Girl, Serpent, Thorn

by Melissa Bashardoust

  As she reached the palace steps, she tripped over her dress, landing on her hands and knees in front of her mother—a fitting position, she thought, to beg for forgiveness.

  “Soraya? What are you doing here? You shouldn’t be here!” Tahmineh’s voice was shrill with panic and utter dismay.

  Soraya looked up at her mother—the purple silk of her gown was torn, the jewels in her hair were tangled in her elaborate braids, and her face was swollen from tears. Soraya had always wondered what her mother would look like undone, and now she wished she didn’t know. “I’m sorry, Maman,” she said, reaching up to her. “I’m so sorry.”

  For the first time in her memory, Soraya touched her mother’s hands, taking them in her own as if that would explain everything.

  Tahmineh didn’t flinch or pull her hands away from Soraya’s grasp—instead, she immediately gripped Soraya’s hands more tightly, like they were locking into place. She didn’t even seem to know anything was amiss until she looked down at the bare, smooth surface of Soraya’s hands and realized there was no poison under Soraya’s skin.

  “No,” she said, the word escaping her like it was her last breath. She lifted her head and looked Soraya in the eye. “Soraya, what have you done?”

  The words rang through Soraya’s head, an echo of the question she had been asking herself from the moment she had stepped back from her first kiss to see the creature from her nightmares.

  Before she could answer, something wrenched her up from the ground, its grip tight around her upper arm. The div towered over her, long tusks emerging from his mouth. “I don’t remember you,” he growled at her.

  “You can’t harm me,” Soraya said with more confidence than she felt. All she could think was that if she were still cursed, the div would be dead by now.

  The div narrowed his eyes. “I can’t kill you. I can still—”

  But before the div could explain in any further detail what he could do to Soraya, a shadow blocked the sun again, and all heads turned up to see a winged silhouette descending from the sky.

  The Shahmar landed at the head of the palace steps, wings outstretched, framed by the ayvan behind him. He was still dressed in Azad’s clothing—the red tunic and trousers stretched over his scaled form in a mockery of humanity. The garden was hushed as he walked down the palace steps.

  He stopped in front of the div that was still holding on to Soraya’s arm. “If you touch or threaten her again, I’ll tear out your tusks myself,” he said in a low, calm voice.

  The div’s hand instantly fell away from Soraya’s arm.

  The Shahmar turned to Soraya, holding her gaze. And then—to Soraya’s surprise—his eyes moved away from hers, to rest on something right behind her. When she turned her head, she saw her mother standing close to her, her face bloodless, returning the Shahmar’s gaze with cold recognition.

  But before Soraya could begin to make sense of what she was seeing, the Shahmar turned away from them both and swept forward into the center of the crowd. Even the placement of the captive guests in small groups around the garden had been deliberate—the divs had formed an audience for the Shahmar, who now stood on the trampled rug where the bride and groom should have been sitting.

  “You know who I am,” he bellowed in his deep, sonorous voice, his arms and wings both outspread to address the crowd. “Many of you have thought me dead, or merely a story to scare your children. But the legend of the Shahmar is real, and I have returned to take back my crown from the line that usurped mine all those years ago. The descendant of that line is among you now. Bring him forward.”

  There was a flurry of movement among the crowd as everyone looked around them for the shah. Soraya let out a long, relieved exhale. If the Shahmar wanted to see her brother, that meant he wasn’t dead.

  “Here, shahryar,” one of the divs called out. He was standing by the line of cypresses, and she saw that the humans the div was guarding were the injured remains of the king’s guard. They all rallied themselves now, but before a fight could ensue, a figure both familiar and strange stepped out from their midst and came forward. Soraya knew that handsome, boyish face, but it was now haggard and ashen. She knew his easy yet dignified gait as he walked out to the center of the garden, but now he seemed so small, so dull, especially as he drew closer to the imposing form of the Shahmar.

