A Wind in Cairo (17 page)

The sultan's father had never had anything to do with Zamaniyah. His dignity was too great to trouble itself with a mere woman, particularly a woman who conducted herself as a man. Nor had she ever tried to win his notice. She had never had any skill in currying favor.

But Ayyub had mattered.

“I was more of my uncle's making,” the sultan said. “He taught me what I know of war; he set me where I would become what I am. But my father was my father.”

Zamaniyah did not know what to say. People were about, as they always were, but he had rejected them. One of his kinsmen grieved quietly by himself: the youngest brother, handsome al-Adil who acted now and then as if he knew that she was not a boy. She sat mute in all that grief, and listened because she could think of nothing else to do. She could not mourn a man whom she had hardly known. But she could share the sorrow, a little.

The sultan seemed hardly to know that he wept. His coat was ragged where he had torn it in ritual grief. His beard, of which he had always been so fastidious, was frayed and torn. He looked as if he had forgotten sleep.

Yet he smiled at her, sudden and warm. “You didn't come here to hear me chant dirges. Did you bring your Khamsin?”

“Always, my lord,” she said. And her eunuch, and her handful of mamluks, and one who was not a mamluk at all.

“Ride with me,” said the sultan.

He did not ask more of her than her company, and perhaps a tale of that oddity who was her stallion. She had told him of the day when Khamsin chose her over a mare and a rival; it had become one of his favorite tales. She had even heard him tell it to a gathering of emirs. They had been most polite, and most politely incredulous.

“Ah well,” he always said. “We know truth when we tell it.”

Now he was quiet. Sad, a little, but less than he had been. She made no effort to trouble his peace. This was her own peace, to ride her stallion, to be at the side of her sultan, with small attendance, and no walls to bind them. She watched his face ease, the farther they rode from Cairo. She won a shout of laughter in a swift mad gallop, a pounding halt, a flash of Khamsin-temper.

They sat their snorting mounts and grinned at one another. They did not speak. There was no need.

The rider met them on the far side of the Old City. He came at a great pace, swaying astride a racing camel, flailing with the goad. Ill news, Zamaniyah knew, her lightness fading and dying. The sultan waited. He did not move to meet the messenger: dreading it, surely, as much as she. There was death in that urgency. But whose, if not Ayyub's?

“Nur al-Din,” the man gasped as his camel lurched roaring to a halt. “Syria—sultan—” He drew a deep gulping breath. “Nur al-Din is dead.”

The sultan stiffened as if he had taken a blow in the vitals.

“Nur al-Din,” said the messenger, hammering at him. “Dead in Syria of a sickness. His son claims the sultanate; or his regents claim it for him.”

The sultan swayed. “Dead?” he asked, barely above a whisper. “The Light of the Faith? The one who was my overlord? Dead? But he was never going to die.”

“No more was your father.”

Zamaniyah had said that. Her brain had nothing to do with it.

The messenger looked from one to the other, uncomprehending. The sultan's voice snapped him about. “How did he die?”

The man's relief was palpable. This, he could answer. “There was a festival in Damascus, O my sultan, a great occasion: the circumcision of the lord's only son, the Prince Ismail. On the day after it, the lord rode at polo as he was fond of doing. He rode as well as ever, until he missed a stroke. That cast him, my lord, into such a rage as none had ever seen in a lord so clement and so pious. He roared like a lion; he shattered his mallet; he fell down foaming on the ground.

“His people were frozen in shock, until one or two dared to calm him, to help him up, to coax him from the field. His fury passed as inexplicably as it had come; but it left him weak and ill. The doctors would have bled him to release the evil humors; he would not let them. A man of his threescore years, he decreed, is not to be bled. Even in his sickness he awed them. They yielded: to their lasting sorrow. He lingered for two hands of days, sinking ever more swiftly. Then at last he died, commending his soul to Allah and his son to his loyal princes.”

“May the peace of God be upon him.” The sultan was white under the weathering of cheek and brow. His hands clenched and unclenched upon the reins; his eyes burned, as if even tears were too little for his grief. “My uncle, my father, my sultan. All gone. All dead. And I...” His breath caught. A sob, perhaps. Or a gasp of laughter.

