Diana Pho - Steampunk World

“Walk, Bina,” said her sister. So she did.

There was, there was not…. the older man read, his finger tracing the black stitching of ink on the yellowed page. “That is to say that this story is only true if Allah wills it. All tales begin this way.”

The young boy next to him fidgeted in the squeaking caned chair, his body given to the fits and hesitations of all five-year olds. The creaking of the chair betrayed his impatience; his delicate fingers touched the corners of the thick pages, eager for the adventure promised within the book. He did not care for the words, just the story. To Allah and five-year olds, all stories were true.

The student had left, and Tariq’s modest earnings for today’s lesson sat on the table in a stump of silver coins. Enough for some lamb from that Egyptian butcher, and green olives, tomatoes, and pita from the Palestinian grocer. Maybe with the remaining akçes, a glass of Greek Retsina wine from a Sherbet House where the Europeans drank.

The akçes provided nowhere near enough for anything else. Barely enough for a few days of oil or wood to warm those nights when Russia’s winter swept in from across the Black Sea. To think he’d arrived from Damascus with enough literature to wallpaper his Constantinople apartment with book spines. Tonight, he’d see far more of the water-stained walls than he cared to.

Tariq flung open the window and welcomed in the acrid smell of burning coal and the wash of brine from the Marmara. Noise flooded in as well, the shopkeepers and stall owners fought in decibels for clients while above the awning-covered streets and alleys of the Grand Bazaar puttered the air dhows. Their cypress wood prows and pine decks spoke of their fishing days, but their air bladders promised more of this new era, their flanks festooned in draping silks, or painted with oriental tigers and long-legged cranes, or finned with colorful side-sails like giant fish.

“Aziz,” Tariq cried to the shop beneath his apartment, the one with blue cloth for awning.

A man with a face dotted by ash-raised scars of the Nubian tribes and a berry-stained fez waved up at him. “More books? I’ll send the boy up,” the Nubian said, laughing. “But no more sciences, ah? People want adventure and poetry, my friend.”

Tariq frowned, but nodded before closing the window and turning back to his shelves. He was in short supply of those already. Perhaps the local madrassas would take his science books for their students, he thought, and then dispelled the notion. If they realized who he was, who his father had been, he’d be driven out of Constantinople the way they’d driven his father from Damascus.

There was a knock at the door. Tariq knew Aziz, knew he’d only offer a couple of silver kuruŞ for rare volumes at best. That would be enough to continue treading water for a few weeks more. He opened the door.

The man waiting there did not work for the Nubian. He reached no higher than five-and-a-half-feet in height, his frame wiry and corded with muscles, a fact that not even his double-breasted frock coat and striped morning pants could hide. He removed his top hat, dislodging not one strand of black hair. His equally black eyes glittered over the gold frame of his spectacles. The spectacles had come from a madcap’s mind, the red lenses flipped up on a pivot near the arms, revealing the black lenses beneath… like the glass wings of a butterfly.

Tariq instantly distrusted the man. Never mind he felt underdressed in his homespun white cotton shirt and baggy trousers, it was the Steamkraft that unsettled him. Steamkraft, the Prussian’s marriage of the assembly line to madcap inventions, had become more than fashionable within the Ottoman Empire. As Prussia’s closest allies, the sultans turned what had been an evolution of assembly line warfare towards the Islamic arts of engineering and architecture. The Ottoman twilight became a new golden age, with Constantinople its brass pearl. Her newest minarets glittered with metal lace shells and copper inlay, the gears beneath turning under cascading water that transformed the towers into gigantic water clocks.

“Are you the bookseller?” the visitor asked in the perfect Arabic of the Koran in a region still muddied with regional dialects.

“Who asks?”

The man smiled deeply with white teeth. “Raakin, a humble servant.”

“You dress like no servant I know,” Tariq responded, glancing at the man’s expensive tastes in clothes. The silk shirt and bowtie alone was worth a year of Tariq’s time.

“My master is generous,” Raakin replied, the smile never wavering, “to anyone who demonstrates purpose.” He pulled a purse of coins from his breast pocket and tossed it up once to catch it. It jingled dully with a heavy weight, heavier than silver, heavy with the weight of fortune’s promises. “My master wishes to buy all your books.”

Why did I let him in? Tariq wondered, a self-admonishing thought that refused to let go, but he knew why. With the gold lira in Raakin’s purse, Tariq could live very extravagantly for a few short years or in modest comfort for decades.

It would serve his father right for burdening him like this. The books served only to provide his walls with color and remind him what his father had sacrificed—thrown away. They were all that remained of his family’s exodus from Damascus when they’d left behind a fortune in jade statues from China, ivory tusk-carvings from India, Mother-of-Pearl covered tables from Cairo, Persian rugs from Baghdad. All for a fortune in words, hardly worth a handful of akçes.

Now, however, Raakin stared at the walls of Tariq’s apartment, his face creased in displeasure and the uncertainty growing in Tariq’s breast.

“Where are all the books?” Raakin asked. “I heard you possessed a formidable library.” He motioned around him. “Old men have more teeth than this.”

Tariq tried not to bristle at the comment. “I make little money teaching,” he explained. The man nodded and smiled in a way that made Tariq feel as though he’d been trapped in the cage with a tiger.

“Where is the Book of ‘Abd-Es-Samad?”

Tariq’s voice hitched in his chest. “Leave.”

“You did not sell it, did you?” Raakin asked. “That would be unfortunate.”

“Leave!” Tariq managed more forcefully, which seemed to amuse the visitor.

“Do you know that my employer told me to get the book by any means necessary?” he said, slowly walking past a row of books, his fingers tapping their edges. “I convinced him that gold silences tongues more easily than a knife across the throat. Will you make a liar out of me?”

Tariq darted toward the door, but a click of a hammer and a soft voice that said “No,” stopped him. The man held a large tri-barreled flintlock pistol, the sides adorned with etched silver plaques, the barrel wrought iron. He motioned Tariq to step away from the door.

“Dog,” Tariq muttered, obeying.

The visitor laughed sharply. “The book,” he said.

“The Gunpowder Alchemists leave no survivors, yes?” Tariq said.

“True,” Raakin said, “but we can be merciful. A tincture of Belladonna and other plants to give you a peaceful death, or I leave you in agony for days with corrosive shot until you beg me to end your life.” He raised his flintlock.

Tariq swallowed once, trying to whet his throat, but to no avail. He stepped to a row of books and pushed them aside. He reached into the gap between the shelf and the wall, and pulled out a bundle wrapped in dusty wool. A string wrapped it neatly together.