"Sing for me," I said, though I took the cup.

"If it pleases you."

And thus she rose, though I did not truly wish her to depart my side, and stepped past a bra.s.s brazier. It had been sprinkled with perfumes, and pleasing scents curled in the smoke that rose from it.

She sang me a song of love and I was well pleased with her performance, if not her voice. So pleased, in fact, that I found my fingers had set down the cup to clutch an almond cake near my lips, and I froze. I returned it to the platter.

When the song was finished, she sank onto the couch. "Does the music please you?"

"It does."

She lifted a cake. "Please, eat."

"I have already eaten."

"I insist." Her fingers brushed across my lips and she presented the dessert to me.

"I am not hungry for food," I demurred.

She stuck out her bottom lip in an exaggerated pout.

"How may I please you, lord?"

"Sing for me."

"That I will. But first you must try one of these fine cakes. Surely a lion of a man such as yourself has room for such a tiny thing. And it would please me." Her fingers swept across my chin and into my beard. "It would please me greatly." Down her fingers swept, across my chest and to my waist. And then, abruptly, she reached for the cake. She pushed it to my lips.

I was nearly blind with desire, but I resisted. I grabbed her wrist. She struggled fruitlessly against me for a second, then saw something in my expression that she did not like, for her eyes narrowed.

"Fahd!" she screamed.

The servant flung open the door. A sword in his hand threw back the yellow and red gleam of candlelight.

I flung the girl from me and grabbed for my sword, then realized she had moved it too far.

Fahd cried out gutturally and charged.

I sprang to the brazier and grabbed it in both hands. Smoking coals rained down on the floor, sizzling. I raised the brazier and his blade clanged into the bra.s.s. I swept the tripod at his head, then threw it at him and dived for my sword.

I heard him curse in pain and smash back against the wall as the tripod clattered and banged on the floor planks. My hands found my pommel, and I cast down the sheath as Fahd scrambled to his feet. And then something pa.s.sed over my head and fabric tightened around my neck.

The girl meant to strangle me with a scarf.

The attack bent me backward, off balance at just the wrong moment. Fahd charged. His was a butcher's chop, but it was nearly the end of me. I knocked his cut aside with a wild swing.

"Kill him, fool!" the girl hissed as I found a firmer stance that pulled her feet off the ground.

The noose tightened about my throat. I gasped for air while parrying another poor thrust, then grasped the silk stretched behind my neck and jumped away from the couch. The girl was as tied to me as I to her. I could not see her, but I heard her shriek as she stumbled upon the hot coals. She had lost her grip, and the strain on my neck eased.

I met the servant's third thrust unenc.u.mbered, swung back. His scimitar and the hand that held it flew toward the door. Even as he cried out my blade licked up and found his heart.

I spun on the girl, but she had flopped onto the couch and clutched at her singed foot, cursing. I heard the outer door open and looked over to find Dabir staring down at the scimitar still clutched by Fahd's fingers.

"I see you have things well in hand," he said.

I all but groaned. "You missed your true calling as a comic poet."

"You are unharmed? I heard shouting."

"I am unharmed." Disappointed perhaps, but unharmed.

"She is a poisoner, then?"

"Indeed."

Dabir nodded and took in the room. "Almond cakes. As I expected. Come, lady. It is time for answers."

IV.

Dabir led us along the darkened streets. Only a few stars glimmered through the overhanging clouds.

Three figures lurched out of the darkness.

"Begone!" I growled.

They sang a few drunken s.n.a.t.c.hes of song, laughed, and staggered on.

We turned a corner and walked almost straight into a group of bravos. One raised a hand as though to command us to halt, but he stared at us and backed away. The others fell into a whispered discussion.

My sword was bare in my hand, and the bundle over one shoulder looked remarkably like a corpse, for the bound singing girl struggled only intermittently. She mouthed something into her gag, then let out a m.u.f.fled scream.

Suddenly the thieves retreated to the mouth of the alley from which they'd come. They did not follow us. We must have seemed on an errand more villainous than theirs.

A few hundred feet more brought us to the door Dabir sought. He bade me step to one side and pounded on it. "It is Dabir," he called. "Open up!"

After several moments of pounding, Jamilah's student opened the door and peered at Dabir, who pushed wide the door and strode past him. I bore my squirming burden after. I kicked the door shut and motioned the young man ahead of me.

The receiving area was a nest of shadows save for the tiny pool of light about a lantern that rested on a side table. Dabir lifted it. "Jamilah," he said grimly to the nervous youth. "Where is she?"

"In...in her laboratory."

"Show us."

"Lead us not astray," I growled.

The alchemist's laboratory must have been a pleasant temperature in winter. Red tongues of flame flickered in two furnaces, and hot embers glowed in a third.

A foul smell permeated the vast room and its source might have been any of the barrels along the walls or the bottles and boxes bunched in neat rows along a half dozen tables. Also there were strange tall cylinders of gla.s.s filled with a rainbow offering of colored powders, pottery and gla.s.swork with beaklike spouts, and a shop's worth of unlit lamps. Tongs and ladles and hammers and an a.s.sortment of other tools hung from pegs near the largest furnace, and dozens of bright metals set in a warren of cubbyholes threw back the light.

Jamilah swirled a long ladle in a high-walled stone tub beside the largest furnace. She looked up at our entrance but did not leave off her work. Sweat plastered her hair to her face. She looked composed enough that she might have been cooking a meal.

