"The Heart of Abdul-Rafi," by Deanna Sparrow
Soraya climbed nearly a hundred feet before a guard appeared at the tower’s rim. The man’s head was an inky shape against a background of glittering stars, and the view from his perspective would have been the gold and onyx patchwork of light and shade that was Afsaneh at night.
The night was cool, but Soraya’s palms sweated regardless. A climb in the dark, with only the slightest holds for fingers and toes, sapped energy and frayed the nerves. She ascended without ropes or other gear. Her clothing was light as a whisper: black silk with loose sleeves and leggings to allow the most unrestricted movement. The delicate stone cornice was within reach; she gripped it firmly with one hand and let go with the other. For a breathless moment, she dangled over space.
By the time she stole onto the safety of the narrow walkway, the guard had gone. Soraya heard nothing but the gentle whisper of the wind. She crouched and let the ache in her arms fade. It was not real rest, but it was enough until the task was done. From here, the tower’s dome climbed skyward. Soraya leaped to catch the tiled edge and pulled herself up. The dome was like a steep hill paved with ceramic cobblestones. Soraya’s slippers made no sound as she dashed to the summit.
Given a chance, she would have liked to stop and appreciate the spectacle of the city all around. Lamps glowed in sentinel minarets and scattered windows across Afsaneh while whole quarters slumbered in pitch-blackness. The golden dome of the Blessed Mosque glittered despite the hour, lit by eternal flames on the grounds surrounding it. But she had no opportunity to revel in hidden sights, no matter how spectacular: dawn came swiftly in this season.
The dome was open at the top because this tower belonged to the maguš Abdul-Rafi, and it served as his window to the stars. Abdul-Rafi read the skies like a divine scroll, and his birth charts were in high demand in the wealthy households of Afsaneh and beyond. The wonder of his seeing-glass – a device of brass and polished crystallum – was well known.
Soraya paused at the oculus. She caught her breath and carefully peered over the edge into the chamber below. In her imagination, Abdul-Rafi was there; his attention turned to the heavens, and he saw Soraya immediately. An alarm was raised, and she was trapped. In reality, the maguš was not there. Soraya saw a shadow-swept hall where no light burned and no person moved.
Abdul-Rafi’s seeing glass was there. Its eye was broader across than a serving platter, and Soraya saw the reflection of a million stars caught in its heart. The device’s brass fittings were skeletal, suspending more disks of crystallum – each smaller than the one before it, Soraya noted – at regular intervals. A framework of bolts and rods held the apparatus firmly; it could easily take Soraya’s weight.
She flitted across open space like a bird’s shadow and lighted on the seeing-glass. Descending along the device’s structure to the floor, Soraya was absorbed into a pool of darkness. She was inside the home of the maguš.
“Abdul-Rafi has prolonged his life for two hundred years,” the maguš named Qutaybah said, “but his magic is not that of spells or potions; his arcana lives in finely crafted cogs, coiled springs, and inlaid metal. And his masterpiece is his clockwork heart.”
Soraya listened to the old maguš. They sat on cushions beneath a shadowing carpet suspended on carved posts, surrounded by the gentle green of Qutaybah’s garden. Palm trees spread green fingers in the mid-morning sun, and water was in the air.
Ordinarily, Soraya thought little of the tradition of veils and discreet clothing, but in times like these, she was glad of the anonymity. Though she sat close enough to touch Qutaybah, the maguš saw nothing of her but dark eyes. Perhaps he might remember her voice, but Soraya deliberately said little.
“The heart is the repository of life,” Qutaybah continued. “Any mortal’s heart would cease to beat after a few score years, but if it could be replaced… then there is no limit to a man’s years.”
“Stealing the heart’s desire is one thing,” Soraya replied, “but stealing a heart is impossible. I’m not an assassin.”
Qutaybah shook his head. He was an aged man, and when standing, his beard drooped almost to his waist. His eyebrows were likewise overgrown. Of his features, only his sharp, beak-like nose refused to be drowned in a sea of white. “You won’t need to cut the heart from his body. It is a mechanism, not a thing of flesh. I know from spies within Abdul-Rafi’s household that it must be wound each evening, and for this to be done, it must be removed.”
“Without a heart, surely he’d die.”
