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Chapter Eleven

The Cyborg Aisha had slain knew by training as well as instinct how to use the senses she fumbled even now to control. No point regretting it. She ghosted up the final set of switchbacks toward the Bashan Pass, counting on truenight darkness and her earth-colored clothes to keep non-Sauron eyes from seeing her. There were a few travellers, even this late. They were plain to her view, fuzzy outline shapes of body heat against the stone-cold earth. Once a patrol heading west on horseback, leading pack-muskylopes. She hid behind a tall tilted slab of rock, motionless as the soldiers halted. One stood in his stirrups.

"Anything?" his commander called.

"Movement. Shall I take a look?"

"No, it's a rock-dassie or drillbit," the officer said after a moment. "We've a long way to Fort Gilead. Trek."

They cantered off. The next was a train of Bactrian camels burbling complaint as tired drovers whacked them on toward the valley to the east. They looked at her incuriously as she trotted past, dodging the bales of wool strapped to the camels' pack-saddles. Then she was at the saddle of the pass, higher even than the steppe; she could feel her heart and lungs adjust smoothly, breathing deeper and pumping harder.

She climbed from the broader modern road to the old disused track higher up the slope. There was no warmth there, not even reflected UV, with Cat's Eye down. Her nightvision picked out just enough to keep her feet from stumbling as she worked her way up to the old bunker—but there was a slight glow from the narrow slit windows and the buckled splinters of the door.

Stealthily Aisha crept toward the bunker. The approaches and the half-ruined stonework offered sturdy places for hands and feet: she didn't want to leave a blood trail on the rocks for men or beasts, nor to take the pathway. She took a deep breath and waited, utterly motionless, surveying the place with all her senses. From within a cracked wall came the sense of warmth. Well enough, but it could be a beast, or beasts. She flared her nostrils. Human scent, unmistakable, but without the spoor of rut. Not youngsters crept off together, then. She sank to the ground and crept closer, peering from the top of a boulder through the door. Four people: she counted the invisible sources of heat.

Aisha edged closer . . . no, that handhold looked as if it would crumble . . . three points anchored . . . lever the leg over now, quietly, you fat musky!

The pulse in her temples distracted her, so she ignored it, focusing on the heat, the voices up ahead. By instinct, she crept up the rocks, picking a vantage-point, where she could listen and watch and, if the time came, when the time came, intervene. One long leap away from the old trapdoor that gaped in the flat roof.

"What do they say?" The voice bore the accent of her tribe, but weighted with heavy sarcasm. "Bring the hakim along, you said; one hakim can understand the words of another." A hooded lantern flared, the reflected glow blinding to her night-adapted eyes for a second.

Aisha heard whispered curses and a scrabbling through pages. "They're in Bandarit, even to the letters. Allah wither them! No, keep the lantern covered, fatherless one!"

"Then we get someone to read them," came a third voice. Kemal. "The fool slut who helped us gain them. Fetch her. She can refuse us nothing now."

"I'll go, lord," said a voice she recognized at once. Ihsan, Kemal's adana.

Aisha shifted into shadow as one of the nomads slipped from the bunker. She would know his scent again, if anyone would believe her.

Who was the woman? Sannie? Somehow, that made sense. She wanted Barak, and she wanted him to be kapetein. Seize the records before someone else did, and hide them. If nothing in them hurt Barak, betray Kemal and let them be "found." Or find them yourself and reap the harvest of gratitude that might follow and be wife to the kapetein—and healer of the rift between Edenite and Bandari, if Sannie cared for that.

But if the medical records held . . . oh, Aisha did not know what, taints in the blood, the threat of disease, the nomads had what they could not read and would probably destroy. And the files would hold no dangers for Barak.

It was all dishonor, greater than her own in leaving her father's corpse unburied.

Grimly, Aisha shook her head. If they planned hunts as badly as they planned this, they would have starved to death. The wind blew and she sheltered against the rock as the night passed. How long, dammit, how long would the Judge take to come or Sannie to betray herself? She had wintered on the steppe, and the Eden Valley's weather was gentle in comparison; but she didn't think she could wait that long before she must attack.

