The Waters of Eternity (11 page)

Anyone knows that Mosul, though far older, is not as vast as Baghdad; while suburbs stretch out beyond the walls, most of the grandest homes are within. This means that even the wealthy folk do not live in the sort of palaces one finds in many quarters of Baghdad, as they must make do with existing buildings, and under the governor in those days there was no bribe that would have allowed the closing down of even the most minor lane to extend a property. So it was that the footprint of Bassam’s family home was not much larger than our own. But it was stuffed to overflowing with fine things, which hung brightly or sparkled upon so many walls and shelves and nooks that the place felt as crammed as a merchant’s stall. It was impossible to rest my eyes in any one place because there was so much to see.

Unfortunately, we had to spend considerable time there, for after Dabir’s careful examination of the wine jar with the alleged poison and the questioning of the servant who had taken it from a messenger boy, he then spoke with each of the four guards who had been with Bassam on the occasions of the attack by bandits and the attempted trampling. Every interview was conducted separately, and afterward Dabir sat down again with Bassam to ask him about certain events or the appearance of the attackers that the other accounts had differed on, then went on to speak to him at greater length of other people he knew. It was a tedious business and it was easy to see that Bassam grew irritated, though he did not protest. At least the food was well prepared, though I must admit I found even this wanting in comparison to that served by the cook of our own household.

It was with relief that I left with Dabir in time for evening prayers. Bassam somewhat sulkily promised to heed Dabir’s suggestion to remain in the home that night.

After prayers Dabir led us to a tavern near the city’s heart. As the weather was fine, many folk were out, and music and laughter could be heard within.

“Why are we here?” I asked him.

“To visit an old friend,” Dabir said. “Were you not listening?”

“There was much to hear,” I said.

“Perhaps you were munching at the time. You will recall that one of Bassam’s lady friends is Samar.” We turned down a dark lane to the tavern’s side.

Samar was like Bassam in that most everyone in Mosul knew her name. They otherwise differed, for she was very clever, and a dancer in demand throughout the province. We even had once solved a problem for her. This did not mean that Dabir trusted her, for he had declined her advances after the matter was concluded, carefully, so as not to make an enemy of so influential a woman.

“You think she is trying to kill him?” I asked. I could scarce credit the thought.

“I doubt it. But she will tell us something of the matter. Of this I am sure.”

I would have asked him how he knew this, but he was already knocking on the worn cedar door at the tavern’s rear. The portal was opened by a big bored-looking fellow, garbed only in pants and a vest. From his squinty-eyed look of displeasure it was clear he was used to dismissing drunkards seeking either the wrong way in or attentions of the women, but he recognized Dabir’s name, and my own, and bowed over his potbelly, gesturing for us to enter. He sealed the door behind us, then lifted a lantern to light the way. So far as I recall, he never did speak, leading us on past several open doorways until he paused at one closed door and rapped on it with hairy knuckles.

“What is wanted?” came a woman’s shrill voice. It did not sound, to me, like Samar.

The guard bowed his head to us and stalked back down the corridor, leaving us in the dark save for the voice and a single lantern to the right of the door. The distant sound of merriment reached us through the walls.

“It is Dabir ibn Khalil and Asim el Abbas, come to call on Samar,” my friend said.

There was no immediate answer; Dabir glanced over to me.

The door came open suddenly and a short woman looked up at us. Her unveiled face was fair, if truth be told, but she was not Samar.

“My apology,” Dabir said. “We were led to believe—”

“My mistress will see you,” she said. “Enter.” She then rolled her eyes at me and I gathered that she liked what she saw, for she smiled.

That was a womanly place, hung with long mirrors and draped with scarves; also there were candles and lanterns and soft cushions and a carpet. It smelled of costly perfumes. The maid slipped out into the hall and closed the door behind her. Either she found us sufficiently trustworthy, or Samar had ordered her out.

Samar stood with her back to us, adjusting cloth over a dressing screen. She was slim, and I was reminded again of her splendid grace, noticeable even in ordinary motion as she turned to face us.

“Dabir and Asim,” she said. “What are the odds?” Her voice was husky. She swayed closer to us, her ornaments jangling, and those dark eyes looked up into Dabir’s. “To what or whom do I owe the pleasure?”

“You are lovely as ever, Samar,” Dabir told her, and it was no less than the truth. “Peace be upon you. We have come because a man is in danger, and we seek to help him.”

She laughed musically. “I am but a defenseless dancing girl,” she said. “I will be of no use to you.”

“You are many things, Samar,” Dabir said gently, “but you are surely not defenseless. I know that you have danced for Bassam ibn Habbab.”

“Indeed I have,” she said. “He is a generous man.”