“Somehow, Abdul-Rafi has mastered this,” Qutaybah said. “While he sleeps, the clockwork heart is readied for another day of stolen life. In the morning, the device is returned to him. While man and heart are separated, a thief could strike. A thief could put an end to the cycle.”
The observatory was filled with objects Soraya didn’t recognize or understand, but they were secondary to her task. From Qutaybah, she had a painted cloth map that showed the path she would traverse from the tower’s peak to the clockwork heart. She also held an image of the heart in her mind’s eye. Qutaybah shared with her a drawing of the thing so that she would know it with certainty when she saw it.
Soraya stole from the observatory on silent feet. She paused at the door, but there was nothing to fear. In the corridor outside, it was nearly lightless, though a lamp burning low somewhere beyond the curving passage provided the softest of soft orange glows by which to see.
According to Qutaybah, the maguš slept well below, in the belly of the tower, while the heart was kept only a short distance away. Soraya still didn’t grasp how a man and his heart could be separated, but she understood that Abdul-Rafi was not wholly a man, at least as the word was taken. She stalked farther down the corridor until she saw the lamp: it burned in a sconce at the head of a set of wide steps leading down.
In the light, she could better see the subtle decorations worked into the walls of the passage, underlined along one side by two thin bands of brass. Soraya touched the metal and felt a gap with her fingertip—a slight vibration carried. The purpose of such a thing eluded her.
Soraya descended. Scant feet from the next floor and another barely flickering lamp, she heard a sound like a spinning wheel from somewhere below. She stopped and pressed into the shadows. The sound went on for a few moments and then ceased. A handful of breaths later, it resumed, closer this time, before stopping again.
The number and character of Abdul-Rafi’s servants were unknown even to Qutaybah. He knew only that the servants were forbidden from passing the halls at night. Once their master was comfortably in his chamber for the evening and his heart taken to its resting place, the house was cleared. Qutaybah saw this as Soraya’s opportunity to move freely. But there was something else here; Soraya felt the air stir, and the spinning-wheel noise continued.
She was exposed on the steps, without even a doorway to use for concealment. Looking up, she estimated the distance to the beamed ceiling, lower here than in the corridors at either end. The noise drew closer still. Soraya coiled her body and sprang. Her fingertips caught a gap between the wooden joist and the wall. She scrabbled with her other hand and found a second purchase.
Soraya was small and light, and in these circumstances, both were a boon. She clung to her finger-holds and brought her legs up until she was wedged spider-like between two closely spaced lengths of timber. Perspiration wicked away from her skin through the light silk of her clothing.
Something clattered, metal on metal, in the passageway below, and then Soraya saw it. The device moved on twin wheels along the wall’s brass bands, a rod at its base extending into the exposed slot and securing it parallel to the floor. A pair of crystallum disks, not unlike those in the seeing glass of the observatory, rotated around an axis of tooled gears and intricate metal interlaces. When the thing moved, it made its distinctive noise. At the base of the steps, it halted again, and the magnifying disks performed a strange, halting orbit. Soraya saw a dull red light glimmer briefly within the mechanism.
Her muscles trembled. Only the tension in her limbs kept Soraya suspended from her vantage point, and she was already weary from the climb. More perspiration beaded on her face. A heavy droplet fell onto the steps below. The metal thing did not appear to notice.
The device ascended the stairs along its track of brass. It passed directly below Soraya. A fire started in her shoulders, building slowly. An echoing pain blossomed in her thighs.
It proceeded out of sight by the curve of the steps. Soraya let her legs swing loose and dropped. She felt the impact on her knees more than she should. Tomorrow, there would be bodyaches she would not expect.
Soraya hurried to the bottom of the stairs. All of the doorways were on the left side, facing inward toward the center of the tower. Now she understood why: the device’s track likely circled the entire house, proceeding along the outside wall unbroken. The observatory ended its journey, some hidden room below its keeping-place. She stopped and listened and then checked Qutaybah’s map.
She felt the presence of sleepers behind the closed doors she passed. Moving through the home of the maguš Abdul-Rafi was like stealing across rooftops in the night, surrounded by the energy of dreams.
The corridor made a half-circuit of the tower and ended with another set of steps. All was perfectly quiet. The pain in her limbs faded, salved by quick movement, confidence, and anticipation.
