Younos

Suleiman glowered down at the boy.

“You’re blackmailing me, you mangy cur!” he screamed.

“Don’t think of it as blackmail, esteemed one,” Younos said, trying not to smile while he thought that ‘mangy cur’ was something his sister had called this gentleman a short while ago. “Think of it like a gift to a well-wisher. I promise you two things. One, I will not approach you with a request like this again. Two, the Sultana values my services, so if you should want to harm me, your life will be forfeit.”

Suleiman seethed and cursed in Egyptian under his breath. Younos thought quickly. So the city’s water lord had Egyptian connections. How could that be? He was Arabia’s foremost son, and people knew him as being the model Arab. They didn’t have the best relations with Egypt at that point in time. How could this be? He wondered whether this would give him more leverage over the trader.

“Very well, you little piece of shit,” Suleiman said. “Two hundred dinars, and I’ll give my reference on your wonderful character to the court scribe, and we’re done. I know about your performance in front of the Sultana’s court. Everyone is talking about it. So your life is safe. Go in peace, and keep your lips sealed. If my secret should become known to any one soul, remember that I can have you killed discreetly. Sultana or no Sultana, then I will have you devoured by desert scorpions. Do you understand that, boy!”

Younos shivered.

“Yes, my lord,” he said. “You will not see me again, unless you ask for me, or you happen to come to the Sultana’s court.”

Suleiman dismissed him from his attention. Younos tiptoed out of his presence, knowing well that the trader would try to kill him sooner rather than later. The dinars and the reference were just him buying time until he hired the right assassin. He wondered whether he had done the right thing. Sewer cleaning appeared more palatable just about now.

Later, after Younos had completed all formalities at court, he learned that the Sultana had asked for him. While she was preoccupied for the moment with affairs of the kingdom, he had an appointment with her later in the day. In the meanwhile, his mind turned back to his explorations of the palace labyrinths. His mind would never stay still, so he slunk out of the royal scribe’s office where he had been sitting for a bit and disappeared into a dark corridor that led into the labyrinth. This time he would try to see if he could get closer to the princesses’ quarters. Mayhap something that would excite his fancies would be sighted.

Imi

Imi prayed to Nut. She was after all the mother of the Gods. She was the sky. If anyone could give her her beloved, and make her dreams come true, it was she. She raised her arms to the sky and uttered ancient chants that not many knew.

She had a talisman that she held sacred. Her grandmother had bequeathed it to her mother, and her mother to her. For simple slaves, they had knowledge of their lineage for several generations, which others in their community considered surprising. They had been slaves the last twenty generations at least.

The talisman showed a cow inside a pot. The pot was the hieroglyph that represented Nut’s ancient name. The cow was her depiction. She was a gigantic cow whose body formed the sky and heavens, who suckled the stars on her celestial teats.

If the Sky Goddess heard her petition, perhaps she would have her handsome Persian prince. Great is the power of prayer, she thought, remembering her grandmother’s training, as she felt the talisman resting on her palm now.

Give me this one prayer, O mother of the Gods, she said to herself. This one prayer, O coverer of the sky. Grant this little serving girl one wish. Surely you, who hold a thousand souls, can do that.

Nadia

Her name was Nadia and her friend’s name was Nadira. They weren't sisters, but they may as well have been. They looked very different. She was light skinned, as if her Arab ancestors had actually been Teutonic barbarians. Nadira was colored like light caramel, as native an Arab color as there ever was. But they were so alike in behavior, and their names were so alike, that people often wondered if they were one mind. Yet she had survived and her friend had succumbed.

The general’s unceasing cruelties had broken her friend’s spirit. Her body had been bruised and battered, but it was when she had given up in her mind that the general’s usual asphyxiation game had claimed her life.

Nadia was kneeling down, bleeding, dirty, with pain and soreness and anger pervading every pore. The general Mohal’s sexual games became darker each night, and she knew that she had to escape.

She touched the earth and uttered a prayer. The nourishing earth was a mother, after all. She asked for only one request. One very vengeful request. She felt the spirit of her late friend in the air. She smiled and asked her friend’s spirit to witness her terrible prayer to the earth mother.

Mediha

Mediha felt the warm, new water against her skin. All the grime from the sewer was gone, but now she simply stayed in the bath for the pleasure of feeling this fresh flow of water in the bath. They had placed a trace of some exotic fragrance in the bath. She didn’t know where it was from, but she loved it.

Her lovely raven hair looked divine when dripping with the bath waters. It was undone and floated partially on the surface of the bath, as she massaged a bath oil into her breasts, kneading her nipples, and enjoying the supple feeling the oil gave her skin.

The bath was a great place to think. She had a lot of thinking to do. More so because what Rawer had told her left her confused in so many ways, and her emotions were doing a circus act right now. She didn’t know whether she wanted to leave her people, her family, her race, and her comforts.

On the other hand, there was Rawer. She had so many more questions for him, but he had given her so much information in one viscous dollop. She giggled. The way he gave information was exactly the way his big, ebony cock spurted out his seed. That one visual image made her decision for her.

