 
Stories to Captivate the Imagination

Welcome to the worlds of Saladin Ahmed

A medieval physician asked to do the impossible. A gun slinging Muslim wizard in the old West. A disgruntled super villain pining for prison reform. A cybernetic soldier who might or might not be receiving messages from God. Prepare yourself to be transported to new and fantastical worlds.

The short stories in this collection have been nominated for the Nebula and Campbell awards. They've been reprinted in The Year's Best Fantasy and other anthologies, recorded for numerous podcasts, and translated into several foreign languages. Now they are collected in one place for the first time. Experience for yourself the original voice of one of fantasy's rising stars!

Praise for Saladin Ahmed

"Ahmed's characters...are a terrific blend of the realistic and the awesomely magical." — io9

"[Ahmed is] revitalizing the fantasy genre with fresh perspectives and original stories." — Library Journal

"Ahmed's debut masterfully paints a world both bright and terrible." — Publishers Weekly

""An arresting, sumptuous and thoroughly satisfying debut." — Kirkus Reviews

Other Works by Saladin Ahmed

Throne of the Crescent Moon (DAW, 2012)

**Engraved on the Eye**

Saladin Ahmed

Copyright Saladin Ahmed 2012

Published at Smashwords

This book and parts thereof may not be reproduced in any form, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, or otherwise—without prior written permission of the publisher, except as provided by the United States of America copyright law.

Ridan and its logo are copyrighted and trademarked by Ridan Publishing. All rights reserved.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to actual persons, organizations, and/or events is purely coincidental.

A Ridan Publication

www.ridanpublishing.com

www.saladinahmed.com

Where Virtue Lives © 2009 Saladin Ahmed, originally appeared in Beneath Ceaseless Skies #15

Hooves and the Hovel of Abdel Jameela © 2009 Saladin Ahmed, originally appeared in Clockwork Phoenix 2, ed. Mike Allen

Judgment of Swords and Souls © 2009 Saladin Ahmed, originally appeared in Orson Scott Card's Intergalactic Medicine Show #14

Doctor Diablo Goes Through the Motions © 2010 Saladin Ahmed, originally appeared in Strange Horizons, Feb 15 2010

General Akmed's Revenge? © 2010 Saladin Ahmed, originally appeared in Expanded Horizons #16

Mister Hadj's Sunset Ride © 2010 Saladin Ahmed, originally appeared in Beneath Ceaseless Skies #43

The Faithful Soldier, Prompted © 2010 Saladin Ahmed, originally appeared in Apex Magazine, Nov 08 2010

Iron Eyes and the Watered Down World © 2012 Saladin Ahmed, originally appeared at www.saladinahmed.com, Jun 12, 2012

Cover Art © 2012 by Michael J. Sullivan

Formatting by Robin Sullivan

Release Date: September 2012

Author's Note

This collection gathers all of my short fiction that has been published to date. The title of this collection, "Engraved on the Eye," refers to a sort of storyteller's boast that appears in the Thousand and One Nights—"If this tale were engraved with needles at the corner of the eye, it would not be more wondrous."

I don't claim to live up to the old tale-teller's boast. But that image, and the way it connects writing and the impossible, has always been a touchstone of inspiration for me—a kind of writer's magic talisman.

I hope, as you read these stories, that you experience a bit of that magic as well.

Saladin Ahmed, Detroit, MI

August 2012

# Where Virtue Lives

"I'm telling you, Doctor, its eyes—its teeth! The hissing! Name of God, I've never been so scared!"

Doctor Adoulla Makhslood, the best ghul hunter in the great city of Dhamsawaat, was weary. Two and a half bars of thousand-sheet pastry sat on his plate, their honey and pistachio glazed layers glistening in the sunlight that streamed into Yehyeh's teahouse. Adoulla let out a belch. Only two hours awake. Only partway through my pastry and cardamom tea, and already a panicked man stands chattering to me about a monster! God help me.

He brushed green and gold pastry bits from his fingers onto his spotless kaftan. Magically, the crumbs and honey-spots slid from his garment to the floor, leaving no stain. The kaftan was as white as the moon. Its folds seemed to go on forever, much like the man sitting before him.

"That hissing! I'm telling you, I didn't mean to leave her. But by God, I was so scared!" Hafi, the younger cousin of Adoulla's dear friend Yehyeh, had said "I'm telling you" twelve times already. Repetition helped folk talk away their fear, so Adoulla had let the man go on for a while. He had heard the story thrice now, listening for the inconsistencies fear introduces to memories—even honest men's memories.

Adoulla knew some of what he faced. A water ghul had abducted Hafi's wife, dragging her toward a red riverboat with eyes painted on its prow. Adoulla didn't need to hear any more from Hafi. What he needed was more tea. But there was no time.

"She's gone!" Hafi wailed. "That horrible thing took her! And like a coward, I ran! Will you help me, Doctor?"

For most of his life men had asked Adoulla this question. In his youth he'd been the best brawler on Dead Donkey Lane, and the other boys had looked up to him. Now men saw his attire and asked for his help with monsters. Adoulla knew too well that his head-hair had flown and his gut had grown. But his ghul hunter's raiment was unchanged after decades of grim work—still famously enchanted so that it could never be dirtied, and quietly blessed so that neither sword nor knife could pierce it.

Still, he didn't allow himself to feel too secure. In his forty years ghul hunting he'd faced a hundred deaths other than sword-death. Which deaths he would face today remained to be seen.

"Enough," Adoulla said, cutting off yet more words from Hafi. "I've some ideas where to start. I don't know if your wife still lives, young man. I can't promise to return her to you. But I'll try my best to do so, and to stop whomever's responsible, God damn them."

"Thank you, Doctor! Um...I mean...I hereby thank and praise you, and beg God's blessings for you, O great and virtuous ghul hunter!"

Does he think I'm some pompous physician, to be flattered by ceremony? A ghul hunter shared a title but little else with the haughty doctors of the body. No leech-wielding charlatan of a physician could stop the fanged horrors that Adoulla battled.

Adoulla swallowed a sarcastic comment and stood up. He embraced Hafi, kissing him on both cheeks. "Yes, well. I will do all I can, child of God." He dismissed the younger man with a reassuring pat on the back.

O God, Adoulla thought, why have You made this life so tiring? And why so full of interrupted meals? In six quick bites he ate the remaining pastries. Then, sweets in his belly and a familiar reluctance rising within him, he left Yehyeh's teahouse in search of a river boat with painted eyes, a ghul, and a bride whom Adoulla hoped to God was still alive.

Raseed bas Raseed frowned in distaste as he made his way down the crowded Dhamsawaat street his guide called the Lane of Monkeys. Six days ago Raseed had walked along a quiet road near the Lodge of God. Six days ago he'd killed three highwaymen. Now he was in Dhamsawaat, King of Cities, and there were dirty, wicked folk all about him. City people who spoke with too much speed and too little respect. Raseed brushed dust from his dervish-blue silks. As he followed his lanky guide through the press of people, he dwelt—though it was impermissibly proud to do so—on his encounter with the highwaymen.

"A 'Dervish Dressed In Blue,' eh? Just like in the song! I hear you sons of whores hide jewels in those pretty dresses."

"Haw haw! 'Dervish Dressed In Blue!' That's funny! Sing for us, little dervish!"

"What do you think that forked sword'll do against three men's spears, pup? Can your skinny arms even lift it?"

When the robbers had mentioned that blasphemous song, they had approached the line that separates life from death. When they had moved from rough talk to brandishing spears, they'd crossed that line. Three bodies now lay rotting by the road. Raseed tried not to smile with pride at the thought.

They'd underestimated him. He was six-and-ten, though he knew he hardly looked it. Clean-shaven, barely five feet, and thin-limbed as well. But his silk tunic and trousers—the habit of the Order—warned most ruffians that Raseed was no easy target. As did the curved sword at his hip, forked to "cleave the right from the wrong in men," as the Traditions of the Order put it. The blade and silks inspired respect in the cautious, but fools saw the scrawny boy and not the dervish.

That did not matter, though. Soon, God willing, Raseed would find the great and virtuous ghul hunter Adoulla Makhslood. If it pleased God, the Doctor would take Raseed as an apprentice. If Raseed was worthy.

But I am impatient. Proud. Are these virtues? The Traditions of the Order say, "A dervish without virtue is less than a beggar."

The sudden realization that he'd lost sight of his guide pulled him out of his reflections. For a moment Raseed panicked, but the lanky man stepped back into view, gesturing for him to follow. Raseed thanked God that he'd found a reverent and helpful guide, for Dhamsawaat's streets seemed endless. Raseed had been the youngest student ever to earn the blue silks. He feared neither robbers nor ghuls. But he would not know what to do if lost amidst this horde of lewd, impious people.

Life had been less confusing at the Lodge of God. But then High Shaykh Aalli had sent him to train with the Doctor.

"When you meet Adoulla Makhslood, little sparrow, you will see that there are truths greater than all you've learned in this Lodge. You will learn that virtue lives in strange places."

Before him, his guide came to a halt. "Here we are, master dervish. Just over that bridge."

At last. Raseed thanked the man and turned toward the small footbridge. The man tugged at Raseed's sleeve.

"Apologies, master dervish, but the watchmen will not let you cross without paying the crossing tax."

"Crossing tax?"

The man nodded. "And the bastards will charge you too much once they see your silks—they respect neither piety nor the Order. If you wish, though, I will haggle for you. A half-dirham should suffice. Were I a richer man I'd cover your tax myself—it's a sad world where a holy man must pay his way over bridges."

Raseed thanked the man for his kindness and handed him one of his few coins.

"Very good, master dervish. Now please stay out of sight while I bargain. I will return for you shortly. God be with you."

Raseed waited.

And waited.

Adoulla needed information. Ghuls had no souls of their own—they did only as their masters bade. Which meant that a vile man had used a water ghul in his bride-stealing scheme. And if there was one place Adoulla could go to learn of vile men's schemes, it was Miri's. There was no place in the world that pleased him more, nor any that hurt him so.

Though God alone knows when I'll get there. Adoulla walked the packed Mainway, wishing the crowd would move faster, knowing it wouldn't. Overturned cobblers' carts, dead pack animals, traffic-stopping processions of state—Dhamsawaat's hundred headaches hurried for no man. Not even when a ghul stalked the King of Cities.

By the time he reached Miri's tidy storefront it was past midday. Standing in the open doorway, Adoulla smelled sweet incense from iron burners and camelthorn from the hearth. For a long moment he stood there at the threshold, wondering why in the world he'd been away from this lovely place so long.

A corded forearm blocked his way, and another man's shadow fell over him. A muscular man even taller than Adoulla stood scowling before him, a long scar splitting his face into gruesome halves. He placed a broad palm on Adoulla's chest and grabbed a fistful of white kaftan.

"Ho-ho! Who's this forgetter-of-friends, slinking back in here so shamelessly?"

Adoulla smiled. "Just another foolish child of God who doesn't know to stay put, Axeface."

The two men embraced and kissed on both cheeks. Then Axeface bellowed toward an adjoining room, "The Doctor is here, Mistress. You want me to beat him up?"

Adoulla could not see Miri, but he heard her husky voice. "Not today, though I am tempted. Let the old fart through."

For one moment more, though, Axeface held him back. "She misses you, Doctor. I bet she'd still marry you. When're you gonna wake up, huh?" With a good-natured shove, he sent Adoulla stumbling into the greeting-room.

One of the regular girls, wearing a dress made of sheer cloth and copper coins, smiled at Adoulla. The coins jingled as she shimmied past, and he tried to keep from turning his head. Just my luck, he thought not for the first time, that the woman I love runs the whorehouse with the city's prettiest girls.

Then she was there. Miri Almoussa, Seller of Silks and Sweets, known to a select few as Miri of the Hundred Ears. Her thick curves jiggled as she moved, and her hands were hennaed. Adoulla had to remind himself that he was there to save a girl's life. "When one is married to the ghuls, one has three wives already," went the old ghul hunter's adage. O God, how I wish I could take a fourth!

Silently, Miri led him to a divan. She glared at him and brushed her hand over his beard, ridding it of crumbs he hadn't known were there. "You're a wonderful man," she said by way of greeting, "but you can be truly disgusting sometimes."

A man's slurred shouts boomed from the next room. Irritation flashed across Miri's face, but she spoke lightly. "Naj is usually so quiet. Wormwood wine makes him loud. At least he's not singing. Last week it was ten rounds of 'The Druggist, the Draper, and the Man Who Made Paper' before he passed out. Name of God, how I hate that song!" She slid Adoulla a tray with coffee, little salt fish, and rice bread. Adoulla popped a fish into his mouth, the tiny bones crunching as he chewed. Despite the urgency of his visit he was hungry. And Miri was not a woman to be rushed, no matter what the threat.

She continued. "Unlike some people, though, Naj can be counted on to be here every week, helping to keep me and mine from poverty. It's been a while, Doullie. What do you want?" She set her powder-painted features into an indifferent mask.

"I'm wondering, pretty one, if you've heard anything about a stolen bride in the Quarter of Stalls."

Miri smiled a disgusted smile. "Predictable! Of course you already have your gigantic nose in this nonsense! Well. For the usual fee plus...five percent, I might remember something my Ears have heard."

"A price hike, huh?" Adoulla sighed. "You know I'll pay what you ask, my sweet."

"Indeed you will. We may be more than friends here and there, 'my sweet,' but we're not man and wife. Your choice, remember? Our monies are separate. And this, Doullie, is about money. Now, according to my Ears..."

A name would've made Adoulla's task easier, but Miri's information was almost as good. A red riverboat with eyes painted on the prow had been spotted only two hours ago at an abandoned dock near the Low Bridge of Boats. And Hafi's wife may not have been the first woman taken by the ghul. Two of Miri's Ears said the ghul served a man, one said a woman, but none had gotten a close look.

Still, Adoulla had a location now. Enough to act on. And so, calling himself mad for the thousandth time in his life, Adoulla prepared to leave a wonderful woman's company to chase after monsters.

Raseed approached the well-kept storefront and allowed himself to hope. This was not Adoulla Makhslood's home, but after Raseed's "guide" had absconded, an old woman had led Raseed to this storefront, insisting that she had just seen the Doctor enter.

Raseed paused at the threshold. He had journeyed far, and if it pleased God he'd have a new teacher. If it pleased God. He took a measured breath and stepped through the doorway.

Inside, the large greeting-room was dim. Scant sunlight made its way through high windows. Tall couches lined the wall opposite the door, and a few well-dressed men sat on them, each speaking to a woman. And at the center of the room, on a juniper-wood divan, sat a middle-aged woman and an old man in a spotless kaftan. They stared as a massive man with a scar ushered Raseed in. Raseed looked at the man in white. Doctor Adoulla Makhslood?

It had to be him. He was the right age, though Raseed had expected the Doctor to be leaner. And clean-shaven. This old man had the bumpy knuckles of a fist-fighter. Can this rough-looking one really be him?

Raseed bowed his head. "Begging your pardon, but are you Doctor Adoulla Makhslood? The great and virtuous ghul hunter?"

The man snorted a laugh. "'Great and virtuous'? No, boy, you're looking for someone else. I'm Doctor Adoulla Makhslood, the best belcher in Dhamsawaat. If I see this other fellow, though, I'll tell him you're looking for him."

Raseed was confused. Perhaps he's testing me somehow. He spoke carefully. "I apologize for disturbing you, Doctor. I am Raseed bas Raseed and I have come, at High Shaykh Aalli's bidding, to offer you my sword in apprenticeship." He bowed and waited for the Doctor's response.

Old Shaykh Aalli? The only true dervish Adoulla had ever known? Adoulla had assumed that ancient Aalli had gone to meet God years ago. Was it really possible this Raseed had been sent by the High Shaykh? And might the boy be of some help? The Doctor sized up the five-foot dervish. He was yellow-toned with tilted eyes and a clean-shaven face. He looked like one who had killed but did not yet value life.

A scabbard of blue leather and lapis lazuli hung at the boy's waist. Adoulla smiled as he thought of the bawdy song that poked fun at an "ascetic" dervish's love for his jeweled scabbard. The tune was as catchy as the words were blasphemous. Without meaning to, Adoulla started humming "Dervish Dressed In Blue." The boy frowned, then bit his lip.

God help me, he looks so sincere. Adoulla sighed and stood, avoiding Miri's glare. "We'll talk as we walk, boy. A girl's life is in danger and time is short." He paid Miri her fee, mumbled his inadequate goodbyes, and herded the boy out onto the street.

A dervish of the Order. Adoulla decided he could not ignore the advantages of having such a swordsman at his side. After all, who knew what awaited him at the Low Bridge of Boats? He was easily winded these days, and he had no time to stop by his townhouse for more supplies. He needed help, truth be told. But first the boy had to be set straight.

"The name of Shaykh Aalli goes far indeed with me, boy. You may accompany me for now. But we're not in a holy man's parable. We're trying to save a poor girl's life and keep from getting ourselves killed. God's gifts and my own study have given me useful powers. But I'll kick a man in his fig-sack if need be, make no mistake. A real girl has been stolen by a real monster. God forbid it, she may be dead. But it's our job to help however we can."

The boy looked uncomfortable, but he bowed his head and said "Yes, Doctor." That would be enough for now.

The thoroughfare the Doctor called the Street of Festivals was lined with townhouses separated by small gardens. A girl hawked purple pickles from a copper bowl. Raseed smelled something foul, but it wasn't the pickles.

Two houses down a human head had been mounted above the doorway.

The Doctor spat. "The work of 'His Greatness' the Khalif. That is the head of Nassaar Jamala. Charged with treason. He made a few loud speeches at market. Meanwhile, young brides are abducted by ghuls and the watchmen do nothing."

"Surely, Doctor, if the man was a traitor it was righteous that he should die," Raseed said.

"And how is it that you are a scholar of righteousness, boy? Because you're clean-shaven and take no wine? Shave your beard and scour your soul?" The Doctor squinted at Raseed. "Do you even need to shave yet? Hmph. What trials has your mewling soul faced, O master dervish of six-and-ten-whole-years? O kisser of I-am-guessing-exactly-zero-girls?"

The Doctor waved his big hand as if brushing away his own words. "Look. There are three possibilities. One, you're a madman or a crook passing yourself off as a dervish. Two, you are a real Lodge-trained holy man—which in all likelihood still makes you a corrupt bully. Three—" he gave Raseed a long look. "Three, you are the second dervish of the Order I've ever met who actually lives by his world-saving oaths. If so, boy, you've a cruel, disappointing life ahead."

"'God's mercy is more powerful than all the world's cruelties'" Raseed recited. But the Doctor merely snorted and walked on.

As Raseed followed through the throngs of people, his soul sank. Despite years of training he felt like a small boy, lost and about to cry. His long journey was over. He had made it to Dhamsawaat. He had found the man Shaykh Aalli named the Crescent Moon Kingdoms' greatest ghul hunter.

And the man was an impious slob.

Doubt began to overwhelm Raseed. What would he do now? He knew that he needed direction—he wasn't so proud that he couldn't admit that. But what could he learn from this gassy, unkempt man?

And yet Raseed could not deny that there was something familiar about Adoulla Makhslood. A strength of presence not unlike High Shaykh Aalli's that seared past the Doctor's sleepy-seeming eyes. Perhaps...

He didn't realize he'd come to a halt until a beggar elbowed past him. The Doctor, a dozen yards ahead, turned and hollered at him to hurry. Raseed followed, and they walked on into the late afternoon.

It was nearly evening when they finally approached the abandoned dock near the Low Bridge of Boats. There should be watchmen here, keeping the street people from moving in, Adoulla thought. But neither vagrants nor patrols were in sight. Bribery. Or murder.

"Doctor!" The boy's whisper was sharp as he pointed out onto the river.

Adoulla saw it too: the red riverboat. He cursed as he saw that it was already leaving the dock. The owner had seen their approach—a lookout spell, no doubt. Adoulla cursed again. Then two figures stepped out from behind a dockhouse twenty yards ahead.

They were shaped vaguely like men, but Adoulla knew the scaly grey flesh and glowing eyes. Water ghuls. And not one of them, but two!

Adoulla thanked God that he had the little dervish with him. "Enemies, boy!"

The ghuls hissed through barb-toothed leech-mouths, and their eyes blazed crimson. It was no wonder Hafi had run from them. Any man in his right mind would have.

Adoulla dug into his kidskin satchel and withdrew two jade marbles. He clacked the spheres together in one hand and recited from the Heavenly Chapters.

"God the All-Merciful forgives us our failings."

The jade turned to ash in Adoulla's palm, and there was a noise like a crashing wave. The water ghul nearest him lost its shape and collapsed into a harmless puddle of stinking liquid, twitching with dead snakes and river-spiders.

The drain of the invocation hit Adoulla and he felt as if he'd dashed up a hill. So much harder every year!

The other ghul came at them. Raseed sped past Adoulla, his forked sword slashing. The creature snaked left. The boy's weapon whistled through empty air. The ghul drove its scaly fist hard into the boy's jaw. It struck a second time, catching Raseed in the chest. Adoulla was amazed that the boy still stood.

Regaining his own strength, Adoulla reached back into his satchel. He'd had only the two marbles but there was another invocation...Where is that vial? The ghul struck at Raseed a third time—

And the boy dodged. He spun and launched a hard kick into the ghul's midsection. Its red eyes registered no pain, but the creature scrabbled backward.

Adoulla marveled at the boy's speed. Raseed's sword flashed once, twice, thrice, four times. And Adoulla saw that his other invocation would not be needed.

Ghuls fell harder than men, but they fell all the same. The boy had finished this one. Its hissing shifted into the croaks and buzzes of swamp vermin. Its claws raked the air. Then, its false soul snuffed out, the thing collapsed in a watery pile of dead frogs and leeches.

Adoulla smiled at the puddle. So he's not all bravado, then. Ten-and-six years old! "Well done, dervish! I've seen stone-hard soldiers run the other way when faced with those glowing eyes. But you stood your ground and you're still alive!"

"It...it wouldn't die!" the boy stammered. "I cut it enough to kill five men! It wouldn't die!"

"It was a ghul, boy, not some drunken bully! Let me guess: for all your zeal, this is the first time you've faced one. Well, I won't lie. You did brilliantly. But our work isn't done. We've got to find that boat."

'Brilliantly,' he said. Raseed sheathed his sword, trying not to feel pride. He had killed a ghul!

"Thank you, Doctor. I hope—"

He heard a noise from the dockhouse. To his surprise, a scrawny young woman stepped from the shadows. Except that there was not enough shadow there to have hidden her. How could I not have seen her? Impossible! The girl wore a dirty dress with billowy sleeves. Her face was a small oval, her left eye badly bruised.

"You killed them," she said. "You killed them!"

The Doctor smiled at her. "Well, not killed, exactly, dear. They never truly lived. But we stopped them, yes." He bowed slightly, like a modest performer.

"But he said they couldn't be killed! He swore it!"

The Doctor's expression turned grim. "Who swore it? Are you not Hafi's wife? Did these creatures not attack you?"

The girl frowned. "Attack me? I...he swore," she said dazedly. "They...gave me time." She shook her head, as if driving some thought away, and raised a clenched fist. As she did, Raseed saw that she held two short pieces of rope, one white, one blue. His keen eyes noted intricate knots tied at the end of each. The girl raised the white rope—tied with a fat, squarish knot—to her mouth.

