The coffee-house had a sullen air as afternoon approached. Tradesmen and caravanners filtered out and locals rushed in, bee-lining for their usual spots as the servant boy tailed them with fresh cups. Every single discussion centered around what had happened in the square. Those who had seen it first-hand described it to their companions in hushed voices.

Rabia and I had found a secluded corner inside the house, by a screen that looked out to the mosque road. She had veiled herself, and pulled up her scarf. Most ignored her presence and only the servant boy asked her who she was. I told him to mind his own business.

When Samir Ali stopped by, his sharp eyes picked out Rabia and he quickly made his way over with a tray of pastries. “What are you doing here?”

“It’s fine, no one will recognize me,” Rabia brushed him off. “Besides, something else is on everyone’s mind right now.”

Samir Ali nodded gravely as he settled down on a cushion across from us. “First the Numayri attack, and now this. It has been a terrible week for everyone.”

“Lady Qurrat will be devastated,” Rabia said.

“The Emir’s wife?” I asked.

“Yes, I’m sure she knew of her daughter’s affair. And even encouraged it.”

“That’s odd,” the physician’s aide added with a mouthful of the almond cookies.

“Ali was a good one. He was a farrier, I met him a few times. He’ll be missed.”

Rabia’s voice remained unchanged and I couldn’t see her face, so it was tough to tell how much this was affecting her. It was a brutal sight as they had dragged the boy out of the fountain. There had been a lot of blood.

“The town has lost a youth,” I said.

Rabia snorted, “Of course, that’s what you would think of. One less fighting body.”

“You’d rather the old guilds-man pick up the spear and defend our town?”

“Our town?” Rabia said, and I felt her eyebrow raise as she turned to me.

“How are you eating your food, anyways?” I asked.

“Like this,” Rabia said and took a piece of her pastry, lifted her veil and slipped it underneath. “Give me your coffee.”

“You said you didn’t want it.”

“Well, I want it now,” Rabia said and snatched my cup.

“Don’t finish it.”

“I’m not,” Rabia snapped.

“Why does everyone gulp down their drink around here like some yogurt drinker?”

“Musa!” The servant boy yelled excitedly and rushed over to the old date-seller as he stumbled into the house, squinting around as his eyes adjusted. Yaseen blocked the boy’s path, “back off, Abdul. He’s mine,” he said.

“I told that boy to go rest,” I said but Rabia only grunted. “He should be sleeping. He spent all night waiting for his father by the gates.”

“His father didn’t come back?” Samir Ali asked.

I held my tongue as the boy picked his way over to us, leaving Musa to catch up with the Hankeeper. It was obvious what they were discussing. Yaseen also had the same in mind.

“Did you see it, Munqidh? Did you see what Ali did to himself?”

“We were there,” I nodded.

“He killed himself. They still haven’t washed the blood off the fountain. Is he going to end up in hellfire?”

“Yes,” Rabia replied. The boy frowned and Samir Ali offered him a cookie, which he refused.

Musa eventually trudged up to us and with hands on hips, studied Rabia, “And who are you?”

“My cousin,” I said quickly.

“Are you that runaway slave?”

Rabia froze as the old man smiled and waved her off, “Don’t worry, don’t worry. I’m not going to say anything. Mina mentioned she saw you around the bimaristan.”

“See,” Samir Ali said, “people are already noticing you. You can’t hide around here. Sooner or later Abu Mateen will send the Oghuz after you.”

“So the Turkmen are Oghuz?” I asked.

“Aren’t they all?” Musa asked.

“And why didn’t you come back for your wound cleaning?” Samir Ali said to me. “I thought you’d left Salamiyya already.”

“I don’t think our new Captain is going anywhere,” Musa said.

“What?” Rabia and the physician aide both looked at me confused.

“Khwaja recommended him to the Ra’is,” the date-seller explained between sips of his black coffee. “It’s basically decided.”

“I didn’t hear of this,” Samir Ali said, “where did you—“

“I must go, actually,” Musa replied. He put down his empty cup on the tray and lifted himself up with a grunt. “Don’t worry about the Ra’is or anyone else Munqidh. Khwaja’s word carries more weight than anyone else. The Militia Captain is always for the people. And I think you’ll do justice to the station. Just come over to my place for some drink now and then, eh?”

