by Lucy Tempest
Fairuza, still holding up the front of her skirt with Agnë and Meira holding the back, stuck her head between Ayman and Cyrus. “No. Isn’t that what appointing lord judges is for?”
As the judges beat us into the shadowed depths of the building, Cyrus’s answer echoed off the walls. “It is, but that’s not the point of this test.”
“Then what is?” Cherine asked as he rushed ahead. When he didn’t stop, she roughly linked her arm with mine and dragged me behind her. I caught Cora’s wrist, and we rushed through the paved hall in a line like schoolchildren.
Ariane tucked her parasol under her arm and laughingly latched onto Cora, joining the line.
“Looks like we picked up another passenger,” I said, trying to stifle my giggles as I admired the high ceilings and the pillars of the hall.
“All aboard the Anbur Express!” Cherine announced, pumping her free arm in the air as she increased her speed and pull on me.
“Destination?” I asked her.
“A stuffy courtroom for an hour of contrived nonsense!”
“What does Cahramani legal nonsense entail?” Ariane asked, starting to pant. “Is it any different than Orestian law?”
Cherine gave her a perplexed look. “Aren’t you from Tritonia?”
“Tritonia and its neighboring islands are considered to be a part of Orestia, and by extension, Lower Campania,” Cora explained, the only one not even breathing faster. “And from what we’ve seen here so far, their legal nonsense is bound to be even sillier.”
Cherine huffed, nose in the air. “Sillier than you barefoot farmers fighting over cattle?”
Cora and Ariane exchanged knowing looks, before Ariane laughed breathlessly. “What is it with these desert-dwellers thinking they’re more advanced than us?”
“Likely because their nations are newer.” Cora rolled her eyes with a sigh. “They think that compared to them we’re old and backward.”
I almost stumbled on my own feet trying to keep up with Cherine and listen to the girls. “Wait, how old is Cahraman?”
“The kingdom itself is around six-hundred years old,” Cherine explained distractedly. “Cahraman, and the princedoms of Almaskham, Merjan and Gemisht as well as the Kingdom of Avesta, are what remains of the Avestan Empire after its collapse.”
Avesta was where the White Shadow from The Anthology of the Dunes claimed to be from, his story predating the empire’s collapse. Sadly, people’s attitudes towards albinos like him and Ayman hadn’t changed since.
Before Cyrus’s devastating revelation, I’d planned to take Ayman back to Ericura with us, where he wouldn’t be feared or burned by the sun. I’d even had fantasies of recruiting him to help save Bonnie, and that they could be a modern version of the White Shadow and his wife Nesrine, whom he’d rescued from a demon-guarded tower.
“Could you even call Avesta a kingdom at this point?” Cora pointed out. “It’s in a pitiful state. If I were you I’d petition the king to invade it and absorb its land.”
Fairuza’s voice crashed into our conversation. “Fancy yourself a conqueror?”
Cora turned her head to level her with a hard, blank stare. “Yes.”
It was such a blunt and unexpected answer, I found myself cracking up.
Before an argument could break out, our line came to a halt at yet another pointed archway, open to reveal a hexagonal courtroom with dark, wooden furniture. The dais facing us loomed over the whole room ominously, and had my apprehension back in full force.
One of the women in pewter ascended to the dais, and the other four each took a seat at the pews below her. Loujaïne and Farouk followed the lesser judges to their seats and Cyrus ushered us in, walking deeper into the room while Ayman stationed himself at the doors.
“You will be presented with a single case,” the head judge addressed us. “You will each give your judgment one at a time. Once you give a verdict, it will be final. You cannot adjust it.”
“Why not?” I asked thoughtlessly.
The judge squinted down at me. “Don’t question the rules. You give only one verdict, so decide wisely.”
The harsh finality of her statement set an intense mood as other judiciary members in grey entered the room, filling up every level along four of the six walls, surrounding us.
I’d spent years roaming to avoid places like this, where they decided if the likes of me were meant for imprisonment or execution. Being here, even as an observer, felt riskier than rescuing Cherine and risking falling off the mountain.
Cyrus came up to Fairuza and myself, offering each a hand. “Let’s get you to your seats, shall we?”