"Damn it! Stop her!" the Doctor shouted. There was an unnaturally loud whispery sound as the girl blew on the white rope. As Raseed stood there confused, Adoulla's shout twisted into a scream. The Doctor hunched over, gripping his midsection in agony. He spoke around gritted teeth. "Get. Ropes."

The girl blew on the knot again, and Raseed heard another whispery puff-of-air sound. The old man screamed again and dropped to his knees.

Knot-blowing! Raseed had never seen such wicked magic at work, but he'd heard dark stories. He charged as he saw the girl raise the blue rope—tied with a small, sleek knot—to her lips. That one's for me, he realized. But Raseed was too swift. He crossed the space between them and palm-punched the woman flat on her back. The little ropes flew from her hand. Before she could get to her feet, Raseed's sword sang out of its scabbard. He held its forked tip to her throat.

The Doctor shuffled up beside him, panting and still wincing with pain. "Let her stand," he said, and Raseed did so. The Doctor's tone was hard but strangely courteous. "So. Young lady. Blower-on-knots. Were these your pet ghuls we destroyed?"

The girl sounded half asleep. "No. Pets? No. Zoud said that...Said that...." She eyed Raseed's sword fearfully and trailed off.

The Doctor took a deep breath and gestured to Raseed, so he brought the blade away from the girl's throat. But he did not sheathe it.

The Doctor's voice grew infuriatingly gentle. "Let's begin again. What's your name, girl?"

The girl's eyes lost a bit of their glaze. She had the decency to look ashamed. "My name's Ushra."

"And who has hurt you, Ushra? The magus who made these ghuls? What's his name?"

The girl looked at the ghuls' puddle-remains. "He...my husband is called Zoud. He sent me to stop you while he got away. I'm his wife. First wife. I've...I've helped him catch others. Four...five now?"

Wickedness, Raseed thought. This one deserves death.

"Well, his girl-stealing days are over," the Doctor said. "Whatever's happened, we'll help you, Ushra, but we also need your help."

Raseed could not keep his disapproval to himself. "And why have you never run away, woman? Or used your knots on this Zoud?"

"I would never! I could never. You shouldn't say such things!" Ushra looked terrified, and for a moment Raseed almost forgot that she was a wicked blower-on-knots who had just made the Doctor helpless with her magic. For a moment.

"I must go back!" she said. "He'll find me. He'll make more ghuls! He'll feed my living skin to them! He did it with his stolen wives..."

The Doctor sucked in an angry-sounding breath. "We'll stop him, Ushra. Where is he going in that riverboat? Where can we find him?"

Raseed could not let this interrogation continue. "With apologies, Doctor, this one has worked wicked magics and must be punished. It is impermissible, according to the Traditions of the Order, to twist information from one who must be slain."

The Doctor threw his hands up. "God save us from fanatical children! We're not going to slay her. We're going to stop this half-dinar magus Zoud, and save Hafi's wife. Whatever your Shaykhs taught you, boy, if you wish to study with me you will—"

The puff-of-air sound again.

Another rope. She had another rope hidden in those sleeves! As Raseed thought it, his vision went black.

Blinded! It was so sudden that he cried out in spite of himself. He felt a soft hand on his face. Then his stomach twisted up and his mind stopped working properly. All around him was darkness and his thoughts seemed wrapped in cotton. What is this? What foul magic has she worked on me?

Raseed could not ask the Doctor, because the Doctor was not there.

Adoulla heard the puff-of-air sound again, and suddenly he was alone on the dock. The girl had disappeared and, along with her, Raseed.

Damn me for a fool! A whisking spell, no doubt, used to travel from the location of one object to another. Adoulla had seen such magic before—leaving an ensorcelled coin at home and carrying its counterpart to provide a quick escape—but he hadn't known knot-blowing could be used the same way. She must have touched the boy, too. The girl's power was great, if feral. Adoulla himself avoided such spells. It only took one bad whisking to break a mind, and the caster never knew when it was coming. No quick trip home was worth a lifetime of gibbering idiocy.

He had to find them, and fast. Praise God, he had a name now. A crude tracking spell, then. He would have a splitting headache the next day from the casting, but it was his only choice. Standing on the still-quiet dock, Adoulla dug charcoal and a square of paper from his satchel. After writing the Name of God on the front of the paper and "Zoud" on the back, he pulled forth a platinum needle, pricked his thumb, and squeezed one drop of blood onto Zoud's name. He rolled the square into a tube and placed it in his pocket. The mental tug he felt meant God had deemed Adoulla's quarry cruel enough to lead His servant to the man. He followed it eastward, the half-sunk sun at his back.

He cursed himself five times as he crossed Archer's Yard. Adoulla had shown mercy, and the girl had betrayed him. The dervish had been right. Adoulla was a soft old man who called for tea when he should be calling for the blood of his enemies. The Yard's hay training targets stood abandoned now, a few arrows still sticking out of them. To Adoulla's mind the arrows seemed accusatory fingers pointing at him—a fuzzy-headed fool whose weak heart had killed a boy of six-and-ten.

No. Not if he could help it. He had brought the boy into this mess. Now, if Raseed still lived, Adoulla would get him out of it.

Raseed awoke blindfolded, gagged, and bound. During his training he'd learned to snap any bonds that held him, no matter how well tied. But something was wrong here. He was bound not with rope or chain, but with some fiendish substance that burned hotter the harder he tried to escape.

His struggles caused him a slicing pain in his wrists and ankles, but for an uncontrolled moment he thrashed like a madman.

Calm yourself! He was disgusted at how easily he lost a dervish's dignity. He went into a breathing exercise, timing his inhalations and exhalations. The first thing was to figure out where he was. They had blindfolded him, which meant that the knot-blower's blinding curse was not permanent. Praise God for that. Adapting quickly, Raseed let his other senses take over. He heard the cries of rivergulls and a splashing sound against one wall. He smelled water and felt himself swaying. A boat. Zoud's. The one we saw leaving. Raseed was captive on a boat, and bleeding.

He wondered where the Doctor was. I should not have listened to him. He is old and grown soft. Raseed could have ended the girl's life and ought to have done so. Now it was too late. Impermissible panic began to rise in him.

Inhale...exhale. He would not feel fear. He would find a way out.

Suddenly Raseed heard a sobbing sound. A young woman crying as she spoke. "I'm sorry, holy man. So sorry. The whisking spell could have killed you."

Ushra. Perhaps a yard away from him. From the same direction he heard glass clink and smelled something acidic.

"What can I do?" the girl continued, her voice moving about. "I'm damned. I didn't want to be his wife, master dervish. He...he took me and he made me need him. But the things he did to the other wives..." The girl wept wordlessly for a moment, then took a deep breath. "Please don't scream," she whispered, pulling down Raseed's gag.

Talk to her!

Raseed felt that God was with him, for the words came quickly. "You can correct your wickedness, Ushra. You can make amends for your foulness. 'In the eyes of God our kindnesses weigh twice our cruelties.'"

She untied his blindfold, and Raseed blinked at the dim lantern-light. Ushra crouched before him, a long glass vial in the crook of her arm. The look on the girl's face gave him hope. 'Our kindnesses weigh twice our cruelties.' The scripture echoed in Raseed's head.

"Zoud's gone now, master dervish, but he'll return soon. He left me to guard you." She took a breath and closed her eyes. "I know I can't fix everything. But I freed the girl, his new wife. That will weigh well with God, won't it?"

Raseed would not presume to speak for Him. He said simply, "God is All-Merciful."

The girl opened her teary eyes and spoke more swiftly. "He bound you with firevine. It can't be untied. I've poisoned it, but it'll take an hour to die. God willing, it'll die before he returns." More weeping. "I am foul, holy man. My soul is dirty. But, God forgive me, I want to live. I have to go. You don't know the things he can do, master dervish. I have to go."

Ushra went.

But she's freed Hafi's wife! Raseed praised God as he lay there captive, bleeding, alone.

The red riverboat had docked near the High Bridge of Boats. Adoulla found the hatch open and thanked God. He made his way into the cabins without being discovered, which meant that this Zoud was either blessedly overconfident or waiting for him. For a moment Adoulla half-hoped that he'd find Raseed and the magus's "wives" before Zoud found him.

But then, as he came to the threshold of a cabin that seemed impossibly spacious, he heard whistling. It was "The Druggist, the Draper, and the Man Who Made Paper," Miri's least-favorite song. Not a good omen.

The room was impossibly spacious, Adoulla realized. A magically-enlarged cabin, grown to the size of a tavern's greeting-room. In a far corner the dervish lay bound on the floor. Firevine! Dried blood ringed Raseed's wrists and ankles.

Between Adoulla and the boy stood Zoud.

The magus was gaunt and bald with a pointed beard. Raseed's sheathed sword lay at Zoud's feet, and beside the magus stood an oaf whose size made his purpose obvious—bodyguard. There was no way Adoulla could reach the dervish before those two did.

Zoud, disturbingly unsurprised at Adoulla's entrance, stopped whistling and gestured toward Raseed. "He is in great pain."

Adoulla frowned. "Why stage this gruesome show for me?"

Zoud smiled. "Simple. I'm no fool—I know your sort. I don't want you as an enemy. Hounding me across the Crescent Moon Kingdoms on some revenge-quest. No. All I ask is your oath before God that you'll leave me in peace. I'd hoped to take the boy with me—the Order has enemies who'd pay well for a live dervish. But if you'll be reasonable you may walk off this ship, and we'll put the boy off as well. That's fair, isn't it? You've taken much from me already. My new wife. Even my first wife."

Ushra's not here? And Hafi's wife is free? How? Adoulla could find out later. What mattered now was that his options had just increased. In the corner behind the magus and his henchman, Adoulla saw a small flicker of blue movement. Impossible!

He smothered a smile and silently thanked God.

"So," Zoud said. "Do I have your oath, Doctor?"

Adoulla cleared his throat. "My Oath? In the Name of God I swear that you, with your tacky big-room spells, are but a half-dinar magus with a broken face coming to him!"

Everything happened at once.

He heard a snapping noise and the boy was free. It was impossible to snap firevine. But Adoulla adapted quickly to impossibilities. As Raseed leapt to his feet Zoud darted behind his bodyguard and screamed "Babouk! Kill!" The magus clapped twice.

Oh no.

The flash of red light dazzled Adoulla for a moment. But his eyes knew and adjusted to the glamour-glimmer of a dispelled illusion well enough. Adoulla had to give this fool Zoud his due. The big bodyguard was gone. In his place was an eight-foot-tall cyclop.

This is not good.

A blue streak darted at the one-eyed, crimson-scaled creature. Raseed! The dimwitted monster grunted as the dervish barreled into it and knocked the mighty thing off its clawed feet.

Adoulla stood there for a stunned half-moment. Half the monster's size, yet he topples it! Dervish and furnace-chested cyclop wrestled on the ground until the monster wrapped its massive arms around the boy. Adoulla took a step toward the pair and shouted "Its eye! One sword-stroke through its eye!"

Then he whirled at the familiar sound of blade leaving sheath. Zoud stood before him with a hunted look on his face and a silver-hilted knife in his hand. All out of tricks, huh? And now you think to buy your freedom with a knife? Adoulla cracked his knuckles and took a step toward the magus.

Raseed wriggled free of the cyclop's crushing hug. The monster pressed him again, closing its clawed hands around Raseed's fists. His wounds from the firevine burned, but he pushed the pain away.

As part of his training, Raseed had once wrestled a northern bear. This creature was stronger. Still, Raseed thought, as impermissible pride crept in, he would slay it. Then he'd know that he had fought a cyclop and won. He twisted his powerful arms, trying to get the leverage to free himself. But the cyclop held him fast. And the pain in Raseed's wrists and ankles grew worse.

Then he heard a small sound and his left hand blazed with pain. His little finger was broken. Another sound. His index finger. The rest would follow if he did not get free. But how?

The cyclop decided for him. Shifting, it hoisted Raseed aloft like a doll. The monster tried to dash Raseed's brains out on the floorboards.

Raseed twisted as he fell, somersaulting across the room. His sword hand was unharmed. He thanked God and forced away the pain of his wounds. He scooped up the blue scabbard, rolled to his feet, drew.

The cyclop grunted. It blinked its teacup-sized eye as Raseed rushed forward. With eagle-speed Raseed leapt, sword extended. He thrust upward.

With an earsplitting howl, the cyclop fell, blood seeping from its single eye. Watching the monster die, Raseed felt more relief than pride.

Adoulla charged Zoud, making sure that his robed shoulder was his opponent's most prominent target. A sneer flashed on Zoud's face. The fool thought Adoulla was blundering into his dagger-path.

The silver-handled blade came down.

And glanced off the blessed kaftan, as surely as if Adoulla were wearing mail. Zoud got in one more useless stab before Adoulla let loose the right hook that had once made him the best street fighter on Dead Donkey Lane. With a girlish cry, the magus crumpled into a heap. Somewhere behind Adoulla, the cyclop howled its death-howl.

His tricks gone and his nose broken, Zoud lay bleeding at Adoulla's feet. The magus whimpered to himself like a child yanked from a good dream. Before Adoulla knew what was happening, Raseed was at his side.

"Magus!" the dervish said. "You have stolen and slain women. You dared demand an oath before God to cover your foulness. For you, there can be no forgiveness!" Raseed sent his blade diving for Zoud's heart. In a breathspace, the forked sword found it. The magus's eyes went wide as he gurgled and died.

Adoulla felt ill.

"What is wrong with you, boy? We had the man at our -" He fell silent, seeing the boy's firevine wounds.

Raseed narrowed his tilted eyes. "With apologies, Doctor, I expected Adoulla Makhslood to be a man who struck swiftly and righteously."

"And instead you've found some pastry-stuffed old fart who isn't fond of killing. Poor child! God must weep at your cruel fate."

"Doctor! To take God's name in mock is imper—"

"Enough, boy! Do you hear me? Fight monsters for forty years as I have—cross the seas and sands of the Crescent Moon Kingdoms serving God—then you can tell me what is 'impermissible.' By then, Almighty God willing, I'll be dead and gone, my ears untroubled by the peeps of holy men's mouths!" The tirade silenced the dervish, who stood looking down at the magus's bleeding corpse.

The problem was, Adoulla feared that the boy's way might be right. Adoulla thought of the girl, Ushra. And of Raseed's pain as the firevine had tortured him. And of Zoud's dead "wives." He sighed.

"Oh, God damn it all. Fine, boy. You're right. Just as you were about the blower-on-knots." Adoulla sat down with a grunt, right there on the bloody floorboards. He had fought a dozen battles more difficult than this over the decades, but he did not think he'd ever felt so weary.

Raseed spoke slowly. "No, Doctor. You were right. About Ushra, at least. She did what she did from weakness and fear of a wicked man. Yet I would've killed her." The dervish was quiet for a long moment. "It was her, Doctor. Ushra. She poisoned the firevine. She freed Hafi's wife. I'm ashamed to say it, but I must speak true—I wouldn't have escaped if not for her."

Adoulla was too tired to respond with words. He grunted again and clambered to his feet.

Yehyeh's teahouse buzzed with chattering customers. Raseed tried to ignore the lewd music and banter. Hafi and his tall, raven-haired wife sat with her grateful parents on a pile of cushions in the far corner. At a table near the entrance, Raseed sat with the Doctor, who was nursing what he had called a "God damned gruesome tracking spell headache". Lifting his head from his hands slowly, the Doctor fixed a droopy eye on Raseed.

"How many men have you killed, boy?"

Raseed was confused—why did that matter now? "Two. No...the highwaymen...five? After this villain last night, six."

"So many?" the Doctor said.

Raseed did not know what to say, so he said nothing.

Adoulla sighed. "You're a fine warrior, Raseed bas Raseed. If you're to study with me, though, you must know your number and never forget it. You took a man's life yesterday. Weigh that fact! Make it harder than it is for you now. Remember that a man, even a foul man, is not a ghul."

Again, Raseed was confused. "'Harder,' Doctor? I've trained all my life to kill swiftly."

"And now you will train to kill reluctantly. If you still wish an apprenticeship."

"I do still wish it, Doctor! High Shaykh Aalli spoke of you as -"

"People speak of me, boy, but now you've met me. You've fought beside me. I eat messily. I ogle girls one-third my age. And I don't like killing. If you're going to hunt monsters with me, you must see things as they are."

Raseed, his broken fingers still stinging, his wrists and ankles still raw, nodded and recalled the High Shaykh's words about where virtue lives. Strange places indeed.

A quiet settled over the table and Adoulla devoured another of the almond-and-anise rolls that Yehyeh had been gratefully plying him with. As he ate he thought about the boy sitting across from him.

He did not relish the thought of a preachy little dervish in his home. He could only hope the boy was young enough to stretch beyond the smallness that had been beaten into him at the Lodge. Regardless, only a fool would refuse having a decades-younger warrior beside him as he went about his last years of ghul hunting.

Besides, the dervish, with his meticulous grooming, would make a great house-keeper!

He could hear Miri's jokes about boy-love already.

Miri. God help me.

Raseed lifted his bowl of plain limewater and sipped daintily. Adoulla said nothing to break the silence, but he slurped his sweet cardamom tea. Then he set his tea bowl down, belched loudly, and relished the horrified grimace of his virtuous new apprentice.

# Hooves and the Hovel of Abdel Jameela

As soon as I arrive in the village of Beit Zujaaj I begin to hear the mutters about Abdel Jameela, a strange old man supposedly unconnected to any of the local families. Two days into my stay the villagers fall over one another to share with me the rumors that Abdel Jameela is in fact distantly related to the esteemed Assad clan. By my third day in Beit Zujaaj, several of the Assads, omniscient as "important" families always are in these piles of cottages, have accosted me to deny the malicious whispers. No doubt they are worried about the bad impression such an association might make on me, favorite physicker of the Caliph's own son.

The latest denial comes from Hajjar al-Assad himself, the middle-aged head of the clan and the sort of half-literate lout that passes for a Shaykh in these parts. Desperate for the approval of the young courtier whom he no doubt privately condemns as an overschooled sodomite, bristle-bearded Shaykh Hajjar has cornered me in the village's only café—if the sitting room of a qat-chewing old woman can be called a café by anyone other than bumpkins.

I should not be so hard on Beit Zujaaj and its bumpkins. But when I look at the gray rock-heap houses, the withered gray vegetable-yards, and the stuporous gray lives that fill this village, I want to weep for the lost color of Baghdad.

Instead I sit and listen to the Shaykh.

"Abdel Jameela is not of Assad blood, O learned Professor. My grandfather took mercy, as God tells us we must, on the old man's mother. Seventy-and-some years ago she showed up in Beit Zujaaj, half-dead from traveling and big with child, telling tales—God alone knows if they were true—of her Assad-clan husband, supposedly slain by highwaymen. Abdel Jameela was birthed and raised here, but he has never been of this village." Shaykh Hajjar scowls. "For decades now—since I was a boy—he has lived up on the hilltop rather than among us. More of a hermit than a villager. And not of Assad blood," he says again.

I stand up. I can take no more of the man's unctuous voice and, praise God, I don't have to.

"Of course, O Shaykh, of course. I understand. Now, if you will excuse me?"

Shaykh Hajjar blinks. He wishes to say more but doesn't dare. For I have come from the Caliph's court.

"Yes, Professor. Peace be upon you." His voice is like a snuffed candle.

"And upon you, peace." I head for the door as I speak.

The villagers would be less deferential if they knew of my current position at court—or rather, lack of one. The Caliph has sent me to Beit Zujaaj as an insult. I am here as a reminder that the well-read young physicker with the clever wit and impressive skill, whose company the Commander of the Faithful's own bookish son enjoys, is worth less than the droppings of the Caliph's favorite falcon. At least when gold and a Persian noble's beautiful daughter are involved.

For God's viceroy the Caliph has seen fit to promise my Shireen to another, despite her love for me. Her husband-to-be is older than her father—too ill, the last I heard, to even sign the marriage contract. But as soon as his palsied, liver-spotted hand is hale enough to raise a pen...

Things would have gone differently were I a wealthy man. Shireen's father would have heard my proposal happily enough if I'd been able to provide the grand dowry he sought. The Caliph's son, fond of his brilliant physicker, even asked that Shireen be wedded to me. But the boy's fondness could only get me so far. The Commander of the Faithful saw no reason to impose a raggedy scholar of a son-in-law on the Persian when a rich old vulture would please the man more. I am, in the Caliph's eyes, an amusing companion to his son, but one whom the boy will lose like a doll once he grows to love killing and gold-getting more than learning. Certainly I am nothing worth upsetting Shireen's coin-crazed courtier father over.

For a man is not merely who he is, but what he has. Had I land or caravans I would be a different man—the sort who could compete for Shireen's hand. But I have only books and instruments and a tiny inheritance, and thus that is all that I am. A man made of books and pittances would be a fool to protest when the Commander of the Faithful told him that his love would soon wed another.

I am a fool.

My outburst in court did not quite cost me my head, but I was sent to Beit Zujaaj "for a time, only, to minister to the villagers as a representative of Our beneficent concern for Our subjects." And my fiery, tree-climbing Shireen was locked away to await her half-dead suitor's recovery.

"O Professor! Looks like you might get a chance to see Abdel Jameela for yourself!" Just outside the café, the gravelly voice of Umm Hikma the café-keeper pierces the cool morning air and pulls me out of my reverie. I like old Umm Hikma, with her qat-chewer's irascibility and her blacksmithish arms. Beside her is a broad-shouldered man I don't know. He scuffs the dusty ground with his sandal and speaks to me in a worried stutter.

"P-peace be upon you, O learned Professor. We haven't yet met. I'm Yousef, the porter."

"And upon you, peace, O Yousef. A pleasure to meet you."

"The pleasure's mine, O Professor. But I am here on behalf of another. To bring you a message. From Abdel Jameela."

For the first time since arriving in Beit Zujaaj, I am surprised. "A message? For me?"

"Yes, Professor. I am just returned from the old hermit's hovel, a half-day's walk from here, on the hilltop. Five, six times a year I bring things to Abdel Jameela, you see. In exchange he gives a few coins, praise God."

"And where does he get these coins, up there on the hill?" Shaykh Hajjar's voice spits out the words from the café doorway behind me. I glare and he falls silent.

I turn back to the porter. "What message do you bear, O Yousef? And how does this graybeard know of me?"

Broad-shouldered Yousef looks terrified. The power of the court. "Forgive me, O learned Professor! Abdel Jameela asked what news from the village and I...I told him that a court physicker was in Beit Zujaaj. He grew excited and told me beg upon his behalf for your aid. He said his wife was horribly ill. He fears she will lose her legs, and perhaps her life."

"His wife?" I've never heard of a married hermit.

Umm Hikma raises her charcoaled eyebrows, chews her qat, and says nothing.

Shaykh Hajjar is more vocal. "No one save God knows where she came from, or how many years she's been up there. The people have had glimpses only. She doesn't wear the head scarf that our women wear. She is wrapped all in black cloth from head to toe and mesh-masked like a foreigner. She has spoken to no one. Do you know, O Professor, what the old rascal said to me years ago when I asked why his wife never comes down to the village? He said, 'She is very religious'! The old dog! Where is it written that a woman can't speak to other women? Other women who are good Muslims? The old son of a whore! What should his wife fear here? The truth of the matter is-"

"The truth, O Shaykh, is that in this village only your poor wife need live in fear!" Umm Hikma lets out a rockslide chuckle and gives me a conspiratorial wink. Before the Shaykh can sputter out his offended reply, I turn to Yousef again.

