In Farthest Himyar

The High Court
Windhaven

“’Cause we’re Marpesians and we’ll fight through thick and thin,
we’ll keep our land a free land, stop the enemy coming in!
We’ll keep them north of the Rwenbezi till that river’s running dry!
This mighty land will prosper for Marpesians never die.”

The raucous soldier's song was occasionally interrupted by baseball bats smashing hard drives, and the office smelled like bleach. Robert was surprised to find the doughfaced attorney in a good mood. Hadn't he and the pigeon-toed politico just been thrown out of government? Guess I won’t have to cheer them up after all. Walter saw him and slung a monitor at his head, discus-style, and the glass exploded against the dated yellow wallpaper. Padraig turned around smiling like a jackal.

“Can’t have ‘Quint Queer’ look through my files.” He checked his watch. “We’re picking up Gallagher in thirty minutes. Going to visit Uncle Ian in Port Stanley.” Himyar? They were going to Himyar?

Walter clapped him on the shoulder. He looked like a wild man, his blond hair almost down to his shoulders, his moustache now a full-grown beard. When he spoke it smelled like whisky. “Coming with, Rob? There’s a war on. We’re going to shoot some commies after all.” He flashed the fat lawyer a wolfish smile.

Schloss Klippenstein
Radeberg, Eiffelland

"Maybe you've played this game too long, Robert."
Adelaide smiled at their repartee. She was kneeling on the Pelasgian carpet, inventorying the queen's jewels as she packed them away. Robert and Julian noticed their voices echoed. The room had been emptied of the furniture and drapes. It would be Queen Julian's last intelligence briefing in Schloss Klippenstein, at least for as long as the war lasted. And her last from Robert Gunn. He had been first to resign his post during the recent MacLeish scandal.

"Prime Minister Smith never heeded my summons."
"I am asking you to investigate. I want to handle the MacLeishes and the Council..."

So that's why Adelaide was smiling. Robert looked in amazement at the young queen's self-assurance. Julian is suddenly older, somehow. He knew she was right. The Gunn chief would be a liability in any peace talks with the MacLeishes, and sending him away would be a signal of her strength, her control over her own clan. But what amazed him most of all is that Julian would step up to do this. Robert must have looked hurt, since the petite dyed-blonde monarch suddenly looked like she pitied him.

"...take Adelaide with you. She knows the language, the people... my mother..."

Suddenly the kneeling lady-in-waiting's smile disappeared. Her mother? Deoiridh is in Port Stanley also? Was she still in touch with the MacLeishes? Did she somehow factor into the plans of Smith and Gallagher, plans which he hadn't told the queen about? Julian was giving Robert a severe look, a look that let him know he was indeed going to go to Himyar to find her mother.

"...and, of course, you must take young Joachas."

Highhome Mansion
Maseru, Loago

He lay down on the sofa without taking the dust cover off. The report from the 15AR bureau chief in Maseru was distressing. No Gunnishmen were on that Gallegan Airlines flight that was shot down. Do you really want to know why? Turned out, he didn’t. But Robert had to admit his agents were on top of the complex conflicts in the region. And so proactive that they had secured the title to the old MacLeish mansion, Highhome, for when the Foreign Office sent an ambassador to Maseru again.

Cross-legged on the balcony looking down at the lights of Maseru, Adelaide remembered the electric crackle of the cicadas. She had been in Highhome once before. Raped by Poseidon and the Lady-Phantom of the Opera at a bal masqué, when Deoiridh dressed her up like a slave-girl of Al-Kez to seduce Duncan MacLeish for the first time. She never told Julian what her mother had done. How strange Julian sent both of us away in one fell swoop. Robert was the one who had sent her to spy on Deoiridh for him, before Julian rescued her. Robert Gunn, the arch-plotter: conservative, pious, privileged, well connected; teaching Julian the ways of Gunnland, how to pull each string. And Adelaide: the victim, teaching Julian that biology isn’t destiny; teaching Julian that Gunnishwomen must pull away, resist their oppressive culture, stick together, survive. Robert made the Eiffellandians deport me back to Windhaven to scold me for being a bad influence upon her, too. Memories of smoking late-night cigarettes on the Schloss Klippenstein ramparts, and curling up with her queen, her rescuer, her student… Adelaide didn’t want to think about that now. She focused on the spoonful of pap soaked in chakalaka that she was putting to her lips and groaned in delight. Then she sensed Robert behind her. Adelaide felt like ignoring him, but also like tasting him. And then by the force of habit, almost against her will, she started to flirt.

“You love Himyar. The food. The people. Even when you were a student.”
“My shirt sticks to my back. How can Gunnishmen live here in the summer?”
“And you, of all people, are in love with this misogynistic tribal culture?”

Ian B. Smith International Airport
Chinde, Port Stanley

Flight 1 from Maseru was the only daily flight to Chinde. Robert leaned over the window of the wobbling plane as Adelaide pointed out the geographical features of Port Stanley. The great blue Lake Rwenbezi that fed the river that shared its name, stretching almost sixty miles between the forest outpost of Fort Smith (“The judicial capital,” Adelaide shouted over the propeller) and the much larger city of Oriel (“The legislative capital!”) on its southern coast. She traced the straight dirt line of the Great South Road, and its many bridges crossing the winding river, as both made their way to the coastal capital (“The executive capital!”) formerly known simply as Port Stanley.

