Alamut (36 page)

He could not, in the moment's shock, remember shame. Half of him was Joanna's. Half knew the lure of his own kind, the beauty of that pointed cat-face, that fall of wine-red hair.

His eyes knew the gleam of steel. Knife,in her hand. But why...

He saw the madness in her eyes. He knew.

Worse than fear was grief, and desperate denial. No, he tried to say. No. Not you.

I. Her voice, cold and clear.

No,
he said again.

Yes.
She was in the air: death, winged, with steel. Hate rode her.

He thrust against too-yielding air, struggled to turn, to shield Joanna. The utmost edge of bitter blade seared his side.

Joanna gasped, stiffened. Her agony resounded in his mind. She convulsed in his arms.

She was deathly heavy. He gasped for breath that would not come, trapped as beneath a weight of stone.

She shifted; but it was no movement of her own. Morgiana bent over him. Her face was a mockery. Stark with fear for him. Reaching to touch, to be certain that he lived.

Assassin. Murderer of children.

Her throat in his hands was a wonderful thing, as delicate as a flower's stem, and hardly more difficult to break.

She was still, unresisting. She would let him kill her. It was the way of her faith. To kill for the Mission; to die for it. It was just, that he should be her executioner. He who was of her own kind. He whom she loved.

He flung her away in a passion of disgust. She lay where she had fallen, eyes wide, fixed on him, as devoid of humanity as a cat's. No more than a cat did she know remorse for what she had done. Regret, yes, that she had not killed with the first blow, without pain.

He turned his back on her and knelt by Joanna. The Assassin had cast her aside like a broken doll. The dagger lay hilt-deep in her side. The point of it just pricked the heart itself; blood welled about it where blood should never be. He knew. He could see. He had no power to stop it.

Her breast heaved. The hilt pulsed, swifter, swifter. Her hands clawed at it. He caught them. They fought him. She did not know him. She knew nothing but agony.

He turned his head. The Assassin had not moved. “You,” he said, though it choked him. “Have you healing?”

She did not answer. He could see how it tore at her, the tenderness with which he regarded Joanna. And he was glad. She had destroyed all that he loved. Now let her know the pain he knew. Now let her suffer as he suffered.

Her face twisted. He laughed, cold and bitter. With a sound like a hawk's cry, she fled into the night.

No matter. He would find her. And her master. And make them pay.

oOo

He was perfectly calm. Joanna was dying. What he would do, must do, would kill her truly; or it would free her to heal herself, since he could not heal her with power. He grasped the hilt. If he prayed, there were no words in it. Only the dagger, and the heart fluttering bird-swift, and blood that for her now was both life and death. With utmost care he eased the dagger out of her breast.

The dam burst. A trickle, at first, runneling down the grooved blade; then a sudden flood. Human instinct cried to him to stop it. Instinct that was not human held him fast, the blade half-drawn, half-sheathed in living flesh; sight that was never of human eye, saw the emptying of places that should never have been filled. The great fist of the heart unclenched, freed again to beat.

He could not heal, but he could hold: draw the blade at last and bind the wound, and wipe away somewhat of the blood, and all the while hold back the tide that would fill her anew unless, until, healing grew stronger than wounding. He wrapped her in his own robe against the cold of shock. He remembered to find his drawers and don them. Then he raised her.

The harem's gate opened before him with no hand upon it. There was resistance. He took no notice of it. He had no slightest care for their laws or their proprieties. A chamber emptied for him. He laid her in it. He said, “A physician. Fetch one.”

People hovered, expostulating. He should not be here. He was not allowed.

He sat on his heels and let the storm die of its own futility.

The doctor came: a woman, and beyond a single swift glance, undismayed by his presence. She cleared the room with a word. Her apprentice, a young eunuch with a face as Byzantine as her own, laid down her box of medicaments and waited for her to command him.

It was swift, for Joanna's life's sake, and yet it seemed slow, like a dance: no move wasted, none enfeebled with haste. Aidan found the dagger in his hand. He did not remember taking it up, or bringing it her. He knew Farouk's forging, Maimoun's artistry in the hilt. Of Morgiana's presence there was nothing. Of Joanna's blood there was far too much.

