by Fuad Baloch
She heard footfalls approach from behind. The boots dragged along the marble floor as if the man was too tired to lift them properly.
A man gathering power for her cause.
Even if the power was considered abominable by many.
Didn't matter.
He was just another pawn.
Chapter 17
Shoki
“Get up, son,” said Gohara Bano, her pinched face hovering over Shoki’s vision. He blinked, unsure of where he was, his mind numb under the thick blanket of fog.
Gohara leaned in, shook him by the shoulder. “I made chicken soup. It’s your favorite, isn't it?”
It used to be. Shoki opened his jaw, failed to find the necessary energy to reply. Instead, he let the older woman fuss over him, muttering one second, talking loudly the next.
His mother and father were dead. Not just that, people he thought his parents were dead. Salar Ihagra’s words came to his mind. When a soldier died, his final rank in the army became a part of his identity no one could wipe out. One’s parentage was the same. His had been.
Two people were dead. A man and a woman he had loved dearly. When he mourned them, how was he meant to honor them?
Voices rose outside the tent. Shoki heard them dimly. Angry. Loud. Heavily accented too in the Reratish dialect. None of that mattered to him though. He was just someone breathing, in a world that held little meaning for him.
“... I’m so sorry...” Gohara Bano was saying, her cheeks tear-streaked.
Shoki blinked. “Why?”
Something in his voice made the older woman break out into loud wailing. She stood, tore at her hair, thumped her massive bosom. “Why... oh why, did I open my big mouth? Much better to have kept the terrible tidings from you...”
Shoki watched the old, pinched lips move, words pouring out thick and fast, making no sense to him. Another realization rose. He had lost his parents twice now. First, whoever had birthed him. Then the kindly blacksmith and his wife who had never stopped fussing over him.
There was nothing he could do about it. What was done was done—
Except…
There was something he could do.
Shoki licked his lower lip, sucked deeply through clenched teeth, the thick fog of grief lifting for a moment. Innocents had been slaughtered in Algaria. He had investigated a murder case before, had brought the culprit to justice. He was still a member of the city guard, still duty bound.
He would find those responsible for these crimes and bring them to justice.
No matter what it took.
A part of him, one he’d known all his life, quailed at the dangerous idea taking root in his mind. Flee, it warned. Run away. Live with the losses instead of incurring more.
Run where though?
He had nowhere to go, mere flotsam at the mercy of waves.
He was also a free man.
A man with a vendetta.
Shoki licked his lips again and found them dry. Surprised, he raised his fingers, brushing them gently over the broken skin. When was the last time he’d had anything to eat or drink? As if reading his mind, Gohara thrust the bowl at him once more, steam rising in thin swirls over it.
He had no appetite.
Shoki clambered out of the bedroll. Whose tent was this? The old woman was still blabbering. Something about old relations and the need for them all to stay together in these troubling times.
Shaking his head, dazed, he raised the flap and walked out. Pungent smells—heady spices, human and animal shit, old urine—assailed him. He inhaled deeply, relishing that the part of him that could still process the outside world hadn’t yet died.
“Shoki!” shouted Gohara behind him.
Shoki clumped forward, his limbs heavy but obeying him for the moment.
“—Firumin is stretched too much—” a guard was saying to another as they crossed Shoki’s path.
“Tough times are coming, my friend,” replied his portly companion.
Shoki continued to hobble straight. Unlike Algaria, a massive sprawl of humanity constrained by ancient walls, this city was well-planned, all streets leading toward the mercantile quarters and the ever-present Red Fort in its heart.
Shoki stuttered to a stop. Next to him was a guard post, not that different from the ones in Algaria. The three city guards within ignored him, their eyes on the cards splayed across an old table. Just like they would have done in Algaria.
Inhaling, he strode forward, and bumped into a tall man. “Watch where you’re going, you dirty refugee!”
Shoki ignored the insult and followed the winding road.
