by Melanie Rawn
With a groan—he’d never get there in time and would have to think up some plausible excuse for his tardiness—he turned Khamsin toward the palace. A brisk trot and a shortcut or two, and maybe he’d arrive during the dancing or while an especially incredible creation of the Sheyqa’s kitchen staff was being presented, or—well, he’d spent all his twenty years being lucky, and there was no reason to think tonight would be any different.
“Esteemed Majesty,” the eunuch whispered at Sheyqa Nizzira’s shoulder, “not all of them drink enough.”
The Sheyqa smiled, clapping her hands in time to a spirited tune, following the dancers’ swirling silks and exposed flesh with her gaze. The youth on the far left, the one who was dark and muscular and half-naked, he might do for later tonight. She kept her eyes on him, annoyed by the interruption, knowing it was necessary to reply. Without moving her lips, she said, “I never meant them to.”
“But—Revered Majesty—your kinsmen from beyond The Steeps said—”
She saw the concertmaster watching her and gave him the signal that indicated her choice of the beautiful dark boy. He nodded once and turned to give his own instructions. To the eunuch, the Sheyqa said, “All that is required is that most of them are drunk. Go away. All will be as it should.”
“You have commanded it, Exalted One.” Bowing low, he melted away into the shadows.
She returned her attention to the boy, whose new role in the dance now required him to shed almost all his clothes. He was the coveted one, the desired one; all the other young men faded into the corners of the room while concubines belonging to Nizzira’s sons danced to tempt him.
“No difficulties, I trust, Highness?” asked the al-Ma’aliq seated nearest her—father of Ammineh, smug enough to make Nizzira’s palm itch for her knife.
Instead she waved a well-manicured hand, rings sparking a dozen colors by lamplight. “That silly eunuch frets as if he truly were a woman, instead of merely not a man. Do you enjoy yourself, my friend?”
“Truly, Highness, it is a night for jubilation at Acuyib’s great generosity to both our houses. For is it not said,” he added, his smile dazzlingly white below a luxuriant black mustache, “that the fiftieth of a sheyqa’s descendants shall be the joy of her age? My own father finds it so.” He directed a fond glance at the drooling ninety-year-old moron who, determined not to wait for grandchildren to fulfill his ambition, had killed seven successive wives in the getting of his first forty-nine offspring. The fiftieth, sole product of the eighth and final wife, attended the old man so devotedly that he practically chewed his food for him. The Sheyqa found this utterly disgusting, but what offended her more deeply was the reference yet again to the long-gone alMa’aliq power. That senile, toothless old man ruling Rimmal Madar? It didn’t bear contemplation.
What she said, in a mild tone, was, “I hope your daughter has given me a child just as fine for my fiftieth.”
“I am confident that she has, Highness.” Another raising of the wine to his daughter’s accomplishment.
The Sheyqa nodded, smiled, and drank. The exquisite young boy had spurned the attentions of all the girls, no matter what they did to entice him; it was his role to reject them and eventually to prostrate himself at the Sheyqa’s feet. She watched as he began the moves that culminated the dance, reflecting that it really was a fine thing to be past the age of childbearing and not have to limit herself to those men she had married for money or land or political alliance. Carelessness in this regard had been her own mother’s downfall—one did not bear the child of a Hrumman servant, no matter how tempting his golden looks might be, not when there had never been an al-Ammarizzad born with blond hair. Husbands were tedious at times, but not even a sheyqa could mortify them in such fashion. It was said she had died of a fever, and all her husbands were seen to mourn her—none of them less sincerely than Nizzira’s father, who had administered the “fever” in a cup of wine. The act had sealed Nizzira’s accession to the Moonrise Throne, for not only had her father taken on the task and thus the responsibility if caught, but he had not been caught—and that was warning enough. No one in the palace wished to be similarly administered to. The other husbands had been dealt with in Nizzira’s own time, and their offspring as well, and now all of her own husbands were either dead or divorced.
