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  He turned into an alley and found his way impeded by two men, both broader and thicker than he, one half a cubit taller. They stood in postures of martial challenge. Kai felt no fear, only a cool inevitability. Politics was strange to him. This, on the other hand, was utterly familiar, and he breathed a fervent curse that these two fools had given the most feared part of himself an excuse to walk the night. His father the peacemaker receded from his heart, and in his place strode forth Malik, lord of war.

  Kai stepped sideways, still sufficiently in control to attempt an avoidance of hostilities. They bracketed him.

  “I am iTing,” said the larger man. “Sword master to Kaleb Al-Makur. And this is my son.”

  The younger threw his own cloak to the side. “I am Xsiam.”

  “What do you want?” Kai asked. Strange, he thought. Those words were spoken in a deeper, fuller voice than my own.

  iTing bared his teeth. They were black-stained, perhaps from the chewing of betel nut. “Are you a fool, to ask such a question? Ndiyavuya ukudibana nawe, Wakil.” It is good to finally meet you, Wakil.

  Kai thought to try more words, to cajole or to bribe, but already it was too late. That thing inside him was alive, and loose in the night, and it was pleased. He felt the corners of his mouth pull upwards into a cold smile. Malik’s smile.

  For just an instant iTing was taken aback, as if Kai’s response had been different from that expected, both in words and posture. But expected or not, things had gone too far, and the two swordsmen moved forward, steel in hand.

  Kai swept his cloak back with his left hand and drew his shamshir with his right. Despite their life of experience, neither of the Xhosa could have anticipated what next occurred, nor did they have time to adjust either thought or action.

  In a blur of sword feints and low sweeps, Kai floated so quickly from one position to the other that father and son were marginally hesitant in response, fearful of striking one another. The night was shadow and steel, grunts of effort, soft sliding footsteps and the sound of pierced flesh, and then … silence.

  The younger swordsman lay facedown in his own blood. For a moment iTing’s son braced his arms as if trying to perform a push-up, trembling with the effort to rise and rejoin the fray. He spasmed and relaxed into death.

  The elder Xhosa sank back against the wall, dimming eyes wide. “Where … did you learn that technique?” He coughed. Blood dribbled from his lower lip, staining his beard. “That is not Dar Kush!”

  Kai said nothing. He merely stood with shamshir at the ready, watching dispassionately, as if calculating how much blood a man had to lose before collapse.

  “Ndilahlekile.” I am lost. “We were wrong about you,” iTing gasped. “You are not a coward. You are a devil.”

  “A small one,” Kai granted. The corners of his mouth lifted, exposing teeth. “Salute the greater, in hell.” And he swung his sword in a great, scything arc.

  Joi, owner and manager of the Odalisque, was a middle-aged gentleman of Fulani extraction. He hunched over his desk, documenting the evening’s financial gain. Business was good: an informal Senate was in session, and such a congregation of respectable men invariably filled the coffers of brothels and hashish dens to overflowing.

  The Fulani were a pastoral West African folk who often formed insular religious communities if forced into the cities. Doubtless if his grandmother knew his current activities, she would tear her hair and wail. But men had physical as well as spiritual appetites, and what was the harm in providing a clean, respectable establishment wherein such hungers might be slaked?

  The crackle of breaking glass in the foyer pulled Joi’s attention from his self-congratulatory thoughts. Feeling more curiosity than concern, Joi climbed from behind his desk, thinking that perhaps a clutch of rowdy senators and statesmen had invaded his place of business.

  The Fulani did not recognize the handsome young man who stormed in. Judging by his garments, he knew the invader to be wealthy. A bloodstained leather sack swung at his belt, large enough to hold a dead cat, perhaps, or …

  “Kaleb!” the newcomer screamed. “Where are you?”

  Joi waved his hand nervously at a eunuch, who tried to halt the intruder. The guard took an evil-looking punch to the stomach and sank gagging to the ground. A second eunuch, this one a massive shaven-headed Roman, attacked the intruder next: a house guard was one of the few whites who could lay hands upon an African, but the sight remained jarring. The young noble seemed not even to move: their figures merged for a moment, and the eunuch smashed into the wall. Joi was thunderstruck. He had paid good Alexanders for the pair, and had seen them clear the room of a half dozen men. What the hell was this?

