Alamut (51 page)

Suddenly he knew it. They were by the spring in Persia; the cave was behind them. Clouds lowered above them. The strangeness in the air was the scent of rain.

Morgiana swayed. He caught her. She was conscious, but grievously weak, and furious with it. “Too much,” she said. “I stretched too far. I was no better than you.”

His lips twitched at that. “What did you do with the
fidais
?”

“I sent them all away. To a place I know, in a city far from any that they would have heard of. The women there are beautiful and wanton, and each has many husbands. My master's servants may decide for themselves whether to call it hell or Paradise.”

Aidan laughed. “And the old man never asked for them back.”

“He, like them, believes them dead. He will not find it easy to fill their places.”

“Or yours.”

“Or mine.” Her head rolled on his shoulder. “Allah! What a fool I am!”

“A splendid fool.” He turned toward the cavemouth. She lay limp in his arms, fighting the dark, but losing the battle.

$ayyida sprang out of the cave's shadow, wild with fear as she saw what Aidan carried. “She's alive,” he said, little comfort as that was. “She pushed too hard, that's all, to win everything for both of us. She'll be well, once she's slept.”

Sayyida wanted transparently to believe it. She watched Aidan lay Morgiana on the divan, was there in an instant with a blanket and a scowl. “How could you let her do this to herself?”

“How could I stop her?”

“You should have tried,” Sayyida said.

There was no sensible answer to that. Aidan hovered, but he was not wanted. He withdrew to the cavemouth.

It had begun to rain. He had not felt rain on his face since he came to this sun-blasted country. Cold though it was, with an edge of sleet, he welcomed it.

Morgiana was deep in sleep, Sayyida engrossed in fretting over her. He was free. Truly, finally free. Sinan had paid with his own hand for all that he had taken; and he had lost the most useful of his slaves. He would not recover quickly from that blow. Nor would he turn again upon the House of Ibrahim.

Aidan knew what taste was in his mouth. It was ashes. So long a hunt, so bitter a battle, and all that it came to was this. A chest bound with iron, a grey rain falling, and a rending in the heart of him. To stay and be this woman's lover. To go and keep his promises: to Aleppo, to conclude his bargain with the Lady Khadijah; to find Joanna.

He did not even know how long he had been away. A month? He had never gone a day without thinking of her, and being soul-glad that she had not come with him. She would surely have died, and the baby with her.

Maybe she would forgive him for leaving her. Maybe she would even forgive what he had done to win his war with the Assassins. They would find a way out of their coil. His child would not be branded a bastard; his lady would have the honor she deserved.

And Morgiana?

She had what she wanted. He had older ties, and stronger.

Coward
. The voice of his deep self.

He thrust it deeper and set his foot on it. What more could there be between a knight of the cross and a devout Muslim, but what there had been? It was over. They had their own worlds to live in, their own and separate destinies.

Still, the small, needling voice. Craven. Honorless fool.

“What would you have me do?” he cried to the rain. “Turn apostate? Marry her?” He stopped. “Yes, why don't I go Muslim? Then I can have both of them.”

The voice was silent.

He tossed his rain-wet head. “My way is chosen. My mother chose it the day she brought us to Caer Gwent and told our father that we were his.”

Silence, still; silence that was reproach.

He went back into the cave that was more splendid than many a lord's hall in the west, and found nothing changed. Morgiana looked like a child, asleep. He wanted to bend and kiss her. He wanted her, starkly and simply.

He firmed his will. It took more strength than he had expected; almost more than he had.

Sayyida took no notice of him, except to rebuke him for dripping on the carpet. Hasan was asleep.

Signs enough, and farewell enough. He remembered the way of Morgiana's magic, that she had given him after all, as if she wanted him to know it, to do what he did now: the fixing of the mind, the gathering of power, the indescribable inward turn and flex. He paused on the very edge of it, not quite afraid. No one moved. No one called him back. He let himself go.

35.