“This is terrible news,” Rabia said as the old man left in a hurry.

“Why?” Yaseen replied, “I think it’s great. You can recruit me and train me, right?”

“You’re too young, Yaseen,” Samir Ali replied. “And I don’t think it will work out, Munqidh. You need to be careful.”

I saw the concern in his eyes and wondered what he thought of me. I’d already expected Rabia’s reaction, even though she sat quietly now and didn’t say much else.

Samir Ali continued, “Khwaja can get you the spear. But you’ll still have to make happy the Exchange, the Ulama, even Sumaira.”

“Who’s Sumaira?”

“Lady Sumaira, she’s a seamstress who runs the cotton district. She usually doesn’t care about stuff like this, and Umar kept to himself. But allowing a stranger in town to become militia is going to be a concern for the women. Especially with everything that’s going on.”

“I will clear up who needs to be worried and who doesn’t soon enough.”

“What does that mean?” Samir Ali said, suddenly suspicious in addition to his concern.

“It means this town needs to be a little more disciplined. Especially for what’s to come.”

“And what is to come?” Rabia finally spoke again, turning to me seriously.

Samir Ali stared between us, then threw his hands, “Both of you should have left when you had the chance. You still can—“

I put a hand on the aide’ knee, “I will not leave you, friend. There is a debt I owe to all of you.”

“Yes, I think so,” Rabia agreed slowly. “Maybe you do.”

“To Rabia for saving me from the beast, to you for healing my wounds,” I said.

Yaseen jumped up, “and what about me?”

Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.

“To you, I owe everything else,” I said and jabbed his stomach playfully. The boy’s giggle lifted my spirits and I felt ready to barge into the Ra’is office with my blade and demand the world for him.

“Come,” I said, “It’s time for remediation.”

***

The Ra’is had a habit of sniffing every time he reset the old abacus. He scribbled for a few minutes, then fiddled with the wooden instrument, sniffed, dipped his pen in ink, scribbled again. Yaseen made shadow puppets in the sunlight that beamed through the door rafters. But he eventually grew bored of that, sighed and starting wandering around aimlessly.

“Don’t touch anything,” I told him, then turned back to the Ra’is. “How much longer?”

The Ra’is’ daughter came out of the back office with a stack of paper and when she set it on the desk, a puff of dust rose in the air around her. She wrinkled her nose. “Don’t disturb him while he’s working. There are other farmers too, you know, that have had to seek refuge behind the walls. You’re not alone in your troubles.”

“Coffee?” The Ra’is asked absently.

“Yes, father,” the woman took his empty cup and rushed back into back room.

“I don’t understand what the delay is,” I said.

The pen scratched in response, and I settled back against the wall and stared up at the roof. It was carved in Damascene style, but hadn’t been cared for in ages. There was some shuffling of feet outside the door, then came a knock.

“Come in!” The Ra’is shouted suddenly.

A handful of teenage boys ambled in awkwardly, getting their spears stuck in the door-frame and hitting each other in the shins. “Watch it!” the oldest yelled at the ones behind him.

“Muneer! Thank you for coming. Where is Captain Umar?”

The young man shrugged.

“Right, well, this will do I suppose.”

“What do you want, again?”

“Nothing, just…uh, stand there. While I deal with this man,” The official jabbed his pen in my direction.

“Yaseen,” Muneer said happily, “who’s that with you?”

“Munqidh, he’s a cavalier,” Yaseen introduced me.

“Peace be with you, soldiers,” I said. The three boys behind Muneer stood up straighter at the address.

“Peace,” Muneer replied, “you are new around here, yes? I think I saw you the other day. Were you the man who scolded Amjad?”

“The gatekeeper? He is stupid, yes.”

Muneer chuckled, “yes, Amjad is a donkey. He said you let a Numayri inside the town, though.”

“I mean no harm, soldiers. The Ra’is is fearful of me, but I’m just here to help Yaseen.”

“Where is your father?” Muneer asked the boy.

“He’s not back, yet.”

“Well, be careful,” Muneer told him, then turned to leave.

