INSTRUMENT OF VENGEANCE

INSTRUMENT OF VENGEANCE, by Howard Andrew Jones, artwork by Darian Jones

“You would not think her extraordinary, to see her,” the musician told us. “She has few ornamentations.” His hand rose, fluttering. “My father once added small pearls along her bridge, but these I removed. For a lovely woman needs no extra ornament. Only a fool would think her plain after hearing music from her. Her neck is so finely crafted that my fingers seem to fly across her, and she has a resonance like no other instrument I’ve ever held.”

His dark eyes were unfocused then as he contemplated the beauty of melody, or the feel of the instrument in his hands or some other such thing as poets and musicians contemplate when their gaze fills with dreamy languor. In my time I’d seen many such, and many, nay, most, were afflicted with the need to call attention and praise down upon themselves, even if they had already acquired it.

This fellow, though, was different. Oh, Kamal had some of that dramatic flair in him, but it was only in reference to his instrument, and that I understood, for it reminded me of the way a man praising a fine sword or horse might speak. He was quiet and sober and well-mannered, a lean man in his early twenties with a slim sharp face and slim dark brows, and short dark beard. Kamal’s jubba was simple and brown, as was his turban, but there was no missing his wealth, for the cloth of his garments was of fine cut, and he himself was clean and well-scented. It may seem strange that a musician should be prosperous, but then Kamal was famed. Even I had heard of him and, as Dabir was wont to say, I had no ear for music

He sat across from Dabir and me in our reception room that afternoon. His gaze was direct and a little sad, and so afflicted was he by his trouble he’d spared only a few glances to the curio shelves upon his right, where Dabir and I kept mementoes of our adventures.

In those Mosul days, Dabir and I were both still at our most vital, neither having reached our thirtieth year, and as my wife had perished and Dabir mourned still for the woman he could not have, our household was empty of wives or children, lest you count our loyal stable boy, Rami. All three of us sat upon comfortable household cushions, the Persian rug between us. Dabir’s bright blue eyes lit intently on the younger man. “Is there anything that distinguishes it, by sight?”

“There is some filigree along its neck. The belly is narrow, so you would not think her capable of such a lovely echoing quality.”

“You said it was your father’s. How did he come upon it?”

Kamal thought upon that for a moment. “Why do you ask?”

Dabir smiled thinly, politely. “I but gather information. The least of it might have the most import, in ways none of us anticipate.”

This seemed to satisfy the musician, for he nodded slowly. “He had it in Basra, before our move, purchased from some other man whom he did not like. My father felt he had been tricked, you see. That the instrument had been cursed.”

“Cursed?”

Kamal nodded now, reflective. “I never thought it so. But then he told me he had the curse removed. He’d smiled as he said that. As though he were pleased with himself. But I never found out how, and he refused to speak further of the matter. He wasn’t an expressive man, except through his music.”

Through the downward twist to Kamal’s mouth, it was easy to see he wished otherwise.

Dabir sat back, stroking his spade-shaped beard. “What sort of curse was this said to be?”

“One that brought poverty and misfortune to its player.”

It seemed to me that poverty and misfortune were the lot of many musicians already, and that one would be hard pressed to notice the effects of that curse.

Kamal felt a little more garrulous now, and spoke on. “The curious thing was that the curse was supposedly only passed on if the instrument was freely given. Perhaps that’s why it never affected me, for father died without word of what should be done with it.”

“And so you took it.”

“Aye. And now someone else has it. I think someone must have come in through the Inn’s window. I was not gone long, and I saw no one come up the stairs to the room.”

“We will go there, and look,” Dabir said.

 “Do you think you can find her?”

“It’s possible,” Dabir conceded. I wondered why he said so, given the paucity of information we had, but then he explained further. “Most likely your thief means to sell it to some other musician here for the festival. And with the major competitions not yet begun, there may yet be time to track it before the other players scatter to the winds.”

I nodded, for this was wisely reasoned.

“Have you enemies?” Dabir asked.

Kamal thought for a moment and shook his head.

Dabir offered an encouraging smile. “Come. Surely you have rivals.”

“Don’t all successful men? But ours is a brotherhood that appreciates fine music. We might be jealous, sometimes, when one of us sings especially well, but we celebrate and venerate beauty when we hear it.” He spread his hands. “I have no enemies, Honored One. Besides, they could not expect to play the oud, in public, for everyone knows to whom it belongs. And no musician would steal it and not wish to play it.”

 “What of a jilted lover?” I asked. We had dealt with such, sometimes.

Again he shook his head and I held back a sigh.

“Perhaps,” I said, “it is a friend or lover of one of your competitors, determined that you should lose the competition to them.” I was impressed by my guess, thinking that I had learned to reason a little more clearly after exposure to Dabir’s ways of thought. My words clearly gave the fellow pause, which pleased me further. I could practically see the wheels turning behind his eyes as he considered the possibilities.

