Shadow Spinner (22 page)

“Rise,” the Sultan said.

I got slowly to my feet, glancing at the Sultan. His eyes were hard. Quickly, I looked over the group, picking out the Khatun and, beside her, Soraya. There were two men I did not recognize, an older one and a younger one. The younger one resembled the Sultan. His brother, I thought. His brother from the land of Samarkand, who had also been killing a wife every night. Then, in a shadowed far corner, surrounded by guards, I found the one I was looking for.
This traitor.
The storyteller—Abu Muslem. Had he come to help Zaynab? His hands were bound, I saw. But what surprised me was that beside him—also bound and guarded—stood the gold-clad eunuch.

“So. You want to tell me a story,” the Sultan said.

“Yes, my lord.” It came out as a scared whisper.

“I'm glad
someone
is willing to talk,” he said, his voice heavy with sarcasm. “My pigeon keeper wont. Nor will these two”—he jerked his head toward the storyteller and
the gold-clad eunuch—“confess to me what trouble they've been stirring up. So now I am curious. Is this a true tale you came to tell?”

“There is truth
in
the tale, my lord.”

“Indeed.” He narrowed his eyes; I looked down at the floor. “And what does it treat with?” he asked.

“It treats, my lord, with a poor boy, the servant of a powerful magician.” My voice was still shaky and soft. I forced myself to speak louder. “Every day he would go to the sea with his master. The magician would cast his fishing net and call out a magical word. Then the fish would puff themselves up into balls and float up through the water, entangling themselves in the net, until the magician called out another magical word. Then—”

“This is an outrage!” The Khatun lurched toward me. “My son, let me deal with this girl. She has the effrontery to burst in here and turn your mind from important affairs of state with a piece of fluff about enchanted
fish.
She's a harem slave—my responsibility. I'll wring a
true
story out of her.”

The Sultan held up his hand. “Wait. We'll come to that. This girl escaped my guards and was safely away, but returned because she wanted to tell me this tale. It amuses me. You know I like stories,” he said, his mouth twisting into a joyless smile, “and I have not heard this one before.”

I knew he hadn't heard it, because I had made it up. I couldn't risk boring him with one he'd already heard. Anyway, my mother made up tales. It was in my blood.

“But,” the Sultan warned me, “you won't leave this room without telling what mischief you have been up to, and why you escaped.”

“I will, my lord.”

“Very well. Go on.”

I told how the magician's boy decided to fish for himself, but he forgot the second magic word. When the fish puffed themselves into balls and rose up into the air, the boy snatched at the cords of the net, tried to pull it down. But the fish carried him aloft, and soon he was too high up in the air to let go. They floated through the sky, over the green hills, and into a far-off country. At last the fish wafted down and landed in the shallows of a pond in a beautiful garden.

“Just then,” I said, “the owner of the garden spied the boy and summoned his guards. He was going to kill the boy for stealing into his garden. The boy pleaded for his life, and at last, the landlord said, ‘If you can tell me a story I have never heard before, I will let you live.'”

The sound of a throat clearing. I looked up and caught the Khatun's eye. She was glaring at me, arms folded before her. I peeked at the Sultan; I couldn't tell what he was thinking. But he didn't stop me, so I went on in a rush.

“Now it happened that the fish had been talking as they floated through the sky, and the boy had understood them. He thought surely the landlord would not have heard of what the fish discussed, and so he told them
that
story, about a merman, a king of the sea—”

“This king was not. . . Badar Basim?” the Sultan interrupted.

“No,” I said. “This was another merman. Even more illustrious and powerful than Badar Basim. The ruler of all the creatures in the sea.”

The Sultan made a tent of his fingers, tapped the tips of them together. “Go on,” he said.

I took a deep breath to calm my trembling voice. This was the scary part. What would the Sultan do when I held up my story's mirror and showed him his own reflection? I told how the merman king was married to a beautiful mermaid, but she betrayed him. “So he had her executed, and he vowed to marry a new mermaid every night and chop off her head the next morning, so that no wife of his would ever betray him again.”