Some neighborhoods of Maseru looked like Little Gunnland in the tropics: brick row houses, stone churches, kilts, old pub songs, blood sausage. But even before the little plane’s airstairs went down, it was clear that Port Stanley was another world. The sun was blindingly bright, and there was a faint smell of burnt garbage. The black passengers remained seated while the white passengers stood to exit the plane first. Adelaide wrapped a saffron shawl around her head in the fashion of a hijab, and Robert noticed that each one of the other white women did as well. Her eyes indicated that she would follow him off the plane. So this is how things are in Port Stanley. Robert began to wonder if it had been wise to arrange to bring the royal family together there.

This was not how things were in Port Stanley, or Chinde, as the city had been renamed to commemorate independence in 1979. The affluent air travelers may have politely submitted to racial and sexual hierarchies, but the porters glared as they carried the bags, the whites of their eyes accentuated by their dark faces. Robert noticed dozens of olive-green RRF Schwarzhabicht military helicopters down the tarmac. The soldiers in camouflage were mostly whites, but there were some Nethians and mustached Urodoah as well. One of the men strode confidently up to him, raising his peaked cap to reveal a head of black hair slicked back.

“Colonel Callum MacLeod Marlow, sir. Ma’am. Welcome to Port Stanley.”

Marlow gave him an odd look.

Chinde

He hated helicopters. In the pitch dark, there was no telling where the black helicopter ended and night began. Schwarzhabicht indeed. And it didn’t make him feel any better when eight Reiver Light Infantry paratroopers ran out, jumping and rolling onto the roof of the grand bungalow, making the helo bob up like a fisherman’s cork float. Nor when Colonel Marlow smiled to say, “Urban, nighttime. Boys don’t get much of this.”

Marlow was a funny fellow. Wouldn't touch whisky. And Robert wasn't sure he was joking when the topic of John XXIII, and Marlow said the Holy Father was 'not pope here, in Far Himyar.' And the odd look? Robert's first impression of Marlow was explained when Marlow said he had met "a fat Gunnish fellow, his shaggy friend, and a priest" a week before that had also demanded to see Prime Minister Smith. ("The fat fellow's uncle or grandfather or something.") Marlow wasn't the prime minister's keeper, after all. Negotiating the end of white rule, however, was second to the mission of hiding the royal family away in Port Stanley, away from a world war that would almost certainly become a clan war. Starting with the family's craziest member. Why is Deoiridh here, of all places?

Shots sounded from the grand bungalow barely visible below between the soft nacre moon and the sweeping, harsh halogen spotlight. Not the staccato bursts they had worried about. One at a time means they’re just unlocking doors, Robert reminded himself. A few minutes later, “Up! Up!” and through the spotlight they winched up the ugliest woman he had ever seen with the rescue hoist, like herring anglers hooking a sea-robin. Savage, the way the flames took Deoiridh’s beauty. “And another!” Up came the catch; you could tell she was a toned beauty hauling her body onto the deck of a Schwarzhabicht in the dark. One of Duncan’s old swimmers? Robert guessed. He laughed and leaned over to the queen-mother, hands zip tied around her back, face scalded side up. In a moment of pity, Robert decided not to mention the arrival of Deoiridh’s mother-in-law Cherra, nor the remote Fergusine convent upriver the royal family minus Julian was headed to. He shined his flashlight at the younger woman with the frizzy braid and freckles.

“I think this other one is a keeper, Majesty. I’ll trade your son for her.”

Chinde

"Chinde was the furthest outpost of the Azraqi Empire..." A black woman, perhaps sixty years old, in a colorful jacket of multicolored interlocking squares that matched her purple head-wrap, put her hand on a seventeenth-century cannon. She spoke Engelsh with an accent that made him think of Mary-le-Bone. "...and these guns kept pirates from sailing up the Rwenbezi to threaten Mashrabiya."

Oriel, Robert reminded himself. They were alone on the top of a sand-colored fortress. He felt like a tourist, but getting a tour of the city had been his idea. He thought Callum Marlow would take him around, just not in a helicopter. Instead Marlow brought him to the mayor of Chinde, Dr. Octavia Butler. Even though she was mayor -- "Here's your democracy," the colonel had said with an eye roll -- Robert had the impression that Butler took orders from the white military officer. Orders like, "Show him around town, Octavia." Her list, the United Development Party, seemed to be the black party that supported the ruling Commonwealth League. Why?

He was less interested in the medieval fortress and more interested in other things he had seen on the tour that day, from the corner of his eye. Policemen beating up black men peddling cell phones and sunglasses. Blacks in prison uniforms watering palm trees on the city streets. Maybe it's not mere rumor that men are "extradited" from this country into the neighboring First Republic's human commodity system. Robert could not help blurting out, "Doesn't the way this country is ruled bother you?"

Dr. Butler raised an eyebrow. "Don't assume you know the way this country is ruled, Dr. Gunn." She sat down wearily on the cannon. "Of course it bothers me. In Fante we are 'Mafewo,' the 'Goodbye' People, left behind in the great westward migration to Loago. Mafewo have always lived among others: Urudoah tribes, white tribes. You have been here three days, and you think I should join the Popular Front. Do you think I have the heart of a slave? Have you thought, just maybe I don't want to die fighting for Xinhaise communism? Maybe my people prefer our problems to Viru or Engellexic company masters." At a loss, Robert looked down at the sandstone tiles that protected the country he did not understand.

