Jack Cloudie. Stephen Hunt

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      The high keeper patted Omar’s shoulder and walked away as if he was lost in thought. Quite extraordinary. The emir of the church had clearly seen the greatness within Omar where so many others had dismally failed. Omar’s reverie was broken by the cough of the master’s shaven-headed house manager, who was pointing towards the door, left open for him by the guard.

      Marid Barir was waiting for Omar behind the wide sparkling surface of his marble-topped desk, the master’s main office silent except for the twisting cooling fan in the ceiling and the cry of the gulls from beyond his massive open window.

      Standing up from behind his desk as Omar entered, the short, portly figure brushed his oiled goatee beard while he slowly paced by the window. ‘Good evening to you, Omar Ibn Barir.’

      ‘Master,’ said Omar. ‘We have filled the traders’ water tanks and loaded all the salt. They will be leaving shortly.’

      ‘Of course,’ said Marid Barir. ‘But that is not why I have brought you here this night. You have been weighing on my mind, boy.’

      ‘I am ever your loyal servant, master,’ said Omar bowing and smiling ingratiatingly.

      ‘You make a very poor one.’

      ‘I understand everything about water farming, master,’ said Omar, trying to sound hurt.

      Marid Barir scowled. ‘At least well enough to keep your desalination line ticking along while you find ever-more inventive ways to skive off. We have tried everything with you. But we never did beat you enough. Would you work harder if I had you flogged every morning?’

      ‘I would labour mightily even with the weals on my back, master,’ said Omar, trying to keep the smile on his face. ‘With the strength of three normal men.’

      ‘You are a poor liar,’ said Marid Barir. ‘I think I am done with you, boy.’ He picked up a rubber tube from his desk, opened it and took out a roll of paper to throw at Omar.

      ‘Master,’ said Omar, glancing at the paper as he unfurled it. ‘What is this?’

      ‘You were taught to read the panels on your equipment, well enough, boy. What does it look like?’

      ‘My—’ Omar looked at the elaborate calligraphy on the roll in confusion ‘—my papers of indenture.’

      ‘You are a freeman from today,’ said Marid Barir. ‘The Ibn is removed from your name. Struck away.’

      Omar fought down the rising sensation of confusion, all his certainties, collapsing around him. ‘But why?’

      ‘There was one week, Omar, when you didn’t wear that perpetual foolish grin of yours. It was a few years ago when you went down to Haffa’s graveyard to try and find the tombstone of your mother.’

      ‘It was not there,’ said Omar, remembering. But then, mother had just been a slave. How few there were left in the house to remember her after the plague had struck Haffa.

      Marid Barir walked to the window and pointed to the hill at the side of the house. ‘You will find her out there.’

      ‘That is the House of Barir’s family graveyard,’ said Omar.

      ‘I buried the best of them out there, Omar, after the plague. My wives, my daughters, my sons, my brothers. All of them, but one.’

      ‘I—’ Omar started.

      ‘It is not fitting for the last of this house’s blood to die in bondage, Omar Barir. Not even the foolish result of a dalliance with one of my wife’s maids.’

      ‘But …’ Omar looked at Marid Barir. The great, wealthy Marid Barir, so shrunk by age, by the worries of freemen. My father. Omar was rendered nearly speechless. All these years, he had known he was not fated for the life of a slave. But this? He had never imagined this. ‘Am I to inherit the water farms, the great house, to lead our people?’

      ‘You misunderstand my intentions, Omar. I have granted you your freedom. I do not intend to shackle you with anything else, least of all running the House of Barir.’

      ‘You do not intend to …’ The implications of the man’s cold words struck Omar in his heart.

      ‘My father,’ said Marid Barir, ‘your grandfather, was a renowned caravan master, but he left me nothing. I raised the money to lead my own caravan. I parlayed one trade route into twenty, and then multiplied that into enough to buy a seat on the guild of water farmers, to pay for the first womb mage with the guild spells for our salt-fish. I did this by myself. An ancestor’s wealth is a gilded cage, a curse you cannot escape. Your grandfather was wise enough not to trap his sons in such a cage. This is the gift I pass along to you. It’s a most valuable one.’

      ‘Then I cannot stay on the desalination lines?’

      ‘I could not demean the family’s name by having the last son of Barir toiling alongside nomads and slaves.’

      ‘Then what shall I do?’

      ‘What is it that you are always saying? Something will come along …’

      Omar gawked at his master. No, not my master. My father. Who would have guessed that freedom would feel so uncertain?

      ‘Congratulations, my son, you have discovered the joys of independence, the consequence of being a freeman. If I had known it would silence your prattling so effectively I might have done it years ago.’

      Omar waved his ownership papers at the man, no longer his master. ‘What shall I be?’

      ‘We are what heaven wills us,’ said Marid Barir.

      ‘What shall I do? Tell me what I should do now!’ Omar begged.

      Marid Barir tapped his greying hair. ‘Think.’ He barked an order and the house manager opened the door. ‘And go.’

      Omar looked at the scroll of paper in his hand. It had all the weight of a length of steel pipe from a salt-fish tank.

      The house manager shut the door as Omar – Ibn no more – Barir stumbled out.

      ‘You managed to remove the grin from his mouth, master.’

      ‘For an hour at least,’ said Marid Barir. ‘Now then, we must make time to prepare.’

      The house manager nodded sadly and began to unfurl documents from the satchel he had with him, laying them across the marble table.

      Omar blundered down the corridors of the fortified house, all thoughts of the views the pavilions’ windows and gardens afforded an idler forgotten as he struggled to come to terms with his new status. Free. Every certainty of his life broken into pieces. Is this what greatness feels like?

      Glancing up he saw Shadisa at the end of the corridor, walking serenely with one of the house cooks, an icebox of fish under her bare arm. Shadisa, the most beautiful of all the women in the house. And he was free. Free to marry her. Surely her scowling-faced father could not object now? Why, if anything, he should thank his stars that the last son of Barir favoured his lowly daughter!

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