The Secret Fund

Writer’s Note: ‘I’ll write more short fiction,’ he said, before getting too wrapped up in editing to do so for months. This is a rather short piece, but I think it packs quite the punch into that reduced word count. 2,000 words, 5-10 minutes to read.

The Secret Fund

If anyone were to take a good, hard look at Naztab’s books, they would soon notice the discrepancy. To be sure, the mysterious sums were loosely disguised as unexpected windfalls on a variety of unrelated investments. But they came in too regularly, at too similar an amount, for anyone to be hoodwinked for long. Naztab’s books were a diary and a history to her, and she cared too much for their accuracy to perform more than the most cursory of deception. Besides, none read them but her. The countermeasures came only from an abundance of caution.

Where the money actually came from, Naztab herself was unsure. From her husband, Armin, was near enough the extent of her knowledge. The first time he had given her the money – more than his monthly salary as a mid-level bureaucrat in the Department of the Interior – he had called it his share of some bet. The second time, he had said nothing, and neither had she. On the third instance, she had asked. He answered after the fifth.

Money paid to him out of a secret fund, he said, for services best left unspoken. No, he was not in danger; she had no reason to be afraid. He hinted at corruption in the department – foreign espionage, even – and a few tapped to uproot it. She was proud of him, and pleased with the money, though Armin cautioned her to be discrete with it.

Discrete she was. The couple and their three children stayed in their modest house in a crowded eastern district of the great Mhatasrand, city of a million souls and capital of the Lydesi Sahandom, though they could have afforded better. She avoided investing it all at once, instead slowly adding to her portfolios to make the growth in their wealth appear natural, until she was the envy of the other monied wives, all of whom came begging for her secrets.

She felt secure and proud in her life and her wealth, which she lavished upon her children and her husband as much as she could without giving away the extent of that affluence. The way that the other wives crowded around her at the baths, or the merchants scrambled to talk to her at the coffeehouses, like she was the sahan himself holding court, gave her the warm glow of a subtle, indescribable pleasure.

It was on such a trip to the baths – she went to the large and expensive Bathhouse of the Twin Serpents, these days – that she first noticed she was being followed. The noon sun was hot and the air dry, with a wind that felt pleasing on the face but grabbed irritatingly at Naztab’s hair and shawl. She noticed him as she stopped to give alms to a worthy looking beggar woman. He, too, stopped, awkwardly taking refuge by a little alleyway.

When she resumed her walk, she looked back and so confirmed her suspicions when he emerged to follow. She stopped, miming that she had dropped something, letting her look back as he found an excuse to tarry and keep his distance. Yes, he was definitely following her.

A tall man, which had helped him stand out to her in the first place. His billowing trousers and shirt were white, with a jacket and tarboosh of a matching deep blue. Taking in his clothing and darkened complexion, she would have labelled him a labourer of some kind, until she noticed the long knife thrust through his sash. A thug for hire, perhaps, or off-duty soldier. A distinction without a difference, in truth.

Naztab quickened her pace, her heart following suit. The baths were only another quarter mile away. Spying an opportunity, she cut into the White-Gold Bazar, zigzagging through its stalls before coming out at the exit closest to her destination. Surely she had lost him.

She slowed her breathing to appear unflustered as she approached the grand bathhouse. Now she could think, she had to ask herself why under Fariph anyone would want to follow her. To rob her, most likely, but there were easier targets and she kept to the safe streets. Yet, if she were not a target of opportunity, then he must have been following her specifically. Her stomach sank. Whatever her husband was up to, maybe it did pose a danger.

Entering the now familiar baths, she tried to expel such thoughts from her head. The steam and water would take away not just her grime but her worries.

However, she could not relax. This time, when the other wives came up to her, she recoiled away from them, wondering if they knew the mysterious origin of her wealth. If any of them were in league with whatever force had sicced that man on her. She washed and departed hurriedly.

She would go next, as always, to the Grand Gulf Coffeehouse, meeting point of merchants and industrialists and bankers and monied wives – those, like her, who managed their family’s finances due to their husband’s careers in service to the state.

It was a short walk and her furtive glances assured Naztab that the man had not returned. Finally able to breath normally, she took her customary divan and ordered a pot, waiting for men to approach her with their new ventures.

One sat down opposite her while she was inspecting a new blue and saffron carpet along one wall. She turned to greet him and almost screamed.

‘Naztab shal Tanaz Frashtyra?’ asked the man who had followed her.

‘You don’t belong here.’ It was true: his clothes stuck out, drawing attention to them.

‘I could just be a servant, delivering a message,’ he said, shrugging.

‘Someone like that would leave after the message was given. Immediately.’

‘Then I shall.’

 ‘Who are you?’

 ‘Lieutenant shar Bokhtar, ma’am. Of the Sahansguard.’

‘Why are you following me?

‘Because I don’t think you know. And I asked for the chance to forewarn you, to guard against that possibility.’