  “Sorush, the young shah,” the Shahmar said, circling him. “You wear my crown. You live in my palace. You use my title.”

  Sorush shook his head. “You lost your right to the throne. None of this belongs to you any longer.”

  The Shahmar halted, looming over Sorush, but Sorush kept his gaze ahead of him, not even looking up to meet the Shahmar’s eye. “Is that so?” the Shahmar hissed. “And yet you were the one to welcome me to your home. You called me a friend and thanked me for saving your life.”

  Only now did Sorush’s regal mask start to crack. He glanced up at the Shahmar, brow furrowed in confusion—and then his eyes widened in understanding. “Azad?”

  The Shahmar put his hand to his chest and dipped his head in a mocking bow. “I owe this victory in part to you.” He pitched his voice louder, so all could hear. “Even now, an army of divs is storming your city. And they won’t stop, not until they’ve laid waste to your entire kingdom—or until I tell them to stop.”

  He paused, and there was a low buzzing of murmurs all around the garden, people looking up and noticing the plumes of smoke overhead, wafting from the direction of the city. Sorush’s jaw tensed as he tried to remain impassive.

  “You’ve noticed,” the Shahmar said, still addressing the crowd more than the shah, “that the divs listen to me. They obey my commands. Over the years of my exile, I have taught them what it means to band together under a king, to follow a vision—my vision. The simorgh will not come to your rescue this time, I promise you that. Only I can end this violence. I can return you to your lives of wealth and influence. But first—first you must accept me as your new shah.”

  He knew when to speak and when to fall silent—to allow the full meaning of his words to sink deeply into the minds of every person present. And they weren’t just any people gathered here for the wedding of the shah. They were the bozorgan and satraps from all across the country, the people who chose the shah and those who governed the provinces in his name.

  This was why the divs had been instructed not to seriously harm or kill anyone apart from soldiers—the Shahmar didn’t want to destroy Atashar. He wanted to rule it.

  “Well, then?” the Shahmar said to Sorush. “Will you give up your crown to protect your people? Will you bend your knee to me in supplication?”

  Sorush lifted his head to look his enemy in the eye. “The Creator will protect us,” he said, his voice quieter than the Shahmar’s, but no less powerful. “And you will fail.”

  The Shahmar didn’t respond, staring down at Sorush with deadly stillness. And then, with one fluid movement of his graceful neck, he turned his head and looked directly at Soraya.

  “No,” Soraya breathed. She didn’t think she’d spoken aloud, but then she felt her mother’s hands clasp around her arms.

  The Shahmar began to walk slowly in her direction. “I understand now,” he said. “You refuse to surrender to me because you still believe that the simorgh’s protection will shield you.” The closer he came to Soraya, the more her mother’s grip tightened. He came to stand directly in front of her, shaking his head in disapproval. “So many lies in this family. Perhaps it’s time to bring everything to the surface.” He wrapped his scaled hand around Soraya’s wrist, and with one sharp tug, he tore her from her mother’s grip.

  Soraya and her mother both cried out together, but the tusked div prevented Tahmineh from following, and the Shahmar effortlessly dragged Soraya to the center of the garden, directly across from her brother. Sorush didn’t look at her or show any reaction to his mother’s and sister’s cries, knowing the Shahmar would use any emotion against him.

  But then
Sorush’s eyes widened as he realized the Shahmar was touching Soraya’s bare skin—a subtle movement, but one the Shahmar noticed as well.

  “Do you want to tell him, or shall I?” he said to Soraya, his hand still encircling her wrist.

  Soraya looked up at the Shahmar, her eyes pleading—and for the first time, she noticed that there were patches of skin visible between the scales that covered his face. She saw the shape of Azad underneath the Shahmar, the boy he had once been before his corruption, the boy she had come to trust and had wanted to run away with. And at the sight of him, a lightning flash of rage pierced through the thick gray fog of her guilt.

  “Don’t touch me,” she said through gritted teeth, wrenching her wrist out of his grip. It was the worst insult she could think of to say to him—that no touch at all was still better than his.