Chinde

They sat on the verandah that seemed to rise out of a grove of palm trees. At coffee with the queen-mother, like the lovely couple we might have been. Marlow’s soldiers brought Deoiridh and her companion back, because Robert requisitioned the grand home. Already someone was repairing the atrium roof that those very soldiers crashed through two nights previous. Adelaide knew who Deoridh’s companion would be as soon as Robert told the story of hauling her up to the helicopter. Robin MacDonald Lang: the MacLeish’s mistress; record holder in the women’s 100-meter freestyle; an APO envied by every unfortunate in the WLA. Why did she stay? For a month? Adelaide too envied Robin’s healthy complexion. But at least it's not me serving coffee. Servants were treated brutally in this country, she remembered. Still, I might have found Robert one that wasn’t… beautiful. Adelaide looked down, embarrassed at her thoughts, and noticed the bulge of an ankle monitor concealed by Deoiridh’s flowing silk pants. The old queen’s speech was oddly slurred, an effect of the skin pulled too tight on the burned side of her face. She was finally giving Robert the information he wanted, the information in exchange for which he would reunite her with her son.

“My late hus-ss-band’s connection was a man named Halevi. Older man. Ss-said Halevi would hide me here. Port Ss-stanley was the rendezvous-ss point in case anything bad happened to him. How did you find me here?”

Robert didn’t answer. He just nodded. Deoiridh silently cooperated when two RLI soldiers came to take her away. The child, Joachas, would be arriving on that day’s flight from Maseru. Maybe a prince wouldn't feel awkward leaving the plane first. Joachas would never step foot in Chinde: too many eyes. Robert was bringing him straight to Bal’harm, a tiny desert village halfway to Oriel, and the Fergusine abbey of St. Moses there. Adelaide turned her head to see Robin standing against the wall, waiting to clear plates. Then she asked her question, even though she already knew the answer to it. The answer was that Port Stanley was worse than anything she had experienced: worse than displaying herself in fish tanks or obstacle courses. Boyish stuff in comparison. No white woman could stand the customs of this country towards servants.

“So why did you tell Queen Julian and me that the queen-mother was here?”

St. Moses Abbey
Bal'harm, Port Stanley

A Child's History of King Joachas said:

Do not be deceived by the fact that Joachas was born in Gunnland, and lived his first seven years there. Bal’harm, the country known as Port Stanley, is forever his place. You have read that he had no playmates his own age in Bal’harm. The dangers were too great. But Joachas did have wonderful companion-teachers. There was Brother Paul, the warrior-poet. There was Dr. Landry Gunn MacChrystal. There was Robert Gunn, the clan chief and tutor, a name black in treachery but bright in knowledge. And, of course, the mother-of-kings Deoridih, whose qualities as a parent have long been overlooked.

Click to expand...

“Am I going to die in this sea of sand?” Cherra was not pleased. But the doctors of Weissenfels were pleased to be rid of their troublesome patient. To the old woman, the sun seemed to melt the horizon. St. Moses Abbey was on the side of a large rocky outcrop that obscured the Rwenbezi River. Sand in three directions.

Landry rolled his eyes at Robert. It was good to see Landry. This is the kind of place where the royal family can ride out the wars to come. It was remote. The popular abbot, Edmund Woodstone, OSF, had come all the way from Gunnland a month before to prepare the furthest Fergusine abbey. Ancient ties to the royal Gunns would do that. Little did he know he would be toasting his own good fortune. Robert told him the news, that the Holy Father had appointed him Archbishop of Windhaven. He was a young man, just forty, for the position. Glasses of a strange amber-colored wine were raised. The new archbishop's sister, a pretty young woman named Melody, beamed in delight at their esteemed guests. She had a lazy eye.

A change came over Deoiridh when she saw her son. More than anything in the world she knew she had to keep him here, safe, in this place. Inwardly she promised not to let the monk, the doctor, or the clan chief take him away.

Chinde

“She’s a Jew? But she’s black!”

The Gunnish mind was not easily conformed to such ideas. For most of the long six-hour trip back from Bal'harm, speeding through desert and crawling through fishing villages on the Rwenbezi, Robert had assumed his tour guide from last week, Dr. Octavia Butler, was a Moslem. His theory was that there was an élite of Islamicized, Urodoahized blacks that shared in governing the country with Islamicized whites. Now he was checking in with Callum Marlow. It is also a roundabout way of asking Colonel Marlow if he is a Moslem. Robert knew the UDP was the Moslem political party, but that Oriel was the only city with a large population of Moslems.

“I think she converted for Judah.”
“Her husband. Judah Halevi. He runs this town. Or did. And she was young and beautiful.”

The Gunn chief's head was spinning. Marlow continued, explaining that Halevi was the go-between for the MacLeishes and a man named al-Khazari. Things started to fall into place. This wasn’t a white rule country. Maybe it was in the eyes of the world. Robert started to wonder if Ian Smith had apostatized as well. Gone native. Like Marlow This was a world where dhimmi communities—white, black, Jewish—were at the beck and call of the Urodoah tribal leader in Oriel. Mashrabiya, Octavia had called it. Robert knew he would have to go there.

