Blood of a Sultan

  A Short Story set in “The Divided Sultanate” series

  Fuad Baloch

  Copyright © 2018 by Fuad Baloch

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  version: taa

  Editing by Bodie D. Dykstra

  Blood of a Sultan

  “And that’s how the blood of the old Sultan died,” whimpered the old, dignified woman, rocking sideways as she knelt on the dusty floor. “Ah, the world’s poorer without him!”

  Shoki shook his head. As tragic as the murder was, it wouldn’t do to get facts mixed up—whoever the dead man was, he most definitely wasn’t part of the royal family.

  “The Sultan’s family member is brutally murdered,” said the woman, whose name Shoki had jotted down and promptly forgotten. “And the city guards managed to send… only you two?”

  Shoki licked his lips. “Well, we’re p-pretty good at what we do.”

  “Did you say something?” asked the woman, leaning forward as if his words had failed to rise over the din of traders crying outside the dingy, dusty cottage in the middle of the mercantile district.

  “Sahiba Razia,” boomed Salar Ihagra, Shoki’s commander, his white mustache quivering, seemingly unperturbed by the courage that the relatives of victims seemed to discover after the tragic event had passed. “Need I remind you again, the murdered was not related to the Istani crown! Just choosing the same last name as them doesn’t make one member of the royal family.”

  “But…” protested the woman—Razia, Shoki reminded himself—but she fell silent as the Salar waved his arm.

  “Now, where is the body? We don’t have all day,” declared Salar Ihagra. Razia raised a wounded eyebrow toward Shoki, who offered a pursed smile in return, unsure of what he could do here.

  Razia scoffed, readjusted her frayed silk head veil. Then she raised her right hand toward the room behind her, the fingernails catching the sunlight for a second and glowing white. “T-there…”

  Shoki opened his mouth, sensing the need to comfort the woman, to say something appropriate. Razia cupped her face and broke into hysterical sobs. Shoki swallowed.

  “Come!” said his commander.

  “Aye, Salar,” he responded.

  Together, the two of them stepped past the woman and the musical instruments arrayed to her left—lutes made of the finest cedar found only in the eastern kingdoms—and into the sleeping chamber beyond.

  Shoki stumbled at the threshold, catching himself at the last instant. Salar Ihagra grunted but thankfully didn’t chide him in front of the woman.

  A window on the left had been thrown wide open, flooding the room with harsh noon light. Despite that, it took Shoki a few seconds to find the body.

  “Oh, Rabb!” he exclaimed, right hand drawing up to his mouth as he swallowed the urge to throw up.

  Jalib Istan—a last name he had appropriated for himself without sanction from the Istani crown—lay sprawled on the carpeted floor beside the four-post bed. Dried blood had pooled to either side, lending the brown carpet a dark reddish tinge. Even as Shoki willed to turn his eyes away, they fell on the gaping wounds in Jalib’s chest and abdomen. “Oh, my Rabb!”

  “Come here!” ordered the Salar as he walked over to the corpse.

  Do I really have to?

  Strengthening his resolve, Shoki stuttered forward, thankful for the Salar’s preoccupation with the dead merchant, making sure there was nothing he might stumble upon.

  “Hmm, someone really didn’t like this man,” said Salar Ihagra, his stern voice thoughtful. Scratching his nose, he crossed his arms, tilted his head to the side, one end of his white turban casting a long shadow across the dead man’s face.

  “No, t-they didn’t,” agreed Shoki without much enthusiasm. Again, he forced himself to take a look. When was the last time he’d seen a dead body? An actual, real dead body? Memory floated up of goats squealing as the butchers cut their throats, their bodies thrashing, blood gushing out, as Shoki stood with the other residents of Algaria waiting for fresh meat.

  He shivered, felt bile rise in his gorge.

  Salar Ihagra dropped to his haunches, his turban’s end inches from the grisly body. “Really hated him!”

