Bonus writings
Mar. 22nd, 2011 08:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
matt_doyleAnyway, here it is:
Damascus was unquestionably the greatest city in the world. Even with the Caliphate besieged on all sides by enemies, her navies decimated, her colonies torn away, her wealth undermined, her science and technology lagging for the first time in nine hundred years – even with the air of melancholy and desperation that wafted like the scent of incense through the streets – even with all of that, it was splendid, luxurious, a flower in the middle of the desert, and Kadmos ibn Tzor was overwhelmed to be there. His skin was alive with the thrill of it, his heartbeat thrumming behind his eyes. For a moment he forgot his troubles, his grievances, his own urgent errand, and allowed himself merely to stare out across the glimmering, steaming night.
“No pork in the whole damned city,” Hasdrubal said from over his shoulder, breaking the mood. The big man's voice was disbelieving, and this was not the first time he had repeated this mantra. “No beef because the Paramountcy won't export it here. Nothing but sheep and birds, and even then half the stalls in the market are selling chickpeas. This place hates me as much as I hate it.”
Kadmos bit his tongue against a number of obvious retorts. Kadmos' parents had been born in the Caliphate, but Carthage had been their home, and Carthage had held their loyalties, to the death. And it was the Caliphate that had enslaved Hasdrubal as punishment for some unnamed crime, so his hatred was hard to argue with, even if, in the politics of the moment, that hatred was misplaced and inconvenient.
“We'll brush its dust off out boots soon enough,” he said instead, and pointed north, to the growing point of light in the distance – one star lost among many in the city, but this star moved, and a plume of steam followed it. “There's the train from Istanbul, and Alyssar and Haruna will be on it.”
“Yeah,” Hasdrubal said, looming closer now, his expression flat. “You think I'd forgotten?”
Kadmos hid a wince. The knotted wall of scar and muscle that stood next to him couldn't read, couldn't hold his tongue, couldn't figure out which fork to use with which course of a meal. That made it very, very easy to forget that crudeness and stupidity were two different things, especially when Hasdrubal took any excuse he could to allow himself to be provoked. Alyssar and Haruna couldn't get back soon enough for his tastes – as soon as they did, he and Hasdrubal could go back to ignoring one another, exactly the way they both preferred it.
The two of them hurried down from the mezzanine and across the crowded streets of the impromptu bazaar assembling itself in anticipation of the arriving train. The screech of the train's brakes on the metal of the rails cut through the chatter of the crowd and the music of the organ-grinder monodrones, and in a similar fashion the hectic but practiced choreography of the vendors around them gave way before the imposing lumber and smouldering glower of Hasdrubal at his most public-spirited.
As they reached the platform and the train came ponderously to a stop, the hissing cloud of steam enveloped them, smelling not of coal or hot metal but jasmine, sandalwood, frankincense and cedar – because their resins and essential oils were packed around the smokestack and blended with the oils that lubricated the wheels, rods, and pistons. Kadmos inhaled appreciatively, while beside him Hadrubal snorted and coughed.
The steam cleared. Porters, beggars, and a few of the more intrepid vendors swarmed around the doors to the train, while a few calm islands in the middle of the flow of humanity waited for passengers to disembark. The first-class cars, of course, disgorged their elegant entourages first – the company in which Alyssar belonged, but was not yet accepted. Any other head of state would be guaranteed her own car, reserved before she entered the city for her exclusive use, but Carthage was a newborn and upstart nation, unrecognized by any of the Great Imperial Powers until scant days ago. But any other head of state would have wealth enough to buy her own train car, and a family line stretching back generations, intermarried with half the world's potentates. They would have a title to go with their power, an intricate machine of governance and bureaucracy to back it. Alyssar had... a mercantile clerk, a gladiator, and a butler turned cut-throat turned hero of the people. The entire apparatus of the Carthaginian state was in this train station, at this moment. If the Paramountcy knew, and had agents in Damascus plant a single bomb...
“Any threats?” he asked Hasdrubal through suddenly gritted teeth.
“Not to us,” Hasdrubal answered, and gestured with two brief flicks of his hand to a pair of well-dressed Egyptians, a man with a trim beard and an amused expression, and a woman with black hair piled on her head in snakelike coils scaled with a proliferation of jewelry. “Caliph's agents. Hunting smugglers. Alyssar will be fine... assuming she got rid of the phosphorous.”
