Devil's Bargain Read online

  She stood for a long while and simply breathed. One would think, she thought rather crossly, that a woman of her breeding, who had eluded any number of attempts to marry her off, would be more in control of herself than this. She was as silly as one of the maids.

  That would have to pass. She had a bargain now with the sultan’s own driver of bargains. If she meant to keep it, she must have discipline—both to face him without collapsing in a fit of girlish stupidity and to learn what he had to teach. Magic was discipline. Her mother had taught her that. If she had no discipline, then her magic was no more than market tricks and foolish charlatanry.

  He did not summon her that night, or the next morning, either. She steeled herself against disappointment. He had matters of great import to address—and if those were pursued on the hunt or in feasting at Richard’s table, then that was the way of embassies. Through frivolity and seemingly aimless carousing, enemies came to know each other. He would remember her when he could, which might be days.

  She had no fear that it would be never. He was a man of his word: that much she was sure of. She had ample to occupy her; she could hardly sit with folded hands and wait upon his pleasure.

  On the morning of the second day, she was fletching arrows in the sunlight outside her tent—an art she had learned when she was a child in Gwynedd, which sometimes proved useful here. The messenger wore the shape of a small bright bird, one of many that flittered among the branches of the orange grove; but this one wore a crown of fire and spoke to her in Arabic. “Lady, if you would come, my lord will begin to keep his bargain.”

  She suppressed the urge to leap up and run where the bird led. That would not set a proper precedent. She finished the row of feathers that gave the arrow its wings, and put her tools away, tidily, while the bird hovered, singing to itself. She had gambled and won: the creature would wait.

  She considered putting on clothes that would be suitable for a royal audience, but that would put her in too much of a flutter. He of all people would be accustomed to the sight of a woman in Turkish trousers with a veil over her hair, though she had no intention of covering her face as Muslim women did. If that caused him to reckon her wanton, then so be it.

  The bird led her through the orchards and past a vineyard stripped of its grapes. There was a house beyond the vineyard, small but well kept, with a neat kitchen garden—miraculously untouched by the marauding armies—and an arbor of roses. It had a wall, but it seemed more fit to keep cattle away from the roses than to keep soldiers from attacking the house.

  As she drew closer, she began to understand how it could stand intact where the Frankish armies had been and gone. The light was subtly different there, the air imperceptibly altered. If this house had been here even as early as this morning, she would have been amazed.

  The bird delivered her to the rose arbor, loosed a trill of pure breathtaking sound, and vanished in a blur of jeweled light. For a long while there was no response. The house was still; no one stirred inside it. She debated going in to be certain, but the air was soft and the scent of roses ineffably sweet. She sat under the arbor and let herself simply be.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Ahmad had not meant to keep the king’s sister waiting. When he called forth the bird of his spirit and sent it to find her, he had every intention of being in the summerhouse before her. But as soon as the bird had flown, a messenger came with a matter that could not wait; then when he had seen to that, the Frankish king summoned him for a council that, though brief as such things went, was still tediously long.

  It was late in the day before Ahmad could escape the press of duties. The spell held: the summerhouse was still where he had set it, invisible to any but those who were meant to see it. The sweet air of Damascus wafted over him as he passed the boundary between worlds; he paused to breathe it in.

  She was still there, which was rather miraculous. He could trace her by the memory of her passing: how she had lingered for a long while under the rose arbor, then wandered through the garden and the courtyard, pausing by the fountain, then exploring the house. He found her in the room that was his favorite of them all, the gallery of light in which he kept the chests and cases of his books. They were not all that he owned, nor the greatest treasures—those were kept safe in his house in Cairo—but some of them were rather interesting.

  She had curled like a cat on the divan under the dome, basking in light, with a heap of books about her. She was deeply absorbed in them; even as strong as her magic was, she did not know he was there.

