CHAPTER 44

He was back where he’d started, standing on glittering white sand under the heat of a midday sun. The Inner Ocean had long ago washed the beach clean of the remains of the slave he’d dragged from the water and hadn’t had time to bury.

‘Do you remember, Said?’

‘How could I forget? You grinning like you were touched by the sun, and Ibn Alam swinging his precious sword around.’ Said reached down and scooped up a handful of dry sand, then let it trickle through his clenched fist. ‘You punched me in the throat, then tied me up.’

‘Yes,’ said Benzamir, ‘but I’m not sorry.’

‘And I’m not asking you to apologize. It was the will of Allah that brought us together that day, and more fool Ibn Alam for not recognizing it.’ He wiped off the last of the sand from his palms. ‘And look. It’s the will of Allah that we’ve returned, safe and sound. Not a scratch on us.’

‘No one will believe your story. You haven’t lost an eye or a leg, you haven’t gained a single scar. Perhaps—’

‘Master! You’ve saved us from diggers and armies and monsters and who knows what else. That we’ve lived is a miracle.’ Said slapped Wahir across the shoulders, making the boy grunt. ‘To say anything else would be ungrateful.’

‘Except,’ said Benzamir, ‘you return as Said and Wahir, man-at-arms and camel boy, and not as the friends of Prince Benzamir Mahmood. I’d like to do something about that if I can.’

‘You won’t ask Ariadne to float over the sheikh’s palace? Please, no. They’ll stone us all.’

‘It’ll look really impressive.’ Benzamir could see Wahir weighing up the idea.

‘It would be a gift too far,’ pleaded Said. ‘Don’t honour us in that way.’

‘I had another idea. A gift that you might accept.’ The lift disc slid down the beach, laden with bolts of cloth. ‘We can bury these above the high-water mark, or stash them in a cave if we can find one. You can collect them later when you’ve got a camel or two in tow.’

Said fingered a deep blue cotton. ‘This is a king’s ransom.’

‘Not really. It leaves me short on azo-dye components, but Ariadne assures me that we’re not going to need them on the way home. You can sell these for a good price, and you’re wise; you’ll know what to do with the money. A business buying and selling. Mahr, even, if you met the right woman.’ He bent down. ‘And for you, too, Wahir. Said will share what he gets with you, but I want to make certain you benefit from this, just in case your father decides that your good fortune should be his alone. Said will look after what’s due to you until you can control it yourself.’

Wahir looked serious as he considered his options. ‘Camels, I think.’

‘I never doubted it for a moment.’

‘Though I don’t think I’ll be like Ali Five-camels. That story was just too strange.’

‘Trust me. You’ll change your mind one day. You’ll want to give five camels and consider it a bargain. Love never counts the cost.’

Pulling a face, Wahir mumbled: ‘I’m too young.’

‘And yet the time will come around, like it or not.’ Benzamir got up again. ‘It’s going to be nightfall in Novy Rostov at this rate.’

‘Ariadne is faster than the fastest bird,’ protested Said.

‘She is, but Novy Rostov is west of here, so it’s mid-afternoon there already.’

Said and Wahir looked sceptically at each other.

‘Ask the imam. He’ll tell you I’m right.’ Benzamir gave up. He hugged Said, slapping him repeatedly on the back, then swept up Wahir and swung him around. Wahir laughed and howled as his heels left the ground. ‘We have to go.’

Va, Elenya and Alessandra gave more circumspect farewells, and Wahir had one last word with Benzamir.

‘I’ll never see you again, will I?’

‘If everything goes well, then no. I don’t expect to come back. But if I do, we’ll smoke a sheesh and talk about old times, and you can tell me all your news. I expect it to be interesting, though,’ and he wagged his finger. ‘Adventure is burning in your soul. Never let it go out.’

The others were carrying the heavy rolls of cloth up the beach, and Benzamir took one, put it over Wahir’s shoulder, then gathered up an armful himself and added it to the pile. There was nothing more to be done.

‘I’ll remember you every day I’m alive,’ called Benzamir, walking backwards towards Ariadne. ‘Peace be on you both.’

No matter how fast he blinked, his eyes filled up with tears. He stumbled into the cargo bay and did something he hadn’t done since he was a child: pressed his face into a corner of two walls and let the sadness take him.