“Yes,” Dabir agreed. “And someone is trying to kill him.”

“So you come to me? Tell me I am not one of your suspects, Dabir.”

My friend smiled and did not answer her question, exactly. “You are surely in the know, Samar. Someone has four times tried to kill Bassam. He has left a trail of sad women and angry male relatives throughout the city.”

“And you think I might know whom he most upset? Ah, Dabir, there are too many. What of Jala, the daughter of Ahmed, the grain merchant? Or Laila, whose brother is Wasim, the caravan owner? There are so many possibilities, I don’t know how you could begin such an investigation.”

“What about you?” Dabir asked softly.

She laughed fetchingly. “Surely Bassam is not suspicious of me.”

“He is not,” Dabir said, with just the slightest inflection on the pronoun.

Samar studied him. “You? But you know me better than that.”

“I know that you are no fool,” Dabir said.

She smiled, considering him. “You are a peculiar fellow, Dabir ibn Khalil. All this time in the city, yet you have found no wife.”

Now I did not care to hear her bait him, though I could not help but agree that a woman would keep Dabir’s mind from his lost love, Sabirah, and from thoughts of his poor wife, who had died in childbirth. The last time I had raised the topic of marriage, though, he had quipped that a spear cast at that target might hit either one of us.

“As to my question, Samar. Is there anything you would like to tell me?”

She blinked at him. “I will dance in the next little while, and after, it might be pleasant to speak with you alone. That is, if you have any additional questions for me.”

All of this was spoken with great innocence, but only an idiot would have mistaken her meaning. Dabir only smiled and bowed his head. “I have other matters to attend to, Samar, so I am likely to miss your performance. I shall do my best to return, though I cannot guarantee it.”

Almost I let my mouth fall open in shock. This I had not expected, for Dabir had once warned me about the woman, whose nature had not been as immediately obvious to me as to him.

“I cannot guarantee that I shall be waiting,” she answered, “but I would like to see you.”

We left the same way we’d come, the grunting slave opening the door for us without comment, and made our way out into the darkening street. Folk wended to and from various taverns and caravanserai.

I did not want to pry about Dabir’s change of heart regarding Samar, so I started with something else. “So she is innocent?”

Dabir did not answer the question. “Handwriting can be like a footprint, if one knows how to look. Samar sent me letters over the last months, inviting me to various events.”

I nodded, for I remembered this.

“The note warning Bassam seemed in a familiar hand—”

“Inshallah,” I hissed, then looked both ways, and before and behind, to make sure no one listened. There were a few folk in the street, but none seemed to be paying us any heed. “And did it come from her?”

“I cannot say for sure, without comparing them side by side…but I believe so. I wish to return home and compare them to this note from Bassam.”

“Why did we not question her more fully, then?”

“If she did not confess the matter to me, and she seeks to warn Bassam of the attempts on her life, she herself may be in some kind of danger. And that may be why she wants to speak with me.”

“Ah. I thought your interest was more…”

“She is a beautiful woman, is she not, Asim? But some snakes too are beautiful.”

“So we are to return home?” I asked.

“We shall divert to Bassam’s home—it is not too far out of the way. I wish to make sure that he followed my instructions.”

That he had not done. We reached his house in under a quarter hour, and found him gone. His manservant, a dwarf, tried to put the matter in Dabir’s lap. His voice rose in agitation as he explained. “My master waited and waited for you to return after he received the letter, but you did not come, and he finally threw up his hands and departed.”

I could tell from the expression upon Dabir’s face that he was at pains not to reply caustically. “What letter?” he demanded. “Did he leave it?”

The dwarf pressed it into Dabir’s palm, chattering as he did so. “He said that if you bothered showing back up that you should read it and follow. Your pardon, Excellency,” he continued, impudently, “but those were his very words, and he wished them conveyed to you.”

My friend’s expression soured even further as he glanced over the letter. “Fool! I should leave him to his fate.” His teeth were gritted. “Come, Asim.”

“Where do we go?”

“Someone has set a trap for the wretch and bade him to enter. Tell me,” he said to the dwarf, “did he at least take guardsmen with him?”

“Of course.” He sniffed.

Dabir then strode out onto the dark streets, me at his side. He still clutched the letter. “This is in a different hand than the other note,” he said.

“And what does it say?”

“It promises,” Dabir said bitterly, “that all will be revealed if Bassam meets with the note’s writer at a home beside that of Rashid the jeweler. It bids him to enter alone.”

“You think he did so?”

“You have met the man, what do you think?”

“I think,” I answered after a moment, “that we shall be lucky to find him alive.”

“Aye.”

Two of Bassam’s guards were rolling dice before the closed doorway to Rashid’s jewelry store. They said they’d been ordered to remain here while their master went inside the dark building next door.

