Free A Wind in Cairo by Judith Tarr Page A

wickedness. “He bound himself to accept me. And I—I think I’ll play this gave to its end. I’ll show my father what he’s done. I’ll be exactly what he says he wants me to be.”
    The horse regarded her with great misgivings.
    â€œYou’ll see,” she promised him. She retrieved her cap and the tangled knot of her turban, tossed them in the air, caught them lightly. Lightly then she left him.
oOo
    She was a very strange woman, this mistress of his. Khamsin rolled long and deliciously and settled in the shade. In a little while he had an entourage of cats. A small dust-devil amused itself in the trampled circle of his training. He watched it, interested. How odd that he had ever thought a horse’s sight less than a man’s. It was less garish-glittering, but it was deeper. It saw worlds within the mortal world.
    It could not see into a woman’s heart, nor ever understand it. Her words when she left had been bright and bold. Her scent had been both angry and frightened. But determined. And strong.
    A woman?
    He fled the prospect. The devil snaked long dusty fingers into his mane, clambered onto his back. He bucked it hooting into the air.

7
    â€œJaffar?”
    He started up from his mat, knife leaping into hand. Zamaniyah stood over him in her thin white nightrobe, her hair tumbling down her back, trembling with much more than the lamp’s flicker. Her voice was thin and high, like a child’s, not like her own at all. “Jaffar, I think—I’m afraid—”
    Her eyes were strange, almost as if she dreamed; but wide and fixed on his face. Little as she could have seen of it there in the gloom, with him rising over her, gathering her in.
    She was stiff and shaking. She let him hold her, but she contracted in the circle of his arms, shrinking from his touch.
    He had never seen her so. It frightened him. He veiled it in soothing murmurs, in strokings that only knotted her tighter.
    Fear had a way with him. It made his mind clearer. Carefully he unfolded his arms, stood back. She stared at him still. Her hands were fists. Her face was white.
    â€œWhat is it?” he asked her with utmost gentleness. “A dream?”
    She blinked. She shook her head, broadly, as a child will. Her lips were tight.
    â€œA memory?” he asked. “A spirit of the night?”
    She shivered, stumbling with the force of it. “I can’t—I don’t know—I woke, and felt—and there was—”
    His eyes swept the room. Nothing, not even the shadow of a dream. A long stride brought him to her bed. A glance, and he knew.
    And she—by all the gods that were, she did not.
    â€œI’m afraid,” she said in that soft strange voice. “I don’t want to die. Not like this.”
    â€œWho ever told you—” It had escaped him before he thought. He bit his tongue.
    â€œIs it Allah, do you think? Because Father—”
    Because her father, indeed. There were curses fit for him. And for the women who had never told her that one, simple, inescapable fact. And for Jaffar himself and most of all, because he had not thought to tell her. He had thought she knew. All women knew.
    Jaffar found the laughter that sparked when he began to understand. He mingled it with love and set it in his voice. “Little bird,” he said. “Little fool. You’re not going to die.”
    â€œMy mother did!” The air rang with the force of it.
    He stilled the echoes, softly, calmly. “You are not your mother. But a woman, you most certainly are. Now your body knows it. It’s telling you in the surest way it can.”
    Her hand reached, tore at the sheet. “It’s blood.”
    â€œIt is life. And womanhood. And pride.”
    Her head was shaking. “My mother bled. She bled and she bled, and she screamed, and they all said there was no hope for her. I watched. She screamed for a day and a night. Then she had