"On this visit, did you see Abdel Jameela's wife?" If he can describe the sick woman, I may be able to make some guesses about her condition. But the porter frowns.

"He does not ask me into his home, O Professor. No one has been asked into his home for thirty years."

Except for the gifted young physicker from the Caliph's court. Well, it may prove more interesting than what I've seen of Beit Zujaaj thus far. I do have a fondness for hermits. Or, rather, for the idea of hermits. I can't say that I have ever met one. But as a student I always fantasized that I would one day be a hermit, alone with God and my many books in the barren hills.

That was before I met Shireen.

"There is one thing more," Yousef says, his broad face looking even more nervous. "He asked that you come alone."

My heartbeat quickens, though there is no good reason for fear. Surely this is just an old hater-of-men's surly whim. A physicker deals with such temperamental oddities as often as maladies of the liver or lungs. Still... "Why does he ask this?"

"He says that his wife is very modest and that in her state the frightening presence of men might worsen her illness."

Shaykh Hajjar erupts at this. "Bah! Illness! More likely they've done something shameful they don't want the village to know of. Almighty God forbid, maybe they—"

Whatever malicious thing the Shaykh is going to say, I silence it with another glare borrowed from the Commander of the Faithful. "If the woman is ill, it is my duty as a Muslim and a physicker to help her, whatever her husband's oddities."

Shaykh Hajjar's scowl is soul-deep "Forgive me, O Professor, but this is not a matter of oddities. You could be in danger. We know why Abdel Jameela's wife hides away, though some here fear to speak of such things."

Umm Hikma spits her qat into the road, folds her powerful arms and frowns. "In the name of God! Don't you believe, Professor, that Abdel Jameela, who couldn't kill an ant, means you any harm." She jerks her chin at Shaykh Hajjar. "And you, O Shaykh, by God, please don't start telling your old lady stories again!"

The Shaykh wags a finger at her. "Yes, I will tell him, woman! And may Almighty God forgive you for mocking your Shaykh!" Shaykh Hajjar turns to me with a grim look. "O learned Professor, I will say it plainly: Abdel Jameela's wife is a witch."

"A witch?" The last drops of my patience with Beit Zujaaj have dripped through the water clock. It is time to be away from these people. "Why would you say such a thing, O Shaykh?"

The Shaykh shrugs. "Only God knows for certain," he says. His tone belies his words.

"May God protect us all from slanderous ill-wishers," I say.

He scowls. But I have come from the Caliph's court, so his tone is venomously polite. "It is no slander, O Professor. Abdel Jameela's wife consorts with ghouls. Travelers have heard strange noises coming from the hilltop. And hoofprints have been seen on the hill-path. Cloven hoofprints, O Professor, where there are neither sheep nor goats."

"No! Not cloven hoofprints!" I say.

But the Shaykh pretends not to notice my sarcasm. He just nods. "There is no strength and no safety but with God."

"God is great," I say in vague, obligatory acknowledgment. I have heard enough rumor and nonsense. And a sick woman needs my help. "I will leave as soon as I gather my things. This Abdel Jameela lives up the road, yes? On a hill? If I walk, how long will it take me?"

"If you do not stop to rest, you will see the hill in the distance by noontime prayer," says Umm Hikma, who has a new bit of qat going in her cheek.

"I will bring you some food for your trip, Professor, and the stream runs alongside the road much of the way, so you'll have no need of water." Yousef seems relieved that I'm not angry with him, though I don't quite know why I would be. I thank him then speak to the group.

"Peace be upon you all."

"And upon you, peace," they say in near-unison.

In my room, I gather scalpel, saw, and drugs into my pack—the kid-leather pack that my beloved gifted to me. I say more farewells to the villagers, firmly discourage their company, and set off alone on the road. As I walk rumors of witches and wife-beaters are crowded out of my thoughts by the sweet remembered sweat-and-ambergris scent of my Shireen.

After an hour on the rock-strewn road, the late-morning air warms. The sound of the stream beside the road almost calms me.

Time passes and the sun climbs high in the sky. I take off my turban and caftan, make ablution by the stream and say my noon prayers. Not long after I begin walking again, I can make out what must be Beit Zujaaj hill off in the distance. In another hour or so I am at its foot.

It is not much of a hill, actually. There are buildings in Baghdad that are taller. A relief, as I am not much of a hill-climber. The rocky path is not too steep, and green sprays of grass and thyme dot it—a pleasant enough walk, really. The sun sinks a bit in the sky and I break halfway up the hill for afternoon prayers and a bit of bread and green apple. I try to keep my soul from sinking as I recall Shireen, her skirts tied up scandalously, knocking apples down to me from the high branches of the Caliph's orchard-trees.

The rest of the path proves steeper and I am sweating through my galabeya when I finally reach the hilltop. As I stand there huffing and puffing my eyes land on a small structure thirty yards away.

If Beit Zujaaj hill is not much of a hill, at least the hermit's hovel can be called nothing but a hovel. Stones piled on stones until they have taken the vague shape of a dwelling. Two sickly chickens scratching in the dirt. As soon as I have caught my breath a man comes walking out to meet me. Abdel Jameela.

He is shriveled with a long gray beard and a ragged kaffiyeh, and I can tell he will smell unpleasant even before he reaches me. How does he already know I'm here? I don't have much time to wonder, as the old man moves quickly despite clearly gouty legs.

"You are the physicker, yes? From the Caliph's court?"

No 'peace be upon you,' no 'how is your health,' no 'pleased to meet you'. Life on a hilltop apparently wears away one's manners. As if reading my thoughts, the old man bows his head in supplication.

"Ah. Forgive my abruptness, O learned Professor. I am Abdel Jameela. Thank you. Thank you a thousand times for coming." I am right about his stink, and I thank God he does not try to embrace me. With no further ceremony I am led into the hovel.

There are a few stained and tattered carpets layered on the packed-dirt floor. A straw mat, an old cushion and a battered tea tray are the only furnishings. Except for the screen. Directly opposite the door is a tall, incongruously fine cedar-and-pearl latticed folding screen, behind which I can make out only a vague shape. It is a more expensive piece of furniture than any of the villagers could afford, I'm sure. And behind it, no doubt, sits Abdel Jameela's wife.

The old man makes tea hurriedly, clattering the cups but saying nothing the whole while. The scent of the seeping mint leaves drifts up, covering his sour smell. Abdel Jameela sets my tea before me, places a cup beside the screen, and sits down. A hand reaches out from behind the screen to take the tea. It is brown and graceful. Beautiful, if I am to speak truly. I realize I am staring and tear my gaze away.

The old man doesn't seem to notice. "I don't spend my time among men, Professor. I can't talk like a courtier. All I can say is that we need your help."

"Yousef the porter has told me that your wife is ill, O Uncle. Something to do with her legs, yes? I will do whatever I can to cure her, Almighty God willing."

For some reason, Abdel Jameela grimaces at this. Then he rubs his hands together and gives me an even more pained expression. "O Professor, I must show you a sight that will shock you. My wife... Well, words are not the way."

With a grunt the old man stands and walks halfway behind the screen. He gestures for me to follow then bids me stop a few feet away. I hear rustling behind the screen, and I can see a woman's form moving, but still Abdel Jameela's wife is silent.

"Prepare yourself, Professor. Please show him, O beautiful wife of mine." The shape behind the screen shifts. There is a scraping noise. And a woman's leg ending in a cloven hoof stretches out from behind the screen.

I take a deep breath. "God is Great," I say aloud. This, then, is the source of Shaykh Hajjar's fanciful grumbling. But such grotesqueries are not unheard of to an educated man. Only last year another physicker at court showed me a child—born to a healthy, pious man and his modest wife—all covered in fur. This same physicker told me of another child he'd seen born with scaly skin. I take another deep breath. If a hoofed woman can be born and live, is it so strange that she might find a mad old man to care for her?

"O my sweetheart!" Abdel Jameela's whisper is indecent as he holds his wife's hoof.

And for a moment I see what mad Abdel Jameela sees. The hoof's glossy black beauty, as smoldering as a woman's eye. It is entrancing...

"O, my wife," the old man goes on, and runs his crooked old finger over the hoof-cleft slowly and lovingly. "O, my beautiful wife..." The leg flexes, but still no sound comes from behind the screen.

This is wrong. I take a step back from the screen without meaning to. "In the name of God! Have you no shame, old man?"

Abdel Jameela turns from the screen and faces me with an apologetic smile. "I am sorry to say that I have little shame left," he says.

I've never heard words spoken with such weariness. I remind myself that charity and mercy are our duty to God, and I soften my tone. "Is this why you sent for me, Uncle? What would you have me do? Give her feet she was not born with? My heart bleeds for you, truly. But such a thing only God can do."

Another wrinkled grimace. "O Professor, I am afraid that I must beg your forgiveness. For I have lied to you. And for that I am sorry. For it is not my wife that needs your help, but I."

"But her—pardon me, uncle—her hoof."

"Yes! Its curve! Like a jet-black half-moon!" The old hermit's voice quivers and he struggles to keep his gaze on me. Away from his wife's hoof. "Her hoof is breathtaking, Professor. No, it is I that need your help, for I am not the creature I need to be."

"I don't understand, Uncle." Exasperation burns away my sympathy. I've walked for hours and climbed a hill, small though it was. I am in no mood for a hermit's games. Abdel Jameela winces at the anger in my eyes and says "My...my wife will explain."

I will try, my husband.

The voice is like song and there is the strong scent of sweet flowers. Then she steps from behind the screen and I lose all my words. I scream. I call on God, and I scream.

Abdel Jameela's wife is no creature of God. Her head is a goat's and her mouth a wolf's muzzle. Fish-scales and jackal-hair cover her. A scorpion's tail curls behind her. I look into a woman's eyes set in a demon's face and I stagger backward, calling on God and my dead mother.

Please, learned one, be calm.

"What...what..." I can't form the words. I look to the floor. I try to bury my sight in the dirty carpets and hard-packed earth. Her voice is more beautiful than any woman's. And there is the powerful smell of jasmine and clove. A nightingale sings perfumed words at me while my mind's eye burns with horrors that would make the Almighty turn away.

If fear did not hold your tongue, you would ask what I am. Men have called my people by many names—ghoul, demon. Does a word matter so very much? What I am, learned one, is Abdel Jameela's wife.

For long moments I don't speak. If I don't speak this nightmare will end. I will wake in Baghdad, or Beit Zujaaj. But I don't wake.

She speaks again, and I cover my ears, though the sound is beauty itself.

The words you hear come not from my mouth, and you do not hear them with your ears. I ask you to listen with your mind and your heart. We will die, my husband and I, if you will not lend us your skill. Have you, learned one, never needed to be something other than what you are?

Cinnamon scent and the sound of an oasis wind come to me. I cannot speak to this demon. My heart will stop if I do, I am certain. I want to run, but fear has fixed my feet. I turn to Abdel Jameela, who stands there wringing his hands.

"Why am I here, Uncle? God damn you, why did you call me here? There is no sick woman here! God protect me, I know nothing of...of ghouls, or—" A horrible thought comes to me. "You...you are not hoping to make her into a woman? Only God can..."

The old hermit casts his eyes downward. "Please...you must listen to my wife. I beg you." He falls silent and his wife, behind the screen again, goes on.

My husband and I have been on this hilltop too long, learned one. My body cannot stand so much time away from my people. I smell yellow roses and hear bumblebees droning beneath her voice. If we stay in this place one more season, I will die. And without me to care for him and keep age's scourge from him, my sweet Abdel Jameela will die too. But across the desert there is a life for us. My father was a prince among our people. Long ago I left. For many reasons. But I never forsook my birthright. My father is dying now, I have word. He has left no sons and so his lands are mine. Mine, and my handsome husband's.

In her voice is a chorus of wind-chimes. Despite myself, I lift my eyes. She steps from behind the screen, clad now in a black abaya and a mask. Behind the mask's mesh is the glint of wolf-teeth. I look again to the floor, focusing on a faded blue spiral in the carpet and the kindness in that voice.

But my people do not love men. I cannot claim my lands unless things change. Unless my husband shows my people that he can change.

Somehow I force myself to speak. "What...what do you mean, change?"

There is a cymbal-shimmer in her voice and sandalwood incense fills my nostrils. O learned one, you will help me to make these my Abdel Jameela's.

She extends her slender brown hands, ablaze with henna. In each she holds a length of golden sculpture—goat-like legs ending in shining, cloven hooves. A thick braid of gold thread dances at the end of each statue-leg, alive.

Madness, and I must say so though this creature may kill me for it. "I have not the skill to do this! No man alive does!"

You will not do this through your skill alone. Just as I cannot do it through my sorcery alone. My art will guide yours as your hands work. She takes a step toward me and my shoulders clench at the sound of her hooves hitting the earth.

"No! No...I cannot do this thing."

"Please!" I jump at Abdel Jameela's voice, nearly having forgotten him. There are tears in the old man's eyes as he pulls at my galabeya, and his stink gets in my nostrils. "Please listen! We need your help. And we know what has brought you to Beit Zujaaj." The old man falls to his knees before me. "Please! Would not your Shireen aid us?"

With those words he knocks the wind from my lungs. How can he know that name? The Shaykh hadn't lied— there is witchcraft at work here, and I should run from it.

But, Almighty God help me, Abdel Jameela is right. Fierce as she is, Shireen still has her dreamy Persian notions—that love is more important than money or duty or religion. If I turn this old man away...

My throat is dry and cracked. "How do you know of Shireen?" Each word burns.

His eyes dart away. "She has...ways, my wife."

"All protection comes from God." I feel foul even as I steel myself with the old words. Is this forbidden? Am I walking the path of those who displease the Almighty? God forgive me, it is hard to know or to care when my beloved is gone. "If I were a good Muslim I would run down to the village now and...and..."

And what, learned one? Spread word of what you have seen? Bring men with spears and arrows? Why would you do this? Vanilla beans and the sound of rain give way to something else. Clanging steel and clean-burning fire. I will not let you harm my husband. What we ask is not disallowed to you. Can you tell me, learned one, that it is in your book of what is blessed and what is forbidden not to give a man golden legs?

It is not. Not in so many words. But this thing can't be acceptable in God's eyes. Can it? "Has this ever been done before?"

There are old stories. But it has been centuries. Each of her words spreads perfume and music and she asks Please, learned one, will you help us? And then one scent rises above the others.

Almighty God protect me, it is the sweat-and-ambergris smell of my beloved. Shireen of the ribbing remark, who in quiet moments confessed her love of my learning. She would help them.

Have I any choice after that? This, then, the fruit of my study. And this my reward for wishing to be more than what I am. A twisted, unnatural path.

"Very well." I reach for my small saw and try not to hear Abdel Jameela's weird whimpers as I sharpen it.

I give him poppy and hemlock, but as I work Abdel Jameela still screams, nearly loud enough to make my heart cease beating. His old body is going through things it should not be surviving. And I am the one putting him through these things, with knives and fire and bone-breaking clamps. I wad cotton and stuff it in my ears to block out the hermit's screams.

But I feel half-asleep as I do so, hardly aware of my own hands. Somehow the demon's magic is keeping Abdel Jameela alive and guiding me through this grisly task. It is painful, like having two minds crammed inside my skull and shadow-puppet poles lashed to my arms. I am burning up, and I can barely trace my thoughts. Slowly I become aware of the she-ghoul's voice in my head and the scent of apricots.

Cut there. Now the mercury powder. The cautering iron is hot. Put a rag in his mouth so he does not bite his tongue. I flay and cauterize and lose track of time. A fever cooks my mind away. I work through the evening prayer, then the night prayer. I feel withered inside.

In each step Abdel Jameela's wife guides me. With her magic she rifles my mind for the knowledge she needs and steers my skilled fingers. For a long while there is only her voice in my head and the feeling of bloody instruments in my hands, which move with a life of their own.

Then I am holding a man's loose tendons in my right hand and thick golden threads in my left. There are shameful smells in the air and Abdel Jameela shouts and begs me to stop even though he is half-asleep with the great pot of drugs I have forced down his throat.

Something is wrong! The she-ghoul screams in my skull and Abdel Jameela passes out. My hands no longer dance magically. The shining threads shrivel in my fist. We have failed, though I know not exactly how.

No! No! Our skill! Our sorcery! But his body refuses! There are funeral wails in the air and the smell of houses burning. My husband! Do something, physicker!

The golden legs turn to dust in my hands. With my ears I hear Abdel Jameela's wife growl a wordless death-threat.

I deserve death! Almighty God, what have I done? An old man lies dying on my blanket. I have sawed off his legs at a she-ghoul's bidding. There is no strength save in God! I bow my head.

Then I see them. Just above where I've amputated Abdel Jameela's legs are the swollen bulges that I'd thought came from gout. But it is not gout that has made these. There is something buried beneath the skin of each leg. I take hold of my scalpel and flay each thin thigh. The old man moans with what little life he has left.

What are you doing? Abdel Jameela's wife asks the walls of my skull. I ignore her, pulling at a flap of the old man's thigh-flesh, revealing a corrupted sort of miracle.

Beneath Abdel Jameela's skin, tucked between muscles, are tiny legs. Thin as spindles and hairless. Each folded little leg ends in a miniscule hoof.

Unbidden, a memory comes to me—Shireen and I in the Caliph's orchards. A baby bird had fallen from its nest. I'd sighed and bit my lip and my Shireen—a dreamer, but not a soft one—had laughed and clapped at my tender-heartedness.

I slide each wet gray leg out from under the flayed skin and gently unbend them. As I flex the little joints, the she-ghoul's voice returns.

What...what is this, learned one? Tell me!

For a long moment I am mute. Then I force words out, my throat still cracked. "I...I do not know. They are—they look like—the legs of a kid or a ewe still in the womb."

It as if she nods inside my mind. Or the legs of one of my people I have long wondered how a mere man could captivate me so.

"All knowledge and understanding lies with God," I say. "Perhaps your husband always had these within him. The villagers say he is of uncertain parentage. Or perhaps... Perhaps his love for you... The crippled beggars of Cairo are the most grotesque—and the best—in the world. It is said that they wish so fiercely to make money begging that their souls reshape their bodies from the inside out. Yesterday I saw such stories as nonsense. But yesterday I'd have named you a villager's fantasy, too." As I speak I continue to work the little legs carefully, to help their circulation. The she-ghoul's sorcery no longer guides my hands, but a physicker's nurturing routines are nearly as compelling. There is weakness here and I do what I can to help it find strength.

The tiny legs twitch and kick in my hands.

Abdel Jameela's wife howls in my head. They are drawing on my magic. Something pulls at— The voice falls silent.

I let go of the legs and, before my eyes, they begin to grow. As they grow, they fill with color, as if blood flowed into them. Then fur starts to sprout upon them.

"There is no strength or safety but in God!" I try to close my eyes and focus on the words I speak but I can't. My head swims and my body swoons.

The spell that I cast on my poor husband to preserve him—these hidden hooves of his nurse on it! O, my surprising, wonderful husband! I hear loud lute music and smell lemongrass and then everything around me goes black.

When I wake I am on my back, looking up at a purple sky. An early morning sky. I am lying on a blanket outside the hovel. I sit up and Abdel Jameela hunches over me with his sour smell. Further away, near the hill-path, I see the black shape of his wife.

"Professor, you are awake! Good!" the hermit says. "We were about to leave."

But we are glad to have the chance to thank you.

My heart skips and my stomach clenches as I hear that voice in my head again. Kitten purrs and a crushed cardamom scent linger beneath the demon's words. I look at Abdel Jameela's legs.

They are sleek and covered in fur the color of almonds. And each leg ends in a perfect cloven hoof. He walks on them with a surprising grace.

Yes, learned one, my beloved husband lives and stands on two hooves. It would not be so if we hadn't had your help. You have our gratitude.

Dazedly clambering to my feet, I nod in the she-ghoul's direction. Abdel Jameela claps me on the back wordlessly and takes a few goat-strides toward the hill-path. His wife makes a slight bow to me. With my people, learned one, gratitude is more than a word. Look toward the hovel.

I turn and look. And my breath catches.

A hoard right out of the stories. Gold and spices. Jewels and musks. Silver and silks. Porcelain and punks of aloe.

It is probably ten times the dowry Shireen's father seeks.

We leave you this and wish you well. I have purged the signs of our work in the hovel. And in the language of the donkeys, I have called two wild asses to carry your goods. No troubles left to bother our brave friend!

I manage to smile gratefully with my head high for one long moment. Blood and bits of the old man's bone still stain my hands. But as I look on Abdel Jameela and his wife in the light of the sunrise, all my thoughts are not grim or grisly.

As they set off on the hill-path the she-ghoul takes Abdel Jameela's arm, and the hooves of husband and wife scrabble against the pebbles of Beit Zujaaj hill. I stand stock-still, watching them walk toward the land of the ghouls.

They cross a bend in the path and disappear behind the hill. And a faint voice, full of mischievous laughter and smelling of early morning love in perfumed sheets, whispers in my head. No troubles at all, learned one. For last night your Shireen's husband-to-be lost his battle with the destroyer of delights.

Can it really be so? The old vulture dead? And me a rich man? I should laugh and dance. Instead I am brought to my knees by the heavy memory of blood-spattered golden hooves. I wonder whether Shireen's suitor died from his illness, or from malicious magic meant to reward me. I fear for my soul. For a long while I kneel there and cry.

But after a while I can cry no longer. Tears give way to hopes I'd thought dead. I stand and thank Beneficent God, hoping it is not wrong to do so. Then I begin to put together an acceptable story about a secretly-wealthy hermit who has rewarded me for saving his wife's life. And I wonder what Shireen and her father will think of the man I have become.

# Judgment of Swords and Souls

Layla bas Layla's breath came raggedly and her blue silks were soaked with sweat, but she was pleased with her performance. Ten beheaded in threescore water-drops. She lowered her forked sword.

The clay-and-rag dummy skulls littered the packed-dirt training yard of the Lodge of God. Boulder-faced Shaykh Saif kicked one aside. He wore the same habit of silk blouse and breeches as she—he had been a member of the Order for thirty years longer than she—but even smiling, his craggy features somehow made the bright blue garments seem muted.

"Only seven-and-ten years old, and you're better with the forked sword than I was as a Dervish in my prime. And I was the best, God forgive me my boasts!"

Layla bowed and sheathed her sword. She ran a hand over her stubbly head and wondered idly how it would feel to have long hair like the women outside the Lodge of God.

As if he sensed her thoughts, Shaykh Saif's smile faded. "Almighty God willing, someday perhaps your soul will be as disciplined as your sword arm!" There was a reprimand in his eyes as well as his words.

Layla fingered the red silk scarf wound around her blue scabbard, the only difference between her garments and her teacher's. It was the cause of the discord that was tearing the Lodge of God apart.

She said nothing.

The Shaykh shook his head. "Child, again I say you must repent this willfulness! Seven years now have I known you. I cheered as loudly as any when you moved from student to Dervish. Your skill, your martial focus—you are unique in this Lodge, and not only because you're female. But this scarf—it disgusts me."

Disgust. A hard word for her to hear—nearly as hard as if her grand-uncle, the High Shaykh, himself had said it. "Shaykh Saif, I—"

"No, child, I've heard your reasons. An oath to your mother, God shelter her soul. What you owe her. But what of your obligations to High Shaykh Aalli? For forty years your grand-uncle has, praise God, been High Shaykh of this Lodge. But by his own words, his time in this world is almost at an end. His rivals see a chance for power. That is why they have called this tribunal against you. Every day that you wear the forbidden color you undo the work that High Shaykh Aalli has done, and you strengthen his enemies. Shaykh Rustaam has taken up your cause, yes, but you deepen the fractures in the Lodge of God so that it may well split asunder. Dervish fighting against Dervish, and over what? A scarf? A red scarf?"