Chinde

Halevi. Deoiridh said that was MacLeish's man. Mayor Butler's husband. Robert had to appreciate the irony. In Gunnland they thought of him as a Richelieu or a Metternich: the chess-master manipulating both the queen and the leader. That reminds me. He had to reply to Julian's e-mail. Her instincts that the Camerons would back Douglas MacLeish were correct, he thought, leaving the clan chiefs tied 3-3. Act decisively. Cast the Gunns' vote, Julian. It was a once-in-a-century opportunity to put a relative -- his Uncle Mark -- in charge of a troublesome clan. Here in Port Stanley, however, he did not understand how any of the pieces worked. Time to meet Halevi. And time to meet his master, Al-Khazari. He realized Colonel Marlow was still talking, because the big-eyed man with slicked-back hair threw a newspaper at him.

"Thirty men. Stormed the airport this morning. They stole four Schwarzhabicht helicopters. Worse, they disabled dozens of mine. Total fucking mess. I think they're going all the way to the top of Rwenbezi to Nethsaïs -- to Fort Smith, godwilling. We'll be a match for them if they're spoiling for a fight, godwilling. But I can't take too many men out of Chinde. Too volatile. Goddamn Nethians are restless."

Bal'harm! Robert immediately thought of Prince Joachas. Did Padraig, Coemgein, and Walter know he was there? He had the feeling that Colonel Marlow would have to wait for clearance from the powers-that-be in Oriel to go after his helicopters. But Robert wasn't sure if the Gunnish hardliners were really looking for Ian Smith, or for Joachas. What kind of mess will they make tomorrow? he wondered. With friends like them...

His head was still spinning when the soldiers in the jeep dropped him back at the bungalow. Julian and Douglas MacLeish. Joachas. Did Coemgein know he wouldn't be bishop? Was Woodstone still in Bal'harm? Mark, Ian, and Padraig Buchanan Smith. Why did Marlow always say 'godwilling'? He scarcely noticed a young, toned Mafewo woman opening the door, with a great pink head wrap and a wry expression on her face; it later struck him her look was bemused and judgmental, intelligent, but not defiant. Adelaide was grinning, clearly very pleased with herself. Robert would soon find out why.

"Ad, I need you to make me an appointment to meet Judah Halevi tomorrow. Somehow he's the key."

The Bungalow
Chinde

She was playing a Nimzo-Himyari defense system, a chess opening that Robert often played against a new opponent. Rubenstein variation. He had underestimated the young woman, looking intently through thick black braids hung with silver bangles. He looked up at her admiringly, seeing his overextended attack. Yes, of course, he was playing white. He heard himself mutter, "Say your name for me slowly."

"Oritsematosan Udomo." Like most Nethians in Port Stanley, her Engelsh had the sophisticated polish of the So.C.R.E.R., so different from the sing-songy Gunnish cadence and the distinctive alveolar trills of "r." Adelaide had found her playing guitar in a speak-easy. What was it that Octavia Butler had said on the parapet of the Azraqi fortress? This country has more over-educated black women than we know what to do with. Urodoah-educated. These women belonged neither to the real Mafewo tribal world of the north (Robert guessed) nor to the Urodoah society of the advanced southern cities of their masters and husbands. In general, they accepted white rule like a white disguise to hide in a white world. As soon as Robert formed this thought, Udomo flashed an unmistakeable defiance:

"You should tell your abd'ear that I am an abd'ead. She thinks I am an abd'ess."

Robert did not know these words. And when he asked, Udomo sighed and began a long lecture. The whites came to Chinde in small numbers in the late 1600s. Marpesians following the Viru and the Engellexians. They quickly consolidated control: the Mafewo had only come into control of the river a few decades earlier during the Fante migrations, which followed the Azraqi loss of control. But it did not take long for the white Christians to feel the pull of the learned and diverse Urodoah-Nethian culture, especially of the Islamic universities that had kept Aristotle alive, and the doctrine that the world was eternal. The slave system inevitably imposed followed the ancient tripartite division of the soul from vulgar Platonic and Aristotelian writings: some humans like an ass are ruled by their passions, others like an ear can obey reason, and others like a head can reason themselves. Vulgar Engelsh was compounded with the Urodoah abd' to describe the social system. The custom began that the white settlers and Urodoah merchants would take an abd'ead, sometimes male but often from the Mafewo tribal matriarchs, to advise him; an abd'ear as a personal servant; and an abd'ess as a bedwarmer. Adelaide had served as an abd'ear in Mashrabiya, didn't Robert know that? Udomo laughed when she told Robert how Adelaide was horrified by the hospitality custom: a host must share his abd'ess with his guest, and a guest must reciprocate if possible. ("Gallo women act like this is some kind of torture!") Robert gulped. When I visit Halevi, will Robin or Adelaide have to... Udomo's lecture meanwhile returned to its academic tone. The abd'ess was therefore the lowest rank in the society forming at Port Stanley, but custom was for the abd'ess to gradually take upon the roles of the trusted abd'ear and the wise abd'ead, and ultimately marry their masters: the seraglio would evolve into a normal Gallo-Germanian bourgeois family, but one that produced a new biracial society. Udomo captured one of his knights with her bishop.

"I am nine mothers abd'ead. I return to my people during the rainy season when the coffee growing is interrupted. I think the barman was pleased to receive the price of an abd'ess for an abd'ead, though."

She smiled deviously.

