by Fuad Baloch
“Argh!” he exclaimed, pinched his side so hard it hurt. The very next town he got to, he had to do something to sate these bodily needs. Hopefully, that would stop the sultana’s face from haunting his waking moments. “What have I gotten myself into?”
The roan snorted. Shoki smiled, then turned his attention back to the winding path ahead. As the light continued to dim, they trudged deeper into the valley spreading out in front.
He had always known that Istan was a huge realm, yet the fact had never quite registered until he had taken to the never-ending roads connecting every little town to every other little town. Istan was the world’s largest, grandest empire, with pathways crisscrossing its length and breadth.
What good were roads that remained empty? Why had he not seen anyone else on the road for the past five miles? Surely, he should have encountered some farmer or merchant by now. Rising in the stirrups, he scanned the path ahead. No one but him. He sighed, his insides tightening with worry. If rumors were true of soldiers and armies being pulled back from the border garrisons by both Istani princes, had that left the roads open targets for bandits?
Chewing on his lower lip, he tried putting his mind to what lay ahead.
Thoughts of what he needed to do in Paryala, capital of the Habs province didn't help him relax much. He patted his vest, felt the rolled-up scroll packed therein. Once he got to Paryala, what exactly was he meant to do? Pass it on to the local ameer like a glorified errand boy and await a reply? If that was the case, he would be no better than the other messengers the Sultana had already dispatched to the ameer.
Or, did they expect him, a mere city guard, to somehow play at being a statesman? Make the case for the sultana over her brothers and help recruit the ameer to her cause?
He wasn’t someone who understood politics well. Though he found nothing objectionable in Nuraya’s claim to take over the crown, surely, he was the absolute last person to be made responsible for articulating the idea in front of those who had spent all their lives grappling with such matters. Sure, sometimes his tongue ran faster than even his legs, but that blasted thing had more often succeeded in landing him in trouble than not.
Shoki dabbed at his sweaty forehead, thankful for the horse’s comfortable pace. How would his life have turned out had Salar Ihagra not spied him accidentally tripping the thief fleeing the lawman all those years ago? The thief had been caught, and the salar had praised his bravery, a misconception Shoki had never clarified. And when the salar had come back years later to ask his parents for him to join the city guards, he’d kept his mouth shut again.
Seemed like he had been given plenty of opportunities to say no, and because he hadn't, he’d continued to get into increasingly worse situations.
Shoki sighed. Perhaps, there was a silver lining after all. The sultana had ordered him to deliver the message, not to ferry back a response as well. Maybe, she didn't really want him to come back. If that was the case, he could take the road leading to Algaria afterward and head back home, leaving the smug Jinan, the djinn, and the sultana behind. Dimly, he wondered what secret her brother had threatened to unveil that involved Nuraya and the queen. Would he ever get to find out?
Shoki’s fingers brushed against the steel bangle on his right arm. He recoiled as if scalded. One more thing he should have said no to, hadn’t, and was now stuck with.
A relic, the djinn had called it. Something to do with his connection to the world. Shoki forced himself to look away, but a brief moment later, his eyes settled right back on the bangle. What powers did this seemingly innocuous band of metal hold?
The roan neighed, dropped down to a walk from the canter. Startled, Shoki spurred the horse, but it continued shaking its neck sideways. Shoki turned around and froze.
Ten riders had emerged from the forest. Dressed in resplendent silver armor, broad scimitars in their hands, their chargers advanced at a leisurely place.
Shoki’s first instinct was to flee. Still looking back, he kicked the roan with all his might. The damned horse snorted instead, refusing to obey him. Shoki turned around, twisting the reins into a whip to slap the horse’s neck. Then he saw two more riders approaching from ahead.
“Gods’ guts,” he croaked, knowing what the horse had realized before him. He looked to the left, then the right. Did he dare try to enter the underbrush there?
One of the two riders raised a shout, the words unintelligible, then broke into a gallop toward him. Eyes mesmerized, his bladder threatening to burst, Shoki watched the looming figure approach.
