"Maybe I do want to talk," he said. He closed the filigreed doors to thebalcony, turned to face his companion.
Meryel was seven years older than he. Her skin was too dark and her featurestoo coarse for her ever to have been thought beautiful. Or even pretty. Agenerous dowry had helped her marry well.
She was too short and too fat and dressed with the eye for style of agoatherd. She drank rivers of date wine, proscribed by both Aram and theHerodians' tempestuous god. She was, invariably, inevitably, an embarrassmentin public. She said the wrong things at the wrong times and burst into gigglesin the wrong places.
She was his best friend.
"He's shutting me out. More and more, he's hiding things from me. He didn'tused to send me away when he wanted to meet with somebody. But the last sixmonths ..."
"You distrust his reasons?"
"No."
"Does he distrust you?"
"No. Of course not. How could he and live with me?"
"You don't think it's the normal course of security?"
"No."
"You do talk where you shouldn't."
Bel-Sidek looked at her sharply.
"Here. To me."
"I'm sure you've been checked every way he can imagine." He knew she had, knew the General trusted her almost as much as he trusted her himself.
"Should I be flattered? Is it just that your feelings are hurt, then?"
"No. Maybe. I guess that's part of it. But I'm worried for him, too."
"And have you considered the chance that his ego is involved, too?"
"How so?"
"I don't know. I don't know what he's up to. I do know he thinks enough of you to have made you his adjutant. Of all those who would have taken it. To me that says he values your opinion. Maybe that's why he's shutting you out." "I don't follow that."
"He's a sick old man. He doesn't have much time. He knows that. He's desperate for results before he goes. Maybe he has a scheme he knows you wouldn't approve." "That's possible."
She really was quite a remarkable woman, so inept in some ways and so damnably competent in others. In a culture wholly dominated by males she had established her independence, if not equality. She had managed that because she understood money, power, and the power of money.
The one truly daring thing she had done was, on hearing the first grim whispers from Dak-es-Souetta, to assume that her husband was among the dead.
She had moved instantly to assume an iron grip on both his fortune and her dowry, and had not been the slightest bit hesitant to use force and terror to stay the claims of both families. They said she had had her own father beaten. And yet ... she could not cope in the society into which her wealth had propelled her.
Nor did she care, apparently. Apparently all she wanted was the power to make half the human race leave her alone. Amazing contradictions these days, bel-Sidek reflected. Meryel was a boil on the face of all the old man held holy, yet he must approve of her, if not for bel-Sidek's sake, then for the sake of the coffers of the Living. She was one of the movement's strongest supporters. What a tangle of ethics and traditions had come out of one day's dying.
"That could explain it," bel-Sidek admitted. "But I don't like it."
"Of course you don't. If you were going to like it you'd know everything there was to know already. Wouldn't you?"
"I suppose." He opened the filigreed doors and stepped out onto the balcony.
Qushmarrah had not changed in his absence. The tide of fog had risen a littlehigher, that was all. The air was so damnably still that the boundary betweenfog and not-fog was as sharp as a saber's edge. As he watched, a man camestriding up out of it like some thing of dark legend marching out of the mistsof nightmare.
What a turn of mind tonight, he thought. The man was probably a baker on hisway to work.
Meryel said, "Since you aren't in a mood for anything else, why not talkbusiness? I have two ships coming in from Benagra. I'll need reliable men tounload them."
It was how they had come to meet. He was khadifa of the waterfront. She hadstrong interests in shipping, gently helped to grow by the gentlemen of theLiving. Her captains imported the arms that dared not be smithed anywhere inQushmarrah.
As Azel strode up out of the fog he was thinking that there was still a chancehe could get some sleep tonight, but he'd have to forget about getting awayfor any fishing or hunting. He had been out of touch in several directions andit looked like things were going to happen. A week away and he might return toa chaos he could not unravel.
He glanced at the hulking blot of the citadel, wondered if the Witch wasgetting any sleep tonight. Probably. She thought she was like the citadelitself: above the dirt and turmoil of Qushmarrah.
She might end up learning the hard way.
He crested the hill, putting the harbor side behind him. Ahead lay the Hahr, the most prosperous quarter of the Old City. Behind lay the Shu, the poorestand most densely populated quarter, where sons had stacked homes beside andatop those of their fathers till half the quarter was like some enormous madmud daubers' nest where anyone who lived off the thoroughfares first had toclimb up to the sunlight and cross the rooftops in order to reach a street.
The labyrinth underlay it all, sometimes open all the way to the sky, moreoften built over and now with old doorways sealed lest doom slip up by thatroute. The maze was so deadly that even the most desperate homeless seldomstole in for shelter. That territory belonged to the boldest of the bad boys.
Azel had met people in there who made him nervous. Weird people. Crazy people.
People you had to deal with harshly to get your message across. And some whojust could not learn.
Azel had grown up in the Shu. At seven he had been orphaned and left homeless.
He did not remember much about his parents except that his mother had criedall the time and his father had yelled almost as much and had beaten them alla lot. He had a notion that it might have been he who had set the fire thatconsumed them-except that he had an equally fuzzy recollection of his brothergiving the old man fifteen or twenty good ones to the head with a hammerbefore the fire.
He hadn't seen his brother since.
There was nothing he wanted to remember from those days, no little heirloom hecarried around and treasured.
At fourteen he had gone to sea and had gotten to know most of the ports aroundthe rim of the sea. He had survived them all and most of them had survived him. At twenty-one he had returned to Qushmarrah.
It had not been long before he had fallen in with the remnants of the Gorlochcult. Its grim philosophy appealed to him, though he took from it only whatsuited him and discarded the rest. He was not weak. He had no higher god thanhimself.
Soon he caught the eye of the High Priest, Nakar. The sorcerer gave him oddjobs. He handled them swiftly, efficiently, no matter how difficult or cruel.
In a moment of humor Nakar had begun calling him Azel after the demon whocarried Gorloch's messages to the living world. Azel the Destroyer.
Never did he commit himself to the god or to the man. Not entirely. Azel couldnot give himself wholly to anyone but Azel.
He had missed Dak-es-Souetta. He hadn't been trapped in any of the towers atHarak Pass. He hadn't participated in the rout on the Plain of Chordan nor hadhe been there for the hopeless defense of Qushmarrah after the pride of heryouth and manhood had been slaughtered or scattered, chaff driven by the hotbreath of Death.
His absence did not shame him. It would not have shamed him had he done nothing for the city that had done nothing for him. He knew nothing aboutshame. But he had in fact been doing something. He had been in Agadar, westalong the coast, where the Herodian armies had landed. His few carefullystruck blows against Herodian commanders had-unfortunately, as it haddeveloped-delayed the invading armies the month necessary for Fa'tad al-Aklato gather his tribal warriors and race to Dak-es-Souetta.
Thus do the Fates conspire.
Azel paused across the street from the house that was his destination. Almostthe instant his feet stopped moving the door opened over there. Azel easedback into deeper shadow.