‘I don’t think it’s wise. You came here last night, and you’ve been out of the palace all morning. The eunuchs might wonder about you if you stay out for the evening as well.’
‘I can tell them the truth. They know we meet for women’s prayers. I don’t have to tell them what we’re praying for.’
‘Yes, but the Chosen also know that Soutan’s part of my new business venture. I don’t want anyone adding things up.’
‘You’re right about that.’ Lubahva considered, sucking on her lower lip. ‘The Fourth Prophet. Do you truly think she’ll be female?’
‘That’s what the Sibyl’s prophecies tell us.’
‘But what if the mullahs are right, and she’s a demon?’
‘The mullahs condemn anything they don’t understand. Now remember: we can’t tell if the Fourth Prophet’s meant to come in our lifetime. All we can do is watch and wait.’
‘But – no, you’re right. I won’t carp any more. If she comes to us, she comes. Inshallah.’
‘Oh yes. Inshallah.’ Nehzaym suddenly smiled. ‘But if she does come, she’ll find us waiting.’
On their second day out of Haz Kazrak, Warkannan and Arkazo met up with Soutan in the little resort town of Samahgan, famous for its hot springs. So many people flowed into and out of its spas and medical clinics that no one would question why a retired cavalry officer and his ward would turn up at the same hotel as a foreigner like Soutan. Still, all three of them pretended to great surprise when they met in the dining room. Soutan made a show of insisting they eat with him.
‘It’s good to see a familiar face,’ Soutan said. ‘I’m leaving tomorrow, though.’ He paused, letting a waiter get within earshot. ‘I have to be back in Haz Kazrak to meet with the bankers.’
‘We’re moving on ourselves.’ Warkannan spoke clearly for the benefit of a passing group of customers. ‘Now that I’m retired, I’m going to visit my sister, Arkazo’s mother, that is. She lives up in Merrok.’
‘Give me the address. When I know how much working capital we can raise, I’ll send you a letter.’
The waiter, young and shiny clean in his loose white pants and white tunic, showed them to a low table surrounded by velvet cushions. Soutan had chosen an expensive establishment. The dining room held a good fifty tables placed on fine carpets. True-wood panels hung from the reed and bamboid walls. The men all sat, arranging themselves while a young servant girl dressed in a white shift brought warm water, towels, and a large basin. The waiter rattled off the evening’s menu as they washed their hands, then helped the girl carry the utensils away. Soutan leaned close to Warkannan and spoke quietly.
‘We’ve had great luck, or else the Great Khan has had very bad luck. Either might be possible.’
‘I suppose so, if you want to split hairs,’ Warkannan said. ‘What was it?’
‘I was in the marketplace yesterday when I saw two cavalrymen ride in. They were official messengers from the look of their saddlebags, and they rode straight to the fort here in town.’ Soutan paused, glancing around him. ‘I have ways of learning things. They were carrying messages to Blosk.’
‘I’m sure they would have told anyone who asked them that.’
‘Indeed? Would they and their fort commander tell anyone who asked what the messages said?’ Soutan paused for another look round. ‘One of my spirits followed them into the post. They were discussing a certain officer down on the border who’s about to get cashiered and turned out of the cavalry. Both of them thought the situation was odd for some reason.’
‘So?’ Arkazo leaned forward to interrupt. ‘What does that have to do –’
The waiter came back, bowing and smiling. They ordered, he bowed again, three, four times, then strode away at last.
‘If the Chosen are sending a man east,’ Soutan said to Arkazo, ‘he’d never make it across the Rift alone. This time of year the Tribes come to the border, and he might well be able to travel with one of them.’
Arkazo’s mouth framed an ‘oh’. The waiter came back with a large brass tray of appetizers and set them down with a flourish.
‘Your first course, gentlemen,’ he said. ‘Shall I bring coffee?’
‘No, not yet,’ Warkannan said. ‘At the end of the meal.’
With narrow eyes Soutan watched the waiter leave. ‘I wonder if that boy is just a waiter,’ he remarked. ‘Probably so.’
‘Probably.’ Warkannan allowed himself a brief smile. ‘We’ll talk more once we’re in our cottage. You can see what it’s like, Soutan, to live with the threat of the Chosen.’
‘Yes, I can. I can’t say I like it.’
After the meal they left the dining room and walked outside, heading for the gardens and their guest cottage. Beside the outer doors crouched a woman, her face bound with the black ribbons of widowhood. Two small children clung to her.