“It may be so,” he said. “But no one comes to mind.” Still, he seemed to hesitate a moment. “There was a fellow who spoke to me about teaching his master’s wife. When I told him no, he asked how a fine instrument might be told from a poor one. I used my instrument to show him niceties of crafting, and then he offered to buy it for his master.”

“That is something,” I said.

“He was an older fellow, though,” Kamal said, shaking his head. “I don’t think he would have climbed to the window.”

“His master might have sent someone else,” I suggested.

Dabir nodded agreement, then questioned Kamal once more. “Did he say who his master was?”

“If he did, I do not recall it.” The musician sighed. “I have offered a reward, but I fear it will come to nothing. I leave it in your hands. The people of Mosul seem to have great faith in you as a finder of secrets.”

 “We will do our best,” Dabir assured him. “Now I should like to see the place from where it was stolen.”

II

Autumn was come to Mosul. The city is sometimes said to have two springs, for early autumn brings a cooling wind that bears with it pleasant fragrances of the blooming flowers. Along with that came the poets and musicians, for there was an annual, week-long festival of music and verse hosted by our governor.

With the artists came the merchants and artisans, although they had much competition from the locals already, and all these wares brought those who wished to buy them, or imagined buying them, or hoped to steal them. It is the way of things.

The festival was yet a day away but already the city had begun to fill, with even quiet side streets ringing with the call of merchants. This I did not care for, having no love of crowds, although I do, and did, ever love the scent of fine food, even if the promise of a thing is often greater than the actual experience of it. That day the air was rich with the aroma of spiced meat and baked breads and sweets that almost set my mouth to watering.

Kamal had taken a room at one of Mosul’s finest inns, not quite overflowing with merchants and musicians, but filling. A knot of them sat tuning their instruments in the courtyard, and merchants and travelers chatted in the common room over late breakfasts. Kamal offered quiet greetings to the folks we passed and led us up to the second floor, where he had a most spacious room.

It was a spare place, with a single bed, and a chest for belongings, a dressing screen, and a bedside table. It was large enough that there was a fine red rug with plump cushions, should Kamal wish to receive visitors, and a shuttered window looking out on a back alley.

Dabir poked and prodded and asked of things, as was his habit, learning that the window shutters had not been latched, that nothing else had been taken, and other matters, including the approximate times yesterday evening that Kamal had left his room and returned to it.

Dabir then reassured him we would do our best, and we departed, Kamal having declared he would go forth to hunt a replacement oud, should we be so unfortunate as to fail in our mission. There had been talk of payment, of course, and given Kamal’s station Dabir had suggested a fee for his services, which I know full well he would donate to the local Library of Iskander, for the caliph already paid us generously.

“One wonders,” I said as we left the place, “why he didn’t simply buy a new instrument to start with.” Even on a side street we’d passed, we had seen two merchant stalls with a variety of long-necked and fat-bellied ouds on display.

“No instrument is exactly like another,” Dabir replied, “just as no weapon is identical, even when shaped by the hands of the same craftsmen.”

To this I nodded. We sidestepped a trio of girls heading to the well with buckets, too busy staring at shop wares to take note of us.

“And he clearly has emotional attachment to the thing, tied to his father,” Dabir went on. “Much like your old sword.”

I had picked up the habit of using a curved sword, for my father had won a fine one from the Turks, years before, and passed it on to me. “I think I was far more fond of my father than he of his.”

One of Dabir’s quick smiles brightened his face. “I think so, too. Yet he clearly cherishes it.”

“So we find it. Where do you mean to look?”

“First, The Dregs. This was no chance theft. Someone hired a second-story man to procure that instrument alone.”

“And you think a thief can be made to tell us who it was?”

“I think the right man can be paid to tell us who it was. Or at least the most likely culprit.”

The caliph himself had charged me with Dabir’s safety, so I had no liking for taking him to unseemly places. I was wary that some enemy might be plotting vengeance against him, although I could not conceive how the current problem could tie into any greater scheme. I had been surprised before and, in any case, the neighborhood just south of the city walls known as The Dregs had more gambling houses and wine shops and houses of ill-repute than any other portion of Mosul or its suburbs.

Neither of us wore our finery, but we did not seek to disguise our appearance. Dabir could rarely be bothered with such, and in Mosul, by daylight, such a stratagem was laughable anyway. Even those who did not know us by sight could guess our identities. Alone, perhaps, one or the other of us might not have been noticed. Together, though, a lean scholarly fellow with bright blue eyes, and a man of my height and breadth with a curved sword, we were unmistakable. We might as well have been preceded by a bannerman and a band of trumpeters.

Surely, we were recognized the moment we entered the inn of the Twin Palms and took a seat in the corner. Sober folk looked long at us before returning quietly to their conversations.