  The Shahmar let out a low growl as he stared down at Soraya. He grabbed her wrist again and swung her around to face the encircling crowd.

  “People of Atashar,” he called to his audience, “I’m sure you’ve heard tales of the shah’s mysterious sister. Perhaps you’ve wondered why she remains hidden, why she never appears with her family.”

  Soraya tried to pull herself out of his grip again, but his claws were piercing her skin.

  “Allow me, then”—he looked down at Soraya, the beginning of a smile on his thin lips—“to tell you the truth of the shahzadeh’s curse.”

  The Shahmar pointed directly at Tahmineh, who was still in the grip of the div. “When her children were first born, your beloved queen mother—then, the shahbanu—took her infant daughter to the divs and asked them to grant her protection.”

  Protection? Soraya froze, no longer struggling. She had told Azad that her mother was the cause of her curse, but not even she had known the reason for it. But if he knew the reason, then he’d known the truth all along, watching her stumble from the dungeon to the dakhmeh to the fire temple, looking for answers while her hands grew more and more stained with blood. But even as she hated him for it, she longed to know what he would say next.

  “And the divs agreed,” he continued, “because the shahbanu had helped them once, and they owed her a debt. They laid a curse on the child and filled her veins with poison, so that she would be deadly to the touch.”

  The crowd’s murmuring was louder now, like the furious roar of a wasp nest. How could the shah’s mother have committed such an atrocity? How could the shah have kept his sister’s curse a secret from the court all this time? What else was this family hiding?

  But Soraya knew the worst was still to come.

  The Shahmar spun her around again, holding her in place by her arms, so that she couldn’t look away from her brother’s grief-stricken face. “And so this girl decided to take her revenge on the family that had cursed her. She waited until the day of her brother’s wedding, and then she went to the fire temple, slew the guards, and put out the Royal Fire, because she had discovered that inside the fire was the one object that could free her from her curse—the simorgh’s feather.”

  The Shahmar didn’t have to explain further. He put one hand under Soraya’s chin and held her face, so that all could see him touching her bare skin without consequence.

  Soraya couldn’t even turn her head to look away from her brother’s broken gaze. “I’m sorry,” she tried to say, but the words were so mangled by the sob trapped in her throat that they were barely audible.

  The Shahmar released her then, and she fell immediately to the ground, crushed under the weight of her guilt, her brother’s shame, and her mother’s secrets. She managed to lift her head and see the Shahmar approach her brother slowly, with the same elegance that she had so admired in him when she thought he was hers.

  “Well?” he said. “Do you still believe your Creator will keep you safe? Do you think you can protect Atashar better than I can? Or will you kneel?” He turned to the crowd. “Will you kneel,” he called out, his arms outstretched, “to save your land from ruin?”

  Soraya didn’t know who was the first to kneel. She didn’t know if it was done out of anger at her family or out of hopeless despair. But all around her, one by one, the most influential people in Atashar went to their knees and chose a new shah. She didn’t blame them; pride or loyalty would only lead to more destruction.

  Soon, all the bozorgan were kneeling except for relations of the shah—aunts and uncles and cousins Soraya had never really known. Laleh and her wounded father, huddled together. Tahmineh. And Sorush.

  From where she lay on the ground, Soraya watched her brother, waiting to see if he would look at her. But Sorush kept his eyes on his usurper as he slowly went down on one knee, then the other, before pressing his forehead to the ground in supplication.

  The Shahmar had won.

  14

  For years, Soraya had thought of herself as a prisoner in the walls of Golvahar, but now, she actually was one.

  Her prison was luxurious, certainly—one of the rooms in the new wing, usually reserved for the shah’s most important visitors. Its beauty was slightly tarnished, though, since the divs had stripped the room nearly bare, removing anything that could be used as either weapon or escape route—bedding, letter openers, and vases, as well as practically any piece of furniture that could be lifted. When the div had first locked her inside, Soraya had almost longed for the shadows of the dungeon—they were more comfortable to her than a room where there was nowhere to hide.