  “Kaleb!” the invader cried. He turned and locked eyes with Joi, and the Fulani quailed. The man was younger than Joi had initially thought: perhaps twenty-two or -three. Clean-shaven and slender, Joi might almost have thought him effeminate. At this moment, gazing into the fire blazing in those brown eyes, the invader seemed both more and less than human.

  The owner pointed a single quivering finger upstairs. The intruder stalked up the stairs, disappearing from sight. A muffled shout. Joi watched, aghast, as the last of his guards tumbled bonelessly down the steps, coming to rest at the bottom as devoid of consciousness as any opium smoker in the Odalisque’s back room.

  Kai slammed open two doors before finding the man he sought. He stormed into the third room in time to see Kaleb withdraw his glistening member from a small, thin Greek girl-child, black hair flagging her shoulders, her breasts still but promising buds on her narrow chest. “W-what is this?” Kaleb stammered.

  “‘Are you mad, to ask such a question?’” And with those borrowed words Kai tossed the bloody sack onto the floor. It bounced across the room before rolling to a halt just digits away from the curtained bed. “I found it in the gutter.”

  Kaleb eyed his sword, just within arm’s reach.

  “At your service,” said Kai, then added, “if you survive this night, I suggest replacing your manservant, who sold me your location for a silver.”

  For a few seconds Kaleb sought to hold Kai’s gaze defiantly, but at last was forced to look away.

  Kai studied the girl, who sat staring at him. No shame, no embarrassment. No feeling at all. Her olive skin gleamed with oil. The mingled scents of perfume and sex soured the air.

  “How old are you, child?” he asked.

  “Thirteen,” she murmured, eyes wide and staring. A baby.

  He turned back to Kaleb. “You will leave this place, this city, pederast. Tell those who would rush to war that the House of Kush will not kneel to such as you.”

  He tried to keep his attention on Kaleb, but his eyes flickered back to the nude girl. Her eyes were darker brown than those of most ghosts. He wondered if there wasn’t some African blood in her. She stared at him, unblinking. A kind of feral awareness smoldered deep within her eyes. She saw him. Knew who and what he was: just another man who would pay to use her and throw her aside.

  Kai’s sword flickered. Blood erupted from Kaleb’s nose, gushing down the young man’s cheeks and over his lips. Kaleb made a wet squealing sound, covering his spurting, sliced nostrils with one hand while he gripped the covers with the other.

  “If ever I see what remains of your face, I take the rest of it.”

  Two new guards appeared at the door, swords in hand. Stern and challenging at first, they quailed at the sight before them. Joi appeared behind them, peeking past their shoulders.

  “Sir!” said one. “What is the meaning of this?”

  “This man sought to murder me. My business here is concluded,” Kai said. His shamshir disappeared into its scabbard. He took a step away. Turned to leave, but found another painfully vivid image of the girl, passively accepting Kaleb’s ravishment.

  And tomorrow there would be another Kaleb. Or later tonight. And every day, for the rest of her childhood. Until she was a haggard young crone, with little resemblance to anything that had ever be
en human.

  When did you become the champion of hapless ghost? Malik laughed. You can’t save them all.

  No, Abu Ali said. But you can save this one.

  He glanced again at the girl, who was unable to meet his gaze. “What is her name?”

  “Tata,” said Joi.

  “And her price?”

  Seeing money, the owner abandoned thoughts of vengeance. “Two silvers—”

  Now she leered up at Kai, a faux-seductive grimace on her painted face. “No,” he said sharply, turning away from the child. “Her price.”

  “Sir,” the owner said. “I would expect to earn … over the course of her career …”

  Career? Allah preserve him. Before his marriage he had used pleasure slaves, but they were always women, not mere children. Always, he had felt that they enjoyed their … duties. Hadn’t they? “What did you pay for her?”

  “A half-Alexander, sir!”

