He said nothing. She searched his eyes for a time, then shook her head.
Again Mirzah spoke, again quite mildly. “Of course, some of those who own suitable horses will be too old to fight. For the good of the tribes they must give up their horses to younger men who can—” She glanced at the closed tent flap, distracted by a polite rattling of the wooden chime. “Enter,” she called out, and to everyone’s astonishment, Abb Harirri came into the tent. Mirzah sprang to her feet, welcoming her grandfather with an embrace.
“Child, you’re looking more beautiful than ever. Leyliah, Challa Meryem, I swear to you that if I were not already married, I would carry one of you off to my tent. Or perhaps not, for how could I possibly make a decision to take one and not the other?”
The two women smiled, for, as time-honored as such extravagant compliments were, Abb Harirri truly meant what he said.
“No, I want no qawah or sweets, thank you. Abb Shagara gave me a dinner tonight that staggers me still. What I wish, if convenient, is a private talk with Alessid. With your permission, Mirzah?”
A few minutes later the two men were outside, walking through the soft spring night toward the thorn fences. Alessid waited for the older man to speak, but the words were a long while coming.
At last, when they were far from the tents, Abb Harirri said, “Tallibah is still without a child. I am afraid that she may have to divorce Kemmal.”
Expecting conversation about the horses and the cavalry and Sheyqir Za’aid, it took Alessid a moment to rearrange his thoughts. When he did, he was both disappointed and pleased. Only the former was expressed to Abb Harirri, though.
The older man nodded. “I too am sorry, but what can be done? Our friendship is separate from our kinship, Alessid—I hope you know this—but for reasons both of affection and of family I had hoped . . .” He ended with a shrug. “But you understand.”
“Yes.”
“I will of course support you in everything that benefits the Harirri.”
“My wife’s father is Harirri, and my children are of that blood. Whatever I do, it will be with the Harirri in my mind.”
“Then we understand each other.” Abb Harirri stretched widely, his brown silk robe glinting by moonlight with a delicate tracery of gold embroidery. “Tomorrow will be a strenuous day, I think. Discussions begin early. I will retire now.”
“Sururi annam,” Alessid said, and watched him return to the tents. For himself, he walked for a while longer in the fragrant night, considering this new information.
Neither Kemmal nor Kammil had sired a child. Alessid now was certain that they never would. And whereas he wished they could have given him grandchildren, they were of even more use to him for what they had proven: that the Shagara blood was strong in his line. The twins’ infertility was proof that Mirzah had borne two Haddiyat sons. When one of her daughters bore one as well, Alessid’s position with the Shagara would be secured. It would mean that the bloodline ran true.
But he could not wait for his girls to grow up and marry and have sons— and then wait for the sons to grow up and marry and be divorced. The time was now. He was thirty-three this summer. He had already waited nineteen years for his vengeance—the same amount of time Azzad al-Ma’aliq had waited. But Alessid had put those years to much better use than had his frivolous, charming father. Where Azzad had created an empire of trade, Alessid would create an Empire.
He walked slowly back to his wife’s tent. A little ways from it, he encountered Meryem. He would have nodded a good night, but what he had just heard from Abb Harirri and what he would do and say on the morrow made him stop.
“Challa Meryem,” he said formally, “I have just discovered that my two eldest sons are almost certainly Haddiyat. I think it might be time for me to learn precisely what this means.”
She was silent for a long while. Then: “I think you are right, Alessid.” And she led the way to her own tent, where she talked and he listened until dawn.
There were not quite enough horses. But when Alessid and seventy riders of the Shagara made their first raid against the Qoundi Ammar, thirty horses were captured—and thirty more men of the Za’aba Izim were mounted on stallions trained for war.
All during the spring, young men came to the Shagara camp. Mirzah had the great joy of having all three of her sons back in her tent, and with them came men of the Tallib, the Azwadh, and the Harirri. They were taught battle maneuvers, and all but a few returned to their tribes to teach the same to their kinsmen. Some stayed with the Shagar, to become their tribes’ contribution to Alessid’s force.
By midsummer, he had more than four hundred skilled riders at his personal command. And as these mounted warriors swept across the land, led by a man on a stallion the color of sun-gilt cream, Sheyqir Za’aid al-Ammarizzad began to hear of a Golden Wind. But he was not yet afraid.
13
It was a clear, bright summer’s night when Alessid watched his son Addad, qabda’an now of his own hundred warriors, ride away to return to his wife’s tent at the Azwadh camp. The twins, Kemmal and Kammil, stayed.
“You know now what you are,” Alessid told his sons, who walked beside him through the sparse grassland where flocks grazed. Washed gray and silver by starshine, the shadows shifted with the intricacies of the breeze. “The first year, you did not suspect. The second year, perhaps you thought about it. But it is nearly the third year, and your wives have borne no children.”
He paused beneath a wool awning set up for the comfort of those who watched the goats and sheep. All the herders were out gathering the animals for the move tomorrow to a more remote location, the better to evade Sheyqir Za’aid’s soldiers. Two hundred of them had been reported at Ouaraqqa, the last town before the wastes began. Once all the Shagara wagons were safely distant . . .
Seating himself on a firm leather cushion, he put aside his plans for his enemies in favor of his plans for his sons. He took out his waterskin and drank briefly, then passed it to them. Their faces were impassive, and entirely identical but for the tiny scar above Kammel’s right eyebrow, memento of the only time he had ever fallen off a horse. Their skin was not quite as golden as Mirzah’s, but they had inherited the subtle eyes of her father Razhid. For the rest, their long noses, long limbs, and wide mouths were al-Ma’aliq. Handsome youths, sought in marriage by many girls, had they not been Haddiyat, they would have fathered many children.
Had they loved their wives? Would they miss the girls they had married? He did not know. He guessed it might be painful for them if he asked. So he decided he would never ask.
“Neither of you has any aptitude for medicine, nor are you skilled in the crafting of hazziri. The best I ever saw either of you do was pound out a reasonably round pair of copper cups for your mother’s birthday.” He smiled a little, partly to show their lack of skill did not trouble him, partly to show his affection for them, and partly because Mirzah treasured those cups as if they had been set with jewels by Abb Shagara himself. Wobbly, comically dented, the talishann for warmth lopsided and clumsy, they had never functioned as intended—though now she knew this was not because her sons had no Haddiyat gift, only that they had no talent.
“Abb Shagara has told me he is waiting for the results of certain tests. We know what those results will be, you and I. The usual work of the Haddiyat is neither to your aptitude nor to your liking. So it may appear to you that your gift is no gift at all, and useless to the tribe. But I tell you now, my sons, you are absolutely essential to me.”