The words blistered the proud lips speaking them, but they were said. “You and your tribe are no longer our enemies.”
“Nor is the Empire of Tza’ab Rih.”
More acid, but spewed out more swiftly so as to be rid of it. “Nor is the Empire of Tza’ab Rih.” And he ended the oath by touching first his brow and then his heart.
Satisfied, Alessid asked, “So. How was it accomplished?”
For the first time, the Geysh Dushann looked smug and confident in what Alessid deduced must be the way of his kind. But his voice was bland as he remarked, “There is a family of artisans who make tiles. Very beautiful tiles. When these Grijalva came to redecorate the lady’s bath, they were given . . . assistance. The tiles of a bath can be very slippery, and the waters thereupon . . .” He arched his brows delicately. “. . .treacherous in other ways.”
“I trust no one else will experience the same accident?” Meaning, of course, that it should never be discovered as anything other than an accident.
“No one, al-Ma’aliq.”
Alessid nodded and dismissed the assassin. Alone once more with his daughter, he said, “So you see, we did not require Shagara magic after all.”
“Ayia,” she sighed, removing the ornamental coronet that invariably gave her a headache, “but any contact with the Geysh Dushann is dangerous.”
“As it happens, I agree. But this was the simplest way, and it solved two problems. I wish to leave you an empire as free of the past as I can make it.”
“Yet the bargains we make based on the past—Grandsire Azzad’s, yours, mine—are the foundations of what we do in the future. So there is no real freedom from the past, is there? Countess Nadaline is dead, the enmity of the Geysh Dushann is canceled, but—” She sat straighter, gaze narrowing. “The boy. Nothing was said of where he was, only of where he was not.”
“So you caught that, too. Still . . . how much of a future can he possibly have?”
“None, if he intrudes upon my notice.”
Alessid smiled to himself. “Go now, and say nothing of this. You will rule after me, so it was necessary for you to know the truth of what happened to Countess Nadaline. But to everyone else it must be a fortuitous accident.”
When she was gone, he took out paper and pen to write another letter to his cousin Sheyqa Kerrima. He would send it with a fine young gelding and a gorgeous leather saddle from Sihabbah, jingling with golden Shagara hazziri.
Not the blooded kind, of course. Not the kind that really worked. One never knew when the past, in the form of al-Ammarizzad greed, might intrude once more upon his notice.
Leyliah Shagara was as beautiful in her old age as she had been when a girl. At eighty-six, her skin was a marvel of dusk-gold softness, and her hair was pure silver without a hint of yellowing, and her lustrous dark eyes saw as clear and straight as ever. She had outlived her husband, two Haddiyat sons, three daughters, six grandchildren, four great-grandchildren, and all the friends of her youth. She was the only one left besides Alessid who personally remembered Azzad al-Ma’aliq—one of the four men she had loved and the one she had mourned longest, for he had been the first to die. But in Alessid’s opinion, Razhid and Fadhil and Abb Akkil were worthier of her sorrow than Azzad.
It was Leyliah, however, who pointed out what should have been obvious to him: that Mairid’s son Qamar, even in childhood, was Azzad all over again. At first Alessid rejected the notion. How could he love so thoroughly anyone who was so thoroughly a copy of his father? But when he looked with his heart, he saw the charm, the grace, the cheerful mischief, the enchantment of presence and smile. It was so easy to see Azzad as he must have been in boyhood, with his big dark eyes and laughing face and the ability to wheedle anything he liked out of anyone he pleased. Yet even knowing this, fully aware that he was being wheedled, Alessid indulged the boy. The love between them had nothing to do with favors asked or bestowed. Qamar loved him, even on the rare occasions when Alessid said No.
All the grandchildren spent at least a year living with the Shagara. Those who also had ties to the other tribes of the Za’aba Izim lived with them for a time as well, to affix the relationship as well as to teach the younglings about their heritage in the desert. The year Qamar spent with the Shagara was the loneliest of Alessid’s long life.
The boy returned much taller but no more obedient than when he had left. Leyliah, in whose tent he had lived, reported him hopeless at every craft but one: that of horses. Alessid shrugged and smiled, and gave Qamar a splendid colt to train as his own. The horse loved him as devotedly as everyone else—to the extent of escaping his grooms and mounting the stairs to Qamar’s chambers one evening when lessons had kept the boy from him for two whole days.
Thereafter, every few days Qamar spent the night sleeping in Shayir’s stall. And every so often, Alessid joined him. He refused to concede to Mirzah that a bed of straw and blankets was not as beneficial to his aging bones as a feather mattress and silken quilts; indeed, he refused to acknowledge his years and did not even feel them when he was with Qamar.
They talked, and read books aloud by lamplight, and curried Shayir until he shone like golden fire. And then Qamar would sprawl on the straw, and Alessid would curl next to him and watch him sleep until sleep overcame him, too. He had never been so perfectly happy in all his life.
But when Leyliah had returned from the Shagara camp with Qamar, she had also brought words of warning. The Abb Shagara who had deplored Alessid’s use of magic in war was long dead, as was his successor, but the new one thought like the old—and the cancellation of enmity between the Shagara and the Geysh Dushann, done without even consulting Abb Shagara, turned the leader’s thoughts in grim directions. Leyliah had explained the necessity and the wisdom of it: that now no one in Tza’ab Rih need fear the assassins, that they had made recompense for the attacks against the al-Ma’aliq, that Joharra was now ruled by a Queen whose mother was a Shagara.
Abb Shagara had not been impressed.
“But neither does he encourage open rebellion,” Leyliah concluded. “Though I must caution you, Alessid, that I believe this is more due to respect for my age than for your power. It is not right, but it is true.”
“Then you shall have to live forever, ayia?” Alessid answered smiling, and went off to ride with his grandson.
Joharra did not stay quiet for long. Za’avedra the Younger ruled the land as her mother ruled Ibrayanza: lightly, unobtrusively. The people kept their homes, their farms, their shops, and their religion. But they also kept their pride alive, that they alone had resisted the Riders on the Golden Wind for so long. And they especially kept their hopes of return to independence, personified in the young man who, though bastard, could lay claim to two thrones.
Ra’amon do’Joharra was living in Cazdeyya, a mountainous land north of Joharra across the marshy river valley claimed by a family called do’Barradda. Alessid had no use for either piece of territory. He knew how far his influence could spread. He had established his borders and set up garrisons to guard them. Keeping the peace certainly gave his warriors enough to do.
Peace was the last thing on the minds of the Joharrans who attacked their own city in the autumn of 683. Ra’amon was not with them. Indeed, he later claimed he had no knowledge of what they did in his name. This was likely, as Cazdeyya was often isolated from the rest of the world by heavy winter snow and the occasional earthquake that rendered the roads impassable. Whether Ra’amon knew of it or not, however, the attack progressed—and succeeded. Queen Za’avedra, her husband, and their three-year-old son were captured and put to the sword. Joharra was no longer of the Empire of Tza’ab Rih.