‘Charity, sirs?’ she whispered and held out trembling hands. ‘Charity, oh please?’
The others hurried past, but Warkannan stopped. Beggars here, in wealthy Samahgan, even here! He fished a couple of silver deenahs out of his pocket and pressed them into her hand.
‘May God provide better,’ he said. ‘And soon.’
Out to the east of the khanate, all of the grass grew purple. No one kept a garden or tilled a field on the other side of the sunset-coloured hills that marked the khanate’s border. A treaty dating back to Landfall forbade it, a pact so sacred that not even the ambitions of the Third Prophet could force the Kazraks to break it. Besides, without the open grasslands, there would be no horse-herds, and without a large number of horses the Kazraks would have no cavalry. All ambitions would become empty, then.
On the night that Warkannan was dining in Samahgan, the Tribes brought their stock into the border town of Blosk for the spring horse fair. The comnees, as the travelling groups were called, came out of the lavender grasslands, herding their horses ahead of them. Most rode, but some of the women drove rickety orange wagons, made of lashed-together bamboid, heaped with their possessions. Down by the river that flowed near town, they set up round tents stitched together in a patchwork of coloured saurskins and grey horsehair felt. In the meadows they tethered their horses with tasselled halters and drew the gaudy wagons into a circle. By the third day over a hundred tents stood in clusters out on the grass.
Children ran and played in the impromptu village while their parents brought out hoards of dried horse dung to fuel cooking fires or walked from tent to tent to greet old friends. Everyone talked about the trading ahead. The Great Khan’s gold bought the necessities that only farmers could supply, such as grain, soap, and lamp oil, as well as trinkets like brightly coloured cloth and gold jewellery. Men and women both wore gaudy belt buckles, brooches, and clasps for cloaks, cast or hammered into the shapes of mythological beasts, such as the stag, the wolf, and the lion.
Ammadin picked the spot for her maroon and grey tent on the edge of the encampment, a good distance from all this convivial chaos. In silent respect, the members of her comnee, sixteen extended families in all, raised her tent, carried her possessions over from the communal wagons, then left her alone. Inside she arranged her belongings: her roll of blankets, her leather-and-wood folding stool, her two cooking pots, and the four big grey-and-blue woven tent bags that held her clothes and tools. Her most precious belongings never travelled in the wagons. In saddlebags of purple leather she carried her spirit crystals, her silver talismans, and her feathered spirit wands. The god figures of her tribe had their own pair of saddlebags, lined in fine white cloth from the Cantons far to the east.
Ammadin was arranging the god figures on their red-and-white striped rug when Maradin crawled through the tent flap. A blonde, handsome woman with skin the colour of gold, Maradin was the only person who dared enter Ammadin’s tent uninvited. She pressed her palms together and bowed to the god figures, squat stone carvings, wrapped in coloured thread and decorated with feathers and precious stones. Only then did she speak.
‘Dallador bought some mutton, and he’s making stew. Do you want to come eat with us?’
‘Yes, thanks. Have the Kazraks got here yet?’
‘A couple of their officers rode up a few minutes ago. Apanador’s taken them into his tent for some keese.’
In front of Maradin’s tent, pieced together from mottled purple and white skins, her husband Dallador was cutting chunks of meat from a haunch and putting them into an iron kettle. Their three-year-old son sat on the ground nearby and watched him. A good-looking fellow with hair so pale it was almost white, Dallador was dressed in the usual leather trousers of the Tribes and a red-and-blue cloth shirt; his belt had a palm-sized gold buckle in the shape of a horse, its legs tucked up, its head turned as if it were looking behind it.
‘I hear the Kazraks are in the mood to buy,’ Dallador said. ‘Are you going to sell that pair of greys?’
‘If they’re stupid enough to take them,’ Maradin said. ‘I’ll give them a dose of herbs before I bring them over.’
While Dallador tended the stew pot, Maradin brought out wooden drinking bowls and a leather skin of keese, a liquor made of fermented mare’s milk. She was pouring it round when Palindor strolled up to the fire. A handsome, almost pretty young man with strikingly large blue eyes and coppery skin, Palindor smiled once at Ammadin, then squatted down beside Dallador.
‘I invited Palindor to eat with us,’ Maradin announced.
Ammadin felt like kicking her – she was match-making again, damn her! Palindor accepted a bowl of keese with a murmured ‘thank you’ and looked at the ground. As an unmarried man, he had no standing in the comnee and no horses but the one his mother had given him to ride. He did, however, have a fine reputation as a warrior in the endless squabbles and raids that went on between the comnees. One of the bravest of the brave, men said of him, and as good with the long knife as he was with the bow. For the sake of that, Ammadin did her best to be pleasant to him during the meal.
