Desert Rhapsody - Chapter 27

Chapter 27

It was an extraordinarily unconventional line of thinking, but based on the requirements they had laid out, it seemed to be the only path left. Otherwise, where could they possibly find a woman who fit the conditions? Abal sat there, stunned for an instant. Then he understood what Jiang Yuan meant. It had clearly exceeded the bounds of his imagination, and that handsome face twisted at once.

“Me?!”

“You are the most suitable candidate.”

Abal was indeed the most suitable candidate. Although he was male, and his bone structure was fundamentally different from a woman’s, he was still a youth, still growing. His height had shot up so fast that his muscles had not yet had time to fill out his frame, and the agility his profession required meant he had never pursued brute strength. If he stood up, he was still two or three sizes smaller than those grown men who swung swords and sabers.

That was enough. Jiang Yuan watched calmly as his expression cooled after passing through fury, disgust, mockery, and hatred.

“…Fine,” he said. “Then let’s try it.” He arched a brow, his gaze dark and vicious. “You’re a woman, Jia Nan. I hope this idea you came up with because you dress as a man is actually reliable enough.”

There were three ships crossing the Red Sea each day, but only the early-morning departure was a large sailboat capable of carrying horses. Abal slipped quietly into the stables and drugged all the fodder in Saeed’s horses’ stall. That would delay him by at least two or three days. The horses Lady Fatini had given them had long since been pawned at some inn along the way; their brands were too conspicuous. The only ones they had left were Night and Sun.

That was enough. Jiang Yuan and Abal led their horses aboard. The ship that crossed the strait was about the same size as the ones she had seen in the harbor before, yet it felt far more imposing. Before sunrise, wind from the deserts of Africa had already carried in a red-yellow haze of dust, and the sea was veiled in a rusty red. Merchants who needed to transport goods had moved everything aboard and arranged it days in advance. Their cargo would be shipped to Alexandria, and from there the trade routes spread across all of Egypt. Jiang Yuan and Abal, however, only needed to spend one day aboard before disembarking on the opposite shore.

Now, just before departure, these sailboats were taking on more lone travelers. The bottom of the ship, over a dozen meters tall, was sheathed in lead and moored at the slick harbor. A huge wooden gangway had been lowered, wide enough for pedestrians to lead horses across. The fare for this was higher: each person had to pay fifteen silver coins.

Sun was not used to the rocking sea and panicked as they boarded. But they would not arrive until sunset. The witch doctor from an African tribe was a foul-smelling old man, his face painted with strange colors. He inspected their horses for disease. Once he confirmed there was no problem, he took the money, drew odd symbols in the air above the horses’ heads, and handed each of them a handful of grass. In a muffled accent, he said, “Feed it to them.”

Abal patted Night, soothing him, then led him to the assigned spot and fed him the grass. Jiang Yuan did the same. Sun and Night were not in neighboring stalls. Sun was a young filly who had seen little of the world, and under the effects of the unfamiliar environment and the drug, she grew restless and uneasy. Jiang Yuan struggled to calm her. After a while, a gust of wind swept past her side-Abal had brought the drowsy Night over as well and tied him beside Sun at the same manger.

The stable boy nearby shouted unhappily, rattling off something in Egyptian. Abal replied with a couple of sentences and tossed him a few copper coins. The boy counted them over and over several times before handing Abal a marked wooden token, then walked away to keep an eye on someone else. Jiang Yuan said, “Thank you.” Abal said, “They’ll feel more at ease together.” Arms folded, he stood beside her and watched Night calm Sun for a while. Sun knelt down and fell into an uncomfortable sleep.

Night, on the other hand, slept standing up. Abal shot Jiang Yuan a sidelong glance. He still had a bit of grass in his hand; he had not fed all of it to Night. He gave a snort. Jiang Yuan ignored him.

