Saladin Ahmed - Throne of the Crescent Moon

The inn where they were meeting Litaz’s contact was in the Round City, the innermost part of Dhamsawaat. A sixty-foot wall of massive, sun-dried bricks surrounded the Round City, with great gates of iron in its northern and southern sections. The pair joined a line of people making their way through the North Inner Gate and, in a short time, reached the gate itself. As they walked through, Litaz smiled and nodded at one of the watchmen on duty. The man eyed Raseed’s habit and sword but said nothing.

As soon as they passed through the gate they turned from the huge gray paving stones of the Mainway. Litaz led the way confidently and Raseed followed. They rounded a corner and stepped onto Goldsmith’s Row, a paved lane that was narrower than the Mainway but still quite broad. Leaving behind the press of pedestrians and shouting porters already building up, the pair joined a traffic flow that was decidedly quieter and less crowded.

Litaz bit her lower lip and mumbled to herself, obviously deep in thought. So Raseed remained silent and took in his surroundings. He had been in Dhamsawaat for nearly two years now, but he’d never been down Goldsmith’s Row. He looked about with interest.

Tidy storefronts and splendid houses lined the street here, the crude, open, stone windows of the Scholars’ Quarter replaced by fine sandalwood screens and, in the more opulent shops, leaded glass. Though one could walk here from the Scholars’ Quarter in less than an hour, the two neighborhoods were a world apart.

Here were the homes and shops of Abassen’s wealthiest merchants and most distinguished craftsmen—elite importers and perfumers, gemcutters and jewelers, bookbinders and glassblowers. Here also, in decadently furnished mansions, lived the courtiers and viziers and their families—those who did not live at the palace itself. Raseed marveled at how few people there were, and what little noise they made.

No doubt many of them were home preparing meals for the Feast of Providence, which was this evening. But there was more to it than that, Raseed thought. This was the sort of place where one could be alone with one’s meditations. The streets of the Scholars’ Quarter were never this quiet, or this empty, or this clean. Raseed envied the residents the solemnity of their surroundings. No great stinking puddles. No loud donkey-whipping. No hashi smoke drifting in the window. No muttering madmen. Would that I had a place like this to meditate and train. He tried to smother this unacceptable covetousness. O Believer! Worship God wherever fate finds thee—whether prison, prairie, or Prayersday table , the Heavenly Chapters say.

His service with the Doctor did not bring him into contact with the overfed inhabitants of the Round City. It was probably just as well. The denizens of the Doctor’s home quarter disgusted Raseed with their degeneracy and lewdness. But while the hashi-smokers and whores of the Scholars’ Quarter were foul, the men and women here were perhaps even more foul. Here was wealth, as much wealth as anywhere in the Crescent Moon Kingdoms. Here was every opportunity for virtue and learning, with none of the dire incitements to vice that poverty brought. But the Doctor claimed that the people of Goldsmith’s Row ignored such opportunity, using their incalculable riches only to devise new and more luxuriant vices.

Partner , he had called Raseed the other night. But Raseed was unworthy. He’d said nothing to the Doctor or the others about his encounter with Pharaad Az Hammaz. About taking the stolen goods the thief had given him. He hadn’t gone so far as to utter a falsehood—when he’d returned to the Soo couple’s shop and Litaz had asked after his dusty silks and disheveled appearance, he’d put off her questions, and she hadn’t pressed him. The wrongness of it burned his soul, like a foretaste of the Lake of Flame.

Partner . Again he turned the word over in his mind. Unworthy though he was to speak prayers to God, he prayed now that the Doctor was safe. There was no telling when that Mouw Awa creature would strike again.

“Raseed?” Litaz’s voice intruded on his thoughts.

“Yes, Auntie?” He scanned the thin crowd about them as he answered.

“Zamia Banu Laith Badawi—she is interested in you. Do you see this? Do you understand how careful you must be with this?”

He felt as if she had slapped him. Without meaning to, he stopped walking. He closed his hand around his swordhilt, said nothing, and started walking again.

Litaz’s heart-shaped face split in a patronizing smile as she walked beside him. “And you have taken an interest in her, too. Anyone with eyes can see that plainly enough,” she said, sounding amused.

He began to dispute the alkhemist’s words but found that he could not quite do so without speaking a falsehood, which was forbidden by the Traditions of the Order. He tried to find something to say. But all that he could come up with were questions. “With most humble apologies, Auntie, you should not say such things,” he said at last.

“She’s a Badawi, Raseed. Even as she is fixed on revenge, she will be thinking about keeping her band from dying out.” Litaz’s smile deepened. It was the smile of one who knew more than Raseed did about certain matters, and he found that it upset him. He kept walking, keeping his gaze straight ahead, hoping to force an end to the conversation.

But Litaz continued. “It’s all right, you know. What you feel when you look at her. You’ve been holding a sword so long that you’ve known little else. But there is nothing wrong with what you feel when you look at her.”

The Soo people had a frankness in speaking of things inappropriate—it was not surprising that the Doctor was so comfortable among them. Raseed felt his face flush, and he bit off his words. “You speak of such things too openly!” he said. And surely none could blame him if he was more curt than one ought to be with an elder.

But if annoyance was edging into his voice, it was annoyance with himself as much as anything. He wanted to be comforted, despicably weak as he was. He wanted to reach out to Litaz and talk to her about these things. But that was simply unacceptable. He fell silent.

She smiled gently. “If you want to talk, young man, I swear before God that I’ll say not a word to anyone. Not even to Adoulla or my husband.”

They moved on, turning off of Goldsmith’s Row to enter a neat but narrow cobblestone alleyway. Something in his soul clenched and then relaxed. He felt the words come without his bidding them.

“I don’t have any secrets , Auntie. It is just that… she has been chosen by the Angels themselves! I wish that… It… it is so… difficult sometimes. When I went to seek the crimson quicksilver I—”

“You would do best to answer quickly, harlot, and truthfully!” The harsh voice came to Raseed’s ears at the same time that the speaker—a robed man with a whip—came into his field of vision. The man was lean and gray-haired, and two big men with short, thin clubs stood with him. These other two might have been twins—both young, huge, and hook-nosed. All three men were clean-shaven and wore plain turbans and heavy robes of brown sackcloth belted with coarse rope. They had a girl trapped in the alley.

The Humble Students! Wandering mendicants that scoured wickedness from the streets and taverns of the Crescent Moon Kingdoms. Raseed felt even worse than he had a moment before. He glanced at Litaz. Her smile had twisted into a hard line; she looked more the old warrior than the kind grandmother now.

The Humble Students were charged with chastising those who needed to be chastised, helping men and women to walk the path of God. But Raseed had learned that some Humble Students did this more out of greed or cruelty than righteousness. Praised in Rughal-ba, mocked in the Soo Republic, in Dhamsawaat the Students were few in number—tolerated by the Khalifs, disliked by the people.