The Forty Thieves Read online

  For Noah and Joshua

  This is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  251 Park Avenue South, New York, NY 10010

  Text copyright © 2019 by Christy Lenzi

  All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

  Yellow Jacket and associated colophon are trademarks of Little Bee Books.

  Manufactured in the United States of America MAP 1019

  First Edition

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Lenzi, Christy, author.

  Title: The forty thieves / by Christy Lenzi.

  Description: First edition. | New York, NY: Yellow Jacket, [2019]

  Summary: A loose retelling of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, set in tenth-century Baghdad, in which twelve-year-old Marjana tries to keep her brother, Jamal, from joining a gang while helping Ali Baba, their master’s cruel brother. | Identifiers: LCCN 2019018448 (print) | LCCN 2019019973 (ebook) | Subjects: | CYAC: Brothers and sisters—Fiction. | Slavery—Fiction. | Gangs—Fiction. | Ali Baba (Legendary character)—Fiction. | Baghdad (Iraq)—History—10th century—Fiction. | Iraq—History—10th Century—Fiction. | BISAC: JUVENILE FICTION / Legends, Myths, Fables / General. | JUVENILE FICTION / Historical / Asia. | JUVENILE FICTION / Action & Adventure / General. | Classification: LCC PZ7.1.L445 (ebook) LCC PZ7.1.L445 For 2019

  ISBN 978-1-4998-0945-9

  yellowjacketreads.com

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgments

  CHAPTER

  1

  The moon is a pearl against the black skin of night. I reach for it and sigh as I lie on my mat beneath the window. My little brother sighs, too. The snores of the nearby women and children drone in our ears like mosquitoes, but that’s not what keeps us from sleep.

  Jamal’s nose almost touches mine. “I don’t like when you wake me up with your dreams.” His worry forms a line across the smooth surface of his forehead. “If the dreams are about Mother, then why do they make you cry?”

  I draw in a deep breath. If only the scent of jasmine could fill me up like a bottle of perfume, I might not feel so hollow. “It’s not the dreams that make me cry.” I close my fingers over the moon until it disappears. “It’s the waking.”

  “Marjana.” He wiggles closer. “Tell me about Mother. How did our umi choose our names again?”

  “Umi said she never would have believed that she would hold a treasure in her hands until the day she held me, so she gave me a name that means little pearl—her precious treasure.” I roll the words over my tongue like savory morsels. “And you! You were such a dashing little fellow, she chose the name Jamal because it means handsome, of course.”

  “But what did Umi’s name mean?”

  I smile at the ceiling. “Wishes.”

  Jamal edges himself into the curve of my body. His skin smells of olive oil and goat’s milk. “Tell me the twirling story,” he whispers.

  “Close your eyes, little donkey.” I run my hands through his curly black hair. “I was just a twig of a girl—about seven years ago.”

  “How old?”

  “I was …” Using my fingers, I count off seven from my twelve years. “Maybe five years old. And you were fat and round inside Umi’s belly; she could barely hold the lute to play a song because you were in the way.” I tickle him between the ribs to make him giggle.

  “But one day Umi played the Twirling Song. She said if I spun around to the music, it would carry me to Allah, and when it stopped, His angels would fly me home. So Mother played the lute, and I twirled until all the colors of the world ran together. I spun until all the people, creatures, earth, and sky melted together into one beautiful, perfect paradise. When the music stopped, I fell to the floor, and the world kept spinning. Umi’s laughter danced around and around with the colors until everything finally slowed down, and the angels brought me back home.”

  Jamal gazes at the ceiling, wide-eyed. “Magic,” he whispers.

  “No, not magic, Jamal. It was a sacred Sufi ritual. Umi’s twirling was a way to feel closer to Allah.”

  “What’s a—”

  “Shh.” I trace his profile with my fingertip. I didn’t want to admit that I knew so little about Mother’s beliefs, though I longed to. “That’s my favorite memory of Umi.”

  Jamal’s shoulders tense. “Why did our umi give us away?”

  I sigh. I’ve explained hundreds of times. “You know that’s not what happened. When she died, her master gave us to his sister and her husband as a wedding present. And you—a messy, stinky little boy. Not much of a wedding present.” I dig my fingers into his side to make him smile again, but he shrugs my hands away.

  “You should learn to play the Twirling Song on your lute, Marjana. Then I’ll spin up to Allah and ask him to fly us both to Umi. Then you won’t be so sad when you wake from your dreams.”

  A lump swells in my throat. “I can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’ve forgotten the tune.” I push him gently away and rise from my mat. “I’m hungry. I’ll go slice a pear for us.” It hurts to think about the emptiness inside me that Jamal can see. I concentrate on stepping only on the patches of moonlight that slip through the openings in the carved window screens. I make it all the way to the cupboard without touching a single dark spot.

  Finding a silver paring knife, I cut the skin from a pear in one long coil as a thrush sings a lonesome tune outside the harem walls. The ribbon of fruit skin drops to the table, and the birdsong ends, replaced with a new sound—a low rumble of thunder.

