Thirty-Six

D U M E A N

 

“Yasmin… maybe… perhaps it is best to let this thing lie, yes?”

“I’m just asking questions.”

The old man, Yaram, just smiled and nodded, but there was no humour there. He glanced to the side, beyond the woollen blanket shelter where he and Yasmin were sat eating bean rice with their fingers from a shared dish, and watched two boys squatting by a stall in the sun. Their backs were turned to him, drawing on the ground together as the bazaar hummed around them.

“Zaqeem was a complicated man,” Yaram said. “More than you know. He had friends, strange ones, in low places and high places… These questions you ask, were you to find those able to answer, you may also find them sharing what they’ve been asked, and who asked them, with others… you understand.”

Yasmin wasn’t sure she did. She wasn’t sure she understood any of it. She and Hassan had argued again. A mistake to go to Súnam, he’d said, a mistake to involve you in any of it. All the while refusing to tell her what it actually was. Who were this “Fellowship of Truths” Zaqeem had apparently belonged to? Who was this brother she’d never known? And so she’d left Dumea that night by boatman, coming east along the River Crescent and then the Swift, halfway across the Sovereignty to arrive here, in Hanesda, to speak with the uncle who’d fostered Zaqeem as a boy and mentored him as a man.

Yaram scratched the side of his forehead beneath his turban. “Even now, I can still remember when Zaqeem was that age,” he said, nodding at the boys in the street. “Always with a pen and tablet in his hands, always at study.”

“My son, Noah, does not share the habit,” Yasmin said.

“He doesn’t? Well. You should bring him here. It will do him good. It’s hard to set your hand to the plough when you’ve never known harvest. You should show him the city, the school, the sovereign courts, and leave off from these questions of yours. Nothing good will come of them. Not to you or anyone else.”

“You already know I can’t do that,” Yasmin said. “You know why.”

Yaram scratched at his beard and made a low displeased sound in his throat.

“If you could at least tell me who I might speak to about Zaqeem,” she said. “Who in this city knew him. His habits. His ways.”

“His habits and his ways… There are a great many habits of his you’d do well to never learn of, child. Your memories of him are few, I know that. Do not sully them.”

“What do you mean?”

Yaram’s pale eyes slid once more toward the boys. Apparently they weren’t drawing on the ground, after all. A hawk lay dead between them, piled flesh, beak and bones, battered dusty feathers and wings sticking out at odd angles. The boys were poking at it with sticks. “What if I were to tell you that those who knew him best were gamblers, vagabonds and wastrels? What if I were to say to seek Zaqeem’s ways is to seek the underside of a pretty rock, or the innards of a whitewashed tomb? All goodness and light without, decay and rot within.”

Yasmin just looked across the table at the old man. Zaqeem was dead. Tobiath had been missing for two months and it was becoming increasingly apparent that Hassan was hiding things from her, and had perhaps been doing so for some time. “I need to know the truth,” she said.

Yaram sighed and looked back to the bazaar. “Will you not heed a man in his old age, Yasmin?”

“I can, and I do, uncle. But he was my brother. I need to know.”

Yaram repeated his unhappy growl. He watched the bazaar, watched the wind ruffling the dead bird’s feathers on the ground whilst the boys continued to prod. He sighed heavily.

“There are two I know of,” he finally said. “They may provide a beginning… one in the clay street, by the pool near the watergate. His name is Barat. But you will need to be careful of him. Not a wholesome man. I was forced to have dealings with him when making guarantee for Zaqeem’s debts. If you must meet him then do not do so alone.”

Yasmin nodded.

Yaram looked at her to see she understood, then back to the bazaar.

“The second, she is an innkeeper. Rona, she is called. A Tresánite. She is on the straight street by the markets. Zaqeem stayed there most often when he came to the city. She will know what his comings and goings were.”

Yasmin bowed her head. “Thank you, uncle. I owe you.”

“No… The debt is mine for having told you, debt to your fathers.” The old man stared hard at the dead hawk on the ground; he could see the shape of its eyeless skull. From this angle it seemed as though it was looking at him. He looked at Yasmin. “And you will pray to them for me, that they may forgive this debt of mine. If they can.”

