Gifting Fire

by Alina Boyden

  “Good,” I said, turning my attention to Hina, who was sitting just a few feet away, on a cushioned dais of her own. “And Zindh, your majesty?”

  “Zindh is secure, your highness,” she replied. “All of my emirs have sworn oaths of loyalty to me as the rightful jama, and they all agree that we will permit Zindh to remain a subah of Nizam so long as you are the subahdar.”

  It was a strange arrangement, I had to admit. I had promised Hina that she would be the queen of her own land once again, but we’d both known that my father wouldn’t permit a Zindhi bid for independence, especially not now that the river zahhaks had been made so valuable, though I wondered if he had heard about it yet. At any rate, I would be the nominal subahdar, but in effect that simply meant that Hina provided certain tax revenues to my father’s court, and ruled Zindh as queen, while I was permitted to live in Kadiro or Shikarpur as I liked. In exchange, she would fight for me in times of war and I for her. I thought it was a mutually beneficial arrangement, though there was one oddity yet to be worked out.

  “Have you decided how you will manage the succession?” I asked, as she couldn’t have children of her own.

  “The men of Zindh have agreed that from now on, a chosen cela of the Talpur dera will become the new jama once I am gone, and thenceforth in perpetuity.”

  My eyes widened and a smile spread slowly across my face. “A hijra dynasty?”

  “Just so,” Hina agreed, and she was smiling too. “A first in the world, I think.”

  “And hopefully not a last,” I replied.

  With Zindh secured, my eyes fell on Arjun and my happiness grew, because I knew that the letter had been sent from his father to mine concerning the prospect of marriage, though I had not the slightest idea how it would be received. I still didn’t know why my father hadn’t arrived yet. Nizam wasn’t so far from Kadiro. He could have been here days ago. Why hadn’t he been?

  “And matters in Jesera, my prince?”

  “Settled,” Arjun assured me. “Jesera agrees to be your protectorate in exchange for peace, and in exchange for your guarantee of their borders against any assault from the other Yaruban emirs. The merchants there have named you emira officially, though they rule the city among themselves.”

  It was a good arrangement. It would bring us money, and the investment was light enough—zahhaks and ships. Those had come from Hina and Viputeshwar. Four cannon zahhaks now flew over Jesera, along with a pair of fire zahhaks. It wasn’t nearly the force they had lost in the battle, but that couldn’t be helped. And anyway, I’d taken two of their zahhaks and given them to Bikampur in thanks for Udai’s assistance, and to strengthen my alliance with Registan. That was more important at the moment than the fate of Jesera.

  Last of all, I looked to Haider, who was seated with Tamara on a dais to my left. “Has your father accepted the gift of Ahura in exchange for peace?”

  “He has,” Haider agreed. “The messenger arrived this morning. He is honored by the gift, and by the letter you sent him, and will always consider himself a second father to the princess of Nizam.”

  I raised an eyebrow, while Tamara suppressed snickers. “He didn’t really say all that, did he?”

  “He did, actually,” Haider replied, which shocked me, because his father was cut from much the same cloth as my own. “He may not accept a hijra in his own household, but he knows how to play the game of politics as well as anyone, and so long as you’re gifting him islands, he will be happy to send you pretty gowns and call you a princess.”

  “Well, I regret that I have no more islands to gift him,” I quipped. To Tamara, I said, “And I regret even more that I have nothing substantial with which to honor Khevsuria’s support beyond my eternal gratitude.”

  “Razia, it was a joy to help you,” Tamara said, “if only so I could see Sultana carrying you eighty miles in her mouth.”

  I gave my zahhak some very fond pats as everyone laughed. Sultana seemed to know we were talking about her, because she cracked open an eye and swiveled it lazily around the rooftop before deciding that whatever it was, it wasn’t worth getting up for when she was lying so comfortably in the shade. She settled back down with a snort through her nostrils and curled a little more tightly against me.