"Douse that flame! Someone's coming!"

Darkness.

Aisha didn't think Barak or the Judge would make the noise she heard, a confident crunch, crunch, crunch of boots on rock. The breathing was of a middle-aged man who found the going rough. Obviously, someone did not fear disclosure. Other boot steps followed, several men. She rose, squinting to reduce the risk of her reflective Sauron eyes showing in the darkness. Now she knew she must see or die, of curiosity if nothing worse.

A new light flashed into the darkness, deliberately glinting on the long double barrel of a Bandari pistol. "You've got the medical records? Hand them over."

The light flared up as the cover was withdrawn from the lantern, and Aisha flattened herself. She was above the mens' heads, unlikely to be seen if she did not move or speak. The man who spoke had a tuft of chin-beard shot with gray.

Hans fan Haller? Had he set the spies?

"What do you know of this, Bandari?" Kemal spat.

Hans bar Rhodevick fan Haller laughed. "More than you, hotnot." Hands clapped to sword-hilts at the insult, then paused uncertainly. The men behind the fan Haller chief carried bows, except for two with wide-muzzled flintlock shotguns. Those pointed into the bunker, and it took little imagination to see what their buckshot would do in that enclosed space.

"D'you think I haven't tried to get a look at those records?" Hans bar Rhodevick said. "To know who among us are Sauron spawn, to what degree—and what the real parentage of our would-be kapetein Barak is. He's too strong and fast, curse him—too strong and fast to have only his dam's Sauron strain. Karl bar Edgar wouldn't go along, curse him.

"So I had Sannie watched; she could get in there, say she was thinking of a marriage and needed access to the files, make an impression of the key. Her father's a locksmith. Should have known she'd do something stupid like bring them to you. These women . . . what we get for letting them think they run things . . . even our esteemed Judge."

Incongruously, Kemal laughed. "You'd shoot a guest?"

"I'd say you outwore your welcome when you turned spy. So I'll take these, and you can just leave quietly. Or you can have a fight and be known as the men who turned on their hosts. The dead men who turned on their hosts."

How many people had come up here? Aisha wondered. The more who knew of this, the less chance for decent concealment.

"The new kapetein would hardly approve of this."

Haller gestured at the records. "I'll be the new kapetein. His vote will collapse, and enough will come to me. Those prove he's no more fit to be kapetein—"

A woman's voice pierced the night. "Than who? Than you, Hans bar Rhodevik fan Haller? Someone who'd be in the Elders' pockets—as if the clans would stand for that, even most of fan Haller? Someone who'd set Bandari against Bandari for the sins of their fathers? Or had you planned to hold whatever might be in those records over Barak's head? Blackmail is as much a crime, you know, as theft. Or spying."

So quietly that Aisha never heard it, Judge Chaya and her son had come up the rocks and into position. Two clicks sounded. The nomads crowded in the doorway of the bunker looked about frantically, and so did the fan Haller clansmen, but all were blinded by the night and the unshielded lantern.

"I would like to know," the Judge's voice was assured, even a little amused, "who is whose catspaw in this. Sannie? A willing tool. She might not even guess who put her up to it. Or did someone, one of her own clan, egg her on? Steal the records since your attempt to force Karl to disclose their contents failed miserably. Never mind what harm it might do our medical care. Steal them, discredit Kemal for spying, throw me out of office? That's another way to look at it. Or, let's look at it from Kemal's point of view. Cast the Bandari into ferment, maybe into civil war, and then break away, if you can. A pretty mess."

"You're a fine one to talk about messes," the fan Haller snarled at the unseen Judge. "Righteous, aren't you? You don't want your son to be kapetein? You want it so bad you can taste it. But he's just not qualified, is he? Not of old Piet's line, is he? We know that, just as we know why that woman you brought in wears the ring you used to have. She's bad seed, isn't she? You all are. We never saw you with your husband. How do we know . . ."