“Phosphorous?” Kadmos tried not to stare at the couple, and felt the skin on the back of his neck prickle.
“Yes, say it loudly, that's a good idea,” Hasdrubal dropped his voice to a murmur, bending in so Kadmos could hear him over the crowd. “Before we were separated, she had been collaborating with those British socialist friends of yours. If neither of them could get the Khan's support... there was to be a bomb. They could have held his city hostage. I liked the idea... but the Khan's son liked us, I guess. We got what we came for.”
That was how all of this had started. An expedition east from the fledgling, fragile borders of Carthage Free State, skirting the coast of the Paramountcy in a small Dutch amphibious zeppelin, a smuggler's vehicle; floating over the much-reduced Caliphate, until they reached the southwestern stretch of the Golden Khanate. There, they were to go on the maiden voyage of Khara-Zanai, the Khan's new capitol, a genuine rolling city – something unthinkable and spellbinding. But from Kadmos' perspective, everything had gone wrong.
He had been left behind in a confusion of stolen identifications and disguised espionage agents, barely missing the last ferry-walker to the city. The city had been gone not the expected hours but long days, and before it returned, scorched and scarred, he had heard already that the Khan had invaded Tunguskan China with his new mobile battlestation – for the city was armed – and conducted a naval strike against the Tunguskan fuel reserves. There was war in the world again, far from Carthage, and none of the Imperial Powers would spare any time for them now, he was sure...
Then Hasdrubal had disembarked from the city, grinning, with a fresh brace of scars, diplomatic credentials from the Khan himself, and a pneumatically sealed box full of gold troys. The Khan had recognized them, he said, and the Twin Kingdoms as well – wherever those were – and the Caliphate (his face darkened) was considering it.
But Hasdrubal had disembarked alone. Haruna and Alyssar, he said, had left before the battle had broken out, in 'some ridiculous ornithopter.' Kadmos had not understood, and almost refused to believe it – Hasdrubal chafed under prudent restrictions, and more than once he and Alyssar had nearly come to blows. If he had lost his temper, if... but there was a telegram in Khara-Iskhandahar from Alyssar, offering no explanation but merely telling them where to rendezvous... for a second time, the world had outpaced him. He prayed it would not end as the first time had.
“There,” Hasdrubal said, and pointed at two passengers exiting the train. Not Alyssar and Haruna – a bent old man with an enormous, curled salt-and-pepper beard and a black skullcap, and following him solicitously, and a statuesque young woman, Kazakh or Afghani,in a boiled leather breastplate and strips of lamellar, with a heavy maul strapped to her back.
“What-” Kadmos began, but cut himself off immediately, because Alyssar stepped out of the train behind them a moment later. Even seen out of the corner of his eye she was unmistakeable because of the smoothness with which she moved, the angry grace which Kadmos thought of as her defining trait. Her skin was darker and smoother than his own or Hasdrubal's, but lighter than Haruna's – a teak brown or a milk chocolate brown, not a coffee brown. Her hair was knotted close to her scalp, intricately braided in dozens of small strands that joined in a topknot. But it was the way she dressed that marked her out – simple, well-fitted clothes, a martial artist's clothes that never interfered with movement, that never were accented by jewelry or adornment that could give an opponent a handhold. The heavy belt and ceramic sheath that held her scimitar stood out starkly against the red cloth, and the incongruous but somehow elegant segmented metal boots on her feet did likewise.
He almost overlooked Haruna, standing in her shadow, as everyone almost overlooked him – the world's most inconspicuous hero, the paragon of discretion, the very archetype of a butler – quiet, courteous, conscientious, and utterly effective. It was possible, even plausible, that when Haruna had finally been fed up with the governor of Carthage, he had walked up to him openly carrying a straight razor, and never been suspected as an assassin rather than a barber. Haruna was dressed in a sober, dark bisht and jellaba– a short robe and a dress cloak, of the exact same cut and style as half the men in the train station. On his head, wrapped like a turban, was a black and reddish-saffron keffiyeh, understated and stylish, and effectively concealing that his head was entirely shaven, which would mark him as unusual in the Caliphate. It was Haruna who caught his eyes first, nodded sideways at the Caliph's agents and raised his eyebrows in a silent question, and then ushered the others ahead of him through the crowd until they were standing together.