         

Getting to Novy Rostov unseen was all but impossible. Ariadne couldn’t change her skin colour–she was a spaceship, not a spy drone–and Benzamir didn’t want to wait until nightfall to leave. He wanted his grief to be compressed into one overwhelming lump, then finished with, not strung out like a wire until he broke on it.

So they rose into the sky until they looked no more than a crow, and crossed the Inner Sea from east to west. Ariadne’s drive didn’t produce a vapour trail, but her passing shed a ghostly mist which spun and broke up in her wake.

Those who looked up would have seen a dark shape dart across the sky, followed a few moments later by the rumble of distant thunder that seemed to roll on for ever before fading. But as they approached the Caliphate, heavy snow clouds bunching down from Siberia shielded their approach.

They watched from the flight deck, radar punching through the cloud layer and discovering what lay beneath. The Black Sea fell away, and they slowed as they came to the Bay of Azov, dropping lower all the time.

‘There,’ said Elenya. ‘See where that finger of water reaches up between the hills? Novy Rostov is on the south bank.’

Benzamir looked at Va. The monk’s jaw was clenched tight shut, and beads of sweat glittered on his head. ‘Brother?’

Va didn’t move. His gaze was locked on Novy Rostov.

The radar painted a picture of the city, balanced on a ridge of land between the sea and a river. Brutal stone walls enclosed a warren of streets and alleys, and at the eastern end a second enclosure surrounding an ugly squat castle and a bright-domed cathedral. The fields around the walls were vacant, the forests further out, deserted.

‘Where should I land?’ asked Ariadne.

‘Forgive me, but I don’t want a fuss. Matters will be hard enough to explain. My family own a summer retreat upstream. There’s a dock, and the house is above there, facing north,’ said Elenya.

‘No,’ said Va. ‘Not any more.’

‘How do you know? You never went there.’

‘I had it destroyed. There was a detachment of Caliphate cavalry billeted there. During the night my army surrounded the place and burned them, and their horses, alive. You’re right. I never went there. But I ordered the action and welcomed the report. To this day I don’t know if you had any servants there, or what happened to them.’ He wiped his face with his hand. ‘I was protecting my left flank.’

Elenya watched as Ariadne sought out any sign of the wooden dock or the comfortable dacha. There was a path from the river that led to a clearing. Nothing more.

‘I’ve always tried to make you understand what it was like, what I actually did to break the Caliphate’s siege. We took the barges they left and sent them downstream, laden with rock oil and wood. People burned themselves to death guiding the fires to the heart of the fleet, because it was the only way we could guarantee success. They gave up their lives gladly, sometimes singing as they went.’

Benzamir slipped from the pilot’s chair and stood beside the monk. ‘Don’t do this.’

‘They died because I asked them to.’

‘Perhaps they died because they thought the cause was right?’

‘The cause wasn’t right. The Caliphate wasn’t the enemy. I was. Because I wanted her, I gave them war.’

‘Whose cause is ever right? My motives for coming here weren’t pure. If I hadn’t accepted the decision of my people, I would have been on Persephone Shipsister. I’d have ended up justifying the murder of your brothers for a pile of metal books.’

Va was close to vomiting. His skin was translucent, dripping sweat onto the deck.

‘One decision separated me from them. Everything that followed afterwards was because I chose to stay with my people, even though I thought it was the wrong thing to do.’

‘The voices,’ said Va. ‘They curse me.’

Benzamir spun up a map of the Inner Ocean. ‘Alessandra? Tell him. Tell him about Misr.’

She looked confused for a moment, and looked at the map. ‘You saved us,’ she said in sudden recognition. ‘You did, didn’t you? The Caliphate’s navy was strangling Misr’s trade, always threatening a landing. The Kenyans had turned us into an armed camp. Then it suddenly stopped. You broke the Caliphate’s back right here at Novy Rostov, and they lost their stomach for fighting.’

‘You don’t understand,’ started Va, but Alessandra gasped.

‘Five years later the Caliphate wasn’t in any position to stop you from following Solomon Akisi wherever you wanted. It’s almost as if’–and she put her hand to her mouth–‘you knew.’

