A thousand enemies outside the house is better than one within

- Traditional Proverb

Abdul al Ba’ith Okmed took up his pen and prepared to write, knowing it would lead to his death. As the Housekeeper, in light of what had occurred he needed to lodge a thorough incident report just after sunrise. This report would be read by his superior, the Master of the Imperial House, but it was addressed to none other than the Caliph’s Retainer. What they read would almost certainly prompt them to ‘retire’ the Housekeeper.

The Housekeeper’s apprentice Zakariyya hovered at his elbow, impatient and watchful. He scratched at his scrap of a beard, a patchy affair that betrayed his age. “But what are you going to say?” he asked.

“Zakariyya, be quiet a moment. I need to think.” He sounded irritated, but al Ba’ith was touched by the boy’s concern.

The Retainer had entered deceleration just under six hours ago, and his ship was expected at the docks at dawn, the customary twenty-four hours before the Armada, the Winterface and the Caliph himself.  That left al Ba’ith barely three hours to write a narrative of his failure.

The Caliphate remained strong precisely because it did not admit ambiguity in Imperial affairs, and yet he was about to burden the Retainer with a situation of great uncertainty. As the primus inter pares the Retainer would be practically compelled to put him on a proscription list, and al Ba’ith would be well beyond the reach of the Advocate, of that he was certain.

If the matter at hand was ambiguous, then, his own fate was not. Despite this he was determined to write a succinct and accurate account, and then to decide what was to become of the boy. Al Ba’ith sighed. ‘Make me some coffee, Zakariyya. I need to write now.’

From: Housekeeper Abdul Ba-ith Okmed At Verdant Riyadh (encrypted)

Office of the of the Kafes

To His Excellence, the First Among Equals, the Retainer General of the Great Caliph (May He be blessed):

This report concerns the security of the Caliphate, and is designated ‘ALIF.

- natural eyes only -

Most Excellent Sir:

By now you are aware of the threat to the Caliphate.

As the Keeper of the House my first duty is the isolation of the Kafes, and the prevention of any external incursion into its walls. In this regard I have performed my duty, as there has been no attack upon, or breach of, the Kafes.

Al Ba’ith paused as Zakariyya handed him a delicate porcelain cup filled with a bitter-smelling coffee. The boy looked uncertain, and didn’t seem to know where to put his hands. Al Ba’ith sighed.

“Zakariyya, what is on your mind?”

“Teacher, where is the Prince?”

“I don’t know”, the older man said simply.

“But how can that be? How can you not know? Is he behind the red doors?”

Al Ba’ith met this with silence. He was always amazed at the flexibility of young minds. Here the boy was, wondering if the Prince was behind a stout pair of locked doors, and yet the fact that the doors had simply not been there a week ago did not seem to trouble him. Al Ba’ith glanced at him over his cup, and then without speaking returned to his writing.

The second and more important part of my duties is to know the whereabouts of the Prince at all times. In normal circumstances this second duty is a natural consequence of the first. However, these are not normal circumstances, and I have failed the Caliph. The Prince is no longer in the Gilded Cage.

No point avoiding the plain fact of it, he supposed. The law would be drawn down upon him regardless, and anything other than the bare facts would merely irritate the Retainer and hasten al Ba’ith’s fate.

When I arrived at the Kafes I took the key from within my belt, and placed it within the Seal. I opened the doors without difficulty. As the lock still knows the key and the key remembered the code of my skin, I can say with certainty that no-one else has broken the Seal.

Upon entering the Kafes, my apprentice and I sought out the Prince to request his permission to attend to the House. Although we searched the entire Kafes three times, he could not be found.

The Kafes had always been considered a strange edifice, perched high above the Seat and built right into the sheer cliff wall, and many stories were told about what supposedly happened within. The facts, such as they were, were more straightforward than the rumours: the Kafes, or ‘Gilded Cage’, had been built by Hamzah II two hundred and twenty-seven years before, shaped to form a glittering prison within which the Caliph’s brothers could be sentenced to luxurious, pointless lives. Every Caliph since Hamzah II had used the Kafes to ensure that the most potent threat to their own power, the legitimacy of their male siblings, was neutralised in this way.

Al Ba’ith turned to the boy. “What have you learnt from me this last year? If the Seal of the Kafes is not broken, then where is the Prince?”

They both knew that there was only one answer to this, as there was only one way out of the Kafes. That was through the pair of doors leading to the cliff path. They were the only doors to the building, and with great iron bars across all the windows, the only point of entry from the outside world. If the Seal was unbroken, and the guardstations on the cliffs above and below the Kafes had not reported any activity or trespass, then the conclusion was inescapable.

“If the Seal is unbroken the Prince must be within the Gilded Cage”, the boy intoned, as he had been taught.

“Exactly.”

“But he isn’t within the Kafes.”

“That’s true.”

The boy paused. “I don’t understand, Housekeeper.”

“Yes. Well, nor do I, Zakariyya, but the Caliph will want to know where his brother has gone, and how it is that he has not left the Kafes, and yet is not within.”

The building was luxurious and for a house it was large, but not large enough to conceal the Caliph’s brother and his companion. Their search had been thorough. At any rate, the Housekeeper knew every inch of the Kafes intimately, having studied it since childhood. This had only compounded the shock he felt upon entering the Map Room to find a new pair of doors, blood red in colour, set into the far wall.

The doors were impossible: the doors were new.

That was the essence of the problem.