 

She went after sundown, quickstepping with Mulaam, the servant she’d had bring her here, through the narrow streets surrounding the market. There were people everywhere despite the hour, stallkeepers packing up their tables and wares and carrying them away in sacks. A shepherd went with an oil lamp, leading three ewes down the narrow road on one side and shielding the lamp with a curled hand like some precious jewel. Opposite, an old man tapped a feeble rhythm on his drum, croaking out an old and obscure song for coins from passersby whilst others leant against the walls, sipping from mugs of sourwine with bloodshot eyes. Yasmin and Mulaam hurried their way through with the hoods of their cloaks up over their heads, trying to avoid the passing glances of others on the street. With every step Yasmin found herself wondering if Zaqeem had walked here before them. Had he come by night? Did the dark narrow road with its departing vendors feel as fraught to him as it now did to her?

They reached the end of the road and turned into the alley Yaram had told her about. They found the door just where he said it would be, and then knocked and waited.

A woman opened, looked Yasmin up and down, and then glanced at Mulaam. “You are strangers,” she said. “There are other inns by the market road.”

“I was told this one is best,” Yasmin said.

The woman acknowledged that with silence. She stared at Yasmin for a few moments, and then up at Mulaam, and then shut the door. Yasmin looked at Mulaam. They stood there in the alley. Yasmin was about to knock again when the door reopened. The woman’s arm thrust through the gap, brandishing a purse. She held it out to Yasmin in her palm.

“I’ll give no more to beggars or thieves,” she said. “I’ve patrons I’d not have you disturb, but if you force me, I will. There’s plenty a man in here.”

It took Yasmin a moment to make sense of what the woman was saying. “Oh. No, no. That’s not why we’re here.” But when she stepped forward to explain, the woman moved back. Yasmin decided to do the same, give her space, let her see they were no threat. The woman was small. Her face was narrow and hungry, a certain hardiness to her; as angry as she was afraid. “It’s true we’re not seeking a room,” Yasmin said. She looked at the purse still clutched in the woman’s hand. “But neither are we after your money.”

“Then what do you want?”

“You are Rona?”

The woman’s eyes narrowed. “What do you want?”

“I need your help.”

Rona relaxed a little. “You’ve not the look of one in need of my help.”

“We came to ask about a man you perhaps once knew,” Yasmin said. “He came here often, I think. His name was Zaqeem?”

The woman’s wariness returned. “You’ve no business here with me,” she said. “And I’ve none with you. You find some other to trouble. Some other.”

“I just need some answers.”

“I’ve no answers for you.”

“A question or two, and then we’ll leave.”

“Leave now.”

“I will not,” Yasmin spoke quietly. “I cannot. Not until you answer our questions.” She glanced at Mulaam, who then reached into his cloak to fish out the purse. He bounced the small parcel of cloth in his palm. The silver jangled inside. “We will not be ungrateful for your help,” Yasmin said.

The woman’s eyes fixed on the parcel. It was a large purse. Mulaam pulled the drawstring and opened it. The silver inside glittered dully in the moonlight. “Just questions,” she said.

Mulaam stepped forward and handed her the purse.

“Only questions,” Yasmin said.

The woman took it quickly and opened it further to examine the contents.

Mulaam conjured a second purse from his pocket and jiggled it in his palm as he had the first.

“Should your answers prove helpful,” Yasmin explained.

The woman looked at the second purse and then again at the one in her hand. “Alright,” she said. “But this big one,” she jutted a finger in Mulaam’s direction. “He waits here.”

The woman let Yasmin in and led her through a second doorway, and then down into a narrow passage flanked with string-draped doorways on either side. Yasmin could hear the lulled heavy breaths of others behind each one, and in some the muffled murmur of voices. The small chamber Rona eventually brought her to closed with a wooden door. The woman lit a lamp and gestured for her to step all the way in.

“Just sit over there,” she said, pointing at a short upended stool between two tall clay pots and what looked like half a ladder tipped over.