Shouts came from behind him. Shoki turned, just in time to see three riders pull up next to the guard post. Black horses, lathered and snorting. Orange harnesses. Their riders dressed in yellow livery, the sickle of imperial messengers on their chest plates bright and proud.
“Imperial messengers!” shouted one of the guards, the card game forgotten, the declaration entirely unnecessary.
“Report to the gates,” ordered one of the riders.
“W-why?” replied the guard, his mouth hanging loose.
“An army marches toward the city. Go, shore up the defenses! Now!” That said, the imperial messenger nodded to his companions. As one, the three imperious riders spurred their magnificent beasts and thundered up the road leading to the Red Fort.
Men and women of Buzdar stared at each other dumbfounded. Shoki felt his lips curl back in a sneer. Unlike them, he had little to worry about losing.
The guards were muttering to each other, a crowd of worried faces turning toward them.
“An army,” shouted someone.
“Headed toward Buzdar.”
“Ten thousand, did you say?” asked someone.
“More,” replied another.
The whispers and rumors spread like wildfire, multiplying into twisted forms.
“Don’t worry,” came an accented voice from the guard post. Shoki inclined his chin. A tall man dressed in the tight-fitting trousers of the Reratish Kingdom smiled. “Our king is just, and a great friend of your people. He will offer you all aid.”
Someone shrieked. Another voice howled. A baby joined in the clamor. Individual voices, already hard for Shoki to make sense of, got swept up in the din. Cupping his ears, Shoki stumbled away from the mayhem.
He turned to his left, then turned right at the next intersection. The shopfronts looked expensive, the large windows clean, gleaming. Even here though, the merchants and hagglers and bystanders all shouted at each other. A perfume-maker rushed out of his shop, forgetting to lock the doors behind him. Two guards exchanged nervous glances outside a jewelry shop.
Unable to fight the tiredness coming upon his legs, Shoki leaned against a brick wall, stared at his surroundings blankly. Was this what had happened at Algaria too? Panic, grown to a level where the slightest spark could light up a bonfire?
“Get away if you value your hide,” came a thick voice behind him. Shoki turned. An old beggar, the lines on his ancient face heavy and deep, his beard dyed orange with henna, raised a trembling finger. “An army marches to the city. An army! Run before you get slaughtered.”
Shoki bared his teeth. “Oh, yeah? And run where exactly?”
The beggar eyed him, an amused twinkle in creeping into his eyes. “Don’t jest with Dullah, servant of the great saint Edin.” He leaned forward. “In a heavy downpour, all piss and shit goes one way.” Then, he raised his fingers. “Make sure you're not swept up with it all.”
“Calm down,” bellowed a rider, the golden stripes on his embroidered robes denoting him a salar of the city guard. Two city guards rode beside him. All three brandished swords, the blades shiny, glinting as if they'd never been bloodied. “By order of the ameer, calm down!”
“Are we being invaded?” shouted someone.
“Is it the sultan’s army?” came another shout.
More senseless shrieking broke out, so high, so piercing, it seemed to cut thr
ough his mind.
“For Rabb’s sake, stop panicking!” shouted the salar again. “There is no need to worry. We are not being invaded. Just a... small party outside the gates, wanting to seek an audience with the ameer. Nothing more than that.”
Not the right words to use apparently in the circumstance. Far from calming, the crowd surged, mindless waves crashing into each other.
The salar shouted some more, his loud voice lost now to the braying, worrying masses. Before long, the restless crowd swallowed him and his two men. Six more city guards rode into the crowd, their hooves clapping against the pebble road. Screams followed their wake. For a minute, they towered over the crowd. Then the crowd, transformed into a mad beast twisted itself around the riders, curled inward, swallowing them whole.
Shoki exhaled. Ordinarily, city guard or not, he’d have been in the crowd, worried sick. Now, he couldn't care less.
He turned. “Where—”
The beggar was gone.
Shoki shook his head. In the teeming crowds, he was all by himself.
