I had to correct him there. “I am sure there could be nothing worse than the Death of a Thousand. Perhaps, Wali Achmad, you are unacquainted with—”

“I am acquainted with it. But even the Fondler knows how to inflict a death worse than that one. And I know several.” He smiled—or his lips did; his stone eyes did not. “You Christians think of Hell as the most terrible torture there can be, and your Bible tells you that Hell consists of pain. ‘To be cast into the Hell of fire, where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not extinguished.’ So spoke your gentle Jesus, at Capharnaum, to His disciples. Like your Jesus, I warn you not to flirt with Hell, Marco Folo, and not to pursue any temptations that might put you there. But I will tell you something more about Hell than your Christian Bible does. Hell is not necessarily an ever burning fire or a gnawing worm or a physical pain of any sort. Hell is not necessarily even a place. Hell is whatever hurts worst.”

11.

I went from the chambers of the Chief Minister directly to my own, intending to tell Nostril to cease his spy activities—at least until I could give some serious cogitation to the Wali’s warnings and threats. But Nostril was not there; another slave was. Biliktu and Buyantu met me in the vestibule, their eyebrows haughtily aloft, to inform me that a slave, a stranger, had come calling and had begged leave to stay and wait my return. The twins, not being owned by me or anybody, were always disdainful of their inferiors, but they seemed even more than usually bothered by this one. Rather curious to see what had provoked them, I went into my main room. A woman was seated on a bench there. When I came in, she swept down to the floor in a graceful ko-tou, and stayed kneeling until I bade her rise. She stood up, and I looked at her, and I looked with wide eyes.

The palace slaves, when their errands brought them from their cellars or kitchens or stables up among their betters, were always well dressed, to reflect credit on their masters, so it was not the woman’s fine garb that made me stare. What struck me was that she wore it as if she deserved nothing but the best, and was used to it, and was aware that no richest raiment would ever outshine her own radiance.

She was not a girl; she must have been about the same age as Nostril or my Uncle Mafio. But her face was unlined, and the years had marked her beauty only with dignity. If any youthful brook-twinkle had gone from her eyes, it had been replaced by forest-pool depth and placidity. There were some threads of silver in her hair, but it was mostly a warm, ruddy black, and not Kithai-straight, but a tumble of curls. Her figure was erect and, as far as I could make out through the brocade robes, still firm and nicely shaped.

When I continued to greet her only with a gawk, she said, in a velvet voice, “You are, I believe, the master of the slave Ali Babar.”

“Who?” I said stupidly. “Oh, him. Yes, Ali Babar belongs to me.”

To cover my momentary confusion, I mumbled an excuse-me, and went to peer into a jar to see how my flaming powder was doing. So this was the Turki Princess Mar-Janah! A day or two ago, I had poured the huo-yao from one of the two baskets into a sturdier jar. No wonder Nostril had been enamored once before, and was now again. Then I had poured some water into that portion of the powder. No wonder Nostril was ready to promise an extravagant change in himself, to win this woman. Despite the Firemaster’s skepticism, I had wanted to see whether I could make the powder more stable in the form of a thick mud. Any man would make that extravagant promise, and probably would change, too, or die trying. But it seemed the Firemaster had been right to scoff at my suggestion. How in God’s name had a buffoon like Nostril ever got even remotely acquainted with such a woman as this? The wet powder was only a morose, dark-gray sludge, and showed no sign of ever becoming anything else. A woman such as this ought to laugh at a thing like Nostril—or jeer. The powder might be stable in the form of muck, but it would never ignite. Or retch violently. Vakh!

“Tell me if I have guessed right, Master Marco,” said Mar-Janah. She sounded amused, but was obviously trying to help me compose my scattered wits. “You asked me here to regale me with praises of your slave Ali Babar.”

I coughed a few times, and tried: “Nost—” I coughed again and tried again: “Ali can boast of a good many virtues and talents and attainments.”

That much I could say without a blush, and without speaking one word of falsehood, for if any true thing could be said about Nostril it was, by God, that he could boast.

Mar-Janah smiled slightly and said, “As I have it from our fellow slaves, they cannot decide which is greater: Ali Babar’s monumental self-admiration or the windiness with which he expresses it. But all agree that those are traits to be commended in a man who has so abjectly failed at everything else.”

I stared at her, and I think my mouth hung open. Then I said, “Wait a moment. You evidently know a great deal about Nost—about Ali. Yet you are not even supposed to know he is in residence here.”

“I know more than that. I know that the other slaves are wrong in their mocking appraisal of him. When I first met Ali Babar, he was everything that he now only pretends he is.”

“I do not believe it,” I said flatly. Then I more courteously put a question, “Will you take cha with me?”

I clapped my hands and Buyantu appeared so promptly that I suspected she had been jealously lurking and listening just outside the curtained doorway. I ordered cha for the visitor and pu-tao for myself, and Buyantu went out again.

I turned back to Mar-Janah. “I would be interested to know more—about you and Ali Babar.”

“We were young then,” she said reminiscently. “The Arab bandits galloped out of the hills, down on my carriage, and they killed the coachman, but Ali was riding postilion, and they took him alive. They bore us away to their caves in the hills, and Ali was to be the messenger who would carry their ransom demand to my father. But I bade him refuse, and he did. At which, they laughed and they beat him most cruelly and they sealed him into a great jar of sesame oil. It would soften his obduracy, they said.”

I nodded. “It is a thing the Arabs do. It softens more than obduracy.”

“But Ali Babar did not soften. I did, or I pretended to. I feigned an infatuation for the bandit leader, though it was the staunch and loyal Ali with whom I had fallen in love. My pretense won me some measure of freedom, and one night I contrived to free Ali from the big jar, and to procure for him a sword.”

Buyantu returned, and Biliktu with her, each of them carrying a drink. They gave Mar-Janah her cup, and me my goblet, lingering to get a good look at the handsome visitor, as if they feared that I was recruiting an unwelcome fourth for our menage. I waved them out, and prompted Mar-Janah to continue: “Well?”

“All went well. On Ali’s instructions, I pretended further. I feigned submission to the chieftain’s lust that night, and, as planned, when I had him most vulnerable, Ali Babar leapt through the bed curtains and slew him. Then Ali bravely slashed our way through the other bandits, as they awakened and converged, and we got to the horses. By Allah’s mercy, we got safe away.”

“This is all very hard to believe.”

“The only disadvantage to our plan was that I had to make my escape stark naked.” She modestly turned her face away from me. “But that made it sublimely easy for me—when we lay down for the rest of the night in a friendly forest glade—to reward Ali as he deserved.”

“A better reward—or so I understand—than your father the King gave him.”

She sighed. “He promoted Ali to Chief Drover, and sent him far away from the palace. A royal father prefers a royal son-in-law. He never got one, though. Much to his vexation, I spurned all later suitors, even after I heard that Ali Babar had been taken in slavery. My spinsterhood probably saved my life when, some years afterward, our royal house was overthrown.”