“Where are you going?” Ra’is demanded. Slowly the boys filtered out, this time carefully lowering their weapons as Muneer shepherded them out. “We’ll be outside, Al Muhtiz, don’t worry. We’ll be right outside. Just yell if he does something.” And with that the militiaman shut the door, leaving the Ra’is white-faced behind his counter.

“My apologies, Ra’is Al Muhtiz,” I said with as much regret as I could muster, “my anger got the better of me earlier this morning. I only want what’s best for the boy and his family.”

“I can’t give you anything, his father needs to accept the remediation.”

“Munqidh is my guardian,” Yaseen said quickly.

“I don’t care,” the official sat back down on his stool. “Your father’s name is on the Iqta files.”

“So they can receive remediation once the father returns?”

“Not quite,” the Ra’is replied. “Here’s the situation.”

The man took the papers that his daughter had bought and flipped through them quickly, counting under his breath. “The Abbasi family has had that farm for forty years now. But it has only been functional for less than half of that time. So any remediation would be ten dinars.”

“Fine,” I said.

“However,” the Ra’is then picked up the papers in front of him and counted some more. His daughter brought him a steaming cup and for a moment looked like she was going to ask if we wanted anything. But she sniffed and turned away, disappearing again into her room.

“However,” the man repeated, “His father has accrued a debt of three dinars with the office over the years. And we can’t give remediation to any debtors.”

“So give only seven dinar, take the debt out of the—“

“The debt must be cleared first,” the Ra’is said nervously and licked his lips, “Look, once this nasty business with the Bedouins is over, the family can return to their farm and start again.”

“The livestock is gone.”

“I’m sure we can arrange a loan for some more. I can see the farm back to normal by next Ramadan.”

“The boy needs food and shelter.”

“The Exchange provides food and drink for everyone at the coffee-house.”

I held back a sigh. Perhaps it was time to bring up Khwaja’s recommendation. “There is one more thing.”

The round man shrunk back into his stool as I stood up. He looked nervously to the door. “Here,” I said, taking out the letter from my satchel before the man’s imagination ran wild.

“What is this?” he said, squinting through his spectacle at the insignia on the parchment. “This is not true.” He quickly unfolded the paper and his sharp eyes blinked across the words. He must’ve read it several times with how long it took for him to reply.

He finally took off his glasses and looked up in confusion, “Why would he pick you?”

“Here’s one more,” I said, handing him a small scarf of blue silk. “Lady Sumaira didn’t have time to draft a letter, but I was given this handkerchief. You can check with her later.”

Sumaira hadn’t seen me, and it was Mina who had handed me the scarf early morning. She said she would explain everything and that the cotton lady would be fine with Khwaja’s recommendation either way. The Ra’is held the cloth in one hand and the letter in the other, and was speechless.

“I can fight, I can lead. I will not disappoint the people of this town,” I said.

“I… well, this is strange.”

“And you don’t have to pay me.”

The Ra’is came back to his senses, “I don’t?”

“I don’t want a salary, I just want the boy’s debt to be cleared.”

“Three years of unpaid service,” the man said quickly.

“One,” I said, “and I want full control of the gates as well.”

“Two.”

“Fine,” I replied.

Yaseen was scratching his chin when I told him to get up. “I don’t understand. You will pay my father’s debt?”

“Something like that.”

Yaseen frowned, “you don’t have to. I’m going to pay it.”

“When you’re older.”

Yaseen seemed unsure for a moment but surprised me by taking my hand, “you’ll make a great captain, Munqidh.”

His smile was like finding a freshwater spring after a long day’s journey. I put my hand on his. “Thank you for helping me. I didn’t know who I was on that road where we first met, but you’ve given me a new life.” The air seemed to shimmer for a second around Yaseen, like heat-waves distorting my vision of the boy. But they weren’t made of heat, but emotion. The boy’s emotion. And It smelled like pride.

I let go quickly and my vision cleared. “Are you alright?” Yaseen said, noticing my shock.

The Ra’is slapped his pen on the desk to get our attention. “Umar will get you your spear and vest. Please leave, I really do have other matters.”

“Didn’t you hear my father, he said—“ his daughter began.

“He just said that, what’s wrong with you,” Yaseen snapped.

“Get out!” The Ra’is cried.