Soraya heard the sound of the spinning wheel’s return. Rushing down the steps two at a time, she reached the next landing. She found the nearest door unlocked. Inside was utter, windowless blackness. Soraya eased the door nearly shut but left a sliver through which she could monitor the progress of the mechanical sentry.
The device appeared almost immediately, trundling along its brass track. Near the foot of the steps, it came to an abrupt halt. Soraya held her breath. Once again, the crystallum disks revolved around the machine’s central axis. They locked into place, one behind the other, focusing a warm red light on a spot on the stone floor. At the base of the steps, there was a tiny splotch like spilled ink. The sentry seemed particularly interested in it.
Soraya’s chest clutched. She reached for her waist and the silk map of Qutaybah tucked into her sash. The cloth was gone, lost on the stairs in her haste. Outside the corridor, the mechanical sentry made a series of clicking noises, a metal cricket playing its night-song.
Nothing happened. Soraya tensed behind her door. Perhaps there was another exit from the chamber she was in, though without even the light of stars to help her find her way, she was more likely to give herself away. Thieves stumbled in the dark.
The sentry didn’t move. After an interminable pause, it made its cricket song again, but this time, an echo came from farther along the corridor. From somewhere out of sight came the tinny clatter of insects scurrying, and then the mechanical sentry’s companions were revealed.
The new devices walked on three jointed legs with sharp-pointed feet. Their pod-like bodies were hard-shelled metal from which jutted a tubular snout. Three arrived at the sentry’s call. The metal things sang to each other briefly and then parted. Two climbed the steps while the sentry returned to the tower’s base. Only one walker remained.
It was not the device’s size that made it threatening; stretched to its full height, it would not have reached Soraya’s waist. Instead, it was the precise and alien way of it. The impression of a long-legged bug was strong, but the polished metal of its shell and the fitted joints of its limbs denied the natural.
The walker hovered over Soraya’s fallen map. It had no visible eyes, but it pointed its nose toward the floor as if scenting the cloth. Soraya’s blood chilled. Could it smell? Her body was damp with nervous sweat. Any beast could track the scent with ease in the dark.
A length of bright, silvery metal slithered from the walker’s nose. Segmented like an earthworm, the member extended until it could scoop up the map. Clear ooze coated the length of the tentacle, making it shiny.
In the north, some monkeys used their tails like another hand. Soraya was reminded of the tiny, furred animals by how the walker caressed and examined the silken map by touch, using only its repulsive feeler.
The walker dropped Soraya’s map, and the metal appendage snaked back into its shelter. Wheeling away from the upward-leading steps, the walker headed directly for Soraya’s hiding place.
She retreated into the unlit room. Her extended hands touched shapes concealed under heavy drapes of muslin. In her haste, she nearly upset a tower of shrouded junk. The hidden pillar still rocked when the walker opened the door, and light from the corridor lamp spilled across the threshold.
Soraya concealed herself beneath a shelf, crowded on two sides by cloaked forms. Her hiding place was imperfect: if the walker ventured too far into the room, she would be visible.
The walker’s legs made sharp metal sounds on the stone floor. Soraya searched the far corners of the room, now visible in the feeble illumination. This chamber was small, crowded with objects and densely packed shelves, with no other outlet. She touched the hilt of her jambiya, sheathed at the small of her back, and waited.
The walker proceeded two feet into the room and then another. Its metal feeler extended, the appendage searching beneath and around obstacles. The feeler seemed too long to fit inside the walker’s shell; it could reach as high as the tallest stack, its explorations delicate, almost dainty.
When the walker was halfway into the chamber, Soraya unsheathed her jambiya. The curved blade was, for her, a weapon of last resort. Soraya’s preference was to move into and out of a place without once having been seen or heard. Some thieves preferred to leave a string of bodies in their wake to guarantee their escape, but Soraya was not that sort.
She coiled to strike. The walker searched high and low with its tentacle, finding small places even a child couldn’t use for concealment. Soraya was almost completely exposed, but the walker did not mind her. Only then did she confirm it had no sight; its feeler was its only sense.
The oil-slick member extended in Soraya’s direction. It searched out the muslin-covered objects on either side of her and touched the shelves. Soraya slipped her jambiya back into place. When the tentacle came for her, she danced with it.