The broadhead arrow that punched through Hans fan Haller came from behind Aisha. It slapped through his chest and out his back to quiver in the hard dirt of the trail. He looked astonished, then agonized and then like nothing at all. As the other fan Haller clansmen whirled, trying to find the source of the shot, the tribesmen jumped. The shotguns roared into the night, stabbing orange flame, but they had already been wrestled upwards. Aisha saw knives glint and then streams of blood, rapidly cooling in the night.

Barak dropped to his feet and walked toward the bunker, another shaft on the string. Even without his mother out in the darkness, hand-to-hand he outnumbered the four nomads all by himself. "Everyone don't move. Fan Haller just went too far. And you heard it. One move and you'll go farther."

Kemal chuckled. "What about you?"

Barak shrugged. To Aisha's senses, his breath and pulse were normal—Soldier normal—and he wasn't sweating at all. Half-blood that he was, he should have shown more stress than that. "A man's mother, she's sacred, or should be."

They all knew why Chaya's son was called Lightning; they might as well have been disarmed, in the same room with him. "All right, Kemal. This has all gone too far. Hand over the records."

Kemal prodded at Hans with his toe. "I never liked him," he said. "This was well done, all but the blood feud it will bring." He shrugged and made a sign to his followers. They wiped and sheathed their blades. "Let there be peace between us for this night. I have eaten the salt of your house and am your guest, at least." He handed over a thick file of papers.

"We don't have feuds," said Barak. "We have Laws. I'll have to stand trial."

Kemal grinned sardonically. "So you say. Say it again if you live that long. But hear what I say, man of Law: if the Pale casts you out for this night's work, I'll make a place for you in the tribe."

Aisha understood him. Kemal hated his people's subjection to the Pale, and he had despised Hans bar Rhodevik. Barak he respected as a warrior and honest enemy. Evidently Barak bar Heber felt the same way, from his answering smile.

Absently, Barak flipped through the crumpled leaves of the medical record file. "Sure. After all, I'm of your blood. Just like Aisha. Come on in, why don't you, cousin? You too, mother. Let's make it a mishpocha."

Kemal shook his head as if admiring what? Enemy? Ally? Aisha sought for a word and found it: accomplice.

Judge Chaya slipped in between two boulders. "Cover the light," she commanded. The hood closed around it, all but a narrow bull's-eye. "We ought to burn those," she muttered.

Barak laughed, a sound Aisha distrusted. "Kemal, you were right about Law, weren't you? God, that I should live to see the day. The Judge urging her son to break the Law? Why?"

He bent over the records. "I could understand concern over my . . . our Sauron blood. But I'd have thought it was diluted. You're only half-blood, so I'm a quarter Sauron. Shouldn't make for any trouble. Unless." He froze. "Unless . . ."

Aisha stood, and slid down to the ground. Light glinted off the ruby on her hand and caught Chaya's attention. Abruptly, she seemed to shrink in on herself; for the first time, she looked old. She stared at Aisha, who knew in that moment that both faced the same nightmare every day of their lives.

"Blood," Judge Chaya murmured. "So much blood. Always calling for more." She looked down at the bodies lying in the darkness that spread out from beneath them. "The God-bloody Saurons." Her eyes darkened as if she stared into hell. "They took him from me. Took Heber, before we could make the child we wanted together, we were waiting until . . . And I never even saw his body, I had nothing of him."

"Ama . . ." Barak's voice was gentle.

"She's got to let it out." Aisha's voice was so ruthless she could barely recognize it. "All these years, the wound has festered. What did you do, kinswoman? The Saurons stole a life from you, so you . . . stole one back?"

Chaya nodded. "You aren't the only woman who kills Saurons, girl. Left him dead on the plain with a spike through his head. My son's mine. The Sauron was just the means to get him."

"So I'm not of Piet's line on either side," Barak said. He didn't sound as if it had hit him, yet. But it would, very soon, it would. "You didn't want to admit what you'd done. Instead, you discouraged thoughts of me becoming kapetein. But what if I had? What would have become of your Law if I had?"

"It was all in the blood!" Chaya snarled, then seized control of herself. "The Law would have been broken. But no one would have known. Just me. I would have taken the blame on my soul. The Pale would have had a strong leader. And would that have been so bad?"