They squeezed into a second-class cabin. It was cramped, with a damp, moldy smell inside. The sheets were messy and bore suspicious stains. But in any case, they were not here to sleep. Abal used water to draw a crude map for Jiang Yuan on the table. Both shores of the Red Sea were lined with steep cliffs, impassable to people and livestock, while traveling by ship was too slow. They would disembark at Dahab, then head north for Suez. From there, the Nile River branched southward, soaking the edge of the desert and nourishing countless oases. Bakum was one of those many oases, a territory encompassing three or four towns.

Aside from the unpredictable shifts along the river trade routes, the road from the moment they got off the ship until they reached Suez was fixed. Saeed was in a hurry; he would not choose to travel by ship. He would take the same route Abal had chosen: disembark at Dahab, then ride toward Bakum. If they moved fast, the journey would still take ten days. It was tight, but it was enough.

Abal said, “We have to stop him in Suez.” Jiang Yuan said, “Don’t move.” The ship was rocking, making the work extremely awkward. The dagger hidden in her boot was sharp and cold as it pressed against Abal’s face, shaving the beard from his cheeks. One careless slip and she could draw blood. But this face was now the most important thing they had. Nothing could happen to it. Jiang Yuan only cleaned up his sideburns, then lightly brushed them with the pad of her finger. The smooth skin, still belonging to a youth, felt full and supple beneath her touch. Only when the eyelashes so close to her trembled did she realize that Abal’s lashes were that long. He turned his head away unnaturally and let her continue.
Although Abal had accepted the fact that he would be dressing as a woman, he clearly had not prepared himself for it mentally. Jiang Yuan said, “Let’s leave it like this for now.” He had no objections, nor did he want to see what he had become. They ate a little, then seized the chance to sleep. No one wanted to get into the bed; it was damp, cold, filthy, and a complete mess. Their packs contained blankets, so they wrapped themselves up and slept with ropes fixed to one wall tied around their waists.

It was an experience Jiang Yuan never could have imagined either. By the time she got off the ship, she felt as if her waist was about to snap. When she went to collect the horses with the little wooden token, the stable boy glanced behind her and said something she could not understand: “*(#).” In a Damascus accent, Jiang Yuan said, “Cut the nonsense.” She held out her hand, her gaze calm, signaling for him to move aside. The stable boy shuddered and stopped meddling.

Night recognized her and did not put up much resistance when led out. Sun, on the other hand, twisted her head and refused to move, costing Jiang Yuan a great deal of effort. Leading both horses onto the deck, Jiang Yuan found the woman wrapped from head to toe in a long robe amid the evening crowd and the fishy stench. Her headscarf covered her face. She was tall and slender, and beneath the soft fabric veiling her features, long lashes lifted to reveal clear, captivating blue eyes. With only those eyes and that high, straight bridge of her nose, anyone could tell she was a beauty. If one had to name a flaw, it would be that she was perhaps a little too tall, and too thin to be especially pleasing.

When she saw Jiang Yuan, she lowered her head timidly and followed. After two steps, Jiang Yuan scolded her under her breath, “What do you think you look like? Take smaller steps.” She was about to tear the skirt apart. The woman froze, then lowered her head even more nervously and meekly obeyed, following in tiny steps like every gentle, charming wife of Arabia walking beside her husband.

For some reason, Jiang Yuan inexplicably found it rather satisfying.

But no matter what, Abal’s shortcomings were still far too obvious. The bandit chief had never learned how to be a woman. From casting flirtatious glances to seducing men, he failed at all of it. Jiang Yuan dragged the two horses along, drenched in sweat, and found the nearest inn at the port of Dahab. After being ruthlessly fleeced in the tongue of Arabia muddled with a Beja accent, an ethnic group near the Red Sea, she finally managed to check in. This time, when she shaved Abal’s beard, he had enough energy to mock her. “You’re not much of a woman, and you’re not much of a man either. Can’t even hold your chest up.” Jiang Yuan shot back, “You’re not much of a woman either. Shut up, or I’m going to cut you.”