The Sultan leaped to his feet. “This tale cuts too close!” he roared. The guards shifted toward me.

My heart stood still, but I stood my ground, trying to seem unafraid. I shrugged. “It's only a tale,” I said, “that the fish told. The landlord was amused, and I thought you might be, too.”

The Sultan slowly settled himself back against the cushions.
“Go . . . on,”
he said grimly.

I continued. “It all happened as he had said, until one night the merman king married a beautiful mermaid who sang to him a wondrous song. It had many verses, though, and there wasn't time for her to complete it before morning dawned and the king had to attend to his prayers and his duties to his subjects. So he gave her stay until the next night—”

“Stop her!” The Khatun shoved forward and stood beside me; the sickly-sweet smell of her filled my nose. “My son! Can't you see what she's doing? She
mocks
you!”

“Do
you mock me?” the Sultan growled.

“No. No, my lord. I only—”

“Let me take her now! Don't demean yourself to be mocked.”

The Sultan snapped his fingers and two guards seized my arms.

“One moment, noble king!” I felt the weight of all the eyes in the room staring at me for my audacity. “I thought you might like to know, my lord, in what way the singing mermaid . . .
deceived
. . . her husband.”

“Wait,” the Sultan said to the guards. Even the Khatun was silent.

“It was a small thing,” I said, “but one that brought her much grief.”

The Sultan stared at me for what seemed a very long time. I kept my gaze down at the floor. I was hot, uncomfortably hot. My bloodbeat pounded in my ears. Finally, at the edges of my sight, I saw the Sultan nod at the guards; they loosed my arms but stood close at either side of me. “Go on,” the Sultan said. His voice was soft now. Ominous.

I plunged in. “It was soon after she had borne him his third son, my lord. She was weak from childbearing and fuddled from lack of sleep.” I told of how the queen mermaid was at a loss for a song that night, and how her sister brought her a poor serving maid from the far reaches of the kingdom. “A mermaid with a broken fin,” I said. “She swam a little crooked. But she liked to sing songs.” Not very subtle, perhaps, but I didn't have a thousand nights to make my meaning clear. Then I told how the broken-finned mermaid sang the queen a song, and how the queen sang it to the king, and how he liked it and asked for more verses of that same song. And then I told how the queen, eager to please, had promised it to him.

“She said that she knew it, my lord. She was eager to please him. But she didn't know the rest of the song.
That
was her deception.”

I kept my eyes downcast and held my breath, awaiting his wrath.

“So this mermaid with the . . . broken fin,” he said slowly.
“She
knew the rest of the song?”

I glanced at the Sultan, then, but I couldn't read his face. It was closed. A mask of stone.

“No,” I said. “But she had heard the first part years before from a ... a singer in the bazaar. And she thought that he would know it, and that she might find him.”

I told, then, how the queen had smuggled the girl out twice (I left Dunyazad out of it) to find the rest of the song. I ended it happily, talking fast so that no one would break in before I got to the end. “So the merman king forgave his queen. And he honored her above all other women. He told her that henceforth she needed only sing for the joy of it. He would never compel her again. And he would never, ever slay her. And then,” I said, “the compassionate landlord showed mercy on the magician's apprentice. 'You have indeed entertained me with a tale I have never heard before,' he said. He gave him a mule and some fruit from his garden, and he sent him on his way home.”

When I had finished, I stood looking down at the carpet. It was done now. I had either saved Shahrazad or condemned her.

“She
lies,”
the Khatun said.

“Hmm.” The Sultans voice. At the edge of my vision I could see that he was tapping his fingers again. “And this . . . mermaid queen didn't know that the storyteller was Abu Muslem?”

“No! She didn't have the least suspicion, my lord.”

“Hmm.” He spoke softly, as if to himself. “So. If your
tale has truth in it, my old vizier would not only be Abu Muslem—he would be your singer-in-the-bazaar as well. Which would make sense—now that I think on it—for it was he who told me Julnar's tale when I was a boy. He must have written to Zaynab, whom he had known in the past, for reasons of. . . romance or conspiracy, I know not which. Then, when he heard she'd been arrested, he tried to rescue her, aided by my chief harem eunuch. And they were caught.” The Sultan turned to the storyteller. “Well?” he demanded. “Do I have it right?”

