Alamut (53 page)

The light came back all at once. He crouched in the room that had been his in the House of Ibrahim, and beside him the chest of his kinsfolk's ransom. Both of them seemed intact, except for the bruises where he had fallen.

He drew a sharp breath, levered himself to his feet. God be thanked that no one had seen him. He did not need to be told that he was a fool to have tried it, alone, without teaching.

Not again, by God and all the saints. Henceforward he would travel by plain human means, and slowness be damned.

He left the box where his power had dropped it, and went out into the last light of the sun. It startled him. He had gone so far since morning; surely by now it should be deep night.

The murmur of Muslim prayer ran with him, less in the ear than in the mind. They were like monks in their offices, all these easterners. Time and the desert had changed him: he felt strange, walking upright and unsanctified in the hour of prayer, when everyone around him at least pretended to turn toward heaven. Nor was he minded to cross himself, and so defy them all.

The harem's guards were not Muslims, and not at prayer. They admitted Aidan without question. “As the lady wills,” one of them said.

She received him almost directly. The woman with her was not Joanna; with them, as if to guard them, sat Karim. Aidan bowed to them. They greeted him without surprise; even with pleasure. Even Karim, although his pleasure was not so much for Aidan's sake as for what Aidan must inevitably be told. The honor of the House was well on its way to being mended. Joanna was gone.

Perhaps Aidan spoke words of greeting. Perhaps he said nothing at all, but stood motionless, speechless. How could she be gone? She was here, mending, waiting for him to come back.

He must have said it aloud. Khadijah said, “Is she your wife, that she should wait for you?”

“You sent her away,” he said.

“Allah bear witness,” said Khadijah, “I did not. Nor would I have considered it. Indeed I sought to dissuade her, but she was set on it.”

Riding to Acre. Going back to her husband. Cozening him into accepting her child — Aidan's child — as his own.

“She was set on it,” Khadijah repeated. “She was wise, if not precisely prudent. I hope that you share somewhat of her wisdom.”

Aidan sank down. His knees throbbed; he sat on his heels. So much fear, he had had: for her, for the child. So little thought for what they would do, past Masyaf. She had thought — he had given her time for that. Time alone. And she had taken it.

She had not left even a word of farewell. No message at all, except her absence.

“She was well looked after,” said Khadijah, as if that could comfort him. “A troop of guards accompanied her. The physician rode with her, to see that she did not harm herself more than she must. Although she scarcely seemed to need so much: she was most miraculously recovered.”

Miraculously. Yes. He began to laugh. For her he had abandoned Morgiana. For her child's sake she had abandoned him. One woman was not of his faith. One was not of his kind. Now he was alone again. Alone, and victorious.

Despair was perfect, and being perfect, gave him power to do what sanity might never have permitted. Silver and gold rained down out of the air, filling the laps of the queen of merchants and her heir. Their wonder was bittersweet. “Sinan's gold,” Aidan said. “Assassin silver. Your share of his blood-payment to the House of Ibrahim.”

They were astonished. He laughed again, light and joyless. He laid the scroll of the agreement in Khadijah's hands. “As you see,” he said. “Signed, and sealed.”

She took her time in reading it. “It is well negotiated,” she said, “and not too badly conceived.”

He did not see the need to tell her how that could be. But some glimmer of compunction made him say, “I had an ally among the Assassins. That one bargained in my name.”

“Not at too great a cost to himself, one can hope.”

“No,” he said. “Not too great.” He could not stop seeing Morgiana as he had left her, unconscious, with her friend for nurse and guard. He seemed to make a habit of leaving women so.

Maybe Morgiana would wake as Joanna had, and find herself alone, and choose anew: go back to Sinan, become his captain, rule among the Assassins.

He raised his eyes to Khadijah. “Have you a horse which I may purchase, against my share in the House?”

“What will you do with it?”

“Does it matter?”

“No,” she said. And waited.

“Ride,” he answered her. “To Jerusalem, to enter the king's service.”

“To Acre, to confront your kinswoman?”

His mouth opened; closed.