***

I didn’t bother Umar and the militia the rest of the evening. There would be time enough for that in the morning. Before I went to the fakir house for the night, however, I stopped by the bimaristan and Samir Ali was more than happy to clean my cuts and apply fresh bandages. We sat down on the steps of the bimaristan.

“Are you sure you won’t spend the night? We have a bed,” Samir Ali said. He replaced his cloth with a cleaner one and dipped it carefully into the ointment in his lap.

“I like the coolness out here,” I replied. The laundry quarter was mostly empty now. But the air was still wet with soap and the colorful blankets left out to dry waved softly in the quiet yard. The moon was already making its rise, faintly white as a cloud in the evening sky. I think I found the nights of Salamiyya more to my liking than the rush of the morning.

“You’ve made strange choices for a recluse,” Samir Ali said.

“If I could wear a mask during the day, I would.”

“Like the man in the golden mask?”

That question caught me off guard, and a flash of anger at the aide passed through me. I didn’t want to speak of my visions anymore. The nightmares were enough to deal with.

“You don’t sleep at night do you?” Samir Ali continued, finishing the wrappings around my thigh. He avoided my eyes.

Thankfully, I didn’t have to answer that since Rabia sat down beside us in that moment. “What are you two badgers doing out here?”

“How did you finish your dinner so quickly?” Samir Ali asked her, “I just saw—“

“I found this,” she said, holding up a book sown in a bright blue leather.

“You looked through my satchel!”

Rabia avoided the Samir Ali’s flailing hands and managed to flip through a few pages. “It’s just drawings, Samu,” she said, and the aide eventually snatched it out of her hands. I heard her laugh for the first time; a childish giggle I never expected from her.

Samir Ali held the notebook shut in his lap, “You are more trouble than you’re worth, Amah Mateen.”

Rabia immediately scowled at that and crossed her arms, giving Samir Ali pause. Perhaps he’d gone too far mentioning her master.

“May I see it?” I asked the aide, hoping to ease the tension, but also curious about the contents of his notebook. “If it’s not too private.”

The aide hesitated, then slowly opened the book, revealing a drawing that stretched two pages. It showed Castle Chmemis, the ruined fort atop the ancient Tell overlooking the town. I recognized the viewpoint; close to the Abbasi farm, peeking over a line of jujube trees and past a sprawling field of wildflowers that gave way to a barren land full of abandoned farms. The aide had captured all of that.

“What’s that,” I said, pointing to small writing above the ruins.

“The dimensions of the moat,” Samir Ali explained, tracing his finger along the shadows that circled the fort. “And some materials that can be found inside. Limestone mostly and there wa… Rabia?”

The slave-woman had stood up and was turning away when Samir Ali suddenly reached out to her. “Rabia, wait,” he said, grabbing her wrist. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine.”

“Here, look,” Samir Ali raised the notebook for her to see and Rabia obliged, leaning over his shoulder. “Can you tell where I drew this?”

She shook her head. “Looks peaceful.”

“By the Abbasi farm.”

I was right, then. Samir Ali had slipped away sometime in an afternoon and drawn the view. I pictured the aide hiding under a tree shade, quietly scratching away on his page. But he hadn’t just drawn that day, had he? The moat dimensions would’ve required some effort to figure out and measure, and there were other scribblings around the sketch that I caught. Numbers, comments, even what looked like a compass in the bottom corner of the page.

“You should see it at dawn,” Samir Ali said, “when the sun first hits the bricks and turns them a burning red.”

“Maybe I should live there,” Rabia added, “so I don’t bother you.”

“Uf! You’re not a bother, Rabia,” the aide said, pulling her back down. “And besides, who else would Munqidh bicker with?”

“I don’t bicker,” I replied.

Rabia pretended to whisper in the aide’s ear, “if you want, Samu, I can teach you how to really get on his nerves.”

I realized they were joking and found myself smiling along. “Be careful, Samir Ali, I control the gates now.”

“Call me Samu,” he replied.

“Samu,” I repeated, liking the sound of that.

We sat awhile on the steps as night fell and watched the Blight torches flicker awake, one by one, across the town walls. It was a comforting sight, watching them float in the distance, standing guard over the town.

***