Layla shot her eyes downward during the scolding. She'd thought this training session was meant to help soothe her before the tribunal. Now she saw that it was just another attempt to convince her to break her oath. "I swore to my mother, O Shaykh, that I would wear her scarf when I came of age. I'm a Dervish now and no longer a student. I will keep my oath, and God piss on the man who tries to stop me." The curse was awkward in her mouth and she regretted it as soon as she spoke it.

"These words from you? God forgive you! You've spent too much time talking with caravan guards! I warned your grand-uncle to lock you away when men visit!"

"May God forgive me my careless tongue."

"Almighty God forgives us all our failings, child. But you must smother this obstinacy. For it was not put in you by God—know that for truth."

Layla knew it, but she did not feel it. And try as she might, she could not find the shame that should have been there. She bit her lip and fell silent again.

Shaykh Saif's expression grew cold. "I see that my words still mean nothing to you. May it please God to show you your error before your foolishness rends this Lodge in two! In any case, you're Shaykh Rustaam's problem now." He turned his back to her. "Go bathe. The tribunal will commence within the hour and since you still parade the Traitorous Angel's color, your appearance is already offensive."

Layla fought back hurt words. She bowed to Shaykh Saif's back, and returned to her room to prepare for judgment.

Layla's fingers dug anxiously into the potash-and-olive soapcake as she scrubbed away the training yard's grime over a pail of spring water. A thousand thoughts raced through Layla's head, but she took a deep breath and rerouted them like a general commanding soldiers. Only one topic mattered—her mother's scarf.

For a long time Layla just stood there, water dripping from her body as she stared at the thing, which was spread like a scarlet serpent across her simple reed sleeping-mat. So much trouble over three feet of silk!

The Heavenly Chapters said that the Traitorous Angel, who was cast out of heaven by God, wore red robes. Many in the Order took this to mean that red was unclean, and long-standing tradition banned it from the Lodge, even if scripture itself did not. To most of the Lodge's students, Dervishes, and Shaykhs, the matter was clear—and her recent insistence on wearing the forbidden color was simply proof that female vanity ought not taint the Lodge of God.

But as her mother lay dying she had given the scarf to Layla, to wear on her seven-and-tenth naming day. And Layla had sworn in God's name that she would wear it always. In the end, that was all that mattered. That the Order considered such oaths petty and profane, and that her mother hadn't known what pain the oath would cause, did not excuse Layla. Her last words to her mother had been a promise. O Believer! God hears your every word, and will weigh your lies against your promises. She repeated the bit of scripture again and again in her mind as she donned her blue silks and wound the red scarf back around her scabbard.

On the short walk to the tribunal hall, one of her grand-uncle's student-attendants ran up to her, huffing. Layla's heart jumped in her chest. "What's wrong? The High Shaykh? His illness has not worsened?"

"The High Shaykh, praise God, is better than he's been in days. His speech is clear and he insists upon presiding over the tribunal himself." The young attendant tried and failed to keep his eyes from Layla's scarf. "He bid me fetch you and says he must speak to you before the proceeding begins."

Layla nodded and silently thanked God that her grand-uncle was fighting the illness that threatened to claim him after nearly a hundred years of life. She followed the attendant to the High Shaykh's house.

A pack of students hovered about her grand-uncle's divan. As soon as Layla entered, though, he dismissed them with an irritated motion. The youths shot surreptitious looks at her scarf as they left.

If they can't discipline even their eyes, they will never become Dervishes.

She looked at her granduncle and saw the white-eyebrowed old man—old even then—who had kissed the top of her head and given her sesame candies when she'd arrived at the Lodge as a terrified orphan.

He would not kiss her now. Before anything else, she was a Dervish and he her High Shaykh. He raised a bone-thin arm in greeting and spoke in his usual to-the-point manner.

"So, my child. A tribunal. Before it begins, I must ask you again: why do you do this?"

"Because, O High Shaykh, my mother, God shelter her soul, pledged me to it."

Her grand-uncle took a rattling breath. "I dandled your mother on my knee, child. My love for her was great, which is why I brought you into this Lodge. But the Heavenly Chapters tell us 'No man or woman can be closer to you than God.' Would you displease Him to fulfill an oath to your mother?"

"Forgive me, O High Shaykh, but my oath to my mother and my oath to God were said with the same words. And...forgive me, but I am not certain that wearing red in the Lodge is truly forbidden."

"You are right, child, that there is nothing in the Heavenly Chapters that says in so many words that a Dervish must not wear red." Her grand-uncle spoke carefully, though each word clearly caused him pain. "As with so many of the Lodge of God's Traditions, this is a matter of interpretation. Still, I could command you to remove that scarf."

He winced and fell quiet. Layla hated herself for hurting this old man whom she loved. Her grand-uncle breathed in and continued, and she had to strain to hear him. "I could command you, but it would not be right. For you are a Dervish now. In ambiguous matters such as these, you ought to make some of your own rulings. Shaykh Rustaam, of course, agrees."

He stood up shakily, but as his voice took on the High Shaykh's formality, it gained strength. "I ask, then: Do you swear before God, O Dervish, that you have made this ruling in love of and obedience to Him?"

O believer! Honor your father and your mother and you have said a thousand prayers. Layla had repeated that section of the Heavenly Chapters countless times over the past year. "O High Shaykh, I do swear it before God."

"So be it. Would that it could end there, but Shaykh Zaad will not let it." He was her grand-uncle again, and his voice was weaker than ever. "God help me, child, sometimes I think this is just not the place for you." He leaned against the wall and ran his fingers over a map that adorned it. Layla's eyes danced about the city names as they had a hundred times before. Dhamsawaat. Kez. Tamajal. Shaykh Rustaam had told her stories of each, but swore that stories were not enough. Her grand-uncle sat back down.

"Still, all is always as God wills it to be. I'll see you in the tribunal hall, child, and God willing this will end peacefully."

Layla thanked her grand-uncle and backed out the doorway bowing. Again, confused and fearful thoughts threatened to overwhelm her. She had to keep her oath to God and her mother—there was simply no other way. But at what cost?

Layla stepped out into the warming midday air. She hadn't walked ten yards toward the tribunal hall when someone grabbed her from behind and pinned her arms to her body.

"Wake up, now! A drunken cripple could've taken you unawares with your head in the clouds like that!"

Before she could begin to struggle she was free again, and tall, long-haired Shaykh Rustaam spun her around to face him. "You'll need your wits about you when you walk into that hall. Shaykh Zaad isn't a man to take mercy on a sleepwalking opponent."

Shaykh Rustaam had always been Layla's favorite teacher. She was glad to see him before her tribunal. "O Shaykh! May God forgive me, for I have brought discord to His Lodge!"

Shaykh Rustaam toyed with his thick black moustache and gave a pained smile. He then herded her toward the tribunal hall, speaking softly. "Listen to me, Layla bas Layla. You are already a great Dervish—better than any man in this Lodge with the sword, and purer in regimen than those men who would call you heretic. But this is a much bigger poison-pot than you could have cooked up alone. This bit about the red scarf is merely the bushel that proves the camel's bad back. This tribunal is truly meant to determine one thing—which man holds power in the Lodge of God. This day has been coming for some time now."

They reached the Lodge's plain-faced main building. The area about the great brass-bound double doors bustled with students and Dervishes who conspicuously averted their gaze from Layla and her Shaykh.

Shaykh Rustaam halted. "Just tell the truth and don't let Shaykh Zaad cow you. God is with you, for 'God smiles on all men, but smiles on the righteous man twice.' Your case is just. Take strength from that."

The Shaykh headed for an onion-arched side entrance while Layla walked on through the great double doors alone.

The tribunal hall was a simple space—one large, open room with great carpets spread for the scores of students and Dervishes at one end, and a low stone platform for the Shaykhs at the other. Layla sat alone in the hall's center, the assembly murmuring behind her and the Shaykhs staring down before her.

Her grand-uncle sat on a juniper-wood divan atop the platform, elevated slightly above the simple seat-cushions of the senior Shaykhs. Those three sat cross-legged before the High Shaykh—Shaykh Rustaam, who winked at her affectionately; Shaykh Saif, who as recorder would stay silent during the proceedings; and lastly, staring at her as if at a sucking-beetle found in his pallet, Shaykh Zaad.

Layla looked back toward the assembly, anxious to avoid Shaykh Zaad's gaze. But then she saw Hakum. A Dervish barely older than she, he was one of Zaad's most fervent supporters. He scowled at her. He was tall and powerfully built, but Layla had outsparred him twice. It was Hakum who had first run to Zaad to report Layla's scarf. As she frowned at him, he did not look away, but deepened his scowl and put his hand to his swordhilt. Then Shaykh Saif was speaking, and Layla focused on the matter at hand.

"'Let your trials serve justice, not pageantry' say the Heavenly Chapters! It has always been so with the Order's tribunals. And so, we lay the matter out plainly now: The Dervish Layla bas Layla has been called to tribunal by Zaad, Shaykh of the Lodge of God. May God, who alone knows what is true and what is false, guide us to a just outcome. Shaykh Zaad?"

"I beseech God's blessings on us all, and may God guide us to justice," Shaykh Zaad invoked. "Layla bas Layla, seven years ago, you were brought into the Lodge as a student. Only last year, you donned the blue silks of a full Dervish, which have been granted to only three females in the Order's distinguished history. And how have you repaid the Lodge of God?"

Shaykh Zaad paused and frowned. His slow, cold speech reminded Layla of a lizard's slither. "Indeed, how have you repaid Almighty God Himself? This scarf. This red scarf. Wearing the Traitorous Angel's color would be foul on Dhamsawaat's decadent streets, let alone in the Lodge, where our Traditions ban it. What justification can you have for this blasphemy?"

Layla had made an oath to God and her mother. An oath. How many times had she repeated that to herself? With the eyes of all the Lodge on her, all she could do was tell Shaykh Zaad the same thing again in different words.

"As I've told you before, O Shaykh, this scarf was given to me by my mother, God shelter her soul, the woman who brought me up to piety and led me to the Lodge of God."

"More's the pity," Shaykh Zaad interrupted. Layla made herself wait for his nod before continuing.

"As she lay dying I swore to her, before God and His Angels, that I would remember her by wearing her scarf. My mother was a believer, but an outlander. In her country, such a scarf is passed from mother to daughter and—"

Shaykh Zaad snorted and spoke scripture as if lecturing a child. "'For God, the whole world is but a footstep,'" he quoted. "God's law knows no borders. The scarf is red. And red is the Traitorous Angel's badge. Nothing could be simpler." Beside Zaad, Shaykh Saif nodded solemnly.

Layla spoke quickly, knowing that she would falter if she hesitated. "While the Traditions do say that wearing red is forbidden by God, O Shaykh, you know better than one so ignorant as I, that this is largely based on opinion. There is nothing explicit in the Heavenly—"

"Opinion?" Shaykh Zaad moistened his lips and smiled a smile that made Layla afraid. "I am twenty years a Shaykh, and you are barely a Dervish, girl. As far as you're concerned, I determine what is blessed and what is forbidden."

There was a loud scraping as her grand-uncle shot up from his divan, with none of the usual wincing. "Watch your tongue, Zaad!" He had not sounded so strong in months. "Do not forget that all power comes from God! I will not have usurpers of His authority sleep in His Lodge!" He sat back down, clearly exhausted.

Shaykh Zaad barely hid his irritation. "Of course, O High Shaykh. Forgive my careless words—they were spoken in anger." He turned his gaze back to Layla and she felt as if a sword were pointed at her. "You were telling us, child, about your learned scholarship—you who can hardly read the Heavenly Chapters. Please, continue."

Shaykh Rustaam replied before Layla could. "She is not a scholar, Shaykh Zaad. But I am. 'O believer! Know that God is the fairest judge and the most doting father' say the Heavenly Chapters. Come now, brothers. We all know the truth. The girl has always been pious in her conduct. We have all seen the miraculous speed with which she moves and leaps, and her prowess with the sword. If you're honest with yourselves, you see God's hand at work in her uncanny skill."

"Ha! That the girl has a strange strength I grant," Zaad said, "but her power comes not from God, but from the Traitorous Angel. No doubt this is why she wears his badge of wickedness!"

Layla held her tongue, though it wasn't easy.

Shaykh Rustaam smirked. "O Zaad, God knows you're a veritable scholar of wickedness! Still, at its bottom, this is where we are: the girl is a full Dervish, however young. She has made a fair ruling, given the Heavenly Chapters' ambiguity. A valid if provocative interpretation." He stroked his moustache. "I find Layla's daring paradoxically pious in its way—for 'Above all are love and bravery blessed,' and 'He who honors his mother hath a feast set him in Paradise.' The Oasis Shaykh, God shelter his soul, taught—"

"Keep your heretical interpretations to yourself!" Zaad spat.

Shaykh Rustaam frowned. "The Oasis Shaykh was a revered saint who—"

"He was the degenerate founder of a degenerate school! A lover-of-boys who thought himself a mystic!"

"Zaad!" Her grand-uncle shouted as loud as his feeble lungs would allow. He was on his feet again.

Layla could not quite sort out all the hollering that followed. She'd always been bored by books and the Traditions, by scrolls and sermons. Even her command of the Heavenly Chapters wasn't what it ought to be, she knew. For seven years now, she'd spent every moment she could in the training yard or the archer's copse or the pool of hardening. This back-and-forth of saints and scriptures meant little to her. But in Zaad's eyes she saw something that she knew well enough. Rage.

Again her grand-uncle's reedy shout cut through the other Shaykhs' voices. "Disgraceful! I will not have the Lodge of God torn apart in these disputes! In God's name, I—"

His words stopped as his eyes bulged out and he fell back in his seat. He sucked in a breath and Layla was close enough to see him grit his teeth. With every bit of discipline her training had given her, she kept from leaping to his side. Such a display would weaken his hand, and in this hall he was the High Shaykh, not her grand-uncle.

"We...will...adjourn." Her grand-uncle bit the words out and put his hand to his chest. Two attendants half-carried him out of the room. Shaykhs Saif, Rustaam, and Zaad followed the High Shaykh.

After a long, shocked silence the hall began to clear.

"No! No! He can't be dead!" Layla wailed. She sat on a large rock near the archer's copse with Shaykh Rustaam who, with strong arms and a vial of salt-and-violet had twice now kept her from collapsing.

His own eyes shone with tears that did not quite fall. "Listen, child. High Shaykh Aalli scolded me often, but without his guidance I'd never have become a Shaykh. I loved him and I feel his loss—for 'Death is only a loss for the wicked and the living.'

"Yet if we would honor your grand-uncle's memory, there is work that falls to us—work that leaves us little time for grieving. You recall what the Lodge of God's Traditions mandate in a situation such as this?"

Layla's memory struggled through grief and neglected lessons. When the answer came to her, she gasped. "The Judgment of Swords and Souls!"

"So your learning isn't so poor as some wagging tongues say! Yes, the Judgment. Zaad, in his lust for power, insists upon determining the new High Shaykh immediately after your grand-uncle's funeral."

At the word 'funeral,' Layla felt a sob rising up in her, but she smothered it and clenched her jaw.

Shaykh Rustaam went on "The Judgment is a matter between Shaykhs. Its contests of swordplay and piety act as arbiters between us and help us find our leader. But we Shaykhs are measured by our pupils as well—and so we are accompanied in the Judgment by a Dervish of our choosing. Zaad will bring that little-shit-in-a-big-man's-body, Hakum. And I'll bring you. Now, I ought not ask this—for High Shaykh Aalli's sake I should protect you. But the Lodge that he has built needs your help." Shaykh Rustaam stood.

Layla winced and again felt weakness creep in. But there was no time for it now. She rose and she and her teacher walked side-by-side. "I mourn my grand-uncle, O Shaykh, but Shaykh Zaad must not become High Shaykh. To tell truth, my grand-uncle spoke of your someday taking that place."

Shaykh Rustaam's eyes shone again. "Me? High Shaykh? Truly? And here I thought he had cast me in the dross-pile for a hopeless libertine! Nonetheless I loved him. And I'm proud to see that his grand-niece has made a fine Dervish. Daring! Honest! And 'pointed,' as the Traditions say a Dervish must be, 'like God's own sword at the heart of injustice'!" Her teacher had recaptured a bit of his bombast, and Layla drew strength from it as she walked.

They entered the burial yard.

From the small minaret above the High Shaykh's house, the funeral-caller cried out scripture about souls weighed on golden scales and the brevity of men's lives.

Death rites at the Lodge were simple, with none of the trilling and sweets that she remembered from her mother's funeral. Within the Order, the rites grew simpler the more venerated the deceased was, so that the funeral for a High Shaykh was a very brief affair. Quiet recitation from the Heavenly Chapters, a plain white winding sheet, a cup of clean water passed about the mourners' mouths.

Layla could not focus on even these simple, pious gestures. Her thoughts kept returning to the Judgment of Swords and Souls. A strange giddiness crept over her and she had to keep herself from smiling. In an hour's time she would have a sword in her hand, and all of the intrigue and ceremony would be beside the point. She would prove with her skill that the Lodge of God belonged to her and those she loved.

Before an hour had passed, the ceremony was over and she was walking toward the training yard. Shaykh Rustaam fell in beside her. He diverted them, taking an indirect route.

As they walked, he twirled his sword between his left and right hands, an old Order exercise for mind focusing and wrist limbering which he'd always performed with a unique flair. But the Shaykh displayed little of his usual mirth. "Listen closely; I want to be sure you're clear about how the Judgment will proceed. After the opening invocation, the middle tambour will sound and you and Hakum will duel until one of you is disarmed and yields, or Shaykh Saif sounds the low tambour to signal a breach of rule. You may wield no weapon other than your body and your forked sword. To blind, cripple, or kill is to forfeit victory. When the duel between you Dervishes is over, the high tambour will sound and then Zaad and I will cross swords, bound by the same rules."

"What if I lose?"

"You won't, God willing. Regardless, the outcomes of both Sword-Judgments are considered mere preliminaries to the Judgment of Souls that follows. After the two duels, Zaad and I, our spirits strengthened or weakened by our own contest and that of our pupils, will have a battle of closeness-to-God. A weaponless duel, of gazes and all that lies behind a gaze. It is the Judgment of Souls that truly determines the contest's winner."

It was as strange a notion to Layla as when she'd first read about it. Still, beneath all the words it meant that, between the contesting Shaykhs, the best and most pious warrior would become High Shaykh. Which surely meant that Shaykh Rustaam would win. She smiled and said so, but Shaykh Rustaam sheathed his sword and frowned at this.

"It's not so simple, Layla. With High Shaykh Aalli gone, God shelter his soul, the Lodge already half-belongs to Zaad."

"But if we win the Judgment, then things will be different!"

Shaykh Rustaam ran one hand over his moustache. "Perhaps. At least, if we win the Judgment, I will be High Shaykh in name. But don't put too much faith in even a zealot's adherence to inconvenient old codes. Too many men here are loyal to Zaad. The Lodge's troubles will have just begun. Still, if we lose..." He held Layla's gaze. "It won't be easy for you. Your grand-uncle's authority protected you from...many things. If we lose, I'll be under Zaad's authority, and I won't be able to protect you."

Layla took a moment to think about what that might mean. But it changed nothing. "I understand."

Shaykh Rustaam's solemn stare broke into a smile. "But why do I speak so grimly? God forgive me my boasts, but I could defeat two Zaads even if I missed my morning tea and yogurt. No reason for fear, child!"

They arrived at the training yard and Layla hoped to Almighty God that her teacher was right.

Two hundred men and boys—students and Dervishes alike—stood forming a large circle around the training yard. Even more men than had been at the tribunal. The entire Lodge, in fact. It was as she had expected.

The crowd parted as she and Shaykh Rustaam made their way into the circle. Layla ignored the murmured words that followed her. She stepped into the circle and saw that Shaykh Zaad and Hakum were already nearing its center. Beside her, Shaykh Rustaam said nothing, but flashed her a grim smile as they went to stand face-to-face with their opponents.

Shaykh Saif, acting as judge, stood just inside the circle. He held a small mallet over a three-tiered tambour. He called out in a clear, thunderous voice "'If there is no High Shaykh, there is no Lodge of God'! So say our Traditions. So it is that we gather here to..."

He said more words, but Layla did not really hear them. She studied Hakum, weighed different opening gambits. She gripped her swordhilt and nearly jumped when the middle tambour sounded.

Hakum wasted no time in beginning his attack. He was one of the biggest Dervishes in the Lodge, and the savage blows Layla parried were jarring. Her teeth rattled. But she was confident.

She'd bested Hakum each time they'd met in the training yard. He fought now as he had then. Still believing that raw strength was enough against her. She watched his hacking sword arm with disdain. Waited for her chance.

He kicked her left shin. Hard. Layla hopped back two steps and nearly buckled from the pain. Hakum pressed the attack, but she gave no more ground. She saw her opening. She slashed out once and sliced open Hakum's forearm. Another swift blow knocked his sword away.

As Layla expected, he scrambled for his lost weapon. But then, without retrieving his sword, he turned awkwardly and swung at her. Was the angry fool venturing his bare hands against her? She brought her arm up in a scornful block.

And felt a blade bite deep into her flesh. A second weapon! The dog had a palm-dagger! A coward's weapon, and blasphemy to bring into the Judgment. The pain seared. Surely Shaykh Saif would call this a breach of rule and sound an end to the duel. The Traditions demanded it. But she dared not turn to catch the Shaykh's eye.

And the low tambour did not sound. A few feinting steps brought her into Shaykh Saif's line of vision, but he just stared at her coldly. Of course. Even the Traditions did not matter to him so much as a unified Lodge. He had chosen not to see the dagger.

So this is how things stand.

The wound in her arm burned, but she had her sword and Hakum had only a tiny dagger. There was no contest. With two vicious but careful slashes she disarmed him a second time. She slapped his face with the flat of her blade for good measure before she cried "Yield!"

The big, sour-faced Dervish breathed heavily. He did not speak or move.

"Yield!" Layla repeated.

Another silent moment. Then Hakum bowed stiffly to her. With murder in his eyes, he mumbled, "I yield."

As soon as the words left Hakum's mouth, the high tambour sounded and Shaykhs Rustaam and Zaad stepped toward each other, swords drawn.

The forked sword of the Order was a slashing weapon, but Shaykh Rustaam thrust his out before him. He easily kept Zaad at a distance. Then Shaykh Rustaam darted his sword-tip almost past Zaad's own sword. Zaad clumsily turned away the blow, but he was in a desperate defensive position now. Shaykh Rustaam drove him back a dozen steps with a whirling attack that made his one sword seem like three.

Shaykh Rustaam toyed with Zaad, wearing the older Shaykh down. Zaad was not unskilled with a sword, but Layla thought her teacher had boasted true—it would take two Zaads to even challenge one Shaykh Rustaam.

Again and again the two swords crossed in parries and flurries of blows. Shaykh Rustaam touched his opponent five or six times to Zaad's one. The older Shaykh managed to get in one more accurate slash at Shaykh Rustaam's arm before Layla's teacher knocked the weapon from Zaad's hand.

There was no question who would win the Judgment of Swords. Shaykh Rustaam still held his blade and his forearm was marred only by two small slashes. Shaykh Zaad was disarmed and his silks had been sliced open in a dozen places. Still, Zaad smiled as if some comforting thought kept the pain from him.