“You may do as your heart bids you. I only ask that you allow your mind a moment's grace, and consider. What can you do but hurt her? Bitter enough for her that she was forced to choose as she has, and with such a burden as she bears. Need she endure the grief which your coming would bring?”

He gritted his teeth. “I would not betray her. Or make her betray herself.”

“No?”

Joanna was a wretched liar. Aidan knew it as well as Khadijah. He unknotted his fists one by one. “But if she fails to win her husband over — if she needs me — ”

“If she needs you, then surely you will know.”

He had not even known that she was gone. He raked his fingers through his hair, clawed them against his skull. How could she be gone? How dared she?

The pain brought him to his senses. He wondered if he could ever be truly or simply a wild thing again. Something in him had changed. Grown, maybe. Been tempered with fire.

It would have been easy to run mad. Give himself up to his pain. Kill something. Or someone.

Too easy. And much too imprudent.

“I will not go to Acre,” he said. “I give you my word.”

But if she was in Jerusalem...

Khadijah, mercifully, did not say it. Could it be that she was not omniscient? She only bowed her head, accepting his promise.

oOo

He left in the morning. It would not be fair to a horse to ride nightlong as he would have liked to ride; and he surprised himself with sleep, and with waking hungry. There was food for him; his clothes were mended, even made new where the tatters were most hopeless.

When he came out at last into the courtyard, a caravan waited. Mounts; mules and camels; a handful of the cousins who, they said, were being sent to Jerusalem on the business of the House.

And guards. Anonymous in plain armor, like hired soldiers; faces demurely or discreetly lowered, eyes fixed on anything but the one they were to guard. He did not know what it was that woke in him, whether joy or rage or sheer, blank astonishment.

“But,” he said. “They were dead.”

“Hardly,” said Karim behind him.

He did not turn. His eyes, he knew, were wild. “She did it. Didn't she? And never told me. Damn her. Damn her to her own hell.”

“Indeed,” said Karim dryly. “Did you think that you could be free of them?”

“They should be free of me. I'm no master for good Muslims.”

Aidan barely had time to brace for it before it was upon him: a tide of armored bodies, a clamor of voices, a flood of joy and tears and sudden, righteous anger. “No master for us, are you? Abandon us, would you? Freedom, do you call this? What do you take us for?”

“Idiots,” Aidan answered them, not gently. He rocked like a stone in a torrent, but he kept his feet.

They were all present and accounted for, and quite exuberantly defiant. Having destroyed dignity and discipline by overwhelming him, they remembered both, to drop down in obeisance. Timur spoke out of turn, and Arslan kicked him soundly for it, but he spoke for them all. “We belong to you. We don't want to belong to anyone else.”

“Even yourselves?”

Their heads came up. “But,” said Conrad in his sweet, baffled, singer's voice, “we have to belong to somebody.”

“You can belong to — ” Aidan broke off. They would never understand. Karim's mouth was hidden behind his hand, but his eyes betrayed him. He was laughing.

Aidan turned on him. “You hired them. You keep them.”

“Not I,” said Karim. “I but kept them for your return, as honor bade me.” And he was more than glad, Aidan could see, to be relieved of them and honor both.

“She told us,” Timur said. “When she sent us away. You wouldn't want us, and we shouldn't want you. She expected us to listen to her. What does she think she is?”

“A daughter of Iblis,” Aidan said.

Ilkhan made a face. “She's a woman. We belong to you. She left us in Damascus; we knew better than to stay there, and she wouldn't let us follow you to Masyaf. So we came here, where we knew you would come. You have to take us back; you have to punish us. We let the Bedouin take you.”

They were as perfectly unreasonable as any creatures he had ever seen.

“If you leave us behind,” said Arslan, “we will follow you.”

Aidan reared up, half in anger, half in perilous mirth. “I'll make you put off your turbans. Shave your beards, if you have any. Bow down to the Church of Rome.”

One or two blanched. The rest never wavered. “You won't,” Timur said. “It's not in you.”

“How do you know what is in me?”

One or two more began to quail. But not Timur. He had never enough wits for that. “I know you want us. Your conscience is in the way. Can't you just accept what is?”

“I know what is. There's the little matter of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, and the Crusade against the infidel.”