"It can't happen now," Barak said.

Chaya nodded her head and dared to look at her son. "You don't hate me?"

"I just wish you'd told me earlier. I could have done something to take myself out of the running. I knew I could do the job; I just didn't want it much. Well." He stared down at Hans' body. "At least now I've taken care of that."

"What about us?" asked Kemal.

He and his men knew too much now to live. He stank of fear to Aisha, and he had to know that the three who faced him could smell it; but she was proud of his courage in that moment.

"Dishonored," said the Judge. "Spying. Conspiring with him. I wouldn't stoop to kill you. Tell about this night's work, and I'll see no one believes you. Ever. Get out of here. Come back with your warriors and we'll give you a fight. Come back with more spies—" She spat.

"Some more are coming," Barak observed, almost as if he counted heads at a feast. "They're not making very good time."

But then, they don't have Sauron blood.

"A tribesman," Aisha said. "Kemal sent him to bring in Sannie." Her lips quivered. "He wanted her to translate the medical records for him. Want me to tell her that her services aren't required?"

Barak shook his head. "She has to see. Too much has been hidden." He sighed. "It's my fault as much as hers. I made her wait too long. I took counsel of my fears; always a stupid thing to do."

"It would not have been treason if my plan had worked," Kemal said.

"Why is it that treason never prospers?" Chaya said. She laid a coat over Hans bar Rhodevik's staring eyes. "Why, if it prospers, none dare call it treason."

Color flushed Kemal's high cheekbones. "And my blood is still dishonored." He gestured at Aisha.

"I'm not about to kill myself to cleanse it," she told him.

He shook his head. "Not what I meant, girl. Your father, not you. We cast him out. You chose to go with him, a loyal daughter, worthy of honor. It's not your fault."

She shed years in that moment, years and defenses. Tears rose briefly, then subsided. Karl the hakim had said the same thing. Forgiveness. Mercy. Those were . . . what? Miracles? Avenging one's blood, though, was a Law.

"But it is my blood," Aisha said softly. "And my father's cries up to heaven for vengeance." Saurons, see your evil turned on yourselves. Nobody could hate with the grim persistence of a Sauron, except one of their kind raised on the steppe.

"You go." Kemal gestured to his men. "I'll see this through."

"But, khan . . ." one of them began.

"I said, go! I am no khan, who am a dishonored man. You will say nothing of what passed this night. Or do I slay you for your disobedience? Tell Tarik, I shall return when I have cleansed my name; that only. If I can. Go!"

The nomads left quickly, pushing past their comrade on the way. He was walking with his hands tied behind his back and Sannie's saber-point resting lightly on his sheepskin coat, directly over the liver.

"If you hotnots think—" she began, then stopped. The Bandari and her captive gaped identical "O's" of shock at the bodies and at Barak and his mother.

"Come on in, Sannie," said Barak.

The young woman's eyes widened with dismay, whether at the sight of Barak or the bodies on the bunker's floor, Aisha couldn't say. But only for a moment. In the next, she controlled herself as well as any half-Sauron woman might.

"What did you hope to gain?" Chaya asked gently. "You couldn't have known what was in those records."

"He, Oom Hans, he wanted to know, thought there might be something when Karl wouldn't talk. I knew Oom Hans musn't get them, and somebody had to before he did. I thought . . . I thought . . . best to get rid of them, the hotnots would do it and then they'd be blamed and nobody would believe—and you would have been kapetein, Barak. And the Pale would have been strong. All of us, Eden and clansfolk, just as Kari's dinned into my ears since before I could ride. And would that have been so bad?"

Even Kemal burst out laughing. Sannie flushed with shame.

Chaya shook her head. "For the first time, Sannie, I think I could approve of you as a daughter-in-law. My thoughts exactly. But it's too late now. And the Law is the Law, no matter how much good we think we might have done by breaking it."

 

"Well, it's virtually bliddy unanimous," Oom Barak said, "thanks to you!"