So she could have anyone she wished these days. Truly, it was most liberating. When the boy began his approach, she forgot to wonder whether what was between his thighs was natural or cleverly provoked by drugs. The latter, she thought, rightly judging the glaze in his eyes. But it mattered for nothing; he really was quite the loveliest thing she’d ever seen.
She was just beginning to plan the end of her evening when the first al-Ma’aliq began to vomit.
No one was on the last mile of the palace road. Azzad cursed. No other late arrivals with whom to slide, practically unnoticed, inside the gates. He couldn’t even pretend he’d been there all along, caught up in greeting friends or seeing to the comfort of his older relations. His esteemed father would see through that in a twitch of a lamb’s ear.
Khamsin suddenly froze—ears pricked, head thrown back, the whites showing in his black eyes. Azzad frowned. Usually he had his hands full preventing the stallion from challenging every other stallion on the palace road, for which the Qoundi Ammar on their grand white horses did not thank him.
But there were no Qoundi Ammar lining the palace road tonight.
He was alone.
And on the soft evening breeze his inferior senses finally recognized what Khamsin’s nose had already warned of: fire.
One hundred twenty-six of the almost four hundred al-Ma’aliq had to be helped from the banqueting hall to the outer courtyard, robes stained and bellies churning. The Sheyqa waved aside the mortified apologies of Ammineh’s father.
“Young men will overindulge, you know it is so,” she said as servants hurriedly cleaned up the messes. “Think no more on it, my friend. Come, let’s not ruin the celebration.”
On the expert advice of distant relations whose help she’d sought for this purpose, she’d made sure that all of the “drunks” would be young men, easily excused in their excesses. For their elders, she had something else in mind.
The eunuch approached right on time, bowing, begging Her Glorious Majesty to accede to the Qoundi Ammar’s request that they might demonstrate their joy in her fiftieth descendant. The Sheyqa smiled. “Very thoughtful. My thanks and compliments to the qabda’an, but it can wait until tomorrow. I shall even bring along my little Sayyida to see the salute in her honor.”
“Highness,” said Sayyida’s grandfather, “the disgraceful actions of my kinsmen have soured the atmosphere within. The fresh air of the courtyard would be most welcome, would it not?”
Naturally the al-Ma’aliq would wish to revel in a show of military precision by the elite guard. They thought it a tribute to them. Fifty years ago—at about the time of Nizzira’s birth, in fact—a renegade faction of al-Ma’aliq had been the only troops ever to defeat the proud, invincible Qoundi Ammar. The doddering old fool down the table from Nizzira had been the one to punish his wayward kinsmen, thereby gaining for himself royal assistance in his claim to leadership of the family. But the necessity still galled, all these years later. Had things been just slightly different, one of the al-Ma’aliq women would now occupy the Moonrise Throne. “Never trust them, my daughter—never, never. They were kings once and would be again if they could. Keep them under your eye always.”
Ayia, not her eye—her heel. And even that had not been enough. Who knew but that Ammineh had been dangled before her fool of a son in hopes of precisely these circumstances: an al-Ammarizzad with al-Ma’aliq blood, who one day would seize the throne? Restored to its former glory, the family would make certain that all the mighty deeds of Nizzira’s own forebears were appropriated to their renown.
Never. Never. There were, among her forty-nine other strong, clever, ambitious sons and daughters and grandsons and granddaught
ers, many now at an age to begin vying for precedence in the succession, which amused her. She intended to live to be at least eighty years old and die in bed with a beautiful boy in her arms—not with a knife in the spine as her grandmother had done. (Not Nizzira’s knife, to be sure, though she had hated the old woman, and she had enjoyed tremendously the execution of the cousin who had done it.) Her plans for the al-Ma’aliq tonight were in part to warn her own offspring that such could just as easily happen to any of them, should she become displeased. Another lesson learned from her esteemed father.
But not a flicker of these thoughts showed in the Sheyqa’s face. She chewed another candy, pretending to consider, then nodded. “Very well. Let us go outside and see what the qabda’an has arranged for our amazement tonight. Something spectacular, I hope, with lots of pretty riding, and that trick they do with their swords and axes. Have you ever seen it? Truly extraordinary.”
