What is this? Dawoud wondered. His old friend was rarely embarrassed by anything.
“As for myself,” the ghul hunter continued, “come morning I will go to the Singers’ Quarter to speak again to the boy Faisal, whose family was slain.”
So that’s it. Adoulla was ashamed of his own weakness. Afraid he was making selfish choices. Anxious that Dawoud would judge him harshly for it. Well, Dawoud could never pass judgment on this man whom he’d been friends with for a long lifetime. But neither would he let Adoulla lie to himself.
He smiled as he spoke. “Aye, speak again to the boy. And while you are about it—what do you know?—you will be at the house of the only woman that you have ever really loved. It is funny how All-Provident God arranges these things, eh?”
He’d meant only to tease his friend, but Adoulla’s expression was dark and troubled. “Miri Almoussa knows a great deal about the history of this city—she may have more information on our enemies.”
At this the dervish, who Dawoud had nearly forgotten was there, chirped up. “With apologies Doctor, I hope you will excuse me from accompanying you tomorrow, for—”
“For a holy man ought not be seen traipsing about a whorehouse, eh? And ought not associate with certain types, eh?” Adoulla’s tone spoke of the weariness of an old argument. “I grow truly tired of this, boy. You cannot call a man ‘partner’ and insult his friends at every turn.”
The boy’s tilted eyes went wide, and Dawoud thought his own might have, too. Adoulla seemed unaware of his surprising choice of words.
“I… I have never dared call myself your partner, Doctor. I am merely your assistant.”
Adoulla shrugged. “You’re my assistant in ghul hunting, true. But you and that forked sword of yours are near as good at it as I was in my prime.”
The boy looked profoundly embarrassed, and pink points tinted his golden cheeks. “I thank you, Doctor. But in any case I do not ask to be excused for the reason you named. Rather, I ask to remain here and act as a guard for the women.” Now it was the boy’s turn to look ashamed of himself and stammer. “The monster may return. I’ve… I’ve failed once to protect Za—er, the tribeswoman. Due to my lack of diligence, she was attacked, and if I am to—”
Dawoud could not listen to this. Adoulla teased the dervish but essentially coddled the boy’s rigid nonsense. Dawoud would not. If the dervish wished to judge himself guilty on the basis of nothing, that was his business. But Dawoud and his wife were being drawn back into grim matters that they’d left behind long ago. They had little choice—as foul a force as Dawoud had ever sensed threatened their best friend. But he’d be damned by God if he was going to go into battle with confused warriors at his side.
He wheeled on Raseed. “Do you have jackal fangs, boy? Not so far as I can see. So how in the name of Merciful God is it your fault the girl was wounded? The life you have chosen is war, young dervish. A war against the Traitorous Angel. The sort of thing your Order talks about in all of their oaths and Traditions. Well, this is the reality. The girl ought to praise God that she’s still alive. People—people we care for—die in wars. You seem unprepared for this. And perhaps unprepared to do the duty you left the Lodge for.”
Raseed lowered his head, his blue turban bobbing “You are correct, of course, Uncle.” The boy’s look said that each word was pulling a sword blade through his guts. “I must put ‘the sun of God’s good before the candleflame of one life.’ I just… I… it was my fault that—”
Litaz reappeared in the doorway, apparently having put the tribeswoman to bed. “What with the enemies that are after Adoulla, I would feel better if I could work without worrying that a ghul pack is going to knock down the door. Let the boy stay here with me and act as a guard.”
Dawoud nodded. “Anything to keep you safe, beloved.”
He and Litaz spent half that night lying beside each other, too anxious to sleep and not secluded enough to make love. Dawoud held Litaz’s small hand in his, but they said little. Finally, they drifted into sleep.
When he woke at dawn he did not wake Litaz. Instead he said silent goodbyes to her and a loudly snoring Adoulla, and stepped quietly out the door into the still half-dark morning.
Soon the nights would be growing shorter. The Feast of Providence, the night before the shortest day of the year, was almost upon them—though he’d do no celebrating until this Orshado and the things that served him were destroyed.
Dawoud started walking and soon left the Scholars’ Quarter behind him. He breathed deeply of the early morning air, trying to drive from his body the taint he’d felt when he’d worked his scrying spell last night. The power behind that taint… there was more to this than a handful of killings, Dawoud felt certain. That sort of power aimed at bigger things.
For the first time since he and Litaz had seen the smoke rising from Adoulla’s townhouse, Dawoud really turned over events in his head. He was angry to have been dragged into this business. For decades, his and his wife’s work had drawn them away from all that was normal and happy. Dawoud’s body wrecked by magic. Their baby boy murdered by monsters. When they had fought and traveled beside Adoulla and others, the hypnotic song of responsibility had called them onto paths of danger and madness, like the snake-tailed dune maids that lured desert travelers to their doom. But they’d left that all behind. Dawoud’s greatest worries these past few years had to do with ministering to the poor without going broke, and with his wife’s increasing desire to leave this city he had made his home. But now…
He passed a shuttered storefront, then stopped walking as his chest suddenly tightened and blazed into pain. In the course of his calling Dawoud had been both stabbed and poisoned, and this felt like both at once. He began to cough and nearly collapsed from it.
It was several minutes before the coughing fit passed. Standing frozen there on the street, he panted painfully, feeling his body taking on more age than was its due. The healing and scrying magics he had worked over the past day—it had been many months since he’d done such. He felt the toll with every labored breath. Loudmouthed Adoulla liked to complain about his old man’s aches, but he knew nothing of pain. Of weakness. When Dawoud worked his magic—Name of God, when he simply walked down a dusty Dhamsawaat street too fast!—it felt as if God’s great fingers were pinching his lungs shut.
With this Orshado and his monstrous servants out there, Dawoud, his wife, and his oldest friend were needed more than ever before, but he did not know how long he could last back in this life. Not for the first time, his head was filled with visions of himself as a doddering invalid who needed his wife to spoonfeed him.
He tried unsuccessfully to keep his face from betraying his pain to the porters and cartmen passing by. But, he saw, he needn’t have bothered—for the busy people of Dhamsawaat didn’t give three shits for a dying old man’s agony. The only looks he received were looks of disgust. After a moment his breathing began to return to normal, and he gave the self-centered people around him his own look of disgust. Perhaps Litaz is right. Perhaps it is time at long last for us to leave this cold-hearted city.
He leaned heavily against a stone wall and allowed himself one deep shudder. Then he focused his soul and drew himself up. There was a task at hand. And if he was going to be there for Litaz, he had to be strong. He clenched his fists and pressed on, trying not to feel the ache that was building in his back.