The Bungalow
Chinde

He beat Udomo in a long endgame, and earned a look of respect. This morning she entered his bedroom without knocking, bowed, and announced that she (implying: not Adelaide) had arranged a visit to the home of Judah Halevi that afternoon. Now Udomo was shouting ferociously downstairs at Adelaide and Robin. Was she shaming them for insulting her culture? That's what it sounded like. The young Mafewess had established herself as abd'ead. Minutes later Adelaide walked through his open door, her face expressionless, embarrassed. She held out a silver plate with an opened letter upon it. Robert did not think it was Adelaide who had opened it.

+Edmund, Archbishop of Windhaven
St. Moses Abbey Bal'harm, Port Stanley

Robert, Chief of the Gunns
Chinde, Port Stanley

Dear Robert,

I am delayed here. Padraig came to the abbey with forty Gunnishmen yesterday. There was a scene. Coemgein is furious, and accuses Queen Julian of interfering to deny him my prelature. He stood before me at supper, threw his Tiburian collar in my chakalaka, and asked to be released from his vows. But that is just the beginning of it. After two drams of whisky, Walter stood up and told Prince Joachas that his father King Josias was still alive (!) and therefore Queen Julian's election is null and void (!) and if his father is incapacitated than he as male heir and not his sister is to rule during the interregnum (!). After some commotion, forty uniformed guardsmen stood up and saluted, Long Live King Joachas. There was much drinking and cavorting after that, and calling themselves "Knights of the Stone Chair."

They left the next day, telling the young "King" that their business was to reconquer his southern realm from "heretics," "apostates," and "barbarians." I know that there are many secret Muslims, or secret atheists, hidden among the ostensible "Catholics" of this country. Especially the men like Colonel Callum Marlow who seem to be most powerful here. Who knows what happened to Prime Minister Smith?
However worrisome the ruling cabal is to you, however, I fear that an armed band of Gunnish adventurers is not going to bring peace or the true faith to this strange country. I don't know who else is in a position to stop them. But you must try to stop them. I do not know a trustworthy courier, so you may receive several duplicates of my letter that I am entrusting to the Mafewo servants here.

By the time you receive this, Godwilling, I shall be flying home to Windhaven with my sister. I shall be discrete about these matters with Her Majesty until we confer further. I trust you will send me news of the Prince and the troubles of that strange Himyari land.

Your servant in Christ Jesus,

+Edm. Woodstone

Click to expand...

Sighing loudly, Robert now noticed that Adelaide had stood stock still behind him, just as Robin had been accustomed to doing when they had breakfast. The role of the abd'ear. Robert decided it was not time to bring up Udomo, or explicitly acknowledge Adelaide's sudden change of status in "his" household. Best to let these things work themselves out.

"The Abbey will have to wait. Let's pack the Borschel up. Time to meet Judah Halevi."

Chinde

He awoke in the pitch dark to flashing blue lights. The television watching the sleep of his father. But that was what? Thirty years ago? Too intense, this blue that flouresced in the deep shadows of the room, on the bare hips of the woman lying next to him. Police then, and mute ambulances. My gun on the nightstand. Raw words of an unfinished joke swam in his mind. If there were sirens, could he hear them over the electric crackle of these crickets, the deafening machine guns of the tree frogs? At about that time the world snapped into joint: that was Robin Lang beside him, in bed, in Chinde, in Port Stanley, in Far Himyar. The flashing lights were one more urgent mystery in this dark land full of them.

It turned out a man had come to kill him, now leaving in an ambulance. Brother Paul had arrived in the middle of the night from Bal'harm to bring a message that Robert had already received via letter. The monk had risen for midnight office, the mesonytikon, keeping that ancient and sacred vigil that the apostles could not for Christ. It turned out he would also keep a vigil for the sleeping Robert; hearing an intruder, the silent monk slipped behind him, his eyes accustomed to the darkness, and slipped his sgain dubh through a lethal juncture between ribcage and spine. Ex tenebrae, gladius... in vertebrae.

The Borschel pulled out of the tree-shaded bungalow at first light, after matins. I am lucky to be alive. He had no appetite for breakfast. Adelaide was at the wheel of a 986 again, now crawling through streets already crowded with pedestrians, rickshaws, motorbikes rather than screaming down the autobahnen Eiffelland. The same big sunglasses she had worn in Bremen. They were not due at Judah Halevi's till late afternoon, on his great estate outside of town. Udomo was pointing Adelaide towards the beach. "Robin loves the beach," Robert explained simply. The beach is a place for the body. Robin smiled immediately upon seeing the sandy shoreline, palms and withered brown palm-thatch beach huts as far as the eye could see. She tapped Robert excitedly on the shoulder, pointing out packs of elated black-skinned children flying kites. Abd'ess these many years, how often have you felt this joy? Is there a joy of yours forever darkened by what has been done and will be done to you? Like a pagan, Robert felt the sun say, "No." What is it with this land that turns us away from the Son of God? The merciful sun, bright and already hot by the time Adelaide dropped them off, melted the questions away. Then it scorched away the memory of the dark night before. Before he knew it, Robin was leading him by the hand into the cool aquamarine Clarencian, even washing away anticipation of the dark night to come.

