A child who suffers cruelty will grow into an adult who inflicts it.


    <ul>


    <li style="font-weight: 400">Pārsan proverb</li>


    </ul>


    ?


    13th Day of High Summer’s Moon, AC 297


    “Something is troubling you,” Valeria observed.  She poured fresh qahwa into the Caliph’s cup, set the pot back on the low table in his sitting room, and then circled around behind him.  He stiffened when her fingers found his shoulders.  “Has a woman truly never done this for you before?”  she purred in his ear, making certain to get close enough that he would be able to take in the scent of her perfume.  It was expensive enough, after all, that it should not go to waste.  She leaned forward with the weight of her body, her thumbs seeking out the knots in Nasir al-Rashid’s muscles.


    “Not a woman, no,” the Caliph admitted, then groaned as she found a particularly sensitive spot.  “It would be improper.”


    “Well,” Valeria answered, “I am a woman of Narvonne, not of Ma?īn.  I see nothing improper about it at all.  You are the man carrying the weight of the entire Caliphate on his back.  I am happy to ease your burdens.”


    “You already do so much,” Nasir said, slumping under her hands.  Valeria’s father had made certain she was trained young in how to relax a man, how to make certain he lowered his guard.  A Pārsan slave had been procured to instruct her in this particular skill, and certain eastern dances, as well.  A shame that she’d wasted so many hours soothing Lionel Aurelianus, with nothing to show for it.  She promised herself that this time would be different.


    “I do hardly anything at all,” Valeria insisted.  “I am a foreigner in a strange land.  The only thing I have to offer you is a kind ear to listen to your troubles.  What happened today?”  She glanced over to the door, where two palace guards stood at attention.  So long as they were present, Nasir’s illusion of propriety was preserved.


    “Word from Captain Omar,” Nasir groaned.  “Sent by pigeon from The Bay of Sands.”


    Valeria frowned.  The Bay of Sands was on the eastern coast of the Caliphate, across the entire stretch of the Maghreb wastes.  “What is he doing there?” she asked.  “I thought you had sent him to arrest the traitor.”


    “And so I did,” Nasir complained.  “But the fool allowed her to talk him into sailing from Rocher de la Guard to Khalij Alrimal, where she has connections through her father’s tribe.”


    “I must confess, the concept of tribes is somewhat unfamiliar to me,” Valeria wheedled for more information.  In the meanwhile, she went to work behind his shoulder blades.  The man was practically one giant knot of tension.


    “Before the Etalans came and conquered us,” Nasir explained, “the people of Magreb, and the people of the western mountains, were divided into tribes.  I am told your Narvonii were much the same.”


    “True,” Valeria admitted.  This would be easier if she could get him to strip to the waist, and let her use almond oil.  “But the ancient Narvonnian tribes are long extinct.  They were replaced by the barons, and the knights beneath them.”


    “Our tribes are still very important to us,” Nasir said.  “They are like great extended families.  My father and I are of the ''ahl aljibal, the mountain people.  Ismet ibnah Salah is of the ''ahl alsahra, the people of the wastes.  Her tribe is spread throughout all the major oases in the Maghreb, and the governor of the Bay of Sands is one of them as well.”


    “So Captain Omar let her go home,” Valeria concluded, “to where the people are loyal to her and to her family.  She must be raising an army, then.”


    “You are as insightful as ever.”  Nasir had relaxed back into her now, and Valeria was careful to lean forward and accidentally press her chest into his back when she went to work on his scalp.  This required removing his shumāgh, which she set aside.  “Omar sends word she rode west from the Bay of Sands with perhaps a hundred and fifty soldiers, making for her father’s oasis of Eayn Zarqa'', where she will no doubt gather more troops.”


    “I am no commander of men,” Valeria admitted.  It was always good to make sure the men she were working on felt superior to her, that they knew things she did not.  They often enjoyed explaining, because it put them in the position of being superior.  “But surely you have the greater force.  Can you not strike now, while she is still gathering her army, before she is ready?”


    “Fighting the ''ahl alsahra in the Maghreb is suicide,” Nasir said, doing exactly as she had intended.  “The desert tribes will come with the sandstorm and fall upon an army’s supply lines, then vanish back into the dunes.  They will shelter at half a dozen oases that are marked on no map, while your own men die of thirst and heat, or are stung by the scorpions that crawl up from the sands.  If you do take an oasis, they will poison the water as they retreat.  No, we will crush them in our own lands.”


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    “You will permit them to march to Ma?īn, then?” Valeria asked.  She wasn’t certain how she felt about that.  On the one hand, it would be very satisfying to destroy Ismet ibnah Salah herself.  On the other hand, the southern woman was a trained soldier in her own right, before ever having been chosen as an Exarch, and Valeria was not.


    “Only as far as the mountains,” Nasir said.  “I have instructed my generals to begin mustering.  It will take her time to cross the wastes, where there are no roads.  We can be at Eish Alsaqr Pass long before them, and it is already fortified.  They will not have siege engines; the wastes do not produce lumber.  That is where we will break them.”