The walker touched the spot where her hip had just rested, but Soraya lifted herself above it. As softly as a blind man touches, the silvery feeler explored the wall behind Soraya, but she was beneath it. She put one leg over the extended length of the walker’s tentacle, and when it moved sideways, she slipped to the other side.
She picked her way around the walker as its search continued, avoiding the feeler like she would shun prickly vines in the garden of a wealthy merchant. Once, she was close enough to the device to put her hand atop its metal carapace, but she did not. Instead, she slipped out of the room and into the hallway.
Soraya gathered up the map from where it fell. She took a moment to consult the route and continued her descent, moving quickly. Though the walker likely would take time to explore the rooms on its floor before proceeding in Soraya’s footsteps, she did not know what else might await her in the darkened halls of Abdul-Rafi’s house.
She found no other walkers along her path. Now she understood why the servants of the maguš were told to remain in their rooms at night: the strange devices were given free rein to search for intruders. Another of Afsaneh’s wealthy or ruling elite might have used trained beasts as sentries, but Abdul-Rafi was not this way. Qutaybah warned that the maguš’s enchantments were of a particular kind, unrelated to the binding of djinn, the creation of potions, or the manipulation of unseen energies. Soraya remembered briefly the slithering feeler of the walker and shuddered.
When she finally reached her destination, Soraya estimated she was two floors above the garden level. Abdul-Rafi’s tower was the central pillar of a broad and lovely area walled on all sides against the busy traffic of the river district, Kawthar. Even among the minarets and houses of the wealthy, Abdul-Rafi’s redoubt was striking, though none had any suspicion of what strangeness lurked behind its brilliant golden stone.
The entrance to Abdul-Rafi’s private chambers bore no lock, though the door was decorated more elaborately than the rest, its carved wood accented with gold leaf. Soraya listened at the portal for sounds, both human and not. She heard neither, but her nerves did not steady; she half-expected the return of the walkers or the trundling device with its rotating eyes of crystallum.
Gentle light came from beneath the door. Soraya eased her way inside. She was slender enough to slip through a gap no wider than two spread hands. Once through, she pressed the door closed. If the mechanical sentries returned, she wished to leave no obvious trail.
Illumination came from coals glowing orange in twin braziers at the room’s far end, flanking double doors drawn shut. The chamber was longer and narrower than others she’d entered. Pillars set along the walls cast deep shadows on alcoves decorated in turn by mosaics of reflective stone. But the ceiling captured Soraya’s attention: overhead on the length of the chamber hung inverted drums, taut skins directed toward the floor.
Soraya didn’t move. Once more, she felt the distinct tremor of presence as though the drumskins were somehow attentive to sounds and movement in the chamber beneath them. On another night, Soraya might have dismissed such a thought as foolish, but this one had already seen strange sights and stranger encounters.
She took her first step into the breathless room and then another. No blades sprang from the walls or the floor. No bizarre device intruded on the chamber brandishing weapons. Soraya heard nothing and saw nothing, but she did not allow herself the luxury of relaxation. She disliked the sensation of the upside-down drums above her. Reaching the far doors was a relief.
According to the silken map, she would find the clockwork heart beyond. The maguš slept deeper within, but Soraya had no desire to intrude on Abdul-Rafi’s slumber. The heart was her only goal. As she told Qutaybah, she was not an assassin.
Soraya pressed on. The double doors swept open on silent hinges to reveal the resting place of Abdul-Rafi’s mysterious heart: a circular chamber with a high, domed ceiling and inlaid metal all around. Lit by the daytime, the sight would have been a brilliant variety of reflections, silver and gold in tone, centered on the pedestal at the focus. Here was the clockwork heart, on display like the rarest of gemstones, without guard or defense.
The device was beautiful, its housing made of precious metals, while its interior was a riot of moving wheels and springs all cunningly arranged to dazzle the eye. Abdul-Rafi’s heart hinged open, and its pedestal was not just for presentation but rather a part of the device’s care: various rods and keys connected to the heart’s workings.
In her time, Soraya had stolen virtually anything that could be taken to hand, from gems to gold to items valued only by those with specialized tastes. Nothing had ever overwhelmed her like the clockwork heart did; there was something hypnotic about the metal puzzle of its insides, everything in motion toward purposes Soraya could not begin to comprehend.