  “Hmm,” murmured Shoki. Again, he forced himself to examine the body. The merchant had been a rotund man, the layers of fat in his abdomen peeled back as if… Shoki bit his tongue, shoved the ghastly thoughts away. Squinting so he saw only as much as was needed, he looked around the room.

  The Istan family, as they had taken to calling themselves, weren’t rich, something obvious by the peeling plaster and paint, but at one point they must have been wealthy enough to afford a three-bedroom house in the middle of the bustling mercantile quarter of Algaria. They even had a fully grown tree outside. But now, as he looked at the surroundings once more—the threadbare carpet, the dusty layer on the instruments he’d seen in the other room, the rather shabby clothes the merchant wore—it was obvious the husband and wife had fallen upon hard times.

  “Not much to see, is there?” muttered Salar Ihagra, rising and turning toward Shoki.

  Fearing a trick question, Shoki looked down at the corpse one more time to ensure he hadn’t missed anything. Jalib Istan’s eyes were open, staring unblinkingly at the ceiling. His tongue, fat and swollen, lolled out of his mouth, a white residue of sorts drying to a side. No weapon in sight. No obvious bloody footprints. Shuddering, Shoki shook his head. “Not much more to see.”

  Salar Ihagra grunted. “I swear by Rabb, Algaria used to be much more peaceful when I was your age.”

  Shoki decided not to take umbrage directed toward his generation. “We’ll find the killer, Salar.”

  “Oh, we will,” replied Salar Ihagra thoughtfully. “Shouldn’t be that hard. With a merchant like him, who also dabbled in eastern musical instruments, no doubt there’d be some dispute that would have led to this.” He scanned the room one last time. “Strange.”

  “What, Salar?”

  “Why don’t you tell me?”

  Cursing silently for having brought this scrutiny over himself, Shoki looked around. The body still lay as it had, just as ghastly. His eyes fell on the open window. Shoki squinted. If the window had been open before the body had been discovered, could that have been the way the killer used to get in and out of the room?

  “Well?”

  Shoki cleared his throat, pointed at the window. “The killer must have…” He trailed away, sensing the trap moments before he would’ve stepped into it. He took a step forward, looked about the room, examined the bed. His eyes widened. “The room, except for the bedsheets, looks untouched. Almost as if the killer’s intent was primarily to kill Sahib Istan. That seems to rule out a common robbery gone wrong.”

  Salar Ihagra didn’t say anything for a long breath. A long enough pause for Shoki to start sweating. The Salar nodded. “By the two moons, it’s most curious. Even a killer with a personal grudge might have wanted to see what else they could get away with. But the almirah to the side remains shut, the mantle pieces dusty and lined with cobwebs.” He tapped the coin purse tied the dead man’s waist. It clinked softly. “Even the coins left alone.”

  “Perhaps the murderer didn’t have time to get away before being discovered.”

  “The victim’s wife only found the body in the morning,” said Salar Ihagra. “Indicates plenty of time if the murder happened at night.”

  “Hmm,” replied Shoki. “Does appear curious.”

  Salar Ihagra scratched his forehead. “Times like these, I wish I could just summon a djinn from the myths to help tease out these mysteries.”

  Shoki forced a laugh. “If only djinn were real, eh, Salar?”

  Salar Ihagra glared at Shoki for another breath, then, shaking his head, strode out of the room.

  Shoki followed, this time very aware of the threshold.

  Razia stood at the door, blocking their way out. “When are you going to hang the heinous bastard who did that to my husband?”

  “We’re onto it,” assured the Salar, raising a hand. “But these things can take time. You’ve given us names of all people the deceased had conflicts with. Rest assured, we’re going to find out—”

  “It’s Asharf,” declared Razia. “The man fleeced my husband the last time they went on an expedition to the Zakhanan empire together.”

  “If…” said Shoki, trailing away when both sets of eyes turned toward him, suddenly aware of the urge to pee. “If Sahib Asharf fleeced your husband, what reason would he have for killing him?”