For once thankful for his freakish height, Shoki headed for a road that looked relatively quiet, then began trudging toward the city gates. He chuckled, realizing he was headed right for the invading army. He turned to the right, heading for the eastern gates.
Squat inns lined the roads. Grooms brushed horses in the stables, and cooks stood over pots in courtyards adjoining various taverns and inns. Worried eyes fell upon him. A stable boy called out to him. Over his own beating heart, Shoki couldn't hear the words, a mixture of Nirdu and Kinlish the Reratish spoke in the west.
Besides, what did he have to say anyway? Nothing except an exhortation for the young man to run, before the crowd realized what he knew, and all swarmed toward the eastern gates as well.
Two city guards ran past him. “No help will come from Orsa—” shouted one of them.
“Firumin then—”
Shoki kept walking ahead. He was panting now. Didn't matter though. Onward and forward. He had nothing in this cursed city or region. His home was Algaria. He had to report to Salar Ihagra. Together, like old times, they’d hunt the monsters who had attacked his family.
His heart seemed to burst with pent-up rage. A curious, terrifying specter in its own right. Red hot anger ran through his veins, lending him a rush he couldn't recall experiencing before.
At the next intersection, he paused, the city gates looming three hundred strides away. Shoki turned his head to the left. Toward the Red Fort.
Toward Nuraya. Princess Nuraya Istan.
Could he really just run away like this when the daughter of his sultan might need him? He forced a chuckle. What good would he be to her? Why did it even matter?
Yet, something stirred in his breast, arresting his feet. Not loyalty. Not higher calling. Something more basic, more powerful. Infatuation that even he could see would cause nothing but ruin, yet powerful enough he couldn't just sweep it away.
Flee! urged the voice again.
His heart thrummed within him, the desire to see Nuraya’s face so powerful it almost choked him. He was of no use to her. The reason why the princess or her men had never sent for him.
But didn't it make sense for him to present himself to her and take his leave? Isn't this what Salar Ihagra would have expected of him?
Excuses, he knew, to see her one last time.
Shoki turned to the left and took his first step toward the Red Fort.
“Where are you off to?” boomed a deep voice behind him.
His eyes widening, Shoki turned. Mara Carsa, the djinn magus stood tall, his naked torso smooth over the loincloth, an amused expression on his severe face.
“Something I need to do,” replied Shoki.
“No, you don’t,” said the magus.
Chapter 18
Nuraya
Nuraya woke to the sounds of shouting and mayhem outside the wide-open windows. Rubbing sleep from her eyes, her head bare, she rushed over.
From her rooms on the second floor, she saw the city guards standing very still outside the Red Fort’s main gates, their gloved hands clutching spears and polearms tight against their bodies.
She blinked. Instead of the usual dozen or so men she had become accustomed to seeing at this smaller castle, at least two score stood there now.
Nuraya inclined her chin, a part of her shouting she’d seen this all before. Beyond the men, down the winding road that led up to the Red Fort, she spied ant-like figures going about their business. Citizens of Buzdar, busy with whatever it was that passed for their ordinary lives.
Yet, even from this distance, she could hear the distant drone of voices, broken by the occasional shouts coming from the bailey underneath her window.
Light glinted off some distant object outside the city walls, visible from the Red Fort’s domineering position on the tallest hill. Squinting, she turned toward the western gates. A dark caravan approached the city at a snail’s pace.
No, she shook her head. Caravans didn't fly the streaming banners these riders carried, nor did their horses and camels move with this precision.
Soldiers did.
The doors behind her burst open. Nuraya whirled around. Mona rushed through the threshold, her face ashen, shouts coming behind her.
“Come back,” demanded a stern female voice.
Nuraya stepped forward. Mona never slowed down, almost crashing into Nuraya. Footfalls approached the door. Jimana, the head maid assigned to her by her aunt stood at the threshold.
“I apologize, my princess,” she said, not looking abashed at all. “The ameer has summoned you.”
“Summoned?” bristled Nuraya.