Someone was speaking, tracing the path of the blade through her body, naming what he had done to draw it, and how, and why. It was a man's voice. His own. The physician's incredulity stung like salt on a raw wound. But she had eyes, and fingers nigh as gifted in seeing, and she could see what was clearly evident: that here, where should have been death, was life beating strong. She did not pause to question. She bent to the task which he had left her.

Aidan looked up from it into a stranger's face, but eyes which he knew, dark and clear and young amid the wrack of age. The Lady Khadijah had laid aside her veil: she leaned on a stick, but lightly, with no tremor of hand or body.

She beckoned. Aidan did not choose to disobey. He would not leave the room, but she was content to pause by its inner door, through which breathed the coolness of water, the fall of a fountain in its own courtyard.

She sat there on the threshold, on a mat from which he dimly remembered startling its occupant. A sharp gesture brought him down beside her. “Now,” she said. “Tell me.”

There was little that she did not know, or suspect. And there was no softness in her. He gave her the truth. “My lady was with me. The Assassin found her there, and struck.”

“So I can see,” said Khadijah. Her eyes were not on Joanna, but on Aidan.

He glanced down at himself. He was clean enough, except for the hand that had held the dagger. With some small surprise, he remembered the burning kiss of the blade. A long cut, hair-thin, seamed his side. It barely bled. It stung a little; he quelled it, and forgot it anew. “Did you know, my lady, that the slave of Masyaf is a woman?”

Khadijah nodded slowly. “Ah,” she said. “The ifritah. I had feared it; I had prayed that it might not be so.”

“You knew?” he cried. “You knew, and you never told me?”

“I was not certain,” she said. “But yes, I knew of her. She is old and she is strong, and she has never failed of her kill.”

“Until now.”

“Pray Allah,” said Khadijah. “It is a measure of Sinan's desire, that he has unsheathed this most deadly of his weapons.”

“If I had known,” Aidan said. A cry was rising up in him; he battled it down. “I saw her. She followed us. She spoke to me. She named me for what I was: Khalid,
Foreigner.
I took her for one of my own people. I never dreamed that it would be she — who — ”

“You are not the first man whose fatal weakness was a woman. Or two.”

His face flamed. “If there is any dishonor, it is mine alone.”

“And the child, too: that is yours?”

The blood drained from his face. “How did you know?”

“Women do,” she said. She sighed. “I had been fool enough to hope...No matter. I am not a man of this House, to defend its honor with steel. My defenses all too evidently failed. Do not trouble to lie to me. I know which of you sought the other.”

“An hour later, and it would have been I who sought her.”

“Doubtless. An hour later, and she would have been dead when you found her.”

It was not approval. But it was absolution, of a sort. He bowed to it. “Then you will not punish her.”

“Has she not been punished enough?”

His hands ached. They were fists, the nails digging deep into the palms. “It is I who should be punished, and I who will exact her blood-price.”

“You take much upon yourself.”

He smiled almost gently. “But you see, no one else can. Now at last I know what I face. Now I can hunt in earnest.”

It was not in her to shiver, but she nodded once. “You will go soon.”

“Now.”

“Nothing is ready,” said Khadijah.

“There are horses,” Aidan said, “no? There is food, water, the wherewithal to carry them.”

“Your guides — your caravan — ”

“I can guide myself. A caravan would only slow me.” He paused, drew a breath. “Lady. I lingered not for prudence nor for any bargain, but for my lady. A weakness, yes, and fatal. If I fail again as I have failed in all my vigilance since I came over sea, then perhaps God will have mercy and slay me for my folly.”

She looked long at him, and deep. She saw what he knew very well. He was quiet. His mind was clear. He knew precisely what he did. And he was quite mad.

He rose and bowed low, as low as a Frank and a prince might ever bow. He did not speak. What promises he might have made, she knew as well as he: which of them he had a hope of fulfilling, and which were hope only, well beyond the edge of sanity.