  That was a Frank, he thought. They had a remarkable innocence about them, a conviction that nothing in the world could truly harm them. And yet they were strong fighters, with a crazy courage that put even Bedouin raiders to shame.

  Not that she looked like the common vision of a Frank. She bore some resemblance to the women of his own people: thick blue-black hair, cream-pale skin, sweetly rounded features. She wore no paint or kohl, and her trousers must have been purchased in a bazaar; they were serviceable but hardly elegant. There was no pretension about her at all.

  Her magic had drawn him to her, but the rest of her was hardly less captivating. He allowed himself to make a soft sound, to feel the sudden force of her awareness. She looked up into his face with those eyes that were not precisely blue; that were the color of evening. She was quite an extraordinary beauty, and quite unconscious of it.

  She smiled at him without affectation, and said in her softly accented Arabic, “Your library is wonderful.”

  No recriminations; no impatience. She was a marvel among women. “I am glad that you find my books interesting,” he said. “If you will accept my apology—”

  “My brother waylaid you,” she said. “He does that. I’ve been well entertained.”

  “And edified, too, I should think,” he said, lifting the book that had been in her hands. It was a treatise on the gods and demons of Egypt.

  “Every country’s spirits are different,” she said. “I wonder, do the people of the country change them, or do they shape the magic of a place?”

  “I think a little of both,” he said. “You can see them, then?”

  “Can’t all mages?”

  “Not in our part of the world,” he said.

  “Where I come from, magic is often called the Sight,” she said.

  “Here it’s called the Art or the Craft.”

  “A learned art or tricks of the mind?”

  He inclined his head. “Spells of words and names, and invocations of powers.”

  “Knowledge transmuted into power,” she said. “We’re less learned in my mother’s country. There’s lore, there’s wisdom, and some of it is very great, but there’s so much more to be seen and known and understood.”

  “You have a hungry heart,” he said.

  Her eyes sparkled; her cheeks dimpled. “Starving,” she said.

  “And a stomach to match, I’m sure,” he said, “if you’ve been here since morning. Magical feasts, alas, give no nourishment, but there should be something earthly and edible in the kitchen.”

  “I found a wheel of cheese and a jar of dates, and there was flour—one could make bread.”

  “One could,” he agreed.

  She was on her feet, standing not as tall as many of her countrywomen, but tall enough. He, who was often dwarfed in the company of Franks, found it pleasant to face one who was half a head shorter. She had a light free stride, unconstrained by idleness or indolence; her carriage was erect, her movements strong, so that one might in a quick glance have taken her for a boy—but on closer inspection, there was nothing masculine about her.

  The kitchen was not too ill stocked, all things considered. Besides the cheese and the dates and the flour, there was a jar of honey and a loaf of sugar, a bag of onions and a box of herbs and spices, and a lidded basket that proved to contain a sack full of lentils. She sent him to the garden for a basket of roots and greens, which when he returned, went into the pot that was already bubbling
on the new-lit hearth, sending off the beginnings of savory smell.

  By the time the sun had set, they had a feast: lentil stew, and bread baked with cheese and herbs, and a cake made with dates and honey and a whisper of nutmeg and cinnamon and cloves. There was pure water from the spring in the garden, and a bit of lemon and honey to flavor it; and when they had had all of that, he brewed the treasure from the stores, kaffé ground thick and fine, sweet with sugar and pungent with cardamom.

  She had not had that before; her eyes widened at the taste of it, and she grimaced, but not entirely in dislike. “This is decadent,” she said.

  He laughed. “And the rest of it wasn’t?”

  “That was simple,” she said.

  “Simple magic. I didn’t know that kings’ daughters knew the arts of cookery.”

  “They don’t,” she said. “I used to plague the cooks in my sister’s court in Sicily. They’d teach me this or that, to get me out of the way. I’m terrible when I want to learn something; I won’t let go.”

  “Is that a warning?”

  Her eyes glinted at him in the light of the lamp. “If you wish to take it so.”