She came closer, the doors behind her left open and forgotten. At an intimate distance, the quiet working of the heart was finally audible, sounding nothing like the thrum of a natural heartbeat. Soraya was aware of her pulse racing, thudding in the veins of her neck, and the creeping tingle of excitement crawling along her spine.
When she was a little girl, Soraya saw a ragged sha’ir summon a minor djinn to make lights, fire, and smoke for the delight of onlookers. The sha’ir trapped the djinn in a golden snuffbox, and the young Soraya longed to see him open it again, but the performance was done, and the sha’ir collected coins from the crowd. Standing before the heart of Abdul-Rafi, Soraya felt some of that tense expectation again. What strange energy powered the mechanism of the heart? If she looked closely enough, would she find djinn at work among the springs and cog-wheels?
So absorbing was the clockwork heart and so rapt Soraya’s attention to it that only after some time did she realize that there was no other exit from the room. According to the map she carried, Abdul-Rafi’s private room was still ahead, but the far side of the heart chamber was unbroken by any passage or portal. She checked again; this was the place, but the indicated doorway was missing. This awareness made her ill at ease.
Soraya was likewise aware of the time being wasted. First, she must disengage the heart from the pedestal’s gears. She drew her jambiya and began to prize the connecting arms away from the heart. A part of her cringed at the damage done to the fragile workings, but so long as the heart itself was intact, all was well.
Soraya was so engrossed in the task that she did not hear the subtle trundle of wheels, but when the far wall of the heart chamber split along a vertical shadow and retreated in separate halves, she snapped to attention. She left the heart where it sat and crouched with jambiya ready.
The maguš Abdul-Rafi did not walk but arrived on brass tracks like the sentry eyes. The maguš’s bed was a casket of gold, silver, and bronze, filled with tiny limbs and levers akin to those maintaining the clockwork heart. Abdul-Rafi wore the luxuriant robes of his station, but the silken cloth was pulled back to reveal a gaping cavity in his chest. Soraya saw metal inside the maguš’s body, nestled in the moist, naked flesh.
“Here I am,” Abdul-Rafi announced. His bed rolled to a halt scant feet from the pedestal. The maguš was thin, ancient, and withered. An apparatus cupped one ear while another obscured one eye. His left hand was sheathed in a metal gauntlet. “If you came for me, then here I am.”
Abdul-Rafi still seemed asleep, though he spoke: his exposed eye was shut, and the ancient maguš was held tightly in the embrace of his strange bed. An air of awareness was about the man. Soraya froze.
“You can hide, but I have seen evidence of your passing,” the maguš said. “I have heard you in the hall beyond and searched for you in the rooms above. You have no secrets from me.”
Soraya licked her lips. Her palm was sweaty on the hilt of her jambiya. If she were so inclined, she could pounce forward and slash the ancient maguš’s throat, but to do so, she would have to enter the altered space around the man. Power emanated from his skeletal form.
“Speak if you have a tongue,” Abdul-Rafi commanded.
Soraya hesitated. “I’ve come for your heart,” she said at last.
“Then take it. But you will never reach the outside. I will hound your every step.”
At that moment, Soraya understood why there were no servants and guardians in the halls and on the steps of Abdul-Rafi’s house. He was not just watched over by cunning mechanisms of his design but safeguarded himself through the night by touch and vision and hearing. The maguš lived without a heart by becoming his home.
The ancient maguš smiled. His was the grin of a corpse.
Soraya heard the click of walkers behind her. She threw herself aside. A sleek tentacle snapped in the air where she’d been. She rolled and found her feet. Entering the chamber were a half dozen or more of the blind devices, their feeling-members no longer searching but anxious to grip and strangle and kill.
The jambiya was a good weapon against men and might even manage to sever the metal tendrils of the walkers, but with so many crowding the smallish chamber, it was more likely that she would be overwhelmed. She put the heart pedestal between herself and the things, less afraid of what Abdul-Rafi might do from his bed than of his three-legged surrogates.
Abdul-Rafi’s uncovered eye was open now, as dark and glittering as a black jewel. The walkers used his sight, flanking Soraya on both sides. Without the maguš’s eye, they were forced to rely on their feelers to navigate.