Again he startled the messenger. “Who rules in Syria?”

“No one, my lord. Or everyone. Ismail is a child. The nephews of the sultan are caught in disarray: Zangi makes no move, nor has he the power to make one. Saif al-Din mourns his uncle's passing in a flood of wine and a fever of conquest; but he conquers in the east, and pays no heed to Syria. The emirs array themselves as they will, with one or another, or with none at all. The Franks, it is said, are closing in for the kill.”

“Indeed they would,” said the sultan.

“The lady,” said the messenger, “the sultana, some call her—she tries to act on behalf of her son. But she is a woman; she lacks the force of a man.”

Perhaps the sultan glanced at Zamaniyah. He did not smile as he sometimes did when people spoke of woman-weakness in her presence. She could not read his face at all.

She heard his sigh even over the wind. “Back,” he said. “Back to Cairo.”

He would not let her go. Her mamluks, yes, not all of them willingly. Jaffar was escort enough: better than any man knew.

She was not needed for anything that had to do with governing. There were men and to spare for that; and they flocked to grief like vultures to carrion. Nor did he want a servant. He had slaves in plenty, and wellborn pages, and the mamluks of his guard in their sun-colored coats. It seemed that he simply wanted her there, sitting in a corner, saying nothing, watching everything. Her father came with the rest of the emirs, greeted her with affection if with some little surprise, gave her the gift of forgetting her. The others were slower; but what brought them here was both new and mighty. Her presence dwindled to nothing beside it.

Sometimes, in the long hours, the sultan wept. “I loved him,” he said more than once. “I admired him more than any man I ever knew. He was all that was admirable. A true Muslim, a true king: strong, and just, and merciful; obedient to the laws of the Prophet, whom God has blessed and granted peace, and to the will of God. All that I strive to be, he was.”

But then he would harden. His eyes would glitter. He would say through gritted teeth, “He was my lord and my curse. He bade me rule, and then he forbade me; he acknowledged me his equal, and demanded that I pay him tribute. From his palaces in Syria he dreamed that he knew how best to rule in Egypt: he who had never set foot in Cairo. He pricked me with needles; he cut me with knives. He tormented me beyond endurance.

“And if he had not died by the mercy of Allah—if he had lived—he would have come to cast me down. His armies were gathered. His war was readied. First the lord of Egypt, then the King of Jerusalem: so did he intend to conquer all, and be emperor in truth.

“And yet,” he said, as if the words were torn from him, “I loved him.”

Love, Zamaniyah thought as she listened, and enmity. Both together; both the lot of kings.

This king mourned his master, and yet he was glad. At last, all in a stroke, he was free.

Free for what?

“Wait,” said his counselors. “See. The jackals in Syria will quarrel over the lion's leavings, and wear themselves down in doing it; and perhaps some of them will die.”

“They will come!” a third party shot back. “Unless Egypt moves first. Even now the Lord Turan-Shah seizes the wealth of the Yemen and gathers to advance upon Arabia. Why waste his victories? Crown them. Take Syria swiftly, before another Nur al-Din can rise and grow strong and set us under his heel.”

“There is another Nur al-Din,” one of the emirs pointed out. “He named his son his heir.”

Lips curled; heads shook. “A child. Eleven summers old, subject still to the care of eunuchs and women. He counts for nothing.”

“Who holds him, holds the right to rule in his father's stead.”

Eyes narrowed. Men murmured, speculating.

“And what of Egypt?” a sudden clear voice demanded. Zamaniyah heard it with a small shiver. Her father's enemy stood as far from her father as his own will and the sultan's stewards could set him; that they shared these walls at all measured the magnitude of the council.

Ali Mousa repeated his question. “What of Egypt? The prince plays at soldiers in Arabia, and well for us that he does, for his extravagances have drained the treasury dry. Byzantine hounds sniff even yet at our gates in the north; Nubians snarl in the south. In Egypt itself the people are barely reconciled to the rule of the Turk. Are your memories so short? Have you forgotten the conspiracy so lately broken, the rebels who would restore the old rule of the caliph? The ravens barely picked the bones of those who dared it. Would you abandon all for yet another realm in turmoil?”