She shaved off his entire beard, leaving a loose ring of hair scattered on the floor. They had never been this close before, except for that night, for that kiss when they had both wanted to kill each other. Jiang Yuan could barely remember what Abal’s face had looked like the first time she saw him. Back then, she had just arrived, swept by a storm into the desert. Moonlight had plunged down from the sky and seized his arm guard. He had looked down at her from horseback, covered in blood from head to toe. When he removed his face covering, she had seen a handsome, clean-cut face, a cold expression, and blue eyes so deep they were almost unsettling.

Even that brief moment of distraction did not escape Abal. He laughed at her. “I knew you liked women.” In an instant, that half-smiling gaze took on the familiar wickedness that made her want to bash his head in. “Fatini touches you, and you never refuse.”

So he had indeed seen every interaction between Lady Fatini and her clearly. But this was merely a difference in aesthetics. Jiang Yuan, of course, preferred men without beards. Calmly, she said, “Take off your clothes.” Abal snorted. He had no choice but to start undressing. Strictly speaking, he had no reason to feel awkward undressing in front of Jiang Yuan, but when Jiang Yuan was holding a dagger and preparing to shave off his body hair as well, that was extremely irritating. Jiang Yuan only shaved his chest hair. In this era, there was no shaving lotion or hair-removal cream either, so she scrubbed with soap-pod water until her back ached and she was covered in sweat. When it came to his leg hair, she simply tossed the dagger to him. “Do it yourself.”

Forced to condescend to bend down, pick up the dagger, and shave his own hair, Abal sneered, “If I don’t butcher Saeed, I’ll butcher you.”

Jiang Yuan copied his manner, lifting her brow and returning the sarcasm. “I’m afraid you probably can’t beat me right now.”

As they traveled onward, they gradually perfected Abal’s image as a woman. He took on a new name: Jamila. The beautiful Jamila was a dancer from Persia, raised from childhood at great expense by a wealthy merchant. Only because the merchant family’s fortunes had declined had he been forced to sell her for two thousand gold coins. The merchant Jia Nan had placed exceedingly high hopes on her and intended to bring her to Egypt, make her famous along the Nile River, and earn money. Jamila only observed the dances of serving girls in the inns along the way and never responded to provocations from other women. Yet even without lifting her veil, men pursued those enchanting blue eyes relentlessly. Even if her gaze merely shifted and she glanced at someone, countless people would compete to present her with gifts.

A blue-eyed dancer from Persia had always been the fantasy of every man in the Arab Empire.

As Jiang Yuan continued on the road, she bought clothes and accessories for Abal along the way. She had to admit, this strange shopping need somehow satisfied a hidden instinct in her as a woman. Since she was disguised as a man, she had no need to purchase gorgeous clothing or jewelry, and the fashionable garments worn by dazzling beauties of mixed West Asian features, with high noses and deep-set eyes, did not suit her at all. Although Jiang Yuan did not really know how to buy clothes for a dancer from Persia, Abal seemed to have some experience. He would silently point at an item among the goods, and if she found it suitable, she bought it.
She bought bells and fastened them around Jamila’s ankles. She bought bracelets too, so that when Jamila danced, they would make a crisp, lovely accompaniment-though Jamila had yet to dance even once. She bought veils and wrapped layer after layer around Jamila’s long, elegant neck. The jewels sparkling over the gauze only made her skin look smoother, her collarbones longer and more alluring.

She bought a whole pile of cosmetics, everything from Egypt’s smoky eye makeup to India’s red forehead dots. She even bought wigs, switching up Jamila’s look again and again. Dressed in Jamila’s clothes, she would slip out to find prostitutes, sobbing to them with the excuse that she wanted to win back her husband, and learn some basic makeup tricks from them. Every night became her time to practice dressing up her doll. The pressure of time left neither of them with much energy to think about anything else: travel, makeup, learning to be a woman, imitating a man, and dancing. The night before they reached Suez, there was no town nearby, but the oasis outside the city was large enough to accommodate thousands of people. That day, news began to spread through the merchants’ circles: “A peerless dancing girl from Persia is here to drum up business!”