“There was a woman, waiting for him,” said one, a snaggle-toothed Arab.

“Happens all the time,” his friend agreed.

Dabir turned from them and tried the door. As you might expect, it did not give.

“It’s probably too late,” Dabir told them sternly. “Asim?”

I eyed the door and shook my head, for it was too solid to kick open. I then considered the edge of the one-story roof. I pointed to Snaggle-Tooth. “Make a stirrup with your hands.” The man complied, and I must say that if Bassam had not picked him for looks and brains, he may have chosen him for strength, for he had that in abundance. He had no trouble supporting me. I put hand to his shoulder, pressed my weight into his palms, then reached for the coping. I stepped off his other shoulder to pull myself up silently as I could, then knelt on the flat-topped roof and looked about. Like most homes, there was a central courtyard, and I heard a man’s voice rising up from it, although I could not make out many words. He sounded as though he were reading something aloud. And then I heard someone grunting, as if he strained, and another voice telling someone to be still if he knew what was good for him. The letter reading resumed.

I leaned back out, lowered my hands, and in a moment Snaggle-Tooth helped Dabir up into my grasp. We left the useless bodyguards where they were, bidding them to silence, and Dabir and I advanced quietly across the wooden roof. In the heat of the summer, folk often slept on their roofs, so we were sure it would bear our weight. My concern was that we would reveal ourselves with the creak of a board. Indeed, there was a telltale noise beneath me as I slid forward, but the speaker droned on, and there was another groan, so I guessed that the sound had gone unnoticed.

Soon Dabir and I were peering over the far edge and into a courtyard. The place looked to have been abandoned for a while, for the trees were dying and an empty central pool was a round spot of darkness. The fellow reading was standing on the far side of the pool, crouched near a lantern where he held a piece of paper. Bassam was tied to a wooden yoke and held in place by two hairy Berbers in shabby turbans. One had a long knife, and the other one stood behind, as if he meant to push the rich man forward into the tiled basin at his feet at any moment. Bassam’s eyes rolled wildly between the pit and the speaker, but he could not speak, for his mouth was gagged with a wad of cloth. The pool’s bottom was not far below, and a fall would not normally have hurt a man much, save that reflected glints from the lantern light caught on something sharp within. Knives, I thought, or spear tips.

“We must move fast,” Dabir whispered. “Leave the reader alive.”

I eased myself up to the roof edge to eye the ground below. Dark flagstones. From there it was eight swift paces to the men.

“…breaker of promises and oaths such as you,” the man was saying, “who lies as easily as he breathes, and pretends that he will take advice only to do as he wishes, such a fate is well deserved.”

Without waiting for the climax of the speech I swung down and dropped. Though many have remarked on my size, I was fairly light on my feet in those days, and I made no sound. Still, the letter reader caught sight of me and stopped short, staring. I’d hoped to creep up unawares, but hope fades swiftly as a dream at dawn. I whipped out my blade and charged.

I heard Dabir drop behind me, which might explain why the Berber with the knife yelled “We’re surrounded!” and ran for the shadows.

“Push him in!” the letter reader shouted.

Bassam twisted as the man behind him shoved, and he teetered on the edge, fighting for his balance.

The Berber snarled and whipped out his blade, but he backed from me as I charged, shouting out to Allah. I swear that I might have cut him in half in short order, but I had to toss my sword to my left hand in order to snatch the back of Bassam’s jubbah before he plunged into the pit. This gave the fellow with the sword an opening, and he sliced at my head.

Were Bassam an enemy I would have sent him stumbling forward, but I caught the strike on my blade and blocked a second blow as I dragged my charge to safety. By that point Dabir was there, with a sword of his own. The man with the letter dropped it and fled into the shadows, and my opponent hurled his sword at me then followed him through a doorway. I knocked the forcefully flung steel aside and sprinted after, halting on the threshold. A new blade was suddenly thrust out from the darkness. The fellow had lingered just beyond and had meant to slice me as I ran on.

I beat down the knife, wishing there were a visible hand and wrist, and swung into the darkness. There came a gurgling noise, and then the man—my most recent foe—was sinking to his knees, one hand to his throat. As God as my witness, to this day I know not how I managed to cut him, for only an idiot would have leaned forward at that moment. The blow should only have wounded his arm and forced him to drop the blade.

I stepped past him and peered into the darkness beyond. Nothing.

“Where are the others?” I asked of the dying man, realizing even as I did so that I wasted my time, for he could not speak even if he wished it. He coughed, and quickly expired.