Two pairs of eyes watched her. It was her most private space, her sanctum sanctorum, but someone had gained access to spy on her here. One pair of eyes was simply ogling her, while another pair was glaring.

As the princess dipped her beautiful head under the bath waters again, a masked female figure that was dressed in black from head to toe, including a black mask, leaped out of her hiding place and launched herself into the bath. She landed right behind the princess and forced her to stay underwater.

The princess struggled and panicked. The assassin was strong, and she didn’t have enough oxygen to last more than a few seconds, having already been underwater a half minute before the attack, just to test her breath. She wriggled and thrashed, and pushed her feet against the foot of the bath, unbalancing herself and the assassin.

The two of them sank backwards, both their torsos facing upward, well under the surface of the water. The assassin’s hands were clamped around her throat, and she knew that she had to change that somehow. Her lungs were struggling now, and she felt her life slipping away.

She wriggled some more, using the slipperiness from the bath oil to good effect, but the assassin’s grip remained powerful. Her mind screamed in alarm, and the fragrance of the bath waters that had been the last thing on her mind seemed a laughably trivial detail now.

Her lovely and powerful mother’s face came to her mind. When she thought of someone saving her, she didn’t think of Rawer, and certainly not of her father. It was her mother, who had taught her all she knew, who appeared in her mind’s eye. Her mind cried out for her mother. The assassin’s grip was powerful beyond measure, and the princess started losing consciousness.

Sultana

The Sultana started. She was worried, but she didn’t know why. She was adjourning a meeting where she oversaw different provincial magistrates as they addressed petitions from citizens. It was a review process that they went through each year.

The panic that the sisters were causing in the kingdom weighed everyone down, but that was no reason to pause the important affairs of state. Besides, the Sultana was well versed in how the human mental mechanism worked and knew that taking some time off from a problem was sometimes the best way to deal with it.

Now though, some worry for her children entered her mind. She did not know why, but she felt that they were in danger. She wondered if she was just panicking for no reason. Then she dismissed the thought. It could surely wait until the meeting was done.

Mohal

General Mohal knelt down on one knee. A vast abyss of velvet black stretched out in front of him, and yet he was inside his quarters. His eyes were on the floor. For all his ambition and arrogance, in the presence of this being he was terrified, and according to the ancient legends, he knew he must not look up.

A voice that sounded like pregnant clouds rolling against one another crashed out of that abyss and instructed him. He nodded, while staying penitent.

The entire northeastern borders of her kingdom were without protection. No neighboring kingdoms had made any moves yet. The sisters were traveling at superhuman speeds along her kingdom’s eastern border, decimating army posts and thousands of men as they traveled.

But the bloody bitch was still holding court and attending to other duties. General Mohal mentally spat on the Sultana each night. He imagined that each of the servant girls that he abused was that royal bitch. It was his fondest wish to force the Sultana into submission, sexually, martially and politically.

In order to accomplish his designs, he needed the aid of a force that was beyond the ken of human comprehension. The general wanted to hit the Sultana with so much power and force at his beck and call that she was rendered helpless instantly, and if she stayed alive, it was at his mercy. Oh, how he longed to dominate the bitch.

In league with sorcerers who had been exiled from the kingdom, the general had invited an enormously potent entity into the human realm. He now wondered at the wisdom of his course. The entity was like a thousand desert storms rolled in one, and when it spoke, the entire room quaked as though it would fall any moment.

This entity was, at least in the general’s mind, his ticket to saving the kingdom and then usurping it. He trembled as he addressed the abyss that yawned in front of him, willing himself to force each word out of his mouth.

Mediha

The bath oil made her torso slippery, but not slippery enough to shake the assassin’s hold on her throat, that kept her beneath the surface of the water. Mediha’s life force was ebbing, and she saw scenes from the high and low points in her life flashing before her eyes.

Her father was calling her across the field, having just returned from a tour. He was grimy from battle but looked young and virile. Her mother was astonishingly beautiful and even more buxom back then. She ran through the tall grass and the desert roses and felt her father seize her under the shoulders and toss her up in the air, as she squealed with delight. She felt herself fall, but instead of falling into his arms, she fell on her feet, and was a twelve-year-old girl, exploring the palace’s highest point, it’s tower, along with her sister Lubna, and finding what they thought was a treasure chest.

They were laughing and excited and were about to open it, when her mother intercepted them. She heard her scolding them now, asking them to behave, and not disturb their most sacred possessions. She felt angry and turned around and stormed out of the tower, and felt herself as a nubile twenty-year-old, eying Rawer taming an unruly horse from the distance, wondering why she felt as she did. She experienced that powerful stirring in her breasts and her loins again, as she saw his rippling, ebony sinews in the late morning sun.

Just as she lost consciousness, she fancied she saw the face of an ancient woman, a wraith, a spirit, a mother. She also fancied she saw a boy.