Lions of Istan

by Fuad Baloch

  “I… what am I to do?” Mona stammered.

  “You don’t have to follow me,” said Nuraya, her voice slow, soft. “Ahasan has no reason to harm you.”

  For a second, Mona stared at her, then she laughed bitterly. “And leave you alone?” She shook her head, pulled Nuraya into another quick embrace. “Never!”

  Nuraya opened her mouth to argue back. Mona raised her finger to it, quieting her.

  “My princess...” she whispered, the eyes wide with concern. “Jinan still hasn't returned. And the Ameer must have got the Red Fort exits well-guarded.”

  Nuraya clenched her fists. “The ameer... has deceived me.” She punched the wall, felt the pain distantly as if it wasn't really hers. “He’s going to pay for it. Dearly!”

  Then she strode toward the door. Mona cried out but she didn't stop. When Nuraya yanked open the doors, she found the old maid standing just outside.

  “Out of my way,” Nuraya snarled.

  Sensing the dark rage in her, Jimana relented, stepping away.

  “And,” said Nuraya, raising a finger toward her, “remind my uncle that I will definitely be visiting him. Soon. On my terms though!”

  Together, Nuraya and Mona stomped through the Red Fort’s harem. Eunuchs shied away from their sight, maids and ladies-in-waiting scurrying. Mutters, whispers, occasional shouts rose behind them.

  Nuraya ignored them all. This might have been her uncle’s castle, but no one dared deny the lioness that prowled through it now. They crossed the gates that separated the harem from the men’s section and past the guards who stared at them dumbfound.

  Courtiers and sons of minor lords turned toward them. The old and wily with their scrunched brows, their voluminous turbans drooping over the pathetic, weak heads; the young with their ship-like hats leering openly at her.

  Nuraya swallowed all the disrespect. She was the daughter of the great Sultan Anahan, and nothing would get in her way when she’d made up her mind. Not even her mother’s brother. She heard Abba’s words, respect is earned, never commanded.

  Ameer of Buzdar demanded the loyalty of his men through tradition and position. For treachery to her, she would snatch it all from him, deny his son the very rights he had tried to take away from her.

  Justice.

  That is what she was going to perform in the name of the sultan. The Keeper of the Divide might be no more, but his legacy continued in her.

  City guards shouted beyond the rich corridors, horse hooves clapping against the cobbled bailey.

  “Halt!” came a man’s deep, authoritative command. Nuraya didn't slow down even as she heard Mona gasp beside her. “In the name of the sultan, stop, my princess.”

  At that, Nuraya did stop. She turned her head to the side. The siphsalar who had been standing beside the maps in her uncle’s chambers marched toward them. Dressed in mail marked with falcons to depict his station, the siphsalar raised a fist. A dozen men strode toward them. “My lady, the ameer wishes to speak with you.”

  Nuraya scowled, her fingernails clawing deep into her palms. “Are you a man of honor, siphsalar? If so, do not mince words with me. You may eat the wheat my uncle provides you, but do not forget your foremost loyalty lies with the Istani family.”

  The old warrior’s face darkened. “I know my duty well enough.”

  “Good.” Nuraya raised a finger, her heart suddenly beating violently inside her chest, her right hand settling on the sword hilt. “Then stay out of my way.”

  Two of the soldiers stepped forward. “Princess, I... strongly encourage you to attend to the ameer.”

  Nuraya turned, motioning Mona to follow her. “And I refuse.” She started walking.

  Each second, she feared the siphsalar would see through the mask she’d put on. That he’d know she was nothing but a scared little girl putting on a show.

  The siphsalar remained quiet though. No guards rushed to block their path.

  And so, they emerged unchallenged into the bailey. Soldiers and their salars, their uniforms pristine and perfect, stared at her. A few of them at least had the courtesy to drop their gazes.

  Keeping her chin high, meeting no one’s eyes, Nuraya led Mona through the glares and mutters and out the main gates onto the road that led down to the city.

