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sleeve, "we will come back and kill that one."
"Now THAT is silly," returned Raphael.
The sea was Hakiim's hope; once he reached the water, temperatures would be temperate and the air
moist. But the sea was a very long way away, many days by muleback. Heat had crumpled the airs of
Granada so that no line could be discerned between earth and sky, and the air itself smelled like ashes.
The Moor had one hand on his mule's girth strap, and was peering into the high distance when Perfecto
addressed him.
"You think I'm crazy, no doubt," grunted the round-faced Spaniard. "You must think I'm crazy, after
the way I acted with the eunuch."
But Hakiim glanced at his partners expression, and for the first time in weeks he tended to believe that
the man was NOT crazy, for this hangdog attitude was every inch the old Perfecto. The black glint was
gone from his small eyes and his fat-shrouded jaw no longer clenched and unclenched.
"I never thought you were crazy," answered Hakiim, with more regard for the amenities than for the
truth. "I merely thought you& ill-advised."
Silence fell, impossible for the Moor to endure. "It seemed that first you wanted too much for the
eunuch, and then, as soon as he was found to be of value, too little. That's all.
"But it is done, and no great loss." He raised his foot to the round wooden stirrup.
Perfecto put one hand on Hakiim's shoulder. "Old friend, I can explain."
Hakiim smiled uncertainly. He no longer wanted explanations, but to be out in the clean air, away
from Perfecto and Granada both. "I am to meet a troop of fursan outside the Alhambra at noon. They
will let me ride with them all the way down to the sea, but I must not be late."
Hakiim's sleek and restive mule pawed the desiccated earth with his hoof. In reply Perfecto thrust one
finger at heaven, swaggered behind the house, and returned with his own beast, already bitted and
saddled. "I will ride with you to the Alhambra," he said. "That will give us time."
Hakiim was not happy, but he was one of that sort who, while not especially kindly, has a great deal
of difficulty being rude. He allowed Perfecto to mount beside him.
The mules danced their first few steps, finding their balance under saddle. The Spaniard coughed and
cleared his phlegmy throat. "It has to do" he chewed his lip silently for a moment "with a promise I
made once. That I would do something for someone. If it needed doing."
Hakiim frowned. He suspected Perfecto of talking nonsense. Like a child. Like a Spaniard. "To do
what, and for whom?" He led his animal along a street so narrow that pedestrians darted into doorways
to allow them to pass.
Perfecto's animal followed. The Spaniard's reply was inaudible and so Hakiim turned and asked him
to repeat it.
"It does not matter to whom I gave the promise, does it? It was a promise and I was therefore honor
bound."
Hakiim, as a dealer, thought this attitude was so much dung of the mule. What was more, he was
certain that Perfecto had no more illusions than he himself. But as he turned to say something of this
nature, they rounded a hump in the road, and a white donkey, carrying a man and two sacks of wood,
rammed nose-to-nose into his mount.
There was a great thrashing and hawing, and Perfecto's innocent mule received a kick in the chest
from Hakiim's. When the incident had resolved itself (the donkey rider backing his animal along the alley
and into a cul-de-sac) Perfecto pointed urgently along a cross street that led out of the gates of Granada.
"Here. You will arrive at the fortress at the same time as if you had cut through the city. AND, we will
be able to hear ourselves talk."
"I don't want to be able to hear ourselves talk," whispered Hakiim to himself, but he turned the mule's
head.
"As to what the bargain or rather the promise was, well, that was to depend on circumstance. As
it happened, it was necessary that I sell this man in Granada."
It was cooler outside the wall, and undeniably fresher, but Hakiim's mood was unimproved. "Not
man, Perfecto, but boy. And how can you& "
Quite calmly the Spaniard corrected his partner. "Not boy, Hakiim, but man. The blond was never a
eunuch."
Hakiim let the reins slide down his mule's neck. For some moments his tongue forgot speech. "And
you knew it?"
"From the beginning. But I knew that you would be very unhappy with the idea of selling an entire, so
I thought it better to pretend."
Perfecto, jogging along on the mouse-gray back, looked more complacent than ashamed.
Hakiim thought furiously.
"I should have suspected something when the Berber woman refused to be sold without him."
Now it was Perfecto's turn to raise his eyebrows. "Berber woman? Djoura?"
Hakiim made a negatory wave. "She& always claimed to be a Berber. Pay it no mind."
But Perfecto's little eyes squinted littler. "Are there, then, black Berbers?"
"A few," Hakiim admitted. "In the west and south. But that doesn't mean that she is one& "
Perfecto gave a heavy sigh. "It would be a dangerous thing, to sell a woman of Berber tribe as a
slave, in a land where the Berbers have the sharpest swords," he said.
"You are referring to Tunis?" Hakiim mumbled nervously.
"I am referring to Granada," answered the Spaniard.
The wall of the city rose to their left, gray but gleaming like milk in the sun. Below was a bank of shale
that crumbled down to a series of turtle-backed hills. The sprawling fortress called the Alhambra, red
walled and white towered, gleamed from half a mile away. Hakiim took a deep breath of sage-dry air
and listened to the cicadas in the dust.
But for Perfecto, now, he'd have solitude.
"There is a world of difference between selling a Nubian who CALLS herself a Berber and is not,
and selling a man
YOU call a eunuch, and who is not. What will happen when Rashiid finds out he has been tricked?"
Perfecto urged his animal close beside. "Tricked? It was not I who told him Pinkie was a boy, but
Djoura herself"
Djoura. Hakiim's brow knotted. "Yes! Our black lily must have known. Was she in this business with
you?"
Perfecto spat off to the side. "No. Djoura is only perverse.
"And Rashiid can have no complaint to us, since Pinkie did not cost him one shaved copper!"
Hearing an unmistakable jingle, Hakiim turned his head. Perfecto had taken out his moneybag and
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