“I knew you would come, beloved,” she sang. His arms enclosed her. She clawed herself tight to him. Her tongue thrust between his lips.
He bore her down, they were on the carpet, the thought flashed that she must take care it show no stains, he groaned and she reached after him.
Lantern light glared. “Behold!” Zabdas cackled.
Bonnur rolled off Aliyat. Both sat up, crouched back, crawled to their feet. The lantern swung in Zabdas’ hand. It sent huge misshapen shadows adance over the walls. She saw him in fragments, eyeballs, nose, wet snags of teeth, wrinkles, hatred. Right and left of him were his two sons. They bore swords. The steel gleamed.
“Boys, seize them!” Zabdas shouted.
Bonnur reeled. He lifted his hands like a beggar. “No, master, my lord, no.”
It tumbled through Aliyat: Zabdas had planned this from the first. He had no passage arranged with the caravan. ; These three waited in another room, their light muffled, for that which he knew would happen. Now he would be rid of her, and keep her property, and believe that even an ifrit— or whatever inhuman thing she might be—would not return from the punishment for adultery.
Once she would have welcomed an ending. But the weariness of the years was burned out of her.
“Bonnur, fight!” she screamed. “They’ll tie us in a sack and the people will stone us to death!” She laid her hands on his back and shoved him forward. “Are you a man? Save us!”
He howled and leaped. A man swung sword. Unpracticed, he missed. Bonnur caught that arm with one hand. His fist crunched into the nose behind. The second brother edged around, awkwardly, afraid of hitting the wrong body. The struggle lurched past Aliyat. It left a smear of blood on her. She bounced clear.
Zabdas blocked the doorway. She snatched the lantern from the old man’s feeble grasp and dashed it to the floor. Oil flared in yellow flame. He staggered aside. She heard him shriek as the fire licked his ankle.
She fled past the beads, down hall and stairway, out the rear door, from the lane into ghost-gray streets between blank walls. The Philippian Gate stayed open after dark when a caravan was making ready. If she took care, if she moved slowly and kept to the shadows, its sentries might not see her.
Oh, Bonnur! But she had no breath or tears to spare for him, not yet, not if she wanted to live.
THOSE IN the caravan who glanced behind them saw the towers of Tadmor catch the first sun-gleam. Then they were up the valley and out on the steppe. Ahead of them the sky also brightened-until the last stars faded away.
Signs of man were sparse on that day’s travel. After Nebozabad left the Roman road on a short cut across the desert, there was nothing but a trail worn by the generations before him who had fared likewise. He called halt for the night at a muddy, pool where the horses could drink. Men contented themselves with what they carried along in skins, camels with what scrawny shrubs were to be found.
The master strode through the bustle and hubbub to a certain driver. “I will take that bale, now, Hatim,” he said. The other grinned. Like most in this trade, he considered smuggling to be a part of it, and never asked unnecessary questions.
The bale was actually a long bundle tied together with rope, which had been nestled into the load on the camel. Nebozabad’s slave carried it back, into the master’s tent, laid it down, salaamed, and went to squat outside, forbidding intruders. Nebozabad knelt, undid the knots, unrolled the cloth.
Aliyat crept forth. Sweat plastered her hair and the djellabah he had lent to the curves of her. The countenance was hollow-eyed, the lips cracked. Yet once he had given her water and a bite of food, she recovered with eerie quickness, well-nigh minute by minute as he watched.
“Speak low,” he warned. “How have you fared?”
“It was hot and dry and gut-wrenching bumpy,” she answered in a voice husky more than hoarse, “but I shall forever thank you. Did a search party come?”