Adoulla passed men from Rughal-ba, with their neatly trimmed goatees and tight-fitting turbans. He saw Red River and Blue River Soo. He heard the false promises of a hundred hawkers, the single-stringed fiddle of a roving musician, the argument a feral-eyed, twitching man was having with himself. Unlike most sons of Dead Donkey Lane, Adoulla had seen many towns. Those folk he’d grown up around would leave the city only a handful of times in their lives—even going to another quarter was an occasion for some of them. Adoulla, on the other hand, had seen the villages of the Soo Republic with their low, bleached-clay houses of hidden luxury. He had seen the strange mountain-hole homes of the far north, where rain froze. He’d been to the edge of Rughal-ba, where, instead of being a character from lewd shadow-puppet plays, the ghul hunter was respected by powerful men as an earthly agent of God, and was considered a slave of the Rughali High Sultaan—if a rich and powerful slave.
But this city of his—his for some sixty years—well, there was nothing to compare with its streets. The crowds had annoyed Adoulla all his life. But of all the places in the Crescent Moon Kingdoms he had been, Dhamsawaat alone was his. And somewhere in his city, murderous monsters were preying on people.
And so, you old fart, Dhamsawaat needs you. Rotating this truth proudly in his mind made Adoulla feel just a little bit less tired. But as his sandaled feet brought him closer and closer to the house of Miri Almoussa, his fatigue returned twofold.
True to the code of the ghul hunter, Adoulla had never married. When one is married to the ghuls, one has three wives already, was another of the adages of his order. He didn’t know much about the old order—a few adages and invocations passed down many years ago by his teacher, old Doctor Boujali, and learned from old books. The ghul hunters had never been as cohesive a fraternity as the Dervishes’ Order—and any man could wear white and claim to chase monsters. Still, over the years, Adoulla had tried to adhere to what he had learned of the ways of his ancient order. He was a permissive man in many ways—no less with himself than with others, he had to admit. But in some things rigidity was the only way. Saying marriage vows before God would cause a ghul hunter’s kaftan to soil, and it would cost him the power of his invocations. As with so many of God’s painful ways, Adoulla did not know why it was so, only that it was.
The crowd thinned and Adoulla strode through Little Square, his kaftan billowing in the breeze. Little Square was not little at all—in fact, in all the city it was second only to Angels’ Square in size. But the name was old, from the days when Dhamsawaat had first been built on the ruins of a Kemeti city, and had only had two squares. Long rows of brown, thorny shrubbery framed its eastern and western sides. These low, desert bushes served as a back wall for the stall-less, beggarish sellers who lined the square to Adoulla’s left and his right.
Little Square was a haven for the less prosperous merchants and tradesmen of the city—those too poor or too unreliable to have earned, through honest work or bribery, a real shop or stall in one of the better markets. The square was flanked by these men and women, sitting on rugs or standing beside sorry piles of goods. Adoulla’s eyes moved up the column of half-rate cobblers and rotten-vegetable sellers to his right.
He cursed as he caught sight, a dozen yards ahead, of a skinny man in the white kaftan of his order. He strode over and made the noise in his throat that he made when genuinely offended. Litaz had once said that it sounded like he was being pleasured by a poorly trained whore.
For all that he mocked Raseed’s dervishhood, Adoulla had also pledged his life to an antiquated order that Dhamsawaatis knew mostly from great-grandparents’ tales and bawdy shadow-puppet plays. Adoulla had learned long ago that most men professing his life-calling were charlatans who had bits and pieces of the proper knowledge but had never been face-to-face with a ghul. They used cheap magic to make their robes appear moonlight white and took the hard-earned money of the poor, mumbling a few bogus spells and promising protection from monsters.
The hairy young man with an oily smile who stood before him wore such cheap robes. He was the sort who claimed to hunt the “hidden spirits” supposedly behind working peoples’ every trouble. The sort who claimed to tell the future. The rotten-vegetable sellers of my order.
When he was a younger man, and more defensive of the honor of his order, Adoulla had thought it his duty to root out such hucksters and send them packing with their robes dirtied and their noses and false charms broken. But the decades since had taught him resignation. Other charlatans would always pop up, and the people—the desperate, desperate people—would always go to them. Still, Adoulla took enough time now to give the fraud a long, scornful glance. They knew Adoulla, these men, knew him to be the last of the real thing—was it wrong that he took some pride in that? This one, at least, had the decency to lower his eyes in shame.
That such thieves thrived was sad, but it was the way of the world. Adoulla passed the fraud by, spitting at the man’s feet instead of throwing a punch as he once would have. The fool made an offended noise, but that was all.
By the time he reached Miri’s tidy storefront it was past midday. The brassbound door was open and, standing in the doorway, Adoulla smelled sweet incense from iron burners and camelthorn from the hearth. For a long moment he just stood there at the threshold, wondering why in the world he’d been away from this lovely place so long.
A corded forearm blocked his way, and a man’s shadow fell over him. A muscular man even taller than Adoulla stood scowling before him, a long scar splitting his face into gruesome halves. He placed a broad palm on Adoulla’s chest and grabbed a fistful of white kaftan.
“Ho-ho! Who’s this forsaker-of-friends, slinking back in here so shamelessly?”
Despite all his dark feelings, Adoulla smiled. “Just another foolish child of God who doesn’t know to stay put, Axeface.” He embraced Miri’s trusted doorman, and the two men kissed on both cheeks.
“How are you these days, Uncle?” the frighteningly big man asked.
“Horrible, my friend. Horrible, miserable, and terrible, but we praise God anyway, eh? Will you announce me to Miri, please?”
Axeface looked uncomfortable, as if he was considering saying something he didn’t want to say.
“What is it?” Adoulla asked.
“I’ll announce you, Uncle, and there’s not a man in the world I’m happier to see pay the Mistress a visit. But she isn’t gonna be happy to see you. You’re lucky her new boyfriend isn’t here.”
Adoulla felt his insides wither. For a moment he had no words. “Her… her… what?” he finally managed. “Her who?” He felt as if he’d suddenly been struck half-witted.
“Her new man,” Axeface said with a sympathetic shake of the head. “You know him, Uncle. Handsome Mahnsoor, they call him. Short fella, thin moustache, always smells nicer than a man should.”
Adoulla did know the man, or at least knew of him. A preening weasel that twisted others into doing his work for him. Adoulla’s numbness burned away in a flame of outrage.
“That one!? He’s too young for her! Name of God, he’s clearly after her money!” He gestured with one hand to the greeting room behind Axeface. “The son of a whore just wants to get his overwashed little hands on this place. Surely, man, you must see that!”