By the time they were done eating, the skin of keese was empty, and Dallador brought out another. As he was refilling Palindor’s bowl, he splashed keese on the back of his unsteady hand.
‘Dallo?’ Maradin said.
‘I know. I’ve had enough.’ Dallador handed the skin to Palindor, then began licking the spilled keese off his hand while he smiled, heavy-lidded, at Maradin, who smiled back as languidly as if she were drunk herself.
All through the camp, fires glowed like golden blossoms among the tents. Here and there, men began to sing to the dahsimmer, a three-stringed instrument, one for the melody, two for the drone. Every time he had a sip of keese, Palindor would look at Ammadin so longingly that she realized that he was in love with her, not merely greedy for the horses a wife would bring him. Ye gods! she thought. What’s he doing, taking lessons from Dallo? She got up, excused herself, and went to her tent. Before she closed the flap, she listened for a moment to the clear strong voices of the men, singing of the two things they loved above all else: the hunt and war.
About an hour after dawn, the Kazrak officers rode down from the fort in Blosk to start the day’s haggling. The women and girls cut the horses they wanted to sell out of the herds and brought them down to the riverbank in a snorting, prancing procession. Their husbands and brothers stood nearby to make sure the Kazraks treated their women with the proper respect. Every man had the short curved bow slung over his back and in his belt, the leaf-blades steel knife, about eighteen inches long, that marked a man as an adult. In their red tunics, buttoned tight with silver pegs, and grey wool trousers, the Kazrak officers moved stiffly, their backs as straight as arrows.
When Ammadin brought down two bay geldings from her herd, the comnee women fell back to let her have the first place in line. A dark young officer introduced himself to her as Brison and began to examine the bays. He ran practised hands down their legs and over their chests, then looked into their mouths.
‘Four-year-olds, huh?’
‘Yes, and halter-broken.’
‘Very well. A gold imperial each.’
‘Two each.’
Brison hesitated, looking at her cloak, the entire black and purple mottled skin of a slasher saur, and a big specimen at that. Even for a comnee woman Ammadin was tall, but although she had the saur’s front paws clasped at her neck, the middle feet hung well below her belt and the hind set trailed behind her on the ground. Apparently Brison had been on the border long enough to know what the cloak signified.
‘Very well.’ He motioned to another officer. ‘Give the Holy One what she asked for.’
The assistant counted four gold imperials out of a cloth sack and handed them over. Ammadin put them in the pocket of her leather trousers and walked away without another word.
During the day, other comnees rode up to join the camp. The fair would go on for weeks, though it would migrate as the horses ate down the grass. Outside the town, which lay across the only hill for miles in this part of the grasslands, booths built of bundled rushes stood side by side with peddlers who spread their goods out on old blankets and shepherds selling raw fleeces and baskets of rough-spun yarn. Women hawking food in baskets mingled with the crowd; here and there, a juggler or story-teller performed for a clot of onlookers. Round it all swarmed the tiny flying yellabuhs, scavenging on scraps and spills.
That afternoon Ammadin and Maradin strolled through the market, looked everything over before they bought anything, and stopped every now and then for a cup of Borderland wine, which tasted as light as water for someone used to keese. Since their First Prophet had specifically forbidden wine, the Kazraks weren’t supposed to drink it, of course, but here and there a drunken cavalryman staggered through the fair. Ammadin bought fine coloured threads, glass beads, and dyed hen’s feathers to use in making magic charms. Maradin bought lengths of striped cloth, woven from the fine light thread spun in the water-powered mills of Kazrajistan. She lingered over a tray of brass buttons.
‘I should get some of these for Dallador,’ she said.
‘Why?’ Ammadin said. ‘You spoil him, you know, always fussing over him, always buying him things.’
‘Well, I happen to love him.’ Maradin hesitated, then turned away from the button seller’s booth.
‘What’s wrong?’ Ammadin said. ‘Something is.’
Maradin shrugged, and they walked a few steps on. ‘I just get so jealous when women look at him,’ she said at last. ‘I remember when I asked him to marry me, and Mama warned me that watching other women chase him would break my heart. She was right. He’s not the most handsome man in the world, but there’s just something about him. Women do flirt with him. You must have noticed.’
‘It would be hard not to.’
‘After all, you –’
‘That was before you were married.’