Night was normally the time to travel, but with such a rare beauty dancing, staying to watch was hardly a bad idea. Many people gathered in three rings, inside and out, to watch Jamila’s debut. In the dim yellow firelight, a temporarily hired bard plucked an oud and began to sing. The beautiful dancing girl emerged from the crowd, curved blade in hand.

Jiang Yuan stood among the crowd, her palms slick with sweat, watching the entrance they had planned and the dance she had rehearsed herself. Abal was good at knife dances. When he danced, he was no worse than any woman; it was just that the thought of dancing for men made his face darken, his movements stiff and murderous. Jiang Yuan had warned him to fix that habit, and Abal had spent two days brooding over it. But today, he seemed to have finally understood. Beneath the veil, his eyes were full of soft, charming laughter, and when they swept over the crowd, the temptation in them was proud and aloof. Jamila was tall and slender, not voluptuous enough, but her long hair was thick and glossy, and the jewels and flowers adorning her glittered brightly. Her long legs extended from the slits in her sheer gauze, bells ringing around her delicate ankles. Her dance was sharp yet seductive, drawing every eye.

The knife dance was highly masculine, but when performed by a beauty, it somehow made people’s blood run hot. Someone began beating a drum, stomping his feet and clapping along with the rhythm of the lute, stirring up the crowd. Jamila circled past him, the rings and bracelets on her jeweled hands clinking crisply as her fingers lingered around his wine cup with a teasing scratch. “Jamila! Jamila! Ohhh!” they shouted. In the firelight, the dancing girl’s skin and figure blurred in the heat rising from the ground. What remained in memory was only one vivid image: the pair of blue eyes beneath the veil. She curved her eyes slightly at the man in a smile, bending as if she wanted a drink. Without thinking, he raised the cup to her, but she immediately pushed him away and clapped her hands twice.

“Clap, clap.” The sound was crisp, like a proud, languid command. Behind the gauze, her faintly scarlet lips curved upward. The elongated corners of her eyes flicked in Jiang Yuan’s direction, soul-snatching enough to make the heart stop.

They earned quite a bit in tips, and some people even wanted to spend a spring night with Jamila. But Jiang Yuan, knowing full well how rare and valuable their commodity was, coldly refused them all and took Jamila through a gap in the crowd to slip back toward the inn. That was only an excuse. Neither of them wanted to return to the inn. They found a rock in the wilderness far from the firelight and settled there. With so many people around, wild beasts would not dare come close, so they could relax for a while and slowly remove the makeup. When Jiang Yuan used a damp towel to wipe the rouge from Abal’s lips, he not only bit her finger, but even licked it, sucking the taste of rouge from her skin.

“Let go,” she said calmly.

Abal said, “No.” Tilting his head, he held her fingers and lightly sucked them one by one. “Don’t you want to know why I danced so well?”

He wanted to restore his masculine pride by seducing Jiang Yuan, but he had clearly chosen the wrong person. She forcibly pulled her fingers free, wrung water into the cloth, and wiped him down again and again with mechanical precision. But each pass of the towel revealed those blue eyes. The jeweled powder and gold outlining the corners of his eyes were wiped away, leaving only reddened skin behind. He dragged her down, and she crashed into him through the padding at his chest. A dense fragrance rushed over her, almost burying her in it. His breath fell from above as he said, “Because when I was dancing, I imagined every man I saw was you.”

Jiang Yuan: “…”

For a moment, she had no idea how to react.

“Hmph.” Then Abal seemed to have found her weakness and said with smug satisfaction, “You really do like women.”

Looking green in the face. I posted this before finishing it.

It’ll be updated by twelve-thirty.

By the end, I didn’t even know what I was writing anymore. I might revise the last paragraph.

I can’t wait to announce that there will be no update tomorrow. Updates will resume over the weekend. I need rest. Thank you, everyone.

Thank you to the little angels who watered me with nutrient solution~

Thanks to the little angels who watered me with nutrient solution: Heart Arsonist, 10 bottles; A-Yin, 2 bottles; Shut-In-kun, 1 bottle.

Thank you all so much for your support. I’ll keep working hard! ^_^