Shaykh Zaad moved to recover his weapon. But Shaykh Rustaam pointed his own sword at his opponent's throat. "YIELD!" the younger Shaykh boomed. Zaad still smiled when he ought to have been furious. "I yield."

Shaykh Rustaam nodded and sheathed his sword. But something seemed wrong. He'd barely exerted himself in defeating Zaad, yet sweat poured down his face, and his breath was now coming sharper and quicker.

All three tambour-tiers sounded in quick succession, and Shaykh Saif intoned "Thus ends the Judgment of Swords! But the Heavenly Chapters say 'The strong soul of the believer can stand against seven swords.' Prepare, O Shaykhs, for God's Judgment of Souls!" Again Shaykh Saif struck the three tiers of the tambour.

Their gazes locked, the two Shaykhs moved in unison. Each took one long step back from the other and sank down to sit cross-legged on the packed dirt. And then Layla knew something was wrong. Though he held Zaad's gaze, Shaykh Rustaam was sweating and breathing harder than ever. It wasn't battle fatigue. Layla had sparred with her teacher countless times, and she'd never seen this.

The two Shaykhs continued to stare at one another, their souls in a strange silent duel. But after a few long moments, Shaykh Rustaam began to swoon, and he huffed as if he'd been running for hours. It made no sense. Except—

Poison.

Just as the thought formed in her head her teacher swooned again, as if he couldn't breathe. He righted himself and kept his gaze hard on Zaad, who suddenly seemed, behind his own strange stare, to be afraid.

Then Shaykh Rustaam collapsed.

Poison!

It was the only explanation. Caring little for propriety, she scrambled to his side as Shaykh Saif sounded the high tambour and shouted words about victory and God's Judgment.

When Layla reached her teacher, she saw that Shaykh Rustaam would never breathe again.

Poison was the most reprehensible weapon in existence, according to the Traditions. Zaad visibly withheld a smile as he looked on Shaykh Rustaam's body. In his eyes she saw her suspicions were right.

But if she was close enough to see the signs, surely Shaykh Saif was. Layla turned to him. "What...what could cause this, Shaykh Saif? Only an envenomed sword!"

The assembly murmured around them. Shaykh Saif's look was dark, but he said nothing.

Zaad turned toward her and shrugged. "His wicked soul shriveled when it stood unmasked before a servant of Righteous and All-Scouring God! Such things have happened before in the Judgment of Souls."

"No. No!" She was screaming, and she did not care. "This is wickedness! This is no fair Judgment! This is murder!" She fell to her knees beside Shaykh Rustaam's now lifeless body.

Shaykh Saif knelt next to her and spoke softly. "Be still, child. It's out of our hands now. This is why we have the Judgment. The Lodge must shed its diseased limbs so that the body does not die." He knew that Shaykh Rustaam had been poisoned. But even this wouldn't cause him to act against Zaad. Layla saw it in his eyes. A united Lodge of God. He placed a hand on Layla's shoulder.

She jerked away from his touch and stood. "Zaad is the diseased limb!" she screamed, "A user-of-poisons, as disgraced in the Traditions as the blasphemer—you all see this, yet you say nothing!" A last bit of something careful and thoughtful in Layla seemed to burn and blow away like ash. She turned to Zaad.

"Poisoner! Son of a whore! God piss on you, murderer!" They were the words of caravan guards, and Hakum snarled at them, but Zaad restrained his pupil with a raised hand and smiled.

"I forgive your angry words. You are a girl, taught by a heretic and a soft old man. You cannot be blamed. But an influence such as your cannot be allowed to remain—"

Zaad would not strike her. He did not need to. He would simply cast her out of his Lodge coinless, friendless, and dishonored. Her grand-uncle and Shaykh Rustaam were dead. Their enemy had won.

She could not let it be this way.

She focused on her breathing, her blade, the mocking Shaykh across from her. Zaad had killed Shaykh Rustaam, who had shown Layla how strong she might be. But if her teacher could look on now, he would see her strength. Her sword appeared suddenly in her hand. She flew at Zaad.

Before the Shaykh or his pupils even got their weapons up, Layla's sword made three deep cuts at Zaad's neck and shoulders. He gurgled as he fell. Then he stopped moving.

The assembly rang with men's shouts and the drawing of swords. Shaykh Saif bellowed her name. Hands clutched at her. Her blade bit into flesh again and again. Hakum fell before her, clutched at his bleeding gut. Her sword flashed. She heard screams, watched a man's severed fingers arc through the air.

Whether her power came from God or from the Traitorous Angel, Layla was faster than any man at the Lodge. She bolted through the stunned assembly, out the great double doors, and into the cool night air.

Layla ran down the rocky path that led away from the Lodge. The shouts slowly grew more distant behind her. She headed off the path and down into the stony hills. Picking her way among the rocks, she ran for an hour before stopping beside a great gray boulder. She held her breath and listened for sounds of pursuit, but heard none. She allowed herself a few huffing breaths and put her hand to her swordhilt.

Merciful God, please, no! This can't be!

But it was. Brushing against her scabbard, her fingers touched only leather. No scrap of silk was wound there. During the Judgment, or when she'd killed Zaad, or perhaps when she'd fought through the assembly—somewhere she had lost her mother's scarf.

Her grand-uncle. Shaykh Rustaam. Her home in the Lodge of God. Her oath to her mother. All lost. And what did she have? Revenge? Shaykh Zaad's death meant little enough, when she thought on it. How she had burned to kill him! But now his allies—men who called God's name as they took what they wanted—would run the Lodge, even if Shaykh Saif became High Shaykh in name.

Her life in the Order was over. She would never become a Shaykh as she'd once dreamed. And she had maimed and killed men. Other Dervishes. She'd done it simply by reaction. It wasn't as hard as the Shaykhs had made her believe. She felt no shame thinking on Hakum and...Yusef, had it been? Mahmet? Others whose names she'd never retained had gotten in the way as well.

Her eyes stung and her stomach clenched, but she felt no shame. What had she become, she wondered, that she could kill others of the order and feel no shame?

Layla inspected herself. Bruised and cut. Her blue silks tattered and stained with blood. She could not continue to wear them, and not only because they were ruined. She was no longer a Dervish.

She thought of the map on her grand-uncle's wall and all the cites listed there. She quickened her pace through the hills.

Saints starve, robbers roast lamb. More caravan guards' words she shouldn't have heard. Layla weighed them heavily now, her hand on her sword. She could never be a saint now. God would not forgive what she had done, nor would the order. They might even send men to hunt her.

Let them, she decided, looking about the barren hills. She realized that had become something new in those moments after Shaykh Rustaam's death. Something disappointing to God, perhaps, but terrifying to wicked men like Zaad. She would do what she had to.

Saints starve, robbers roast lamb. She had to go somewhere. And three days' walk from the Lodge of God was a soft city full of rich men—a whole new world, full of bolts of red silk waiting to be taken.

# Doctor Diablo Goes Through the Motions

So here I am again, sitting at a twelve-person steel table, going through the motions. The Society of Supercriminals' new headquarters is impressive but not comfortable. You'd think that Overlord, with his ill-gotten dictator-industrialist billions, could afford some padding for these damn chairs. But as my Tío Cesar would say, assholes never shit flowers.

We've been at the table a long time, Overlord assigning minor miscreantish jobs to the Society's members. He's clearly building to some criminal crescendo, and I wish he'd just get to it. I squirm audibly in my seat and I can practically hear him frown behind that grotesque silver mask. There's a longstanding if covert debate among my associates as to whether the big O wears the mask because he's horribly scarred or whether he just has a kink for such things. Either way, over the course of a meeting, dude's heavy breathing goes from annoying to gut-deep creepy.

My attention is drifting. I force myself to focus on our self-appointed leader's metal-echoed words.

"...on other fronts, there is a new so-called hero that has been disrupting the profitable activities of one of the larger illicit organizations that pay us tribute. Doctor Diablo, this assignment will fall to you. The foolish do-gooder calls himself Steelfist. His powers include a great proficiency with all forms of martial arts and—"

"Let me guess—he's white, right?" I interrupt, tired of the rambling. Overlord always goes on like this when all he really has to do is slap down a dossier with This guy needs his ass handed to him stamped on the cover. I'm just cutting to the chase.

Behind that mask, bloodshot eyes register confusion, then irritation with my question. Around me, I hear mumbles and shifting chairs. The Society of Supercriminals hates it when I bring up race.

"How could the ethnicity of this self-righteous fool possibly matter to—"

"I'm just sayin'," I interrupt, gauging carefully how far I can push my smart-aleckry. Overlord has a tendency to vaporize guys who disagree with him in meetings. "I'm just sayin' you don't need to go through all of this. I can guess his goddamn origin: Disaffected rich kid. Fled America and trained with mystical Eastern warriors. Soon became the best—one year at ninja camp is always enough time for a gringo to get better than any native. He defeated the jealous Eastern ex-best warrior. Screwed the prettiest Eastern girl. Earned the respect of her dad, some old guy with a white mustache who's been waiting all his life for a white boy to come to his school. Came home and decided to fight crime. Am I right?"

For the first time in a half-dozen of these meetings, Overlord looks at me with something like real respect. "Impressive intelligence gathering, Diablo. Your sources are—"

"It was a guess. Anyway, yeah, he sounds about my speed. I'll handle him." Taking out a new, minor-league hero. Chump work. But it could be worse—Overlord doled out a goddamn bank robbery to Jaguara. An insult to homegirl's skills, but better her than me.

"Very well," says the madman in the silver mask. "Our last task falls to Planhatcher."

Planhatcher, the World's Greatest Schemer, stands up. His costume always struck me as preposterous—the monocle, the image on his chest that looks like Rube Goldberg got drunk and drew on his shirt.

Still, he's one of the few folks in the Society that I can stand. One of the few that ever talks about anything other than taking over the world or putting this or that nemesis in a death trap. Early on, I tried to make buddies with Black Thunder, on the brown-black solidarity tip. Going through the motions. But dude's too obsessed with his archenemy Weatherlord, who's been beating his ass since the '70s. Now, I know living under the white man's thumb can fuck with your head, but the shit got depressing. Cheering on a pathetically pumped Black Thunder when he aced Weatherlord's little green-skinned sidekick. Like I say, depressing.

Planhatcher strokes his goatee and says, "My task is to free the inmates of Centropolis Prison."

Beside me a blue-skinned fist the size of a Thanksgiving turkey pounds the steel table enthusiastically, leaving a dent. "MASHER LOVE JAILBREAKS!" booms the biggest Supercriminal present.

Planhatcher sniffs, his disdain evident to everyone except Masher, which is probably for the best. "I am speaking of more than a jailbreak, my friends. This is something much more...thorough."

Mister Munitions, who was half-asleep a second ago, suddenly lights up at this. "We're gonna blow up Centropolis Prison!"

The look of disappointment on Planhatcher's face is profound. "This is not about destroying the physical prison, either. My plan is to destroy the need for the prison. Now, most of those imprisoned in Centropolis are nonviolent drug offenders—useless to us as henchmen, but what if..."

Planhatcher spins his word-web. His scheme involves super-powered inmates, corrupt officials and a shadily acquired prison construction company.

The details are sort of lost on me, especially when he starts jotting down some sort of equation on a napkin. Despite calling myself Doctor Diablo, I only have a bachelor's degree. It's more than most kids from the barrio manage, but it wasn't enough to keep me out of trouble. Anyway, the man with the monocle goes on about stealing Moodshifter's emotion ray, then there's something about a remote-controlled clone of the governor.

The guy's nuts, straight up and down. But then, I go to work in a flame-painted bodysuit.

And, as the implications of Planhatcher's scheme become clear to me, I have to admit that he might be nuts, but he's also a genius. Prisoners painlessly reformed and reintegrated into society. Their former victims granted a sense of deep healing that the courts could never provide. The best part is, the results will inevitably draw attention and encourage similar efforts elsewhere.

My God. This is the seed of something truly amazing, and for once I'm happy to have shown up for a Society meeting. My cousin Carlos—a good kid who's caught a whole lot of shitty breaks—is in Centropolis Prison. Rotting away and reduced to an animal's existence for making essentially the same stupid decisions every frat boy on campus made back in college. This plan would give him another—better to say a first—chance at life.

I can't help gushing. "Planhatcher! This is fucking brilliant!"

Overlord, on the other hand is clearly impatient and irritated. "An intriguingly baroque scheme, Planhatcher. Still, this and the other tasks I have assigned you are merely distractions. For now we come to my own part." Those bloodshot eyes are smiling. "While the Legion of Justice is dealing with the baffling distractions the rest of you provide, I will be using my skill with robotics to reprogram the Legion's most faithful servant. Those crusading buffoons think he is at ARMOR headquarters for his annual maintenance, but behold!"

Overlord gestures with a mailed hand at the wall behind him. The wall slides up to reveal a man-shaped robot writhing in manacles and berating us Supercriminals in a posh English accent.

Arthur the android butler. The idiot kidnapped Arthur! For an evil genius, Overlord is a moron. As the rest of the Society cackles in a great forethoughtless gloat, Planhatcher and I exchange worried looks. Inevitably Captain Patriot or Ultiman or whoever's in charge of the Legion of Justice this year is going to stage a rescue. Which means we won't get time to implement Planhatcher's "distraction." A thousand hapless cholos like my cousin, whom we could have helped, will get chewed up even further by the system.

As if on cue, a thunderous rumbling shakes the building. Then another. The sound of our impenetrable fortress wall being broken open. The Legion is here.

"Impossible!" shouts Overlord. What a jackass.

A voice like a lightning strike echoes from a nearby room. "Think ye to hide, cowering villains!? Verily, my axe doth rend these walls as though steel were mere paper!! Fear not, friend Arthur, for the Legion of Justice hath come to free thee!!"

A knot forms in my stomach. I turn to Planhatcher. "They brought The Berserker with them? I thought he was trapped in the Middle Ages!"

Planhatcher shrugs and rolls up the tube of blueprint paper he had spread on the table. I sigh and think of Carlos. Chances are pretty good I'll be joining him soon.

The Legion wants a fight. So I charge up my infernal internal dynamo, watching the orange glow begin to shimmer off of my arms. Every time I do it I think about falling into that volcano and waking up...changed. It's a hell of a thing, being a changed man in the same old world.

Planhatcher pulls something small and gun-shaped from his belt and turns a dial on it. I see the prison rehab plan die in his eyes. Beside me, Masher picks up the great steel meeting table like a club.

We didn't make this world, but we survive it by going through the motions.

# General Akmed's Revenge?

"Today we destrrroy Amerrrica."

Muhammad Mattawa twisted his face into a melange of rage and barbaric triumph. He was rallying a bloodthirsty crowd. He needed to be more forceful. He raised his voice, tried again.

"Today we destrrroy Amerrrica! TODAY WE DESTRRROY AMERRRICA!!" Muhammad shook his fist at the American air, held his conqueror's scowl for one long moment more. It slipped into a clowning smile when he looked at his friend Ali, who sat on their apartment's ratty couch, watching Muhammad practice. "Well, what do you think?" he asked Ali in Arabic.

"I think you've got it down, dude." Ali said in English. Smug, American-born Ali with his effortless slang. "I also think," he began, switching to Arabic, "this is the stupidest fucking movie script ever written. And racist! I mean, the fact that they're still making stereotypical shit like this..." Ali ran a hand through his spiky black hair. "How many times you going to practice that one line, anyway? Let's get high."

Muhammad shrugged in surrender. He hurled the script at his best friend's head. Ali was right, of course. Desert Rangers II was the worst script Muhammad had ever read, in Arabic or English. The movie certainly qualified as "Public Insult to Islam"—a punishable crime in his homeland. Worse, his role was tiny. But "General Akmed" was the only part he'd landed in the year since he'd played "Terrorist #3" and been shot in the head onscreen by an Austrian body builder-turned-action star. There wasn't a lot of work out there for Muhammad. In a stroke of luck two years ago, he'd played a Cuban drug dealer's henchman. Mostly, though, it was sleazy oil sheiks and men who cackled as they blew up children. Then again, Muhammad reflected, the fact that he had shown up to his last two auditions late due to car trouble and reeking due to long nights of hashish and video games probably hadn't helped his career.

An hour later that same sweet reek filled the apartment, leavened with the fried onion-and-cumin smells of Ali's cooking. Muhammad's half-eaten plate sat before him. A video game controller was in his hand.

"Alright, motherfucker," Ali said in English, "Keep an eye on that score!" Super Mario Brothers © 1986 Nintendo Entertainment Corporation flashed on the screen in white light-letters.

1986. Some part of Muhammad knew it was an arbitrary, European number. According to the Islamic calendar the year was 1406. But living in this country it was hard not to feel that it was 1406 only for old men like his uncle, a hearer-of-voices who had told Muhammad many times that an unseen jinn protected the Mattawa family. This jinn had not saved his uncle from being tortured and crippled by the Internal Security Police back home, though the fact that one of the thugs had suffered a heart attack during his uncle's public trial had once inspired credulous notions in Muhammad. Still, when he'd crossed the ocean to America, Muhammad thought, he had moved away from such superstition and into the future.

According to the Desert Rangers II script, General Akmed was the terrorists' supreme commander. But the part had little screen time. Muhammad's lines consisted mostly of the direction [screams in Arabic]. His main lines in English were "Die, Deserrrt Rrrangerrrs!" and "Today we destrrroy Amerrrica!" The triple r's were there in the script. Eric Williams, the director, had explained that Muhammad was to roll his tongue.

Eric was a bony, sadistic man. Back home, Muhammad had often been warned about the Jews of America. But his agent Sol, a mostly-former actor who also had a part in the film, was kind and helpful—almost fatherly. Eric, on the other hand, was neither Jewish nor a kind man. Muhammad wasn't sure Eric was a man at all. He did not believe in ghuls, but when Muhammad looked at the director he did wonder. Eric was also co-producer and co-writer of the script, in which Lieutenant Snake and his Desert Rangers battle a mad Middle Eastern dictator who's uncovered an ancient magical artifact.

Muhammad picked his way across the set. Someone tugged at his sleeve.

"Watch out, Mo. Director dickface is in a choice mood today." Muhammad smiled at egg-bald Sol, who was playing Lieutenant Snake's hard-nosed commander. Sol could make the huge vein in his forehead throb powerfully on command, and Eric made much use of this talent. Muhammad envied Sol's role, with its exasperated lines like "If you're gonna screw me, Snake, you could at least give me a reacharound!"

"Mo! Get over here!" Eric had noticed his arrival.

Muhammad walked over to discuss his scene with Eric.

"Listen up! You're giving your 'we're gonna take over the world' speech and -"

"Yes, this is what I am wanting to ask you about, Mister Williams." Eric's look made Muhammad cringe at his own bad English. "I am saying what in my speech?"

"I told you before, it doesn't matter! Until we get to the last line, you're just background noise. Everything's gonna be focused on Chuck. Just mumble like it's Arabic. You don't really have to be saying anything."

"Yes, but..."

"Goddammit!" Eric snapped, "Just start out calm and then make it angry! Like that Ayatollah asshole."

"Excuse me, Mister Williams." Muhammad struggled with his tenses. "That is Iran, what you are talking about. They are not speaking Arabic there, but..."

One of the crew groaned, said "Aw, come on!"

Eric squinted at Muhammad, as if seeing him for the first time. The director lowered his voice. "Do you know what kind of schedule we're on here? We don't have time for you to get cute. Or to suddenly develop a fucking attitude. You understand?"

Muhammad didn't quite understand, but he knew when to grin stupidly and say "Sorry, Mister Williams. No problem!"

Muhammad's problematic attitude came up again at the end of his weekly English lesson/American breakfast with Ali. From an unseen television somewhere in Johnny's Hollywood Diner, an announcer roared "IT'S A NEEEEW CAAAR!!!" Ali snapped his fingers in front of Muhammad's face, and he realized he'd been staring into space.

"What the hell's wrong with you today, anyhow?" Ali asked.

Muhammad blinked, tried to clear his head. "What is this word, 'Anyhow'?"

"Not now, dude. Answer my question."

Ali looked concerned, but Muhammad didn't quite know what to say. "I...I do not know. Lately, I am feeling that I am in a video game," he said in English. "In Super Mario Brothers! Every inch of ground I am gaining is a danger, a..."—what was the word?—"a...an obstacle, you understand?" Forks and plates clinked around them and greasy smells filled the air.

"Not understand. Understand. Emphasis on the stand. Enough with the English lessons, anyway." Ali sipped his coffee and smiled in a bemused way that irritated Muhammad. "So you feel like Super Mario?" his friend asked.

"Yes!" Muhammad half-shouted in Arabic. Since I've left home, I've made it through obstacle after obstacle. Found new worlds. Overcome monsters and bottomless pits. I think I am going to rescue the princess. But then, without warning, fireballs erupt behind me and I leap without looking into a pool of lava!" Muhammad knew that he was too loud, that he was speaking too quickly, that he must sound crazy. But he found he couldn't help himself. He'd been holding too much inside. "Yes, I leap into the lava and I'm done for. But then, it's even worse. I'm not quite done for! Instead I find myself all the way back at the beginning of this tiresome world, facing all those obstacles over again. And I say to myself 'there's only so many times I can come back!' But I can't check the corner of the screen. How many chances do I have left?" Muhammad pounded the Formica tabletop for emphasis. "How many!?" he shouted. Then, embarrassed at last, he looked around sheepishly and fell silent.

Ali stared for a moment, dumbfounded. Then he cracked a grin, and gave Muhammad a tsk-tsk-tsk. "Have you," he asked in English, "been dipping into my stash?"

They parted ways after breakfast, and Muhammad begged off when his friend invited him to a party that night in the Valley. There was too much going on in his head for him to try and be social.

For several years now, Muhammad had been dreaming at least partly in English. In his daydreams, too, the language's strange words and phrases had crowded into his brain. He supposed this was only natural. But lately there had been more to it. He heard and saw certain lines from his life played over and over again in his skull. One moment they were strange and foreign, the next they were disturbingly familiar.

Sorry, Mario, but our princess is in another castle!

Today we destrrroy Amerrrica!

IT'S A NEEEEW CAAAR!!!

And somewhere behind all the blaring English he could still hear the worst sounds from home. The bullying Internal Security Forces with their American-bought uniforms and rifles. The shouted charges against his uncle, who swore before God that he had heard the voice of a jinn mocking the government.

Slander! Blasphemy! Public insult to Islam!

His uncle's reedy Arabic, whimpering words in the public square.

In the name of God, just kill me!

The sound of his uncle's bones being broken. The consoling words, like smokeless fire speaking, that had echoed impossibly in Muhammad's head as he was made to watch his uncle being beaten.

Muhammad woke in the night, sometimes, with all these sounds and words insisting he listen to them, picture them. More and more often he worried that he was losing his mind.

As Muhammad walked toward his rusty Dodge, silently praying to himself that it would start again, he passed a newspaper box and a headline caught his eye.

US BOMBS LIBYA

He scanned the story as best he could through the grate. US warplanes...over 100 dead...baby daughter was slain.

Why had he looked? Muhammad took a breath and did what he always did with the news—tried to pretend he hadn't read it. He moved on.