Azzad urged Khamsin back toward the city, and the closer he got to home the brighter the sky became. The breeze had died, and smoke billowed straight up into the heavens. Smuts of soot began to drift down onto his blue cloak. People in outlying districts leaned out windows or stood atop the flat roofs of their houses to get a better view, but as he neared home, he had to slow the big stallion to avoid the milling crowd. Only when he turned onto Sharyah Ammar Zaqaf—the Street of the Red Roofs—did he realize that there was no rush toward the flames with buckets of water to fight the fire. The faces he saw, lit crimson by fire glow, were curious and apprehensive at the same time—like dogs confronted by poisonous snakes.
Abruptly furious, he dug his heels into Khamsin, caring nothing for whoever might get in the way. Down the wide avenue he galloped, past shops crammed with silk and silver where his five sisters loved to dawdle of a morning before the heat grew oppressive. At the very end of the double rows of plane trees was the walled magnificence of Beit Ma’aliq, the house of his family. The gate was high and narrow and closely woven, all fanciful curves and bright flowers, like a woman’s embroidered shawl draped shoulder-toshoulder across her slender back—only this embroidery was of iron. Tonight the vivid colors of the painted metal were black against a background of flames.
Someone grabbed at Khamsin’s bridle, a mistake that nearly cost him a hunk of shoulder as the stallion snapped angrily. Azzad kicked the man and wheeled Khamsin around toward the back entrance. The surrounding wall was much too high for him to see over, but through small, iron-barred apertures cut into white-plastered brick he caught glimpses of the blaze. And no people. Not one single person was outside in any of the courtyards.
When he got to the rear gate, he understood why. Through the twisting painted iron he could see the sprawl of the main house and the doors leading out to the stable yard—and the stout planks nailing them shut.
There was yet one more way to get in. Frantic now, he turned Khamsin to the alleyway behind the stables and fumbled in his green and gold sash for the key. The postern gate into the gardens was made of wood. Even as he turned the corner, he saw that it too was ablaze, and as he neared, he smelled the stench of rancid oil.
Beyond the high walls spread the garden with its languid flowers and many fountains. Above was the two-story arrareem, the women’s private chambers that no man dared enter without Za’avedra’s invitation. Azzad coaxed Khamsin nearer, fighting the horse’s terror of fire, standing in his stirrups to see over the wall. All the windows spewed fire through ornamental wooden grilles out onto balconies. Behind those windows lived his mother, sisters, aunts, cousins, the wives and daughters and infant sons. And from within he heard screaming.
He swung one leg over Khamsin’s neck, preparing to dismount. The stallion, wiser than he, sidled away from the postern gate toward the opposite wall. Azzad was too fine a rider to lose his balance, yet neither could he leap down, for Khamsin had trapped his other leg against the bricks. And the instant his rump connected with the saddle again, the horse pivoted neatly on his hind hooves and galloped down the alley.
He could not turn Khamsin back to Beit Ma’aliq. The stallion had had enough of fire and smoke and did not intend to allow his chosen master to commit suicide. Cursing, Azzad lifted his head into the wind of Khamsin’s gallop, feeling the tears dry on his cheeks.
Blazing windows, barred doors, oil-soaked wood—all the women and children of his family would die tonight in an inferno of the Sheyqa’s making. Azzad knew he would hear their screams the rest of his life.
Khamsin finally slowed at the outskirts of the city. Azzad had no notion of where they were or how many people had been trampled to get them there. He understood one thing only: the Sheyqa had murdered helpless women and children in their beds, and she would have no qualms about murdering every man of the al-Ma’aliq at the palace tonight.
His cousin Ammineh too would die and her baby with her—no, Sayyida was the granddaughter of the Sheyqa, she would be spared. And she would be the only al-Ma’aliq left.
Unless Azzad could get to the palace in time.
The Sheyqa’s servants delicately, unobtrusively guided the men in bronze silk robes to walk through the hammered silver doors of the banqueting hall together, and to file into the courtyard together, and to sit on the front two rows of benches together. The al-Ma’aliq were too flush with drink to notice that some of these servants had never been seen before in the palace—indeed, not in Dayira Azreyq, nor even in Rimmal Madar. And after tonight, they would never be seen within the country’s borders again.