Outskirts of Chinde

The palace... it was like walking into a Jean-Jules-Antoine, a Delacroix, a Gérôme, an Ingres: walls hung with tapestries, pointed horseshoe arches, women in exiguous garments and heavy jewelry. A real seraglio, in 2018. The tall, broad-shouldered man with a skullcap on his bald pate: that is Judah Halevi. The man Callum Marlow says runs Chinde. The late Duncan MacLeish's man in Himyar. Halevi smiled and stammered and blinked when you talked to him. How could you live in the lap of 'oriental' luxury and still seem so uncomfortable in the world? Robert was supremely uncomfortable with Robin kneeling at his side the way Udomo had instructed her. He and Halevi would share a pot of tea, then share a pipe, and at the end of the evening share abd'esses.

"Octavia said Chinde was not what you thought it would be."
Judah laughed. "Yes that's what we want you to think."

When he laughed the dark-haired woman kneeling at his side looked at him fondly and faintly echoed his laugh. Robert couldn't see her very well in the dim light, but she looked familiar somehow. Judah had said something offhand, "A gift from my banker." Robert assumed he had a Gunnish banker. I wonder who. MacFallon? MacBoyle? Mackowski? He felt a little sick to his stomach from the strength of the tobacco; the taste of tar coated Robert's mouth. They spoke mostly of the bush war against the communist Mafewo, of coffee plantations, and of baseball, a topic on which Judah was supremely knowledgeable. Who could have foreseen the Bloody Socks throttling the Highlanders down the stretch! At some point Judah took a phone call. Then he stood abruptly, and said something that in the moment alarmed Robert, and only relieved him upon reflection. After all, he would remember, Robin's felt clammy to the touch, and he had begun to smell the acrid sweat-smell of her fear.

"It is best to drive the road to Mashrabiya... Oriel, you call it... in the night. You'd like to meet al-Khazari, yes? He arranged everything."

Oriel, Port Stanley

The city was located where the headwaters of the Rwenbezi flowed from Lake Rwenbezi. The maps said "Oriel," but the people only seemed to know it as Mashrabiya. The river seemed to neatly divide the Azraqi past and the 21st century present. To the west, the "Left Bank" were traditional terraced sand-colored homes that reminded Robert of the Cycladic architecture of Pelasgia. To the east, the "Right Bank" was a cluster of glass-and-steel skyscrapers: the commercial nerve-center Port Stanley, where every lumber corporation, coffee exporter, rubber company, diamond concern, mineral conglomerate, was located. A fortress seemed to rise in the middle of the river, connected to each side by a pedestrian bridges: a forbidden island belonging to neither half of the city. Robert enjoyed the homonym in his head, the Alcázar of Al-Khazari.

From Halevi's penthouse apartment, overlooking the lake and the river, Robert looked down at the pleasure domes and gardens. It was like a magnet for rumors. Very few men had ever stepped foot on the island, a zenana guarded by amazon Mafewesses and entirely staffed by Nethian tribeswomen. It was a strange site, in a city of veiled women, to see topless and expressionless spearwomen, faces painted and tufted pikes crossed in an X, at the exact midpoint of the pedestrian bridges. A clear sign of al-Khazari's power: the prince decided the exception to every law. Even the law of the Prophet? If anyone knew where Prime Minister Smith had gone, it would be this man. Robert knew it. The man who truly ruled Port Stanley sat in a mysterious palace that rose up out of the Rwenbezi.

Adelaide had been right that Port Stanley was a kind of mirror-image of Gunnland. An older clan society remained untouched by modern institutions: the prime minister of Port Stanley mattered no more than the prime minister of Gunnland. Instead of Catholicism, the key to power here was Islam. The core of the society was a rigid, ancient patriarchy. Parallels went down to the indentured castes: instead of the Gunnish 'thrae' of eljas, ambatts, and frillas, the women here were sorted into abd'eads, abd'ears, and abd'esses. My own counterpart in this bizarro Gunnland lives down on that island.

Oriel

"It looks like a nasty storm is about to roll in."

They were eating ndambé, a bean and tomato paste on a baguette. Not really tasty, thought Robert, still watching dark clouds gather over the green-blue of the great freshwater sea. The café directly overlooked gleaming muscular stevedores of every color loading river barges with sacks of coffee beans, and tea, and twenty-foot ocean containers of rubber latex. Halevi's men. The greasy green-brown headwaters of the Rwenbezi flowed lazily off into his peripheral vision, past the Alcázar fortress. Over there, the minarets of the Left Bank formed a kind of background. Judah was explaining how the warm sea produced nearly constant cyclonic storms that almost cut off the third city, Fort Smith, from the rest of the country, and sustained a cloud forest microclimate in the mountains north of the lake that perfect for coffee cultivation. If the storm curved west, a Mafewo bus caravan would take the east road around the lake. If east, the west road. One day's journey there, one day's journey back. Robert processed these odd meterological facts, nodding with his mouth full of ndambé. In his pocket, he felt his private cellphone vibrate, but switched it off without looking. Probably Adelaide found something irresistible at the flea market. She was eager to talk to him privately ever since Udomo had taken over as Robert's personal assistant. When Robert finally swallowed the mouthful of viscous bean paste, another question was already on his mind.

