A/N: I'd like to dedicate one of these chapters to Naguib Mahfouz, but I doubt he would like that very much. Instead, as a nod to him I won't dedicate a chapter to him. Honor in absentia, in a bastardized way.

This particular scene received a truly massive overhaul; went from less than nine hundred to over 1,300.

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the gold standard

Everyone that heard knew it was a mistake when a certain widow told Shadash he was worth his weight in gold. To consider was the boy's jaded fascination with compliments that aped sincerity, no matter how fraudulent. Pretty phrases and flowery speech boosted an ego that was not unlike a bottomless pit. Complimentary language was ambrosia to the dancer, especially when he was so used to concocting it to please others.

Making his patrons feel good was his job and not a reciprocal obligation of those he served. His favorite patrons pretended to love him and he threw his all into their lies; it was precious fantasy fulfillment. If they were well-respected and mentioned buying off his debt, he would let that pass without too much masked contempt. Was not Aisha bought out of debt? On occasion, it was even an enjoyable pretend. Why not be bought by a jaded old woman with such high standing in Calimport? He was young, beautiful, and he easily learned what his patrons desired. It was this sensitivity to others' desires combined with hard work and perseverance that brought him off Avenue Paradise. It was the very thing he believed would work him into higher heights. Why not a plush residency as a wealthy woman's personal entertainer?

When Shadash convinced the rich, and much older, woman to show him how much gold equaled his weight, an extra bounce appeared in his step as he leapt inside her silk upholstered palanquin. Unrepentant bastard that he was, he made sure to expend his exuberance by dancing in place inside the hand-carried transport. Making life difficult for her servants amused Shadash greatly and brought laughter to his patron's thin lips.

The treasury was deep beneath the ground level of her large compound. Without regard for decorum of any kind, she took him to her late husband's treasury and bade him sit on one of two metal plates held by an ornate scale. He did as she commanded, sparing few looks at the carefully organized chests and cases all about him: it was neither the first treasury he had been in nor the most fantastic. His eyes were much more interested in the scale's mechanisms.

Rather than sit still, for such was usually impossible unless he'd had a lion's share of hashish, he struck a score of impressive and scandalous poses while her servants set small gold bars on the opposite scale. To his dismay, it didn't take long to gather enough gold from the chests to lift the wiry young dancer from the floor. In less than thirteen poses, a small mound of gold lifted his plate from the floor.

"Surely I am worth more than this, precious lady," he exclaimed with as much shocked hurt as he could manage. "This isn't even a pittance of your vast holdings, but it is still only equal to half my debt."

Laughing at his precociousness, she agreed. "Yes, this is the least amount of my wealth but I still love it more than you." As she suspected, his eyes did not widen in shocked pain when she spoke the cruel truth. She was just as experienced with playing her servants as he was at playing his patrons. "Gold lasts far longer than youth, beauty, or good company. At least you own a debt, little one. Some people cannot even claim that."

In response, he threw himself into a delightfully thorough tantrum there on the scale. He wailed, he sobbed, he even managed a few tears, and loud and clear in his sorrowful cries was the phrase paga fyir. It was not the strongest form of 'stupid bitch' in Shadashite, but it was enough to satisfy the boy's annoyance with a break in his fantasy.

The emotional outburst was authentic enough that the widow believed his heart was truly in his performance. It only made her smile grow. She did not notice his mismatched eyes often straying toward the scale. More interesting to Shadash than the gold he couldn't have or her counterfeit affections, was the ornate mechanism.

More interesting to the widow was the dancer's illusion of pain. It excited her desires as surely as the feel of power. Gesturing languidly to one of her servants, Shadash was seized and carried to out of the treasury. In the privacy of her bedroom, she had her servant strip aside the dancer's filmy silks and search him from head to toe for stolen wealth. Conscious of her demeanor, Shadash screamed protests from start to finish. When he was found innocent of thievery, she swooped in to console him with kisses. It was all part of the elaborate games she liked to play. He never particularly enjoyed sex with either gender, but the sheer complication females made of it lead him to prefer male patrons.

He was returned to Dancer's Gate in the early hours of the morning, as the widow did not trust Shadash to keep his hands off her jewelry while she slept. Quiet with consuming thoughts about the scale and a burning horse, the young dancer swept into the teahouse. His layers of beige and salmon pink gauze flowed around his legs as if he were walking through surf.

Sensing his return, the song birds in the elaborate cage along one wall began to rustle and trill in greeting. He scowled at their cage's velvet coverlet which lay in a crumpled heap on the floor. Whistling to them in near-perfect mimicry, he pulled the cover over the wire cage and returned them to night.

When one of the domesticated desert cats wandered over to rub his legs, Shadash scolded her soundly for pulling down the cover. But he could not hold his anger in the face of such unjudging eyes and crouched down to pet and rub her until she bumped her face against his.

The raven, Corsh, and the fennec, Palu, both greeted him in their own ways, but soon left him when they sensed his distraction. Shadash walked around the teahouse's sizeable floor space, studying the chandeliers, potted plants, and everything else that was raised and lowered between floor and ceiling. He recalled again the kinship between his horse and the scale. And in his mind ideas bloomed anew.

The supply room was locked, but locks meant little to a boy sly enough to make an impression of the appropriate key in wax. He used the copy he'd had made to unlock, open, and rifle through the contents. The sheer excess of rope and chains within the room only served to amuse him. All the things he needed could not be found, so replacement pieces had to be contrived; in their absence Shadash's mental designs became more complex.

The managers, dancers and apprentices were puzzled when they awoke to find the massive bird cage suspended near the ceiling by means of a monstrously complicated and ugly pulley system made of ropes and wooden spools. It would have been more a matter of amusement among the managers had they not found the supply of rope and chain heaped on the floor in the supply closet.

It would have been less of an eyesore if it were made of something less awkward looking than spools of varying size or if it were anchored with fewer ropes and chains. Tripping over the ropes or banging one's head against the bottom of the cage presented other annoyances. It was not lost on the household which of their dancers was obsessed with caring for the birds to the point he could recite their elaborate family trees, short enough to easily walk under the cage without hitting his head, and sneaky enough to pull the project off.

Sleeping snugly in his bunk, curled up in a ball of flesh and bone beside the fennec and with two of the house cats in his hair, Shadash slept soundly in the knowledge that he was brilliant, annoying, and worth more than his weight in gold.