  Spying the tents Jinan’s mercenaries had erected outside the Red Fort, she turned right. Almost immediately, two figures plodded toward her. Familiar figures. A tall, heavy man, his bulbous nose casting a long shadow to the side of his face. And a lanky man who hobbled as if he was in his eighties instead of forties.

  “Jinan isn't here,” reminded Mona, panting with the effort of keeping up with her.

  “How very convenient,” observed Nuraya.

  The magus was the first one to hail her. “My princess, there’s an army at the door and—”

  “We do not know that for a fact,” countered Vishan, the mercenary Salar, his voice halting, the eyes moving lazily from the magus to her. If he too knew Maharis’s hidden ability, like Jinan, it didn't seem to bother him either.

  “Crazy, you are, my friend, for denying the obvious unless witnessed personally,” noted Maharis dryly, “and so I shall declare beside your shallow grave.”

  Shouts rose behind them. Mona hissed, but Nuraya didn't turn around. “Salar Vishan, why do you not agree with Maharis’s observation?”

  The mercenary salar shrugged, then scratched his nose. “Just because a band of armed men appears outside the city doesn't mean we’re under attack—”

  Maharis scoffed. “—you’re—”

  “—yet,” completed Vishan, his voice easily carrying over the magus’s.

  “Regardless,” said Nuraya. “It’s time for us to be on the move. Order your men to move out.”

  Maharis coughed. “We don’t have mounts, my princess. The... so-called siphsalar Jinan took all the freshest mounts with him, and the remaining horses are all stabled.”

  “I don’t care,” she declared. “We march on foot then.”

  Vishan licked his lower lip. “Sounds fair.” He snapped his fingers, turned around. “Men of Nikhtun,” he bellowed, “thralls of the princess, off your asses. Your princess asks you to follow her. Would you listen to her?”

  As if shocked into wakefulness, a sickly teenager to his left raised his gauntleted fist. “Aye!” A scattering of more ayes came from the few mercenaries who bothered standing up.

  Nuraya shook her head, stepped in beside Vishan. “Men of the Istani Sultanate,” she shouted, raising a fist in the air even as more shouts rose from the castle behind her. “Did your mothers cut off your tongues before they sent you to me? Now, answer me. Are you going to follow your princess?”

  The time the sound of their ayes was thunderous, unanimous, the response sending chills down her spine. She smiled. They were a weak, pathetic group of men who barely knew the difference between a short sword and a scimitar except for their value as booty, but they were hers. A power beholden to neither her father nor her brother or the ameer.

  “Good,” she said, then raised her sword toward the distant eastern walls of Buzdar. “Time to leave this sorry city behind us.”

  The men howled, giving a cheer in local dialects she didn't understand. Not that she needed to know the words. All she needed was their loyalty.

  She watched Vishan as he bellowed and readied them.

  Having gathered all they could, the mercenaries followed her down the road, and through the mercantile quarter, shoving past city guards and panicked citizens who swarmed the cobbled pathways.

  “—the princess—” shouted one of the merchants, raising his arms at her sight.

  Two shabbily dressed men hooted. “Look at the tits bounce on that one. Imperial tits, those!”

  “The sultan’s green eyes!” came more shouts from a group of young women with children in tow. Some of the kids bowed in her direction. Others just stared, their jaws hanging loose.

  Keeping her back perfectly straight, the unwavering ey
es looking ahead, she ignored them all. For some reason, Mona was shaking, reaching out to clutch her hand every few steps. Nuraya brushed her hand off. The last thing she needed was her image marred by the scared-stiff girl beside her who seemed to oscillate between bouts of courage and cowardice.

  Each step she took snapped off a bit more of the world that had existed in her mind. Not just the nobility, the commoners too failed in showing her the deference she deserved. Far from laying themselves at her feet, offering to sacrifice their lives like they so often had in front of Abba in the diwan-e-aam, their wagging tongues instead jeered at her.

  How had she lived all her life without realizing what the real world looked like?

  “Princess!” came another shout from the right. Nuraya ignored that too, trudging toward the gates that loomed ahead now. Fifty more yards, and she’d be out of this cursed city where she’d hoped to find support.

