When you’re wounded and left on Afghanistan’s plains,
And the women come out to cut up what remains,
Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
An’ go to your Gawd like a soldier.
He wondered where Kipling had met her grandmother. Or however many generations back it had been—when he’d lived in that country, both men and women bred young and died young, even for humans. He didn’t think it had changed much.
He wouldn’t have minded if Legion had materialized out of thin air just then. He had some questions for the damned demon, and felt up to arguing with it. But that Kipling reference kept nagging at him.
Part of being old was remembering things that had long gone out of fashion. Kipling was one of them. People didn’t read him much any more, particularly his poetry, didn’t memorize it. Nationalistic racist doggerel, they said, “white man’s burden” and all that. But it was catchy and stuck in his brain. The tale she’d spun sounded like one of Kipling’s, or part of it—a century, century and a half, past his time. Albert would have thought even those hills had moved a bit beyond it. But she’d told the tale as
hers,
not her grandmother’s or a memory of her tribe.
Her
knife, carving pieces from that Badakhi as he screamed and writhed and turned the dusty stones black with his blood.
Most parts of this world moved at the same pace, existed in the same time. Some didn’t. Some were even farther away from “today” than that. Places where human slavery lived on, just for example, an example a lot of people wouldn’t believe.
He’d seen it. He’d had people want to make
him
a slave. Like Legion, they had wanted to own the way he could talk to iron.
He looked behind him, just in case she was following, gun or knife in hand. Bad memories did things like that to him. Not that he’d see her. She was just another demon chasing him, able to walk through locked doors or find him across gaps of space and time.
Demons. Connections. He remembered the feather, a warning that might have come from Mother or might not have. He remembered the things that Legion knew about him, how the demon seemed to be playing around the edge of some kind of demon law in maneuvering him to the fire site and that wrought iron star. Legion hadn’t
told
him to fix the star, just made sure he would be where he could feel it. Wheels within wheels within wheels, the surface didn’t tell you much about what hid beneath the water. He
had
to be tangled up with more than one demon here, even if Legion was the one persecuting el Hajj as well as him.
Legion knew a name for him that he hadn’t used in centuries. The damned demon or another of its kind might know Mother’s code, as well. He couldn’t trust anything. “What is Truth?” asked Pilate, and washed his hands.
He shook his head at all the religious references, but this whole story boiled down to gods and demons, both the real ones and the ones men made for themselves. He lived with enough demons of his own making. He didn’t need outsiders screwing with his life.
He made it home with thoughts still chasing each other through his head. His hip ached with so much walking—orthopedic shoes didn’t take away all the stress from his unequal legs. And his body was still paying for the forging, tired and hungry and headachy with a dull throbbing from toes all the way out to fingertips. Straight smithing didn’t cause it—he had to sink into the heart of forging, “become one with the iron” so that he was worked as much as working, before accumulating such a debt of pain. Zen blacksmithing, the arrow loosing itself into the heart of the target.
The el Hajj woman had said she knew people who would hand over thousands of dollars for his cane. He didn’t think that was enough.
He collected the day’s mail, more junk, no brown envelopes, and clicked his way through all the locks and reset them behind him. Plus the bolts and bars, of course, even though he had more than a hint they wouldn’t stop el Hajj or other demons. Or Mother, of course, because she knew the secret ways.
Then up to his apartment, hip and muscles complaining about the steep climb of old stairways, dusty air more of a contrast than usual with the fresh spring breeze outside. He needed to open some windows, even on the second and third floors. He tended to treat his building like a cave.
Into his kitchen, food at the front of his brain, and he found a new pheasant feather on the table. A hen pheasant, of course. Next to it lay a note:
Don’t worry about Solomon’s Seal.
Balkis
Which was a name Mother sometimes used, as a joke and also as a code. No, she did
not
claim to have been the Queen of Sheba. That would have been extreme hubris even for her. She just wanted people to treat her as if she was.
Well, he thought she was beautiful enough to fit the legends. But then, he knew he was biased.