The storyteller met his gaze. Then, “Yes, my lord,” he said.

“So. Now that this girl has taught you what to say, you're willing to talk. Is that it?”

The storyteller said nothing.

The Sultan sighed. “Well, it does fit together. But I don't know if it's true.” He turned to the younger man standing beside him. “You see my dilemma, brother,” he said. “What would you do in my position?”

“Ask for proof,” the brother said. “For witnesses.”

“Hmm,” the Sultan said again. He regarded me thoughtfully. “Can anyone verify your story? Except for these”—he looked at the storyteller and the gold-clad eunuch—“whom I no longer trust.”

I hesitated. I would
not
bring Dunyazad into it. Her word would be suspect, anyway. The same with Zaynab.

“She's lying and I can prove it,” the Khatun said. “I don't know about Abu Muslem—though I'm certain Shahrazad was plotting treason with him. But it was a
man
they smuggled in and out of the harem—not this girl. It was your precious wife's lover. I saw them together, and I'm not the only one.”

“There was no lover! My daughter would never do that!” It was the old man I had noticed before. He must be the vizier, Shahrazad's father.

“There
was!”
the Khatun insisted. “I saw him with my own eyes and so did Soraya. Tell him, Soraya.”

Soraya blanched. I could almost see her weighing sides, calculating which one held the least danger. Then, “I never saw . . . a man, my lord,” she said.

“What!” The Khatun, livid, glowered at Soraya. “She's a liar. She's lying to save her neck, just like the cripple!”

“It seems to me,” the Sultan said slowly, “that they re putting their necks on the block. This one”—he looked at me—“came out of a safe hiding place to tell me why she sneaked out of my harem. That one”—he turned to Soraya—“risks
your
wrath, which is nearly as renowned as mine.”

The Sultan tapped his tented fingers, staring into the distance. Suddenly, he lunged toward me, took hold of my wrist, and pulled me roughly down to sit on the cushion beside him. “This . . . mermaid,” he said through clenched teeth, leaning in so close to me that I could smell the mint on his breath. “The one who sang to the king at night.” His voice was fierce, but quiet. I couldn't tell if anyone but me could hear. “How . . .” he began. “How did she think of the king . . . in her heart?”

I glanced quickly up at his face and saw there a look that took me by surprise. An oddly soft, vulnerable, hurting look. The look of a man who might cry out in his sleep at night, like a child. But then the stony mask slid back.

“Did she despise him,” the Sultan asked, “for making her sing for her life each night? Did she only
pretend
affection to save her own skin? Did she . . . loathe him for what he had done before, to his other wives? For his . . . sins?”

“No, my lord,” I said softly. “She loved him.”

“Do you
swear
it?” He gripped my wrist harder, until it hurt.

“Yes, my lord. She told me—” I stopped, corrected myself. “She told the mermaid with the broken fin. She said the king—the
merman
king, my lord—she said that he had a deep hurting inside him. She said that she wanted to soothe him. And when the mermaid with the broken fin . . .
questioned
how the queen could love him—because of the things you just said, my lord—the queen said, 'I'm not ashamed of loving him. There's nothing wrong with loving someone. Its hating—that's what's wrong.'”

I glanced at him again. Pain was flooding his eyes. A spasm shuddered across his countenance, and the stone facade broke. Crumbled. The muscles in his face were working, struggling for control. He bowed his head, covered his face with his hands, and I heard a sharp intake of breath that might have been a sob.

It was quiet in the room. No one looked at the Sultan, and we all avoided one another's eyes.

All but the Khatun. She was staring at her son, alarmed.

At last, he pulled his hands away from his face. He had composed it again into the mask.

“You still have no certain proof, either way,” his brother reminded him.

The Sultan nodded.

“Proof?” The Khatun said. “You don't believe your
own mother? Who gave birth to you? Who nursed you? Who protected you from assassins all your life? Who—”