  “Is that it, then?” I asked, scarcely believing that both of my provinces were under control, that my borders were secure, and that I had a wealthy merchant protectorate across the ocean that had agreed to my terms. There was no crisis left to stamp out? God, whatever would I do with myself?

  A trumpet blared high above us, stirring me from my self-congratulatory thoughts. Sultana’s head perked up. She recognized the call as a sighting of unknown zahhaks approaching. We both waited for the type and the number, and when I heard it called out, I knew who it was. Sixteen thunder—my father and his entourage had arrived.

  “Hina, have the patrols maintain their altitude and keep their distance. They will permit my father to land here in the middle courtyard,” I ordered.

  “Yes, your highness,” she agreed, but she didn’t actually lift a finger. She relayed the order to a cela, who used her trumpet to send the message.

  “Is there anything we can do, Razia?” Sakshi asked. She had been sitting patiently with Lakshmi, though she had already given me her reports on my household, which had become her responsibility.

  “Have refreshments brought, please,” I said. “My father will be hungry and thirsty and so will his men. If I want him to approve of this marriage, it’ll be better if he’s in a good mood.”

  “I’ll have the servants bring food and drink at once.” She stood up, tugging Lakshmi to her feet too. “Come on, let’s make sure that Razia’s father has enough nimbu pani that he’s friendly.”

  “I don’t think we have that much, Akka,” Lakshmi said in a voice that was so serious it earned laughs all around the pavilion.

  “Sikander, have you kept my father apprised of all of these developments?” I asked.

  “I have, your highness,” he assured me. “I presume he left Nizam this morning. If that’s the case, then he would have received all the information covered today, less the news from the Safavian messenger.”

  “Good,” I murmured, as that was less that I would have to explain. “I suppose we should go and greet him, then. It wouldn’t do for a daughter to force her father to come to her like a supplicant.”

  I stood with a grimace, my back aching fiercely. I wondered if that would ever go away. I knew it hadn’t been that long since the injury, and the doctor said the prognosis was good, but there was a part of me that worried I’d never be able to climb again, never be able to fly a zahhak again. The pressures on the spine in a dogfight were immense. If I’d tried it just then, I’d probably have ended up crippled for life. And that was to say nothing of the pain in my arm, or my groin. I was lucky the wounds had both hit bone, and hadn’t hit any organs or ligaments, but they still stung.

  Arjun took my arm and helped me down the stairs, toward the courtyard, where my father’s zahhaks were landing in neat rows. I was surprised when I was met on the bottom step by Sultana, who had leapt off the roof, landing in the courtyard in front of me. The poor thing was so worried about me these days. Keeping a firm grip on Arjun with one hand, I used the other to stroke Sultana’s snout. “I’ll be all right, girl.”

  “You really shouldn’t be walking,” Sikander muttered, standing just a pace behind me.

  “I can’t lie in bed all day,” I replied, trying to ignore the “Why not?” that came in return.

  My mouth went dry as I approached my father, who was standing behind Malikah in the courtyard, seeming a little surprised not to see me in the diwan-i-am, where court was normally held. He spotted me slowly making my way toward him, clinging to Arjun’s arm, with a big thunder zahhak hovering close by, and he rushed over, moving faster than I’d expected.

  “Should she b
e walking?” my father demanded the moment we were close enough to speak to one another without shouting.

  “That’s what I said, your majesty,” Sikander answered. “And no, she shouldn’t be. The doctor wants her in bed as much as possible.”

  “If I thought there was a chance of keeping her there, your majesty, believe me, I would have tried,” Arjun said. “But, as I’m sure you’ve realized by now, she has a mind of her own.”

  “She always has,” my father admitted, his tone changing to one that was tinged with an array of emotions I couldn’t quite sort out, not with the pain in my back taking up so much of my attention.

  “I’ve been holding court on the roof to be near Sultana, Father,” I explained. “Please, join us.”

  He scowled. “You shouldn’t have come down to greet me. Do you want to walk again, or not?”

  “I am walking, Father,” I pointed out.

