It was midmorning by the time Durza reached Chah Salar. The air was thick and wet, the sky violently blue. He liked this walk, thirsty and filthy as it was. The heat dried his throat like old papyrus, and the humidity made him long for the cooler, cleaner air of his cave, but Chah Salar was a quaint little town, and he always loved the sight of it at the end of a long trek. More so because he could deposit his captive once he reached it. He had carried Arya Tialdari's bound, inert form throughout half the night and half the morning, and his shoulders were tired.
The warning shot tore the silence asunder. From the slitted window of a tall rickety watchtower a musket's nose peeked out, followed by a ratlike face with a dirty turban. "Chah Salar is shut!" he warbled. "There's a tribe of paleskins running wild in the countryside. Get away from here, whoever you are. The town is shut until the sheikh orders otherwise. No peddlers, no bedouin, and no gypsies!"
"It's me, Munna," Durza called. "It's Durza. I have a gift for the jagir."
Munna squinted through the blazing morning, and his jaw dropped, horrified, when he realized who he was talking to. "Ya Illahi! By Almighty Khuda, accept my apologies, Holy One!" He was a man who prayed six times a day, a man who frequently sent dates and coconuts to Durza's cliff. "I can't see what you're carrying. Is that a goat?"
Durza grinned at that. "It's a woman, Munna. A northern woman!"
"Ay Khuda, and you say she's for the jagir? Shouldn't she be kept in a cage, to preserve her skin? These paleskins shrivel like grapes in the sun. Forgive me, Holy One, but it would be a poor gift if you gave the Lord Mulayam a woman burned head to toe by the heat."
"She's not for the jagir's harem, Munna. Ring the bell, if you would be so good, and tell them I'm here. I have information about the northmen."
The streets were rutted and filthy, lined with hovels built of daub and wattle. Here and there domed towers speared the sky, remnants of an older town, one where inspired men refined their calligraphy and wrote down the sayings of the Only Lord. The air reeked of a million smells, of cowdung and urine and chicken and lamb being cooked at roadside stalls and spices being flung into huge sizzling pots and the rancid, overpowering stench of Chah Salar's tannery. Cows lumbered openly across the street, staring at Durza with baleful black eyes, and emaciated dogs padded at his heels, their ribs stark, their teats sagging.
"Make way!" Akhtar boomed. "Make way for Pir Durza! Make way!" He and his brother Qadir flanked Durza, big men who served the jagir. "Make way for Mulayam's men! Make way!"
His proclamation did nothing to stem the tide of people who scampered out of their hovels to touch Durza's feet, begging him to bless them. Men who would have flogged their daughters for leaving home unveiled flung themselves at his feet, ignoring his his total nudity. "Pray for me, Holy One," begged old Bal Aslam, the man who had divorced his wife after she gave him seven daughters. "You will, won't you? I've sent you milk for the past three months." Razi the Red, nicknamed for his habit of henna-ing his beard, approached him bowed like a hunchback, not daring to look Durza in the face. "Pir Durza, my sister, Ruqaiyya, is very sick. Could you treat her for me? If you cannot do that, can you at least pray for her? You knew her husband's father back when you fought the paleskins in the north."
"Yes, my son, of course," Durza said. "I remember him well. You remember those melons you sent me half a year ago? I was too sick to hunt for myself and they saved my life. After I meet the lord jagir, you must find me, and we'll go to Ruqaiyya's house."
Razi the Red grinned like a child, even after Akhtar shoved him out of the way. Dirty, mangy children began to chase them, chanting "Holy One! Holy One! Holy One!"
"Could you throw them some coins, Akhtar?" Durza asked. "I have none of my own, and I wonder how long it's been since they've eaten."
"Ach, Holy One," Akhtar said. "If I threw coins at every hungry child in Chah Salar, I'd be sleeping on the street like a gypsy. Qadir! You give them your money."
His brother, a stouter, darker man, threw him a filthy look. "Please mention me in your prayers, Holy One," he said, fishing through his coinpurse. "God knows I'll need it, after I've given all my wages to the poor. By Almighty Khuda, shouldn't that take me straight to Jannat, to paradise, when I die?"
Durza smiled at that. "If you've been a good servant of the Only Lord your entire life? Then it certainly can't hurt, Qadir. Child," he said, looking behind him. "Don't pull the northwoman's hair." He was still carrying a drugged, bound, and gagged Arya Tialdari across his shoulders. "Didn't your mother tell you it's bad luck to touch a pagan?"
The town became cleaner after they passed under the ruin of an old stone archway, the streets empty of all cows and dogs. There were Gul Mohr trees in the full crimson blossom of spring and on the cobblestone road a peacock, the sacred animal of Chah Salar, practiced his mating dance, his feathers shining turquoise and green in the noonday sun.
Then before their faces reared the Kala Fort, a barrier of bricked black basalt, its turrets fists that punched the sky, its gateway a sharp square bounded by twisting calligraphy. The bold white Taleqani characters sang of the piety of the Prophet, Chishti Auliya, spoke poems of Khuda's omnipotence, sang ballads about the benevolence of the jagir. Three hundred years ago the great conqueror Malik Ambar had hewn it out of basalt plundered from smashed pagan temples. The rest of Chah Salar had degenerated into a rotting, herpetic town, but the Kala Fort had survived the scourges of time, disease, and dragonfire unscathed.
