Saladin Ahmed - Throne of the Crescent Moon

The minister scowled and said nothing, but the Prince sketched a half-bow to Dawoud and his friends. He put one of his massive hands on Adoulla’s shoulder. “What are the chances, Uncle, that we should meet again like this?” the bandit asked. “That, in surveying the crooked gatekeepers of the palace, my men should see your bright white kaftan cutting through the crowd? And with such a strange assortment of friends about you? ‘Az,’ I said to myself, ‘What are the chances? There must be something to this. Let’s have a talk with the Doctor and find out what that something is.’ ”

One of the men wearing the falcon livery—a burly fellow with only one ear—spoke up. “Aye, sire, there be little enough chance of it. Little enough chance that it’s a-makin’ me suspicious. Something here be smelling of the Khalif’s shitty finger, and this ain’t a day for surprises. All of your work, sire, for all of them years, leadin’ to today. They’ve already harmed one of ours.” He gestured at the still half-choking guardsman. “Ask me, the only safe thing now would be to kill ’em.” The matter-of-factness in the man’s voice chilled Dawoud.

For a long, moustache-stroking moment, the Falcon Prince seemed to consider his lieutenant’s suggestion. But the Prince’s brown face split in a broad smile as he spoke. “No. No, Headknocker, that would be a dreadfully poor repayment to the Doctor here, who, mere days ago, nobly misdirected the watch to save my hide. And it would be a rotten foundation for our new order. Besides, this man earned his own throttling. Striking an unarmed girl like that!” The Prince tsk-tsked at the big guardsman even as he helped the man to his feet.

Misdirected? What is he talking about? Dawoud wondered. He could not imagine his old friend had become an agent of the Falcon Prince without his knowing it. And though he’d half expect Adoulla’s assistant to leap at the chance to confront the most wanted criminal in the city, the boy was strangely still—as if paralyzed by some internal anguish.

“I’m afraid, however,” the Prince continued, “that you are all my prisoners. And if you are agents of the new Khalif, that no-good son of a half-good man, I must warn you: I am not foolish enough to underestimate you. Even you, girl,” he said, turning to Zamia and eyeing her rudely from head to toe, “are perhaps more than you seem, eh?” The Prince turned back to Adoulla. “So why are you here?”

What do we do now? Dawoud found himself wondering again. What to tell, and what not to?

“We are here,” Adoulla said, “because we have read the same scroll as you. Because we know, as you do, that the Throne of the Crescent Moon was once the Cobra Throne.”

Well, that decides that .

The Falcon Prince’s dark eyes went wide. “Remarkable. I am not often surprised, Uncle, but you have managed to surprise me. Yet this knowledge is all the more reason that I must detain you until this business is done with.” The bandit spread his empty hands before him and grimaced apologetically.

Adoulla’s look was dark enough that even the imperturbable Prince took a step back. “Pharaad Az Hammaz, listen to me. We are not the only ones who know of the throne’s powers. You have heard the people speak of me and of the dangers I have saved them from over the decades. I tell you now that there is another after the throne’s power. Another who will strike the palace on this shortest day of the year. A man who is both more and less than a man. A man whose powers are greater and crueler than any of the magi and ghul-makers I have ever faced. He is called Orshado, and if he and his creatures beat you to the throne, I swear before God that the bat-winged shadow of the Traitorous Angel shall fall over all of us for all our days, and for all days to come.”

For a moment, the Prince looked genuinely concerned. But the smile swiftly returned. “The Traitorous Angel, eh, Uncle? I am sorry, but I have little time for such grandiose mysteries! I am a foe of the traitorous man! Of the traitorous Khalif!”

“And are you not troubled by the strange deaths of your men and of the beggars you have sworn to protect?” Adoulla asked.

Suddenly the Prince’s sword was out of its scabbard. “What had you to do with that, old man? If you had a hand in those foul murders, we will not go easy on you.”

“I swear before God that I did not. In fact, we seek to slay the foul beings who did.”

The master thief stared hard at Adoulla then sheathed his sword. “Well, then, Uncle, we must speak.” He looked around the windowless house cautiously. “But not here. You and your group will accompany us.”

The Prince’s men marched them down the stairway in the center of the room. They entered a stone cellar, and here the long-faced minister again stepped to the center of the room. The man produced a thin wand from his sleeve and traced a series of symbols in the dust on the floor. Dawoud recognized magic at work, and he was only half-surprised when, without a sound, the seemingly solid stone of the floor slid open to reveal a tunnel that sloped sharply downward. The minister then said a familiar-seeming farewell to the Prince and went back up the stairs, two of the guardsmen following.

Dawoud and his friends were, in turn, marched wordlessly down through the tunnel, which quickly leveled off. A few minutes later they found themselves in a chamber the size of a small tavern’s greeting room, with another tunnel leading out of its opposite end. The Prince’s men produced clean-burning torches—the expensive sort treated by alkhemists—and took up positions along the walls.

“Here our words will not be heard by any ears above,” the Prince said, bringing the group to a halt at last. “We shall wait here for word from my men in the palace. And you, Uncle, will tell me a story.”

As they waited for some signal from the Prince’s agents, Adoulla and Litaz told the bandit the little they had learned of Mouw Awa and Orshado. Dawoud stayed to the back of the group with Zamia and a still strangely silent Raseed, and he did not catch all of their urgent-sounding words, but he heard his wife ask, “Do you understand what a true servant of the Traitorous Angel could do with the same power you seek?”

He had never been able to effect the shifts in manner that Litaz could—from steel to honey and back again, as the occasion called for it. In this strange life they shared, she tended to do the talking unless what was called for was to frighten someone with dire prognostications. In those cases, Dawoud would screw his face up into an ominous scowl and roll his eyes back

“You’ll need our help,” Adoulla said finally. “Hunting ghuls is not your province, Pharaad Az Hammaz.”

Figuring that the pleading and sugar talk was done, Dawoud stepped to the front of the group. The Prince spared him a glance, but spoke to Adoulla. “You speak to me of ghuls, Uncle. But truth be told, such things are no scarier than watching your children die slowly on a dirty pallet from rat bites. No more frightening than having to smother your old Da-Da in his sleep to end the pain of a disease that could be cured, if only you had the coin. No worse than having your hand chopped off for filching a loaf of bread because the hunger was making you stark raving mad.”

“Your theatrics are not—” Dawoud began.

“Not theatrics!” the big man boomed. “The truth! Life in Dhamsawaat! I could take you to meet the boy right now! Ten years old and he has one hand. The wound would have killed him, had my people not treated it. The stinking watchmen didn’t even let him keep the heel of bread!”

A vicious gleam lit the man’s ebonwood eyes. “It took some work to find the names of the watchmen that did it, but find them, we did.”