Yasmin went over and righted the stool, brushing off the dust to sit. The woman locked the door and stood in the other corner. She turned and looked at Yasmin like what she was – a problem.

“I don’t want trouble,” she said.

“Why should there be any trouble?”

“I…” She took a deep breath. “What are you to Zaqeem anyway?”

“I want you to tell me why you’d think there’d be any trouble.”

“You know why.”

“No, I do not. I wish to know.”

The woman smiled bitterly. “No. If you don’t know, if you truly don’t, then you shouldn’t wish to.”

“Why not?”

“Because there’s no good from it. Once you know a thing, you can’t unknow it. That’s the way it is for everyone. I’ll give you back your silver if you like, or maybe I’d ask to keep just a bit of it, for letting you in and all. But I’ll tell you, what would be best is to keep from knowing any of it.”

“I’m not here for what is best,” Yasmin said. “I’m here to know the truth. Tell me what trouble you fear.”

“What I fear?” The woman smiled again. “You think I don’t know he’s dead, what happened to him?”

“They say it was done by bandits.”

The woman laughed then. She placed her hand to her forehead. “You’d not be here if you believed that.”

“No, I wouldn’t. So why don’t you tell me how he did die?”

“I don’t know how he died. I just know how he didn’t. I know it wasn’t the way it’s said it was. It wasn’t bandits.”

“How do you know?”

“How can I not? He had debts… He had… He was a man of appetites, Zaqeem was. A nice man. A charmer. But he had appetites he never saw to taming.”

“He gambled?”

“Oh, yes. He gambled plenty, and drank, and any and everything else a man with means might do. He’d be here every second month it seemed like. Especially around the new moon, or harvest. Whenever there were going to be men and women making merry, Zaqeem would be there and not shy about it.”

“You knew him well?”

The woman shrugged, sadly. “Some. Never as well as I’d have liked. He came to me only sometimes, when he was drunk mostly, but even then he’d know how to charm, how to make you smile. And me, I… well…” she gestured feebly at the small cluttered space around them. “He was like summer to me, when he chose to be. So I’d never refuse him. Though I knew there’d be nothing to come of it. Zaqeem had many women. That was his problem.”

“Was it?”

“Well, let’s just say he wasn’t picky about who they belonged to, a husband, say. Sooner or later he was always going to come upon an angry husband.”

“So Zaqeem had enemies, then.”

“Oh. Zaqeem had as many enemies as he did friends, and of all kinds and for all kinds of reasons. I always feared over that for him. He wasn’t a bad man. Just… he wasn’t a wise one either. But that’s not what I meant. What I meant was Zaqeem was never shy about what women he’d court, their station and so on.”

“And he would bring these women here?”

“Sometimes. He didn’t mean anything by it. Like I say, I don’t think he really remembered those times when he came to me alone. He was drunk mostly on those times. So it’s not like he was meaning anything by bringing them here. It was just his habit. And he knew I’d not tell. I wasn’t like how I’m being now.”

“Your not telling can neither help nor harm him now, Rona.”

The sound of her name seemed to jolt her. She glanced up at Yasmin. “No… I don’t suppose it can.” She stepped in from the corner. Her face straightened abruptly, tautened, as though all the feeling and sadness of before had been wilfully pressed from it. “There’s something I will tell you. Something I should tell you since we’re speaking this way. My mothers and fathers forgive me for saying it. But should I not say, it would be the greater sin.”

“What is it?”

Again she licked her lips. “Some of the women, when he brought them, I’d know their faces. Only sometimes. Rarely, really. Just one or two. I’ve an eye for faces, you see. They’d come in hoods and all what else but I’d still know them. There was one, when I looked I knew who she was straight away. Took all my strength to keep from showing that I knew her.”

“Why? Who was she?”

“She…” The woman’s lips quivered. She leaned forward and whispered. “I know what you see sometimes, it can’t be certain. I know that. But if who I saw wasn’t her it was the very likeness of her. A good likeness.”

“Who?”

“I saw the sovereign queen mother,” Rona said. “Chalise of Caphás… I saw the sharífa.”