  Impossible. The wet season won’t come for months, and there’s no smell of rain. Suddenly, little hairs on my arms stand up. The sound’s not an approaching storm, but the thundering of many hoofbeats like an army galloping into battle. The noise grows louder. The pear slips from my fingers and rolls across the mosaic floor. My heart changes its rhythm like a drum banging out a warning. Hoofbeats rumble in my chest and under my feet. When the knife shakes in my trembling fingers, I clutch it so tightly my knuckles turn white. It’s as if the wind of fate is hurtling toward me like a sandstorm.

  The storm of hoofbeats roars right up to the house.

  My heart pounds against my rib cage, trying to escape.

  With a sound like a thunderclap, doors crack and rip off their hinges. An army of men on horses crashes into the house with gleaming scimitars.

  I scream, frozen in place. Other screams pierce the air as the sleepers in the harem wake to a nightmare. Slave women grab their children. Mistress and her little niece and nephew clutch each other, their eyes wide with terror. Jamal’s face turns pale as a leper’s.

  A tall, thin man with a long dark beard and a face as cold as the devil’s ride
s up the front steps and through the doorway. His stallion rears and snorts, nostrils flaring.

  A chill shoots down my spine.

  Master’s away on a journey, but his eunuch khādim guards rush in, swords drawn.

  They’re outnumbered.

  The captain, this devil-man, spurs his horse and charges at their leader.

  I scream, turning away, but the thwack of the man’s scimitar says the guard is dead. Mistress sobs as the men crash through the house, grabbing silver, gold, anything valuable. The women scream and try to hide the children as riders whisk people onto their horses—they’re taking Mistress’s niece and nephew along with the slaves.

  Cook grabs my arm, trying to pull me under the table to safety. Jamal. My brother’s a stone statue, standing on his mat in the moonlight, miles and miles away.

  “Jamal!” I struggle free from her grasp and run toward him, but it’s like I’m moving through deep water. Faster, I order my legs. But I’m too late—one of the riders snatches Jamal and pulls the horse’s reins around to gallop away. I rush at the rider and beat his legs with my fists, forgetting I still have the small knife in my hand.

  A strong arm hooks my waist, jerking me upward. The devil-man.

  I kick and fight against his hold, but his arms are like metal bindings. I bite him hard, but he thrusts me into the saddle in front of him and locks me in a tight grip. I struggle to turn and see Jamal, but the man raises his fist in the air, shouts to his men, and spurs his horse toward the door. With a jolt, they burst out of Master’s house into the night.

  CHAPTER

  2

  Hoofbeats and wild shrieking fill the air as the riders thunder toward the Basra gate. The gate guardians are no match for the thieves, who overpower them and open the heavy iron double doors of the inner wall and then the outer. In moments, we’re galloping out of the city, over the moat, and into the darkness surrounding Baghdad. At first, I can only scream. The gold rings on the man’s bare arms cut into my ribs. The hard edge of the saddle presses into my thighs as I’m thrust forward with every stride of the horse. But after a while, my throat grows raw and my body stiffens against the pain.

  A tattoo of a green serpent curls around the devil-man’s arm, baring its fangs at me. I swear its eyes flash red for a moment in the darkness, but that’s impossible. As if in a trance, I stare at the blade of the paring knife still in my hand, hidden by folds of my qamis. I could plunge the blade into the man’s thigh and leap from the horse to escape, but I’d lose my chance to save Jamal. I inch the knife up until the blade’s hidden in my fist, the handle concealed beneath my sleeve.

  The riders finally halt at a cedar grove where a man with a drove of mules waits. My body has turned so numb, I can barely move. The riders dismount to rearrange their plunder onto the backs of the mules and tie up the captives. I strain to catch sight of Jamal in the darkness among the blur of people and horses, but the devil-man forces my arms behind my back to bind them.

  I hold my breath and clasp my hands together, hoping he won’t discover the knife, but he winds the rope around my wrists without hesitating. He turns me around and stands, looking at me in silence for a moment, his back to the moonlight. His face is in shadow, but he can see me plainly enough.

  I long for my gauzy headscarf. I like to let it “accidentally” fall over my face like a wealthy woman’s veil so people can’t see my eyes. Umi used to say my green eyes were beautiful, like sparkling gemstones. But eyes reveal too much. I don’t want people to see what I’m thinking or know what I’m feeling.

  The devil-man touches my cheek. His nails are long like a cat’s claws. He runs his finger down the side of my face and lifts my chin. It reminds me of the way Mistress’s cat plays with the mice it catches before killing them. The thought makes me wince, but I stand tall and straight, facing him. The tattooed serpent’s body winds all the way up his arm and coils over his chest. Instead of a tail, the serpent has another head, even fiercer than the first, with fire erupting from its mouth. As the man’s chest rises and falls with his breath, the serpent undulates back and forth, as if it is preparing to strike me.

  The captain turns and calls to the man in charge of the mules, who lifts me onto one of the animals. After all the plunder is secured, we’re off again, headed in the direction of Basra, a seaport trading town Jamal and I have been to before with Master and Mistress. The cold desert air seeps all the life from my bones. Before long, I drift in and out of sleep.