Solomon’s Seal? Capitalized? Yeah, that iron felt as old as Solomon. The legends he knew, though, said Solomon’s Seal was a ring. A signet ring, the kind you used to seal letters and royal decrees, maybe with magic bound in it. Twist the ring on his finger, a djinn appeared to do the great king’s bidding.
English was a slippery language—seals could be many things. He didn’t think the star ate fish, for one . . .
But the star had told him it sealed the way. Another meaning of the word, something that closes, like the seal on a jar or can. Closing out nasty germs from food, closing out those hungry spots of light.
Mother liked to be vague, confuse people with double-meaning words. When she didn’t want to lie outright. Sort of like a demon, that way.
The star—the Seal—
called
to him, wanted him to fix it. And Legion had led . . . forced . . . him to find it . . .
Maybe Solomon had made more than one Seal.
He stared at the feather. He still had no way of knowing if it or the message really came from her. He walked around the table, not touching it, and it looked pretty much like a pheasant feather from all sides. He’d sort of hoped it would go away or turn into an asp or something.
Then he walked through the apartment, checking the closets and the little tell-tales he left on various secret ways and false walls. All undisturbed—a clump of lint here, a hair across a crack there, dust that would show the sweep of a door. The place was untouched, with no evidence of entry except the presence of the feather—empty. Shame, that, a little heart-to-heart talk wouldn’t have hurt. At least the demon’s gold still sat in his hideaway behind the plumbing. He wasn’t naïve enough to think she wouldn’t have found it if she looked. Mother was always death on secrets—other people’s secrets, that is, she kept her own locked tight.
He didn’t know whether she’d cared to look. Or if the feather came from someone—some
thing
—else, that didn’t know every little twist and quirk about her.
A bit of a love-hate relationship, the way he felt about Mother, and he knew it. Dominant personality, somewhat like those gods he despised, she’d make you pay if you crossed her even in small things. Could be petty and vindictive, with a long memory for real or imagined slights. Living under the same roof didn’t appeal to him much. He felt some level of relief along with the frustration when he didn’t find her anywhere.
He grabbed a beer and thawed a chunk of venison chili for lunch, not enough energy left for cooking or even building a decent sandwich. Plus, the rye bread had gone stale with his lost days, and he didn’t have the energy or patience for baking fresh.
He always kept some good food frozen—the mere thought of canned pasta made him shudder, but sometimes he needed fast and easy calories. Likewise with the music, some Tallis a-cappella choral motets he knew he could trust to soothe his aching brow. He tended to say a lot of rude things about religion here and there, but he couldn’t deny that faith had inspired a lot of lovely music. Other great arts, too, but music was his peculiar vice.
Then he collapsed into bed, the past few days claiming their toll. At least this time he had enough energy to undress first.
A sense-memory nagged at him in the gray drift between waking and sleeping. Sandalwood. When he held the Seal, he’d smelled sandalwood, stronger, as if he sensed it through his fingertips rather than his nose. Was the salamander trapped in that iron, somehow? Like so much else in this confusion, it made no sense . . .
He woke in darkness, his head ringing from the wall he felt against his left ear. He seemed to be sitting on the floor, in a corner. He felt hot blood trickle down his cheek. Light blazed in his eyes—the same bluish dazzle he remembered from that night in the burned-out synagogue. He blinked and shook sleep and pain out of his head, shielded his eyes with one hand, caught the glint of steel held a couple of feet away from the glow.
Knife. It waved back at him.
“Little man, what did you do with that star?”
He shook his head again, groggy, trying to clear it. He studied the blade gleaming in the side-splash of that light, all he could really see, all
she
meant for him to see. Yes, he knew who held the knife, the light. That damned Afghan harpy. Again.
But he concentrated on the blade, squinting. Slight double curve to a fine stabbing point. Double-edged blade, to slash as well. Strong central rib. He couldn’t see guard or hilt, in the black behind the dazzle . . .
He
was
a bladesmith.
