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Updated: May 17, 2025
Thou shalt outbid Tsamanni, or, better still, set someone else to do it for thee, and so buy the girl for me. Then we'll contrive that she shall vanish quietly and quickly before Asad can discover a trace of her." His face blanched, and the wattles about his jaws were shaking. "And... and the cost? Hast thou counted the cost, O Fenzileh? What will happen when Asad gains knowledge of this thing?"
Sakr-el-Bahr went down upon his knees and prostrated himself solemnly before his prince. "The blessing of Allah and His peace upon thee, my lord," was his greeting. And Asad, stooping to lift that splendid figure in his arms, gave him a welcome that caused the spying Fenzileh to clench her teeth behind the fretted lattice that concealed her.
Yet notwithstanding her innocence and assumed simplicity because of it, perhaps he read her as if she had been an open book; it no longer mattered that her face was veiled. "And thy purpose would be equally well served, eh?" he questioned her, sly in his turn. "Equally," she admitted. "Say 'better, Fenzileh," he rejoined. "I said thou art not subtle. By the Koran, I lied.
Most singularly odd!" They were alone behind the green lattices through which filtered the perfumes of the garden and the throbbing of a nightingale's voice laden with the tale of its love for the rose. Fenzileh reclined upon a divan that was spread with silken Turkey carpets, and one of her gold-embroidered slippers had dropped from her henna-stained toes.
"It may well be written that thou shalt be the same again, my lord," murmured the insidious Tsamanni. There was more stirring in his mind than the mere desire to play the courtier now. 'Twixt Fenzileh and himself there had long been a feud begotten of the jealousy which each inspired in the other where Asad was concerned.
"I see," he said at last, with a calm so oddly at variance with his looks as to be sinister. "I see. It seems that there is more truth in Fenzileh than I suspected. So!" He considered the corsair a moment with his sunken smouldering eyes. Then he addressed him in a tone that vibrated with his suppressed anger. "Bethink thee, Sakr-el-Bahr, of what thou art, of what I have made thee.
The negress went out, and silence followed, for those other lesser ladies of the Basha's hareem were more obedient to the commands of Fenzileh than to those of the Basha himself. Then she drew her son to the fretted lattice commanding the courtyard, a screen from behind which they could see and hear all that passed out yonder.
Sakr-el-Bahr crossed to her side and in a glare of torches saw a body of men coming forth from the black archway of the gate. "It almost seems as if, departing from thy usual custom, thou hast spoken truth, O Fenzileh." She faced him, and he suspected the venomous glance darted at him through her veil. Yet her voice when she spoke was cold. "In a moment thou'lt have no single doubt of it.
He came forward smiling, his slender brown fingers combing his long beard, his white djellaba trailing behind him along the ground. "Thou hast heard, not a doubt, O Fenzileh," said he. "Art thou answered enough?" She sank down again upon her cushions and idly considered herself in a steel mirror set in silver.
At last he had drawn her, pumped her dry, as he imagined. Indeed, indeed, he thought, he had been right to say she was not subtle. He had been a fool to have permitted himself to be intrigued by so shallow, so obvious a purpose. He shrugged and turned away from her. "Depart in peace, O Fenzileh," he said. "I yield her to none be his name Asad or Shaitan."
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