Yusuf’s smile stiffened for a moment. “Of course, my prince. I’m afraid our halls of calculation are occupied with . . . notables. But I can do a quick evaluation.”
I stood there, trying not to let my offence show, while Yusuf scratched away with startling speed on a slate taken from inside his robe. “One, two, thirteen.” He looked up.
I pursed my lips. “Which means?”
“Ah.” Yusuf glanced down at the slate again as if seeking inspiration. “First stop, second sister, thirteenth . . . something.”
“Why can’t these ever be like, on the third day of spring give the fifth man you see four coppers to avoid disaster? See, that’s simple and useful. Yours could mean anything. First stop . . . on my way home? An oasis? A port? And second sister? My sister, the Silent Sister? Help me out here!”
“The calculation is done on the basis that you are told what I told you—if I wanted to tell you more I would have to do the calculation again and it would be a different answer, a different purpose. If I told you more now then it would disrupt the outcome and the numbers would no longer be true. Besides, I don’t know the answers, that’s where the magic comes in and it’s hard to pin down. You understand?”
“So, do it again. It only took you a moment.”
Yusuf showed me his black smile. “Ah, my friend, you have found me out. I have been processing your variables since we first met in that Florentine bank. I may have misled you when I implied that you were not important to the shape of things to come. I thought perhaps it would have been easier for you if you didn’t know.”
“Well . . . uh, that’s better.” I wasn’t sure it was. I’d been happier being outraged about not being important enough to factor than I was knowing that my actions mattered. “I, uh, should be going. Allah be upon you, and all that . . .” I raised my hand in farewell but Omar was too fast for me and launched himself forward into a hug that, truth be told, was pretty much a cuddle.
“Good luck, my friend.”
“I don’t need luck, Omar! And I have the figures to prove it . . . one, two, three—”
“Thirteen.”
“One, two, thirteen. That should see me safe. You come visit us in Red March when you’re bored with balancing equations.”
“I will,” he said, but I know from experience it takes practice to lie when cuddling someone, and Omar had not practised.
I disentangled myself and set off toward the front of the caravan.
“Don’t forget your camels, Jalan!”
“Right.” And with reluctance I angled my way toward the rear of the group being lined up, already tensing to dodge the first barrage of camel-spit.
The desert is hot and boring. I’m sorry, but that’s pretty much all there is to it. It’s also sandy, but rocks are essentially dull things and breaking them up into really small pieces doesn’t improve matters. Some people will tell you how the desert changes character day by day, how the wind sculpts it endlessly in vast and empty spaces not meant for man. They’ll wax lyrical about the grain and shade of the sand, the majesty of bare rock rising mountainous, carved by the sand-laden breeze into exotic shapes that speak of water and flow . . . but for me sandy, hot, and boring covers it all.
The most important factor, once water and salt are covered, is the boredom. Some men thrive on it, but me, I try to avoid being left alone with my own im-agination. The key if one wishes to avoid dwelling on unpleasant memories or inconvenient truths is to keep yourself occupied. That fact alone explains much of my youth. In any event, in the desert silence, with nobody but camels and heathens to speak to, none of them with much mastery of Empire tongue, a man is left defenceless, prey to dark thoughts.
I held out until we hit the coast, but that last trek along the narrow strip of sand between the wideness of the sea and the vast march of dunes broke me. One chill night we camped beside the skeleton of some great ocean-going ship that had floundered close enough to port for the irony to be more bitter than the seawater. I walked among its bare and salt-rimed spars rising from the beach, and setting a hand to one ancient timber I could swear I heard the screams of drowning sailors.
That night sleep proved impossible to find. Instead, beneath the bright and cold scatter of the stars, my ghosts came visiting and dragged me back to Hell.
“Isn’t there supposed to be a bridge?” I ask, staring out across the fast-flowing waters of the River Slidr. It’s the first water I’ve seen in Hell. The river lies at least thirty yards wide, the opposite shore is a beach of black sand sloping up to a set of crumbling black cliffs. The cliffs vault toward the dead-lit sky in a series of steps, and above them clouds gather, dark as smoke.