  But more important, there was no way to escape. Soraya didn’t need to wonder why the Shahmar had chosen such a gilded prison for her and her family. She already knew the answer:

  These tunnels run all through the palace?

  Everywhere except for the newer wing on the other side.

  Still, the first thing Soraya did was check the walls for hollow spaces. It was something to do other than wonder how long the Shahmar planned to keep them all alive. She had expected him to execute her brother on the spot once Sorush had bowed his head, but the Shahmar had simply ordered his div soldiers to herd together the shah’s family and anyone who hadn’t kneeled, and keep them confined to the new wing. Soraya didn’t think it was mercy—she assumed the Shahmar wanted to kill them later in secret, so as not to upset his new subjects.

  Around the room she went, putting her ear to the wall as she knocked, listening for the echo that would tell her she was wrong about there being no passages linked to these rooms. But all she heard were the words echoing in her head to the rhythm of her knocking: Your fault. Your fault. Your fault.

  Just as she reached the doorway, the door opened and she froze, one fist still in the air. The beaked head of a div poked into the room, took one look at Soraya, and then flung Tahmineh into the room before shutting the door on them both.

  Was it a coincidence that they were locked up together? Or did the Shahmar hope that they would tear each other apart and save him the trouble?

  They stared at each other, neither of them speaking or moving. They were both bedraggled, their faces tearstained, their hearts heavy. Soraya didn’t know whether to beg forgiveness or demand an explanation. Even now, she didn’t know how to speak to her mother candidly, without layers of courtesy and formality.

  Finally, Tahmineh stepped forward, eyes glistening, and reached one hand to touch Soraya’s face. Soraya backed away, more from habit than anything else, but she could tell from her mother’s wince of pain that Tahmineh believed the movement had been a rejection.

  With a weary sigh, Tahmineh turned away and moved to the window. Soraya had already checked the window and found that it was too small to fit through and too high up to jump from without breaking bones. She started to say so when her mother turned to her and said, “You weren’t surprised when he told everyone I did this to you. You already knew.”

  “I knew you did this to me, but I still don’t know why.”

  If Tahmineh heard the implied question, she ignored it. “How did you find out?”

  “The div,” Soraya said.
There seemed little point in keeping that secret anymore. “The one in the dungeon.”

  Tahmineh arched her eyebrows. “You spoke to her?”

  “At Sorush’s request. He wanted me to report to him if she told me anything useful.”

  Tahmineh shook her head with a wry smile. “I should have known better than to think I could control my children. At least now you know why I was so insistent that you not speak to her. But what I don’t understand,” she said as she stepped forward into the center of the room, still leaving plenty of space between her and Soraya, “is why you didn’t come talk to me after you found out.”

  Her hands were open, her eyes entreating, and Soraya wondered if she would have gone to Tahmineh first if this had been her image of her mother—open and honest. But how could Tahmineh ask her that question when every time Soraya had ventured too close to forbidden topics, that one worried line would appear on her forehead, and her body would tense as if ready to receive a blow?

  “Tell me honestly,” Soraya said, her voice shaking slightly. “If I had come to you and told you what the div had said, would you have told me the truth? Or would you have denied it and said the div was lying?”

  Tahmineh was silent, which was all the answer Soraya needed.

  “And I still don’t understand why,” she said, the last constraints of formality falling away. “The Shahmar said you did this for my protection, that the divs owed you a debt. He knows more about my life than I do. It’s no wonder he—” She stopped, not even sure how to finish. What had Azad done? Before she had taken the feather, what had he done that she did not want him to do? Soraya wrapped her arms around her waist and turned away from her mother, ashamed of her outburst. She wasn’t sure she had any right to anger anymore.

  From behind her, Tahmineh placed a tentative hand on her shoulder. “Did he make you do this?” she asked in a low voice.