  “You lie,” said Kai. A typical male slave could be purchased for a half. A child usually sold for a quarter. “Half that, I think. But no matter: Here is a half.” He threw the owner a thin gold rectangle. “She is mine.” He scribbled a note on a piece of cardboard and handed it to the proprietor. “Deliver her to my hotel within the hour, or I will be back.” He closed his eyes, forcing himself to relax. Then he turned to Tata and in a softer voice said, “I mean you no harm.”

  She looked away from him, little body shaking uncontrollably. For some reason that he couldn’t fathom, he noted that her shoulder was freckled.

  Then, trembling with rage and some other emotion he could not name, Kai turned and left.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  26 Ramadan A.H. 1294

  (Thursday, October 4, 1877)

  Fodjour paced a trough in the deck during the following day’s trip south along the Brown Nile. Babatunde seemed more concerned with the hazards of river travel than the possibility of reprisals. Of the three of them, Kai seemed most detached, a man devoid of emotion, staring out over the shallow waves without apparent pleasure, anticipation, or fear.

  “They say Kaleb’s sword master and his son were slain last night,” Fodjour ventured.

  “Bandits, no doubt,” answered Kai. He had not slept. His veins still burned with the previous evening’s fire. What had begun as righteous anger and then flared to bloodlust had cooled to a more manageable, but less definable quality. As if he were a machine that burned blood.

  He had thought he had made his peace with slavery, with the institution that had built his family’s fortune. After all, the servants of Dar Kush were well fed and decently housed, they were allowed their culture and even religious festivals. No overseer touched a white woman without risking dismissal and the lash. And Kai felt that he had done his part.

  But … what difference did the conditions of Dar Kush make, when it was absolutely inevitable that children like Tata would become the playthings of men like Kaleb? That slaves seeking freedom would endure torture and suffer death? In supporting the institution, was he not giving tacit approval for such murderous abuse? And what would he say of these things when, one terrible day, he stood before Allah Himself and attempted to justify his life?

  “There is much danger about these days,” said Babatunde, at their sides. “The same death that came for them might well come for you, young Kai.”

  The water stared back at Kai without expression or comment. “I think I might prefer death to life,” he said. “A Hashassin would be doing me a favor.”

  Tata huddled against the rail, watching her three strange benefactors with the eyes of a small, wounded animal. Kai studied at her without expression.

  “Sah,” she said. “Will you be wantin’ me tonight?”

  “Not tonight,” he said, not looking at her. “Not any night. You will work on my estate. It is hard work.”

  She reached out with one pale soft hand, and stroked his. “I don’t know things like that,” she said in voice nauseatingly younger than her years. “But I can make you happy.”

  He grabbed her shoulders, trying to think of something to say. Her eyes regarded him blankly, as if she were sedated. To Fodjour he said, “Take her below. See she’s fed.”

  His friend nodded. Kai leaned against the rail, watching the water pass beneath them.

  Babatunde joined him. “There are many kinds of slaves.”

  “As there are many roles in life. They say it is all part of Allah’s design.” Allah preserve me. How many times had he heard his uncle speak those very words?

  “How fortunate that Allah’s design so carefully fits the needs of men like Kaleb.”

  “If another man had said that, I might accuse him of blasphemy.”

  “If another man had mouthed your words, I might have accused him of myopia.” And then without another word Babatunde left his side.

  Kai watched the river as it healed with the steam-screw’s passing, and thought of the waters of the Songhai, so peaceful and deep, and the smiling dolphins frolicking within. They seemed more than a world away now. That had been another life, before blood money had changed hands, and while he could still imagine himself untouched by the corruption his father had tried so hard to keep from his younger son.

  Three days later, Kai turned the girl over to Maeve, Ghost Town’s eldest grandmother. “This is Tata,” he said. “She has no one.”

  Maeve examined the girl closely, noting the swarthy skin and dark hair, she ventured, “one of your orphans, Sidi?”

  The siege at the Mosque of the Fathers had merely begun the Aztec campaign. Thousands of men spent the next year beating them back, ultimately forcing the lords of Azteca into a fragile peace. The stream of corpses heading east from the frontier spawned a growing population of widows and orphans. Even at the beginning, Kai had known that would be the case.