  “You know what I mean,” he said, and he was looking me over with far more concern than I’d ever seen from him before.

  I was so bewildered I didn’t know what to do or what to say. After a moment, though, I thought I understood. I glanced to Sikander. “What in the world did you write in those summaries I asked you to send to him?”

  “I sent a full report of everything that happened from beginning to end, your highness,” Sikander replied, “drawing on what I saw, but also conversations with Princess Sakshi and Jama Hina and Princes Haider and Arjun. And the doctor’s notes, of course, and what you told us of your encounter with Karim on the shore north of Ahura.”

  The mention of that made my father’s eyes widen slightly and his jaw tense. He noticed Sultana standing there, and he reached out and petted her on the snout. “You’ve been a very good zahhak,” he told her, just the way he always praised Malikah when she did well.

  “She has,” I agreed. I didn’t know what my father and I would agree on concerning what had happened, but we could agree on that at least.

  He scowled. “If we’re going to meet on the roof, then we should go. You shouldn’t be standing around like this. If you want to marry her, boy, you ought to take better care of her.” He aimed that last at Arjun.

  Arjun and I exchanged confused glances, though I thought I understood a little of what was going on here. Sikander had said something in those letters. Or maybe it was many things. He must have told my father everything, what Karim had done to me, what I had done to him, what he’d been planning to do to Lakshmi, how close he’d come to accomplishing it. My father had never been an easy man to live with, but he wasn’t a rapist like Karim either. In fact, when it came to women, maybe he was a little sentimental. After all, he hadn’t remarried after my mother had died. It was an oddity many men had remarked upon. Most rulers had more than one heir. My father should have married again, but he never had, and he never spoke of my mother either. I wondered sometimes why that was.

  Going back up the stairs was harder than going down them had been. I gritted my teeth against the pain that lanced through my hips as I took the first two steps, but it faded almost immediately, because my father took my other arm and lifted hard, so that I didn’t have to bear much of my weight on my legs and back.

  “How long has she been like this?” he demanded of Sikander.

  “Your majesty, this is the best I’ve seen her since the battle,” he replied. “She and Sultana were both nearly killed. It was just sheer luck that they landed in shallow seas and not on hard rocks. Another hundred yards north and neither of them would have made it.”

  My father set his jaw, but said nothing until I was safely settled on my cushions on the dais once more, Sultana having returned to take up her place as my backrest, curling in close behind me, her snout making a very comfortable armrest for my wounded right arm.

  No sooner had we been seated than refreshments arrived. I sipped at my nimbu pani with a sigh of pleasure, and was grateful that my father seemed to be enjoying his too. My other courtiers had departed, to give us the chance to speak alone, and I was glad for that.

  My father noticed. “Haider not here?”

  “He’s here, Father,” I assured him. “As are Tamara and Hina.”

  “Good. I always liked Haider and Tamara,” he said.

  I raised an eyebrow, because that was half-true. He’d liked them until he’d found out they’d let me prance around the Safavian court as a princess for two years while he was fighting a civil war, but I didn’t want to rehash that old argument. Like I’d said, he would be more likely to agree to the marriage if he was in a good mood, and I was starting to think that he was. Or at least he was amenable to the idea.

  “You’ve been kept up to date with developments here, Father?” I asked, because for the moment he’d seemed content to sip his drink and eat a few snacks.

  He nodded. “It was very clever, the way you defeated Ahmed Shah. And the act of putting swivel guns on river zahhaks . . .” He actually smiled. “I would have loved to have been there to see the moment thirty-six river zahhaks with cannons strapped to their backs destroyed Ahmed Shah’s entire force of zahhaks.”

  “He didn’t get to see it himself. He was chasing me, and Hina cleared my tail feathers. Without her, he’d have killed us. Sultana was too tired.” I patted her head gently. “I shouldn’t have pushed us that hard . . . it was almost a disaster.”

  “Karim would have killed Princess Lakshmi if you hadn’t, your highness,” Sikander reminded me.

