back on her heels with a What do you think of that? look on her face.
Shagara pretending to be Geysh Dushann? Ridiculous. But Azzad was too polite to say so. “I shall watch most carefully for a man with badly hennah’d hair,” he assured her.
In the normal course of things, the two men would have whiled away the afternoon most pleasantly. But Azzad, alert to his friend’s attempts to hide pain, saw suddenly that he was also attempting to disguise unease. He was halfway through a gallant speech of reluctance to leave the ladies’ company when Yaminna leaned closer to Fadhil and whispered something in his ear.
He smiled at her and shook his head. “I thank you, but no. I am too weary to do you justice, I fear.”
On the walk back to town through the golden dusk, Azzad confronted him. “Tell me the truth. Are you ill?”
“No.”
“You look ill,” Azzad said bluntly.
“As you said earlier, I am the tabbib.”
“Fadhil—”
“I would rather speak of the Shagara who has disguised himself as an al-Ammarad—for can you doubt, from the description, that this is what he is?”
“Fadhil!”
A long, quiet sigh. “Very well. How old are you this year, Azzad?”
“Thirty-nine—and don’t remind me! The gray hairs in my head and beard—caused by my children, I swear it by Great Acuyib!—my age sneers at me from every mirror!”
“Would you like some of what I use to hide mine?” Fadhil gave him a sidelong smile. “No danger to one’s hair, unlike that awful stuff Yaminna tried—”
“What?” Azzad stared at him. “What are you talking about?”
Fadhil kicked at a stone in the path. “Among the Shagara, such cosmetics are not necessary. We know. We understand. But here—ayia, no one would believe that I am two years your junior if I did not dye my hair and beard. I am afraid, though, that in the last year or two, the lines on my face have betrayed me.” He glanced over at Azzad with another tiny smile. “There is no hiding them, you know.”
“Betrayed you?”
“Yes. They show what I am.”
“Everyone knows you’re Shagara—”
“There are Shagara and Shagara, as you know. At least, you know a part of it.” He held a pine branch out of Azzad’s way.
Azzad stopped, staring at his friend. “You mean about not being able to sire children?”
“That is an aspect of it. In the next year, my shoulder and my back will not be my only aches. I am fortunate in that my hands remain strong and free of pain.” He let the branch drop, and sighed again. “How old do you think Chal Kabir was when he died in 614?”
Recalling the tabbib’s appearance the year before, when Azzad had taken Farrasha and Haddid to the Shagara camp, he said, “More than seventy, less than eighty.”
“He was forty-one.”
Azzad felt his jaw fall open.
“Forty-one,” Fadhil repeated softly. “You have not seen Abb Shagara in many years, Azzad. He is my age—we were born almost on the same day. When I visited last summer, I saw what the cares of being Abb Shagara can do. His hair and beard are now almost completely white.”
“Ayia!” Azzad breathed. “Then you—and Abb Shagara, and those like you—”
“Within the tribe, we are called Haddiyat.”
“You use yourselves up in service to others,” Azzad heard himself say, the words coming from the instinctive place that was wiser than his conscious mind. Grief and guilt crushed his heart. “The cares of caring for us—what you’ve done for me and mine, especially since last spring—all the hazziri, and your blood in the paints—all the things that keep us safe from the Geysh Dushann—”
“Do not, Aqq Azzad,” Fadhil said swiftly, his fine, strong hands clasping Azzad’s shoulders. “It would happen wherever I lived, whatever I did. Some of the Haddiyat spend themselves in making hazziri for strangers, in healing strangers. I have been singularly blessed by Acuyib, because my work is done for people I love, for a woman and children I cherish as if they were my own—and a man who is my brother more than any Shagara could have been. How better should I spend myself than for love of you and yours, who are also in some ways mine?”