The chalkboard with the tally was up behind his head. Eight in ten of the legal electors and their registered proxies had chosen Barak bar Sandor fan Reenan as the twenty-second kapetein in lawful succession to Piet.

The conspirators stood in front of the kapetein's table, even Chaya who had just decked him with the chain of office. The celebration was still going on outside, along with a wild flood of rumors. Old Barak was alone at the head of the table—you will have to get used to that, being alone, Chaya thought—but Tarik Shukkur Khan stood respectfully to one side.

"You needn't act as if we'd had you sentenced to death," Chaya said.

Barak grunted. "What'm I to do with you, then?"

Young Barak grinned. "You could have me sentenced to stoning for murder," he said cheerfully.

"And me for conspiracy, treason and spying," Kemal added.

Barak and Kemal looked at each other and nodded; they were nearly of an age. Both looked younger this morning, as if the failure of all their plans had somehow made them boys again. Practically speaking, the risk of such a sentence was nil, but Kapetein Barak would have to find some conduit for the outrage Kumpanie Haller and its allies felt, at the least. A pure pardon would bring rioting. That was the kapetein's problem, and the younger men were both profoundly relieved at that.

"You should send me forth," Aisha said with an old bitterness. "The curse of my blood has brought ruin enough."

The kapetein grunted again. "Bliddy likely," he said. "It's tsouris we brought on ourselves with greed and stupidity. You saved us. I should exile you? Just what we need now, more causes for hatred among ourselves, more blood, more feuds."

Suddenly Chaya spoke. "What's the saying? If anything goes wrong, blame it on the Evil Eye—"

"—the Evil Eye or the Saurons," the new kapetein finished for her. "Well?"

"Who's responsible for all this?" Chaya asked, her voice rising.

Aisha's eyes kindled for the first time since the bunker, and she spoke: "Yes! The bloody Saurons—their meddling, their casting Juchi and Chaya out to die, their accursed breeding program, their tyranny—that is the cause of all this!"

Tarik stroked his beard and smiled his enigmatic smile. "Oh, most excellent," he said. "I could not tolerate the execution of my heir, however guilty. Not and hold the loyalty I need to rule, but . . ."

" . . . but if I choose exile, all is settled?" Kemal said. There was whole-hearted respect in the glance he turned on the older man. "Exile, and the honorable path of vengeance as a ghazi fighting the holy war against an enemy whom all men hate and fear. Did you plan this, excellent khan?"

Tarik shrugged. "No. But one must always be ready for the knocking hooves of opportunity."

Kapetein Barak snorted laughter. "So you, young Barak, and this prince of his people, and your cousin Aisha, will announce that Yeweh and the anima of the Founders command you to tear down the Citadel with your bare hands?"

"Allah and the spirits," Kemal corrected.

"And I as well," Chaya said.

Oom Barak shook his head. "The Judge can't leave the Pale."

"The Judge can't be accessory to a murder!" Chaya said.

"The fan Haller was in conspiracy against the Pale!"

"That didn't give either me or Barak the right to execute him on the spot! I resign!"

Kapetein Barak throttled back his temper with a visible effort. "I don't accept it."

"What are you going to do, have me Judge from behind bars?"

"I'll appoint a deputy, by the anima of Piet, and you can step back in when you return," he grumbled. Which will be never, they all knew.

"So." Oom Barak sighed. "Yes, that will do. Everyone will agree to ignore details and blame it all on the Saurons; you four will hare off into the wilderness . . ."

" . . . five," said Ihsan. "Your father's ghost would haunt me otherwise, Kemal; and you are my adana. And the tribe is full of eager swords who will ride as your noyok, your sworn men, on a jihad such as this. Is not Aisha at our head?"

"Are you mad?" Kemal demanded of him. "Who will care for my son?"

"I," Tarik answered. "He will make a fine heir, and one who is also my grandson, and so cannot . . ."

Kemal's nod held bitter admiration. "So you will be rid of me, have an heir who is linked to you by blood as well as by marriage, and rid the encampments of the wildest of the young men," he said. "Shabash, Tarik Shukkur Khan!"