"Why do al-Khazari and the UDP let Marlow rule the blacks of Chinde so brutally? I understand Octavia."
Robert suddenly remembered that the expriest Coemgein Gallagher and dozens of armed Gunnishmen were loose in the country, looking for Ian Smith. He doubted that Colonel Marlow would get them. Up here, it was al-Khazari's problem. Halevi muttered something else that Robert couldn't quite hear, but he knew immediately what the Jewish exporter said. Black skin. White masks. Halevi was looking down at the cellphone in his own lap; he had not silenced his, and apparently had received an interesting text message. He looked up with a smile.

Richard's Café Geotrien
Oriel, Port Stanley

"I don't feel sorry for Julian, you moron... Shut the fuck up Jake, you're out of your element... Call it the fuck off."
The deep, rich voice speaking Engelsh slowly with trilled r's came from a bald man with rimless spectacles and a beard that appeared in a cloud of cigar smoke. At first Robert thought he was just overhearing one of the valets. Then his mind processed the words. And the man. Al-Khazari. The merchant-prince of Oriel wore a Western-style suit over a white shirt with a banded collar. But how does he know Jake Blackthorn? Gliding from the same shadow and smoke came a backlit woman who stood a head taller than Al-Khazari, all long legs and long black hair. She flashed a white smile. Oh. Marta Ramos. So this is where she ended up. He punched his phone off.

Soon they were seated around a fragrant sayadieh: fresh-caught tilapia, caramelized onions, and spiced rice all covered in tahini. Robert and Robin (who was beginning to think she had escaped the nightmares Adelaide had warned her about), Al-Khazari and Marta, Halevi and Jasmine. Jasmine had been a student of Gunnland's leading economist, the Oriel-born Amittai MacDuff, the son of a Gunnish father and an Urodoah mother, but failing to master the demanding mathematical models the impatient central banker required, had returned home to marry well. Over supper the men made polite conversation, the merchant-princes about business, sometimes answering Robert's questions about lake storms, Marlow's bush war against the tribesmen, the difference between Azraqis and the tribes of Al-Kez, Seraphina Underwood and Paavo Laht. When Robert asked Marta a question about how Oriel compared to Arundel Castle, her one-word answer ("Nicely") told the Gunnish chief in so many words (one) that the women were there to listen. Al-Khazari and Halevi asked him questions about the war, and Robert gave Al-Khazari honest answers, though vague, about the rift between Leader Blackthorn and Queen Julian. He would find out anyway. Besides, he knows about being in a precarious position. Udomo had told Robert that Al-Khazari was lucky to be alive, having barely organized the defense of his alcázar from Bergenheimer Jagdkommandos fifteen years earlier. But when the coffee was served -- strong -- after supper, Robert decided he had to ask the real question. And to his surprise, he got an answer straightaway, with none of the long pauses, pensive beard strokes, and air of gravity characteristic of his demeanor.

"Sayyid, where is Prime Minister Smith?"
"And is he safe?"
"My...?"
"And Padraig and Walter? Are they safe?"

Oriel

"Al-Khazari has invited you to be his guest at the Alcázar this evening."

A somber note in the big old Jew's tone told Robert that Halevi had not been invited. Chinde's most powerful man has never been in the home of Oriel's most powerful man. Robert looked up from the chessboard that Udomo was poring over. He looked through the penthouse windows at the stone fortress rising out of the mouth of the Rwenbezi, its courtyards shaded by neem trees, the shocking sight of stoical topless amazons whose crossed spears blocked the midpoint of the causeways to the mainland. Judah Halevi is envious. Robin sighed, rose from a nearby couch, and walked out on the balcony. She will have to play the traditional role of abd'ess after all.

"Bring Jaz as your abd'ead. I insist. She has experience with Al-Khazari. Be wary of him."
Before Robert heard what Udomo had muttered, Halevi caught the Mafewess on the ear with a savage buffet. It happened so fast that Robert could not, and did not, react. Later he would reflect what happened. Halevi wanted Jasmine to accompany me to learn more about Al-Khazari. But what? Udomo's eyes welled up with tears, but she accepted the blow wordlessly. Halevi simply walked away. Why had the mention of Al-Khazari's wife incensed Judah? Afterwards it did not seem like the right time to ask Udomo.

They left the chess match unfinished. Robert went out and put his arm around a silent Robin on the balcony, and they looked down over the mysterious fortress rising out of the morning mist on the river.

The Alcázar of Al-Khazari
Oriel

It was a long walk down the stone causeway, which was too narrow for a car. Robin held her head high, fighting back tears. She would not escape the duty of an abd'ess. A crowd of passerbies gathered on the quay to watch the strange kilted man and three women approach the imposing alcázar. Robert noticed that today the two bald amazons on guard duty were wearing X-shaped strips of cloth over their breasts. How considerate. Up close he could see that the design of their face paint, an downward-facing white triangle, matched the flags on the parapets that he had not noticed before. The guardswomen hit the butts of their tufted spears on the bridge in salute, and fell in to follow the four towards the great portcullis of black wood, now rising...

...it fell behind him with a crash, and everything seemed to happen at once. Robert heard Adelaide cry out first, and turned to see she and Robin getting their arms wrenched back by the spearwomen. A heavy collar snapped around his neck. He spun around, but not before Udomo slit the back of his shirt and Prince Charlie jacket in an efficient movement. The buffet of a spear-butt on his back knocked him to his hands and knees on the cobblestone of the courtyard. More amazons must have appeared from behind the neem trees. Suddenly he remembered Judah, plaintive, begging him not to take Udomo: "How can you trust her?" Robert felt like a fool. Halevi was concerned, not envious. The half-naked warrior women were taking off his jacket and shirt roughly. Halevi would know enough to never want to come into... what is this place? He heard the muffled cries of Adelaide and Robin being dragged away. A wry joke came to his mind, giving him a respite from the taste of gall and fear: This seems to happen to those girls a lot. About time it happened to me, I suppose.

