do with such a contrivance—watch it every livelong moment of waking and sleeping?"
"With it he could select the day in spring and autumn when day and night are equal to the minute. With the great gnomon he could determine the instant when the sun's shadow at noon is longest in the winter and shortest in the summer. And with his observation of the star movements he could revise both calculations. Yes, I understand what he would do."
"Inshallah," murmured Tutush. "God willing."
"If God wills. We could present Malikshah with a new calendar for his reign."
Nizam suddenly felt that this would be an excellent plan. It would please the Sultan to have a new calendar devised for him alone; being doubly pleased with Omar, he might name the Tentmaker—as Nizam had anticipated from the first—astronomer to the King.
"I will see that he has his new water clock," he decided. "But what made him wander in that fashion?"
Tutush blinked and smiled. "Only God knows—thy servant is ignorant."
"Make it thy task to see that he wanders not again. For I have need of him."
When he had left Nizam's presence Tutush hastened to his own quarters. At times he retired from sight to a certain nook in an old warehouse overlooking the bazaar and the mosque courtyard, where he kept such belongings as he did not wish to be known to any one else. His hiding hole was guarded by a dumb Egyptian who posed as the owner of the rooms. And here, rooting into a chest with triple locks, Tutush drew out a slender armlet of silver set with turquoises the color of the clear sky.
It had been brought to the tower by a hunchback who had been the favorite jester of the late Sultan. This hunchback had said it was a token from a woman named Yasmi who had said that her heart was sickening and she was being carried far along the western roads to Aleppo.
"Only in this one respect is Omar stubborn," Tutush reflected. "And by my soul I will not have him starting off into the western world, to Aleppo. Not with Nizam's anger hanging over my head."
He decided that he would rid himself of this silver token. Thrusting it into his girdle, he closed the chest and descended to the alleys. When he came to a bevy of half-grown girls playing around a fountain, he took out the silver armlet and dropped it. Nor did he turn his head at the click of the metal against pebbles. There was silence behind him, and then soft exclamations followed by a swift pattering of bare feet. Tutush glanced back.
The fountain was deserted, and the silver armlet had vanished.
"Hide a stone among stones," he quoted, smiling, "and a grain of sand in the desert."
Nizam al Mulk was pleased with events at the observatory. Before the end of the hot season the water clock stood in the workroom. It had a small wheel that revolved sixty times in the hour, and a large wheel that turned once in the hour. A silver point like a spear point moved along a graduated scale bar exactly once between noon and noon, and then started on its return journey during the next day. At least Tutush thought it to be marvelously exact, but Khwaja Mai'mun informed him that after a year or so they would be able to determine its variation from true time. Tutush rejoined that it lacked a miniature horseman, to mark the days with his spear like the one in the Castle. And Mai'mun merely glanced at him, pityingly. Mathematicians, it seemed, did not need any tell-tale to remind them of the days.
At last all the instruments were in place, and four more observers selected. The new marble gnomon reared skyward, and even Mai'mun admitted that they were ready to begin their great task of measuring time anew. Mai'mun believed it would take seven years, while Omar thought it could be done in four or five.
"My soul!" cried Tutush. "We could build a palace in four or five weeks."
"Yes," said Omar, his dark eyes kindling, "and when your palace is broken dust with lizards dwelling there, our calendar will be unchanged."
"If I had a palace,"
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