The place was nearly full of men on old cushions seated about low tables. It’s possible that the clientele had come to hear the plunkings of the long-necked youth hunched over his oud, but judging from the way they nodded over their bowls, and the sickly sweet reek of the place, they were there to drink themselves into stupor. In that day and age, though wine was forbidden, men routinely consumed the fruit of the grape, either ignoring the admonition or reasoning excuses.

As we were noted, it was not long before a balding servant waddled over to ask our pleasure, and not long after that he bade us depart and re-enter through a back door, where we were received with frosty hospitality in a carpeted room off a small and shabby courtyard.

Our host was one Tarafah ibn Lufti. He did not name the surly, droopy-eyed man standing with folded arms behind him. Tarafah gestured to astonishingly clean blue cushions across the rug from him and then took a seat. Dabir did likewise. I remained standing, the better to watch droopy-eye, though from time-to-time I looked over at the silent fountain and scummy pool and wondered why no one could find the time to set them to rights. With only a little effort, this might be a pretty sanctuary.

Tarifah was a hawk-nosed man with thick, expressive eyebrows. He was cleaner than his establishment, smelling of soaps even from a distance, and given to clothes with broad, colorful patterns. Today his jubba was ornamented with red vertical lines.

“So. Dabir has come, with Asim el-Abbas.” Tarifah’s voice was thin and cutting. “I would offer you refreshment, but I know you are not here for the drink. How may I be of service?”

“I’m not your enemy, Tarifah.”

Tarifah’s look left little doubt he held a different opinion.

“I might have made things far more challenging the last time we met,” Dabir reminded him. “I’d think you looked upon that as a favor.”

I sought to clarify the matter with a point of my own. “For your involvement in that murder ring, you might well have been drawn and quartered.”

Tarifah’s mobile eyebrows rose not once but twice, a little higher the second time. “I knew nothing of it!” He declared. “And in any case, no was actually harmed, save for me, who lost a fortune in dinars.”

I started to object to this nonsense, for the only money he’d lost was the profit he’d made from the would-be assassins assembling within his tavern, but Dabir raised a hand, and I fell silent.

“We’re looking for a man,” Dabir said.

“I have a variety of them,” Tarifah said. “But you must have someone in particular in mind.” 

“Not a particular man. A man with particular skills.”

Tarifah sensed that he might profit from Dabir’s presence, betraying himself with a mildly subtle inclination of those great eyebrows. “You’re sure you do not wish refreshments, Dabir?” he said, with unctuous charm. “It is customary, while discussing business.”

“How kind. Alas, our need presses.”

Inwardly I groaned. Dabir never had a head for money, even when he had none of it. By admitting his desire for speed, he all but guaranteed he was willing to pay more.

Tarifah signaled he of the droopy eyes to depart and then observed his fingernails while he waited for the tread of his bodyguard to recede. He did not look up until we heard the shutting of the door through which he finally retreated.

“My man has left. Should yours?”

“Easier to lose my right arm.”

“At least have him sit.”

I sat.

“Speak plainly, Dabir. Is there something you want done?”

“There’s something I want found. It’s gone missing.”

“A valuable item?”

“In its way. It’s an oud. It appears to have been misplaced. I think the man who found it returned it to the wrong fellow. No doubt any concerns he had about its true ownership were assuaged by a generous fee.”

Tarifah smiled thinly at this little jest. “Is it the man you want, or the oud?”

“It’s the oud. But I want the man who found it. I think for a proper reward he might wish to tell me to whom he mistakenly presented it.”

“What fine, upstanding citizenry we have here in Mosul. You’d think someone would be more careful where they left their instruments. I assume some rich young musician fell drunk in a courtyard?”

“Nay, he chanced to leave it in the room of an inn where he’s staying in Mosul. Our good citizen happened to notice it after climbing in through the window. Assuming it abandoned, he left to pass it on to some other man.”

“Was anything else, ah, liberated?”

“A wise question,” Dabir said. “No. It was the oud alone.” He dropped all pretense. “I’ve reason to believe our thief waited carefully until the musician departed. Patience, skill, and a definite goal seem clear. This was no theft of chance — he bided time until he had ready access, then departed. Given that the oud was unremarkable, nay, plain in appearance, I believe that this wasn’t merely a clever thief finding an opportunity to part a fool from wealth. Someone skilled was hired to procure this specific instrument.”

“You’re sure?”

“Reasonably certain.”

Tarifah blinked a moment, frowned, waggled his left eyebrow minutely, then spread open palms. “I’ve a man in mind, but I cannot recall his name.”

“What makes you think it’s him?”

“His skill, and reputation, and a degree of circumspection. If someone were to come to me for advice for just such a caper, it’s he I’d recommend.”

“Are there others?”

 “It’s a short list, and other men have various deficiencies, but I might suggest them with reservations. Unfortunately, I can’t recall their names, either.”