“What now?” Hasdrubal said, effectively killing any cordial greeting in the process of growing behind the uncertain smiles being exchanged.
“Introductions, I think,” the old man said. “Kadmos ibn Tzor, I believe?” He offered Kadmos a hand, and shook briefly and forcefully. “Call me Hilah,” he said. “My apprentice, Elisha. Just a pair of wandering ornithoptrists who happened to make your friends' acquaintance in Khara-Zanai, and offered them a ride when things looked... dubious.” He turned and bowed to Hasdrubal. “My deepest apologies for excluding you, sir, but my craft only seats so many.” He turned again to Kadmos, rapidly, before any reaction besides bewilderment had yet occurred to him. “I believe you've met Professor al-Malik, but she's still aboard the train, keeping an eye on the assassins.”
“Alyssar?” Kadmos asked, aware of the uneven tension audible in his voice – but things were getting less clear, not more, and with this old loon acting as though he was in charge, he wanted some kind of clarification now.
“Kadmos,” she acknowledged, evenly. “Rebbe Hilah has had some interesting ideas about Carthage's technical problems. I brought him along to discuss them. Professor Al-Malik sent her escort home, but the Prussians had posters of her up at the borders, so she'll be with us for a while – either until the Rabbi leaves or until she can get to Gibraltar. And we happened to see the Saiva Sinha on the train.”
Professor Regina Al-Malik had been his mentor at Oxford – in fact, she had been mentor to half a hundred foreign students, anyone with a passion for history and a distrust of orthodoxy. She had also, since his matriculation, become the most prominent and vehement spokeswoman for socialist revolution in the world, a stance which had won her no favors in the Prussian Empire, with its ongoing cold war of succession.
The Saiva Sinha, on the other hand, were not personal acquaintances of any kind. Kadmos had never met them, never seen them. They were from the Chakravartin Raj, as neutral and mercenary as their homeland, and were in fact the most infamous contract killers in the world – something between a religious movement and a large extended family.
“They are on a job,” a voice said at his ear, and there was Professor Al-Malik, as dapper in tailcoats as any good British Muslim woman would be – for Islam forbade any immodest clothing that would lead to treating a woman as a sexual object, and so throughout the Caliphate's former colonies, men and women dressed alike unless they wished to flout their Christianity. Bronze skinned and with intent, staring eyes and a hooked nose that made her look falconish, her voluminous black hair drawn loosely together about her head like a cobra's hood, Regina Al-Malik looked wise and deadly – and she was. The cane she carried concealed a high-bore rifle, and that was the least dangerous thing about her. The most dangerous was that she talked sense, and people listened.
“They are on a job,” she said again, “for they declined when I offered them a contract.”
“Something political then,” the Rebbe said decisively, and chewed on the end of his beard nervously. “Well. In this country at least, that's none of our business – none of any of our business. How do you want to proceed, then, Madam Alyssar? We could assail the Caliph's viziers and bureaucrats, or perhaps let ourselves become known more publicly – a nervous prospect for you, given your pasts, I am sure, but to gain the Caliphate's recognition as an upstanding sort of government it would be not entirely...”
His companion – Elisha – placed a cautionary hand on his arm, for everyone save Kadmos had stopped paying attention to him, following Haruna's gaze and subtle gestures calling for their attention. Two striking figures had just gotten off the train – olive skin, mocha hair, and hazel eyes, dressed in loose, patterned silks, the height of elegance but nondescript enough in their style to look at home anywhere in the world. The man – tall, ropy, with distinct and knobbly joints and exceedingly long arms, legs, and neck – had an arrogant stroll, and a way of cocking his head and assessing the world around him in a very alarmingly aware and critical way. The woman – compact, but still graceful – kept pace with him easily, moving as he moved, a perfect complement. Both of them clearly saw and marked the conspicuous cluster of Carthaginians and sundry others, but paid them no mind, moving as though they owned the station.
The Caliph's agents greeted them cordially, as though they were friends, and lead them out of the station to a waiting steamcrawler, which hurried away on its pneumatic stilts.
“Well,” Haruna said softly, as the gears of their minds all turned in silent, curious, contemplation. “That is interesting.”