  “It’s me...” came the awkward shout again. She frowned, turned. Shoki raised a hand, his bare head bobbing over the indistinct sea of turbans and veils and fancy hats. Beside him, the bald magus scowled at everyone, his earrings swaying wildly. “I... needed to see you.”

  Vishan raised his fist toward one of his jawans to shoo them away. Nuraya shook her head at Vishan, her heart glad to see a face that had witnessed the imperious side of her in the court. Besides, something about the irreverent, awkward man appealed to her. “Let them join us.”

  One of the mercenaries came to a stop in front of her, panting and huffing. “The city guards are getting into position to stop you from crossing the gates.”

  “By Rabb, they will live to regret this.” She strode forward. One of the city guard salars stepped toward her, his face partially covered by an iron helmet.

  “My princess,” he shouted. “Our orders are to let no one pass these gates.”

  “I am not a no one, Salar,” she said.

  The salar shifted, his eyes scanning the hissing mercenaries behind her. “I’m afraid... not even you can pass unless I’m authorized by the ameer.”

  “Dear gods,” wailed Mona.

  Nuraya blinked. Blood pounded at her temples. She stood at a precipice here. A moment she could tell would set her on a path whose end she couldn't see.

  “My princess, what are your orders?” asked Vishan.

  Nuraya exhaled. What would Abba have done in this circumstance? She let out a rueful chuckle. He wasn't here though. Her fate was hers alone to make.

  “Step away from my path, Salar,” she warned once more.

  The city guards unsheathed their swords as the salar took a step back.

  Nuraya had no intention of causing bloodshed, or harming men who sought to maintain peace in the Istani realm. But the alternative of giving herself up to the mercy of feckless bastards like the ameer and Ahasan was hardly appealing.

  “Princess...” grunted Vishan, waving his arm at more guards forming ranks.

  Nuraya heard the din of the crowd around her, the men shouting all around. She turned to face the mercenaries’ eager faces. Mona hissed. She ignored her, unsheathed her own sword. “My loyal men, would you offer assistance to your princess?”

  Ayes thundered as the mercenaries grinned, brandished their own swords. Onlookers scurried away at the sight, not wanting to get caught up.

  She didn't get the chance to give them the order to charge. Something whistled past her, lodging itself into the chest of the lanky teenager that had raised his hand when Vishan had called out to them.

  Nuraya blinked, watching black blood gush from the teenager’s chest. He opened his mouth as if to scream. More blood spilled out. He fell to the ground silently, his last gasps swallowed by shouts.

  The mercenaries charged past her. A fierce clatter and clang of metal and leather and voices broke out. She couldn't turn away, her eyes transfixed by the young man who had so suddenly transformed into a corpse from a living, breathing being.

  Her knees threatened to buckle under her. She forced herself upright, forced her eyes on the prone body, blood pooling around it. Men died all the time. A time-honored legacy of the Istani Sultanate. Best she could do was make that man’s death mean something.

  Warm liquid sprayed across her face. Startled, Nuraya staggered back. Blood of some man she didn't even get the chance to see. Mona was screaming, a banshee in the throes of anguish.

  More men had fallen. Not just hers though. The guards too.

  She had cast the first stone at the fragile glass window that had fogged the real world from her eyes up until now.

  “We have to run!” shouted Mona, yanking at her hand.

  Nuraya shrugged her hand free, then raised her sword high in the air. A part of her was terrified. But it was drowned by the demons within braying for blood.

  “For Istan!” she shouted.

  “For Istan!” replied some of the men around her.

  “For the princess!” shouted another group.

  Blood pounded her temples, adrenalin coursed through her veins. Not the same kind she’d experienced when jousting with her teachers. Not even the unnatural strength the magus had gifted her. A lust, an overpowering urge, a predator’s need to pounce.

  A new sensation.

  One she liked.

  “Rabb, give me strength!” Brandishing the sword, she joined the fray of fighting men closest to her. The first guard in her way never saw her, not until her sword was lodged in the gap between his breastplate and arm. With a shriek, she withdrew the sword, marveling at the ease at which her sword had sunk into his flesh.