Superstitiously, he reached inside his shirt, snapped off the cord around his neck from which Nuraya’s message hung. He felt the scroll slither down his body, drop down to the ground.
The rider was clad in full length chain mail, shiny armor plates crisscrossing his torso, face partially covered by a polished silver helmet. He glared at Shoki through pinched eyes, his thick nose flaring, then raised an arm toward the riders behind him. “Is this poor excuse of a boy really the messenger?”
His fingers trembling, Shoki tugged at the reins. Not that the roan needed much encouragement, coming to a stop just in front of the rider.
“That’s what they said,” came the reply behind him. Algarian accents. Not as refined as the cultured voices that inhabited the diwan-e-aam of course. Coarse, crude like his own.
Shoki licked his lips. An urge rose within him to deny this description of himself. A silly, foolish urge he swallowed.
The rider chuckled, then turned to consider him again. “He hasn't even got a proper beard yet.”
Shoki drew himself upright, his hands beginning to shake. “I’ll let you know... I’m a-almost t-twenty-two-years old.”
“Barely stopped suckling milk,” said the rider, squinting at Shoki as if appraising a cow.
“No,” replied Shoki, shaking his head. “I can a-assure you in o-our part of the capital, w-we do not know this c-custom you seem well acquainted to.”
The rider’s mouth fell open. Shoki cringed, cursing the words spilling out of his mouth. Cackling came from behind him.
“He does have a tongue that wags. Sounds like the right type.”
The man in front glared at him for a long breath. Shoki looked down at his fingers.
“Follow us,” commanded the rider, then clucking at his horse, he turned right toward the woods.
Follow them? Shoki blinked, taken aback by the speed at which he had been both ambushed and captured. Had he been captured though? He inhaled. One rider still blocked the way ahead. More than likely, a few remained behind to cut him off.
He had been successfully captured.
As Shoki turned his horse around, a worrying thought rose. How had these men known he was a messenger for the sultana, that he would be traveling this way out of many that led to his destination?
More horsemen awaited them as they exited the road onto a trail leading deeper into the trees. Shoki licked his lips and opened his jaw to object when one of the riders clicked his tongue and Shoki’s horse obediently began following the others east. Groaning, Shoki hung his head. There was a certain way events were supposed to unfold. One tried to ambush. The wounded party expressed their thorough displeasure. Then resisted in most vociferous terms the terms of any capture.
Why in gods’ names had he capitulated at the mere suggestion?
The roan neighed as the trail narrowed and brambles reached out at odd angles. Shoki shook his head. It wasn't all his fault. If he was an emissary, did it not make sense for him to have been outfitted with a suitable charger, served on by a retinue of his own? And if he was meant to carry out all the forms, surely it would have made sense to outfit him as someone more than a pauper.
The rider directly ahead turned his head around and bared his yellowing teeth. No words. Just a casual reminder that Shoki was a captive, riding willingly on his own horse.
They followed the trail for another quarter of an hour. Finally, they exited out into a clearing beside a bubbling stre
am. Scores of tents were pitched in orderly rows, torchlights flickering and casting shadows on flags emblazoned with the roaring lion in front of the sun.
Blood chilled inside his veins. These weren't mere bandits or soldiers the Ameer of Nikhtun might have sent after them.
They were Ahasan’s men.
They came to a stop some twenty yards from the first row of tents. Under the weak sunlight, Shoki spied chests bursting with silks and paintings and jewelry outside a large tent. His eyes fell on a purple tapestry, the flying falcon on it a symbol he’d seen all his life growing up in Algaria.
“W-where did you get all this from?” asked Shoki, pointing a finger at the tapestry.
“Loot,” grinned the rider beside him, once again baring his teeth.
“B-but...” stammered Shoki, thoughts racing too fast in his mind to make sense. “Aren’t you... men sent by Prince Ahasan?”
“So?”
Shoki blinked at the tapestry that had hung on a wall in the tavern beside his house. “You looted the people of Algaria?”
