“A Nuban girl, a serraya, escaped from me some time ago, with our small son. One of my wives, the youngest, arranged for their flight in secret.”
“Jealous, was she?” Bashir asked with a knowing leer. “You know the proverb, ‘Beat your wife each morning—if you don’t know the reason for it, she will’? Ya, with a wife who did that, you would both know the reason. And I would divorce her after beating her.”
“What I did is no concern of yours. This serraya’s name is Miriam, but her Nuban name is Yamila. The boy is called Abdullah. The girl is perhaps eighteen years. Tall and very good-looking, with two lines of marks across her forehead, like this”—he traced his finger over his brow—“and more marks on her belly, in the shape of bird’s wings, and still more marks around her upper arms, like bracelets. Also—”
The trader rather impolitely stopped his speech by raising an open palm. “You wish her returned to you.”
“I do.”
“Ya, Ibrahim! It’s not our trade to take captives or to retake them when they get away.”
“It isn’t necessary to tell me what your trade is. Esmah! You must see and hear a great deal in your journeys. The blacks speak freely to you. They consider you a brother, while I’m their enemy and all our conversing is with guns. Should you hear of her or, inshallah, discover where she is, I ask you to report it to me. If I am then able to get her back, I’ll extend to you the hand of brotherhood.”
“Brotherhood with you—a thing to value highly,” Bashir said, kissing the tips of his own fingers. “But may I say that I would wish there to be something else in the hand you extend?”
“Provided your information is accurate and the girl once again with my house, there will be.”
“How badly do you wish for that?”
“One hundred thousand.”
The trader gazed at his associate, who offered no expression with voice or face, and then he picked up a stick and made marks in the dirt.
“That’s four times what the foreigners pay for each captive,” Ibrahim Idris reminded him.
“A little less four times. Twenty-nine thousand per head they pay. But that’s for any abid, young, old, strong, weak, beautiful, ugly, man, or woman. A serraya such as you described is extraordinary, worth ten to one, I would judge. In addition, there is the son. Your own blood, omda.”
“I’m not offering to buy them. I’m offering to buy information.”
“But in this case, the information would be the same as buying. Without it, you have nothing. Three hundred.”
“That’s outrageous.”
“For a young and beautiful woman? For your own blood?”
“I’m not going to bargain for them as I would for cows.”
“Very well then, don’t bargain.” Bashir, in the time-honored custom, made a show of anger and disgust, flinging the stick aside, rising suddenly. “You have a lot of spies and good ones, too. They certainly know what I’m up to, day to day.”
“Yes. Those spies are to help you resist the temptation to make off with your income without paying my percentage.”
“Ask them to find her.”
“I have, but they have not been successful.”
Bashir tsked in contempt, and as he turned, pretending to leave, Ibrahim Idris offered one-fifty.
“Two-fifty,” the trader countered. “What you’re asking won’t be easy. It would take a lot of time, and if I ask too many questions, the abid would become suspicious. Two-fifty, no less.”
“Who do you think you’re dealing with?” Ibrahim Idris stood to his full height and willed a glint to enter his eyes. When it came to shows of anger, he took second place to no one, and in this instance, it was not entirely a show. “I’ll tell you who. The omda of the Salamat, the owner of eight hundred head, a captain of murahaleen, the father of a martyr! A man about whom songs are sung!”
“I’ve heard them,” Bashir said calmly. “And most are in praise of your generosity.”
He paused. The remark had pricked his pride in his reputation.
“Two then. Two hundred thousand and no more.”
Again Bashir glanced at his companion, who gave a quick nod.
Bashir said, “Done.”
Redeemer
MORNING LIGHT INFILTRATED through the mesh windows and the cracks in the zippered tent flaps so that she now could see the canopy of her mosquito net and the dark blots made by the dormant flies clinging to it. Mosquitoes were not abundant in Loki this almost rainless rainy season, but flies made up