Our elbows collided in our rush to be the first to take an offered hand. I stepped away from her warningly as she glowered at me, the fading bruise around her eye a clear reminder of the last time we’d been this close to each other.
Cyrus cleared his throat. “I suggest you put whatever issue you have aside for now. You’ll need all your concentration.”
She turned away first, giving him the biggest, brightest smile. “Of course.”
I gritted my teeth as he seated us at the same pew as Farouk. My friends sat by Loujaïne next to us. He sat with Ariane across the room.
His seating plan seemed focused on keeping Fairuza and I together, and keeping himself far away from me.
The hollow clang of a bell rang in my ears.
“Bring forth the subjects.”
Two guards in similar garb to those who guarded our rooms at the palace marched in, gripping spears with scimitars hanging from leather belts at their hips, escorting two women with a toddler between them.
Each woman had a tight hold on one of the boy’s hands, like they were afraid he’d slip away or be ripped from them. Waves of mutual hostility came off both as they stopped before us, enough to make Fairuza and my distaste for one another seem like playground antics.
“Present your case.”
One of the lesser judges, a stocky man with a greying curly beard stood up. “Your Honor, these here are the widows of Lord Elyas Maraash. Not long after their husband’s death, an executor came to settle his will but couldn’t settle the custody of the child.”
“How is that possible?” the head judge asked. “Give the child to the one who birthed him.”
“That is the issue, Your Honor. Both claim to be the mother of the child.”
At that, I realized that this test wasn’t going to be a simple case of declaring whether one was guilty or not guilty.
This must be Cyrus’s personal test, like our first one with the metal boxes. Going by how that one had turned out—and the way he was sitting forwards in his seat, attentive, excited—we were in for some duplicitous task.
The judge began the session with a bang of her mallet as she announced, “Swear before the eyes of your judge, your prince, and our supreme god and declare that you will not desecrate with lies and libel the Halls of ‘Adalat.”
‘Adalat.
That name crashed into my mind, catapulting me into the past.
Chapter Seven
Within a blink, I saw myself sitting in a dingy kitchen, watching my mother prepare that night’s cabbage and carrot stew.
I’d been pestering her about her past, and the family I never had. She’d dodged every question as usual. But this time she’d given me the smallest morsel of information to quiet me down.
“I wanted to call you ‘Adalat,” she’d said while grating carrots, sweat pouring down her face. “But a friend said no one here would be able to pronounce it so I simplified it to Adelaide.”
“What does it mean?” I’d asked, fascinated.
“It’s the name of a local goddess in my region. In its old tongue it meant justice.”
To my Ericuran ear, ‘Adalat began with a strange sound I could only compare to the throaty groan one makes on the verge of vomiting. A letter that didn’t exist on our island.
But she’d said she’d come from Man’s Reach, where she’d claimed to be a cousin
of Bonnie’s mother Belaina. It had been why I’d traveled to the northernmost part of Ericura, to search for relatives and answers. But I’d found no mention of ‘Adalat across the North, and by the time I’d reached Aubenaire, Belaina had been long dead. I’d almost left to roam again when Bonnie had found me, and given me a home with her and her father.
But now that I knew ‘Adalat was a goddess here, Loujaïne’s question of whether I was part Almaskhami joined the spinning wheel of doubts in my head, tangling over Nariman’s mention of a Dorreya.
I’d always had my suspicions about my origins. Ones reinforced by Bonnie’s insistence on leaving the island to explore beyond it and find the lands of our ancestors. She—and now I—had figured that those who populated the north of Ericura were the descendants of Arboreans, with the Southerners likely hailing from Cora’s region of Lower Campania.
But could anyone in Ericura have been from this region? I’d never seen anyone there who resembled me apart from my own mother. But there were certain features I didn’t share even with her. The shape of my brows, my dark, hooded eyes, and larger, firmer bone structure.
Now that I thought about it, if anyone resembled me, regardless of color, it was Ayman. Looking beyond his impossibly fair skin, white hair and the bloodshot purple of his eyes, he had the same heavy eyelids, the thick, arching brows and the protruding lower lip that accentuated his mouth’s downturned pout.
