CALIPHATE(82)

"Even so."

She sighed, cast her eyes upward and then down to the floor. "I was a pretty little girl—"

"I can believe that."

"The tax gatherer picked me and my brother. First he set the jizya—"

"Jizya?" Hamilton asked.

"A tax non-Moslems pay here as part of their surrender," she explained. "Anyway, he set it so high my father couldn't pay . . . and when he couldn't the taxman took me instead. I was nine. My brother, Hans—he's the one who attacked you last night—they took later."

"They sold you to this place when you were nine?" And how are they any worse than Bongo and I? We've just sold some six year olds.

"No . . . no. That came later. Though my friend, Ling, was sold even younger. At first I was sold to a wonderful family . . . I thought they were wonderful anyway. Their daughter, Besma, really was. We still write. She's married—really married, I mean . . . not the travesty we have here—and has two children now. She named the girl for me. She's says she will come for me, and not to lose faith. Faith! Like I have any reason for faith."

"It's okay," Hamilton said, disconcerted at the pain growing in Petra's voice. "You don't have to talk about it if you don't want."

"You are my Lord and Master, for the next two weeks," Petra said, a trifle bitterly. She sensed, somehow, that with this client she could get away with a lot more than with most. "You asked; it is my duty to tell you."

"Anyway," she continued, "life with Besma was pretty good. If you don't count her stepmother who used me to control her. And then her stepbrother and two friends decided I was just the thing for a dull afternoon—"

And then the tears came forth. The force with which they gushed took Hamilton completely by surprise.

"I never talk about it," Petra sobbed, "I never talk about—"

After which she couldn't say anything, as Hamilton was kneeling beside her chair, holding her in his arms, and pressing her head into his shoulder. "Shhh," he said soothingly. "It's all right. You don't have to talk about it and I am a complete ass for even asking. I'm really sorry."

* * *

"Hans, I need you to listen carefully to me," Ling said. "This is important and the answer means everything. Why did you attack that man last night?"

Hans drew in a deep breath and then exhaled forcefully. "He's a slave trader, and I saw his cargo. They were just children, Ling, even younger than Petra was when they took her away. He's a stinking slave trader."

Ling chewed on her lower lip, wracked with indecision. Finally, she asked, "What if he wasn't?"

Hans just shook his head in confusion. "What if he wasn't what?"

"What if he wasn't a slave trader, but was something else?"

"Something else? Like what?"

"I can't tell you. Not won't; can't. Someday you'll understand, maybe someday soon. But what if he really wasn't a slave trader?"

"I saw what I saw," Hans insisted.

"Yes . . . but you didn't necessarily understand what you saw." Ling started chewing her lip again. She continued at that for several confused minutes—confused for both her and Hans—before saying, "I need you to prove to me you're not with the Caliphate."

"I'm a dead man," he said, "dead before I can do any good, if I can't trust you. Everything I've told you so far would get me nailed up to a wooden cross. How much more can I do?"

She insisted, "I need more, Hans."

He thought about that for a minute. Then he went to his overnight bag, dropped off in her quarters by a servant the previous night. From the bag he pulled out a Koran. He opened in to a random page and spit on it. "That's one," he said. "Now follow me."

There were, after all, reasons why Abdul Rahman had thought Hans had a future. If he had flaws, lack of decisiveness wasn't among them.

Ling followed Hans to her bathroom. There he thumbed through the book, apparently looking for a choice passage. When he'd found it, he tore that page from the Koran, bent over, and wiped his rear end with it. "That's two." He dropped the page in the toilet, spit again, and flushed.

Hans walked back to the bedroom and picked up his bag again, feeling inside for a small box. This he withdrew from the bag and opened. From the box he pulled out a crucifix, kissed it and said, "This was given to me by a man, a priest, I helped murder . . ."

* * *

"These mountains are murder, I know," Hamilton said in sympathy, as he helped Petra over a rock lying across their path.

Feeling like an absolute rat, Hamilton had offered anything to make up to her his—"stupid, insensitive, moronic, unfeeling, idiotic"—question.