I hurried back to retrieve the lantern and search the rest of the house, but it was empty of everything save a pair of old rugs and a battered table. The letter reader and the other rogue had found egress through a servant’s door, which hung open into a back lane. There was no telling which way they had fled.

Dabir, looking over the letter by moonlight, was nonplussed by my news. “All but the one you killed got away?”

“He leaned into my blow,” I said, pointing to the slumped body by the door. “It is not so simple, you know, to capture such an idiot when he’s attacking.”

Bassam, rubbing his wrists, advanced and bowed his head to me. “Captain, you saved my life, and for that I am eternally in your debt. I think I may owe you—”

Dabir angrily slapped the letter with the back of one hand. “Madness!”

“…an apology,” Bassam finished.

“Who writes such a thing?” Dabir was saying.

“It was my pleasure,” I said, and stepped over to peer into the pit. A series of spikes stood up from a wooden frame two feet below. Bassam would have been impaled in multiple places. And there was something more. As I crouched for a better look I saw that there was a gritty substance coating the blades. I reached down to rub the side of one of them, and raised my hand back up. It felt like sand, which made no sense.

“Is it poison?” Bassam asked, his voice quavering.

I touched it to my tongue. “Salt.” I stood. “All the blades are salted. Someone wanted you in as much pain as possible as you died.” It would have been no easy death.

“Someone vindictive,” Dabir said to himself. “I have never seen such a long list of accusations.” He lowered the letter. “So let me see if I follow. You received a note bidding you come—”

“I know now I shouldn’t have,” said Bassam.

“How long did it take you to figure that one out?” I muttered. I’m not sure he heard me.

“And you did that, which I specifically warned you not to do. You had the foresight to bring guards, then promptly left them outside.”

“Aye, a woman was within. She beckoned to me and said that she must speak to me alone.”

“And you trusted her,” Dabir said.

Bassam flashed his cockeyed grin. “Um…”

Dabir cut him off. “Did you recognize her?”

“She…Well, before I got a closer look, those murderers had hold of me, and the next thing I knew one of them was going on about arrogance and lack of discipline and nonsense. I’m not sure how much you heard. By the way, where were you?” Bassam sounded a little accusatory.

“Looking into matters,” Dabir said.

“It is only by Allah’s grace that we arrived in time,” I interjected. “Dabir asked you to stay in place; it is not his fault that you nearly ended up squirming on a bed of salted nails.”

“Have you found anything?” Bassam demanded.

“We found you,” Dabir offered. He picked up the lantern and walked over to the dead man, shining it down on him. “Come here, Bassam.”

We both followed.

“Had you seen this man, before tonight?”

“Nay. Though I can’t imagine paying attention to him were he not trying to kill me.”

I grunted. So do all common men look to those from on high.

“Does he look like any of the men who attacked you the other night?”

“Eh…no. I’m fairly sure they weren’t Berbers. One was a Turk.”

“So you said. Did any of these men resemble the fellow driving the cart?”

“Nay—he was a Persian.”

“So you said,” Dabir repeated. “And it was a boy who dropped off the wine for you. I wonder why a murderer would hire entirely different folk for every attempt.”

“Perhaps,” Bassam offered, “he hires someone new whenever the other one fails.”

I offered a thought of my own. “The attempts are getting more outlandish.”

“Truly,” Dabir agreed. He was rubbing the band of his ring as he fastidiously stepped around the blood pooling from the Berber. He then bent down on the fellow’s right side and began a search through his garments.

“What is he looking for?” Bassam asked me.

“He will know when he finds it,” I said shortly.

The dead man did not have much, as anyone might have guessed at first glance. Apart from a poorly sharpened knife and a handful of coins, there was a hunk of stale bread, a wine sack, and several sets of dice. Of greatest interest to Dabir was a folded piece of parchment paper that bore writing in a large, easily legible hand. Once Dabir was through with it, he passed it up to me, and Bassam crowded in to read it. On it was written “Bet on Blue, 10 Dirhams,” with the day’s date and month recorded beneath.

“A gambling receipt,” I said.

“From the Inn of the Two Palms,” Dabir said. Adding, “Muwaffaq bin Hasim only hires folk with clear handwriting to draft his markers.”

“So he is a gambler,” Bassam said, sounding irritated again. “A lowlife—why else would he be a murderer?”

“You look but you do not see,” Dabir told him.

I didn’t see, either, but I wasn’t about to let him know that. “You have discovered something.”

“I have a theory,” Dabir admitted, but would only shake his head when Bassam asked him what it might be.

“You are an infuriating man!” Bassam burst out. “Why will you not tell me what you are thinking?”

Dabir stared at him, and for a moment I thought my friend affronted. Then he pointed at Bassam. “You will have to try a little harder to be dead for the rest of the evening.”