While Morgiana pursued her Frank, and after she had caught him, Sayyida had time to think. Watching them was peculiarly painful: a dance of advance and retreat; a glitter on the edges of their meetings, like the flash of honed steel. They seemed barely to know how their bodies yearned toward one another — even Morgiana, who knew that she wanted him, but went about winning him with the deadly simplicity of a child. When they were together, even quarreling as they mostly were, something in the way they sat or stood or moved, was like the notes of the lute that underlie the song.

Sayyida had that with Maimoun. Not as these two did, all fire and passion, but in their quiet, ordinary way, they went well together.

If only Maimoun could learn a little sense. A man who kept his wife in a cage, had only himself to blame if she tried to fly from it.

“A woman should always be humble,” she said to Hasan when Morgiana had gone with Aidan to face the Old Man of the Mountain. Sayyida did not want to wear herself to rags in fretting over them; therefore she fretted over herself. “A woman should be conciliatory. A woman should never oppose the will of her man, whom Allah has set over her.”

She was making bread, kneading it on the hearthstone. She set her teeth and attacked it until her arms cried protest. “Never,” she said, “except when she can be subtle, and suborn him, and play him into her hands. Which is almost always. Unless she is caught in the act. As I was.” With each pause, she pummeled the yielding dough, beating tenderness into it.

She looked at her thickly floured fists. Tears pricked her eyes; laughter bubbled in her throat. “Oh, Hasan! I miss your father.”

oOo

Morgiana came back half-dead, in Aidan's arms. He seemed unworried; Sayyida supposed that he would know, being what he was. But he was a man, when it came down to it: a very large and very willful child, who, having dropped his burden in Sayyida's lap, went off and left her to it. She suspected that he might be sulking. Men hated it when women ignored them for other women.

She shook her head and sighed. It was not anger that stirred in her, not anymore: only a kind of fond exasperation. That was the way men were. The way Maimoun was.

Would he take her back?

She stopped. She could not go back. He had struck her; he had called her a liar. She could not forgive him.

Could not, or would not?

So, then. If she would go back, if she would have sense, and stop being a burden on her friend — would he take her?

He would have to. She would not let him do anything else.

oOo

Morgiana was a long time waking. Well before she did, Sayyida knew that the Frank was gone. He always came back for the sunset meal, and he always slept in the hall Tonight, he did neither.

He had found a way out of his cage. She could hardly blame him for taking it. Or, she supposed, for abandoning Morgiana. That was what came of turning love into merchant's bargain.

Still, she was sorry. She had thought better of him than that.

She was ready when Morgiana woke, and braced for the storm. When it did not break at once, she was by no means comforted. “When did he go?” Morgiana asked quite calmly.

“Last night,” Sayyida said. “As soon as he brought you back.”

Morgiana closed her eyes. Her face wore no expression. For a moment she seemed not to be there at all.

Her eyes opened. She was smiling. “So he did,” she said. And, more slowly, almost tenderly: “So he did.”

“Morgiana,” said Sayyida. “Don't do something you'll regret.”

“I already have.” Morgiana sat up, frowning. “I didn't win him at all. I bought him.”

“You're not going to drag him back, are you?”

“No,” said Morgiana. “No, I'm not going to drag him back. He gave me what I paid for.” She paused. “As he sees it. I might have begged to differ.”

Sayyida wondered at the power of a night's loving, to reduce Morgiana to mere and acquiescent womanhood.

Morgiana laughed, fierce and high. “Do you think so? Will I make a proper female after all?”

“Do you want to?”

“I don't know.” Morgiana stood, took a moment to steady herself, walked in a slow circle. There were signs of Aidan here and there: a cushion he had liked, in the corner he had often retreated to; the cup he had used, beside the flagon of wine; the robe he looked so well in, folded at the foot of his bed. The lute in its wrappings, silent now, bereft. She paused by none of these, barely glanced at them.

She came back to Sayyida. Something lay on the divan where she had been sleeping; as her shadow shifted, for an instant it caught the light. Sayyida reached for it, curious. It was a knife, simply but rather elegantly made, with a plain silver hilt.

“He made it,” said Morgiana. “It's not bad, for 'prentice work.”

She was a little too calm. Sayyida let her take the knife; saw the way her fingers tightened on it. “He left it for you.”

