Jack Cloudie. Stephen Hunt
miracles do happen, master. But failing that, how about you just shout at me until I do it for you?
Omar pushed himself up and off the water tank. He could always tell when Alim was annoyed with him, because he used his full name. The ibn to indicate he was property, and the house-line of Barir to indicate where all his devotion should rightly be directed. ‘I was resting, Master Alim. Saving my strength for my next duty.’ He indicated the parallel run of desalination tanks in front of them. ‘Have you ever seen the bottom of a filter tank scrubbed so clean of salt? There are chefs in the souks of Bladetenbul who will say twenty prayers of thanks to the one true god that there was a boy called Omar so diligent that the sacks of salt they buy from us are as plump as a caravan master’s belly.’
‘It is you who should say twenty prayers,’ said Alim, ‘for being so fortunate as to be born a slave into the house of Marid Barir, for no other master would spare you the floggings you so richly deserve.’
Omar did not risk the old man’s ire by noting that few other civilized masters would have employed a grizzled freeman like Alim, either, his rough nomad manners barely softened by the decade he had spent inside the town of Haffa. Bred a slave, Omar counted the russet-faced Alim as much a father as he had known in his young life. The only male company he was familiar with, the only man he had worked alongside for years. Such as it could be divined, the good opinion of Alim mattered to Omar. Often he was gruff, but when the old nomad could be roused to humour, his laugh would explode like a thunderstorm, his body shaking and jolting almost uncontrollably under the shade of the water farm. Omar had noticed the old tribesman seemed to find less to laugh about these days.
Alim looked up at the tank where Omar had been lounging. ‘A fine view of the caravan road.’
‘There is no sign of the water traders yet,’ said Omar.
‘It is not water traders, I think, that you were looking for.’
Omar tried not to blush, affecting an air of nonchalance, as if he had no idea what Alim was inferring.
‘Shadisa will not come by today,’ said the old nomad. ‘She has gone down to the docks to inspect the fishermen’s afternoon catch for the great master’s table.’
Omar shrugged, as though the news made no difference to him.
‘Ah, Omar,’ sighed Alim. ‘If you were a comely female and she the son of a freeman, rather than a daughter, you might have a chance. But what fortune or alliance does a male slave bring to an honourable family? The stench of salt-fish and the fifty altun it would cost to purchase your papers of ownership from Marid Barir?’
‘My smell is not so bad.’ And I am born for more than this, you grumpy old goat. I can feel my greatness like the burning fingers of the sun, trembling and ablaze within me. A pity you do not see it.
‘You have worked here so long that you have lost your sense of it,’ said Alim.
‘Whatever my smell, Alim, you cannot fail to admit that I am handsome. When I catch my reflection sometimes, I believe that the one true god must have sent an angel from heaven to bless my cradle.’
‘He sent something, boy. A lazy joker to swell my workload here.’
In one matter the old nomad was correct, Shadisa would not come by today. Omar knew. There had always been a connection between the two of them. He could sense when she was coming or when she was near. Sometimes when he was in the great house of their master, he would imagine she was in a certain part of the house and if he ventured close to there, he would find that his sixth sense was proved correct. Old Alim had laughed when Omar told him about this ability. There were men whose bodies had been twisted by womb mages who had such abilities, the nomad had explained, scouts in the elite regiments of the caliph’s army – units such as the imperial guardsmen – the cutting edge of the caliph’s scimitar. They hunted by smell, or perhaps the unseen magnetic patterns of the mind’s thoughts. A mere slave boy had no such illustrious heritage, Alim had laughed. Just the unrequited longings of what he would never have.
But Omar knew better. He only had to meet someone once, take note of them, and then he could then feel their presence if they were near enough. It was as if an invisible thread connected him to them, a tingling warmth he could feel in the depth of his being. Alim was the only one he trusted enough to tell of his gift. It really was not a wise thing for slaves to reveal such abilities, less they be judged a threat and culled. Wild blood, the same as the nomads who haunted the dunes. Too many changes by womb mages and the witches of the desert, percolating through undocumented bloodlines. Who knew what changes had been wrought in the past, what gifts were hiding in his flesh? He hadn’t even spoken to Shadisa about this matter.
Ah, Shadisa. Omar still recalled the first time he had noticed Shadisa. She had been a young helper in the kitchens of the great house, her bare elbow balanced on one of the tables as she challenged the other children on the staff to arm-wrestle her. Barely nine himself, he had taken up the challenge and asked Shadisa what she would give him if she lost. ‘A kiss,’ she had brazenly answered. One Omar had sadly never claimed, for her long perfect arms had proved disconcertingly muscular, and he had lost to her in seconds.
He was a lot stronger now, of course, a titan among men as he imagined it. It had been so much easier when they were younger. While it was true that the life of a freeman’s daughter in the town was little better than that of a slave – always subject to the arbitrary whims of her father – when they had been children so much less had been expected from either of them. There had been time enough for Omar and Shadisa to sneak off to the beaches along the south. Empty golden sands, the two of them climbing palm trees and casting dates down into the sand drifting like mist along the surface where the ocean winds stirred it. Building fires from driftwood and making palaces and castles from sand mounds. Their favourite tree was an old betel palm that had embedded itself along the back of the shoreline, its feathered leaves perfect for hiding them as they waited to ambush other children. In its mottled shade they would sway and discuss who were the bigger tyrants among the great house’s staff and the water farm’s workers, quickest with the switch and harshest with the load of duties. Spending time larking about the sands with Shadisa seemed the most natural thing in the world – the one thing he had to look forward to, the one thing he could count on.
That time seemed so distant now, like remembering a lost age of magic. As they had grown older, he had vowed to let nothing separate them. Certainly not the growing differences in their bodies, swelling in increasingly interesting fashions. The way his heart would jump when she held his hand. The way he would find himself looking for excuses to seek her out, or invent chores to bring her out to the water farm. But as they grew older, so did Omar’s awareness of the relative differences in their position. He was a slave; she was the daughter of a freeman. When they had both scurried around under the threat of the switch as children, that difference had seemed academic, simply a word. Nothing in it. But as adulthood beckoned, with each new season their relationship threatened to widen into an unbridgeable canyon. With the passing of every year, they got closer to the point where Shadisa would be expected to meet no man socially save with the company of a chaperone, and a mere slave, never! Omar knew of Shadisa’s father, a very hard man who never smiled, with a reputation for greed and cheating in his dealings. Eyes as cold as ice, and a dry pockmarked face that seemed as seared as the cruelty of the desert. He had once ordered his wife flogged on the flat roof of his house when she miscarried with a son inside her belly. A punishment for whatever she had done to offend the prophets and cause the loss. He had killed a slave too, in a drunken fit, beating the boy’s head in with a piece of firewood one night. Why? Who knew: just because he could, maybe. And what would he do to me if I dared to present myself as a potential suitor, a lowly slave come calling, and without a dowry to boot?
There had been a brief interlude in the inevitable after a disastrous plague had swept the region, carrying away both Omar and Shadisa’s mothers in the same sickening outbreak: a freeman’s wife and female house slave equalized at last by death’s cold touch. So many had died that the old ways and social codes had briefly tottered. There hadn’t been enough hands to do half the work of the town, let alone bother with the strictures of society. The prices of slaves had tripled, along with