Free A Wind in Cairo by Judith Tarr

voice faded. She hardly knew what she wished. That he were dead? Mad, blind, unsparing of mercy, still he was her father; and she loved him. Which was a madness of its own.
    That she were a man? She stiffened, contemplating it. Touching her cheek, her breast. As if the thought could make it so.
    â€œNo,” she said. “I want to be Zamaniyah. But what Zamaniyah is…”
    There was always flight: the veil, the harem. Life forever within walls, with a lattice between herself and the sky, and no will in anything but her master’s bidding.
    She laughed bitterly. “What will have I ever had? My father has always been strange. He had me raised almost as my brothers were. I learned to read, write—even to ride and shoot, because I showed a liking for it, and it amused him to see what I could do. Then they all rode away, he and my brothers, to drive the Franks from Egypt; and my brothers never came back. My father sent for me, all the way from Syria, and when I came, though I was staggering from days of riding at courier’s pace, thick with dust, reeking of the road, he had me brought to him. He looked at me as if I were a mare he had a mind to buy. I remember his eyes, how strange they were, how keen and yet how blind. He looked, and after a while he nodded, and then he laughed. ‘God has robbed me of sons,’ he said, ‘but one child still He has left me. That one shall do for all the rest.’” She pulled off cap and turban, stared at them, flung them spinning across the sand. “He gave his orders then, and saw that they were obeyed. No veil for me; no womanly arts. I was to learn what a boy learns. Not only what I had been pleased to learn. All of it. But set apart. Not hidden, not secluded, but not made a public spectacle. He let people decide for themselves who I was, what I was, and what I signified.
    â€œI let him rule me. How could I do otherwise? He was my father. I thought, somehow, he knew what he was doing.” Her face twisted. “Oh, he knew! He was wielding me like a weapon. Using me to mock all his enemies. Even—even to cast his defiance in the face of God.”
    She stopped. Khamsin had not moved even yet. He watched her, ears pricked. As if he could understand.
    She rubbed a stiffened patch where the sweat of his labors had dried, smoothing it, centering herself on it. “I love him, Khamsin. And I hate him. His will has set me between the worlds. Now they all know it; and where am I? Twisting in the emptiness. Neither man nor woman; neither flesh nor fowl.” Her teeth ground together. Temper gusted, hot and swift. “What will he make me do next? What will I have to face? How can he do this to me?”
    Pain stabbed. He had nipped her. His glance was as clear as words. That, it said, is pure self-pity.
    She hit him. But feebly, on the strong muscle of the shoulder, with flattened hand. It could have been a rough caress. It became one, as tears sprang again, lived out their season, passed.
    She was hardly aware of them. “I never thought he’d do it. I really never thought… It was a whim of his, no more. It eased his grief. It gave me a freer world than I’d ever dared to hope for. If he did try to claim me in public, he’d claim me as a son. I was braced for that. I could have stopped him. But when he told the truth, all unexpected—”
    She drew a quivering breath. It was almost laughter. “You should have seen their faces! All those fallen jaws. All those wagging beards. They looked like a herd of startled goats.”
    Khamsin snorted. His eye was bright. Laughing.
    Why not? She grinned at him. It was not too deadly difficult. “And there was I, tender little she-kid, telling them all what I thought of them. With the sultan looking on and thinking Allah knows what. He placed me under his protection.” She paused, struck. Her breathing quickened. She had had a thought. A thought of utmost