The jagir awaited them within the ancient, airless hall, slumped in a pile of cushions, a hookah at his side. His ears glittered with diamonds. "Pir Durza," he drawled. "What do you have across your shoulders?"
"Peace be with you too, Mulayam amou'Hadiqa," Durza said dryly. Once upon a time, the jagir's grandfather had received him with honor. Gongs had rung across Chah Salar, and the jagir's grandfather had met him at the town's very gates, a garland of white flowers in his hands. "Praise Almighty Khuda that you've returned alive from the north, Holy One," Lord Amr amou'Babaq had said, kneeling at Durza's feet. "How could we ever doubt that you'd smash the paleskins? We've lit a bonfire to celebrate your arrival, and slaughtered one of our finest sheep. Please eat with us."
His grandson seemed incapable of similar hospitality. "May I deposit her on the carpet?" Durza asked.
"Yes, but softly. I assume she's meant for someone's harem. Is she a northron? I've never possessed such a woman before."
"It's a sin to touch someone as heathen as this woman, lord Mulayam." Clearly the jagir's father had failed to teach his son anything about religion, as well as the rules of basic courtesy. "Almighty Khuda doesn't scorn the man who takes a Taleqani or a Maraqandi to wife, or even a Tatar, but this woman comes from the snowlands of the furthest north, where they drink human blood and sacrifice their own children to demons. I found her with two other northrons by my cliff."
"Did you kill them?"
"I killed one of them, may Khuda forgive me. The other fled, but he's not as important. The Emperor Skandar wants this one, however, delivered to Uru'baen, alive. This order, lord jagir, I have in writing."
"I'm sorry that you had to kill, Pir Durza." Durza softened a little at that. "At least it was only a northron. If Khuda would damn me for taking a northron woman as a consort, I'm sure he'd excuse you for shooting some whiteskinned thief who stole from the emperor, peace be upon him." The jagir leaned forward and frowned. "Though clearly you've never been in a harem, or you'd know that when a lord desires a woman, it's better to refrain from knocking her teeth out."
Durza stifled a smile at that. How little Lord Mulayam knew. Long ago, before he painted his body with his own handprints, he had seen harems that would make the jagir weep in envy. "In the north, lord jagir, women fight alongside their husbands and masters. She fought better than some men."
"Truly?" The hookah bubbled, and purple smoke billowed from Mulayam's mouth. "What could the Emperor Skandar want with her? Is she meant for the arena? And tell me, Pir Durza, didn't they steal something from the vaults of Uru'baen? No one seems to know what it is."
"I know nothing of that, Lord Mulayam. I've heard a thousand rumors, but the Emperor wrote nothing of it, and I found nothing of value on either this woman or the northron who died."
"But you said that one of them survived?" The jagir's eyes narrowed. "Couldn't he be carrying something of value? My spy told me that the northrons stole a relic from Uru'baen, something the bedouin found sixty years ago in the deep desert. I've heard that they stole a diamond the size of a man's head. I've also heard that they stole the golden skull of Murtaza, the Prophet's brother, and plan to use it for some witchcraft. Why didn't you pursue him, this northman?"
"I had already killed once that night," Durza said. "His horse was bleeding and exhausted. A leopard's probably gnawing on his bones as we speak."
"Take a horse, Pir Durza. Find him, or find his carcass." The jagir's clenched fists showed white at the knuckles. "You've lived near Chah Salar since the days of my grandfather. Think of how the emperor would reward us if I recovered something precious to him! Don't you want my Chah Salar to grow? Don't you want us to prosper? Listen to me, Pir Durza. I'd clean the streets. I'd buy my people a thousand cattle each. Track this northron down, and if you find something of value, I myself will build for Almighty Khuda a shrine twice the size of Kala Fort."
As poor as your manners are, lord jagir, you certainly have a way with words, Durza wanted to say. Your vaults burst with gold and rubies and Malik Ambar's sapphires, and you feast on gazelle flesh while your people eat rice and milk. And yet, incredibly, you have the audacity to tell me that you share their sufferings? That any reward Skandar gave you would actually go to your people, rather than to your own pockets? What a fantastic demagogue you'd make. Where were you when we made war in the north? You could have given the White Druid a run for his money.
But then he thought of Mulayam's grandfather, his kindness, his courtesy, and remembered the miasma of Chah Salar, the emaciation of the children who chased him down the street. "I'll go, lord jagir," he said. "Give me Akhtar and Qadir, and I'll hunt him down before the sunset. But if I find him alive, then I won't kill him. I'll drag him back to Chah Salar, of course, and he'll be hung, since he's an enemy of the Emperor. But with the Only Lord as my witness I will not kill again, even if this northman comes at me with naked steel."
"Those are fine terms." Lord Mulayam's eyes were ravenous. "A thousand rumors are too numerous to discount, Pir Durza. He has something. I know he has something. Find it, and bring it to me."
As he walked out of the fort acidic unease burned in Durza's belly. Skandar hadn't mentioned anything about what they stole. It couldn't be anything of real importance, could it? Could it? What did Skandar have that three unwashed pagans might want to steal? Documents? Documents about what? Skandar had barely left Uru'baen in the past eight years.
Why had Durza come upon Arya Tialdari alone in the wild, waiting for him with two swords?
In Khuda's name, what had they taken?