  “Then I shall consider myself duly warned,” he said.

  He watched her sip her little cup of kaffé, growing more accustomed to it with each sip, though she declined a second cup. Night had fallen while they ate; the stars were out, soft with summer. Muted flutterings in the garden might have been birds or bats, or spirits drawn to the light of magic that filled the house. None of them would threaten those within; the wards were up, and all dark things banished.

  After a long quiet while she said, “This place isn’t anywhere near Arsuf. Is it?”

  “No,” he said. “It’s a house of mine in the gardens of Damascus.”

  “Is it, exactly? Is it in the world at all?”

  He regarded her in somewhat greater respect. “It is real. It has earthly existence. For this day, while the spell lies on it, its caretakers are occupied elsewhere, and passersby are prevented from passing the boundaries.”

  “That’s a strong magic,” she said.

  He lifted a shoulder in a shrug. “It has its complexities.”

  “It doesn’t drain you of strength?”

  “Not unduly,” he said.

  Her eyes fixed on his face. “How?”

  “Tell me why it concerns you.”

  “Strong magic has consequences,” she said. “Or it does in my country. The stronger the magic, the greater the price.”

  “Indeed,” he said. “That’s one of the great laws.”

  “Then how—”

  “Art,” he said. “Knowledge. Alliances with the powers of the elements, favors won and given.”

  “Magic is commerce? You trade for it?”

  “Are you appalled?”

  She opened her mouth, shut it again. Her eyes were wide. She mastered herself; she drew a breath. “It’s . . . an instinct,” she said.

  “Perhaps you should think of it as diplomacy. There are wars and alliances; powers combine forces for and against one another. They’ll avoid battles if they can, as even your royal brother will do.”

  “Battles are wasteful,” she said as if to herself. “Still, how does it not cost you, to work such a spell as this? It comes from your own power in the end.”

  She was tenacious. It made him smile. “I’ll teach you to spend your magic as if it were copper instead of gold,” he said. “Much of it is a knowledge of spells and potent words, in which one sets a seed of one’s power, but not the whole root and branch of it.”

  “Learned Art,” she said. “I must seem terribly ignorant and headlong to you—like one of our brawn-brained fighting men.”

  “Oh, no,” he said in all sincerity. “You’re young; it’s no more than that. When I first discovered this thing that was in me, I nearly consumed myself before a wise teacher taught me to be frugal.”

  “You were never as foolish as that.”

  “Truly I was,” he said. “I had always had a gift to see what no one else could see, but I made little of it. My kin are warriors, not sorcerers. Then we were in Egypt, and the power of that land fed me—thousands upon thousands of years, magic so thick that the earth seethes with it and the nights are crowded with spirits. It filled me so full that I came near to bursting with it.”

  “Yes,” she said. “Yes, that’s how it is. Gwynedd, where I was born—the worlds of spirits touch closely on it. But I left it before I became a woman; before the fullness of the gift came on me. In France, even in Sicily, there were memories enough, spirits, powers, but they were dim and feeble beside the deep wells of magic that I had known. Then I came to the east. The lands here, the spirits, the memories . . . they woke in me powers, possibilities . . .” Her voice trailed off. “I always wanted to know; to use what I had—but I never found anyone to teach me. Spirits will answer questions, but they’re made of air or fire. They can’t focus for long, or keep much in their awareness, unless it’s very strong or very important to them. Human mages are so few, and those are mostly mountebanks, or singularly unwilling to share what they know—particularly with a Frankish woman whose breeding is somewhat too uncanny for comfort. I’ve been desperate to learn, but there’s been no one willing to teach me.”

  “I am willing,” he said gently as she paused in her spate of words.

  She blushed like a rose in the lamplight. “I’m sorry! I don’t usually babble like that. I don’t know what got into me.”

  “Desire,” he said. “It’s a need, isn’t it? To learn; to know. To grasp the realities of magic.”

  “How strange,” she murmured as if to herself, “to find such understanding in an enemy.”