The Greek physician had come to the end of her ministrations, for the moment. Joanna lay on the mat, less unconscious now than deep asleep. The thin wound was bandaged, a reed in it still, and a bowl to catch what might yet flow forth; all the blood that there had been was washed away. He bent to kiss her, not caring who saw, and turned from her.

Again he passed through the house. Again no one stopped him. This time no one tried. His room was empty, except for memory. No guard, no mamluk, not even a servant. He dressed himself carefully in the alien garb that had become familiar: Bedu robes, fresh-cleaned but bearing the ineradicable stamp of dust and sun and desert spaces. He would bring them home again, and with them his sword, and two knives. One of his own forging. One christened with Joanna's blood.

He was a fine fierce sight, returning the way he had come, looking the desert bandit for whom the idlers in the atabeg's chambers had taken him. He would give them something to talk of.

Little had changed in the harem, save that it was quieter, less like a henhouse with a hawk in it. The hawk's return met with greater calm and fewer faces. He did not care. There was only one face he wanted to see, and hers would never be veiled to him.

She was awake, which he had not dared to hope for. The healer's eunuch looked up from coaxing a potion into her — wine, heavy with spices and something dark, sweet, redolent of sleep — but did not pause. His eyes were enormous, like the eyes of a saint on a mosaicked wall, and utterly quiet. One could drown in that quiet.

Aidan flung himself free, sparking fire-gold. The flare of it was still on him as he knelt by Joanna's side. She frowned up at him. “I'm a coward,” she said.

She could still startle him, even into laughter: laughter with tears in it, for she was alive and scowling and being unpredictable.

“I am,” she insisted. “One little bit of pain and I ran away, right into the dark.”

“So would any wise creature,” he said.

She shook her head, slightly, for it hurt to move at all. “I made myself come back. It was a long way. I saw you like a flame in the night. You guided me. I was never lost while I had you.”

The tears were running down his face. He could not even curse them.

She saw. She tensed, tried to rise. He caught her before she tore herself anew. She did not feel it. The drug was working in her; she fought it with desperate ferocity. “The baby! Have I lost the baby? Why are you crying? Have I — lost — ”

A cold, clear, Greek-accented voice cut across her outcry. “You have not. But you will, if you go on with this foolishness. Lie down and sleep.”

It was not in Joanna to obey anyone without a struggle. She lay down, but the hand under her cheek was a fist, and her eyes, though clouding, were fixed on Aidan's face. “Why are you crying?”

“Because I love you.”

She took that with her into sleep. The smile broke free when all her defenses had fallen; she never knew it, or needed to know. He kissed it, and her brow, and her nape beneath a tidier braid than she herself would ever weave. His hands stretched over her, edged with fire still. He made it his gift to her. He poured it forth without heed to the cost. It would not heal her, not of itself. But it would make her strong, be light and warmth to her when the dark crowded close, guard her and defend her against the demons of sickness.

His hands fell slowly to his sides. The room was dim, the fire gone from him. Joanna had it all now, all that he could give. He had never given so much. He was dizzy, as if it had been blood and not power that he shed. He smiled. She would not die,now. She or the child they had made.

The Greek woman watched him with knowledge, with understanding, but with only a flicker of fear. “You could have killed her,” she said.

“But I did not.”

“No credit to your wisdom. I know what you are, spirit of fire. Have all your years never sufficed to teach you sense?”

“I'm a very young daimon.” And he felt it, now, here, before this mortal woman and her apprentice who would never be a man. Youth was no strangeness to him who would never grow old, but he had forgotten what it was to be a raw boy, untried, untested, with an enemy before him who was none of those.

And he had emptied his power to give Joanna life.

He straightened. He mustered a smile. Child in power he might be, but his body was a man's, and it knew war.

Joanna slept in her armor of light. He left her and her dark-eyed guardians, and went to claim her blood-price.

24.

There were torches lit in the outer courtyard, horses stamping and fretting, even a roar of disgust from amid a huddle of laden camels. Aidan took it all in with mild surprise. That his mamluks would follow him, he had expected. He had not thought to find an expedition fitted out as if for a raid in the desert.