Free Navigator by Stephen Baxter Page A

boy. He did not harm him. Quite the opposite. Perhaps Ghalib is addled by the pain and the drugs.’
    Ibn Tufayl said to Ghalib, ‘Tell me what happened. What are you accusing this boy of? Did he push you into the water - hurl you at the waterwheel - what?’
    ‘None of those things,’ Ghalib said, his own speech slurred. ‘But we would not have been at the river at all if not for him.’ Ghalib glared at Robert, and Robert recognised real hatred shining through the fug of the morphia. If he had despised Robert as a Christian and a foreigner before, now he was humiliated that he owed his life to him. Ghalib said, ‘We were trying to protect her, from this English animal. That’s why we were following him. For her.’
    ‘It’s true,’ Hisham gabbled now. ‘I was there. He was trying to seduce her. Robert the Christian.’
    The vizier was having trouble following this. ‘Who? Who was he trying to seduce?’
    ‘Moraima,’ Ghalib said bluntly.
    The vizier howled, and lunged at Robert. Orm blocked his way. The vizier’s own attendants ran up, and tried to separate the men.
    Amid this shouting and chaos, Ghalib cried out, and slumped forward in a faint.

XVI
    ‘I was lonely,’ Sihtric whispered. ‘In the end, it comes down to that, and my own weakness. And the result was a new life.’
    ‘Moraima,’ Robert said.
    ‘Yes.’ Sihtric smiled wistfully. ‘And now I will never be lonely again.’
    ‘I think,’ Orm said sternly, ‘that you had better tell us the whole truth, Sihtric. About you, Moraima, and the vizier.’
    Robert, Sihtric and Orm had been escorted to a battered, fire-damaged room. Here the three of them sat, on worn floor coverings and baggy cushions. Bright daylight filtered through more of the charming archways that had so entranced Robert. But now massive soldiers stood in those arches, silhouetted.
    Orm had growled at being put under armed guard. The nervous attendant who had brought them here assured them it wasn’t like that, they had been brought here for their own safety at a time of disturbance.
    Sihtric had advised them just to put up with it. ‘They’ve done this before. I’ve seen it. Just freeze the situation for a few hours, while they get him sobered up. And I’ve seen some of the potions they use. Even tried some myself. Sometimes they will bleed you, or rub ground-up elephant tusk onto your teeth. So decadent were some of the caliphs that the task of making them sober enough to be seen in public inspired a whole library full of medicinal wisdom.’
    Now Orm said, ‘Just tell us the truth, Sihtric.’
    Sihtric eyed him. ‘What do you imagine that truth is?’
    Robert blurted, ‘That they are lovers. Ibn Tufayl and Moraima. Or perhaps it’s worse than that. Perhaps that old goat of a vizier took her by force.’
    Orm eyed the guards. ‘I assume our guardians do not speak any English. But I wouldn’t be prepared to bet my life on it. Think about your words, Robert.’
    ‘Lovers?’ Sihtric sighed. ‘If only it were that simple ...’
    He said it all began with his own loneliness.
    ‘You must remember I came here as a scholar. My sketches of war machines intrigued the vizier, as I had hoped, and he gave me a small stipend. As I told you I had ways to make more bits of money independently, from selling Arabic translations of the Bible to Mozarabs, and from administering to their spiritual needs. And as I began to gain access to the libraries of the emir I developed my own interests, outside the narrow scope of Aethelmaer’s designs. Interests in the career of the Moors in Spain, for instance. And the secret history I discovered - well. That’s for another day, Orm, but we must speak of it, for it forms my whole purpose.
    ‘What I did not anticipate was that these small signs of independence on my part were troubling to a man like the vizier. These are fractured times in al-Andalus, a time of turmoil and threat. With enemies both within the taifa court and outside, the