The rider shrugged, waved his hand dismissively. “Most of my men used to be mercenaries in their past life. Some habits die hard even when one becomes a soldier.”
“Mercenaries…” Shoki blinked, a needle-sharp sliver of pain cutting across his insides. “What did you do to those who opposed you?”
The leader shrugged once more.
Shoki swallowed. Mercenaries fought for booty, for prizes snatched from the populace they conquered. The mercenaries he had encountered under the sultana didn't seem as bloodthirsty. Then again, what did he really know about them or what they were capable of?
His eyes widened. Were these men responsible for the murder of his parents?
The other riders began taking up positions beside Shoki. More soldiers were gathering outside their tents, looking up from their cook pots as if he was some large piece of game the riders had brought back. Shoki watched them all under a growing haze of red anger.
A gray-turbaned figure emerged from the large tent. Cloaked in a black shawl, the man hobbled forward, his craggy features partially obscured by the fading light.
Shoki gasped as the figure walked out in front of a torch. “I-Inquisitor...”
Altamish Aboor, the Kalb inquisitor, his former traveling companion glared at him. “Fancy seeing you again.”
“I...”
“Go on!” snarled the inquisitor. “You weren't expecting to see me get up and about after you’d left me for dead?” He placed his hands on his hips. “You should have done a better job.”
“I h-had nothing to do with the magus.”
The inquisitor arched an eyebrow, his eyes scanning his face. “Perhaps. That changes nothing of course. Not now, anyway.” He pointed at the other riders. “Search him for the message, then put him up for questioning.”
One of the soldiers approached him on foot. Shoki’s eyes fell upon the treasures looted from the poor of Algaria. From his people. From his family. Letting out a shriek, Shoki kicked at the soldier’s hands reaching for him. The soldier howled, fell back clutching his right hand. Two more soldiers approached him, wary this time.
“Step away!” howled Shoki. He reached for his sword tied to the saddle, pulled it out from the scabbard with a ringing noise.
It was one thing having long limbs that allowed him superior reach to kick at the men approaching him. Quite another to face men who killed for sport.
Shoki kicked, flailed, waved the sword, even thrust it sideways. All in vain. Someone pulled him down. Shoki fell with a thud, the sword slipping away from his fingers. Kicks and punches pounded his back, stomach, and arms. Curling up like a baby, all fight gone from him, Shoki whimpered, bawled, howled.
Then the world grew dark.
When he came to, soft lamplight illuminated the walls of a tent. A moan escaped his lips. Shoki forced a hand forward, wincing at the effort, grimaced as he touched the angry bumps on his head. His ribs hurt like seven hells as well.
Memories came rushing in. The lonely ride down the road. The ambush. Seeing the inquisitor. Realizing these men had had a hand in what happened to his parents. The punches and kicks raining down on him.
Grunting, wincing gingerly at each movement, Shoki staggered to his feet. The world swayed underneath him. They hadn't restrained him, leaving him alone in the small tent. He closed his eyes for a second, seeking balance.
He tried a step forward, grunted as pain shot up and down his body. Gotta get through it. Shoki pursed his lips, forced another step forward. He had to get out, tell the sultana what had happened, return with a mighty force to cut each and every one of these bastards down to the stump.
The curtain flap parted. Just a glimpse of the dark skies before the inquisitor’s face filled his vision. Shoki flinched, staggered back. The flaps lifted again and two of the inquisitor’s men entered the camp.
The inquisitor smiled. A sad curl of the lips, but no less sinister for it. “You’re up,” he observed. “That’s good.”
“W-what are you doing here?” demanded Shoki. Hardly the most apt question to be asking, but he was beyond such considerations now.
“Could ask you the same!” The inquisitor sighed, limped forward on his crooked leg. “Anyway, I am disappointed how easy you were to locate. Did you learn nothing having traveled with me?”
The flaps lifted again. Two more men entered, carrying a chair and an assortment of iron instruments, swirls of smoke curling over their red-black tips.
Shoki took another step back, feeling a terrible weight settle in the pit of his stomach. Without paying him any attention, the men sat the chair down, began arraying the instruments carefully, precisely as if attending to a surgeon.