Tarifah’s memory improved after I paid him, of course, and we left not only with their names but their likely haunts.

The two Tarifah thought less likely had quarters in The Dregs; the other, a man named Mustafa, lived in central Mosul. It was towards his lodgings that we wound our way. As Allah wills, his home lay only a short distance from our own. It was one of those built with a balcony overhanging the street so that it nearly touched those of neighboring structures.

Dabir walked without hesitation for the door, worn cedar with the distinctive hatched pattern Tarifah had described.

“You plan on the direct approach, then?” I asked.

“I’ll reward the man for information,” Dabir said, then considered me. “Try to look less intimidating. Though that is like asking a child at the sweet shop not to look tempted.”

The door swung open at Dabir’s first knock, and I thought briefly that someone was opening it. Then I understood it was his pressure on the already open door that had pushed it further into the opening. He swung it wide and leaned in. “Hello? Mustafa?”

We heard only the street noises, and the clangor of someone in a nearby house dropping a cooking pan.

When Dabir started to advance I put a hand to his chest and moved past.

“We’re not after him to hurt him,” Dabir chided me, as though I’d already forgotten.

We found him soon enough, and he was beyond any threat of injury. He lay face down just inside his little courtyard, where a caged bird chirped at us. Dabir bent down to the body and I scanned the blank walls that rose to the second floor. No windows, then, but high enough that neighbors would not have seen what transpired.

Dabir was kneeling over the body and had just declared that he’d not been dead long when I heard a footfall behind me.

I saw a slim woman with a basket of groceries – fresh baked bread, and some cheese, and from the scent of it, roast duck. Also there was a bottle of wine, which I did not see. I deduced its presence when she cried out in alarm and dropped the basket, for I heard the sound of shattering glass.

Dabir turned and started to say something and I looked to him for help in calming the woman, which was my folly. But then how was I to guess she was to rush me with a knife?

My friend hissed a warning. I was alerted by his changed expression and whirled in time to step back from a mad swipe at my side.

“Murderers!” she shrieked.

And here I had been thinking any in Mosul would recognize us by sight!

She was determined, that one, and it takes no great skill to be deadly with a blade in a narrow hallway. I backed from her as she swung again. Oh, I might have drawn my sword, but it was not my first instinct. I wished that I had my shield, but it hung upon the wall near the door of the home I shared with Dabir.

She drove me back twice, thrice, and I had retreated almost all the way in towards Dabir when she swung a fourth. By then I’d divined her pattern and knew my moment. I stepped in at the widest point of her swing, and grasped the wrist of her weapon hand, turning into her and pressing her to the wall. I felt the thinness of her arm as I twisted it and she cried as though I inflicted far greater pain.

I thought the matter resolved when the knife clattered to the floor, but it was then that she leaned forward and bit my arm.

I spoke then words that do me little credit, but brought her arm behind her.

“We are not the murderers,” Dabir said. “We came upon Mustafa this way.”

He repeated variations upon this theme for some short time before she demanded I release her, then she stood glowering. She did not bother to adjust the veil that had worked loose from her face, by which I saw she was young and pretty, though with a long jaw that would likely make her look more and more obstinate as she aged.

I looked down at the bite marks on my arm. She had not drawn blood, though she had surely meant to do so. “Why did you attack me?”

“I thought you had killed Mustafa.” From her expression she still suspected we had. There was more anger in her than sorrow.

“Are you his sister? His wife?”

“I am a friend,” she said. “Who are you?”

She failed to recognize either of our names. “Why are you in his house?”

“We came to ask him questions.”

“If you didn’t kill him, who did?”

“Someone who’ll be made to pay,” Dabir answered her calmly. “It looks as though Mustafa didn’t expect his killer to be a threat. There are three wounds here, all to his back, and another to his neck. He was turned, and then here – do you see the smudge on the wall — he staggered and headed away after touching the wound. And was stabbed again. He fell to the ground, which is when the last one or two blows that actually killed him were delivered.”

“You sound like you saw it happen.”

“Dabir has reasoned it out,” I said. “We want to find who killed him.”

At that a spark of interest lit in her eyes. “Why?”

“We will bring them to justice,” Dabir said.

At this I nodded, and I finally saw a modicum of interest from the woman. Dabir saw it too, and after some skillful questions, ferreted information from her. Mustafa had come into money after performing a service for a rich man. She grew more and more sure it was the rich man was behind the killing the longer she spoke, for she discovered the money the rich man had paid Mustafa was missing and thought the fellow’s henchman had come back for his dinars. Neither of us pointed out any murderer might well have been tempted by the coins.

She became fixated upon the wealthy man being behind Mustafa’s death, which was well enough, for we both expected him to be the one who’d hired Mustafa to steal the instrument, and it was that we were truly after. Mustafa had bragged of the rich man’s name to her, and she gave it to us, one Akram ibn Jedidiah.

