have, what none of us have. The world is cracking, Prince Jalan. The Wheel the Builders turned to change the world did not stop turning and as it runs free those changes will increase in size and speed until nothing that we know is left. We are a generation of blind men, walking toward a cliff. Kelem is not your worry.’
‘The Lady Blue … the Dead King.’ I didn’t want to say their names. I’d done a good job of keeping both out of my thoughts ever since escaping Hell. In fact if that damned djinn hadn’t sparked my memories then I might have managed never to think about the whole journey and poor Snorri ever again. ‘Those are the two I need to worry about?’
‘Even so.’ Yusuf nodded.
Omar just looked more confused and mouthed ‘who?’ at me from across the table.
‘Well.’ I leaned back in my chair. ‘That’s all beyond me. All I want to do is get home.’
‘It’s a war your grandmother cares about.’ Yusuf spoke the words softly but they carried an uncomfortable weight.
‘The Red Queen has her war and she can keep it,’ I said. ‘It’s not the kind of thing men like me can change one way or the other. I don’t want any part of it. I just want to go home and … relax.’
‘You say this, and yet you have been changing things at an astonishing rate, Prince Jalan. Defeating unborn in the northern wastes, dethroning Kelem in his mines, chasing the Dead King into Hell … and you hold the key, do you not?’
I gave Yusuf an angry stare. He knew entirely too much. ‘I have a key, yes. And you’re not having it. It’s mine.’ I’d be hanging on to Loki’s key with everything I had until I got home. Then I’d hand it over to the old woman in a heartbeat and wait to be showered with praise, gold, and titles.
Yusuf smiled at me and shrugged. ‘If you want no part of shaping the future, so be it. I will arrange passage back to Red March for you. It will take a few days. Relax here. Enjoy the city. I’m sure you know your way around.’
When someone lets you off too easily there’s always that suspicion that they know something you do not. It’s an irritating thing, like sunburn, but I know a sure-fire way to ease it.
‘Let’s get a drink!’
‘Let’s go win some gold.’ Omar jerked his head toward the grand library: a quarter of a mile past it the largest of Hamada’s racetracks would be packed to bursting with Libans screaming at camels.
‘A drink first,’ I said.
Omar was always willing to compromise, even though he kept to his faith’s prohibition on alcohol. ‘A little one.’ He patted his well-rounded form and beneath his robes coins clinked reassuringly against each other. ‘I’m buying.’
‘A little one,’ I lied. Never drink small if it’s at someone else’s expense. And besides, I had no intention of going to the races. In the past two days I’d seen more than enough of camels.
The city of Hamada is officially dry, which is ironic since it’s the only place to be found with any water in hundreds of square miles of arid dunes. One may not purchase or drink alcohol in any form anywhere within the kingdom of Liba. A crying shame given how damnable hot the place is. However, the Mathema attracts rich students from across the Broken Empire and from the deepest interior of the continent of Afrique and they bring with them a thirst for more than just water or knowledge. And so there exist in Hamada, for those who know where to look, watering holes of a different kind, to which the imams and city guard turn a blind eye.
‘Mathema.’ Omar hissed it through the grille of iron strips defending the tiny window. The heavy door containing the window was set into the whitewashed wall of a narrow alley on the east side of the city. The wooden door was a giveaway in itself, wood being expensive in the desert. Most houses in this quarter had a screen of beads to dissuade the flies and relied on the threat of being publicly impaled to dissuade any thief. Though what horror ‘publicly’ adds to ‘impaled’ I’ve never been clear on.
We followed the door-keeper, a skinny, ebony-hued man of uncertain years clad only in a loincloth, along a dark and sweltering corridor past the entrance to the cellar where a still bubbled dangerously to itself, cooking up grain alcohol of the roughest sort, and up three flights of stairs to the roof. Here a canopy of printed cloth, floating between a score of supports, covered the entire roof space, offering blessed shade.
‘Two whiskies,’ I told the man as Omar and I collapsed onto mounds of cushions.
‘Not for me.’ Omar wagged a finger. ‘Coconut water, with nutmeg.’
‘Two whiskies and what he said.’ I waved the man off and sank deeper into the cushions, not caring what it was that had stained them. ‘Christ, I need a drink.’
‘What happened at the opera?’ Omar asked.
I didn’t answer. I didn’t say a thing or move a muscle until five minutes had passed and a young boy in a white shirt had brought our drinks. I picked up my first ‘whisky’. Drained it. Made the gasping noise and reached for the next. ‘That. Is. Good.’ I took the second in two gulps. ‘Three more whiskies!’ I hollered toward the stairs – the boy wouldn’t have reached the bottom yet. Then I rolled back. Then I told my story.
‘And that’s that.’ The sun had set and the boy had returned to light half a dozen lamps before my race through the highlights of my journey had reached all the way from the ill-fated opera house to the Gate of Peace in Hamada. ‘And he lived happily ever after.’ I tried to get up and found myself on all fours, considerably more drunk than I had imagined myself to be.
‘Incredible!’ Omar leaning forward, both fists beneath his chin. He could have been talking about my method for finally finding my feet, but I think it was my tale that had impressed him. Even without mention of anything that happened to me in Hell and with talk of the unborn and the Dead King cut to a minimum it really was an incredible tale. I might think another man was humouring me, but Omar had always taken me at my word on everything – which was foolish and a terrible trait in a chronic gambler, but there it was.
For a long and pleasantly silent moment I sat back and savoured my drink. An unpleasant memory jerked me out of my reverie. I set my whisky down, hard.
‘What the hell happened in the desert then?’ As much as I like talking about myself I realized that in my eagerness to escape becoming part of Yusuf’s world-saving calculations I’d forgotten to ask why, apparently for only the second time in eight centuries, a Builders’ Sun had ignited, and why close enough to Hamada to shake the sand out of their beards?
‘My father has closed the Builders’ eyes in Hamada. I think perhaps they don’t like that.’ Omar put his palm across the mouth of his cup and rolled it about its rim.
‘What?’ I hadn’t felt drunk until I tried to make sense of what he said. ‘The Builders are dust.’
‘Master Yusuf just told you that they still echo in their machines. Copies of men, or at least they were copies long ago… They watch us. Father thinks they herd us, guide us like goats and sheep. So he has sought out their eyes and put them out.’
‘It took a thousand years for someone to do that?’ I reached for my cup, nearly knocking it over.
‘It took a long time for the Mathema to discover all the Builders’ eyes.’ Omar shrugged.
