Stephen Hunt - Jack Cloudie

‘Not tonight,’ said the diary keeper, glancing up from the desk to look down the corridor that led to the stairs up to the grand marshal’s offices.

‘Please,’ said Boulous, ‘just ten minutes with the old man. You know me, Jizan, and you know the favours I have done you in the past.’

‘Indeed I do,’ said the diary keeper. ‘And my memory is not so short that I have forgotten their existence over the last hour.’

‘What do you mean?’ demanded Boulous.

‘I mean I already have officials of the guardsmen furious at me for allowing you two an unscheduled appointment earlier this evening; that was his last slot of the night. You can go away now.’

Boulous felt a sinking feeling in his gut. ‘We did not see the grand marshal earlier.’

The diary keeper shrugged his shoulders. ‘It is time for final prayers. It is time for food, and there is a campaign that must be planned from scratch. You have heard that there is to be all-out war, haven’t you? Come back tomorrow Boulous Ibn Uddin and stop wasting my time.’

But Omar had already pushed past the two sentries on either side of the corridor and was sprinting towards the spiral stairs at the other end. The diary keeper shouted for reinforcements from the guardroom down the corridor. Boulous threw caution to the wind and ran after the sprinting sentries, their ceremonial knives jingling on their belts as they pursued Omar.

Boulous gasped as he crossed the threshold. The grand marshal’s frail body had been stabbed through the chest with his own scimitar, pinned vertically against a bloodstained tapestry between two firing slits in the wall. He looked like an insect stolen by a collector, pinned to the fabric for display. Omar had stumbled over two dead guards sprawled across the floor, their throats cut, and the two pursuing sentries had seized the young guardsman from behind even as he took in the horror of the slaughter.

Boulous felt the cold metal of the diary keeper’s pistol jamming into his neck before he could even turn around. ‘What have you done, Boulous, and why in heaven’s hundred names did you come back here? You should have run, you two treacherous devils. You should have run.’

Boulous watched hopelessly as Omar struggled in the grip of the two burly guardsmen as they laid into him. ‘Yes, I believe we should have.’

Nuance and subtlety. Omar had barely understood how the game inside the Jahan was played. But the grand vizier does .

Omar could feel the blood running down his face as he regained consciousness. The painful swelling around his eyes blurred the sight of Boulous sprinkling him with dirty water from a puddle. Then he remembered the questions being fired at him, over and over again. Why did you kill the grand marshal? Who paid you to join the guardsmen? Which satrapy was he working for, which client state within the empire? Had the grand marshal of the order accused Omar of the crime of murdering one of the grand vizier’s servants, before Omar killed him to silence the old man? Had he and Boulous been plotting treachery with the grand marshal? Had they been trying to force Shadisa to put poison in the grand vizier’s food, or were they trying to assassinate the Caliph Eternal through the grand vizier’s office? Why had Omar killed the slave girl? When had he murdered her? Where was Farris Uddin hiding?

No sleep; lights, being drowned over and over again in a foul-smelling cistern. At least the physical pain distracted him from thinking of Shadisa’s blood-soaked clothes being destroyed by Salwa, of what her last few minutes must have been like at the dog’s murdering hands. He tried not to sob at the thought. Omar had been kept on his own for what seemed like weeks, but here he was — back with Boulous at last. They would escape together, and he would have his revenge on that savage Salwa and his dark-hearted master, the wretched grand vizier. Revenge, that was all the last son of Barir had been left as his legacy. Fate had taken Shadisa from him as a reminder of that.

‘It’s raining,’ spluttered Omar, watching rivulets running down the firing slit into their prison cell, darkness and a lashing wind outside.

‘This is not the rain season, it is an omen,’ said Boulous.

‘Good or bad?’ asked Omar, sitting up and feeling the bite of his empty stomach, before trying to rub the agony out of his temples. ‘What a headache.’

‘It is the drugs they injected into your neck,’ said Boulous.

‘Truth drugs?’

‘The sort that will make you agree with anything your interrogators suggest to you,’ said Boulous.

‘I will not have told them anything. My mind is too strong for them.’

‘It hardly matters,’ said Boulous. ‘The pain was to break us, to make us tell them what we knew; and all they found out was that we knew nothing. They are not interested in the truth now, if they ever were. Some of the ones questioning us were from the Sect of Razat.’

‘I did not murder the grand marshal,’ insisted Omar, as if it was the retainer he had to convince.

‘Nor I,’ said Boulous. ‘There are assassins that are said to serve the Caliph Eternal. It is whispered that their flesh has been changed by the womb mages so they can alter the features of their bodies and faces at will. Such creatures murdered the grand marshal, although I have no doubt it is traces of your blood the womb mages will have found on the sword sticking out of the grand marshal’s chest.’

Omar moaned in despair. ‘Immed Zahharl, this is his doing.’

‘Now he has everything he wants,’ said Boulous. ‘A war to consolidate his hold on the empire, the whiff of booty and glory to buy the loyalty of the last of the admirals and generals who opposed him, and for the coup de grace, the grand marshal cut to pieces and unable to oppose his ambitions.’

‘Not quite everything, jahani,’ said a voice through the bars of their prison cell.

Omar threw his aching body towards the door in fury. ‘Salwa, you filthy murdering cur!’

The man indicated the insignia on his shiny new guardsman’s uniform in amusement. ‘You are still a guardsman, at least in name. Do you have no salute for your order’s new grand marshal?’

‘Come through this door and I’ll carve you up like you did Shadisa!’

Salwa smiled sadly. ‘I did you a favour, guardsman. The silly girl’s beauty would have faded in the end and where would your lusts have wandered then? I’ve saved you the heartache of growing apart as she slowly became a crone, the expense of acquiring and feeding younger wives.’

Omar gripped the bars on the door so tight his knuckles went white. ‘I will repay your favour in kind, you filthy murdering dog.’

‘We must all prove our allegiance,’ said Salwa. ‘You have proven where your loyalties lie. You have chosen the past.’

‘How many men did you murder from Haffa?’ demanded Omar.

‘Heretics,’ said Salwa. ‘They were declared without Cent. I made their end painless. A silk rope to twist around their necks. They lost consciousness long before they died. I am not a cruel man, Omar Barir. My nature is merciful. I did not invent the rules of the game in the palace, but even you must admit I play them better than you. You cannot bleat about it after you have lost.’

‘You have no honour,’ said Boulous.

‘Perhaps I can afford none.’ There was a rattle at the lock as the cell door was opened. ‘You know what the laws of the imperial guardsmen demand from traitors to the order?’

‘Tied to a pair of draks,’ said Boulous, ‘and torn apart.’

‘One drak for your hands, one drak for your legs,’ said Salwa. There were six men waiting in the passage for them with rifles. Not guardsmen, but marines in the new black and silver uniforms of the Imperial Aerial Squadron.