Dabir promised her we would strive to see justice done, and then she dismissed us and fell to wailing that sounded only a little forced.

I shut the door on her weeping as we headed into the street. “You think that this rich man really did kill him?”

“If so, I doubt he came in person. There are four possibilities. One. The rich man wanted to keep the theft a secret, so he killed the man who did it. Two. Someone heard of Mustafa’s newfound wealth, and came for it. Three. Mustafa had an enemy, or a debt, and it was his time.”

“It was his time in any case.”

“Four, the murder has some other involvement in the case I’ve not yet guessed.”

“That is markedly vague.”

“One must be open to possibilities, even vague ones.”

“Then we might as well suppose it was a djinn, angry because Mustafa accidently spat at him while he was invisible.”

“There’s a fair distance between vague and absurd, Asim. I’m almost certain that the murder is connected to Mustafa’s doings. The question is whether the murder’s connected to the theft of the oud, or solely the acquisition of money.”

We headed nearer the city center. As you would expect, many of the nicer Mosul homes lie close to the palace. Dabir had forgotten, or simply did not care, that the marketplace would be even busier than usual in the days before a festival, and we had to thread our way through crowds and past one particularly determined young man trying to sell his uncle’s textiles. When we had finally passed through that trial, I asked Dabir how he intended to approach the rich man.

“I shall be direct.”

“What do you know of Akram ibn Jedidiah? Isn’t he the one who invested in all those horses and then sold them?”

“He’s feckless, a man who forms sudden intense obsessions only to discard them.”

“You think he might have become interested in music.”

“Or at least ouds.”

We arrived at the fine cedar door to Akram’s mansion, one painted black. There was exquisite latticework on the large screened balcony overlooking the street, and no doors within twenty feet either direction. The man afforded much space.

An elderly servant, better-dressed than either of us, answered the door and considered us through narrowed eyelids. His turban was immaculately clean and wound with precision.

“May peace be upon you,” Dabir said with a bow. “Dabir ibn Khalil to see Akram ibn Jedidiah.”

“And upon you, the peace. May I ask the nature of this visit?”

“Tell him I have information about one of his recent purchases that the governor may find of interest.”

I fought down a smile; the servant maintained aplomb and indifference. “Very well. Wait here.” He shut the door rather than inviting us into the receiving room.

Dabir noted this discourtesy with an amused smile. We two, who had sat at the right hand of the caliph and the governor, were left like paupers begging alms in the street.

It was no short while before the servant returned to open the door. “The master will see you,” he said, and bowed deeply as he suggested entry with a sweep of his arms.

The receiving room brimmed with black cushions. There were wall coverings of red, and cushions of black, and hanging from the ceiling were a half dozen cages of small song birds, warbling at us. From somewhere in the halls a less talented singer raised her voice in an approximation of melody. She seemed newly come to the art of singing, and perhaps music in general, judging the tentative way she plucked the strings of her instrument. I am an inexpert judge of music, and even I knew she lacked talent.  Dabir’s cocked eyebrow spoke volumes.

“Does it sound like an exceptionally fine instrument? I asked.

“It’s difficult to tell.”

The music ceased a moment before Akram rambled into his receiving room He looked rather like a blackbird with overstuffed plumage, for his perfumed and pointed beard overhung his black-garbed, round little body like an enormous beak.

He was a middle-aged man with bright and suspicious eyes. His greeting feigned warm feeling.

“Ah! Dabir ibn Khalil! Your fame precedes you! And this must be the brave Captain Asim. You honor my humble abode. Refreshments are being readied. Come, sit, and tell me why you have come.”

We sat, he sat. The birds twittered. Dabir spoke. “It sounds as though you have a musical student in your house.”

Akram smiled as though he indulged children. “My new wife. She is very fond of birds, and their music, and she is such a pretty thing that I like to indulge her.” He laughed and preened his beard.

“Has she a tutor?”

“She has learned everything herself, if you can believe it.”

“I can scarcely credit that,” Dabir said. “Tell me, Akram. Where did she find her instrument?”

Akram stroked his beard. He was not a practiced liar, for his answer held little conviction. “It was an old thing passed down through the family. It is of no great worth.”

Dabir opened his mouth to question more, and then from deep in the house a woman screamed. It was not the cry of a little girl, nor a shriek that rose and altered into laughter. That was no mistaking the shrill sound of fear.

On the instant I was up and moving, demanding of Akram where the swiftest route to the back of the house was. Though flustered, he too was obviously concerned and waddled in haste after Dabir and me. We pushed through curtain after curtain, passing down hallways and through a courtyard, directed now by sobbing and the calamitous wails of other voices and finally arrived at a back hall opening onto both the stables and the street. The servant’s entrance.