An American couple in their twenties was walking by, clearly enjoying the warm April morning. Before coming to the states, Muhammad had worked at kebab stands in Sweden and West Germany. There were big blonde men in those places. But there was a way of being big and blonde that only American men had. A way that somehow reminded Muhammad of a swinging fist. This man had it. He squeezed the woman beside him immodestly, smirked as he called her "Princess." She was blonde, too. Thin in a way that seemed unhealthy to Muhammad's eyes. He felt ashamed for being aroused by this unhealthiness, and looked down as they passed.

Though he couldn't say why, he stopped walking and pretended to look in a store window. Then he discreetly turned to watch the couple for a moment. The pair stood in front of the newspaper box. They didn't notice Muhammad. They were drunk and in love and he was just one of Los Angeles' million oily immigrants.

The woman pointed at a headline and said sad-sounding words, but Muhammad couldn't quite make them out over the street traffic.

The man's voice was clear. "You ask me, we should just nuke these assholes!"

The woman looked disgusted and thrilled. She swatted the man's arm and said something Muhammad couldn't understand.

Muhammad looked on with Eric as Artie the propmaster held up a gaudily painted bronze bowl.

"Wow, Artie, where did you dig that up?" Eric asked, smiling for the first time in days.

Artie scratched at his sizable paunch. "I got it on a lark in Egypt last year. The old-timer who sold it to me said it'd grant me a wish. But it must be all used up—I keep trying this one wish involving Madonna, but no go." One of the cameramen chuckled obscenely. "Anyway, I had to paint over it to make it show up on camera. A few bucks for a can of gold spray paint and now we got our evil artifact!"

Eric looked genuinely pleased. "Well, Artie, maybe you're worth half a shit after all. We need to save every fucking penny if we're going to afford Mister Bigshot Action Star's goddamned salary!"

"Where is Chuck, anyway?" someone behind Muhammad asked.

Eric made a disgusted noise. "Are you kidding me? We've got him for six days next week and that's it. We've got to shoot around him as much as we can."

Muhammad turned to go practice his getting-shot-nineteen-times-while-Lieutenant-Snake-says-a-one-liner face in the mirror, but Eric grabbed his arm.

"So, General Akmed, here's your prop. Hey! Maybe you can actually read these damn squiggles." Eric handed him the bronze bowl.

The metal was like none Muhammad had ever touched before. Somehow warm and cool, smooth and rough all at the same time. Under the cheap gold paint embossed Arabic wreathed the bowl.

But it was an odd Arabic. Old and weirdly vowelled, like the language of the Qu'ran read in a warped mirror. Boyhood religion lessons came back as Muhammad pieced together the strange phrases and read silently.

O believer! Know that this bowl holdeth a servant of Solomon, son of David, God's prophet, to whom God did grant dominion over winds and birds and jinn.

O believer! Thou hast seen kin-blood spilled. Thou hast crossed the endless western oceans. Thou hast followed the setting sun farther, to a land of disbelievers where the air itself doth choke and the earth itself doth tremble. Thou hast been watched by God and Solomon's servant.

O believer! As you stand in this land, hold this bowl and recite! Then shall ye reap the knowledge of Solomon! Then shall ye sip from the benevolent cup of Almighty God!

Muhammad's mind raced with unfathomables. This old engraving was describing L.A.! Inside his mind, the words repeated themselves in a voice not his. A voice not human. The same smokeless fire voice that had spoken to him at his uncle's trial all those years ago.

Below the weird words was engraved the traditional Islamic declaration of faith, as familiar to Muhammad's eye as the preceding lines were strange. He gripped the bowl, felt a feverish madness closing in on him. By sheer force of habit he recited the declaration in Arabic.

"There is no God but God, and Muhammad is the messenger of God."

Muhammad only half-heard Eric's barked demands for a translation. Something strange—something impossible—was happening, and he stood transfixed.

Clouds of opalescent smoke rolled forth from the bowl and roiled around him. Muhammad let go of the bowl with a yelp, but it just floated there in midair. He thought his heart might beat its way out of his chest. The clouds billowed out to fill the studio and peals of thunder shook the building. To Muhammad it sounded as if the universe were being cracked open like an egg.

Had he finally lost his mind? No...no, Eric and the crew were running around, screaming terrified things!

A fanged face of shimmering smoke began to take shape before Muhammad. A chillingly familiar voice like a thousand harps strummed by sword-blades seemed to scream behind his eyes.

ONE WISH, O SON OF ADAM! SPEAK IT CAREFULLY!

Muhammad's mind raced with a hundred horrible thoughts. He tried to ignore the inconceivable chaos around him. Tried to control his thinking. What must he do? What must he say?

Video game music, the cruel words of passers-by, old stories of the jinn, his wounded uncle's whimpers, the sound of warplanes—all of it hammered at his skull as he tried to clear his mind of strange language. In the name of God, just kill me! echoed in his head in Arabic. Smoke billowed and the studio roof rained plaster.

In spite of himself, bits of English slipped all at once from his lips.

"...princess..."

"...destrrroy Amerrrica!"

"A NEEEEW CAAAR!!!"

Muhammad wasn't quite sure which bit had slipped first.

# Mister Hadj's Sunset Ride

"...and whoso saveth the life of one, it shall be as if he had saved the life of all mankind."

—Qu'ran 5:32

The toughest man I ever met? That's an easy answer to give, but a tricky tale to tell.

Mister Hadj was from the same place as my rattlesnake of a Pa. Araby, or someplace like, though I don't rightly know the name since neither him nor my Pa ever said a blasted word about the Old Country. You'd ask and ask, and all you'd get back was a look as hard as rocks. No use digging after that.

I've ridden with good men and bad men, but I never rode with a man like Mister Hadj. That wasn't his proper name. Just a way of calling the old man respectful-like. My Pa taught me that, if I ever met a man from the Old Country, to call him 'Hadj.' Damn near the only thing that sonuvabitch ever taught me.

Anyhow, a good few years back now, when I was a young, full-of-hisself bounty hunter, I fell in with Mister Hadj in the Black Hills. We rode together about a year. He was a little leather-brown knot of a man with a moonlight-white beard, and he took an immediate and powerful shine to me on account of my Pa's being from Araby.

Now, understand, I'm a bastard. I carry my momma's name—O'Connor. But the way I look—little darker than the average man, I know, and you can see the hatchet nose—well, I get taken for a lot of things. South of the border, I've fibbed that I was half-Mexican. Lived a summer trading with the Cheyenne, claiming to be part redman. Even got chased outta town once when I winked at the wrong girl—they was sure as could be that I was a mulatto!

It can be hell, sometimes, being different things to different folks. But it can be right useful, too.

Well, Mister Hadj musta smelled the Old Country in my blood, somehow. Like I say, he took a shine to me. And my knowing how to call him respectfully seemed to seal it for him. I can't say I ever understood it, but Mister Hadj was the kind of man you wanted on your side, so I wasn't about to complain.

For what it's worth, I was the last man ever saw him alive.

The last time I rode with Mister Hadj, we was in a little shit town in Texas, trailing Parson Lucifer's gang. Old Parson Lucifer was an ex-preacher, mad as a rabid dog. Said he took the name 'cause he was "part blessed and part damned, like any man." Can't say I ever saw the blessed part, though.

Like I said, the man was out of his blasted mind. Anything ruthless or nasty you might have heard about his gang was probably the plain truth. That three-day-slow murder of the blacksmith and his wife in Deadwood, done with their own smithing tools? That weren't no tale. The widower sheriff of Redemption and his baby boys getting their ears chopped off and force-fed to them? Parson Lucifer'd done that, too.

We were in the employ of the town of Crossblood, where even the old Sunday school teacher was foaming at the mouth to see Parson Lucifer and his boys strung up. They'd lost a lot to that gang. Most of the gang had been caught before we ever got hired—and what got done to 'em wasn't none too pretty, neither.

But Parson Lucifer and his two sons were still out there.

Well, one and a half of his sons, anyway. To hear it told, two sheriff's deputies had fired three shots each into his youngest, Shambles. Wasn't nothing left but a bloody pulp shaped like a man. But Parson Lucifer and his eldest, James, went through the trouble of killing two more men just in order to haul the younger boy's body away.

Now, Mister Hadj and me wasn't the only hunters hunting these dogs, but it was us that found 'em. Rather, it was him that did. By serenading the rocks.

See, that old man could sing. I don't think he knew what half the words meant. But when Mister Hadj started in on them cowboy songs—well, as sure as I'm standing here, when that man got to crooning a tune he made the earth itself cry. This ain't just me tale-telling, you hear? I seen tears fall from big red rocks when the old man hummed. Heardstones weep as they parted before him.

So when Mister Hadj said that a stone in the road told him where to find Parson Lucifer, I didn't doubt it. And though it still spooked me, I didn't flinch when he sang softly to a great big cliff-face until it wept and opened us a passage to a perfect ambush perch.

Y'all ain't got to believe me for it to be truth.

I never learned Mister Hadj's Christian name, but tell the truth I don't think he was a Christian. Not to say he wasn't living Christianly, you hear—when we were down Mexico way, that man'd toss his last peso at the first beggar what asked. But I don't think he'd ever touched a Bible in his life. And Sunday to him was just another day.

Every evening, he'd roll out this funny little rug. Then he'd turn his back to the setting sun, bow down and say some'a his words. Heathen praying, far as I could tell.

"You gonna do that every night?" I'd asked him early on.

"Should be more," he'd said in that rocks-and-honey voice. And that was all he'd ever say on the matter.

No, it wasn't nothing Christian. But my momma taught me that another man's religion was like another man's wife—none of my goddamn business. That old gal taught me a lot of lessons, but sticking to my own business was just about the best of 'em.

Granted, he ain't seemed to like words a whole lot. Never said much more than "Yup," "Nope," "I reckon," and "Good, huh?" Once in a while, when he'd get real mad, he'd start to talking his Old Country talk, sounding like...like a man clearing his throat with flowers.

I suppose it would have drove a lot of men mad, riding with a man as quiet as that. And I can't say that, once in a while, I didn't wish Mister Hadj a bit more social. But I've always liked my quiet. Ain't nothing in this world drives me up the wall like riding with a man who keeps on talking when there ain't nothing to say.

I always knew Mister Hadj was there, and that was all I needed to know. By my hope of being saved, I'll tell you I never saw a man as good with a gun. It wasn't natural, the things that old man could do with a Navy Colt or a Winchester. You'll think I'm talking tall, but I'd swear it before the Almighty hisself: I seen Mister Hadj shoot the buck teeth off a jumping jackrabbit. Seen him shoot another man's bullets out the air. Seen him shoot more than a couple men, too. We made a over a dozen bounties in our year together. And not all of 'em were alive. Not by a clean sight.

We was spying on Parson Lucifer and his son from our hiding place high in the cliff-face when Mister Hadj, for reasons knowed only to him at the time, insisted we wait till the next day to nab the bastards. Well, I didn't want to hear that. I was a foolish young man in those days. Hot and headstrong, with even more to prove than your average prairie boy.

"Tummarah," he said, making the word sound like his Old Country talk. He was loading his Colt with funny-looking bullets. Silver, if I didn't miss my guess.

"Tomorrow!? We've got 'em dead to rights right now! With them powers you got—"

Mister Hadj looked up from his gun and ran a hand over his beard. "Powers? Shut up, you. Just a knack."

"A knack?! You can—"

I stopped, knowing I'd flapped my gums too much. The old man didn't like it when I brought up the things he could do. His eyes narrowed like I'd just called his momma a whore. Somewhere out there in the purple early evening, a coyote howled.

Mister Hadj spit at my feet and jabbed a tree-branch trigger finger at me. "Talk too much. Just heed, huh? Tummarah."

"Now look here," I said. "You know I respect your experience. And I do try to heed you, but—"

"Should be more," the old man said, and turned his back to me.

Now, if I'd had half a head on my shoulders, that woulda been the end of it. But I was young, a little fired up, and a lot of stupid. I thought I could make Mister Hadj respect me. And half a whisky flask later I just knew I could do it by bushwhackin' two outlaws singlehanded. So after Mister Hadj'd turned his back to the sunset, said his 'Should be more' rug-prayer to his heathen god and gone to sleep, I snuck down the cliff.

Like I said, young and stupid. If I hadn't been drunk on top of that, I might have given a second thought to those silver bullets Mister Hadj'd been fiddling with.

Them boys was too smart to set a campfire. But the moon was big and bright and by its light I could see Parson Lucifer's white preacher's collar. He was snoring away, but his son James was on watch. I crept up behind James, close and quiet.

Now, even a boy as brash as I was knows that taking on two men at once—even if one of 'em is sleeping—requires getting underhanded. And when it comes to a gang of killers like Parson Lucifer's, well, I got no problem shooting a man in the back. So that's what I done. Three shots right up that boy James's spine.

Excepting it wasn't James that I shot. It wasn't James that turned around. It was the other boy. The dead one. I swear it by God and my momma's grave.

That boy Shambles just stared at me, something like a smile on his rotten, chopped-steak half-a-face. I put another slug right through his eyeball, but the boy didn't even bleed. Now I'd heard that when he was a natural living man, they called him Shambles on account of his funny walk. But when I shot that boy four times and he ain't stopped coming at me, well, that name wasn't so funny no more.

My mouth dried up, my heart hammered hard, and I screamed and ran back the way I'd come. But there was Parson Lucifer cut right across my path, wide awake and a revolver in his gray-gloved hand. His boy James was beside him.

They didn't shoot me. Just laughed and told me to drop my gun or they'd give me to Shambles. I heard the dead boy laughing through his opened throat and—I won't lie—I wet myself. Then I dropped my gun.

A half hour later I found myself lying trussed up on the ground with two teeth knocked out. Parson Lucifer's boot-heel was digging into my cheek, and I was wishing I'd listened to Mister Hadj 'stead of letting my hot blood send me off half-cocked.

"Don't look so worried, boy," the old bandito laughed. "I ain't going to kill you yet. No, you got to die in a special way. A slow way. That hex what raised my boy Shambles is constantly calling for fresh blood. Having you here, well, it saves me dangerous raidin' on a town." He took his boot from my face and strutted slowly into view. He smiled a nasty little smile and looked up at the night sky. "The spilling, though, has to happen at sunrise, when Shambles sleeps. So you got yourself another few hours to live."

Tears started to burn in my eyes. It's one thing to get shot, but it's another thing entire to have your blood spilled for black magic. I swallowed and foolishly tried to play on the guilty conscience of a man who didn't know what conscience was.

"You know you killed a little girl during that last robbery? Eight years old and you—" I felt fear filling me, but I still wasn't ready to make the man shoot me premature for naming him for the monster he was. I switched up to make like I was giving him the benefit of the doubt. "Now, could be it was an accident...," I started.

But Parson Lucifer just frowned at me like a disappointed uncle. "Boy, ain't nothing involving a pistol and Parson Lucifer ever an accident."

A better man would have called Parson Lucifer a devilish, dog-faced son of a whore just then. But it wasn't a better man lying there with his face in the dirt. It was just me, and I kept my peace as that devilish, dog-faced son of a whore went on.

"The girl died for a purpose, boy—more than most folk these days can claim. Every man and every child must play his part. I ravage so that our Lord Christ can heal."

"And I guess you make a nice living doing it, don't you?"

The old bastard smiled. "There's a Caesar in all of us, boy, and we must render unto him what is his. But the girl's was just one life. Even way the hell out here, there's a lot of lives to go around. Ain't any one of 'em any more sacred than another, far as God's concerned. You think our savior cares more about some snot-nosed child than about a sinner like me? You must not read your Bible then, boy. Ain't no man ever kept Jesus' love busier than I have."

That thing he called his son shambled into my view and gibbered something. Whoever it used to be, right then it just looked like a plate of bloody meat walking on two legs. My breath caught in my chest.

"And what about that creature there?" I said, trying to make the bold in me cover up the scared pissless.

"My hex brought my boy Shambles back alive, even after what them snaky deputies done to him. That's the Lord's work, boy. Same thing our savior did with Lazarus. This here's a Christian hex I put on my beautiful baby boy."

I couldn't hardly help myself. "Mister, I don't know what to call that, 'cept to say that it's about as Christian as pissin' in the pulpit on a Sunday morning."

And at that moment Mister Hadj appeared from I-don't-know-where, looking to my frightened eyes like an avenging angel of the Lord.

He sang a quick string of words in his talk—sounded similar to his sunset prayers, best as I could tell. The rocks around us wailed right back, and Parson Lucifer looked all around, frantic-like. Then Mister Hadj shot five of them silver bullets into Shambles.

That thing what used to be a living man stopped and dropped to the ground. There wasn't no blood coming from where Mister Hadj had shot him, but the way he started to moaning, well, it was like all them bullets that he oughtn't have been able to walk away from had all caught up with him.

There was one last howl, like a demon getting his tooth yanked by the meanest barber in the world. Then Shambles stopped moving, stopped kicking, and died an honest death.

Mister Hadj already had his gun on Parson Lucifer, and now he was whistling "Bright River Valley." The rocks kept a-wailing. And I swear to y'all that a little piece of flint jumped up and cut my bonds.

But by then the boy James, who'd been off shaking a sagebrush when Mister Hadj showed up, had his gun on me.

James gestured toward me with the gun and growled at Mister Hadj. "Looks like we're all of us in a fix here. But my Daddy can't see no hangman." He said it in that fast-slow Kansas City way that drives a prairie boy like me clean out my mind, and his Pa finally wore a look of real fear. "Now, I don't know what kind of Injun magic you got hold of here, but my Daddy can't see no hangman. You hear, old man? Whatever kind of red devilishness you done worked against my Daddy's hex, you'd best hope you can lift it and bring back my baby brother. I got a clean shot here at your—"

There was no movement that I saw. But there was a shot, and there was smoke coming from Mister Hadj's gun. And a boy with a hole in his head was lying where a fast-talking murderer had just stood.

"Hurt alotta people. Price to pay. Should be more." Nine words. For Mister Hadj it was like a whole sermon. He looked up at a patch of moonlit cloud in the eastern sky and nodded, like he'd been arguing with the Almighty but was granting God a point.

He didn't even flinch when Parson Lucifer spun around and shot him twice in the chest.

I tried to stop it—fumbled James's dropped gun into my hands and fired in Parson Lucifer's direction, feeling like my anger alone could push the bullet through his skull.

I'm proud to say I killed that hex-casting sonuvabitch.

But I wasn't fast enough. Parson Lucifer and both his boys were dead. But that didn't change Mister Hadj's lying there with two holes in him, and it didn't stop the little red rivers that seeped into the dirt around his old oak root of a body.

As I say, I was still half-green back then, but I'd already come to know by sight which wounds a man might walk away from. One look told me Mister Hadj wasn't going nowhere else in this life.

Any other man would have been screaming hisself silly. But Mister Hadj was so quiet I could hear the wind whispering in the brush. He grit his teeth and refused the rum and laudanum I offered him. "Tufusahal," he said, and I thought he was speaking his Old Country talk. I wished my Pa—or anyone from the Old Country—was there, just to hear him say his peace. Hell of a thing to have to speak your last word to a man who can't understand you.

But he said it again and I realized I did understand. "Tough as all Hell," the old man was saying, the first time I ever heard him talk proud.

"Yeah. You are that, Mister Hadj," I said to him, "Ain't no man anywhere can begrudge you that."

That man bought my life with his, God as my witness. I ain't seen what I'd done to deserve it, to tell the truth. I told him as much, as he lay there dying.

The old coot spit out some blood and smiled real mean-like. "For you?" he said, and shook his head. He pointed his long brown trigger finger up at the sky, like he was naming a target. "For him. Hurt alotta people. Price to pay. Should be more." And that was the last thing he said.

I watched the light go slowly out of his eyes, saw that smile go slack. I smelled crushed roses in the air, though I can't say where the scent came from. For a long time I just sat there, my thoughts mingling with the moonshadows.

I spent that sleepless night burying him with a short-handled shovel, his guns and his little heathen rug beside him. Come morning I was wore out as man could be, but it was time to leave.

"Ashes to ashes," I said, by way of goodbye to the old man, "dust to dust." Then I dragged myself eastward, my eyes half-blinded by the rising sun.

# The Faithful Soldier, Prompted

If I die on this piece-of-shit road, Lubna's chances die with me. Ali leveled his shotgun at the growling tiger. In the name of God, who needs no credit rating, let me live! Even when he'd been a soldier, Ali hadn't been very religious. But facing death brought the old invocations to mind. The sway of culture, educated Lubna would have called it. If she were here. If she could speak.

The creature stood still on the split cement, watching Ali. Nanohanced tigers had been more or less wiped out in the great hunts before the Global Credit Crusade, or so Ali had heard. I guess this is the shit end of "more or less." More proof, as if he needed it, that traveling the Old Cairo Road on foot was as good as asking to die.

He almost thought he could hear the creature's targeting system whir, but of course he couldn't any more than the tiger could read the vestigial OS prompt that flashed across Ali's supposedly deactivated retscreens.

God willing, Faithful Soldier, you will report for uniform inspection at 0500 hours.

Ali ignored the out-of-date message, kept his gun trained on the creature.

The tiger crouched to spring.

Ali squeezed the trigger, shouted "God is greater than credit!"

The cry of a younger man, from the days when he'd let stupid causes use him. The days before he'd met Lubna.

A sputtering spurt of shot sprayed the creature. The tiger roared, bled, and fled.

For a moment Ali just stood there panting. "Praise be to God," he finally said to no one in particular. I'm coming, beloved. I'm going to get you your serum, and then I'm coming home.

A day later, Ali still walked the Old Cairo Road alone, the wind whipping stinging sand at him, making a mockery of his old army-issued sandmask. As he walked he thought of home—of Free Beirut and his humble house behind the jade-and-grey-marble fountain. At home a medbed hummed quietly, keeping Lubna alive even though she lay dying from the Green Devil, which one side or the other's hover-dustings had infected her with during the GCC. At home Lubna breathed shallowly while Ali's ex-squadmate Fatman Fahrad, the only man in the world he still trusted, stood watch over her.

Yet Ali had left on this madman's errand—left the woman who mattered more to him than anything on Earth's scorched surface. Serum was her only hope. But serum was devastatingly expensive, and Ali was broke. Every bit of money he had made working the hover-docks or doing security for shops had gone to prepay days on Lubna's medbed. And there was less and less work to be had. He'd begun having dreams that made him wake up crying. Dreams of shutting down Lubna's medbed. Of killing himself.

And then the first strange message had appeared behind his eyes.

Like God-alone-knew how many vets, Ali's ostensibly inactive OS still garbled forth a glitchy old prompt from time to time

God willing, Faithful Soldier, you will pick up your new field ablution kit after your debriefing today.

God willing, Faithful Soldier, you will spend your leave-time dinars wisely—at Honest Majoudi's!

But this new message had been unlike anything Ali had ever seen. Blood-freezingly current in its subject matter.

God willing, Faithful Soldier, you will go to the charity-yard of the Western Mosque in Old Cairo. She will live.

Ali's attention snapped back to the present as the wind picked up and the air grew thick with sand. As storms went, it was mild. But it still meant he'd have to stop until it blew over. He reluctantly set up the rickety rig-shelter that the Fatman had lent him. He crawled into it and lay there alone with the wail of the wind, the stink of his own body, and his exhausted, sleepless thoughts.

When the new prompt had appeared, Ali had feared he was losing his mind. More than one vet had lost theirs, had sworn that their OS had told them to slaughter their family. Ali had convinced himself that the prompt was random. An illustration of the one-in-a-trillion chance that such a message could somehow be produced by error.

But it had repeated itself. Every night for a week.

