From within the red silk, a gleaming white, fleshless bone finger pointed accusingly at Asima.
“What?” he managed, his voice hoarse.
“Another little souvenir. It’s his; Ma’ahd’s.”
“You kept his finger?”
Asima laughed and once more Ghassan was unnerved by her expression.
“Better. I kept the whole hand for a while.” She smiled wistfully. “But I had to trim things down and travel light when I left Akkad, so I just kept a couple of fingers for luck.”
The captain stared at his passenger and then shook his head in a mixture of disbelief and revulsion. He suddenly felt so alone. He’d been looking forward to a chance to talk with Asima; to catch up on the events of so many years and now he found that she was far from the person he remembered. She had hardened; become cold and vicious. He found himself thinking of Samir and his life of crime and murder and wondering how, of the three children that had raced across those dusty rooftops so long ago, he seemed to be the only one that had reached adulthood with a sense of morals and principles of which their parents would be proud.
He frowned again. Asima had not flinched at the news of her father’s death. She had not brought up the subject of Samir; not even asked where he was or what he was doing. Ghassan realised with a start that any trust he had in her had evaporated in the past few minutes, and he began to feel for the unsuspecting nobles of Velutio who were about to have this calculating woman dropped upon them.
“Ghassan?”
He looked up and realised that Asima was watching him.
“I’m sorry, Asima. Thank you for thinking of me, but I don’t need these gifts and, I’m afraid, I don’t really want them.”
He turned and gestured at her with a waved hand.
“Have you lost touch with who you were so much that your father’s death is meaningless? You’ve not even asked after Samir…”
Asima shrugged.
“I would have got around to it. One thing at a time, Ghassan. To do anything well, you must prioritise.”
She stood and started to walk around the room, waving her hand to accentuate her words.
“I am Asima, Ghassan. Maybe not Asima the poor merchant’s daughter from M’Dahz, but the lady Asima, wife of the former God-King of Pelasia, first woman of the harem and, until recently, the most powerful woman in Pelasia.”
She pointed an accusing finger.
“You expect me not to change in almost twenty years, Ghassan? You have changed, so why not me. I had to survive and, in the name of all that remains, I did so and I did it damned well!” Her voice had dropped to a hiss.
“And Samir? Of course I know about Samir. That ship of his is as infamous in Pelasian waters as it is in yours. And he always did think faster than you, Ghassan. That’s why he’s still out there. How many times have you tried to corner him? How many times did you think you had him before he slipped out of your grasp like water from a leaky cup.”
She snarled and slapped her hands down on the table.
“I do what I must, Ghassan. So does Samir. Only you are so weak that you hide behind your flags and regulations as you flounder around, unable even to catch your brother with half the world’s military power behind you.”
She fell silent, staring down at the table. She appeared to focus on something for a moment and then her mood changed like a sudden squall. She glanced sidelong at the stony face of the now bitterly angry captain; the target of her tirade.
“I’m sorry, Ghassan.” She gave him a weak smile. “I’ve had a tough time and life is not very easy for me at the moment. I shouldn’t take it out on you. Forgive my harsh words.”
Ghassan continued to glare at her as she returned her gaze to study the map on the table beneath her hands. An interesting archipelago lay between her thumbs and this, if she was reading this correctly, was looming in her near future. She turned to regard Ghassan again and the captain straightened.
“Thank you for you time, lady Asima. I shall not disturb you again until the evening meal is prepared. Rest well.”
Without a word, he cast the bones and the jewel onto the bunk and, turning, strode from the room, allowing the door to shut with a loud bang behind him. Asima sighed. Had she gone too far? She needed him distant, but not too distant. New plans… new plans within plans. Now where was that archipelago?
In which Asima makes her presence felt
Asima peered from the viewport in the side of the room. She had been alone most of the time since her ‘conversation’ with Ghassan when she came aboard, the only interruption being the delivery of her meals by one or other of the crew. Apparently the captain fell disinclined to join her to eat, but that was better for Asima anyway. It had taken around an hour and all of her considerable mental faculties to fathom the arcane naval charts on the table, plot the distance to the archipelago, estimate the ship’s speed and therefore how long it would be until they reached the string of small islands. Having embarked on the afternoon tide, the Wind of God should pass the archipelago in the middle of the second night.
The interminable hours alone in a small, bare room were then mostly spent irritably tutting as she went through all her packages. It had been galling enough when she left Akkad stripping so many years of her life’s acquisitions down to three large cases. Now she realised it would have to be just one, and preferably the bag, which was easily transportable. Refining what she needed and what she could realistically do without was a task of several hours on its own.
Finally there had been the time spent listening to the orders and the heavy footsteps above and outside, peering out of the door and along the corridor to the deck when she felt she needed more information. To work out routines and schedules by sound alone was a difficult task, but Asima had achieved more during her time in the harem.
The first night had been very informative with respect to the crew’s night time schedule. The second morning, she had braced herself and left the room, ostensibly to stretch her legs. Ghassan had glared at her when she appeared on deck and had assigned one of the oarsmen to escort her. She had made a great show of enjoying the sea air, stretching and relaxing, and had shown an interest in the workings of the ship, as she would no doubt be expected to. In fact, she was very interested, but only in certain aspects. How sails were set or oars were stored was of little value to her. Other parts…
And then she had retired to her cabin once more to settle in for the day and finalise her plans. The hours had passed tensely for her as the naval vessel bounced lightly across the waves on its journey to the great city that was the centre of the Empire and the start of her life of imposed exile in obscurity.
Now, the moon was bright and shining down on the water, making the waves glitter and dance, which worked both for and against her plan, but then she could hardly control the heavens. Squinting out to the horizon, she confirmed what she thought she saw a minute ago. Marked on the charts, ‘eagle rock’ was one of the standard naval navigation markers and stood at the near end of the closest island in the archipelago. She smiled to herself. Predictably, ‘eagle rock’ was identifiable from here, rising aquiline above a low spit of sand.
That eagle marked the arrival of the archipelago and the departure of one prickly passenger.
Hoisting the heavy bag onto her shoulder, she glanced down at the other two, open on the bed and messy and dishevelled.
With a sigh, she tapped the hilt of the knife in her belt with her free hand and gave a last quick scan of the cabin to make sure she’d forgotten nothing. She hadn’t, of course. Asima was nothing if not thorough.
Nodding with satisfaction, she opened the door of her cabin as quietly as she could, the faint creak going unnoticed among the many other creaks and groans of a ship under sail. It was almost midnight and most of the crew would be asleep. The oarsmen were bedded down in their temporary sleeping rolls in the flat space between the benches in the lower deck, their oars up and locked, out of the water. The ship slipped quietly through the sea, rising and falling gently, carried by a light wind, slowly but continually.