“They stopped me from coming to you,” said Mona, panting as she stood to the side.
Nuraya stared at her friend, then at the maid. “Who are you to tell my lady-in-waiting what she can or cannot do?”
“With all due respect,” replied Jimana, “my fealty is to the ameer, who, at this very instant, desires to see you.”
Mona opened her mouth to say something, but Nuraya raised a hand and she fell quiet. Straightening her back, Nuraya took a step forward, pointed her index finger. “Tell my uncle, your ameer, that he owes fealty to me.”
Jimana didn't back away. She was in her sixties, her beaten face weathered and heavily lined, someone who couldn't care less of what others thought of her. “The ameer owes loyalty to the Istani family.”
Nuraya blinked, shocked by the insolence at display. How dare she deny her princess? Then, her pride cracked, a silent pain spreading within her breast. Her fortunes had fallen so low that even maids now had the courage to disagree with her in public.
She failed to restrain the rage threatening to burst through. “Tell... Uncle, I shall consider his request.”
The maid shook her head vehemently. “The ameer wishes to see you now, my princess.”
Nuraya turned her back to the maid. “Mona, what’s going on outside?”
Mona stepped in beside her just as the maid insisted, “The ameer—”
“—will have to wait,” completed Mona, glancing back at the maid, her words sharper, more hostile than Nuraya had ever heard before. “Now begone!”
Nuraya didn't turn but could still feel the maid’s eyes bore through her back.
“Perhaps, you could... help the princess get dressed for seeing the Ameer.” The maid’s sandals squeaked on the marble floors. The door shut behind with a thud that sent Nuraya’s blood boiling.
“How dare she—”
Mona reached for her hand, squeezed it. Her eyes were damp, the white veil slipping to the side to reveal the long, brown hair. “Nuraya, what are we to do now?”
Nuraya’s fury subsided. Men were still shouting, gathering in the bailey outside. The sense of something profoundly wrong overcame every other thought. She approached the window once more. The guards stood warily, another score more than the last time. A salar astride a dark charger raised his sword toward the winding road.
>
Out in the distance beyond the city gates, the dark cloud of soldiers inched ever closer.
Not just soldiers, Nuraya realized, her blood chilling.
Ahasan’s men.
They were here. Outside the city walls. And if they weren't rushing in to take the castle, nor were the ameer’s soldiers closing down the gates, the implications were clear as mud.
Nuraya turned around, gestured toward the almirah set against the wall. “Fetch me my sword.”
“Your sword?” asked Mona, her voice quivering slightly even as she put on a brave face.
Nuraya nodded impatiently, then raising her arms, pulled off her shift. Mona blinked at her sudden nakedness, then growing red in the cheeks, turned around. Chewing on her lower lip so hard she drew blood, the air warm against her bare chest, Nuraya began dressing.
Not the frilly, lacy peshwazes her aunt and women of Buzdar preferred. Tough cotton shirt, a hard-boiled vest on top, trousers fit for hard riding.
She buckled the brass belt across her waist, extended her hand toward Mona who handed her the sword. The richly embroidered hilt felt rough in her hand. Not that it mattered. She tied the sheath to her belt, then drawing in a long breath, turned to Mona. “Ahasan’s men are here.”
“Why?” Mona asked.
“For me.”
For a long second, Mona stared at her, blinking her long eyelashes furiously. Then, she leaned in and embraced Nuraya tightly, her soft body trembling. “What would you have us do?”
“Fight.”
Mona stepped away. The bright sunlight set off the wavy brown hair against her pale skin, the black teeth glittering like onyx stones. For the first time, Nuraya saw why Mona’s father thought he could get ahead in life through bartering a suitable hand for his daughter. She was beautiful. Skin so pale as to be almost translucent. A perfectly proportioned body heaving against the tight peshwaz. Lips that could have been sculpted out of marble. Eyes wide and expansive on the open face.
One pretty enough to be acclaimed a princess.
Surprised by the sudden stab of jealousy, Nuraya shook her head.