“A fine sermon,” drawled a voice she knew as well as her own, al-Zaman settled at his ease among the emirs. “Preached most knowledgeably, and most loyally. Are you frightened, revered sharif? Do you dread the uncovering of a new conspiracy?”

Ali Mousa's response was silent: a thinning of the nostrils, a narrowing of the eyes. “O my sultan,” he said with exquisite dignity, “perhaps Allah has willed that you rule in Syria as in Egypt. If that is so, then that is well. Yet now is not the time to move. Syria will settle itself, or it will shatter. Whichever befalls, you are here, with Egypt's strength behind you, strength which can only grow as you wait upon events. When their passage is clear to you, then may you strike, whether to fell a new and feeble sultan or to proclaim yourself lord of a lordless country.”

“Why go at all?” asked a small man in a very large turban, a scholar with ambitions toward government. “You are safe, and free of your overlord. You can rule in peace.”

“For how long? The Franks—”

“Snapping at Syria, as we should be. If by the malice of Iblis they seize it and turn upon us...”

“Allah forbid!”

“Egypt—”

“Syria—”

Zamaniyah's head ached. She rested it on drawn-up knees and sighed. How men could talk so much to so little purpose, she would never know. And they accused women, scornfully, or precisely that. Could they never hear themselves?

If she peered sidewise, she could see the sultan. He had said nothing for a long while. His head was in his hand; perhaps he was not even listening.

The currents of debate had swirled away from him. Factions eddied, babbling. None seemed to notice that he was not part of it. He was alone, forgotten.

Softly she settled at his feet. For a while he did not see her. She was content. He needed presence, and silence; not endless chatter.

When he spoke, she started. She had begun, all unwitting, to drowse. “Are you tired?” he asked her.

She shrugged a little. “There will be time enough for sleep.”

“I should never have kept you. This is ill entertainment for a young creature.”

“Learning is like that,” she said.

He raised his brows. “Have you learned anything here?”

“Oh, yes, my lord,” she answered truthfully. “Much.”

“What would you do if you were I?”

It was the sort of question he would ask. She swallowed a sigh. “I don't know, my lord. There are too many choices; I know too little. What do you want? To hold what you have? To bow to a new overlord? To take the lordship for yourself?”

He frowned. She was cold, suddenly. It was hard to remember what he was. He had always been gentle when she saw him, more man than king. But he was not known for his gentleness. He had killed the caliph's vizier—with his own hands, people said. He had ordered the captivity of every royal seed, male apart from female, female apart forever from male. He had crucified the conspirators against him.

He was, when it came to the crux, sultan. And it was dangerous to tell the truth to kings.

He did not order her flogged. He did not even rebuke her. He rose; he smote his hands together. Even before silence had the wits to fall, he said, “We thank you for your counsel. We shall ponder it with all due care.” He bowed to them, abrupt, courteous, oblivious to protests. His guards hastened to attend him. Without a word he strode from the council.

He pondered most duly and most deliberately. He sent messengers to the child prince, offering condolences, implying loyalty. He gathered his army, wielded it in defense of his domain. He made no move to set foot in Syria.

Allah rewarded him, people said. The Frankish king died ignominiously after all his feats in battle, of a sudden sickness; his son was a child and, more grievous yet for his people, a leper. The north and the sea were safe by force of arms; the south had yielded to the sultan's captains; the Yemen lay in the hands of his brother. Syria was weak and weakening.

“Ripe,” said al-Zaman. “Ripe for the plucking.”

Zamaniyah watched him partake hungrily of his first dinner in his own house since he left to ride with the sultan. He had taken a small wound or two, nothing for any but wives and servants to fret over; he was lean, bronzed, honed with fighting and hard riding. He always looked younger when he came back from the wars, even when they had gone less than well; as these, by Allah's mercy, had not. They were his greatest pleasure. Muslim wine, he called them.

He had brought gifts for them all. Hers was a coat of silk from Byzantium, and a sword, balanced for a smaller hand and a shorter arm than most, with a silver hilt. The blade came, he told her, from India, but the hilt had been wrought in Damascus.