Rafik shook his head.
“Are you sure? I’ll check later, you know.”
“No, only on my fingers. My father chopped them off with an ax but they grew back and—”
“Shut up, Rafik,” Fahid snapped.
Khan scratched his chin. “Interesting.” He turned back to Fahid, measuring every word. “If what your brother says is true, he is worth hard coin. If it was not for my debt to your family, I would have let you walk out of here empty-handed and drink many toasts to your stupidity.”
“We just want to get him to somewhere safe,” Fahid said again, fidgeting nervously.
“Oh, he will be very safe, your little brother, I can vouch for that, and well provided for, and educated as well, in all manners of fields. Now about his price …”
“We do not want your coin, only your word of promise,” Fahid hissed before Simon could say anything else.
“I’ll tell you what.” Khan picked up a glass cup again and presented it to Fahid. “I will give you my solemn oath that I’ll take care of your brother if you drink with me.”
Fahid looked at the small glass for what seemed to be an eternity. Rafik was sure his devout brother would refuse to sin, but eventually Fahid reached out and accepted the glass.
“In one go,” said Khan, smiling.
“May God and the Prophet Reborn forgive me,” Fahid murmured, and all three drank at once.
Rafik guessed his brother was too nervous and drank the water the wrong way because he became very red and began coughing and wheezing. Simon seemed to be fine, though. Khan and the other man laughed unpleasantly and suddenly there was a pistol in Khan’s hand. Rafik saw his uncle’s face turn white. Fahid tried to react but could only cough and wheeze. Rafik wanted to move, shout something, distract Khan, kick his legs from under him, or beg for mercy, but it was as if his legs were made of stone.
He could only gape in horror as Khan grasped his brother with one hand and pushed the gun to Fahid’s forehead with the other.
“I am not normally accused of such things as honesty,” he said calmly. “One does not stay in business with such a reputation. You, on the other hand, are a fool. A brave fool, perhaps, but a fool nonetheless, and in this town, you’d be a dead fool before the night is out. I should just kill you here and now and save you the trouble of growing up just to be killed by people who outsmart you.” Khan waved the pistol in front of Fahid’s bulging eyes. “But … I owe your father my life, and so instead I’ll give you this.” He lowered the weapon, turned it expertly in his hand and shoved it, butt first, into Fahid’s trembling hands.
“Standard ammo, seven in a clip,” he said as he released the young man and patted his shoulder paternally. “I’ll give you some extra ammunition before you go, say a hundred bullets? Do we have a deal?”
Fahid gulped, and Khan clapped his hands. “What shall I do with you, boy? Driving such a hard bargain, I tell you what, I’ll throw in a bag of black linen, and a barrel of my best mead! Yes, I know you are not allowed to drink, but you could trade it with someone who does. Once someone drinks my mead he never wants to drink anything else, so make sure you mention where it came from. What say you? Do we have a deal?”
Fahid looked at the gun in his hand, still red in the face, and nodded without a word.
“Good.” Khan landed a heavy slap on Fahid’s shoulder and turned to Simon. “We are done here. Tell your brother I honoured my debt, but don’t spread any tales. If people knew I gave you an honest trade my reputation in this town would be ruined.” He laughed again and did not wait for Simon to answer. “Have you met Dominique yet? She’ll take care of you lads. Go downstairs and get some food. The kitchen is still open.” He clapped his hands again and smiled to himself. “It’s always open here.”
They shuffled out of the room and went downstairs, where they ate the greasiest meal Rafik had ever tasted. It was glorious and disgusting at the same time, but he couldn’t eat much because he was fighting waves of rising panic. Again and again he heard Khan’s words in his mind: “I cannot cure you. No one can.”
He was not going home.
Rafik watched as the symbols on his fingers stretched and grew in front of his eyes, until he fell into them, enveloped by darkness. For a brief moment, he lay suspended in warm nothingness, but soon he heard soft, distant voices whispering. He could not make out what they were saying, but it didn’t bother him. He was comfortable, warm, and safe. The dots of light, which appeared before him in the darkness, drew his attention.
They grew into symbols, eventually becoming large enough for him to see their shapes clearly. Many reminded Rafik of his own tattoos, featuring crescent moons and dots, while others were completely different. He recognised numbers on a few symbols while others were completely alien. Once the wall of symbols eclipsed his horizon Rafik stopped falling and lay suspended, watching, mesmerized. It reminded him of an army of ants he and Eithan once discovered when digging in the garden of his home. The symbols kept moving next to and over each other, shuffling positions, rising and falling, disappearing as other symbols moved to the fore and reappeared elsewhere.
Rafik couldn’t take his eyes off the symbols. He felt a strong desire to touch them, to move them around, and a growing, inexplicable urge to organize them into a pattern. He somehow knew that this symbol should stand next to that one and the next one should go there.
He heard voices again, up above him, from far away.
“Don’t wake him up.”
“We can’t just leave him here like this.”
“It won’t make it any easier. Look at him, he is now at peace.”
A deeper voice said, “You shouldn’t have given him the spiked goat milk. We should have had the chance to say good-bye.”
“It is for the best—”
A more familiar voice interjected angrily, “If you ever hurt him, I hope I never find out about it, because I will kill you.”
“There aren’t many who have threatened me and are still breathing, but I assure you I have no intentions of hur—”
Rafik drew away from the voices; they were spoken from such a distance they could have been from a different world. Perhaps the voices were a dream, and the symbols before him were the only reality. Besides, he’d just realised something very exciting: there was a pattern hidden among the symbols. You only had to stop that one and move this one and cancel this line here. Rafik watched his hand stretch and extend to an impossible length, towards the wall of moving symbols. He couldn’t see his own fingers, but he was not afraid.
This is what is supposed to happen, this is how it should feel.
His hand plunged into the symbols, and Rafik discovered he could now stop some of them in their tracks. He exposed part of the pattern by holding down specific symbols with his fingers, but whenever he would take hold of one symbol the others began moving again, and since the symbols all had different patterns of movement he kept losing the pattern. Only after what seemed to be an eternity, Rafik discovered the symbols would stay in their places if he concentrated just enough on keeping them where he wanted them. It took him a while longer to figure out how to maintain control over several symbols at once. The more he concentrated, the better his control over a growing number of symbols became. He managed two symbols with relative ease, then three, then five, but soon after he realised it was fruitless. There were thousands of moving symbols in front of him, and he could stop only several at once. Rafik withdrew his hand, feeling disappointed. He could sense the pattern,