‘I know, just teasing.’ Maradin paused for one of her wicked grins. ‘It’s odd, isn’t it? If you looked at him and Palindor together, you’d think, oh, Palino’s so handsome, Dallo’s not. But there’s something cold about Palindor.’
‘Yes, cold and hard, like a face on a Kazraki coin.’
‘But my husband –’ Maradin hesitated, biting her lower lip. ‘My husband’s as warm as a winter fire. I was so proud when he said he’d marry me. Now, I worry all the time.’
‘Has he ever taken any of these women up on their offer?’
‘No. I just keep thinking he’ll meet someone with more horses.’
‘Maddi! Do you honestly think he’d leave you?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t think so. I just get so jealous and sulky. And then I say things.’
‘Things you regret?’
Maradin nodded, looking away.
‘What about the men?’ Ammadin said. ‘There was that fellow the last time we rode to Nannes –’
‘Oh, that doesn’t bother me. He can’t get them pregnant, and they don’t have any horses.’
Ammadin knew two kinds of spells and charms, those that worked because they had magic, and those that worked because the wearer thought they did. Love charms fell into the latter category, but usually they did their job.
‘I’ll bind you a charm,’ Ammadin said. ‘You can wear it on a thong under your shirt. When you feel jealous, take it out and hold it in your hand, and it will soak up the jealousy.’
‘Thank you!’ Maradin turned to her with a brilliant smile. ‘I should have brought this to you earlier.’
Before heading back to the encampment they stopped for a last cup of wine. Nearby a juggler sent four saur eggs spinning through the air, but the crowd at the wine booth was talking about a different kind of show to be held that afternoon. One of the officers in the fort was going to be publicly cashiered.
‘I’ll bet they waited until the fair to do it,’ a local weaver told them. ‘What’s the good of shaming a man if there’s no one to watch it, eh?’
‘Well, true, I suppose,’ Maradin said. ‘What’s he done?’
‘I wouldn’t know. They flog a man for any little thing out here on the border.’
When the weaver drifted away, Maradin turned to Ammadin.
‘Let’s go back to camp. I don’t have the stomach for things like that.’
‘Well, you can go back. I’m going to stay and watch.’
‘Ammi! Ugh! How can you?’
‘I’m curious, that’s all. I don’t understand the Kazraks, I never have, but I should, you know. We all should. They’re dangerous.’
At that Maradin hesitated, but in the end she left, taking Ammadin’s purchases back for her. Ammadin followed the crowd up to the town itself.
Out in front of the thorn walls of the big square fort lay the typical Kazraki public square, a bleak gravelled ground with a stone pillar standing in the centre. Already onlookers lined three sides, jostling for the best view. Things were dull in Blosk. To the sound of a silver horn, the true-wood gates swung open. A contingent of a dozen men marched a young Kazrak officer out to the six-sided pillar while others ordered the pressing crowd to stay back. Ammadin, who was caught against the wall of a house, climbed up on a trash barrel so she could see over the crowd.
Marked by the golden scabbard at his side and the narrow gold stripe down the sleeves of his tunic, the fort commander marched over to the unfortunate officer. At his barked orders, two of the troopers bound the officer’s wrists together with one end of a long rope, then tossed the other end over an iron hook embedded halfway up the pillar. When they pulled, they strung him up like a saur carcass hung to bleed so that his feet barely touched the ground. To steady himself the officer had to stretch himself out into a perfect target. Ammadin was close enough to get a good look at him: a handsome man for a Kazrak, with dark curly hair and black eyes above prominent cheekbones. His skin was a rich brown, darker than most of his people. While the commander conferred with the troopers, he stared out in front of him, his face utterly expressionless.
When she heard someone call her name, Ammadin looked round to see Brison, walking up to her unsteady perch on the barrel. He raised his hand palm out in the Kazrak gesture of respect.
‘So, the Holy One has come to watch?’ Brison said.
‘The show was here, so I thought I’d see it. What’s he done?’
‘It’s a strange story. When it was time for my unit to ride here for the fair, we were told to take him with us. He’d volunteered for the horse-buying unit, and I couldn’t figure out why anyone would. But a message came in that explained it all. Bad news for poor old Zayn. He’d been sleeping with the wife of this high-and-mighty court official back home, you see, and he figured he had to get out of the hot water before it boiled.’ Brison paused to give Ammadin a wink. ‘He didn’t jump quick enough. Her husband knew about it already, and he pulled strings.’
‘What? You’ll flog a man for that?’