“I would have thought that style of
khanjar
came from well south and west of your people.”
“I took it from a Persian who annoyed me.”
That made him snort, even facing the knife. He wasn’t awake enough to be scared yet. If she’d meant to kill him, he would have woken up in hell. Or wherever. Besides, a demon wouldn’t let her. She’d said so.
“This Persian didn’t object?”
“He could not object, being dead.”
Pretty much what he’d expected.
By that time, he had a start of some wits about him. “I didn’t do anything with that star. You claim to be a seer. You claim to be able to find things. Can you see that forging anywhere around here?”
He raised his hand to the side of his head, chancing her nerves. After all, a knife wasn’t as twitchy a weapon as a gun. He’d stared at the wrong end of both more than once. He’d survived. A knife was more dangerous at close range, but it wouldn’t go off by mistake. If she cut his throat, she’d mean to do it.
His fingers met slippery hair. Yes, blood. Skin tender, throbbing already. Not serious, scrape on his scalp about an inch long, no apparent break or even crack to the bone underneath. Sometimes a thick skull paid off.
Not as bad as what his cane had done to her, and that hadn’t slowed her down. He held those wet red fingers out into the light.
“Does this make us even? Blood for blood?”
“In your dreams.”
There it was again, the idiomatic speech, just like that “Melissa” thing, the signs of someone who had lived in this society all her life. Contrast that with the dead “Persian” who’d donated her knife—
nobody
called them Persians anymore.
Persian
meant a long-furred and somewhat ugly breed of cat, not a nationality or race.
Chills shot through him as he woke up enough to be scared and shake his brain into action. The woman liked to torture people. With a knife. She’d said so. That wasn’t the worst of it.
“The star. What about the
star?
”
“Gone. I took our tame wizard out to the scene and the star was gone. You and I and Allah in His infinite mercy were the only ones who knew about it. So I thought we should have a little talk with Allah, you and I.”
That star had touched him somehow, tied itself and its hopes to him. His chest turned hollow and he started to sweat with fear. He had to concentrate on breathing.
“You’re
positive
it’s gone?”
“Boards tossed to one side, empty print in the ash. The wizard said he could feel where it had been. He also gave me a strong sense that he was frightened, once I told him what you’d found, what you’d said. Wouldn’t talk, couldn’t make him.
You’ll
talk, one way or another.” She waved her knife in front of the light, adding emphasis.
The light irritated him—just as she’d intended. The whole damned
game
irritated him, Afghan Harpy and Mother and Legion’s tricks and all. Few people could manage to live as long as he had without developing a little control over their tongues, but midnight interrogations were
designed
to strip all that away.
“Screw you, your flashlight, and the goddamned camel you both rode in on. You don’t need a knife to make me talk. I don’t have your Allah-damned Solomon’s Seal, don’t know where it is, and haven’t been anywhere near that synagogue since you chased me off. No, we’re
not
the only ones who knew about it, you and me and Allah. I got back here and found a note about the star on my kitchen table. It’s still there, and I never touched it. If you can sense people from objects they’ve handled, you might be able to follow that.”
“Bullshit.”
More Western phrasing—from his memory of her ancestral homeland, he would have expected some long and flowery invective that added up to the same thing. Probably including detailed references to his ancestors unto the tenth generation and their kinship with pariah dogs and the undoubted fact that none of the women had kept their noses. And she hadn’t reacted to his blasphemy, one way or the other . . .
“You don’t believe me, I’ll show you. Let me get up.” He paused, considering her culture and general attitude. “Now I’d like to get dressed, if you don’t mind. I’m feeling a little naked here.”
The flashlight gestured up, which he took as permission. He stood and turned toward the chair where he’d dumped shirt, pants, and underwear before collapsing into bed. He heard a swish of movement and froze as a needle-sharp point pricked the skin over his right kidney. The rough surface of the cast on her left wrist sandpapered his throat and chin, pressing just enough to suggest he should move with care if he wanted to keep an uncrushed trachea.