‘I would like you to leave now.’

‘You’re not as good at hiding it as you think you are. People have noticed. My superiors have noticed. Naturally, we started looking at your husband. But if you are innocent, I would rather you not suffer for his… indiscretions.’

‘My husband is a good and loyal man who has nothing to fear from the sahan he loves, nor the true and honest representatives of His Sovereign Majesty.’

‘I have passed on my warning, ma’am. I shall leave you.’

Good as his word, the man rose from the floor and departed. Naztab watched him go with fear in her eyes. Serpents protect her, what was Armin involved in?

Her husband returned late. He knocked on the door and looked surprised when it was his wife herself who answered.

‘I sent them away already,’ she said by way of explanation, meaning their maid and cook. ‘And the children are abed.’

Armin removed his hat as he entered and stroked his beard thoughtfully.

‘And what have I done to deserve a night alone with my wife?’ he asked, cocking an eyebrow. The amusement on his face – the face that had been Naztab’s constant companion these past two decades – died the moment he saw her stony expression.

‘What have you done, sun in my heart?’ she asked.

‘What do you mean, moon of my eye?’

‘The money. Please. I need to know.’

He brushed past her and entered the receiving room. She followed.

‘Why are you asking this?’ he asked, pacing. ‘I have told you that it is best you not know.’

‘A man confronted me today, at the coffeehouse. An officer in the sahansguard. He said we were in danger.’

Armin’s entire demeanour changed in an instant. A rabbit hearing a twig snap nearby.

‘Pack what you can,’ he said. ‘And wake the children. We need to leave.’

‘What? Leave? No, of course not.’

‘Yes. This instant. Gather whatever ready money you have. We’ll have to bribe our way out of the city and onto a postal coach.’

‘Where to?’ Naztab asked, as if she were even considering this madness.

‘Targanze, eventually.’

Naztab laughed, then started when her husband didn’t join in.

‘Flee the sahandom, for a Theman exclave? You have taken leave of your senses, husband.’

‘We can make it.’

‘We’re not doing it!’ Naztab swallowed and sat, her body a mess of nerves. ‘Please, sun in my heart. For the love you bear me, tell me what it is that you have done.’

‘I have taken money in return for performing intrigues.’

‘From the secret fund.’

‘From a secret fund. Not from ours. From that of the Theman navy.’

Feeling ill in mind and body and soul, Naztab rolled forwards onto her knees. ‘You’re a spy. For our enemies.’

‘Don’t say that! I passed on no truly sensitive information. And look what it bought us! The wealth that you and our children deserve.’

Naztab began praying. ‘Horned Serpent, protect my husband. Hooded Serpent, hold him from danger and uncloud his mind. Guardian Spirits of our people, I beseech you, with Andar and Ansurz balanced in my heart.’

‘Stop that,’ her husband demanded.

‘How could you do this to us!’

‘For you! For you.’

‘I cannot raise our children in a foreign land.’

‘Then you shall raise them without a father.’

Tears filled her eyes and, looking up and blinking through them, she saw them mirrored in his.

‘I didn’t ask for this,’ she said, defeated.

‘I’m sorry,’ he replied, impotently.

Her heart clawed at her and she saw what she had to do.

‘Go,’ she said. ‘Now. We shall follow as soon as we can. But it is you they will look for.’

He crossed over to her and took her in his arms and kissed her on the forehead but she flinched back and fell in a heap and he looked down on her and his tears wetted her hair and she wondered if he saw the grim, fatalistic determination in her eyes.

‘I love you,’ he said. He left.

Slowly, Naztab uncoiled herself. For a few minutes, she wept. Wept for her husband and her children and herself. After a while, the tears were gone. She dressed to depart, and prayed once more, and left for the sahansguard barracks to ask after a Lieutenant shar Bokhtar and throw herself on the sahan’s mercy.

She wondered as she walked if she would ever see her husband again. Would he stand trial or be quietly executed without one? She hoped his body was returned to her, for cremation in sacred fire. Briefly, with a glimmer of hope, she considered the alternative. Escaping from the city, fleeing hunted to the arms of the sahan’s enemies, living the rest of her life in exile and, mostly likely, poverty. Could they do it? Unlikely. Would the resultant life be worth living, for her or her children? She did not believe so.

Not that life in Mhatasrand would be easy. The widow of a traitor. Most of their wealth, she was sure, would be seized. But she and her children could stay in the only city they had ever known, surrounded by the rest of their family. She could move to some other district – would probably have to – where none would know her.

She reached the barracks. The lieutenant was summoned. The soldiers made ribald jokes about this woman coming to him under the light of the moon and she pretended not to hear them. For a moment, she considered fleeing. But then shar Bokhtar arrived and it seemed fate had already decided for her and she was but a leaf rushing down its river. She betrayed her husband. She never did see him again. She regretted it, later, but, down another stream of fate, where she acted differently, she regretted that too.