I set the singing girl down by her, expecting some surprised response from Jamilah. The songbird glared venomously at me, then cast pleading eyes up at the alchemist, but she was ignored, and the girl settled into vainly twisting her wrist and ankle bonds.

I peered at the muddy brown mixture Jamilah stirred. Wisps of smoke danced above its surface.

"Dabir Hashim ibn Khalil," she said, p.r.o.nouncing every syllable distinctly. "You returned even sooner than I expected."

I pointed her student to the girl. "Sit there." I raised my sword.

He did.

Dabir spoke slowly, his voice heavy with sadness. "You disappoint me, Jamilah. You, to stoop to elixirs of life. Are you so desperate-"

She laughed.

"-to extend your allotted years? You are still young and fair."

"You look, Dabir, but you do not see."

This was exactly the thing Dabir said often to me, and it was strange to hear the accusation directed at him.

"It is answers I want," she said. "It is answers I have ever sought. You know this."

"So you seek to lengthen your life to seek them longer?"

She frowned in exasperation. "No, Dabir. Khalid hid his true purpose in his writing on life elixirs. After careful study I determined what he really meant with his obscure phrasing, how the ingredients could be brought together for a greater purpose."

"So you have hunched over your books and ferreted out the secret, that you may boast to others?" Dabir's voice rose in anger.

"You are one to talk!" she snapped back. "You, who do the same, who struggled to outdo me-"

"I never murdered, Jamilah! I have no hirelings to poison men with prussic acid and remove their eyes."

Still she stirred. "You have not yet boasted how you found me. Did you suspect from the first, or did you have to torture the answers from Safa?"

"The girl spoke readily enough," Dabir said.

This was the truth. I had tied up the girl only so she would not escape, not to perform mischief. She had talked of Jamilah, pleading that she was but obeying an evil sorceress who had threatened to curse her. Dabir had then asked where Safa had found the money for such splendid furnishings, and the poisoner had even confessed that Jamilah paid her, though she claimed still to fear for her life. I did not believe her; clearly she enjoyed her own part in the scheme.

"And how did you find her?" Jamilah prompted.

"I knew someone had to have lured the murdered men from the tavern," said Dabir. "Did you think no one would piece your trail together? Your tracks were large. Your murderess was too memorable to have succeeded for very long. There were cake crumbs in one of the dead men's beard that smelt of bitter almonds-"

"You are so very clever, Dabir," Jamilah interrupted caustically.

"You served cakes to us, Jamilah-why not poison ones?"

"I would not poison you. Only those who mattered not."

Dabir shook his head. "Who are you to judge? How many men were slain at your bidding?"

"Only just enough. I told Safa I needed no more, but I think she found a taste for her doings."

"And all this in vain. Tell me, Jamilah. What am I to do with you? What is this fabulous secret you sought?"

"I sought," she said, bending over the mixture, "to keep you talking. That is ever an easy thing. Behold." She turned, triumphant. "My preparations are complete. Soon you will know that the sacrifice was worth it. Khalid had learned the makings of a servant of power. A servant from the afterlife. A servant who can give the answers we seek to all the most important questions!"

The pool behind her bubbled and a spray of putrid liquid fountained into the air. Muddy blue water whirled in an ever-rising, ever-widening spout.

Dabir dashed forward and pulled Jamilah back, putting her behind a protective arm.

She laughed scornfully. The water spun like a dust devil over the tub. Small white b.a.l.l.s tumbled helplessly in the vortex. And then, at the same moment, each rotated at once and sat unmoving even as the water whirled.

They were eyes-some two dozen human eyes, and they stared out at Jamilah.

"Behold my servant, Dabir! It has eyes that looked upon the world beyond as its spirits looked past the angel of death! Ask it what you will! Ask it of G.o.d, or the angels! Ask it the time of your death, or how the world shall end!"

I had backed away. The bound girl screamed into her gag, and the student sat transfixed in horror.

"I am your mistress!" Jamilah cried. "Teach me the fates of the stars!"

And then came a sound I shall never forget-the sound of a room of men speaking, their voices strained and burbling. All spoke the same words with the same inflection, though some were pitched high, and some low. "We know not of stars, but we know what will become of you." And with that the liquid swept out of the tub. Still spinning, it dropped upon the singing girl. She screamed even as her lips blackened and fell away, even as her skin dried and cracked like old parchment.

The student found his wits and scrambled to his feet too late. The girl decayed to dust and the demon-spout fell on him. He cried out to G.o.d and his mistress both, straining for us even as his eyes withered away and his face shriveled.

I grabbed Dabir's arm. "Flee!"

He pushed Jamilah for the door, but she broke away and ran for a table, searching among the containers. "Find the purified al-natrun!" she gasped. And that set Dabir to searching with her.

The demon, having sucked life and moisture from the student, spat out his dried body and swirled on for my friend and Jamilah.

Dabir lifted a clay jar and hurled it at the demon. It pa.s.sed through the thing and shattered against the floor, spraying white powder.

"Keep looking!" Jamilah said.

"Why is nothing labeled?" Dabir shouted.

"Ho, demon!" I called. "Come at me!" I had no plan, other than to lead it away. I swiped at its backside, with as much effect as you would expect. How do you harm a creature made from water? My weapon pa.s.sed through its body.

It ignored me and advanced on Jamilah and Dabir. He clutched her, tried to pull her back, but she searched frantically yet, cried out in joy as she reached for a corked jar- And the creature swept into her.