  I wake sometime later to the sounds of the men calling to each other. I glance around. The full moon has vanished, but the sky’s getting lighter in the east. Though it’s still dark, I see the riders more clearly now. They point to an oasis of date palm trees up ahead as they talk. The men are all bare-chested and tattooed. Gold and silver earrings, necklaces, and arm rings glitter against their skin. Their turbans shine a brilliant white.

  The men will surely sell the captives as soon as we get to Basra. My breath catches in my throat. Jamal might be taken from me and sent far away where I’ll never find him.

  The riders direct their horses toward the palm trees and soon dismount and stretch. I ache to do the same. Rough hands lift me from the mule and set me on the ground. The men do the same to the other captives. The prisoners’ faces are ashen, everyone wearing the same stricken expression of a person waking from a nightmare—unsure of what’s real and what’s not.

  Jamal calls out to me, his voice cracked and small, like a broken hand bell. I push over to him, and he falls across my lap, curling himself around my knees. “Marjana, they made the guard’s blood spill out on the floor,” he whispers. His thin body grows taut like a bowstring. I wish I could place my finger over his trembling lips, rest my hand on his head, and smooth his wild hair, his wild thoughts.

  “I know. But they won’t do that to us, Jamal. We’ll be all right.”

  “How do you know?” His voice is the squeak of a mouse.

  “We’re valuable, like the gold and silver around their necks. They wear them proud as peacocks, see? We’re treasure, Jamal.” I give a little laugh. “A dirty runt like you—not much of a treasure if you ask me, but this pig-headed captain of the thieves won’t listen to me. He seems to think you’re quite a prize.” I glance at the devil-man who stands with his arms crossed over his chest, surveying the plunder.

  Jamal’s lips tighten into a small grin. “Will they take us to a magic palace?”

  “Magic palace?”

  “They have magic, Marjana. When they stopped to load the mules, I saw one of them say a strange word and then open a little wooden chest, the size of Mistress’s jewelry box. He pulled out enough food to feed all the men. And not pan bread—banquet food, like Master eats. Whole roasted hens! Melons, figs, and cheese. Cakes and goblets of juice! All for just a quick snack, too. They didn’t even take many bites of it and just left the rest on the ground.”

  He must be dizzy with hunger and imagining things. Jamal is always looking for magic, like the kind you hear about in tall tales. I pretend to carefully consider his words as I strain my ears to listen to the captain. He’s ordering his men to plunge the captives in the stream to scrub them and have them dressed in clean clothes. The looming slave market makes my stomach churn, but I tilt my head and look thoughtful for Jamal. “Well, I’m not sure about taking us to a magic palace. It’s hard to know. They certainly seem to like gold and silver. They may decide they want to trade some treasure.”

  “Trade treasure?”

  “Well, a boy like you might get them some valuable jewelry in trade at the market. I bet that thought has crossed their greedy little minds. Look how they show off their pretty arm rings, strutting around like roosters.” I wet my lips. “But the thing about being traded is … well, we want to be traded together.”

  Jamal sits up. “They might trade me without you?” His mouth falls open.

  I shrug my shoulders, trying to appear unconcerned. “Those men don’t look very smart. You and I go together. Like a pa
ir of earrings. We’re too valuable to be separated, but they might be too stupid to think of keeping us together how we belong. Fortunately, I’ve already thought of that.”

  As I speak, I edge up to the palm tree until it almost touches my tied wrists. Opening my fist, I let the knife slip to the ground near the trunk behind my back and cover it quickly with sand as best I can. “I won’t let them separate us.” I lower my voice as one of the men approaches to make us start washing up. “Don’t worry, Jamal. I have a plan.”

  CHAPTER

  3

  The water feels cool on my feet. I hug myself to cover my chest and crouch down, wishing there were more water in the stream to cover me. Even though my body hasn’t changed from a girl’s to a woman’s yet, I no longer feel like a child and the thought of washing like this out in the open makes me wish I were invisible. But the thieves don’t seem to notice or care. To them I’m just a slave—property, a creature without feelings. The man roughly scrubs my skin with sand and a horse brush, bringing tears to my eyes, and then pours a bucket of water over my head to rinse me off.

  Some of the men stand posted around the grove to watch for any approaching parties, but most of the others have fallen asleep leaning against palm trees or lying in the sand. I count forty men in all, including the captain.

  After Jamal and I dress in clean clothes and I put on the red headscarf I’ve been given, the man ties our wrists behind our backs again and tells us to return to the tree and sleep. Now’s the time to dig up my knife. I’ll keep it hidden in my sleeve so I’ll be ready to cut our ropes and escape with Jamal. I don’t like thinking of the men who are keeping watch. But they’ll be on the lookout for intruders, not escaping children. Besides, the men won’t harm the captives—it would decrease their value at the slave market. At least I hope they won’t.

  I head back to the tree, but stop mid-stride. My heart almost stops as well. The devil-man’s walking toward the very tree where I buried the knife. I glance at the spot and almost choke on the breath that catches in my throat. The silver tip of the knife blade’s sticking up through the sand. Sunlight glints off it like a sparkling diamond.