The Candle and the Flame

by Nafiza Azad

  Zulfikar and ten of his soldiers, all on horses, ride down the empty streets. The shops have closed their doors and doused their lights, though Zulfikar is sure the inhabitants are awake and aware. No peddlers on the sides, no voices to disrupt the night. Danger stalks the streets, and the people of Taaj Gul know to heed its footsteps.

  Moonlight skims off the dusty buildings, turning them ghostly in the hour before dawn. The Emir of Noor City has been on the hunt for the Ghul for a while now. There has been no sign of them, but a toxic scent lingers in the air, marking the places they have been. Zulfikar still doesn’t understand why the Ghul, creatures who have previously never ventured into cities, have begun to do so, but he fears their presence augurs more ill for the city than they can currently afford.

  “Sayyid, this way!” a soldier whispers, turning into an alley between two buildings much like the one Fatima Ghazala used to live in. Zulfikar follows him. The alley continues for a ways until it opens up to a street. Stench from humans and stray animals fight for dominance, but there’s a rank smell that is as familiar as it is disgusting. The Ghul have been here.

  The part of him that is a soldier, that will always be a soldier, remains alert while the part of him that is learning the prickly undersides of love wonders if he will ever see his Name Giver again. He reaches for her through their fire bond, and for the first time since her disappearance, he feels her emotions. She is distraught; something has wounded her emotionally. He can taste her despair.

  It is just for one second, but Zulfikar is distracted and a second is all it takes. Something slams into him from the side, knocking him off his horse and onto the ground. The soldiers yell behind him, but it is too late. The Ghul rakes its claws down Zulfikar’s front, piercing his skin. Zulfikar pulls out his scimitar, not heeding the pain, and manages to defend himself from further mutilation. His soldiers surround the monster, but the creature climbs up the wall and is gone before they can do more than jab at it with their swords.

  “After it!” Zulfikar calls or at least he tries to. His vision starts to swim, and he can feel himself sway. Darkness claims him.

  Fatima Ghazala waits for the morning in the room on the third story of the abandoned haveli. The chill is in her bones, and she shivers violently, feeling as if she has been dirtied by the—she doesn’t know what to call it. Was it— Is she a murderer sixteen times over? Could she have chosen differently? How will she face her Creator? Fatima Ghazala feels Zulfikar’s concern through the fire bond and she folds in on herself, wanting him desperately. How much more does she have to lose? Suddenly, a sharp pain rips through her. She screams, the sound echoing through the empty haveli. In the next second, she realizes that the pain isn’t hers. It is Zulfikar’s. Something has happened to him. She reaches for him, but she can no longer feel him through the bond. It is as if he no longer exists. Fatima Ghazala gets to her feet and runs.

  She remembers the Shaitan telling her about a village at the foot of the mountain. The sky is getting lighter, but it is a while before sunrise. Fatima Ghazala doesn’t care. In the absence of a path, she forges one herself. She falls down often and is covered in scrapes and bruises by the time she reaches the bottom. The sun has yet to make an appearance in the sky, though what little she can see of it through the canopy of the forest is rosy. She finds a crude path through the trees, calls her fire, and lets it light the way to a tiny village. Ten houses stand in the middle of an area clear of trees. She knocks on the door of the first house she reaches. The door is wrenched open a minute later by an irate man who takes one look at Fatima Ghazala and stumbles backward.

  Fatima Ghazala realizes her fire is still visible and pulls it back, but the damage has already been done. The man looks at her fearfully.

  “Let me borrow a horse from you. I need to go to Noor City.” Fatima Ghazala speaks brusquely, no longer caring about the sensibilities of the human in front of her.

  “I only have one horse, sahiba. Our livelihood d-depends on it,” the man stutters through his fear.

  “The horse will be returned, and you will be compensated for your help,” Fatima Ghazala says impatiently. “You can come find me at Aftab Mahal.” Her desperation is obvious, and her fire unpredictable. It races along her skin, lighting her up again, and the man steps back again.

  Ten minutes later, Fatima Ghazala is on that horse, riding toward Noor City, praying as she does that she reaches it in time.

