She found herself speaking. “You may call me simply Zamia, Raseed.” Where did that come from!? This cursed wine is too strong! The dervish mumbled something embarrassed-sounding and locked his eyes on his plate. He is older than me, yet he seems so young.
“Well,” the old man bellowed, tipsily breaking the tension, “such bird food is suitable enough, perhaps, for little holy men’s mouths. But not for a man of my…” he paused, hefting up his big belly with both hands, “a man of my… significance.” The ghul hunter turned to Zamia, a note of solicitude entering his voice. “I have spent long decades as a servant of God, you know. I’ve traveled roads this presumptuous boy has never even heard of. Forty years’ worth of days at war with the Traitorous Angel. Is it so wrong that I should wish to spend my nights like this?”
The old man took another big swallow of wine and turned back to Raseed with a troublemaker’s smile. “You’re as bad, sometimes, as those Humble Students you respect so much! Perhaps you should join their stupid little sect! Scandalized by ale and dancing and such!” He poked a reproving finger at Raseed. “Remember what the Chapters say: ‘God speaks through these Chapters, not through the mouths of priests. His scriptures are not written upon papyrus, parchment or vellum. They are marked in men’s memories, stamped on men’s hearts, engraved in men’s souls.’ Yet your Order and the Humble Students act as if the Chapters were written on their lips.”
He took another drink. “Before their glory faded from Abassen, the ghul hunters’ ways were unbending in some things. But at least they never claimed to be holy men. God is the Most Beneficent Host, boy! When you’ve forgotten that, you’ve forgotten why we fight!” His tirade over, the ghul hunter threw his hands up in exaggerated exasperation.
For a while then there were only the sounds of eating and the old man’s heavy breath. When the meal was done they sat there silently. Then the Doctor’s too-loud voice shattered the silence.
“Speaking of fighting,” he said as if ten minutes had not passed, “I have been wondering something, Zamia. If, God willing, we find this damned-by-God servant of the Traitorous Angel and we defeat him, what will you do then?” Zamia felt the pleasant haze of the wine burn away in an instant. Why does he bring this up now? It sounded to her as if the ghul hunter already knew what her answer would be, and disapproved of it.
“All that matters is that I kill whoever or whatever has done this. Likely I will die doing so. This is as it should be. Martyrdom for me, vengeance for my band.”
The winey cheer was gone from his voice. “Martyrdom? Are you so eager to die, Zamia?”
She came to her feet and hissed at the old man. “Why should I wish to live? Everyone I know is dead! My band is dead! I can only pray that my fate is to avenge them before I die myself!”
The Doctor stared at her, and his gaze was hard. “Remember that even fate has its forking roads. Your father saw the touch of the Angels upon you and chose you to be Protector of the Band, though you are female. He understood the Chapter that reads ‘Only so many fates for each man, but always a choice.’ ”
The Doctor poked idly at the single bean on his plate—the only bit of food that remained there. “But enough grim talk for now. We must see to what we city folk call your sleeping arrangements—and what the Badawi call ‘some random patch of sandy dirt.’ Oh, I am sorry, girl, I only jest. But of course we would not shame you by having you sleep in the house of a man not your husband or father. I don’t doubt my neighbor—the old woman who brought our dinner—will set a pallet for you. For a young woman such as—”
Zamia growled. “I am not a girl, Doctor. My father did choose me for Protector of the Band, and that is what I am. The Protector sleeps where he must. If you would be so kind to set a pallet here at the foot of the stairs, that will be fine.”
Beside her, the dervish made a strangled noise.
Zamia ignored him because she could not afford to lose control of herself. “What I want to know,” she asked, “is whether we are truly safe here, Doctor. I do not wish to wake to the feeling of my ribcage being cracked open. The one whose ghul pack we fought—what is to stop him from striking us here?”
The Doctor yawned and smiled patronizingly. “Sneaking ghuls about within a city is no easy matter, child. And besides, my home is charmed so that no ghul can cross its threshold.” The old man shoved his dirty plate rudely in Raseed’s direction and got up from the table. His lazy expression grew urgent again. “Listen to me. One of the Banu Laith Badawi still lives. When she dies, then your band is dead. Until that day, girl, your band lives.” He waggled a big finger at her and left the room.
She turned to where the dervish had sat, afraid but excited to be alone with him. But when she turned, the little man was gone. Something inside her twisted and untwisted in disappointment and relief.
A little while later, a great storm of things flew through Zamia’s mind as she lay on her pallet seeking sleep. The sight of her brother with his heart torn out and his eyes shining red. Her father’s hand, clutching a dagger. The sound of ghuls hissing. The smells of this strange city. Raseed’s brief smiles.
And the Doctor’s admonitions. Your band lives, he had said. She had already counted herself half-dead, she realized. She’d been acting as if the band of Nadir Banu Laith Badawi were gone from God’s great earth forever. The ghul hunter, with his city man’s love of this one building he called home, did not understand her people. He did not understand what she had lost. But he had started her thinking nonetheless.
Home, Zamia thought. For the nomadic Badawi, it was not a place. The strains of one of her people’s most important songs forced its way into her head. It would start with the boys singing,
Home is where my father is! I am a true Badawi!
Then the men would take their turn, singing
Home is where my sons are! I am a true Badawi!
Then all would sing together:
Home is where my band’s tents are! I am a true Badawi!
The song was a boastful one, intended to flaunt her people’s superiority to the soft villagers and city folk. But now it took on a mournful irony. Her father had joined her mother in death. She had no sons or daughters. The isolation of her band meant that no other band would take her in. How could she ever know a home again?
The burning need for revenge had pushed her far. But her body felt as if it would melt from exhaustion. There was nothing more she could do tonight. Nothing that is, but mourn all she had lost. And so, sure that she was out of the hearing range of her new-found allies, and more tired than she’d ever been, Zamia Banu Laith Badawi, for the first time in years, very quietly cried herself to sleep.
II
The guardsman did not know how many days he had been held in the red lacquered box.
The lid opened and the gaunt man’s hard hands pulled him, naked and whimpering, from the box. The gaunt man threw him to the dirt floor. The guardsman lay there, his throat burning with thirst, trying to remember his name. All he could remember was that he was a guardsman, born in the Crescent Moon Palace and sworn to service there. That the other guardsmen served under him. The gaunt man and his shadow-creature would not let him forget that.
And he remembered the street thief and the beggar. The gaunt man had killed them both slowly, letting their blood spatter onto his already filthy kaftan. He had made the guardsman listen to their pleas. Made him smell their waste as they soiled themselves in fear.