  Raising the sword, she let out a howl. Her men responded. She grinned, drawing their rage around her as if armor. She wasn't just the daughter of the Istani sultan, but its very symbol, its purest instrument.

  She dodged a half-hearted thrust from a stout city guard then parried the next that came from his companion. They might have been better trained than the mercenaries fighting on her side, but they were no match for one trained by the finest Kur'shi sword masters from beyond the southern ocean.

  No match for an Istani princess.

  Again and again, her sword lunged, stabbing, jabbing at any soul within her reach. She whirled round and round, a circle of death and blood and guts spraying around her. Once, she spied Shoki and Mara standing to the side, the tall city guard’s mouth hanging open.

  Time slowed. Reduced to a plodding, continuous dance of dodge, parry, stab. Her army of righteous warriors advanced. A slow, steady, bloody march.

  Sweat poured freely down her back, down her eyes that saw red everywhere she looked.

  Then, just as soon as it had started, it was all over.

  Nuraya whirled around, her sword seeking a target. But beneath the massive barbican, adorned with ornamental angels and demons, no one stood to challenge her.

  “The path is clear, my princess,” reported Vishan, panting beside her, his jacket in tatters.

  Nuraya grinned, leaned in to pat the man on the back. The salar blinked, coughed, looked away. She inhaled, feeling the real, true world she’d always only spied from afar.

  Now though, she saw everything. Saw the reason, the purpose that had been driving her all along. Uncle was right. Her motives weren't as pure or simple as securing the release of her mother. No, they were grander. They had to be. She was the instrument of Istani Justice, the symbol of her father’s authority and wisdom, his true heir.

  “For the princess!” Maharis shouted, coming to stand beside her.

  “For the princess!” howled back her warriors, their faces covered in sweat and blood. They grinned freely at her. Not the leery looks of those who thought they could use her. Nor the false respect they gave her on account of her birth. These men had seen the real her. They were hers.

  Hers in a way Ahasan would never know.

  “For the princess!” shouted Maharis again.

  Nuraya raised the sword, waited until silence had fallen on her men. She shook her head, then bellowed, “For the sultana!”

 
The grins grew wider. “For the sultana!”

  Chapter 19

  Shoki

  Shoki swallowed as he saw the princess shake her head in exasperation, sitting cross-legged on the forest floor. No, he reminded himself, that wasn't right anymore.

  Two days ago, the princess had given way to a sultana.

  Mara groaned and clapped his hands together in disappointment as the sultana arched an angry eyebrow toward him. In the distance, Maharis lurked beside a hastily erected tent, his shoulders slumped, his eyes hard.

  A chill went up Shoki’s spine, recalling the beautiful face scrunched up in righteous fury as she slashed though armor and meat. The face of a goddess in full flow, even more terrifying than a sultana’s might have been.

  The sultana. Shoki licked his lower lip, feeling the wave of his own inadequacy crash into him. Unlike him, one sinking lower every day, this young woman had dared to soar higher than anyone in the Istani realm. And unlike him, at the mercy of trade winds in the middle of the vast ocean, this woman sailed against the currents undeterred, unstoppable.

  He was hardly the only one swept up by the transformation. There were many more admirers. Mercenaries who might have joined her banner for a bevy of purposes now looked at her as their leader.

  She had won respect from all of them.

  Well, all but one magus.

  “Are you even trying?” asked Mara, the vowels all wrong, her earrings catching the fading sunlight, horses whinnying in the distance away from their clearing.

  Nuraya whirled about, her beautiful features twisting to match the magus’s scowl. “I am trying!”

  “Not hard enough,” he said dismissively. Shoki wanted to shout at Mara, warn him against pushing someone like her too much. But then again, the djinn didn’t seem like one who cared much for what humans thought of him. “Jadu isn't something you can just learn if you don’t have the aptitude for it.”

  “Aptitude is not something I have time for.” Closing her eyes, Nuraya stretched her arms overhead. Shoki watched her face, transfixed by her lips moving silently. She still wore the leather jacket she’d worn at the Battle of the Eastern Gate two days ago, dried blood staining its sides. Either she didn't care to remove it or wore it deliberately to make a point.