  A shadow crossed over the woman’s eyes. She took a step forward. Without realizing, Shoki flinched, his eyes falling on a badly healed wound on her neck before the woman stood snarling in front. “Can’t you see? The camel dung wouldn’t want others to find out the way he does business. Hardly the first time he’s fleeced honorable men like my husband.”

  “Hmm,” said Salar Ihagra. “We assure you—”

  “If you do not hang Asharf,” hissed Sahiba Razia, raising a trembling finger at them, “I am going to take the matter to the Iron Sultan himself.”

  Salar Ihagra stood tall, his eyes narrowing. “You’ll hear from us soon.”

  Asharf had a pinched face, a bedraggled look about him as his narrow eyes continued darti

ng from Salar Ihagra to Shoki and back. As he scratched his sweaty skin, he seemed to complete Shoki’s mental depiction of him as a frog out of water.

  “I don’t have a lot of time,” said Salar Ihagra, spreading his legs out on a divan in front of him. “Just confess what you’ve done and we’ll all just move on from this.”

  “That would be a wise decision,” concurred Shoki.

  Asharf hiccupped, the eyes widening. “If I were to confess—to something I’ve not done, mind you—how would I be making my life any easier?”

  “That’s… a fair point too,” conceded Shoki. Salar Ihagra turned his glare toward him, and Shoki swallowed. He really did need to watch when to open his mouth.

  The Salar fell quiet. A tried and true strategy that seemed to break most men. As the merchant melted slowly, Shoki fidgeted with the leather vest—two sizes too large on his thin, tall frame—his eyes diverting to the world passing outside their city guard post.

  Though they could have had their pick of any post in the city, the Salar had decided to appropriate the one in the mercantile quarter itself, stationing himself in full view of the passersby and other merchants as they interrogated Asharf with all windows and doors flung wide open this warm afternoon.

  “You and the Jalib Istan had differences,” suggested the Salar. “Besides, you seem to have a rather nasty reputation in the market based on others we’ve spoken to. Do you object to either of these observations?”

  Despite the very visible mental anguish playing out on his damp face, the fat merchant scoffed. “Don’t call him an Istan. Calling a piece of dung a diamond doesn’t make it so.”

  The Salar didn’t respond. Instead, he leaned forward, his stare causing the merchant to hiccup noisily.

  Shoki shuffled his weight. Something about the case kept nagging at him. Something they should have picked up but hadn’t.

  Then again, what did he know? Still barely months into this wonderful position that continued to delight mother and father, working beside a legend who’d been doing this job for decades.

  “Well?” asked the Salar. His voice was gentle but also pregnant with the threat of what it might devolve into, something not lost on the merchant, judging by his trembling fingers.

  “I… I didn’t kill him. W-why would I do that?”

  “Plenty of reasons I don’t have the time to go into.” Salar Ihagra yawned—another affectation Shoki knew was meant to tear down the suspect’s defenses. “In just a few more days, I am going to be working at the diwan-e-aam, serving the Sultan himself at his court. If you waste my time, you might as well be confessing to him.”

  “C-confessing to the Iron S-s-sultan?”

  “Aye.”

  “But… but I didn’t kill him. For Rabb’s sake, take my word.”

  Shoki cleared his throat, opened his notebook. “Five of your past six partners report creative accounting practices you employed to show a loss on joint ventures that actually turned a profit—”

  “Nonsense. They don’t understand how numbers work,” interrupted the fat merchant, Shoki’s words somehow rekindling his spine.

  “And then there is a Sahib Naraban, an old merchant you seemingly befriended, getting him to name all he’d acquired over to you instead of his own family.”

  “The man loved me!” cried out Asharf. “And his children are all demons. Ask anyone!”

  Shoki scraped at the notebook with his long fingernail. “The facts… have a language of their own, and—”

  “Right this moment,” declared Salar Ihagra, his legs still stretched out, “they point the finger at you!”

  “No!” managed the merchant, his strength once more fading now that the Salar was addressing him.

