The shadow thing’s voice squealed again in his mind. Listen to Mouw Awa, who speaketh for his blessed friend. Thou art an honored guardsman. Begat and born in the Crescent Moon Palace. Thou art sworn in the name of God to defend it. All of those beneath ye shall serve.
Thou doth see the baby-bones. Infants fed and fed and then bled dry. All for the fear that doth now waft from thee.
Listen to Mouw Awa. His blessed friend hath waited so long for the Cobra Throne. Shortest days hath come and gone and gone and come. Never one quite right. Mouw Awa the manjackal knoweth well the pain of waiting. He helpeth to deliver his blessed friend from waiting, as his blessed friend did for Mouw Awa.
The gaunt man burned things before him. His eyes burned with smoke as the jackal-man droned on.
Thou smelleth the smoke of red mandrake and doth recall fear. Thou smelleth the smoke of black poppy and doth recall pain.
And suddenly, a whole piece of the guardsman’s mind slid back into place. He was Hami Samad, Vice Captain of the Guard, and there was nothing he could do but beg for his life through a cracked throat. “Please, sire! I will tell you whatever you wish! About the Khalif, about the palace!” He began to weep wildly. “Ministering Angels preserve me! God shelter me!”
The gaunt man stared at Hami Samad with black-ice eyes. The guardsman felt the gaunt man’s spindly fingers dig roughly into his scalp. The gaunt man’s eyes rolled backward, showing only whites. Horrible noises filled the room, as if a thousand men and animals were screaming at once.
There was a tearing noise, and there was pain a thousand times more searing than anything he had yet felt. Impossibly, he felt his head come away from his body. Impossibly, he heard himself speak.
“I AM THE FIRSTBORN ANGEL’S SEED, SOWN WITH GLORIOUS PAIN AND BLESSED FEAR. REAPED BY THE HAND OF HIS SERVANT ORSHADO. THE SKINS OF THOSE-WHO-WERE-BELOW-ME SHALL MOVE AT THE MUSIC OF MY WORD. ALL OF THOSE BENEATH SHALL SERVE.”
The last thing he saw was Hami Samad’s headless body in a great iron kettle, spurting blood that mixed with a molten red glow of boiling oil.
Chapter 17
The sun was halfway up in the sky, and its heat was already making itself known. Dawoud sweated and huffed to keep up with the two young warriors and his indefatigable wife. He and Adoulla walked several strides behind the others, the ghul hunter’s breath coming nearly as heavily as Dawoud’s own. Ahead of them, Litaz spoke softly to Zamia and Raseed, but Dawoud and his old friend kept silent as they strode, saving their breath for breathing.
An hour passed, and the sun climbed a bit higher. They made their way through the large paved caravanserai that marked the entrance to the Palace Quarter. Ahead of them, a group of merchants argued heatedly with one of the Khalif’s coin collectors.
“Do you see this, brother-of-mine?” Adoulla asked quietly. “It’s not just the poor that the Falcon Prince speaks to. The Khalif has made his own bed of scorpions. He has even alienated the minor merchants with his taxes and his half-day-long tariff lines. The small timers are just waiting for an excuse to join the Prince’s supporters.”
Dawoud laughed. “That would be some alliance! Like a bad prophecy: ‘O watch for the day when the thief and the shopkeepers lie down together!’ ”
Adoulla gave him a sidelong glance. “It’s not so impossible. The Prince has always been daring. His targets have always been those with the biggest purses, men that most stall-keepers and middling merchants are happy to see get robbed.”
The road followed the new canal that had been diverted from the River of Tigers. Dawoud poked Adoulla and gestured to the tiny boats that moved along the canal, knowing that his friend had not yet seen this newly made marvel. The swift, magically moving water that the little boats bobbed on fed into a massive waterwheel. “Follow a twisty route of wafting spells and copper pipe, and this is the other end of the stink that now haunts our neighborhood every month. This thing can grind as much grain as ten normal mill wheels, you know.”
Adoulla snorted. “Yes, the end of the stick with no shit on it. Of course all the money from this monstrosity goes into the Khalif’s coffers. And now we’re off to save the son-of-a-whore’s dynasty.”
“Quiet!” Dawoud hissed as a watchman stepped out of a side alley, rudely crossing their path without so much as a glance at them.
The party stood and waited for the man to pass.
They approached the wheel. The noise it made—creaking wood, splashing water, groaning chains—was deafening. It was monstrous, Dawoud had to admit. One could scarce believe it was made by men.
Then they passed through a marble arch, and a path of smooth white paving-stones, wide enough for six riders, stretched ahead of them for a hundred yards. At the end of the great path, which was grander than the Mainway itself, lay the Crescent Moon Palace, behind a high wall. As always it forced Dawoud’s attention, though he’d been here just the other day.
Yet this time he found his eye drawn even more forcefully to the thin silvery spindle that was the minaret of the Court magi. So much space for seven men when seventy could live there. The Khalifs of Abassen had apparently never learned of the foul power that, for generations, had literally sat untapped beneath them. But what did the court Magi know? How would they fit into this mad sequence of magical events? He felt his tired mind spinning with too many damned-by-God complications.
As they made the long walk to the gates of the palace, Dawoud shifted his attention to Raseed. The boy’s eyes kept darting to the tribeswoman and then to the paving stones before him. He is worrying about protecting her. Wondering how to fulfill his duties and keep the girl safe at the same time. This worried Dawoud. Not the dervish’s cloaked devotion to Zamia—Dawoud accepted his wife’s claims that the obvious feelings between the two young ones would not be an impediment; that in fact “love was what made everything else matter,” despite the fact that young people’s love was a thing of foolishness and first sights. No, it wasn’t Raseed’s interest in the girl that worried Dawoud. It was the dervish’s obvious struggle with that interest, and the second-guessing that came with it. They were hunting monsters in the Crescent Moon Palace. In a situation like this, second-guessing could mean the death of the world.
They were about a dozen yards from the gate to the palace courtyards when a gray-eyed young officer of the guard stopped them.
“Hold! Who are you that you dare approach the palace of the Defender of Virtue wearing weapons?” The man’s hand rested easily on the pommel of his sword.
“God’s peace, guardsman. I am Dawoud Son-of-Wajeed, a friend of Captain Hedaad’s. I must speak to the captain at once. He is expecting me to call upon him.” It was true enough that he could say it with authority.
“Captain Hedaad?” The man looked uncertain but not unfriendly. “Well, I can’t leave my post, Uncle. But if you truly have business with the captain, I will send for him.”
“That will be fine. The matter is urgent, though, so please hurry.”
“As you say.”
Dawoud had been prepared to press silver into someone’s palm in order to get his message up to Roun. But apparently his and his friends’ fates were kind. In their hour of need, they had met with an honest guardsman. It was gratifying, while on this mad quest in a land not even his, to see Abassen’s agents acting as they ought.
The young officer called a slender guardsman over. “Kassin! Send word to Captain Hedaad that—”
“Why, now, are we disturbing the captain?” a vaguely familiar voice broke in.