Va doubled over, spewing out everything he had. Benzamir took an instinctive step back. Va retched again, almost kneeling in his own filth.

Elenya watched, her face void of expression.

‘I am no prophet. I didn’t know. Believe me, I didn’t.’ Va’s voice was hoarse, rasping.

‘Neither did I know that your mission and mine would coincide so completely when I submitted to the Council’s authority. We make decisions based on imperfect knowledge and uncontrollable passions. We have to live with the consequences.’

‘I killed them all.’ Alessandra tried to give Va water, but he held her wrist. ‘Every man and woman and child. I’ve tried living with it for six years. I thought bringing the books back would give me some comfort. I bargained with the dead. I thought we had a pact.’

Benzamir wrestled Alessandra from Va’s grip, and she backed away, cradling her hand across her body and flexing her fingers.

‘It’s not forgiveness you want, it’s redemption. It’s within your reach.’

‘Then why do I feel so utterly wretched?’ Va howled.

‘Because you don’t understand what it is you’ve saved the world from. You saw their buildings and their weapons. You caught the blunt edge of their plan that left your brothers dead and you chasing across the face of the planet. I had to look straight into their corrupt and diseased heart. You should be happy, Brother Va. You should have peace.’

‘I feel no peace.’

‘Then,’ said Benzamir, ‘the enormity of what you have done escapes you. I can only thank you, and wish you well.’

Shiny, scuttling crabs started to clean the floor.

‘How can I believe the things you say?’

‘He doesn’t lie,’ said Elenya. ‘He’s been honest with everyone he’s met. Listen, Va. All those people who died because you loved me, the thing you hate the most about yourself, has been taken and changed and turned into something different. Alessandra and Benzamir are right: if you hadn’t beaten the Caliphate here, you’d never have got the books back. Va, look at me.’

He did so, eventually, reluctantly, sick still on his chin, on the hem of his robe.

‘It wasn’t for nothing. It wasn’t for me. It wasn’t a mistake. It had to happen. I don’t pretend to understand how any of this can begin to make sense. But it makes more sense than twenty thousand peasants and soldiers going to their grave over a woman.’ She smiled at the irony. ‘Even if that woman was me.’

Benzamir guided Va back a step to let the crabs do their work.

Elenya continued: ‘No one’s trying to say their deaths are now justified. Somehow, they’ve…’ She gave up, shrugged and sighed.

Va nodded miserably, and Benzamir asked Ariadne to land.

‘Where, Benzamir?’

‘Close to the city. There’s a blizzard blowing, it’s dark, and if we’re quick, we won’t be seen.’

Ariadne settled through the layers of low-lying cloud. The display showed a blinding swirl of snowflakes superimposed on the radar-mapped landscape.

‘I’ll go now.’ Elenya held up her hands. ‘I don’t want any of you to come with me. Promise me you’ll stay here, in this room.’ She glared at each of them in turn, waiting for them to acquiesce.

‘Good luck, Princess,’ said Alessandra. ‘I hope you…I don’t know–have a long and happy life? Is that too much to ask for?’

‘I don’t know. Any sort of life will be welcome.’

Benzamir raised his hand. ‘Princess Elenya,’ he said, and there was a catch in his throat.

‘Tell me again,’ she said.

‘All will be well.’

There was silence, punctuated only by Ariadne telling them they had landed.

‘Va? Have you nothing to say to me?’

‘God go with you, wherever you are. And I’m sorry.’

The corner of her mouth twitched in the memory of a smile. ‘I release you, Brother Va Angemaite. I won’t chase after you again.’

She strode from the flight deck, her machine-fabricated boots clicking on the floor. The door shushed and cut off the noise completely.

‘I’ve opened the cargo bay doors,’ said Ariadne. The display twisted: Elenya was standing at the doors, eyes half closed against the snow flying at her face. Then she jumped to the ground, and with her ankles swallowed by drifting snow, she ploughed towards the gates of Novy Rostov.

Benzamir realized he’d been holding his breath. He puffed, and patted Va on the back. The monk didn’t move. He seemed frozen in place.

They watched as the figure on the screen broke into a run, uphill, until she was dwarfed by the city’s wall.

‘It’s time to go, Ariadne. We’re almost done.’