The Diviner (19 page)

“
H
usband,”said Jemilha, “I don'tlike this.”

Azzad glanced up from the account books. There were seven large leather-bound volumes, one each for notes and figures on timber, crops, orchards, trapping, mining, fishing, and horses. An eighth book, twice the size of the others, was written in Jemilha's precise and dainty script, recording trade in all these things. Beside the desk was a carved wooden lectern holding a ninth ledger; this was for the yearly total of profits and losses in all endeavors. In the years that Azzad and Jemilha together had managed the al-Gallidh estates, there had been no entries under
Losses
.

Jemilha resettled the matron's silk shawl across her shoulders—a new fashion introduced by traders from Rimmal Madar, with whom Azzad did much business using the al-Gallidh name. At thirty-one, Jemilha was seven times a mother and looked as if she had borne not a single child. Azzad no longer wondered why he had felt compelled to marry her. He would have been a fool not to. She had given him more happiness than he had ever thought to receive and more good advice than he deserved. Something in him that was wiser than his brain had prodded him into marrying her. Now—thirteen years, five strong sons, and two beautiful daughters later—he thanked Acuyib daily for that wordless certainty. She was worthy, and more than worthy, of the pearls he had placed around her slender throat on their wedding day. Back then, the necklace had been his only wealth. But in that instant, his wealth had become Jemilha. He adored her even when she laughed at him . . . but she was not laughing now.

“I don't like this idea of yours,” said his wife. “And once more I must warn you against it. The Sheyqa has obviously forgotten all about you—why can't you forget about her?”

Azzad did not tell her the one secret he had kept from her all these years. It would not do to worry her about the Geysh Dushann contrivances he and Fadhil had foiled. Ayia, it had mostly been Fadhil, truth to tell, who was as fiendishly clever as the assassins sent to fulfill the Ammarad contract with Sheyqa Nizzira. Azzad's houses, horses, and person were firmly protected. Though several times there had been near misses—a rockslide when he was up in the mountains inspecting the mines, a new design of fish trap that had almost redesigned Azzad's face, for instance—nothing had so much as caused a stubbed toe.

But he wasn't about to tell Jemilha that.

Azzad leaned back in his chair and sighed. “Do you remember, Jemilha, when your uncle died, and then your father? Do you remember what I said to you then? I had sworn when I was younger that I would not marry unless the girl had no father, uncles, brothers, or cousins to interfere with my freedom. I told you then, wife, when Zellim and Bazir were gone, that I mourned your father and uncle as I mourned my own—and if I could give them back to you, I would gladly give up my freedom and spend the rest of my life in the Sheyqa's darkest prison.”

“Nothing will bring any of them back to us,” she replied. “You've made a new family, a new life. Is it not good? Are you not happy?” It was as close to a plea as this proud woman would ever utter.

“You know that I am.” Rising, he went to where she sat on a tapestry couch, knelt before her, took both her hands. “But Nizzira destroyed my family. All the women, the men, the children, even the babies.”

“What about
our
babies?”

Resolutely, he went on, “It was not only those of the al-Ma'aliq name. She massacred our servants, and the fallahin who worked on our lands,
everyone
who had any connection with the al-Ma'aliq. She deserves punishment. Surely you must see that she deserves it. Acuyib in His Wisdom would not have let me live if I were not to be the instrument of that punishment.”

Jemilha shook her head. “That is vanity, Azzad, and you know it. It's more reasonable that Acuyib spared you to come here and be my husband, and father my children, and—”

“Qarassia,” he said, kissing her wrists, “I believe this, too. But I believe just as strongly that I am meant to make Nizzira pay for the ruin of my family.”

“
We
are your family now,” she countered stubbornly.

“Our children are al-Ma'aliq,” he pointed out.

“Yes, al-Ma'aliq—of Sihabbah and Hazganni,” she insisted. “Not of Dayira Azreyq.”

He stood, looking down at her with a spark of annoyance. He had heard all this too many times, though the manners instilled in him by his father forbade him to say so. Still, her dark eyes ignited with barely repressed rage as surely as if he'd reprimanded her out loud.

“You know what I think, Azzad, you know how I feel—in every other matter, my thoughts and feelings are important to you. But not in this. In this, I am ignored as if I were any other woman and not your wife!” She took a moment to calm herself, then continued, “Don't you see? If you do this, if you carry through the plans you have been making this last year—ayia, don't think I don't know all about this! If you succeed, the Sheyqa will have no choice but to retaliate. Dearly as I love Fadhil and clever as he is, I don't think even his most powerful hazziri will protect us—or our children.”

“I understand your will on this, and will consider it most carefully.” It was a standard formula and they both knew it. And because he knew himself to be a breath away from rudeness, he walked out of their maqtabba without speaking another word.

Crossing the courtyard to the stables, he nodded to Mazzud and went to look at the latest foals. As ever, his heart swelled at the sight of them: brown and golden, silvery and white, gray and black, ranging from almost exact copies of Khamsin at that age to the sturdier half-breeds, to quarter-breeds nearly indistinguishable from their purebred cousins. In the years since Khamsin's first get had come as such a surprise, Azzad had learned how to produce foals with exactly the combination of strength and speed he wanted. More importantly, rich men from cities as far away as the coast wanted them, too, and paid vast sums for the privilege of looking like sheyqirs on horseback. Sihabbah had profited as well, for the finest saddles and bridles were made here, along with boots and blankets and everything else necessary to riding. Azzad had done well by his adopted home.