He'd told the Fatman about it, expected the grizzled old shit-talker to call him crazy. Half wanted to be called crazy. But Fahrad had shrugged and said "Beloved, I've seen a few things in my time. God, who needs no credit rating, can do the impossible. I don't talk about this shit with just anyone, of course. Not these days, beloved. Religion. Hmph! But maybe you should go. Things sure ain't gonna get any better here. And you know I'll watch over Lubna like my own daughter."

So now Ali found himself following a random, impossible promise. It was either this or wait for the medbed's inevitable shutdown sequence and watch Lubna die, her skin shriveling before his eyes, her eyewhites turning bright green.

After a few hours the storm died down. Ali packed up his rig-shelter and set back to walking the ruined Old Cairo Road, chasing a digital dream.

There was foot traffic on the road now, not just the occasional hover-cluster zipping overhead. He was finally nearing the city. He had to hurry. If he was gone too long, Ali could count on the Fatman to provide a few days of coverage for Lubna. But Fahrad was as poor as Ali. Time was short.

Running out of time without knowing what I'm chasing. Ali blocked out the mocking words his own mind threw at him. He took a long sip from his canteen and quickened his pace.

Eventually, the road crested a dune and Old Cairo lay spread before him. The bustling hover-dock of Nile River Station. The silvery spires of Al-Azhar 2.0. The massive moisture pits, like aquamarine jewels against the city's sand-brown skin. Lubna had been here once on a university trip, Ali recalled. His thoughts went to her again, to his house behind the jade-and-grey marble fountain, but he herded them back to the here-and-now. Focus. Find the Western Mosque.

The gate guards took his rifle and eyed him suspiciously, but they let him pass. As he made his way through the city, people pressed in on every side. Ali had always thought of himself as a city man. He'd laughed at various village-bumpkin-turned-soldier types back when he'd been in the army. But Old Cairo made him feel like a bumpkin. He'd never seen so many people, not even in the vibrant Free Beirut of his childhood. He blocked them out as best he could.

He walked for two hours, asking directions of a smelly fruit-seller and two different students. Finally, when dusk was dissipating into dark, he stood before the Western Mosque. It was old, and looked it. The top half of the thick red minaret had long ago been blown away by some army that hadn't feared God. Ali passed through the high wall's open gate into the mosque's charity-yard, which was curiously free of paupers.

God willing, Faithful Soldier, you will remember to always travel with a squad mate when leaving the caravansarai.

"Peace and prosperity, brother. Can I help you?" The brown, jowly man that had snuck up on Ali's flank was obviously one of the Imams of the Western Mosque. His middle-aged face was furrowed in scrutiny.

Ali stood there, unable to speak. He had made it to Old Cairo, to the charity-yard of the Western Mosque as the prompt had said, and now...Ali didn't know what he hoped to find. A vial of serum, suspended in a pillar of light? The sky splitting and a great hand passing down cure-money? He was exhausted. He'd faced sandstorms and a tiger to get here. Had nearly died beneath the rot-blackened claws of toxighuls. He'd traveled for two weeks, surviving on little food and an hour's sleep here and there. He started to wobble on his feet.

Why had he come here? Lubna was going to die and he wouldn't even be there to hold her.

The Imam stared at Ali, still waiting for an explanation.

Ali swallowed, his cracked throat burning. "I...I...my OS. It—" his knees started to buckle and he nearly collapsed. "It told me to come here. From FreeBey. No money. Had to walk." They were a madman's words, and Ali hardly believed they were coming from his own mouth.

"Truly? You walked all that way? And lived to tell the tale? I didn't know such a thing was possible." The Imam looked at Ali with concerned distaste and put a hand on his shoulder. "Well...The charity-yard is closing tonight for cleaning, but I suppose one foreign beggar won't get in the way too much. You can sleep in safety here, brother. And we can talk about your OS tomorrow."

Ali felt himself fading. He needed rest. Food. Even a vet like him could only go so long.

He sank slowly to the ground and slept.

In his sleep he saw the bloody bodies of friends and children. He saw his squadmates slicing the ears off dead men. He heard a girl cry as soldiers closed in around her.

He woke screaming, as he had once done every night. His heart hammered. It had been a long time since he'd had dreams of the war. When they were first married, Lubna would soothe him and they would step into the cool night air and sit by the jade-and-grey marble fountain. Eventually, the nightmares had faded. Her slender hand on the small of his back, night after night—this had saved his life. And now he would never see her again. He had abandoned her because he thought God was talking to him. Thinking of it, his eyes began to burn with tears.

God willing, Faithful Soldier, you will deactivate the security scrambler on the wall before you. She will live.

Ali sucked in a shocked breath and forgot his self-pity. His pulse racing, he scrambled to his feet. He looked across the dark yard at the green-glowing instrument panel set in the mosque's massive gate. But he did not move.

God willing, Faithful Soldier, you will deactivate the security scrambler on the wall before you. She will live.

The prompt flashed a second time across his retscreens. I've lost my mind. But even as he thought it, he walked toward the wall.

Screen-jacking had never been Ali's specialty. But from the inside interface, the gate's security scrambler was simple enough to shut down. Anyone who'd done an army hitch or a security detail could do it. Ali's fingers danced over the screen, and a few seconds later it was done.

Then a chorus of angry shouts erupted and an alarm system began droning away. Two men in black dashed out of the mosque and past him, each carrying an ornate jewelry box.

Thieves.

By the time he decided to stop them, they had crossed the courtyard. He scrambled toward them, trying not to think about him being unarmed. Behind him, he heard the familiar clatter of weapons and body armor.

"Thanks for the help, cousin!" One of the thieves shouted at Ali. Ali was near enough to smell their sweat when they each tapped their h-belts and hover-jumped easily over the descrambled wall. Infiltrators waiting for their chance. They used me, somehow. He panicked. What have I done? His stomach sank. They've been using my OS all along! How and why did they call him all the way from FreeBey? He didn't know and it didn't matter.

I'm screwed. He had to get out of here. Somehow he had to get back to Lubna. He turned to look toward the mosque—

—And found himself staring down the barrel of the jowly Imam's rifle. The holy man spat at Ali. "Motherless scum! Do you know how much they've stolen? You helped them get out, huh? And your pals left you behind to take their fall? Well, don't worry. The police will catch them, too. You won't face execution alone." He kept the weapon trained on Ali's head. Ali knew a shooter when he saw one. This was not good.

"I didn't—" Ali started to say, but he knew it was useless.

A squad of mosque guardsmen trotted up. They scowled almost jovially as they closed in. Ali didn't dare fight these men, who could call on more. He'd done enough security jobs himself to know they wouldn't listen to him. At least not until after they'd beaten him. He tensed himself and took slaps and punches. He yelped, and they raked his eyes for it. He threw up and they punched him for it. His groin burned from kicks and he lost two teeth. Then he blacked out.

He woke in a cell with four men in uniforms different from the mosque guards'. Cairene police? They gave him water.

God willing, Faithful Soldier, you will report to queue B7.

Ali ignored the prompt. The men slapped him around half-heartedly and made jokes about his mother's sexual tastes. Again, he pushed down the angry fighter within him. If he got himself killed by these men he would never see Lubna again.

They dragged him into the dingy office of their Shaykh-Captain. The old man was scraggly and fat, but hard. A vet, unless Ali missed his guess.

"Tell me about your friends." the Shaykh-Captain said.

Ali started to explain about being framed but then found the words wouldn't stop. Something had been knocked loose within him these past few days. He talked and talked and told the old man the truth. All of the truth. About Lubna and the messages, about leaving Free Beirut, about the toxighuls and the tiger, the Western Mosque and the thieves.

When he was done he lowered his eyes, but he felt the old man glare at him for a few long, silent moments. Ali raised his gaze slowly and saw a sardonic smile spread over the Shaykh-Captain's face.

"A prompt? Half the guys with an OS still get 'em—what do they mean? Nothing. I got one that said I fucked your mother last night. Did she wake up pregnant?" The men behind Ali chuckled. In the army, Ali had hated the Cairenes and their moronic mother jokes. "Sometimes I don't even know where the words come from," the old man went on. "Random old satellites squawking? Some head-hacker having a laugh? Who knows? And who gives a shit? I got one a couple weeks back that told me to find some guy named Ali, who was supposed to tell me about 'great riches lying buried beneath a jade-and-grey marble fountain.'"

For a moment, Ali listened uncomprehendingly. Then he thought his heart would stop. He did everything he could to keep his face straight as the Shaykh-Captain continued.

"Do you know how many fountains like that there are here in OC? And how many sons of bitches named Ali? What's your name, anyway, fool?"

"My name? Uh, my name is F-fahrad, Shaykh-Captain, and I..."

"Shut up! I was saying—I told my wife about this prompt and she said I should go around the city digging up fountains. As if I don't got enough to do here." He gestured vaguely at a pile of textcards on his desk. "'In the army,' I told her, 'I got a prompt telling me about some pills that could make my dick twice as long. Did I waste my pay on them?'" The old man gave Ali an irritated look "Y'know, you and my wife—you two fucking mystics would like each other. Maybe you could go to her old broads' tea hour and tell them about your prompts! Maybe she'd even believe your donkey-shit story about walking here from the north."

The Shaykh-Captain stood slowly, walked over to the wall, and pulled down an old-fashioned truncheon. "But before the teahouse, we have to take you back downstairs for a little while."

Ali felt big, hard hands take hold of him and he knew that this was it. He was half-dead already. He couldn't survive an Old Cairo-style interrogation. He would never see Lubna again. He had failed her, and she would die a death as horrible as anything he'd seen in the war.

Faithful Soldier, she will live.

The prompt flashed past his retscreens and he thought again of the Shaykh Captain's words about riches and the fountain.

This was no head-hacker's trick. No thieves' scheme. He did not understand it, but God had spoken to him. He could not dishonor that. He had once served murderers and madmen who claimed to act in God's name. But Lubna—brilliant, loving Lubna—had shown him that this world could hold holiness. If Ali could not see her again, if he could not save her, he could at least face his death with faith.

He made his voice as strong as he could, and he held his head high as he uttered words that would seal his fate with these men. "In the name of God, who needs no credit rating, Shaykh-Captain, do what you must. But I am not lying."

The Shaykh-Captain's eyes widened and a twisted smile came to his lips. "So that's it! In the name of your mother's pussy, you superstitious fool!" The big men behind Ali grumbled their southern disgust at the fact of Ali's existence and started shoving him, but the old man cut them off with a hand gesture. He set down the truncheon, pulled at his dirty grey beard, assumed a mock gravity. "A genuine Free Shi'ah Anti-Crediteer. The scourge of the Global Credit Crusaders. Hard times for your kind these days, even up north, I hear."

The Shaykh-Captain snorted, but there was something new in the man's voice. Something almost human. "You think you're a brave man—a martyr—to show your true colors down here, huh? Pfft. Well, you can stop stroking your own dick on that count. No one down here gives a damn about those days any more. Half this city was on your side of things once. Truth be told, my fuck-faced fool of a little brother was one of you. He kept fighting that war when everyone knew it was over. He's dead now. A fool, like I say. Me? I faced reality. Now look at me." The old man spread his arms as if his shabby office was a palace, his two goons gorgeous wives.

He sat on the edge of his desk and gave Ali another long look. "But you—you're stuck in the fanatical past, huh? You know, I believe this story about following your OS is actually true. Not a robber. Just an idiot. You're as pathetic as my brother was. A dream-chasing relic. You really walked down the OC Road?"

Ali nodded but said nothing.

A sympathetic flash lit the Shaykh-Captain's eyes, but he quickly grimaced, as if the moment of fellow-feeling caused him physical pain. "Well, my men will call me soft, but what the fuck. You've had a rough enough trip down here, I suppose. Tell you what: We'll get you a corner in steerage on a hover-cluster, okay? Those northbound flights are always half-empty anyway. Go be with your wife, asshole."

Ali could not quite believe what he was hearing. "Thank you! Thank you, Shaykh-Captain! In the name of—"

"In the name of your mother's hairy tits! Shut up and take your worn old expressions back to your falling-apart city. Boys, get this butt-fucked foreigner out of my office. Give him a medpatch, maybe. Some soup. And don't mess him up too bad, huh?"

The big men gave him a low-grade medpatch, which helped. And they fed him lentil soup and pita. Then they shoved him around again, a bit, but not enough to matter.

When they were through they hurled him into the steerage line at the hover-docks. Ali was tired and hurt and thirsty. Both his lips were split and his guts felt like jelly. But war had taught him how to hang on when there was a real chance of getting home. Riches buried beneath the jade-and-grey-marble fountain. Cure-money. Despair had weakened him, but he would find the strength to make it back to Lubna. He would watch as she woke, finally free of the disease.

Faithful Soldier, you will

The prompt cut off abruptly. Ali boarded the hover-cluster and headed home to his beloved.

# Iron Eyes and the Watered-Down World

Zok Ironeyes stared at the tilecard table before him and cursed softly as Hai Hai clacked down the Dragoness tile with a gloating grunt.

Hai Hai looked up from the table and locked her shiny black eyes on the innkeeper, her nose and whiskers twitching. The scraggle-haired, red faced fool avoided Hai Hai's gaze with the shame of a man who'd been caught staring. Zok couldn't fault the innkeeper's curiosity. The man had probably seen only a handful of rabbitmen in his life, for few of Hai Hai's people ever made it this far south. But if the proprietor of the preposterously-named King's Crest Inn didn't watch himself, he was like to get his nose broken at least. Hai Hai wasn't one to indulge untraveled bumpkins' gawking.

"This innkeeper ain't more careful with his stares, he's gonna find himself smiling that swindler's smile with only half a face," she said. Her furry, four-fingered paw drifted to the hilt of one of her twin sabers as she peered skeptically into the hammered-brass mug before her. "And if this is true Rubywine, then my father was a fucking fox-lord." Her paw left her sword and pulled at the pink-tinged end of one white ear. "Thousand-gods-damned hicks and their thousand-gods-damned dyed wines," she muttered before looking up to level a weary gaze at Zok. "We need to spend our spoils in a real city again, Zok. I'm sick to death of these pathetic little dust-bucket shithole towns. Not cozy enough to be a village, not busy enough to be a city. And where in the three hells is that priest of ours, anyway?"

Zok shrugged. "This is where the four fickle gods of the road have led us. And I'm sure Mylovic will be here soon," he said, only half-listening. He eyed the tilecard table again and saw that he was screwed. Hai Hai had put the Dragoness into play as soon as Zok had used up all his Knight cards. A better player might have wormed his way out of such a corner, but Zok had played enough games against Hai Hai to know that wasn't going to happen.

He sighed over his lost coins and studied the Dragoness tile. The inn's tilecard set was an old one, painted in the ornate Emerald Empire style, with the Dragoness depicted not as a serpent, but as a beautiful green-eyed woman. A woman that looked enough like Fraja that it made Zok sigh a second time.

He reached into his purse to pluck out a forfeit-coin and paused, running a calloused finger over the thick gold hoop earring he'd carried for all these years. Sometimes he almost thought he could feel his wife Fraja call to him when he touched the earring. But of course Fraja was a decade dead and gone.

Zok's withdrew his forfeit-coin, but he kept his hand closed around it and stared at the table for another long moment. Surely there was some opening left to him...

One of the inn's serving boys came to the table and refilled Zok's mug, the fourth time he'd done so in half as many hours. Hai Hai cursed the boy for the swill his master served and Zok looked up from his hopeless situation to stare at the lad. The witless little fool stumbled and bumped Zok, half tripping over his chair in fear and just barely managing not to spill black ale all over Zok.

Zok watched the mousy-haired boy scurry away and he snorted to himself in disgust. When had the world's young men become so weak? Spineless sulkers or giggling idiots, all of them. Where were the fathers who ought to be molding them into true men? It was worst here in the south, but it was more or less the same everywhere these days.

Just another sign of a watered-down world. Every time Zok chanced upon his reflection in a gazing glass, he saw more and more grey hairs threaded amongst the red. Every day he felt more like Menace, the bespelled broadsword at his hip—a deadly, out-of-place relic from another era.

The women nowadays were no different than the boys. In the years since Fraja had died, Zok had hired whores in half the world's cities and villages, for no matter how much he missed his wife he was still a man. A man 'full of fuck and fight,' as Fraja had used to say admiringly.

Hai Hai herself had said more than once that they only worked together so well because humans and rabbitmen couldn't copulate. Zok had seen the savage vigor with which she pursued her own race's males whenever they were in the north. Hai Hai claimed to have left seventy-four children scattered across the Amethyst Empire's cities, and more than once she'd rode off with Zok, leaving some soft, pleading rabbitman and his litter of children with nothing but a handful of coins and hard words.

That was a wandering warrior's way, though it wasn't Zok's. Since Fraja, he'd never bedded a woman without hearing her oath that she was a barren-tea drinker. For if Zok still had a man's needs, he nonetheless knew he would never marry again, nor sire children. That he would never love again. Whoring was a different thing. The exchange of coin for cunny was a transaction, and thus not quite a betrayal of Fraja's memory. Somehow, it felt less disloyal to pay for what he needed. He told himself Fraja would understand this.

Hai Hai gestured to the board and bared her long front teeth in a sympathetic smile. "So, can we call this a made match? I mean, I'm willing to bury your ugly nose deeper into the shit-pile if you insist, but I think we both know where this is going."

Zok grunted his surrender and threw down his forfeit-coin and his two useless tiles.

Hai Hai's whiskers twitched as she scooped coins from the table into her purse. "Honestly, Zok, I don't know why you keep playing me. Four out of five times, I drain you dry. I'm starting to think you like humiliation." She stood and stretched, her long ears stiffening as she wiped wine from her white face-fur. "Speaking of draining, I got to piss." She held the table and steadied herself. "Whoa! This dyed wine might taste like fox piss, but it did the trick! Twelve mugs usually doesn't do shit for me!" She headed tipsily out the Inn's back door to the privies.

Alone at the table, Zok looked around the inn again with beer-blurred contempt. The south. Fraja's people were from somewhere near here, though she'd left her home as a girl. Her spirit had been too big to be bound or broken by dust-choked streets and backwater poverty.

If only her body had been so invulnerable. For the ten-thousandth time in his life, Zok saw in his mind's eye the toad-headed demon that killed Fraja. The demon that had escaped his vengeance.

Hai Hai returned to the table and sat down. She picked up her mug, found it empty, and slammed it down again with an annoyed grunt just as their traveling trio's last member walked through the inn's open front doorway.

"What ho, boon companions?" Mylovic beamed as he approached their table, his thick rust-colored robes hanging heavily in the windless air. The squinty little red-headed priest ought to have been sweating his balls off, but his divine sorcery apparently kept him cool, just as it had kept him from shivering when Zok had met the man in the Witch's Teat Tavern in the great northern city of Frostlock three...no, four years ago now.

"What ho, yourself, holy man," Hai Hai said irritably. "So what did your precious prayers tell you? Where in the three hells are we headed next?"

Mylovic pulled chair to table, smiled a far-too-wide smile and blinked bloodshot eyes. "Well, the temples here are ah...less than ideal in their facilities. The road gods' idols in particular are poorly maintained and thus their wishes are far from clear here."

Hai Hai eyed the priest's stupid grin and twitched her whiskers in annoyance. "And I suppose it doesn't help that you've got a head full of pinkpoppy incense, does it, priest? You reek of the stuff. Have you been smoking it since we left you this morning? The last time you tried to make gods-contact with your head full of pink puff-clouds you directed us to that abandoned mine and we ended up knee fucking deep in green gremlins!"

The priest spread his hands before him in a helpless gesture. "That wasn't my fault, sweet Hai Hai, but we've had this argument too many times before. Anyway, all my gods-contact has told me is that vengeance and riches lie north along the Road of Three Lakes, and that we should leave tomorrow at first light."

"North? Well," Hai Hai said, her ears unstiffening in mild mollification, "that at least is good news. If I'm never south of the Green Cross again, it'll be too fucking soon."

Mylovic bowed his head "I am happy to bring you happy news. Now, will one of you pour me a drink? My...supplications have left my mouth parched."

Hai Hai scanned the room in irritation. "Where is that half-witted serving boy, anyway? Such shitty service! That boggle-eyed innkeep is lucky these fucking bumpkins have never seen a real drinking-house. If they knew any better he'd be out of business."

"Well, I'll leave this to you two—I'm done here," Zok said. He was surprised to find himself well and truly drunk already. It didn't happen that often—he was a big man, after all, as experienced at drinking as he was at killing. Hai Hai was right—however unsubtle and bitter this town's drink was, it did what it was supposed to do.

It wasn't until he came to his feet that he realized he was more than drunk. He started to swoon. His head was heavier than black beer could account for.

Drugged!

Zok took a few stumbling steps. Then his head spun and he felt himself fall.

He heard shouting, and things being knocked over. The next thing he knew he felt Mylovic's cool hands on him and heard the priest humming a hymn to the god of purity.

Instantly Zok's head cleared, and his stomach stopped lurching. He came to his feet quickly, and saw the inn's patrons fleeing. Hai Hai—whose rapid metabolism made her nearly impossible to drug or poison—had the innkeeper pinned against his bar, one saber on either side of his throat. The little bit of tipsiness she'd shown was gone now.

This idiot tried the old bad-beer-burgle on us!? Doesn't he know warriors when he sees them? Zok remembered the seemingly clumsy serving boy bumping into him. Instinctively, his hand went to his purse. It was still there, and, digging in it, he found that it still held all the coins that Hai Hai hadn't won from him.

Then he realized Fraja's earring was gone.

Zok screamed like a wounded beast and knocked over two tables. He turned to the pinned-down innkeeper, whose eyes widened with terror.

Hai Hai sheathed one saber and yanked the innkeeper up by his greasy long hair. "You just fucked with the wrong folk, friend," she shouted in the man's face, clearly enjoying the chance to indulge in a bit of brutality. "Your drugged drink didn't work. Now, I've still got my purse, so this isn't a simple robbery, is it?" She shoved him toward Zok.

Zok grabbed the innkeeper by his shirt and slapped him hard enough to rattle the man's teeth. "Where's my wife's earring?" he boomed.

Either the innkeeper was a very good actor, or he was genuinely confused. "Please! Please don't hurt me, masters! I don't know what you're talking about! By the twin gods of truth, I swear it!"

Zok put his hands around the man's throat.

Hai Hai's whiskers twitched dangerously. "You tried to knock us out. Give me one good reason I shouldn't chop your balls off before my friend chokes you to death."

"My wife's earring!" Zok shouted again. The innkeeper sputtered and his eyes bulged.

Mylovic put a calming hand on Zok's shoulder. Zok loosened his grip.

The priest cast a sympathetic grimace on the innkeeper's pain. "My friends have been wronged here. If you know anything at all, good sir, I suggest you tell them. They can be most...unreasonable. The five gods of fury have nothing on Hai Hai when she's of a mind to hurt someone."

The innkeeper cast a wild look around him, as if he might find answers amidst the inn's rafters and tables. "The boy! It must have been the new boy, Sorgo! He's only been working here a fortnight, masters! I know him not! I swear I know nothing of drugs or burgling!" The man began to weep and burble. "Please! Please, masters!"

Hai Hai sheathed her second saber. "I think he's telling the truth." She seemed disappointed.

Zok drew a deep, steadying breath. "Well, someone just drugged us. Someone who didn't give a gods' damn for my coin just stole something specific from me. Something very important. If it wasn't done on your order, it was still done under your roof. Tell us about this boy."

