“Some sort of gate inspection?” Raseed asked.
Adoulla snorted. “ ‘Gate inspection,’ ‘tariff-checks,’ ‘watchmen’s business.’ It’s all the same monkeyshit. And there’s more of it every day.” At the rate the line was moving, it would be another hour before they were through.
A ghul pack was loose, which meant lives were at stake. But Dhamsawaat’s hundred headaches hurried for no man. One did not walk through the gates of Dhamsawaat the way one walked through a townhouse door. There was first the gray stone inner wall, then one passed through Inspector’s Square, and then through the great main wall, a hundred feet thick. Then one crossed a house-lined lane past the last guardwall before taking the Bridge of Yellow Roses over a ditch. The process had never been a quick one, and due to the new Khalif’s poor city management, it took longer than ever.
The duo cut through the throng as best they could without being truly rude. Adoulla did not want to start a fight, and fights were not uncommon in situations like these. Another quarter-hour and he and Raseed managed to get near the wide gate at the main wall. There the road rose slightly, and Adoulla saw that this was more than a simple traffic tangle.
An execution! The great gray paving stones of Inspector’s Square had been cleared of carts. At its center lay a worn leather mat. A boy of no more than two and ten kneeled on the mat, his hands and feet bound and his eyes wide with terror. A huge, hooded man with a broad bladed sword stood over him.
Adoulla stopped walking, transfixed with horror. Name of God! What could a child that age have possibly done to deserve such a fate?
As if in answer, a high-pitched voice assaulted his ears. Turning toward the sound, he saw a liveried crier standing in an alcove carved in the stone archway above the gate. The man shouted shrilly through a metal cone.
“O fortunate subjects of God’s Regent in the World, the Defender of Virtue, the Most Exalted of Men, His Majesty the Khalif, how God smiles upon you to provide you with such a ruler! See how your benevolent monarch, Jabbari akh-Khaddari, Khalif of Abassen and of all the Crescent Moon Kingdoms, protects you from the grasping hands of thieves! See how he punishes the wicked swiftly and terribly!”
Traffic still moved at an inchworm’s pace, but most of the folk on the road were now gawking at the square. Adoulla stood still, wanting to stop this wickedness but knowing he could not. Someone behind him pushed past, trying to get forward in the press.
He looked back to the leather mat. Almighty God, why do you allow this? Why do you send me to fight monsters outside of my city while such monsters live within it?
God did not answer.
Raseed, who had also stopped, looked at him with concern. “Doctor, what do you—”
Without warning, something flew at the hooded executioner’s face, covering it in an amber goop. Then the man’s chest exploded in red.
A crossbow bolt! Men and women screamed. There was a sound like a thundercrack and a puff of orange smoke suddenly obscured the square. A moment later, the smoke cleared and Adoulla saw only the sprawled form of the dead executioner.
The bound boy was gone.
What could—?
There was another thundercrack, this one from the alcove above the gate. More orange smoke wreathed the recess where the crier had stood. It cleared almost instantly, and Adoulla made out the crier’s liveried form slumped at the feet of a tall, broad-shouldered man. This man wore a costume of calfskin and black silk, emblazoned with falcons. His arms were as thick as some men’s legs, but he moved like a dancer as he stepped to the alcove’s lip.
It’s him! thought Adoulla, who’d heard much of the man but never seen him. Pharaad Az Hammaz, the—
“The Falcon Prince!” The words left a dozen mouths around Adoulla.
More trouble. A confident grin split the famous thief’s moustachioed face. Adoulla shouldn’t have been able to read the man’s facial expression quite so clearly at such a distance. An address-spell was at work, then—the kind that, supposedly, only the Khalif could afford. Every person in the crowd would have the same clear view of the Falcon Prince, would hear his words as if he stood beside them, and would find themselves… not coerced by the Prince’s magic, but open to hearing what he had to say. It was likely the only reason they weren’t panicking and fleeing.
Raseed growled. “The criminal!”
Well, most people would be open to hearing the man, Adoulla corrected himself. Technically, Adoulla could not dispute Raseed’s epithet. Ten years ago, a string of flamboyant robberies of the city’s wealthiest citizens were showily announced to be the work of a single brilliant bandit, who called himself the Falcon Prince. Pharaad Az Hammaz, as he had later revealed his name to be, never himself claimed to be true royalty, but the rumors persisted that he was the last heir of a kingly line from Abassen’s dim past.
Royalty or not, the Falcon Prince was one of the most powerful men in Dhamsawaat. He and his small army of beggars and thieves had become an almost governmental force, the semiofficial voice of the poor. And while the landowners and merchants who took up the cry of “share the wealth” were few and far between, Adoulla had heard from sound sources that a few of the Khalif’s most powerful ministers, due to personal conviction or bribery, secretly backed the bandit.
“God’s peace, good people of Dhamsawaat!” The thief boomed, his outstretched arms embracing the crowd. “Our time together is short! Hear the words of a Prince who loves you!” A small, cautious cheer went up from a few corners. “I’ve freed an innocent boy from the Khalif’s headsman. His crime? Being fool enough to think he could pick coins from a watchman’s purse and feed his ailing mother! Now, we grown folk know that watchmen are as attached to their purses as normal men are to their olive sacks.” The bandit grabbed at his crotch and the crowd laughed hesitantly at his bawdiness. “But did the child deserve to die? Do we Dhamsawaatis care more for the ill-earned wealth of bullies than for the life of a child?”
The crowd grew bolder, and shouts of “No, no!” and “May God forbid it!” erupted from all corners.
The Falcon Prince stood, hands on hips, drinking it in. “I am guilty, good people! I freed the boy. I hit the headsman with a honey pie before I killed him! Only a hungry, hungry man would chop off a child’s head for a few filthy coins. So I fed him! Honey and steel, good people!” The crowd laughed loudly now at the Falcon’s cheerful, casual tone, and he went on.
“The old Khalif and I were enemies. He was no hero, but he spent fifty years watching over this city, which he loved. But for three years now, his fool of a son has bled Dhamsawaat. He has tried to find me and kill me. He! Has! Failed!” With the help of the address-spell, the Falcon boomed each word with a great drum’s rumble.
The crowd sent up a boisterous cheer, and a small knot of men took up a chant:
The old-as-sand song—in which a noble falcon gouges out the eyes of a cruel king—had become associated with the Falcon Prince, and the new Khalif had made the singing of it punishable by flogging.