Saladin Ahmed - Throne of the Crescent Moon

Dawoud shuddered at the bandit’s smile.

“ These villains,” the Falcon Prince continued, “ these monsters are before you every day. But unless it hisses and has fangs made of vermin, it is not worth fighting, eh? Pain-magic, death-magic—these cull power from torture and fear, yes? Starvation. Beatings. Making men live in little boxes. How is the Khalif different? Because he takes his time in sacrificing lives for his power? Because the workers’ boxes by the tannery are a little bit bigger?”

Adoulla made an annoyed noise. “Don’t pretend to be as thick-headed as that son-of-a-whore Khalif who you claim is a fool! The same servant of the Traitorous Angel that murdered your people is seeking that which you seek. He may be here already. And only my friends and I can stop him.”

“Well, you know of things I don’t, Uncle. Very well, do a little dance. But your spies—whoever they may be, and we shall have to discuss that one day—have not told you everything. The power of the Cobra Throne is terrible. But there is another way here. Just as the blood of a throne-coronated man’s heir can grant great but cruel powers, the same heir can, of his own power, pass on the mastery of the throne’s kind magics willingly. And those magics are just as great. The power to heal hundreds of lepers in a heartbeat’s time. To feed a thousand men with bread and fishes. Some sources say the throne can even raise the dead. The Heir need only sit upon the throne, clasp another man’s hand, and say that he wishes to pass on the throne’s powers. Now imagine what a man with this power in his hands, and an honorable and wise group of ministers at his side, might do for our city. He could—”

Dawoud could not listen to any more of this. “Even if what you say is true, this is madness. No doubt you have agents within the palace ready to act on your command. But while the guardsmen are fighting with your men, Orshado and his creature will make their move—and all quarrels between men will become meaningless.”

Adoulla ran a hand over his beard and stared at the bandit. He was actually weighing the Falcon Prince’s traitorous plot!

“Adoulla—” Dawoud started to say, but his old friend cut him off with an upraised hand.

“Dawoud Son-of-Wajeed is right,” Adoulla said. “This is the life of the world you play with here, Pharaad Az Hammaz. When I helped you dodge the watch the other day, you said you owed me. Now I ask—”

The big bandit let out a booming laugh. “Uncle, do you truly believe that I needed you to save me? I could have fled from those men were I asleep and one-legged! I saw you in that alley, knowing who you were, and decided to take a moment to test which way the wind blew with you.”

“The wind blows out of my ass, man! But unlike you I am not deluded enough to call it perfume. This plan of yours is mad, and you are risking this city you claim to love for it. I ask you to call it off.”

“I owe you a debt for your intentions if not your assistance, Uncle. But I’m not so foolish as to repay a dirham with a dinar! Besides, as your assistant will attest, I have repaid that debt already—or has this paragon of honesty withheld that fact from you?” He made a tsk-tsk-ing sound at the dervish, though Dawoud had no idea what the man was alluding to. “Well, Pride can pickle even an honest man’s tongue , so no matter. But even if what you say is true, Uncle—and one-half my heart thinks it so—there’s no damned-by-God way you’d be able to get into the throne room without my aid.”

“So it would seem that we have need of one another,” Dawoud heard his friend say. He opened his own mouth again to object but found that he had no better course of action to offer.

Adoulla turned to him, his bushy gray brows drawn down with his frown. “It is either this or we allow these men to bind or kill us. Need I remind you the price if we fail?”

“So we go to rescue the Khalif, only to help his greatest enemy,” Raseed interjected, finally breaking his silence.

Adoulla waved away the boy’s words. “I was never here to save the Khalif, boy. He can choke on bones for all I care! I am here to save my city and the world it sits in.”

“Well, then.” The Prince clapped his hands together and smiled pleasantly at Adoulla, as if they had agreed on a tea date. “It shall be so: you and yours may join us—for if this Orshado proves to be real, your powers may indeed be useful. But I warn you now that if you cross me, I will kill you all.”

The steel in Raseed’s gaze could cut a man. “And if you try to harm these people, thief, I will kill you .”

Around them Dawoud heard the clatter and grumble of the Prince’s men making their displeasure known. But the Falcon Prince himself seemed more offended than afraid.

“No one has harmed anyone yet, young man,” the Prince said. “We are merely conversing. But threatening to kill me just might be enough to bring you to harm, if you are not more careful.”

The dervish cast a long look at the armed men surrounding them. “I would duel you, then,” he said at last to the Prince, “in single combat before God the Judge of All Things, for the fates of—”

“ Duel me?” the Prince broke in. “You can’t be serious? What fireside tale did you crawl out of, boy?”

This from a man who calls himself the “Falcon Prince!” Dawoud thought.

“You refuse?” the boy fumed. “But a duel is the right of all–”

Thankfully, Adoulla calmed his protégé, rolling his eyes behind the boy’s back. He stepped between the two swordsmen and addressed the Falcon Prince. “Forgive him, Pharaad Az Hammaz, for he is young.”

“ ‘A genius of the sword, but an idiot of the street,’ eh, Uncle? I’d sensed as much.”

Adoulla barked a laugh, only belatedly seeming to realize that he was joining a stranger in insulting a friend. The ghul hunter lowered his head and then stepped toward Raseed, placing a hand on the boy’s shoulder and mumbling something apologetic.

“I am impressed by your eyes as you watch over these dangerous young ones, Uncle,” the Prince said. “As though they were your children, even though you bring them into battle. I understand it. Indeed all of these men you see with me are like my sons!” Dawoud was tired of the man’s big mouth, but his gravity as he spoke seemed sincere, if practiced.

A pock-marked man old enough to be the bandit’s father said dryly, “Well, Da-Da, if you ain’t gonna take Headknocker’s advice and kill these people, what’s the plan?”

“We have new allies to aid us, Ramzi, but our plans are unchanged. Speaking of which, I hear—though no doubt none of you can—our man calling me with a silent signal. I must go speak to him. Watch over our new friends with love, now, eh?”

Moving faster than a man ought to be able to move, the Prince disappeared through the room’s far exit. As soon as he did, the old tough called Ramzi stepped up to Dawoud and Adoulla and whispered menacingly, “You’d best learn to watch how you speak to our Prince!”

“Or what ?” Dawoud gave the man his best just try it scowl. “You’ll kill an old man for speaking his mind?” He was tired of being ordered about by thugs. If Dhamsawaat was trapped between men like the Khalif and men like this, perhaps Litaz was right. Perhaps, if they lived through this, they should leave this damned-by-God city.

The man gave him a long, hard look, but then his expression softened. “Let me tell you a story, outlander. Five years ago. I’m a one-copper-fals-from-starving rockbreaker. Never gave a God’s peace for Khalifs and Princes and all that. One night I come home from the teahouse to find my youngest girl Shahnta dying of the three-day greenfever. No medicine for it but the tonics made by the Khalif’s physicians, and you know how that goes. I pass two days and nights with my thoughts in the Lake of Flame, working to feed my half-starved unsick child when I should be home helpin’ the wife tend to the dyin’ one.