“Oh,” said Timur. “Crusade. That's jihad, no? Jihad is holy. We're enjoined it in holy Koran.”

Aidan threw up his hands. “Master Karim! Can't you beat sense into these thick skulls?”

“I doubt that anyone can,” Karim said.

“You won't take them?”

Karim was adamant. “I will not. If you care nothing for me, take thought at least for the House; remember whose mamluks these have been, and what city this is.”

Aidan bit his tongue.

“You want us,” Ilkhan said. “You need us. Didn't you say you were thought ill of in Jerusalem, for coming without an army? Now you have one.”

“Such an army,” Aidan said. “Sweet saints have mercy, I had little enough welcome before. But the king ... “ He paused. “The king will be amused.”

“The leper?” asked Dildirim.

“The king.”

That was fierce enough to cow even the Kipchaks. Small victory: they had still won the war.

“God will judge you for this,” Aidan said, growling low. They kept their heads down, but he saw the white flashes of smiles.

Karim spoke before the silence could stretch. “You will find that they are all in order, and their belongings with them. And,” he added, “a thing or two of your own, which you might be glad of.”

One of which was his robe of honor, packed as it had been in the baggage, and therefore lost. Aidan held it for a moment in his arms, aware of its weight as of its beauty. Like the mamluks who had come with it, it was both a joy and a burden.

It was what he was born to, who was the son of a king. He set it back carefully in its wrappings, and turned to what mattered even more, because it had been Gereint's: his own lost gelding. It waited patiently, but its nostrils flickered, welcoming him.

For all that had befallen him — even with his hellions all safe and restored to him, for whom he had grieved so long — he had not come close to weeping. Now, for this mute beast, he did. He set his teeth against the flood, and swung astride.

As he settled in the saddle, Karim's improbable turban appeared at his knee. “Keep your head down,” the merchant said, “until you are well out of the city; and see that your imps do likewise. You are remembered here, and not kindly.”

“Your regent can't harm me,” Aidan said, “or any who rides with me.”

“You, no.” Karim shook his head. “We are well rid of you, sir Frank.”

“Truly, this time,” Aidan said. “I'll not be troubling your peace again.”

“Thanks be to Allah.” Karim said it devoutly, but without rancor. “You have been of great service to us — that, even I can confess. We owe you a profound debt; we shall repay it as we have agreed.”

“And not one dirham more.”

Karim smiled. “We are merchants, after all.”

“After all,” Aidan conceded. He grinned suddenly. “Give my respects to your lady. She's more worthy of the name of queen, than most who have claimed the title.”

Karim bowed slightly. “You are the proper image of a prince,” he said.

“Aren't I?” Aidan gathered the reins. “God keep you.”

“And you,” said Karim with unfailing courtesy. But his glance, for an instant, was as wicked as a boy's.

37.

Joanna did not leave Aleppo for anger at Aidan, or for anything that touched on courage. Oh, no. She was thoroughly and spinelessly terrified.

But under it her mind was clear. She saw what she had been refusing to see. What she had with Aidan was a true thing, and deep. But it could not go on. She was mortal. He was not. She had a family, which she loved; a world in which she belonged. He was part of it, but not, past these few stolen moments, as her lover. Their dream of going away to have their child in peace, was only that. Words and wishes, and a bitter exile.

He knew it, she thought, perhaps better than she. Neither of them had ever spoken of marriage: of what a royal prince could do, even in the face of holy Church. They had a bond as strong as any in law or sacrament, but it was not a part of either.

The Assassin's blow rent away her self-deceptions. Aidan's absence only gave her time to comprehend them.

It was very simple, when Joanna reduced it to its essence. She did not want her child to be called a bastard. No more did she want Aidan to abandon his rank and his pride and his renown in the world, to become a nameless exile.

Once she had accepted that, she knew what she had to do. It was anything but easy. She healed miraculously, with Aidan's magic burning in her like a steady fire, but the pain was slow to pass: a stitch in her side, a deep ache. And worse than that, the soul's pain. To make her choice. To end it, so, without a word to him. For if she waited, if she saw him again before she began, she knew surely and completely that she could not do it.