  Southern Noor in the morning just after sunrise is soft and green. The city wakes in degrees. First, the cats slink back after a night spent caterwauling. A little while later, those who work outside leave their homes, their footsteps pulsing through the sidewalks. The milkman makes the rounds and the kitchen staff wakes up in the rich houses. The inhabitants of these rich houses sleep on, having little idea of the catastrophe brewing, along with their chai, in the darker places of Noor City.

  Bhavya notices that the hem of her brown sari, borrowed from Sunaina, is wet from the morning dew. She wonders how much the cosmetics chemist will mind if she burns this sari later. She knocks on the front door of the modest little house she is standing before. No response is forthcoming, so she knocks louder, harder, longer. Two minutes later, the door is pulled open by her brother, who stands in the doorway gaping at her. He looks beyond her fearfully, but his expression eases when he sees that she is alone.

  “What are you doing here?” he demands. “How did you find out about this place?”

  “Aren’t you going to invite me in?” Bhavya asks pleasantly.

  “I don’t particularly want to see you.” The rajkumar of Qirat yawns. Unshaven and red-eyed, he looks a far cry from the figure he presents at court every day.

  “Amma sent me.” The lie slides off Bhavya’s tongue smoothly. Her mother and aunt were smuggled out of Southern Aftab in the wee hours of the morning and should be well on their way to the ashram in the mountains by now.

  The rajkumar’s face brightens. “Come in, then.”

  Bhavya spares a glance at the interior of the house. It is shabby. The pack she is carrying bangs against the narrow hallway. Bhavya holds it closer. Aaruv leads her to a small living room in the back.

  “Are you alone here?” Bhavya asks.

  “Obviously.”

  “What do you do for food?”

  “Sanchit Baba brings it.”

  “They are using you, you know.” Bhavya looks at her brother and, despite her dislike, feels a spurt of pity for him.

  “And what would you know of politics?” Aaruv scoffs. “You should leave these matters alone and get married as you are being told to do.” He looks at the pack eagerly. “What did Amma send?”

  “How could you agree to the assassination plot? Do you not love Bhaiya? He’s your own blood!”

  Aaruv’s shoulders stiffen, but he doesn’t try to deny Bhavya’s words. “He is a fool. The crown should have been mine.”

  “Why? What makes you think you are entitled to it?” Bhavya is genuinely curious.

  Her brother turns to her, a stranger suddenly. “Because clearly I am the only one who knows what it means to have royal blood. We do not consort with commoners. Bhai is smitten with Aruna Bhabhi. He doesn’t realize the taint she brings to our name. She will dirty our bloodline! She has dirtied it. You already know how I feel about the Ifrit.”

  His words are almost exactly an echo of their mother’s.

  “Did you plan to have Bhabhi and Vihaan killed too?”

  “Did?” Aaruv laughs. “I still do. Some losses are to be expected. What do you know of ruling a country?”

  “You cannot expect to win against the Ifrit, Aaruv.”

  He smiles. “We have a plan and some unexpected allies. The Shayateen have promised their aid against the Ifrit.”

  Bhavya freezes. She even stops breathing. “Who?”

  “Ah, I shouldn’t have told you. But it’s not like Amma will let you tattle.”

  “Amma knows?”

  “Yes. She gave her approval.”<
br />
  “And what about our people?”

  “What about them?”

  “Surely you don’t think the Shayateen will only kill the Ifrit?”

  “As I said, kaddu, some losses are to be expected.” Aaruv shrugs easily.

  “I see.” Bhavya looks at her pack for a moment before handing it over to Aaruv. “Amma told me to give you this.”

  Aaruv grabs the pack, opens it, and takes out a jeweled box. His expression changes to one of avarice and awe when he sees it. Before he can open it, Bhavya stays him with a hand on his arm. “Will you not reconsider your path, Aaruv?”

  He shrugs off her hand without even looking at her, his attention on the box. He opens it to find the crown of the maharajah of Qirat glittering inside. It is made of solid gold and adorned with precious stones. More of a symbol than for daily use, it was worn by Aarush maybe twice in the entire time he has been maharajah.

  Aaruv stares at the crown, his face flushing pink with happiness. Then, licking his lips, he wraps his hands around the crown and hefts it up from the box, holding it as if it is the most precious thing he has ever held.