‘Adultery’s against the laws of the Prophets.’ Brison paused for a sly grin. ‘Besides, this old boy has favours to give away, like a reassignment off this damned border.’
Out in the square, the commander yelled for silence. He ceremoniously pulled the sabre, inlaid with the golden crescent, from Zayn’s scabbard and threw it on the ground. Zayn set his lips tight and stared out at nothing while the commander unbuckled the sword belt and threw it after the sabre. He took a dagger from his belt, grabbed the hem of Zayn’s tunic, and slit it up the back and across the sleeves so that he could pull off the last trace of the khanate’s insignia and leave Zayn half-naked where he hung.
‘The man who disgraces his regiment disgraces the Great Khan,’ the commander said. ‘A man who dishonours the reputation of the cavalry will have no honour in any man’s eyes.’
Zayn allowed himself a small bitter smile. The commander stepped back and motioned to a trooper. As the trooper unrolled his long leather whip, the crowd pressed closer.
‘Begin,’ the commander said.
The braided leather thongs uncoiled and hissed through the air to snake across Zayn’s bare back. Blood welled up in a thin, precise stripe. Zayn’s eyes flickered briefly. Over and over the whip struck, lacing his back with lines of blood. Once he winced; once he made a stifled grunt; slowly his face turned from brown to a muddy grey. Other than that, the bloody stripes might have been no more than the slap of a gloved hand. At the tenth blow, Brison swore and turned away with a shake of his head, but Ammadin watched fascinated. The Tribes admired a man able to bear this kind of pain.
The whip uncurled and flew to him again and again – eleven, twelve, thirteen. Zayn’s dark eyes stared fixedly at some distant point, but his face was so pale that Ammadin was afraid that he’d break yet. His back was nothing but blood; the whip bit into old wounds each time it fell. Nineteen, twenty – Zayn tossed his head and grunted under his breath.
‘Enough!’ the commander barked. ‘The Great Khan’s justice is done.’
Zayn gathered his breath in a long gulp. ‘Is it?’ His voice cracked and wavered, but he spoke again. ‘You hypocrite!’
The commander snarled like an animal. He raised his arm and turned to the trooper, as if he was going to order a few more stripes, but Ammadin laughed loudly enough for him to hear. He shot a black look her way and said nothing. The panting trooper stepped back and began to clean the blood-soaked whip on a bit of rag. Two others stepped forward. One threw a bucket of water over Zayn’s back; the other cut him down. Zayn staggered, stumbled, then pulled himself upright by an effort of will. He even managed to smile at the two troopers when one caught his arm to steady him, a cold bitter smile of blazing hatred that made them step back and leave him alone. At the commander’s order, the other troopers came forward and dumped a bedroll and a pair of saddlebags at Zayn’s feet. The commander shoved a tiny pouch of what looked like coins into his hand.
‘There’s your exile’s wages,’ the commander said. ‘Walk wherever you want, but get out of my sight. You have three days to leave Blosk.’
Zayn looked at him, then bent over to pick up the gear on the ground. Ammadin caught her breath; she was expecting him to fall and faint, but slowly and carefully he straightened up again with the load in his arms. With the blood still running on his back, he turned and staggered off. The crowd began to jeer, yelling insults as they moved out of his way, but he held his head high and walked on. Ammadin jumped off her barrel and followed him. When she passed, the crowd fell silent.
Slowly, one painful step at a time, Zayn made his way out of the public square and turned down a narrow alley. He began panting for breath, and at times he staggered, but he kept walking until he’d left the crowd behind. He dropped his gear on the dusty street and leaned against the wall of a house.
‘Zayn?’ Ammadin said.
When he turned his head to look at her, he moved too fast and fell to his knees. Ammadin squatted down in front of him and spoke in the Kazraki language.
‘That’s your name, isn’t it? Zayn?’
For a moment he merely stared at her; then his mouth twitched as if he wanted to smile. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘Zayn Hassan.’
‘Do you have anywhere to go?’
‘No.’
‘Come with me if you want. I can use a man like you to tend my horses.’
He reached out a hand twined round with a runnel of blood and touched the edge of her saurskin cloak. ‘A witchwoman. Why would you bother helping the likes of me?’
‘Because you’ve got guts. And it seems a little harsh to be treated this way for bedding a woman who wanted you.’
Zayn managed a thin smile.
‘I thought so.’
He fainted, falling at her feet. Ammadin got up and went to the mouth of the alley. Out in the street four young comnee men hurried along, heading for the centre of town. She recognized none of them.