"I'm sorry about this, Dr. Gunn" said a voice, husky and slow, that was somehow familiar. He tried to raise his head to see but his neck was pushed to the ground. Someone had affixed a pole to the collar around his neck, so that Udomo (he assumed it was Udomo) could keep him in a prostrate position. It didn't matter. He knew it was Octavia Butler. "I didn't want any of this to happen this way, but..."

Her voice trailed off amid the noise of a creaky gate opening, grunting men, and the loud jangle of chains. Robert could only see the bare black legs and feet of two rows of men who appeared to be carrying something heavy. And then to Robert's surprise, Al-Khazari knelt down in the center of his field of vision, framed by the rows of legs. The bald, bearded man was not wearing the expensive suit or rimless spectacles that he had last night. He was shirtless, with a heavy gold collar around his neck. Robert inferred that he didn't look so different himself. Al-Khazari was kneeling as if to pray, balled up in the Moslem fashion, not two arms' lengths away. Robert could almost reach out and touch him, if he wasn't behind held down and back. Then he saw a foot on the Al-Khazari's broad back, an almost dainty black foot with soles the same color as Al-Khazari's skin. A woman was using the merchant-prince of Mashrabiya as her step stool.

"Octavia."
"I see you do not approve of my new catch."

Robert stiffened as the lady of the fortress put her knee and thigh in his face and ran a leathery palm down his back. He thought he might have felt an instinctive desire to claw her, pull her close, and try to throttle her. But he was frozen.

"We shall have to let Anwanyu decide then... Udomo, clean him up for supper."

Lake Rwenbezi

"Robin ran out of sight, but Adelaide waited and waited on the bridge, like a dog."

Udomo chuckled derisively as she wrapped a white loincloth around him, which seemed only to accentuate the nakedness he felt. Somehow, however her cruel words about Adelaide were not cruel. Just matter-of-fact, a woman assured of her superiority to the 'Germs,' as they seemed to call white Gallogermanians. So the Mafewo women let his girls go. What could they do? Robin would call the embassy. But what could a dozen Reivers do? This is rogue MacLeish territory, the Clan Gunn heavies are in Maseru. Robert did not think of escape. But perhaps Adelaide would reach the 15AR... His hands were bound behind his back, the collar was heavy around his neck, with its shame. They were on a gleaming white cruiser yacht. Udomo was instructing him how to serve hors d'oeuvres: bow his head, shuffle around on his knees, present the platter of land snails, igbin, on toothpicks. Do not make eye contact with Octavia or Salammbô.

He did not need Udomo to put it together for him. This country that initially appeared like a brutal white-rule colony, and then like a diverse Moslem-dominated merchant confederation, was in fact a clandestine Nethian matriarchy. Octavia ruled in Chinde. Salammbô in Mashrabiya. And the woman they called Anwanyu in Fort Smith. He had no intention of serving them snails on their yacht, like a pale slave boy. His fate was in the mysterious Anwanyu's hand, anyway. Why amuse them further?

Udomo pushed him into the main cabin by his pole-and-collar, then released him, and walked back into the cramped hull of the yacht. White couches in contrast to a blonde wood trim ran down the edge of the yacht's interior. Salammbô spread out elegantly on the starboard side, long and lean, bald as her soldier-women, in a sheer white robe. She was much younger than Octavia, perhaps not yet thirty. And beautiful. Robert quickly averted his eyes to look out the window, aware of their eyes upon his semi-nudity. The much older Octavia, he noticed, was wearing a white terry cloth bathrobe. Menacing stormclouds gathered ahead out the windows. But the storms always blow north. Robert had planned to simply spill the igbin on the floor, and spend the rest of the trip restrained in the larder-turned-brig downstairs. Then his curiosity got the best of him. Salammbô was speaking to Octavia.

"You of the older generation still suffer insults of those who do not know you rule them... like that creep Marlow... but we of the younger generation have new heroes."

A framed photograph of Baroness Mathelda Ajogo was at the far end of the room. Robert sensed that Salammbô was gesturing towards it, though he dared not look at her. He realized he was proffering the silver tray of snails at her, and she was eating them, ignoring him. Now Octavia was speaking.

Robert's knees burned as they shuffled against the carpet towards Octavia's husky voice on the couch opposite. Seeing her feet he extended the tray. The humiliation was becoming extreme, however avidly he listened to their conversation.

"Judah has never betrayed you. Do you remember what Khaz did to me, fifteen years ago? I give him white women, suits, cars, trips. They're all white devils to me, you know. But do you remember when he got that white devil woman from Bergenheim to do to us?"

Salammbô was speaking for his benefit. He could tell. He was her audience, not Octavia. She was taunting him with questions that he was not permitted to ask as he served them in silence in the cabin of the yacht.

"Georges and the RANU-PF cannot be held off forever, not with so many of Marlow's helicopters damaged, not with the expriest causing havoc on the West Road. We are going to have to give the moonies Smith eventually. Or him."