A bejeweled and perfumed woman was huddled in the corner across from the door, comforted by a pretty maid, who patted her hand. Meanwhile, the stern old servant who’d bade us wait lay upon the floor while two young men tried to staunch the flow of blood from his side with cloth from his magnificent turban. He proved quite bald.

It took no great intellect to determine that an assailant had attacked and fled through yonder servant’s entrance. The whys or wherefores could be determined later, though I guessed it was about the oud.

I pushed through the door and into the back street in time to hear the patter of running feet and glimpse a heel before a corner was rounded. Dabir shouted some needless instruction to me as I bolted off in pursuit.

As the mansion was close to the central market, the attackers had immediately fled to lose themselves in the crowd. Allah be praised, their path was easy to see owing to the disturbance they had caused, for folk were turning to look after those who’d jostled them, and others had seen them coming and moved aside. Thus, after I pushed through, shouting pardons, I glimpsed a trailing figure, a youth in an off-white robe and dirty turban. I saw him glance back at me. Perhaps he knew me, but regardless, it is likely intimidating to see one of my size running at you with teeth bared, hand pressed to his sword. Mind you I did not mean to draw it while running, nor to use it against him – knowing full well Dabir would want me to grab him for questioning if I could not grab them all – I merely held the sword to keep it from banging my leg as I ran.

He did not know that, though, and his eyes fairly popped from his head. He increased his speed and diverted through a market stall. There came a curse, and a clatter, and the wail of a small child.

Within the stall I found a little boy knocked to the ground crying his heart out. Further in was a collapsed table and a host of wooden pots and ladles and other assorted carvings, all lying about the youth who was struggling dizzily to his feet while the shop keeper shouted at him and two elderly women stared dazedly.

I bent to the little boy, saw that he was unharmed, lifted him to one of the women, and commended him to be strong. If I had not stopped for this kindness I might have had the youth then and there. That brief delay afforded him the chance to slip through a gap in the canvas. I stepped after and saw him limping along the narrow space between canvas and market wall.

I called for him to stop. This he did not do, though he hesitated and looked back at me, which gave me a moment to gain upon him.

He emerged at last from the space behind the stalls and started down a twisting alley. This, too, flowed with folk, some coming to the market, and others carrying baskets laden with things they had purchased there. Even were I blind I might have followed his progress merely by the protests shouted by those he offended in his haste.

In the end he blundered into a stout matron, rebounding from her as she staggered to the left, shouting at him. Before he could fully pick himself up I was lifting him by the collar.

He reached for his knife, as you might expect, but a few well-placed punches discouraged further actions in that vein, and soon I was marching him back through the market and on towards the mansion. He demanded I unhand him, and protested to onlookers that he was being taken against his will. Some stared at us as we passed, but no one intervened, and at last I was pounding at the servant’s door.

When it opened to me I dragged him along with me and bade him to sit in the corner where the young woman had previously lain. He cringed there much as she had done, although there was no pretty maid to comfort him.

Dabir was there, along with Akram. The old servant was gone, but one of the servant boys remained, sopping up the blood.

“Well done, Asim,” Dabir said.

 “The others got away,” I said. “But this one may have answers. How did this lot manage entry?”

“They begged alms,” Dabir said. “And once the door was opened, an old man with them claimed to have sight of a vision for the woman of the household. The old servant scoffed until the old man described the oud she played with stunning accuracy, whereupon the lady of the house was summoned.”

I thought then to the sudden silence in her playing while Dabir and I had sat with Akram.

“They attacked her,” Akram cried, his arms rising in his distress, rather like he was flapping wings. “They attacked loyal Kafil and wounded him! And they struck my darling and made off with her oud!” He pointed a finger at the youth. “You will pay for this, young man! You will be hauled before a judge and you will pay for your crimes!”

He stepped towards the thief and raised a foot with the intention of administering justice himself, but Dabir barred him with his arm and forced him back. He spoke to the young man, his voice stern, but quiet.

“Things may go better with you if you cooperate.”

The youth’s dark eyes fastened upon Dabir. He proved well shaved and rather handsome, for all that he was a thief and would-be murderer. His expression was guarded.

“Who were your companions?” Dabir asked.

“My cousin,” the young man said, “and the old man who hired us.”

“Hired you to do what?”

“Accompany him to recover his oud.” His voice grew more strident. “We’ve done nothing wrong, other than to take back for him what was stolen.”

“Explain,” Dabir said. When he became angry or particularly intent, his manner always grew clipped. I saw him absently brushing the back of his emerald ring, as he often did when concentrating heavily.

“We went to the house of a thief, who claimed he had given it to this man.”

“You slew the thief,” Dabir said. “Ensuring his silence. Your work?”

“No,” he protested. “It was the old man. He was very angry. He… he had paid the thief to regain the oud for him, you see.”