The Sheyqa had her own separate platform, with a canopy of crimson. Torches blazed in the courtyard, lighting the vast expanse of hardened earth where every day the Qoundi Ammar practiced drills, most of them showy and all of them lethal. After two hundred and seventy al-Ma’aliq had settled their smugly drunken selves on tapestry cushions, Sheyqa Nizzira signaled for the tribute to begin.
An intricate pattern woven in sleek white horses and crimson tunics and flashing silver trappings delighted the eye, even as the ear marveled at the precision of hooves—one hundred horses moving as one, without a single doubled beat. No horse stepped out of sequence with another. The Sheyqa nodded satisfaction at the preservation of tradition: thus had the Qoundi Ammar fooled barbarian invaders in a famous battle, making them think that a single horse approached through a twisting ravine. The foreigners’ leader was slaughtered, and five hundred soldiers besides, by one hundred men on horseback who sounded like a single rider. At the end of the drill, the audience cheered and whistled. The Sheyqa saw the eunuch Arrif nod to the qabda’an, and she hid a smile.
Turning smartly, the hundred rode back to the other end of the courtyard. At the faint hiss of steel and the sword flashes by torchlight, the Sheyqa leaned back in her throne, eyes narrowed. Slowly, then with increasing speed, long swords circled over the riders’ heads until it seemed each sat beneath a silver whirlwind. Then an ax appeared beside each man, a smaller but even brighter counterpoint to the brilliant spinning cyclones of steel. Light blazed, and the audience gasped, then cheered.
Suddenly one hundred white horses thundered forward shoulder-to-shoulder at a dead gallop, their riders roaring the Sheyqa’s name. A scant armlength from the seats, the horses skidded to a halt, the riders bellowed the Sheyqa’s name once more, and the flame-burnished whirlwinds of swords and axes flew straight into the hearts of the al-Ma’aliq.
Cheeks soot-streaked and eyes frenzied, his fine blue cloak singed, Azzad was unrecognizable as his family’s most elegant wastrel. Riding along the avenue of plane trees and oleander hedges that led to the reservoir and the Qoundi Ammar barracks that guarded it, he saw in the near distance a small troop on horseback. Melting into the shadows, whispering a silencing word to Khamsin, he waited for them to pass.
There were fifteen of them, all in dark crimson tunics, riding the white stallions of the Qoundi Ammar that looked like ghost horses by moonlight. One of the men wore a gold-and-ruby armband. Another repeatedly tossed into the air a long dagger, catching it neatly by the jew
el-studded hilt. A third flourished a white silk cloak, embroidered around the edges with autumnbronze leaves.
The armband belonged to his uncle and the dagger to his older brother. And the cloak—he’d watched his sisters stitch the complicated patterns on the great frame in their workroom, hurrying to finish it in time for their father’s birthday.
“Do you realize what the launderers will charge to get the vomit out of this?” complained the man wearing the cloak.
“Puke soaks out,” said another man, who had a length of bronze silk draped across his saddle. “This one will have a bloodstain even if it’s washed a hundred times!”
“At least we got the best pickings,” advised the one wearing the armband. “Pity the poor menials who’ll have to clean up half the palace, with not even a ring left on any of the bodies! Poisoned vomit on the banqueting floor, blood flowing all over the courtyard, every cushion ruined—”
His companions jeered at him for worrying like a house-proud eunuch. Then they rode past the place where Azzad sat trembling in his saddle, and he could hear their voices no more.
“Eminent Majesty,” said the eunuch, concluding his report, “Beit Ma’aliq will be gutted by morning. All within the house are dead. Regrettably—”
“What?” snapped the Sheyqa, glancing up from cooing to newborn Sayyida, who lay sleeping on her knees. She truly was a pretty little thing, and looked just like her grandmother—but for the unfortunate chin.
“Regret, Esteemed Lady, for the houses nearby that caught fire,” he said quickly. “Eleven, before those flames were extinguished.”
“And how did this happen?”