Alessandra worried at her lip. ‘There may have been another one.’
‘What happened to that?’
‘It went with the original seller. Apparently; it was only a rumour.’ She threw her hands up. ‘I don’t know! Why are we doing this?’
‘The master has enemies,’ said Said, as if he himself understood fully.
‘Magicians,’ said Wahir, ‘wicked magicians who would steal our souls and seal them in little bottles.’
‘Enough,’ murmured Benzamir. He turned back to an earlier page and watched as a Bose-Einstein condensate falteringly flowered in its depths. He tapped the picture with his knuckle, but it didn’t cure the jerky rendering. ‘I had hoped that this was something the traitors were putting about. But it’s not; this was made here, seven hundred years ago, when the Users were at their height. I can understand why the Kenyan emperor wants this book. What I can’t understand is how he came to lose it in the first place.’
‘Stolen,’ said Alessandra.
‘That’s the story, but there’s more to it; more than a man trying to reclaim his property. You don’t use an army for that.’ He stared at the book and ran his fingers down both sides of the cold metal cover. ‘I wonder what it might be.’
He lapsed into silence for so long, the others thought he might have fallen asleep. Even the light-bees dimmed to faint burning coals.
Wahir touched his shoulder. ‘Master?’
Without changing expression, Benzamir said: ‘Can you understand what this means? Any of it?’ He nodded at the book.
‘No, master.’
‘No. No one could. Not, I bet, even the emperor’s finest minds. Not for another five hundred years.’ He looked around. ‘No one in this whole wide world knows what a Riemann cut is or how to use one. Or understand that Phase theory is a subset of Unity physics. Or how to create zero-point energy using the Casimir effect without bringing the universe to a crashing halt.’
Wahir suddenly realized what he was missing. ‘Except you, master. You understand the User secrets, don’t you?’
‘Yes.’ He grabbed Wahir by the shoulders and play-wrestled him to the ground, laughing. ‘But I’m not the only one, am I? Not now. Either the emperor is a compulsive collector like Al Ahiz, or he’s doing a favour for someone. I want to know who that is.’
‘Master?’
Benzamir sprang to his feet. ‘If His Imperial Highness wants this book so badly, I think we should give it to him. In person. I think we should see what he does with it afterwards.’
‘I’m not sure, master,’ said Said. ‘Why won’t he accuse us of stealing the book ourselves, and have us clapped in irons?’
‘We know he wants the book. We know that north, south, east and west, he’s looking for any clue of its whereabouts. And we have it. We’re bringing it to him as a gift.’
‘It’s as the master says, Abu Said,’ said Wahir. ‘The emperor would lose face if he took the book from us and threw us in prison. He’ll give us gold, lots of gold, and jewels, and’ – his imagination failed him – ‘all sorts of presents.’
Said pursed his lips as he thought of a response, but Wahir carried on.
‘We’ll have to pretend to be someone else. Who will we be? Merchants, or pilgrims, or wise men?’
‘We’re all wise, men and women.’ Benzamir smiled. He gathered together the tiny bundle of his belongings and walked round the room, extinguishing the lamps one by one. ‘But none of those.’
‘Then what will we be?’
‘Ambassadors. Emissaries from a faraway land, come to pay our respects and present our credentials from our king.’
‘I take it you don’t need me to point out,’ said Alessandra, ‘that we don’t have any letters of introduction, and only you come from a faraway land. The rest of us won’t pass as exotic enough.’
‘We’ll forge some at the earliest opportunity. And it’s not strictly true that I don’t have credentials.’ Benzamir pushed the sleeve on his left arm as far up as it would go. ‘There.’
‘What? It’s too dark to see, Benzamir.’
‘Oh, hang on.’ He concentrated, and the tattoo on his bicep began to glow: a double star, yellow and red, a stylized tree in green, an out-thrust palm in blue. ‘Bio-luminescence. All my people have one when we come of age.’
Alessandra was quiet. ‘You use your magic so casually,’ she said eventually. ‘But it scares me.’
Wahir leaned close in and traced the outlines of the shapes with his finger. ‘What do they mean?’
‘The two stars are for Mizar, which is in the southern sky. That’s where I was born. The tree is my tribe, my clan. The hand is my profession – an explorer, a scout, a soldier.’
‘You were never born on a star,’ said Wahir.
Benzamir smiled in the night. ‘I was born on a ship at the moment that Mizar was rising over the horizon. I suppose where the ship was isn’t really important. These three signs have hidden messages in them that only other magicians can read, so that we can know all about each other when we meet.’ He rolled his sleeve back down, and the tattoo was covered over.
‘And what about your enemies? What do they have?’
‘They have different symbols. But one of them is of my tribe. We should be working together, because that’s what the tribe does, not fighting each other.’ Benzamir finally stood by the last lit lamp. He picked it up and held it in front of him. ‘He’s chosen his path, and I’ve chosen mine. We’ll see who wins when we meet.’
‘There can’t be any doubt, master.’
‘Hush, Wahir. There’s always doubt. Just because I believe I’m right doesn’t mean I’m going to come out on top.’
‘But you have us, master,’ said Said. ‘We won’t stand idly by when the time comes.’
‘And I’ve told you that you have to. Only a fool interferes with a wizards’ duel.’ Benzamir lapsed into silence again, then reached up to pluck the faint red lights out of the air around his head. ‘We must be away before morning. I want to be able to present ourselves at the emperor’s door before a messenger from Misr arrives with a tall tale about a ruined Bible and missing wall.’
‘We’re going to Great Nairobi?’ Alessandra blinked in the half-light. ‘Now?’
‘Only if you want to. I’ve dragged Said and Wahir away from their homes. I can hardly ask the same of you.’
‘I no longer remember where my home was. Sometimes I dream of a green hill, thick with trees, and goats grazing underneath them. There’s a red tiled house, and a man and a woman. I never see their faces.’ Alessandra bit her lip until she was certain not to cry. ‘I can’t go back. I don’t know the way.’
‘And Misr?’
‘Between you and the Ethiopians, you’ve destroyed the market for years to come. The diggers won’t be at the pyramids until an understanding is reached with the Kenyans. I don’t belong here either. It seems you’ve ruined my life, Benzamir.’
‘Then perhaps,’ he said, ‘you should come along with me. I can find you another.’
PART 3
CHAPTER 29
DESPITE THEIR NEED for haste – imperative now that the news of the theft of the book from Al Ahiz’s house was out and travelling like a ripple from Misr – they only used the flying carpet at night. Benzamir wanted their journey along the Nile valley and beyond to be as uneventful as possible, and there were compensations: it was much cooler, which became more important the further north they travelled.
Only Said was sorry that they hadn’t attempted the trip by camel.