  Bhavya witnesses the moment he realizes that something has gone terribly wrong. His expression changes from happiness to horror in one blink. The poison is fast-working and lethal on contact.

  “Like you said, Aaruv, when running kingdoms, some losses are to be expected.” Bhavya gets up and lets herself out of the house. She does not stay to watch her brother die.

  Fatima Ghazala arrives at Northern Aftab to find the courtyard swarming with Ifrit soldiers. She dismounts from the horse without hesitation and stalks through the soldiers, who move aside to let her pass. She walks through the entrance of the mahal and feels for Zulfikar through the bond. Taking the stairs two at a time, she arrives at a previously unoccupied suite of rooms on the second floor. The entrance of the room is, like the courtyard, crowded with Ifrit soldiers. The atmosphere is thick with dread, and Fatima Ghazala feels fear, cold and immediate, slow down her steps.

  She moves, as though fighting her way through a sandstorm, to the entrance and looks inside. A wordless cry escapes her. The soldiers melt away, and Fatima Ghazala walks to the bed in the middle of the room, conscious of nothing and no one except the figure in it.

  She kneels down beside the bed, her breathing coming in gasps, and picks up Zulfikar’s hand. His eyes are closed, and his skin is gray. His breaths are shallow. “What has happened to him?” Fatima Ghazala whispers.

  “A Ghul attacked him, sayyida. It didn’t manage to injure him seriously, but the monster’s talons were tipped with poison. Poison of a kind we are not familiar with,” Mansoor says somberly.

  A commotion at the door precedes the entrance of the Raees, who waves away the concern of her soldiers to come and sit on a chair beside the bed. Attending her are several Ifrit healers who are unfamiliar to Fatima Ghazala. She rises to her feet and stands looking at the gaunt leader of the Ifrit.

  “How do I save him, Raees?” she asks. “Can’t I give him my strength, my power?”

  “No, that will not do anything against the poison,” the Ifrit leader replies. Fatima Ghazala feels the rent in her a little more sharply. She is made of sharp edges, and even breathing feels like a bloody affair. “The healers have managed to freeze the poison’s effect on Zulfikar’s fire but only temporarily. Send him back, Name Giver. Send him back to Al-Naar. He has a better chance of surviving there.”

  The Raees’s calm breaks through Fatima Ghazala’s despair, and she wipes away her tears. She looks down at her husband and nods.

  “Someone will need to go with him,” the Raees says, and an Ifrit healer volunteers.

  “Before I Un-Name him, I would ask you a boon,” Fatima Ghazala says. She tastes charcoal on her tongue and wonders if this is what endings taste like.

  The Raees raises an eyebrow, and Fatima Ghazala steels herself. “Can you remove the Emir’s fire bond?”

  “The marriage bond?” The Raees looks surprised by her request. Fatima Ghazala nods. “Why?”

  “Zulfikar forged the bond without any idea of its effect. His feelings for me were the result of the bond … The bond is not the result of his feelings. I do not want someone who loves me because he has no choice but to do so. I want someone who loves me out of his own free will. Please, set him free from this union.”

  “And what about you, do you want me to remove your bond as well?”

  Fatima Ghazala shakes her head. “No. I loved him long before the bond was forged. It just took me longer to recognize the love.”

  “Very well, then,” the Raees says. The room is cleared apart from the Raees, the healer, Fatima Ghazala, and Mansoor. Before they proceed, Fatima Ghazala asks for a minute with the Emir. She presses a kiss in the palm of his hand and whispers her farewell. She is made of losses, and she would much rather he find himself someone who is not always in the shadow of death to love. He will find love with someone who has not killed, someone whose soul is not blackened by murder. She steps back from him.

  The Raees reaches out and untangles a knot in Zulfikar’s fire. Fatima Ghazala’s fire returns to her, and Zulfikar gains his freedom.

  Later, much later, Fatima Ghazala sits alone beside the bed on which Zulfikar had so recently lain. The room is empty, and her hands are bandaged, not that Fatima Ghazala is aware of that. A numbness has descended upon her, leaving her impervious to pain and emotion. A glass-walled relief, of sorts. She had supposed that after losing so much she would become inured to loss. She had thought grief familiar and found it simple, if not easy, to speak its language. She had thought wrong.