  So at his behest, the Lion’s Blood trading company had funded two orphanages in Djibouti Harbor, with a total of four hundred beds. In addition to room and board, a stipend for each child guaranteed education and the acquisition of a suitable trade.

  Every day around Dar Kush, fifty or so of these children could be seen, working with the Kikuyu and the herds, or even mending fences and engaged in other forms of common work.

  So efficient were his eager young charges that acquisition of new slaves had dropped by sixty percent over those three years. Several of the orphans had shown an interest in studying the martial ways and had become students of staff and empty-handed combat. If they were of good family and carriage, a handful of them even spent a few hours a month waving wooden swords about.

  But these children were all black. The white waifs were absorbed into Ghost Town’s families. Maeve had made an understandable error in supposing that Tata might be a quarter black.

  “No, she will stay here,” he said simply. He was exhausted, had slept little for the past days, but felt a deep and gnawing compulsion to complete this business. “Find her lodging. Warn the men away from her. I want no messing. Ever. You understand?”

  Maeve was bent but unbroken, an aged weaver who had given great service to Dar Kush and was now pensioned with her own plot of land and vegetable garden in Ghost Town. She nodded her gray head. “Yes, Master Kai.”

  She took Tata’s unresisting hand. “Come, child,” she said, and led her away. Kai felt a bit of his burden lift. Maeve would break Tata in carefully, finding her a home, seeing that her first week’s duties were light. Doubtless she would learn where he had obtained Tata, but that would not work against the girl. Slaves had no choice of duties.

  It was what made them slaves.

  Kai slept for ten hours, and then began an effort to pick up the pieces of his home life. As always, he sought to stay above local and territorial politics while watching the circling vultures carefully.

  He knew he had left a Radama abuzz with rumor and speculation: the dead, decapitated swordsmen in the alley, a disfigured young noble, a violent intrusion into a pleasure den. Such things were the stuff of legend.


  And the worst part was: he hadn’t intended to maim Kaleb. Hadn’t wanted to. But iTing’s attempt on his life, and Tata’s naked vulnerability still plagued him, and he knew that if Kaleb was in front of him today, Ruh Riyȃh would run with blood.

  What had been done … what Kai had done in that brothel could not be undone.

  And both father and uncle were proud of him.

  But the days passed, and no riders arrived at the gate, and the heliographs flashed not with demands that New Djibouti’s youngest Wakil be brought to justice. In time, he began to relax.

  As the days passed, Cetshwayo’s words, and thoughts of Nandi remained with him. Why had she touched him so deeply? He had certainly been no virgin, and in truth she had not actually accepted him into her body. But there had been something both proud and yearning about the Zulu princess. There was danger here … but also opportunity.

  The subject had to be broached with his First, and accordingly he finally approached Lamiya.

  A true child of the Twin Thrones, she would understand. Lamiya had been raised from birth to know that she would likely share her husband with other wives: wives chosen for political or financial reasons, widows taken under protection, perhaps even fertile women chosen specifically to bear heirs.

  On the other hand, Kai was obliged to consider her wishes in this most delicate of decisions. If she rejected the idea of Kai’s marriage to Nandi, regardless of the stress it might cause with the Zulus, Kai was honor-bound to demur.

  Lamiya did not know the full story of the tragedy at the mosque. All she needed to know was that there was political value in unity with the volatile Zulus.

  Fingers folded carefully in her lap, Lamiya said, “Kai, in these matters you must be careful to observe all protocol and procedure.”

  “Agreed,” he replied. “I wish I had a week to spend reading Zulu wedding-custom scrolls.”

  She smiled. “It’s not as bad as that. In truth, your father had worked out all of the most important details years ago. Didn’t you know that?”

  “Well, yes.” His mind raced. Yes, it was almost certainly true that Abu Ali and Cetshwayo had filed initial wedding contracts when Kai was no more than seven or eight. No wonder his father had been impatient for him to cease his whoring and brawling! There had been a contract to fulfill, two lives to meld into a single shining destiny.