Hypatia
It was only after filling Younos up with sweet wine, cheese and dates that Hypatia broached the subject of his clandestine studies of the paranormal. Spirits were a good way to get young Younos to talk in a manner that was less than circumspect. 

“Are you training in the old magic, brother?” she asked him, deciding that a direct approach was for the better.

He looked shocked at her question, but his guard wasn’t completely up, as he was tending to inebriation.

“Where did you get that idea, Adelphe?’ he said.

“I’ve looked at your scrolls, Younos,” she said, simply.

He started, and then was lost in thought for a moment. 

“I know you practice magic, but I want to know what your designs are, brother?” she said.

He had a look that Arabian horses often got when they sighted packs of jackals in the desert. It was a look of panic mixed with determination. 

“You entered my room?” he said.

“This is my house, brother,” she said, keeping her voice even but very dangerous. 

Younos understood veiled threats, so he towed her line just then. 

“Okay, okay,” he said, making a conciliatory gesture with his palms. “I’ll tell you about those scrolls, Adelphe.”

She nodded. 

“I have been spending all my dinars on obtaining a certain strand of magic all these years,” he said.

“What strand would that be?” she said.

“It is called Inanna’s charm,” he said simply, and then looked down at his feet. 

She gasped. Inanna was the ancient Sumerian goddess of love. Love, not marriage. She was particularly known as the goddess of extramarital liaisons and sensual affairs. The goddess herself was supposed to prowl the streets and taverns in search of carnal adventures. Inanna’s charm was a mystical amulet that endowed the owner with infinite sexual potency and a hypnotic hold over whomsoever he or she desired. Younos was blushing after admitting this. No wonder. 

“Younos!” she said. Her tone was a mixture of consternation, condemnation and admiration. Consternation, for she hadn’t expected that to be his target. Condemnation, for he appeared to be frittering away good money over something that was probably only a myth. Admiration, because he had backed his ribald ambition with everything he materially owned. “What have you been doing with your life!”

It was a rhetorical question. He stayed silent for a moment. Then he went on.

“Adelphe, I mean to accomplish it,” he said. 

Why? Why this? She saw no point in asking him out loud. Of course, her brother was always ogling pretty girls, and his baby face didn’t really make him a much sought after suitor among the opposite sex. That could be one reason. He was always looking at girls but never sleeping with them.

She wondered whether she should talk to a lovely Arabian prostitute she knew about ‘helping’ her brother with his confidence. The girl was known for her succulent breasts, and even had people in the Sultana’s court as her clients. She decided against it. She had to learn more about his progress in the mystical arts.

Mediha
The assassin had not been apprehended. She had vanished entirely into the secret labyrinth that played secret mistress to the palace’s vast halls and bedchambers. Princess Mediha realized that whoever had tried to drown her knew the palace catacombs intimately. She also had her suspicions as to who instigated her assassination plot. 

The Nubian bitch was at the center of her web of suspicions. The assassin had been female, and she had been a few inches shorter than the Nubian, but she could have been hired by her. Alternatively, it was entirely possible that her own impressions during the brief and violent struggle with the assassin were mistaken, and that the woman who had attacked her was indeed Tuya, but her memory betrayed her presently. She did not know the truth of it, but her conviction that Tuya deserved to die grew by the minute. 

Her scimitar was gripped in her hand, and the princess paced her bedchamber, turning thoughts over in her mind. She had sent several of her personal guard to look for Tuya, after giving them a detailed description. She had issued orders that Tuya be dragged to her chambers alive. She must be alive, so that she could mete out her justice personally. There were only five more days to the end of the month, when she left this palace for good in order to accompany her Nubian prince into a foreign land and into a new life, and she wanted to anoint her new life with the blood of the Nubian bitch. 

Habiba, one of her guard, returned presently. She was Arab and stood a good six feet in height, with an absolutely erect posture and powerful shoulders and arms, great breasts that hid behind her bronze armor, and muscular thighs and hips that could easily be employed to crush an opponent in unarmed combat. She removed her bronze helmet and saluted the princess.

“A woman of that description was found several miles from the palace, my princess,” she said, meeting the princess’s gaze. 

Habiba was a proud warrior. She didn’t bend the knee to anyone except the Sultana, and Mediha felt trepidation and an equal amount of glee in ordering her around. She maintained eye contact, knowing the rules of the game of dominance. Mediha wondered at the irony of her name. Habiba meant ‘darling’ in Arabic, while Habiba was nobody’s darling, except perhaps her birth mother’s. Still, the princess couldn’t bring herself to associate her guard with anything feminine, given her mien and her attitude. 

“Bring her to me immediately,” she said, keeping her voice sharp, and making sure Habiba understood who was boss here. She felt glad inside. The Nubian bitch was finally hers, after two days of waiting and enduring. The fruit of patience is indeed sweet, as went the ancient saying. 

“Drag her into my presence,” she said.

Her mother was still unaware of her actions.

The true desire for vengeance is a cold and spine chilling affair. It is a far cry from the passionate and hot idea of vengeance that much of the world entertains. Princess Mediha’s desire was more the latter. It wasn’t the calculated vengeance of someone who has planned for years to have delivered cold comeuppance. It was rather a royal hothead making plans while she was driven by her naturally passionate nature. 