Thought and action were the same: Soraya turned and plunged the curved blade of her jambiya into Abdul-Rafi’s open eye. Half the length wedged into soft tissue and bone and then stuck fast.
The maguš convulsed in his bed. Fresh blood and other fluid spurted from the ruined socket, soaking the man’s gaunt face. Abdul-Rafi made a strangled noise, more outrage than pain. The walkers stopped their advance and thrashed their tentacles violently.
Soraya left the jambiya in place. With both hands, she seized the clockwork heart and levered it from its perch. Delicate metal made the sound of snapping twine as it tore loose. Free of the pedestal, the heart hinged closed and was no larger than a man’s fist.
Abdul-Rafi’s voice sounded behind her: “I am… eternal.”
The walkers’ distress eased. Soraya spared only one look back at the bloody maguš, whose birdlike chest still rose and fell with no heart at its hollow center. She fled.
More three-legged walkers stalked the passage outside, and Soraya heard their brethren close behind. The crystallum eye – Abdul-Rafi’s vision by night – hurried along the corridor, its wheels clicking urgently along the wall track. Soraya rushed the metal hunters and leaped over them. She landed lightly, and the walkers spun to follow.
She could not outrun the crystallum eye, but the walkers were not so quick. Soraya took the steps upward two and three at a time, bounding until the muscles in her thighs screamed for relief. When she saw the door to the observatory, she slowed only a little, striking the portal at a run and plunging into the darkness within.
The walkers’ tentacles seemed delicate, but they were as powerful as an elephant’s trunk. From the shadows, one snared her ankle, and Soraya slammed flat onto the observatory floor. The air rushed from her lungs. Her grip on the heart faltered, and the device skittered away, lost in the gloom.
The observatory’s open roof allowed enough light for Soraya to see the two other walkers who waited in ambush for her escape. They came on quickly; one caught her wrist, and the other sought a killing grip around her throat.
Soraya forced herself up and crawled toward the base of Abdul-Rafi’s seeing-glass. The walkers were heavy, but not so much that she couldn’t pull them. Sharp metal scraped on stone. The grip of the coiled feelers turned painfully tight.
She spotted a glint of starlight on the shell of the clockwork heart. Her free hand found the ladder-like frame of the seeing-glass. Soraya climbed and dragged the walkers with her. A sudden weight pounced onto her back. The pointed tips of the third walker’s legs stabbed Soraya’s flesh.
In moments, the rest would be at the top of the steps and into the observatory. The walkers hauled against her. Climbing farther was impossible, even if she possessed the heart.
Soraya threw herself backward into their embrace. The sudden reversal stumbled the devices, while the third found itself swiftly crushed between Soraya’s body and the floor. Soraya heard and felt the walker’s metal shell crack under the impact.
The grip on her ankle loosened enough to allow her back onto her feet. She grabbed the tentacle that bound her wrist with both hands. The metal was slick with lubricant and cold. Soraya yanked the walker off its legs and swung it into its brother with force enough to entangle the long brass limbs with one another.
The walkers scrambled to separate. Both let go of Soraya. She still felt pain where they’d seized her.
Soraya gathered up the heart from where it fell. At the exact moment, the door to the observatory burst open, and the legion of Abdul-Rafi’s walkers spilled through. Soraya sprang onto the seeing-glass frame and scampered for the oculus. At the top of the seeing glass, she paused only long enough to thrust the heart into her pouch. The walkers climbed rapidly behind her.
She made the roof and slid quickly down the dome to the walkway, only to land at the feet of the patrolling guard.
“What? Who?”
The guard grabbed his weapon. Soraya hurdled the edge of the walkway. The gardens far below beckoned. She found a grip on the carved stone and, with foolish speed, began her descent.
“Stop,” the guard shouted, but then he shrieked. The walkers spilled over the side of the dome, a dozen of the three-legged devices. They rained down upon the startled man, and he screamed as if there were devils loose beneath his skin.
Soraya did not slow her descent, and when finally she dropped to the maguš’s gardens, she didn’t pause. Her flight didn’t end until Abdul-Rafi’s tower was well out of sight, and the rose hues of dawn painted the eastern sky.
The heart of Abdul-Rafi ticked quietly in her pouch, as patient as time.