“If it was your employer’s oud, why did he need it stolen?”

“He said it had been stolen from him a long time ago. And then the thief he paid to get it back sold it instead to this rich man.” He pointed to Akram.

Dabir looked not at all surprised. I glanced sidelong at Akram, who looked warily back and forth between Dabir and me. Perhaps he only then wondered if we knew he’d come upon the oud by questionable methods.

I looked at Akram directly, and while I said nothing, he addressed me as though I’d asked a question.

“Mustafa heard I was in the market for a fine oud,” he explained quickly. “I had no idea his instrument was stolen!”

Dabir’s response was dismissive. “Indeed. Send a boy for guardsmen and have this man taken to Captain Fakhir.  Asim, unless I miss my guess, you and I had best hurry.”

“Where are you going?” Akram asked. “Take this ruffian with you.”

“You earned the ruffian when you purchased stolen goods. Guard him so that he can be brought to justice for attacking your wife and servant. The sooner you send forth a houseboy the sooner he will be out of your hands.”

Chastened but grumbling, Akram waddled away and shouted the name of some servant.

I ignored the watchful gaze of the man I’d caught. “Where are we going?” I asked Dabir softly.

“To Kamal’s room at the inn.  We’ve little time if we wish to prevent an unpleasant reunion for our musician friend.”

III

“I’m afraid I don’t understand.” Kamal was still holding the new lute we’d caught him at practice with, up in his room. He’d allowed us entry and, brow furrowed, considered Dabir. A small fire blazed on cooking tiles, and a pot was suspended from a tripod above it, from which I inferred he was preparing a stew. Also, it smelled of lamb, which set my stomach to grumbling.

Dabir repeated himself, more slowly. “I expect that you’ll shortly receive a visitor bearing your oud and claiming a reward. Do not accept it.”

“That’s the part I don’t understand.”

“Bade him enter. Speak with him. But on no account must you take the oud from his hands.”

This admonition only caused the musician’s brow to furrow further. Dabir sighed. I think he might have elaborated, save that there was the telltale creak of wood and the scuff of sandaled feet as someone ascended the stairs. Dabir put a finger to his lips and indicated the dressing screen. It struck me as comical that the two of us should hide behind it, but it was there he led us, and there we both crouched so that our turbans did not project above it. I discovered that I could see the door and the front portion of the room from a knothole by bending a little further, thus I witnessed the musician stride forward as there came a knock on the door.

I wanted to ask Dabir what he should do if the visitor proved bent on mayhem, but trusted his judgment.

In the doorway was a tall old man, hunched and wrinkled, his beard white and well-groomed. He had a proud manner, no matter his threadbare garments. In his arms he bore a plain, long-necked oud with a fat belly, and he raised it in steady hands, his eyes fastened upon the musician. Surely if they had roamed anywhere else they would have seen our ludicrous hiding spot.

“I learned of the theft of your instrument, Kamal ibn Hassan, and your dwelling place. I came to return it.”

Probably he expected Kamal to take the oud from him then and there.

Our musician was barely able to contain himself and remember Dabir’s instruction, for he reached for the instrument and almost touched it, then swung his hand further into the room. “I’m grateful for its return. Won’t you enter? I was readying a meal. We can share it.”

The old man looked none too eager for this hospitality, but came in, and after he had advanced to the carpeted side of the room, Dabir pointed me to the door, which I stepped to and shut.

By then the game was up and the old man whirled with surprising speed, looking to me, then the door, then Dabir, standing before the dressing screen, and finally Kamal, beside the self-same window that had been so instrumental in the whole affair.

“What is this?” the old man said. “I mean to do a good deed, and you close me in?”

“You mean no good deed.” Dabir turned his head to Kamal. “He means to confer a curse upon you.”

“What?”

Dabir indicated the old man with a nod. “This is the fellow to whom your father gave his oud, long ago, in Basra. And then your father stole it from him.”

The old man’s eyes narrowed.

“Your father left the man with the curse. Now this one means to give it to you.”

“By Allah, he shall take it!” The old man drew a wicked looking knife and advanced with oud outthrust towards the musician. “Take it!”

I drew my sword and was ready in a single moment. The old man’s face fell as I interposed myself.

“You do not know what he did!” the old man backed away, complaining to Dabir, and his voice rose in woe. “One by one I saw them fall. My wife, before our new babe was born. My little girl, of pox. My boy, struck by an ox cart. My oldest, stabbed in a tavern. We were happy,” he wailed. “I have never prospered since his father –“ he pointed to Kamal – “gave me the instrument! But how was I to break the curse when he stole it, and fled? I had no idea where he’d gone!”

“But then you heard of Kamal’s coming, and made your way from the south,” Dabir suggested.

“Yes! I would right this wrong! All those years of suffering while first the thieving father and then his son prospered!”