“Alas,” said the inquisitor, “we don’t have much time to start with pleasantries, or our... choices along the way.”
“I did not know Mara was a m-magus... or that he wanted to a-attack you.”
“Perhaps.” He shook his head. “All beside the point. For the moment, my lord demands me to put away my personal grievances and aid his cause. Where is the message that you were carrying for the princess? And, where is she?”
“You...” croaked Shoki, forcing himself to ignore the iron instruments, “call yourself a man of honor and... lead this band of... murderers?”
A shadow crossed over the inquisitor’s face. “Wars are terrible things. Do you know their first casualty? Good people.” He shook his head. “Much better to have a civil war that is quickly, efficiently dispensed with than a prolonged one.”
“I...” Shoki took another step back, his heart thumping against his ribs. His back hit the wooden beam.
The inquisitor limped forward. “As much as the thought puzzles me, and despite what you did, I like you. I’d begun to see why the old grand vizier hadn't put up much of a fight when Riyan chose you. So, I must warn you to not dissemble, to tell me the truth of what I seek. Or... you won’t like what’s going to happen.”
“I... am fleeing from the sul—princess’s camp. T-they ordered me to... fight and caught me when I d-deserted.”
The inquisitor stopped his advance. For a second, the two glared at each other. Then, to Shoki’s horror, the inquisitor shook his head. “Alas, you refuse to take the easy path I offer by dissembling.”
The guards reached for him, grabbed him by the arms, pulled him toward the chair. Shoki yelped, howled. “Wait! L-let’s talk!”
They forced him onto the chair. One of the men bent down, began tying Shoki’s arms and feet.
“W-what are you going to do?” whimpered Shoki, his eyes flitting between the men and the inquisitor and the tray of instruments they carried toward him.
“Where is the princess’s camp?” asked the inquisitor, a man who had led assaults, one who had been hunting magi for years, his voice soft and low and terrifying.
“I d-don’t know...” he replied honestly. “S-somewhere in Nikhtun.”
The inquisitor took another limping step forwa
rd, close enough for Shoki to see nothing beyond him now. “I need more. Where in Nikhtun? Beside a riverbank? Outside a city?”
Shoki licked his lips, caught between two impossible positions. He had never been great with locations, but the little that he did know could still land the sultana and her men in a terrible bind. “I... I don’t know.”
The inquisitor exhaled, his features hardening, the mustache quivering. He extended a hand. A gloved hand, Shoki realized with horror. Silently, someone passed him a long iron rod, its end a bright orange-red wedge.
“No!” Shoki cried, struggling against the binds.
“Times are difficult, boy,” said the inquisitor. “Magi on the loose. The Sultanate facing enemies from all corners. A succession war. A princess who can’t make the right decisions. We must have peace.” He reached forward. “At any cost.”
Vise-like hands gripped Shoki’s face, held it in place.
“No!” he screamed, thrashing, spittle flying from his mouth. The hands didn't budge an inch.
“Last chance, boy,” said the inquisitor.
“W-what will you do to her?” Shoki asked, his bladder threatening to burst.
“For the sake of peace, she and her brother Kinas need to join their father in the afterlife. None of your concern, of course. Just tell me, where the princess is, and I will let you go. This, I promise on my honor.”
“I...” Shoki swallowed. Something thrashed inside him, a power the likes of which he had never experienced before. A cold rush that chilled his insides even as it set them aflame. “I don’t know.”
The inquisitor brought the hot rod forward. Shoki flinched, tried moving away.
All in vain.
Air crackled, the hairs on his neck rose. Tell him! Shoki opened his jaw. The hot iron sank into his eye. Through his eye making a sickening, popping sound. Shoki screamed, a soundless, soulless shriek. Pain, indescribable and unbearable bloomed in the sizzling socket, shot through his body.
Distantly, he heard a sword clatter to the floor. The inquisitor was saying something. Words that didn't matter.
Pain. Dark and impossible. A world of anguish.