Achillrandownhisspine at the familiar voice. Had he conjured her with his thoughts? He turned around to discover his ears had not deceived him. Seeing Rahma, not only in town but drawing attention to herself, froze his brain. He blinked stupidly at her.
She waved merrily at the group. “How are things going?”
Rais stood closest to her. He turned to face her but didn’t apply the intimidating posture he had first used with As’ad.
“Hello, miss,” he returned the greeting politely. “May I ask who you are?”
“My name is Rahma.” She beamed at the crowd. As’ad had a moment to think that maybe it would be alright. Then her next words froze his heart. “I’ve been following the Pied Piper.”
The village elders turned to look at him with varying degrees of curiosity and/or hostility. The younger set hadn’t yet caught on that a drama was about to be acted out, right here in the streets. Sweat gathered at his hairline. He had never imagined this scenario and his usual quick wits had utterly abandoned him.
“He keeps trying to persuade me to stop,” Rahma informed them, her smile never wavering. “He even found a lovely family with five daughters—can you imagine that, five daughters?—who were headed to the coast and could drop me off at home on the way. Obviously,” she continued, “I didn’t go with them.”
She said that last almost as if it was a joke that they could all share. As’ad could see no way out of this mess, but to his surprise, the crowd seemed to be softening. Two or three of the older ladies exchanged glances, and he heard a couple murmurs about “young love.” His obvious discomfiture about the whole situation seemed to endear him to them. All too soon, and without quite knowing how it came to be, As’ad found himself seated at the head table with the mayor and several of her cronies.
Rahma was there, as well, naturally. She had wrapped the village elders around her little finger simply by telling the truth. As’ad chose to stick to the truth as much as possible in order to avoid inventing details that might trip him up later. Rahma wielded the truth as a weapon. Her absolute unconcern for the judgment of others had them all eating out of the palm of her hand.
She told them about Suha, and then flat-out asked if anyone knew anything about misplaced orphans. One of them mentioned that the married couple who cared for the occasional orphan had been relieved of their most recent dependents. The twelve-year-old twins had long-lost relatives somewhere out west. A sour-faced woman had collected them not long ago. This interested Rahma greatly. Her gentle but direct questions established that the woman was most likely Hadia, and that she had been accompanied by a girl matching Suha’s description, along with two young men. As’ad worried that Rahma was getting her hopes up for nothing. Dark hair and brown eyes described pretty much the entire population of Sharamil.
That night, Rahma and As’ad were welcomed into two different homes to sleep. In the morning, they were gifted a goodly amount of supplies on top of the fee he didn’t ask for yet received anyway. More than one person asked Rahma if she wanted an escort back home. She stubbornly stuck to her plan, though she did unbend enough to send another letter to her parents, and the general feeling seemed to be one of goodwill.
When one of the matrons asked Rahma if she felt safe traveling on with As’ad, he relaxed at this evidence that they weren’t going to blithely allow her to continue her outrageous behavior. She reassured them that he had been the perfect picture of a valiant knight.
“I don’t think I could persuade him to behave dishonorably toward me even if I tried.”
“And have you been trying yet?” a middle-aged woman asked in a confiding undertone that As’ad pretended he didn’t hear. He also pretended not to notice the way Rahma twinkled back at the lady.
Before he knew it, they were back on the road heading west, alone but for a handful of rats and a much heavier handcart. How did this come about?
“Where did the name ‘Pied Piper’ come from, anyway?” Rahma asked, right around the time As’ad lost hope that she would change her mind and return to Qarya. “I mean, obviously the ‘piper’ part makes sense. But what’s the deal with the ‘pied’ part?”
He shrugged helplessly. “I can’t answer that. I’m really not sure where it came from, either.” He kicked aside a pebble in his path. “One day, the town I was visiting just called me that. Apparently, word spread. Now everyone does.”
The moniker was a mystery, but he benefited from the anonymity. No one viewed him as a separate person with a real name, and that buffer provided another layer of safety from the authorities.
“It’s better than the Snide Piper, I suppose,” she mused.
He looked at her askance.
“Or the Tried Piper, which suggests a criminal background.” Before As’ad could object, she threw out a few more. “The Dyed Piper? Fried Piper? Guide Piper almost works.”
“Must it rhyme?”
She looked at him. “At this point? Yup!” Her fingers began twisting her braid around. “Hide Piper? No, Hide the Pi—No. Lied . . . to Piper?” she sounded out with a forming grimace. “Nah.”
Her hand got too tangled in the braid and she accidentally tugged her head to the side. This didn’t stop her rambling.
“Dried? Tied? Chide? Eyed? Well, I should hope so,” she muttered the last to herself, then continued at her regular volume, “Bride, cowhide, seaside?”
“How about the Wide Piper?” As’ad offered, unable to resist any longer.
Rahma burst out laughing. “Can you imagine? Everyone would expect you to come waddling into town!”
He felt a surge ofpridefor making her laugh.
She wiped at her eyes a moment later. “Well. I suppose it doesn’t really matter, does it?”
She smiled at him, and he smiled back without thinking.
