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Chapter Eleven:
VICTORY GIFTS
E l Murid and his party departed the Sahel at Kasr Helal, travelling as salt merchants desperately seeking a supplier. The war threatened to destroy the trade. Salt prices were soaring as the flow into the desert dwindled.
It was at Kasr Helal that, unrecognized by the garrison commander, El Murid learned that, to obtain salt, traders had to deal with a Mustaph el-Kader, an uncle of Nassef's General el-Kader. The elder el-Kader was disposing of stockpiles from the captured Diamiellian works.
El Murid had heard of Mustaph el-Kader. He was infamous as a procurer and as a supplier of religiously proscribed wine. What was a man like that doing controlling the salt supply?
"Don't whine at me!" the garrison commander snapped when the Disciple protested.
"But... To deal with whoremasters and thieves, at usurious prices... "
"You want salt? Good. You buy from who we tell you to. If you don't like it, go home."
El Murid turned to Hali, who was supposed to be his master of accounts. "Mowaffak?"
Hali controlled himself. "We'll do what we have to, and pass the costs along. But nobody's going to love us. I wonder, Captain, what the Disciple would think of your profiteering."
"What he don't know won't hurt him. But complain if you want. He'll tell you to go pound sand. It's his brother-in-law's game. He won't turn on his own kin, will he?"
That was not the desert way. Family was concrete while truth, justice and sometimes even God's law were subjective.
"Who knows the heart of the Disciple?" Hali asked. "Surely not a bandit disguised as an officer in the Host of Illumination."
"A True Believer, eh? Get out of here. You're wasting my time. You guys are a royal pain in the ass, you know that?"
When they had gotten beyond the captain's hearing, El Murid murmured, "Nassef is doing it again, Mowaffak. If it isn't one thing, it's something else. He's driving me to distraction."
"Something has to be done, Lord."
"Of course. How do these things happen? Why hasn't anyone complained?"
"Maybe they have and the complaint hasn't been passed on. Maybe they never had the chance. Our most reliable people follow the heaviest fighting. Nassef bears your writ of command over the Invincibles. He's been exercising it, possibly to keep them away from evidence of evils such as this."
"Mowaffak, hear me. I speak for the Lord. You will chose one hundred men of irreproachable repute. Men immune to blandishment and extortion. Reclaim their white robes and return them to their original professions. They are to travel throughout the Kingdom of Peace, including both Hammad al Nakir and all the new provinces, unmasking evils such as this. They aren't to distinguish between the grievances of the faithful and the infidel, nor those of the desert-born and foreigner, nor of the mighty and the weak. All men will be equal before their judgment. I will arm them with letters giving them absolute authority in anything they care to judge, and will back them completely, even against my own family. Even if I disagree with their judgments. This exploitation must stop."
"And who will watch the watchers?" Hali murmured to himself.
"I will, Mowaffak. And I'll be the most terrible judge of all. And Mowaffak. Collect this barbarous captain when we leave. We'll chastise him, and release him to spread the news that El Murid walks among the Chosen, as one of them, hunting their oppressors."
"How much longer will you tolerate the Scourge of God, Lord?" Hali asked, returning to a subject dear to his heart.
"How long will the fighting last? The day we begin beating swords into plowshares, then I'll have no use for captains of war."
It was at Kasr Helal, too, that Esmat told him another Ipopotam courier had failed to return. That made three who had vanished; two regular couriers and the special messenger sent after the disappearance of the first.
"Your worst fears have been realized, Esmat. Three men lost strains a belief in chance. Select six warriors from my bodyguard. Send them. Then another to see what happens to them. Do it right away, and tell them to ride hard. How long can we last?"
"Perhaps forty days, Lord. If luck rides with us."
He wanted to admonish Esmat for the pagan remark, but could not invoke the Lord now. That would be to claim God's countenance of his secret shame.
From Kasr Helal El Murid travelled northwestward, toward Du
Even the towns and little cities were splendid, despite Nassef's rapine. But never had he imagined such splendor as burst upon him when first he gazed upon Du
"Oh, Papa!" Yasmid cried. "It's magnificent! So big and... and magnificent!"
"Your uncle tells me he's going to make it a gift to me. What would I do with a city? You think it's beautiful? I'll give it to you. Assuming Nassef can take it."
"He can, Papa. I know he can."
"What about me?" Sidi demanded surlily.
"There are other cities. Which one do you want? Hellin Daimiel?"
"I don't want another city. I want... "
"Let him have this one, Papa. It's beautiful, but I'd rather have Hellin Daimiel. That's where everything interesting... "
"He said I could have Hellin Daimiel, Yasmid."
"What you're going to get, Sidi, is a taste of the strap. Act your age. You're not four years old anymore."
"How come she always gets her own way? When do we get to see the ocean? I want to see the ocean."
El Murid's hand whipped out. "There are times, Sidi, when you disgust me," he said as the boy rubbed his cheek. El Murid glanced at Mowaffak Hali, who pretended an intense interest in the River Scarlotti. "There are times when I'm tempted to foster you with the poor tribesmen of the Sahel so you'll learn to appreciate what you have and stop whining about what you don't." El Murid stopped. The boy was not listening. "Mowaffak, have someone find the Scourge of God and tell him we're here."
Nassef himself came to greet them. He was an adolescent mass of uncontrolled emotion. He had happy smiles and ferocious hugs for everyone.
El Murid easily identified the indelible tracks loneliness had stamped into Nassef's face. He saw them in his own face whenever he glanced into a mirror.
"I'm glad you came," Nassef enthused. "So much work went into this. It would have been a sin if you'd have missed it."
El Murid noted how attentive Nassef was to Yasmid, with his little jokes, his teasing, his mock flirtation. He indulged in an old speculation. Did Nassef have designs on the girl? She was on the brink of marriageability. For Nassef to wed her would be a great coup for the ambitious Nassef who sometimes thrust his head out of the shadows surrounding the several Nassefs the Disciple knew.
There were those who would frown on a man marrying his niece, but it was not without precedent. Many of Ilkazar's emperors had married their own sisters.
A few months earlier Hali had brought El Murid a chart of succession found in the apartment of Megelin Radetic at el Aswad, the fortress the Wahlig of el Aswad had abandoned shortly before the assault on Al Rhemish. What El Murid had seen in that chart had startled him. And had revivified all the specters that had haunted him throughout his association with his brother-in-law.
If Radetic had guessed correctly, Nassef had powerful motives for pursuing Yasmid. Only Haroun bin Yousif stood between Nassef and the throne on that chart. A marriage could lead to Crown and Disciplate conjoined.