Such hotheaded vengeance can be turned around, if the right person is there to do it. Unfortunately, the right person wasn’t there to do it just then. Tuya was dragged into the princess’ chambers. Her caramel face was fired up with fury. She had no idea what the princess’ idea was, but she had been dragged here when she was attending to the most private business a human being can conduct. Needless to say, she was outraged, but she was also smart enough to know that she was in trouble and that the princess was the one with the power right then and there. 

What was clear to the astute observer was that Tuya was genuinely nonplussed. She had no idea why she had been dragged to the palace by the princess’ guards. Her first impulse had been to fight, being a warrior herself. However, one look at Habiba, and at the size of the contingent that came to get her, told her that she may lose her life in such a fight. So she came along nicely, but she was clear about her confusion to them. 

Princess Mediha accused her to her face, as she was dragged in. 

“This is the Nubian bitch who tried to assassinate me,” she said. 

“The princess is mistaken,” Tuya said, knowing that she had to be cautious in controlling her own temper. “I did not make any such attempt.”

Habiba struck her across the cheek, and Tuya staggered from the blow. She glared at the muscular guard, but kept quiet.

“Are you sure it was this woman, princess?” Habiba asked the princess.

Mediha was furious, and her immediate desire was to take her scimitar and open Tuya’s throat ear to ear. But she hadn’t seen her assailant’s face, and that woman had been smaller proportioned, something befitting someone who was more lithe and light on her feet. She was sure Tuya had been the person who hired her though. 

“It was her,” she said, hoping that immediate execution was something that they could carry out then and there.

Habiba nodded. 

“This is a serious charge princess,” she said. “Her majesty the queen must be informed of this, and this assassin must be tried in court, unless the Sultan or the Sultana decide otherwise.”

Mediha felt panic rise up within her. That would mean lots of delay, and she was going to run away from the kingdom at the end of the month, which was only a few days away. She wanted instant justice, delivered via scimitar. That is how hotheaded vengeance thinks.

Her guards were here though, and princess or not, murder is a serious affair that would detain her in the kingdom. Her mother would increase her guard and have her under observation around the clock, at the very least, when she learned of the attempt.  She could not afford that. She had taken a stand though, so she couldn’t backtrack and allow it to be known that she wasn’t sure that it was Tuya. She knew deep within that she wasn’t, but she also knew deep within that she wanted to carve the Nubian bitch’s heart out.

Princess Mediha started thinking hard, while her guards awaited her next words. 

Imi
The Teutonic whore was called Olga. Imi followed her to her quarters and saw her enter her home. She smiled to herself. Sometimes prayers just don’t cut it. The girl was an immediate rival. Imi’s lovely brown eyes filled with hate seeing the whore. She would share her angel with nobody. 

She was holding a little wicker basket in her hands throughout. She opened the lid. Hor peered out. His hood trembled for a moment, and his body that was a mix of red and pale gray slithered out of the basket. Imi smiled. Her pet hayya (snake) was a very useful tool at disposing of rivals. Her prince had many lovers, so she would eliminate them all, one at a time, with gentle Hor’s gentle venom. She could almost feel Olga’s lungs collapse even before Hor bit her. An Egyptian cobra is such a lovely pet.

Nadia
The blackness of the abyss had a cool feel to it. Not the soothing coolness of the shade, but the creepy coolness of the serpent. Nadia felt the sensation of coolness creep up her legs, as she slipped into the velvet abyss. The abyss was somehow supporting her, and she wasn’t falling fast. Instead, the abyss was creeping up into her. 

The voice of a thousand desert storms whispered in her ear now, and she trembled in fear. The voice was sibilant in one syllable, and rolling thunder in the next. She paid close attention. 

“The fruit of a thousand dark hearts was his that you sacrificed, young onnnnnnnnne…”

She shivered, the voice was no longer in her ear, it was in her head. The thousand desert storms were in her head and there was nothing she could do about it. 

“But he was your sacrificccccccce…”

She felt the voice dart from one corner of her mind to another, exploring her memories, becoming intimate with her love and compassion for her ‘sister’ Nadira, and leaping into her mothers’ arms many years ago when she was a toddler. The voice spoke, but as it did, it opened up Nadia’s store of memories, so that they spun out as though they were compelled by the haboob (summer sandstorm that occurs in the region around Sudan). 

“So yours is the greater fruittttttt…”

Every one of her identities, as daughter, as friend, as slave, as a girl turning into a young woman - came rearing up, asking her to own them, and as she did, they dissolved as if they were castles made of sand that were in the path of a sandstorm. 

“We are yours to command, mistressssssssss….”

The thousand desert storms went silent, and Nadia felt pure power inside her head, heart and solar plexus. She looked around her. She was exactly as she was before. A girl who was going to become a woman in a few months. All her wounds had healed, but she was the same. Except that her brown eyes were a velvet black, and if you looked into her eyes, you were liable to lose yourself. That, and she had enough power at her beck and call to wipe out all of Arabia if she so chose. Or perhaps she could help it.

She put her right foot forward on General Mohal’s head, and his skull shattered to smithereens from the power of her touch.