    “And yet,” Valeria said, leaning over his shoulder to murmur in his ear, “you are still concerned.”


    “I am,” Nasir admitted.  He shivered at her closeness, and she could feel it.  How adorable it was, she found, to seduce a man with such limited experience of women.  “She is an Exarch, and battle tested.”


    “You have Exarchs of your own, do you not?”  Valeria asked.  She knew he did, for she’d only killed the one, as of yet.


    “They have not responded to my letters,” Nasir said.  “I summoned them to Ma?īn to mourn the passing of my father, and yet they have not come.  Only Ashar, Exarch of Hafaza the Guardian, is here in the city, and he will not see me since my father’s death.”


    “It is a shocking display of disrespect,” Valeria said, letting her contempt color her tone as she spoke.  “No Narvonnian king would ever stand for such behavior.”


    “This is not Narvonne,” Nasir chided her.  “And our ways are not yours.  What I am doing has never been done before.  Always, the caliph has been selected by Isrāfīl.  Everything would be settled already, if the Angelus was not absent.  There would be no whispers, no doubters.”


    “And that is a show of disrespect, as well,” Valeria insisted, coming around to kneel in front of the young caliph.  “You are your father’s son.  Isrāfīl should have come to you upon his death.  To spurn you like this, after all of the work you have put in to keep the Caliphate together, is unforgivable.”


    “It is not the place of mortal men to judge the Angelus,” Nasir protested, but Valeria could tell that he was wavering.  “I forgive you, because you are a foreigner, and speak out of ignorance.  But talking in such a way is dangerous.”


    “I say these things only because I cannot stand how you have been treated,” Valeria insisted.  If she didn’t have to wear the awkward veil, she would have made her lips tremble; as it was, she tried to put all her emotions into her eyes, which Nasir could at least see.  “You have been so kind to me, kinder than I deserve.  You’ve taken me in when no one else would, when I was thrown aside.  I can’t stand to see you spurned the same way I was.  It is unjust, and I will say so, no matter who is present to hear us!”  There, just a flick of her eyes towards his guards at the door, subtle but enough for him to notice if he was paying attention.


    Nasir chewed on that a moment, then turned to his guards.  “Wait outside,” he commanded them.  There was a moment of hesitation - Valeria knew it was at the impropriety of what was about to occur, but she saw the chance to drive another wedge, here, and she took it.


    “Why do you hesitate when your caliph commands you?” she asked.  The guards saluted, then, after a brief delay, exited the sitting room, and closed the door behind them.


    “I should not have done that,” the caliph said.  “It will harm your reputation here.”


    “My reputation,” Valeria said, “means nothing to me compared to your well being.”  To emphasize the point, she reached up and cupped his cheek with her hand.  His beard was a bit long for her tastes, she decided, but at least it was well groomed.


    “I do not know how I have come to deserve the kindness of such a woman as you,” Nasire said, placing his own hand over hers.  “I feel as if I spent years chasing a mirage in the desert, only to dash upon sharp stones.  And now, when I least sought for it, I have stumbled onto a spring of cool waters and shaded palms.”


    “In Narvonne, after words like that, a man would kiss a woman,” Valeria told him, lowering her voice enough that he would have to lean in to hear her.


    “Such things are not done until after marriage, here,” Nasir told her.  Valeria deliberately broke eye contact, looking down at her own lap.


    “I understand,” she said.  “I have presumed too much.  Of course I know you would never wish to wed me.  I should not have allowed myself to indulge in fantasies.”


    “Valeria du Champs d''Or, what man would not wish to wed you?” Nasir asked, just as he’d known she would.  After all, she’d essentially forced him to disagree with her.


    “You say that,” she said, “But here I am, alone and unwed.  And in a few years, when you have settled into your reign, you will wed a woman of high birth here in the Caliphate.  Perhaps one of that desert tribe, to secure their allegiance.  And I will have to leave, because she will not wish me here in her palace.”


    Nasir al-Rashid grappled with himself for a long moment, while she remained silent.  Better to let him step over the edge willingly, Valeria judged, than to give him one last push.  “It does not have to be so,” he said, finally.  “Your father is the king of Narvonne.  A wedding between the caliph, and a princess of Narvonne, would secure a strong alliance.  Such a match could put an end to centuries of conflict.”


    Valeria looked up, putting hope into her gaze.  “Do not say that if you do not mean it,” she told him.  “It would break my heart all over again.”


    “I am a man of my word,” Nasir pledged, his voice firm now that he had decided.  “I will send a pigeon to Lutetia tonight.  Three pigeons, to ensure that at least one makes the flight safely.”


    “I wish you could see my face, to see how happy you’ve made me,” Valeria told him.  “We are alone, Caliph.  Perhaps… just a brief moment of impropriety?”  Before he could object, she unwound her veil from her face, tilted her face up, and pressed her lips to his.


    For a heartbeat, Valeria, Exarch of Agrat, worried that she might have overplayed her hand.  When the caliph kissed her back, she knew that she had him.