  “We may be enemies in the ways of war and the world,” he said, “but in the ways of magic we are sworn allies.” He rose and held out his hand. “Come.”

  She hesitated. “You don’t have to—I’m not insisting—”

  “No; but I am.” He smiled, but with an edge of command. “Come with me.”

  She bent her head, as a pupil should to a master, and laid her hand in his. It was a gift of great value; a gift of trust.

  Outside in the garden, a stair led up the side of the house to the roof. One could sleep there under canopies of netting; those were put away now, but the pots of jasmine bloomed extravagantly, filling the night with fragrance. Ahmad stood in the midst of them under the vault of heaven, and threw his head back. “Look!” he said. “What do you see?”

  She did not answer at once. He glanced at her. Her eyes were full of stars. After a while she said, “I see infinity.”

  A smile tugged at his lips, but he kept his voice cool, expressionless. “Indeed? What do you mean by that?”

  “I see the dance of stars,” she said, “that began before the world was made, and will continue beyond the world’s end. I see supernal fire. I see . . .” Her breath hissed softly as she drew it in. “I see how small the world is, and what a mote I am—and yet it makes me glad. It lets me see what this magic is, this spark in me. It’s in the stars, too, and woven through all that is.”

  “Yes,” he said. “Yes, that is so. Magic is in everything. The ability to see it, and more than that, to command it—that is the art of mages.”

  “Seeing is easier than commanding,” she said.

  “Not always,” said Ahmad. He had made a decision while he waited for her to discover the purpose of the lesson. “You should go now, and sleep. Soon—maybe tomorrow, maybe the day after tomorrow—I’ll send another messenger. Then your proper teaching may begin.”

  He saw the quick flash of disappointment, but she mastered it almost as soon as it began. “I know,” she said before he could speak. “Patience is one of the virtues a mage must cultivate. I shall be a patient scholar—and a grateful one.”

  He stooped on impulse and kissed her hand that rested still in his, and held it for a moment, smiling into the starlit glimmer of her face. “Soon,” he said.

  CHAPTER EIGHT


  Sioned came very late to her bed. She had taken pains not to be seen; she had tried a thing that suggested itself to her, drawing the night about her like a mantle. She had learned a great deal from those hours in the lord Saphadin’s house, reading, waiting, cultivating patience; then sharing his company. It was a subtle teaching, but neither difficult nor particularly obscure. She cherished her memory of it.

  And, she admitted to herself as the stars wheeled toward dawn, her memory of him. She was not a silly schoolgirl to squeal and giggle over any man who cast his eye on her, but this one . . .

  She sighed. He was more than twice her age, he was sworn to drive her brother and his army from this country, and she had no doubt that somewhere, in Damascus or Cairo or the gods knew where, he had a flock of wives and concubines, and children innumerable. Her magic had drawn his attention, but she doubted rather strongly that he had noticed the rest of her. He could have the pick of the women of the east; old King Henry’s bastard daughter was hardly worth his notice.

  She was not unduly cast down. A teacher was a rarer beast than a lover, and one who could teach magic was as rare as the phoenix. She would thank the gods for what they had given, and ask nothing more.

  Although, if they should be inclined to give more . . .

  She rebuked her heart for wickedness, thrust down the thought and set her foot on it, and willed herself to sleep.

  The messenger came on the morrow after all, and rather early, too. It was a very young Saracen page, as black and shiny as an olive, with a turban nearly as big as he was, and a sweet lisping voice. Master Judah was not visibly delighted to lose Sioned for another day, but when she glanced at him, he sighed vastly, shrugged, and turned his back on her. That was as close to his blessing as she would get.

  He had no great need of her now; they were in between battles, and except for accidents and injuries and the worst wounded from Arsuf, there was little for the physicians to do. She knew a pang of guilt for the men who would have to do without her, but the master himself was looking after them. They were as well cared for as anyone could be.