Not only in Sihabbah but in Hazganni and fifty other towns and villages his name was blessed. The destruction wrought by the hideous tza'ab azzif of 623—during which Jemilha had given birth to Azzifa, named for the storm—had finally taught everyone the wisdom of trees. Twelve days of unrelenting wind, like the breath of every damned soul exhaled from hell, had heaped sand and rubble from one end of the land to the other. A whole new industry had sprung up in the five years since, of foresters and gardeners and other experts in horticulture, and when Azzad rode through the land and saw the green, he gave thanks to Acuyib—and to the al-Ma'aliq who had planted the first hundred trees in Dayira Azhreq.

All these things, and the family he had sired, were reasons why he had been spared on that horrible night long ago. Jemilha was correct in this. He had done well and lived well. She did not understand, though, that his life was as yet incomplete. Riches, lands, respect, renown, family, friends—he had everything any man could desire. But, as his wife had told him the day he'd asked for her hand, Azzad was not just any man.

He watched his horses for a time, picking out which would be sold and which he would keep. The more placid ones were easy to sort; those with the finest conformation he kept for breeding. But the others, the ones who raced about the field, kicking and leaping for no reason at all but sheer joy—care must be taken in their training and sale, for to match a spirited horse with an indifferent rider was to hold out one's arms to embrace disaster.

But the rider he had in mind these days was an expert—who had learned, undoubtedly, on al-Ma'aliq horses, and may Acuyib curse him and his forever. Azzad left the paddock and crossed behind the stables to the pasture. Of the more than fifty horses grazing there, he picked out the three-year-old colts that might suit his plans. One was dapple gray, one sandy gold, and the third coal-black with a white blaze on his forehead. Beautiful, long-legged, swift and strong, spirited without the unruly and sometimes thoroughly evil streak that plagued some of the half-breeds—his only problem was to decide which horse to use. Which of them would appeal most to an al-Ammarizzad accustomed by now to the finest horses in the world: the al-Ma'aliq horses seized seventeen years ago this autumn?

Annif, Mazzud's brother, came running up to him from the stables. “Do you have need of anything, al-Ma'aliq?”

“Yes,” he muttered. Then, because Annif would not understand his real need, he said, “Qama'ar, Nihazza, and Najjhi—separate them out this evening, please, and put them in the small enclosure. I will train them myself.”

“As you wish, al-Ma'aliq. Zellim has his eye on Najjhi, I think. And Bazir's is on Nihazza. They know horseflesh.”

Being Azzad's sons, they would.

“Alessid, of course, wants Zaqia.”

Azzad laughed. “Does he, by Acuyib's Beard?” Twelve years old, growing fast toward manhood and brash with it, Alessid was Azzad's eldest and favorite son. Jemilha preferred the steady, good-hearted Kallad; everyone adored Bazir's playfulness; earnest Zellim took after his grandfather of the same name, the scholar of the family even at barely six years old; Yuzuf was only a baby with as yet no distinctive personality beyond a winsome smile. Azzad loved them all most devotedly, but in Alessid he saw himself, as most fathers will do with one in particular of their sons.

“He says,” Annif went on, “he'll have a pureblood of Khamsin's siring or no horse at all.”

Ayia, that was stubborn, proud Alessid, from thick black curls to muddy boots. “If you find him up on Zaqia, blister his bottom for him at once—don't wait for me to do it.”

Annif grinned. “As you wish, al-Ma'aliq.”

That evening, Azzad went into the stables to view the three selected colts. He would be sorry to lose any of them—but one horse was not so great a sacrifice, considering what he would do to Sheyqa Nizzira. He went into each stall, running his hands over smooth flanks and powerful muscles, confirming that Qama'ar, Nihazza, and Najjhi were the finest half-breeds Khamsin had ever sired: strength without bulk, spirit without intransigence, speed in short runs and endurance over long. He stroked their sleek necks and fed them carrots from his pocket, and smiled.

There was the faintest odor of fresh paint in each stall. Azzad searched briefly and found what he knew he would: Fadhil had heard about his orders to Annif and correctly deduced their meaning. Sometime this afternoon he had painted griffins on the rafters above each door.
Retribution
.

There were similar icons and sigils all over the al-Gallidh houses in Sihabbah and Hazganni. Some were cunningly worked into decorative motifs, others were hidden in out-of-the-way places, and a few were right out in the open for all to see—
if
they understood the language of Shagara magic. No one did. Over the years Azzad had become casual about these protections, for although he believed, his belief made him uncomfortable, and it was easier to forget the talishann symbols were there. For one hazzir, however, he would be eternally grateful: the silver owl clutching an onyx in its claws that perched over Jemilha's birthing bed. It had watched over her during seven labors now, and she had come through each in perfect safety.

“The owl holding the jazah, these will see her through,” Fadhil had explained. “All our women have such; it is one of Abb Shagara's primary duties to make them for every woman when she becomes pregnant for the first time.”

“I've never seen or heard of one of these before,” Azzad had said, stroking the owl's silver feathers.

“We keep them for our women only. But even were she not your wife, and therefore part of the Shagara, I would have made one for her.”

“Fadhil,” he said, amused, “I believe you are a little bit in love with Jemilha.”

“I do love her most sincerely, Azzad, but not in the way you imply.” Holding up the hand that wore the emerald ring, he grinned. “And this has nothing to do with it.”

“It was kindly meant, by me and Abb Shagara.”

“I know. I will tell you something, Azzad, that you must not repeat to anyone. If a person who wears a hazzir knows its meaning, he can resist it if his will is strong enough. Meryem can tell you about a patient of hers, brought to the dawa'an sheymma by his daughters after his wife died. Meryem did all she could, but knowing where he was and what she was trying to do, still he died. He
wanted
to die, you see.”

“As you did not wish to fall in love.”