“Idiot,” said Morgiana. She did not say which of them she meant. The blade had cut her fingers lightly; she stared at the thin line of scarlet as if she had never seen blood before.

She drew herself up, thrust the dagger in her sash. “Did you save any breakfast for me?”

Her eyes warned Sayyida not to press. Sayyida made herself nod. “I'll fetch it.”

Morgiana followed her to the kitchen. They ate there, squatting like servants by the hearth, since neither of them was minded to spread a cloth in the hall.

Hasan woke in the middle, and needed bathing and feeding. “He'll be wanting weaning soon,” said Sayyida, wincing as he brought his teeth to bear. “Ah! Cruel. Have a bit of bread, if it's chewing you're after.”

He transferred his affections quite happily to a crust dipped in honey. His mother began to tidy the kitchen, while Morgiana watched, silent. Morgiana would never make a plain man's wife. She knew too little of the womanly arts, and she did not seem inclined to learn more.

“They're dull,” she said.

“Necessities often are.” Sayyida tested the washwater in its cauldron over the hearth, dipped out enough to fill the basin. “It's pride that makes them shine: doing them well, and knowing it.”

“You like them?”

“They're what I do. Fahimah says I'm good at them.”

“So does he.”

“Khalid?”

“Aidan.” Morgiana sounded almost angry. “As if he could know.”

“He notices things. It's his way. I suppose because he's a Frank. They're odd when it comes to women's matters.”

“He is purely odd.” She set herself in front of Sayyida, blocking her path to the basin. “Show me how.”

“Why on earth would you want to — ” Sayyida broke off. “Well, then. Watch, and see.”

oOo

By the time they were done, they had turned out the kitchen and the hall, and scoured them from end to end. Morgiana flung herself into it with rare passion; what she lacked in skill, she more than made up for in enthusiasm.

When every inch was scrubbed and spotlessly tidy, Sayyida leaned against the wall and mopped her brow. Morgiana handed her a cup. Sherbet bubbled in it, rich and sour-sweet, exactly as she liked it. She stared at it. “We could have used magic,” she said.

“Muscles are better.” Morgiana propped Hasan on her hip. She looked flushed, disheveled, and almost happy. “You want to go home, don't you?”

Of course she would know. Sayyida was a little disappointed: she had been working hard to find a way to say it. It was like Morgiana to go straight to it, as soon as it came into her head.

“Yes,” Sayyida said. “I want to go home.” Now it was out. She felt oddly empty; oddly excited.

Morgiana reached for her; she pulled away, They stared at one another. “You should go now,” Morgiana said, “if you're going to go at all.”

Sayyida shook her head. “I can't.” She brushed at her gown; at her hair. “I can't go like this.”

“A bath, then,” said the ifritah. “Then we go.”

Sayyida swallowed. This was more than she had bargained for. Though she should have known. She knew Morgiana. “Will you come with me?”

“Do you want me?”

She nodded. Her hands were cold, but her face was burning. “He has to know how it was. So — so that he can decide.”

“To divorce you?”

“Or to take me back.”

“It seems to me,” said Morgiana, “that the taking should be on your side.”

Sayyida smiled, not too shakily after all; now that there was no escaping it. “I know that. He needn't.”

“That's not honest.”

“No,” said Sayyida. “But it's love.”

Morgiana shook her head. She did not understand. Maybe it was a human thing. That a man could give, while seeming to take; that a woman could choose, by letting him choose.

“Not my way,” said Morgiana. “Or ours.” But she was wise enough not to argue with it.

While Sayyida bathed and made herself presentable, she scraped together her courage. She was going to need all of it. Morgiana had put on women's clothes, she noticed.

Then there was no more delaying it. Hasan was in his new coat. Morgiana was gowned and veiled. Sayyida was ready in every way that she could think of, except one.

That would never come while she waited. She drew a deep breath, and got a good grip on Hasan. “Now,” she said.

oOo

Home was smaller and darker than she remembered: a little shabby, a little worn about the edges, but comfortable. Her nose twitched. Fahimah had been making
zirbajah
with its pungency of garlic, as only Fahimah could make it. It hurt to smell it again. To be home.