‘You!’ Ammadin called. ‘Come over here!’
They stopped, scowling, turned, hands on knife hilts. The tallest of them suddenly smiled.
‘It’s a spirit rider,’ he said. ‘We’re coming, Holy One. What do you want us to do?’
‘Carry this man and his gear back to my camp.’
The four trotted over and did what she asked.
Ammadin had them lay Zayn face-down in the grass behind her tent, then sent for Orador, the man who knew wound lore. He was a portly man, Orador, with a long drooping moustache, mostly grey, and a round face to match his belly. A young apprentice brewed herb-water at Ammadin’s fire while the master looked over Zayn’s wounds. Carefully he washed the blood off Zayn’s back with the herb-water, then poured keese over the stripes. When the liquor hit, Zayn’s fingers dug into the grass like a saur’s claws, but he made no noise at all.
‘That’ll keep the evil spirits away,’ Orador said cheerfully. ‘No bandages for you, boy. Air’s the best thing for these shallow wounds, and the bleeding’s stopped already.’
With a long sigh, Zayn turned his head and looked at Ammadin, hunkered down near him in the grass. His eyes were as distant from his pain as if he were merely taking the sun.
‘How soon can he ride?’ Ammadin said.
‘Today if I have to,’ Zayn whispered.
Orador laughed under his breath. ‘I like your guts, but you’ll need to rest for a couple of days, at least.’
‘Easy enough,’ Ammadin said. ‘The comnee won’t be riding for a while. When we do leave, Zayn, we’ll be heading east.’
‘Good.’ Zayn smiled briefly. ‘I’ve always been curious about the east.’
All at once, Ammadin felt danger, an odd intuition that seemed to rise out of no particular cause. For a moment she considered Zayn, lying utterly still in his exhaustion, his back as raw as a piece of freshly butchered meat. The warning came to her as the scent of anger. Puzzled, she stood up and found Palindor standing nearby with his arms crossed tightly over his chest. When he caught her glance, he turned on his heel and strode off. So that’s it! Ammadin thought. Well, I can handle a jealous young colt like him easy enough. She left Zayn under Orador’s care and went to find Apanador to tell him that she had a servant and the comnee a new rider.
After they left Samahgan, Warkannan led his men north rather than straight east, just as if he were indeed going to visit Arkazo’s family in their country villa. In this province, Zerribir, the larder of Kazrajistan, the land stretched out flat in a broad valley, all gold and red with crops – wheatian, oil beans, breadmoss, vegetables – tended by farmers who lived in white-washed cottages set among the rosy fields.
Graceful mosques, built of white-washed true-oak and adorned with minarets, rose out of the magenta view. Five times a day they heard the call to prayer, either carried on the wind from a distant spire or close at hand from a wayside shrine. They would dismount and stand in the road, holding their horses’ reins in one hand while they raised the other to point towards the sky, just as the Second Prophet had taught his people to pray when they were outside. Soutan would stand to one side, watching. One late afternoon Warkannan had enough of seeing him sneer.
‘And just what are you smirking about?’ Warkannan said.
‘Nothing.’ Soutan wiped the smile off his face. ‘Tell me something, Captain. Do you know what you’re pointing at?’
‘Of course. The holy city of Mekka.’
‘Which exists up in the air, floating along?’
‘Don’t be stupid! It’s a symbol of Paradise, where Mohammed’s soul went when he died.’
‘Ah. What would you say if I told you it was a real city, made of wood and vines like any other?’
Warkannan considered a number of blunt insults but discarded them. ‘Of course it was,’ he said instead. ‘Back in the Homelands somewhere. In a desert, if I remember rightly. That doesn’t mean it can’t have some sort of symbolic meaning as well.’
‘Yes, it was in a desert.’ Arkazo joined in. ‘And it was made of stones and mortar, not vines. They didn’t have as many earthquakes back in the Homelands.’
‘Very good.’ Soutan favoured him with a small smile. ‘There may be more to your mind than I thought.’
Arkazo’s face brightened with rage, but Warkannan cut him off. ‘Let’s get going,’ he snapped. ‘I want to make a few more miles before sunset.’
In this flat country the well-kept roads made travelling easy. Warkannan and his men managed a good twenty-five miles a day at a smooth, steady walk. Now and again they pulled their horses to the side of the road to allow a closed carriage to clatter past, drawn by four matched horses, carrying the womenfolk of some rich man behind its curtained windows. More often the roads ran beside canals, where they saw horse-drawn narrowboats glide by, piled high with produce.