Daggers in the Dark (Book 3 of Hanthalah)

Interlude

The characters Father Robert and Lady Ceolsige are based on AncientDoom and desrelly respectively.

"Shit!" the passerby cursed at her. "Watch where you're fucking going."

"Sorry!" Ruqayya bint Abu Ruqayya spared him a moment's glance before pushing back into the packed crowds of the marketplace, shoving past heavy bodies that let out similar cries and curses as she rushed past in her haste.

She clung close to the basket filled to the brim with her father's goods lest she misplace any of the pieces or risk a robber snatching the entire thing off her. She knew that was unlikely in al-Fustat, but it never hurt to be cautious.

Her father – well in truth, he was not really her birth father – had once been an Egyptian Roman merchant who resided in Alexandria. When Egypt had been taken by the Arabs, Andronicus had moved to the new fiscal capital of the province – al-Fustat, the city of Arabs in Egypt.

Ruqayya skidded to a halt before one stall in particular. She had been to Syria with Andronicus before, Hims and Damascus specifically. The marketplace here was nowhere near as packed as the ones there.

Perhaps it was because al-Fustat was a newly constructed town, still primarily made up of tents rather than stone and wooden structures. There were not as many merchants or men of trade here as one would think; only the ones the Arab governor saw as the most skilled and the most fit to provide goods for government officials and common soldiers alike.

"Good morning, Lady Ceolsige!" Ruqayya greeted the pale skinned Frankish woman. Ceolsige's golden hair caught the light of the morning sun, shrouding her in a golden aura of sorts.

She shifted her icy blue eyes on Ruqayya and arced her eyebrows at the sight.

"What do you want?" she snapped at Ruqayya in flawless Greek.

Ruqayya could not help but grin at the woman's endearing attitude.

"You know what I want," Ruqayya teased her.

Ceolsige waved her arms about her in exasperation.

"You new generation!" the woman suddenly shifted to the Arabic tongue. She continued her bickering in her shrill voice spouting incoherent venom as she switched to yet another tongue, one alien to Ruqayya.

Finally, Coelsige handed her the piece of linen Andronicus had requested of her before.

Ruqayya grinned. "I accept your offering, humble servant."

She stuck her tongue out as Coelsige scowled at her.

"How's the husband by the way?" she inquired after the Frankish woman.

Coelsige threw her arms up again and spoke Greek. "Malaka! Probably in that hovel he calls home."

Ruqayya winked at her, carefully placing the linen into the basket before darting off again.

She basked in the wind lapping against her cheeks, the protests of passersby grumbling about her carelessness.

She spared a thought to what life must have been had her birth father not abandoned her. Andronicus spoke little of the man, and even less about the circumstances that led her to this life. He did not speak about her mother at all.

It makes no matter, Ruqayya thought as she pushed past the flap of Father Robert's tent. Life is decent the way it is.

The scrawny straw-haired man perked up at the sight of her, his gaze shifted from that of the Holy Book to his sole disciple.

Father Robert pounced to his feet with a boyish grin on his face, the stark opposite of his merchant wife, and bolted across the tent to wrap his arms around Ruqayya in a tight embrace that left her croaking for breath.

"Can't...breathe," she managed to gasp out, smiling all the while.

Father Robert, a Frank as well, relinquished his clutch on her and giggled.

"I suppose you don't have some time to discuss our Lord and savior Jesus Christ?" dimples formed on Father Robert's cheeks when he grinned widely.

"I just dropped by to check on you," she replied. "I need to deliver this basket to Father."

Father Robert nodded in understanding.

"Perhaps another time," she promised him, plucking the wooden cross at her neck out of her skirts and giving it a peck with her lips. "We have all the time in the world, don't we?"