  Fatima Ghazala gets to her feet, her anger blooming like the sun at dawn. She will meet the architect of her grief.

  Aarush, the maharajah of Qirat, opens his eyes and for a moment doesn’t understand where, or even if he still, is. The pain, when it comes, is welcome. An insistent throbbing on his side reassures him of his continued state of existence. He flexes his fingers and feels the cool bedsheets underneath them. A scent of incense lingers in the air; someone prayed for him. From his vantage on the bed, he cannot see anyone in the room.

  He tries to sit up and fails. His heart has become heavier. His guards tried to kill him. That they failed is obvious, but what happened after it is not. A thought occurs to him, and he tries to sit up again and manages this time.

  The pain becomes sharper when he disturbs the wound, but he endures it. He becomes aware of someone staring at him and looks up. Sitting very still on a chair at the foot of his bed is his sister. Of his wife and son, there is no sign. Bhavya is looking at him, her face devoid of any emotion, her eyes blank.

  “Bhavya!” Aarush says, fear giving him strength that he does not truly possess. His sister starts, and some awareness returns to her eyes.

  “You are awake,” she says flatly. “Let me call for a healer.”

  “Wait!” he beseeches her. “Where are Aruna and Vihaan? Are they safe?”

  “Yes, of course,” Bhavya replies, in the same flat tone. “Bhabhi is attending to Vihaan in her rooms. He developed a mild fever.”

  Aarush sags against his pillows. “What happened?”

  “The guards tried to kill you. The maharani’s companions saved you. Sunaina overheard some servants talking about the assassination attempt and called the Emir, who helped the companions take care of the would-be assassins,” Bhavya narrates. Aarush frowns; there is something wrong with his sister. She sounds broken.

  “Bhavya—” he starts, but she speaks over him.

  “You knew Aaruv was conspiring against you, didn’t you?” Aarush freezes. “Yes, I had Jamshid Chacha give me a copy of the same report he gave to you. You have known for a while now, haven’t you?”

  “I … yes,” Aarush admits.

  “Why didn’t you do anything about it?” Bhavya asks softly. There are dark shadows under her eyes.

  “I was thinking about my next course of action!”

  “You took too lo
ng, Bhaiya. Do you know they planned to kill Bhabhi and Vihaan as well? Because you were too scared to be thought of as bad, they nearly killed our entire family.” Bhavya bows her head, her shoulders stooped as if from some great weight.

  Aarush wishes he could go to his sister. “Listen, Bhavya, I will take care of this. You do not need to worry.”

  Bhavya laughs disbelievingly. When she raises her face, Aarush sees the tears in her eyes, a sheen of sorrow. “We are the raj, Bhaiya. We do not have the luxury of sentiment. Our people come first. You forgot that, but I didn’t. You do not need to worry, Bhaiya. Because you were too weak to take the actions necessary, I did.”

  “What did you do?” Aarush demands.

  “I exiled Amma and Bua. They are gone,” Bhavya replies. “Both of them were fully aware of the assassination attempt.” Aarush flinches, though whether from relief or pain he doesn’t quite know. He immediately feels ashamed at being happy for not having to deal with his mother.

  “And Aaruv?”

  “I gave Aaruv the thing he really wanted.” All emotion slips from his sister’s face, making her into a stranger he barely recognizes.

  “Bhavya …”

  “Don’t you dare blame me for what I did, Bhaiya. I kept us safe; I kept us alive while you were lying helpless in your bed. Don’t blame me for your weakness, and perhaps in time I will learn to forgive you for it.” Bhavya gets to her feet and leaves the room without another word. Aarush watches her go, unable to say a single word to defend himself.

  The world is colored with shades of red and black: red for the fire that rages within her, and black for the sorrow and the anger that pull at her in equal parts. Fatima Ghazala is aware of the storm at her shoulders and the crackle in the air as she stalks from the room that broadcasts Zulfikar’s absence to the Raees’s suite one floor below. She knows she is one spark away from an inferno, and she is too far gone to care.