  “Um… where were you two nights ago?” asked Shoki.

  Asharf arched an eyebrow. “I was home. Asleep.”

  “Any alibi to that fact?”

  “Why, my wife—”

  “She hasn’t shared your bed for months,” said Shoki, earning a grunt from the Salar. He surprised himself by how calm he suddenly sounded. “Is there anyone else who could corroborate your claim?”

  Asharf ground his teeth. He looked around the small room the Salar had turned into an interrogation room, the doors and windows wide open to ensure the scene played out to curious onlookers.

  Silence fell upon them. The Salar was a taciturn man, something that had always grated on Shoki, but for the moment, he could see the strategy working and bit his tongue.

  When the silence stretched, broken by the merchant’s nervous hiccups, Shoki yawned, looked out the window.

  The sun would be setting in another hour or so, but its rays were still searing hot. Husalmin priests garbed in rich, bright yellow clothing streamed outside, mingling with traders and their customers in the busy Algarian bustle. The pious would be celebrating either the birth or death of some saint long gone—neither possibility exciting Shoki much.

  All he knew was that mother and father would be waiting a while for him. Then again, knowing he was putting in long hours with the Salar, who might very well drag him through to the diwan-e-aam as well, no matter what Shoki thought of it, would excuse anything.

  “Salar Ihagra,” said the merchant, “these are difficult times. Spies from both Zakhanan and Reratish are infiltrating our blessed realm. Who’s to say one of them decided to murder Jalib Istan for something the man might have discovered or been a part of?”

  “A possibility,” admitted the Salar. “But an extremely remote one.”

  “If you’re looking for the most likely explanation, why not consider robbers? Why can’t they have—”

  “Nothing was stolen of value from his house,” said the Salar.

  “Well… well…” The merchant’s jaw moved, the words falling away for a breath. He shook his head. “You didn’t know the man like I did. He might be dead, and the blessed faith prohibits badmouthing those recently deceased, but he… he was hardly the saint his wife might be making him out to be. All that you blame me for… Well, those practices were long ago perfected by him. How do you think a mere lute player and his wife ever ended up in one of the most expensive areas of the city, huh?”

  “Asharf, this is how it stands,” said the Salar. “You had a recent fight with Sahib Jalib Istan over a business deal that went sour two months ago. The arrangement sounds like the other five we’ve found out, and considering how little time these took to discover, I doubt how many more we would find if we devoted some serious attention to it.”

  “But—”

  “So just shut up, confess, and let us all move on!” snapped the Salar, his voice striking the merchant like thunderclaps.

  “Make way! Make way!” drifted in shouts from the window.

  Shoki turned. The post’s elevated view afforded him a great vantage point to peer down from. Ten armored soldiers in shiny black iron mail were marching down the alley, pushing gaping onlookers to the side. Three knights in gleaming golden armor, their turbans long and streaming behind them, came into view next. Knights of the Sultan’s Body, soldiers drawn from the elitist of elite units to guard the Sultan himself and his family.

  “Make way!” came the shout again.

  Then Shoki’s eyes fell on the palanquin ten men carried forward, emblazoned with a roaring lion sigil of the Istani crown.

  Two figures sat within, the sheer fabric painting their silhouettes in vivid relief.

  The merchant was saying something behind him even as the Salar grunted. But Shoki didn’t hear them, his eyes glued to the pomp down in the streets.

  The curtain parted, and the most beautiful girl Shoki had ever seen peeked out. Her skin was dark, the long black hair falling in sheets around a heart-faced shape set off by brilliant large eyes.

  Princess Nuraya. He knew even when he’d never set his eyes upon the princess before. Bewitched, he watched the princess as she laughed, revealing a row of perfect teeth. Another girl, pale-skinned, pretty, but hardly standing out beside the princess, leaned forward, whispered in the princess’s ear.

  The curtain fell, reducing the princess to a silhouette once more.

  No!

  He stepped closer to the window, then, realizing his foolishness, stopped dead.

 

1 2 3