The words spilled forth in a sputtering stream "He...He's called Sorgo, masters. A street-boy. The Hireguard took him in a few years ago. They gave me his work-chit for a year as repayment for a debt."

"Where is he now?" Hai Hai asked.

"I...I don't know. Most days he's here until I close, but..." the man gestured helplessly at the empty room and overturned tables.

"He's your boy but he doesn't live here?" Zok asked, sounding calmer than he felt.

"No, master. I've no room for him, and no obligation to feed him. He still sleeps at the Hireguard's hall. Still does some cleaning and such for them before he does his duties here each day."

"Well, we're gonna find him, you can be gods-damned sure. And if he points his grubby little finger back this way, innkeeper, you're dead. You stay closed for now. Shut your door, don't go anywhere and don't say a gods-damned word to anyone, you got me?"

"Yes! Yes, yes, of course! Anything you say, masters."

Mylovic leaned in and brushed a hand over the man's shirt, smoothing out wrinkles. "Some advice, good sir: Do exactly as my friend says. Don't think to run or to call on the Hireguard. I swear by the twin gods of truth that it won't end well for you if you defy her."

The innkeeper swallowed loudly, then nodded.

"Now," Zok said. "Give us directions."

Half an hour later they walked the squalid streets of a town that seemed half-empty, Hai Hai drawing stares with each step. As they neared the Hireguard hall, Zok realized they needed to be more discreet. At his urging Mylovic mumbled a prayer to the gods of sight, and the stares stopped as the priest's eye-slide spell took effect.

Under the spell's hold, a gaggle of giggling boys playing some stupid chase-game plowed past the companions, half-heedless of what they were doing. Again Zok found himself snorting with disgust for the young. In his day, in his home village, boys that size would be learning to work a blacksmith's bellows, or to lift a broadsword.

A buxom, black-eyed lass passed by and Zok's irritation melted away. Without meaning to, he followed her swaying hips with his eyes, which earned him a "back to business!" poke in the gut from Hai Hai. Mylovic, meanwhile, paid the girl no notice. Like all priests, he'd had his desire for women magically shorn from him in exchange for his strange powers. The gelding rites were supposed to strip a priest's bodily desires, but it seemed to Zok that Mylovic had merely replaced his lust for flesh with a doubled lust for poppy-smoke and nose-dusts.

Finally they came the grey stone hall of the Hireguard, one of the largest buildings in town. As with many smaller southern towns, the Amethyst Empress didn't deign to use her legionnaires here. Instead this dust-hole was policed by imperially-sanctioned mercenaries.

Zok gestured his companions into an alley with a view of the hall. He took a long appraising look, then turned to Mylovic and jerked a thumb back at the hall. "You've seen my wife's earring many times, man. Can you use your prayers to tell me if it's in there?"

Mylovic nodded once and took Zok's thick wrists in his own small, soft hands. The priest spoke in a more forceful voice than his normal lilt. "Keep your eyes open, but picture the thing you're looking for now, Zok Ironeyes. Now turn your palms upward."

Mylovic closed his own eyes and screwed up his face in concentration. He started to sweat, and seemed to stop breathing. After a few long moments, he exhaled loudly, released Zok's wrists, and nodded.

His voice was his own again. "The god of lost things says that what you seek is indeed in that building, my friend."

Hai Hai's shiny eyes narrowed. "You're sure about this, holy man? This isn't some poppy-chomp-fueled guess, is it?

"O Sweet Hai Hai. I swear, a man not blessed as I am by the three gods of patience might grow tired of your constant doubting."

"Both of you keep your mouths shut," said Zok, who was in no mood for his companions' bickering banter.

"So what now?" Mylovic asked. "Do we announce ourselves and tell them how their houseboy has wronged us? The Hireguard aren't exactly known for their openness or honesty."

Hai Hai snorted. "No, they ain't. So the lawful approach won't work. We could crack that nut," she said softly, echoing Zok's thoughts as she gestured toward the hall, "but it would make a thousand-gods-damned lot of noise."

Zok nodded. "We'll be as quiet as we can. We go around back."

He started to move, but Hai Hai's paw on his shoulder stopped him. "Zok. I know you don't want to hear this, but as your sword-sister I have to say it: This is only a trinket we're hunting here. We can go in there. And we can reclaim what's yours. But that won't bring your Fraja back."

Zok looked at Hai Hai, and he knew there was murder in his grey eyes. "I'm going in. You two don't have to come."

Mylovic smiled negligently. "In for a card, in for a tile, I say. I'm with you, O gigantic one."

Hai Hai's ears stiffened and she studied Zok a moment. "Your wife must have been quite a woman. Quite a woman. Of course I'm with you, too. Let's do it."

Making their way in without being noticed proved easy enough. A simple alarm-ward which Mylovic neutralized, and an unimpressive stone wall that even the priest surmounted with a little help from Hai Hai. The Hall wasn't really built to prevent entry—Zok doubted that anyone in this town of cowards had ever even tried this.

A moment after they vaulted over the wall two guards wearing the shield-and-jewel Hireguard livery rounded a corner, nearly bumping into Zok. The fools broke off their chatter and stood slack-jawed for a half-moment before fumbling at their scabbards.

Clearly, the mercenaries weren't used to intruders, as they tried to handle the threat themselves instead of sounding the alarm. Hai Hai gutted one with her sabers before he even got his weapon out. The other was quicker, but Zok knocked his sword away and cut him down in two strokes.

They hid the bodies behind a scraggly bush, then found a cellar entrance. It was unguarded and unlocked. Zok found himself almost disappointed by the mercenaries' laxity.

They filed inside and found the cellar empty. Zok wasn't surprised. A piss-pot, half-dead town like this barely warranted a Hireguard hall in the first place. No doubt this one was manned by a minimum compliment of men.

But, he saw by the light-shaft seeping in at the cellar door, that didn't mean that the place was devoid of wealth. The high-ceilinged cellar held earth-apples sacks and ale-casks, yes, but there were also lockboxes here, and porcelains, and bound chests meant to hold valuables. It made no sense, but there was the evidence before their eyes.

Hai Hai whistled softly. "Well, well, well," she whispered. Her glance flicked to an open stairway at the far wall, which likely connected the cellar to the rest of the building, then returned to the lockboxes.

"This isn't what we're here for -" Zok began, but Mylovic cut him off.

"No, my friend. But this wealth—we'd be fools not to take notice." Greed was the only thing that ever united Hai Hai and the priest.

A great pile of iron barrels and ebonwood chests sat in the corner. Hai Hai stooped to examine a chest, running a furry finger over the lock.

"Wait!" Zok shouted, sensing something was wrong.

Hai Hai jumped back, but it was too late. There was a great nerve-shearing metallic screech, like the gates of all three hells thrown open at once. The barrels and boxes quaked and shifted as if lifted by an unseen hand. Zok and is companions watched in horror as the containers tumbled onto one another and rose, melting together and resolving themselves into something vaguely man-shaped. Something eight feet tall and twice as wide at the shoulders as Zok.

Hai Hai, the first to shake off her shock, drew her swords.

"Foxshit and fire! A thief-smasher! A fox-fucking thief-smasher!"

Zok gripped Menace's hilt. "Mylovic, can't you do something here?"

The priest shook his head. "It's warded against supplication-spells. I'm no use here." He backed away several steps.

Hai Hai, though, moved forward, her sabers slashing fast as lightning at the thing's iron-and-ebony hide. Zok had seen their spell-sharpened steel slice a man's hand off at one pass. But at each blade-stroke the lumbering thing before them merely jerked about a bit harder, as if annoyed by the bites of an insect.

Still, Hai Hai's thrusts and slashes kept the thing distracted and off-balance. It focused its pulverizing punches on her, and she was fast enough to stay one step ahead of its strikes.

Until she grew tired. Then the fight would turn.

But Zok wasn't afraid. Menace had been forged in the fires of the Daggerpath Mountains to fight both men and magical beasts. The broadsword glowed golden in his hands as he leaped forward.

The thief smasher's barrel-fists slammed down like massive hammers once, then twice, missing Zok by a hairsbreadth each time. Its attention was split now between him and Hai Hai, which meant they had a chance here.

Zok swung hard at the thing's arm, and Menace burned even brighter. Blue sparks flew as Zok's sword sheared away half an ebonwood arm.

The thief-smasher thrust out an iron-bound knee and caught Zok square in the chest. He shouted out in pain, then fell to the floor, struggling to catch his breath.

Hai Hai leapt over and stood before Zok protectively. She jabbed her sabers in and out of the thing's ruined half-arm like rapiers, and it backed off a few huge steps, apparently more vulnerable on its insides.

Zok fought past his pain and struggled to his feet. Behind him he heard Mylovic mumbling, though the priest had said his invocations were useless.

Hai Hai pressed her assault, forcing the creature to turn its back on Zok. The thief-smasher guarded its wounded arm, though, and Hai Hai's little leaps grew slower. A few more minutes of this and the thing would pulverize her.

Zok dug deep within himself for the battle-madness he needed. He shot forward again, Menace cleaving out ahead of him. Again the blue sparks flew, and a great gash opened in the thief-smasher's barrel-back. The creature turned and seemed to stare at Zok, though it had no eyes. Zok braced himself for another assault.

But just then Mylovic ceased his mumbling and the air grew thick with scents of rust and rot. There was another shearing sound like the one that had brought the thing to life, then the thief-smasher collapsed in a pile of chests and barrels. Zok and his companions barely managed to hop out of the way of the debris.

Zok turned to Mylovic, who was panting. "It was only the thing's outsides that were warded. Once it was wounded I sapped the false life that—"

The priest's words were cut off as the door at the top of the stairway burst open and six Hireguards, swords drawn, stormed down the stairs. Zok met their charge, planting his feet on the stairway so that only one man could come down at a time. He drove his sword through the foremost swordsman's shield-and-jewel tabard, through chainmail, through innards.

The man fell, tripping up the man just behind him. Hai Hai leapt about at the stairway's exposed side, her sabers darting in and out, and wherever she leapt men bled.

The other mercenaries struggled to step clear of their now-dead compatriots' bodies, but Menace met them as they reached the bottom of the stairs. Zok took a few blade-grazes, but soon half a dozen Hireguards lay dead.

"Well, we've been found!" he boomed to his companions. "So let's find what we came for and get out of here!" Stepping over the dead men, he scrambled up the stairs.

Another knot of Hireguards stood in the building's large mainroom, weapons at the ready. But they weren't what interested Zok. As he heard his companions rush up behind him he caught a glimpse of a mousy-haired little figure behind the armed men. The little shit who had stolen his wife's earring. The boy spotted Zok, squawked, and ran up another stairway on the room's far side.

Zok growled at the four men before him just as Hai Hai and Mylovic reached his side. Hai Hai's blades dripped with gore, as did Menace, and godsflame played between Mylovic's palms. Zok imagined they made for quite a sight to the sort of weak-seeded cowards that passed for mercenaries this far south.

And, indeed, though they had a great advantage of numbers, the mercenaries looked terrified. "The Empress! The Empress sent them! She knows!" one of the men shouted. Zok had no idea what the fool was blathering about, but the rest of the men looked even more afraid at these words.

As one, Zok and Hai Hai surged forward, swords slicing out. Two men fell screaming. Then the rest broke, shoving each other out of the way as they made for the door.

Zok ignored them, heading for the far staircase to the second floor without saying a word to Hai Hai or Mylovic. He took the stairs three at a time, heedless of any possible threats.

From the second floor landing Zok could see three wooden doors, all closed. Behind one his keen hearing picked up the sound of someone—a boy, perhaps—crying.

Pathetic, Zok thought as he heard his companions rush up behind him. Zok gestured toward the door with his swordhilt and prepared to kick it in.

But Mylovic grabbed his shoulder. "Wait! Wait, Zok! Something is wrong here! All is not as it seems. I...I smell something." Zok tore away from the priest's grip and gave him an irritated look, but he stopped cold at the fear in Mylovic's eyes. The priest squinted hard at the door and sniffed the air, his nose twitching as if in imitation of Hai Hai's.

"Demon-flame," Mylovic said at last. "The stuff of the Hells. I can't say what it means, Zok, but if your wife's memento is mixed up in this somehow, you have to tread carefully here."

Mylovic was a shirker who lived in smoke-and-powder land half the time, but he was also a true friend, and he knew more of unearthly matters than Zok ever would. Zok had come to trust his judgment.

"What do we do, then?" Hai Hai asked impatiently. "We can't stand here all day."

"Can you do a scrying on that door?" Zok asked.

"I can try. But I'm swiftly running out of favors with the gods here, my friend," Mylovic said, a rare note of annoyance entering his voice. "After this little adventure is over you owe me at least a month in a good city inn, snorting as much three-leaf and drinking as much mushroom tea as I can hold."

Somehow Zok managed to smile. "It's a deal."

Mylovic knelt before the door and gestured for Zok to do the same. Hai Hai stood guard, her ears twitching nervously, but it seemed no more Hireguards were coming.

Mylovic said some words in a lilting chant, then placed a hand on Zok's neck. And suddenly it was as if a large hole had appeared in the wood before him.

Through the hole-that-was-not-a-hole Zok saw the mousy-haired serving boy standing before a mirrored wash basin. The whelp held Fraja's earring out before him. And the wash basin was full of green flames.

"I've waited so long for you to return!" the boy said to the flames, sobbing his words out. "But he's after me! The one you told me to take the earring from! He's downstairs! He'll kill me—you've got to help me!"

Zok's heart almost stopped when he saw the warty, mud-colored face in the flames that the boy spoke to.

It was the toad-headed demon who had killed Fraja.

"THAT DOES NOT MATTER!" the demon rasped and grunted. "PLACE THE EARRING IN THE BASIN!"

Mylovic whispered in awe. "Toad-headed. You've spoken of this before. That is the demon that killed your wife? The one you've been seeking all these years?"

"Aye." Zok could barely restrain himself from barging through the door, but he would not endanger Fraja's soul with rashness.

Mylovic's voice shivered as he spoke. "It's a thing from the third hell, Zok. The Hell of the Beasts. If this is the creature that killed your wife, it probably wants the earring as a victim-trophy. With it, the demon can punish her soul the way it did her body."

Zok tore his gaze from the scene before him and looked at Mylovic. The priest's expression was uncharacteristically grim. "Forget what I said about caution," Mylovic said. "The third hell isn't a pretty place, Zok. Not even as hells go. The tortures there...The risk is worth it. You've got to stop this. Now."

Zok didn't need to be told twice. The door splintered and its hinges screamed as he barreled through it.

Zok shrugged off the splinters digging into his flesh, drew Menace, and strode toward the boy. The boy dropped Fraja's earring into the basin then fell back in fear. He cowered and quaked like a lamb. Then he fainted.

Zok snorted in disgust. He saw little enough shame in thievery. At least it required bravery of a sort. But this chicken-hearted timidity...Yes, Zok thought, boys these days were whimpering shadows of what he'd been in his youth, and southerners were worst of all.

But that didn't matter now.

He was about to cut the little demon-thralled coward down when a voice cried out "Zok, wait! Wait!" and he felt the blood freeze in his veins. The voice wasn't the toad demon's dark, grunting rasp.

It was Fraja's voice.

Zok stopped in his tracks. The demon's face was gone. It was Fraja's face—more lovely than the face on the Emerald Empress tile—in the flames now.

"Fraja?" he heard himself ask. "What...What trickery is this?"

"No trickery, Zok. Or, at least, the trickery is at an end now that you're here before me."

"Where is the demon that holds your soul, my love?" Zok asked. "I'll cut him down, whatever Hell he may abide in! I'll—"

"That demon finished with me years ago, Zok. He feasted upon my bones and left to find other victims. My soiled soul meant little enough to him. This—all of this—has been my doing."

"Your doing?" Zok asked, glancing at his companions, who kept a polite, silent distance. "I don't understand."

"Sorgo is my nephew, my only blood-link to this world, and thus the only living thing that I could visit—though only for flashes at a time, and only wearing the gruesome shape of my death. You and he are the unfinished business that binds me here."

"Your...Your nephew?" Zok asked, feeling half-witted as a thousand emotions warred within him.

"Aye. The only child of my sister Kroja, who died a few scant years after his birth. You remember my sister, Zok? The one we ran into at that inn near the Green Cross all those years ago?"

Zok lowered his eyes in shame at the memory of what he'd done with Fraja's sister one afternoon when Fraja had been away from the inn. His own foolish words from that day filled his head now. She reminded me so of you, Fraja! She worked her wiles on me! I'm only a man!

"I do," was all he said.

"Well, I would hope so. You certainly left her something to remember you by after we parted ways with her. It only takes one tumble to make a child, Zok."

It took Zok a long moment to understand what his wife's words meant. He felt his mouth fall open as their meaning dawned on him.

"Yes, Zok. Sorgo is your son. I sent him to steal my earring from you to bring you here, where I first appeared to him. Such visitations have their requirements. All of the elements—salt water and silver mirror, a boy of my blood, and a thing touched a thousand thousand times by one who loved me—are here now, and I can finally speak to you directly.

"When I saw how Sorgo saw me, I thought to haunt him at first—to drive him mad with fear. Half-death makes one vengeful, and he was a reminder of your unfaithfulness. I cursed my sister, but she was dead already. But when I tried to frighten the boy, I saw that he was only intrigued. That he'd been left to such a dead, dull life that a demon's visitations were the most wondrous thing that could happen to him. And as the months and years rolled on I came to love Sorgo. He is my nephew, after all. And, despite his timidity, I see you in his eyes. But I could do naught but visit him once a month for a few minutes. And never in my own shape. But even those few minutes felt like a cool wind to one in the blazing realm of the half-dead."

"I don't understand," Zok said "I am...was your husband. Every day I think of you. I've touched this earring till the engravings have been rubbed away. Why did you never grant me a visitation? Even had it been to call me to task, I would have welcomed it."

"I had no power to, my love. The weakest nudge in a corner of your mind when you touched that earring was the utmost my efforts could produce. The seven gods of death care about blood. Love and human contracts mean nothing to them."

"But..."

Fraja cut him off with the same look of pitying contempt for his intelligence that she'd given him so often when she lived. "It's hard to explain, Zok. And I haven't much time."

If Fraja could not give him explanations, then Zok wouldn't worry her further by asking for them. He only needed to hear one thing now. He swallowed before he spoke again.

"Do you miss me?" he asked.

"More than anything, my love." Fraja's voice was warm, and it brought tears to Zok's eyes. "More than you can know. You think you long for me, but you don't know what it is to miss someone the way I miss you. Your arms. Your smell. Your dick."

In spite of everything, Zok felt himself smile through his tears.

Fraja's voice grew brisk again. "But I didn't bring you here to tell you that. I brought you here to tell you that Sorgo is yours, and that you must care for him, Zok. For my sake, if nothing else. You two are the last connections I have to the world of flesh and earth. The shattered halves of the ring that I would wear before I go to meet the Maker of All Gods. I need to know that your fates have been forged together, or I'll never know peace."

"But...But I know nothing of fathering," Zok said.

"Then you must learn, my love."

Zok glanced behind him. Hai Hai and Mylovic had withdrawn from the room and stood guard on either side of the shattered door. Sorgo moaned and began to stir.

Zok looked back to Fraja's phantasmal face and nodded once.

"It will be as you say, beloved."

Fraja smiled. "I will always love you, Zok. And this will not be our last meeting. Someday we will wed again in the Heavenly Hall of Hunters. Until then, keep my earring. And think of me now and then."

Fraja's face vanished, and Zok saw only his own reflection in the mirror.

Zok stood once again in the cellar of the Hireguard hall, a silent Sorgo beside him. Hai Hai took tally of the riches around them, while Mylovic read and reread a small ledger they'd found hidden in a cunningly concealed lockbox.

"Well!" the priest said finally. "This is interesting." He fell silent for another few moments as he read over the ledger yet again. "Very interesting," he continued. "So this is what that mercenary meant when he said we must have been sent by the Empress. This is why none of the Hireguard have come back here to harry us."

"Stop being so gods-damned mysterious, priest," Hai Hai said. "What is it?"

"It would appear, dear Hai Hai, that this particular chapter of the Hireguard has been skimming a good amount from the Empress's taxes and tariffs over a good number of years. A very good amount. Quite bold. No doubt this is the source of these surprising stores of wealth."

"You're sure about this?" Hai Hai asked.

Mylovic sighed a longsuffering sigh. "You know I'm the only member of our merry little death-dealing troupe who can read more than his name. I swear, if I didn't fear the five gods of lies, I'd earn myself a few moments of peace by telling you this book was a ward-warning that all rabbitmen hearing these words must keep their whiskered mouths shut for a year, or die by lightning-fire. Lucky for you, I'm an honest man."

"So we've done the Amethyst Empress a favor by killing these fools," Hai Hai said. "Still, I doubt the Legion will see it that way. They'll still want our heads for what we've done here."

Mylovic rubbed a hand through his red hair and frowned thoughtfully. "Perhaps not. There might in fact be a way for us to walk away from this. If we move some bodies around, a few confusion and disguise invocations should be enough to convince any investigators that the thief-smasher went berserk before collapsing from its own corrupted magic. And a few well-placed hints would let the Legion find this ledger, which would do much to make them less interested in avenging these men. Of course," a smile crept across Mylovic's sleepy features, "a few alterations in the ledger would also allow us to garnish a nice bit of what we've found here, and make our trouble worthwhile."

Hai Hai's whiskers twitched appreciatively, and she gave the priest a rare smile. Zok couldn't help but smile himself. Sorgo still wore a haunted look, but Zok thought he saw a smile starting to form.

The violet light began to grow dappled with orange. Zok was surprised to find that he'd never noticed how beautiful the southern sunrise could be. He stood at the edge of town, the boy Sorgo beside him, Mylovic and Hai Hai before him astride road-ponies.

Zok would not be going with his friends. He had a duty here.

Shattered halves of a ring, Fraja had said. Zok wasn't a man of words, but he had always admired the way his wife could talk about one thing in order to speak truth about another thing. Fraja might say that the path he walked with Hai Hai and Mylovic was paved with sword-blades. Sorgo wasn't the sort who could live such a life beside him—not like Fraja with her quick wits and her dagger. And if Sorgo could not live on the warrior's road, Zok would learn to live a different way.

Hai Hai twitched her nose once, and her ears jerked in different directions. "You're sure about this, Zok? We have a good thing going here, the three of us."

"A good thing," Zok agreed.

Hai Hai's ears stiffened. "But you're sure this is what you want?"

"No," Zok said. "Not sure it's what I want. Sure it's what I need to do."

Mylovic smiled beatifically from atop his pony, a wad of poppy-chomp already working in his jaw, despite the early hour. "I usually have little reason to call on the four gods of the family, Zok. But I'll do so at the next temple, and beg their blessings upon you."

Zok smiled his thanks and patted the priest's skinny leg.

Hai Hai nodded once to him. Then his two companions rode off and began bickering about something Zok couldn't make out.

Zok watched them go until they turned a bend in the road and were lost from sight.

Beside him, Sorgo breathed wheezily. Zok turned to the boy.

To his son.

"So," Zok said. "First, you tell me about this town of yours. Then we'll figure out where we go from here."

# About the Author

In addition to his short fiction, Saladin Ahmed has published nonfiction in Fantasy Magazine, Salon, The Escapist, and Tor.com. His first novel, Throne of the Crescent Moon, which Kirkus Reviews called "An arresting, sumptuous and thoroughly satisfying debut," was recently published to wide acclaim. Saladin lives near Detroit with his wife and twin children.