  “I’m told that not a single zahhak was lost,” my father said. “Is that true?”

  “It is, Father,” I admitted, and I allowed myself a slight smile then, because it had been a tremendous victory. “We killed sixteen of the twenty-four they brought against us. Three acid zahhaks and five fire zahhaks survived. Of those, the three acid and two fire were taken as tribute. Two fire zahhaks remain in Jesera, the fifth having been used as a messenger.”

  “And we’ve added Mahisagar to the empire, their fleet intact, and taken Jesera as a protectorate . . .” he murmured, shaking his head in disbelief. “And Ahura has been gifted to Safavia to secure peace—was this accepted?”

  “It was, Father,” I replied. “Shah Ismail told me to consider him a second father, and said that there would be peace between our lands.”

  He stroked his mustache, still trying to take it all in. “In a stroke you have brought us a new subah, and revenues from the richest trading port in Yaruba. Only Registan and Virajendra stand independent now.”

  “And Registan wishes a marriage alliance, your majesty,” Arjun reminded him.

  “I don’t care what Registan wants,” my father replied. His lively green eyes flickered over to me. “What matters is what my daughter wants.”

  “I want to marry Arjun, Father,” I answered, because it had been the only thing on my mind since he’d asked me.

  “Then you shall,” he said.

  I couldn’t believe it was that easy. After everything we’d been through, he was just going to give me whatever I wanted? I frowned. “That’s it? No negotiations? No demands? No conditions?”

  He sighed heavily, and nodded to Arjun and Sikander. “If you please, I’d like a few moments alone with my daughter.”

  “Of course, your majesty,” Sikander agreed.

  Arjun was more reluctant. “She isn’t well, your majesty,” he warned.

  “I’m fine,” I protested, but Arjun didn’t move.

  He stared my father down instead. “This is the best day she’s had since the battle. Only two drafts of opium.”

  “Sikander has made the situation clear to me, Prince Arjun,” my father said, favoring him with his title for the first time in my hearing. “As I have said, I will consent to your father’s marriage request, because my daughter wishes it. And I am grateful you are concerned for her well-being. But I am still her father, and I would speak with her alone.”

 
“I’ll be fine, my prince,” I said, resting a hand on Arjun’s knee.

  Arjun grunted at that. He kissed me on the cheek and said, “We’ll be right downstairs if you need anything.”

  “Thank you, my prince,” I told him, though I watched him go with some reluctance. Private conversations with my father always made my stomach churn, even if he was acting strangely today.

  “Do you love him?” my father asked me once they were gone.

  It was not the question I’d been expecting, but I nodded cautiously all the same. “I do, Father. I know you don’t approve, but—”

  He held up a hand to forestall my arguments. “I agreed, didn’t I?”

  “Why?” I asked, because none of this made any sense. How had he suddenly come around to the idea of my marrying Arjun? Why was he so concerned for me now when he never had been before?

  “Sikander,” my father said, the name coming out as an exasperated sigh. “He sent me a summary of what happened here. A very, very detailed summary. And he also attached a personal letter in which he resigned himself from my service and told me that from now until the end of his life he would serve you and you alone.”

  “Me?” I gasped, having not heard any of that from the man himself.

  “You,” he agreed. “He told me that you were his daughter, his only child in this world, and that he would fail you no longer. He told me that you were twice as courageous as I was, and orders of magnitude more intelligent. He said that you would make the finest sultana in the history of the world, and that if I weren’t so blinded by my own prejudices I would have seen that for myself.”

  I shook my head in disbelief, bewildered that the man was capable of writing such a letter, capable of expressing his feelings so clearly. “And you haven’t killed him yet?”

  My father smiled. “It occurred to me, momentarily. But he made a good argument. After all, I never had to single-handedly scale palace walls to deliver missives, never had to organize a secret rebellion, never came up with a stratagem half so clever as mounting light cannons on river zahhaks. The results spoke more clearly than any letter.”