Chaya nodded to herself. Best for the People as well. So old Mordekai's plan would come to fruition—and in the end, generations hence, Tarik's folk would be Bandari themselves. The khan probably knew; but it would be long after his lifespan, and his family would still have power—as chiefs of Kumpanie Tarik.

"Six of us," Sannie said, looking at young Barak. "Please?"

He nodded. She slumped with relief.

"Now," the kapetein said. "Let's figure out how we're going to explain this to them." He jerked a thumb over his shoulder at the noise of the crowd.

 

Aisha found she was not sorry to be leaving. Always, if she had made the Pale her home, she would have had the sense that she was betraying her blood for the life it had denied her. The decision left her feeling light, as if she had recovered from another fever, but relieved.

I would have been a curse to him, she thought. The pain was distant, lost amid so many others. A home, children—these are not for me. Better thus.

Kapetein Barak had been generous even in his anger. They rode out on good horses, leading strings of remounts; there were silver and goods on their pack-muskylopes. To Chaya's surprise, a trickle of men and women came to join them even before they left the Pale, youngsters mostly, friends and admirers of her son. They stubbornly ignored orders to leave, as stubbornly ignored Barak's blasphemous refusal to command them.

At the last, a few people turned out to see them off from Burg Kidmi itself. One of them was young meid Erika. Her mother Miriam stood talking with Chaya, but the girl ran up to Aisha and held out her fist. In it was a gold chain, with a medallion enameled in blue: the Eye that wards off evil.

"It's old," the girl said. "To keep off the Lidless Eye."

Aisha leaned down and kissed her. "Keep it for yourself. And may Allah grant you a happier fate than mine." The girl retreated, a little crestfallen but keeping her head up proudly.

Young Karl and his Shulamit were there as well. Naked longing was in their eyes as they watched the six make ready.

"My father forbade," young Karl said to Barak and Chaya.

"My mother and my foster-father forbade," Shulamit echoed.

"Good," Barak and Chaya said, without a heartbeat's difference. Then they laughed.

"Go home, youngk," Barak said, fisting him on the shoulder. "The Pale needs you. Am Bandari Hai!"

"They need you worse!" Karl cast over his shoulder, as he rode off toward his father's caravan. "Bring me the Battlemaster's head, and I'll let you beat me at arm-wrestling again!"

Aisha smiled to see them go. Was I ever that young? she wondered. "I just regret . . ." Her voice trailed off. She glanced over and met her sister/aunt's eyes.

You haven't had much of a life, have you, Aisha? she read the thought there.

Chaya had promised her a life, a place, even a home and husband of her own. Instead, she had joined Aisha in exile and a quest for vengeance. Aisha shrugged, wordless. At least, when her sister and aunt's life fell apart, she had a new purpose she could turn to. It was more than their mother Badri had, dead by her own hand in the ruins of her life. They would not die for nothing, if it came to that.

She ordered herself not to glance around. Karl bar Edgar fan Haller must be sick of the thought of her, much less the sight. And he had his clan, stunned by the death of their leader, to comfort. If anyone would listen to him.

A word Aisha had heard in the Pale crept into her thoughts. Dayenu. Enough. It would have been enough to slay the Sauron Battlemaster. It would have been enough to die cleanly on the steppe, to find kinsfolk, honor, even, and aid for this private jihad of hers. Not much of a life? It was hers. And it was enough.

They rode in silence, without banners.

At the border of the Pale, a silent rider waited for them. His leathers were worn and comfortable, his armor somewhat less so, as if he seldom wore it. But he carried his weapons easily, and the thick roll behind his saddle was marked with the twisted serpents of his art. And the sorrow too many people had marked seemed gone.

"And what do you think you're doing?" Aisha yelled at him, abruptly, gloriously furious.

"The way you're acting, I wouldn't let the lot of you cross a cow pasture alone," Karl retorted. "Someone's got to look after you. Also a lot of my clansmen aren't exactly happy with me. You're not the only ones who've made the Pale too hot to hold you."

Aisha's fury melted into something strange. Something like—happiness?

Now we are seven, she thought.

Enough? It was more than enough.

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