“One thing yet puzzles me,” Dabir said. “How do you know of the alleged curse?”

“Because his father told me!” The old man practically shrieked. “His father made sure a note be sent me. He gloated! While my family died, he gloated!”

Dabir shook his head slowly. “Kamal’s father did evil works. You have my sympathy. But his evils cannot excuse your own. You’ve brought misfortune to others by lies and murder.”

There came a knock at the door, and Captain Fakhir announced himself. I bade him enter, and he did so, a pair of guardsmen behind him.

At this the old man looked more alarmed than ever, and his grip tightened upon his knife.

“How may the curse be broken?” Kamal asked. His voice was a soft interruption.

“I don’t know that there is a curse,” Dabir said. “It may be all in the man’s mind.”

“The curse is real!” the old man insisted.

Still Kamal’s voice was calm. “If it is real, how may it be broken?”

Dabir offered empty palms. “The object must be destroyed, and prayers said.”

“Then I shall take it,” the young man declared, and stepped forward.

The old man looked at him, astonished, but did not object as Kamal received the instrument from his hands.

I grunted in alarm, and the old man cackled in glee. Fakhir motioned his men forward, and the fellow did not resist as they clapped hands on his arms. He dropped the knife, chuckling as they marched him away.

“You’ll explain all this?” Captain Fakhir  asked. Ever since our first meeting, earlier that year, he had been ready, perhaps credulously, to believe in the supernatural quality of any oddity we encountered. He trusted us implicitly, which was fortunate, but he still required explanations.

Dabir nodded but said nothing, and Fakhir departed. We heard his heavy footfalls on the stairs as we watched Kamal set the stew pot on the cook stones. I knew what was coming but winced even so as he placed the instrument directly upon the fire. Soon we smelled the oud’s back warming.

“I will be a better man than my father,” Kamal said quietly as he watched. “I’ll prosper with my own skills rather than owing to any instrument.”

At that moment the first of the strings broke, and it was as though the instrument cried out in pain. I felt for it, that it suffered so unjustly.

“If there was no curse,” Dabir said, “you’ve destroyed a wondrous oud.”

“I have freed a man.”

 “A man who’s doomed himself to death through his actions.”

Kamal shook his head. “Actions brought upon by my family. I have freed him from the chains of that curse, even if they are only in his mind.”

And with that the oud blazed up and the rest of the strings gave way, and it was beyond recovery.

It came to pass that Kamal won the musical competition late in the week, performing with his new lute. On winning, he was asked by the governor if he desired any special favor, and he pleaded for the old man’s release. Allah, the most wise, in his infinite mercy had already released him, for the old man had passed away within his cell. Not owing to any mistreatment, though, for Captain Fakhir relayed to me that the fellow had died in his sleep with a smile upon his lips.

The thieves were put to menial labor for a time in the governor’s works, for it could not be proved that they had intended any killing; it was the old man who’d assaulted Mustafa and Akram’s servant. As for that fellow, he recovered from his injury and lived long years yet in service to his master’s whims.

But it is Kamal’s fate that is no doubt of greater interest. His fame spread so far that he was invited to Baghdad, where he played for the caliph and was member to his household staff thereafter. When summoned there ourselves we sometimes saw him in the palace and he never failed to stop and engage us, and always he was a reserved and pleasant man. One day later in my life I was told he had left the court to return to Alexandria, and saw him no more thereafter.

I once asked Dabir whether he thought the instrument had truly been cursed.

“Only Allah knows,” he said. “The important point, I think, is not the instrument’s possession of some enchantment, but the heart of its player.”

________________________________________

Howard Andrew Jones lives in a lonely tower by the Sea of Monsters with a wicked and beautiful enchantress. He’s the author of the Ring-Sworn heroic fantasy trilogy from St. Martin’s, starting with For the Killing of Kings, the critically acclaimed Arabian historical fantasy series starring Dabir and Asim (beginning with The Desert of Souls) and four Pathfinder novels. When he’s not editing Tales From the Magician’s Skull or hunched over his laptop mumbling about flashing swords and doom-haunted towers, you might find him lurking at www.howardandrewjones.com, where he blogs about writing craft, gaming, fantasy and adventure fiction, and assorted nerdery. Now and then he’s on FB at howard.andrew.jones.1, and he occasionally tweets @howardandrewjon.

Darian Jones is a visual development artist, writer, and composer with a passionate love for storytelling and animation. When not caring for animals and plants, Darian can be found feverishly scratching away with a digital pen, typing up a new screenplay, or arranging a musical piece. Darian looks up to Carl Sagan, Shirley Walker, Bruce Timm, Hayao Miyazaki, Michael DiMartino, Bryan Konietzko, and their father, Howard Andrew Jones. They’re currently working on an urban, dark fantasy webcomic called Hellbound. You can see more of Darian’s work at darianvincentjones.com.