Ayman was from Almaskham, that much I knew. So was Nariman, who had the same skin tone as me, and they both had the square jaw I certainly didn’t inherit from my mother.
Could my mother have been from one of the lands that used to be the Avestan Empire? But how could she have gone to the other end of the Folkshore by herself?
A tight pinch on my thigh yanked me off the blurring wheel of conspiracy theories.
“Pay attention,” Cora whispered. “We’re just getting to the good part.”
The good part in mention was the merchant’s widows heatedly arguing.
Apart from the fact they’d both been married to the same man—something I hadn’t thought possible—they were both relatively young, younger than Loujaïne. The one with the long, brown braid, hooked nose and sun-worn, freckled face was probably from a farming district, likely where Cahraman’s extensive spices were grown. The other widow, younger by a few years judging by the pitch of her voice and the roundness of her tan face, had big, dark eyes, and hair the color of the persimmons I’d seen at the market.
“Quiet!” The head judge rang her bell, its cringe-inducing clangs making me scratch my nails over the polished wood of the table. “State your case in a civilized manner or we’ll solve your dispute by giving the child to his father’s closest relative.”
At once, the widows stopped squabbling, both still gripping the toddler, who was sobbing inconsolably. I wanted to take him out of their grasp and put him far away where he wouldn’t be fought over like a ragdoll.
“I am Soumaya, first wife of Elyas Maraash and the mother of his only son,” said the older, dark-haired widow. “After years of sorrow, of losing my children before they could draw their first breath, of making pilgrimages to every fertility goddess in the land, I became pregnant with our son.”
She stopped to wipe her reddening nose and wet eyes as she escalated into sobs. “I couldn’t risk losing another child, so I left Sunstone and spent the duration of my pregnancy in the care of the best midwives and temple priestesses my husband could afford. But I returned with our son to be faced with the humiliation of my husband marrying the servant girl.”
Fairuza was the first among us to speak. “And why did he do that?”
Tears spilled out of Soumaya’s furious grey eyes. “After my many failed pregnancies, he wanted to ensure the birth of his heirs by marrying a younger, healthier girl. He didn’t even wait to see if my last pregnancy bore fruit. He replaced me while I was away, suffering.” She pointed at the redhead accusingly. “And it wasn’t enough for her to take my place, my husband and my home, now she wants to take my child!”
“She’s lying!” the redhead interrupted, her voice shrill. “Why would I want to take a child that is not mine?”
“You planned this!” The other widow snapped. “You waited until I left to take everything away from me—”
“Yes, but why would she take the child?” Fairuza interrupted her, oddly engaged in this situation, arms firmly folded, the grim expression with the undercurrent of threat making her scarily like Loujaïne. “That’s a fairy-like thing to do—kidnap babies, or curse them even.” She looked to the redheaded widow, eyebrow quirked. “Are you a fairy of some sort…?”
“Marihan, Your Grace,” the redhead stuttered, doe-like eyes darting from face to face, the fear in them shining like unshed tears. “I am not a beast of any sort. I swear it.”
“Don’t listen to her,” Soumaya cried, trying to yank the toddler from Marihan’s unyielding grip, making him cry out in pain. “Her voice might be bewitching you as she bewitched my late husband.”
“You didn’t answer her,” I said to Soumaya, trying to suppress the urge to snatch the baby away from them. “Why would she steal a child?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” Cherine spoke out, appalled. “She wanted the woman’s husband, her home, and now the only way she can keep the late husband’s house and money is through the child.”
Soumaya nodded vigorously, shaking the tears further down her cheeks.
Marihan’s jaw dropped. “No, I wouldn’t…I didn’t…”
“She has cheated me out of my own life!” Soumaya sobbed. “Now she wants to keep my child as hers, to take the inheritance meant for my husband’s heir. Please, stop her. And evict her from my home, because she won’t leave any other way.”
Cherine, deeply moved by Soumaya’s laments, was tearing up herself, hands folded over her heart. Ariane was in a similar state, holding a handkerchief to her mouth. Cora appeared uncertain, slouching in her seat and watching the women with a half-open mouth.
I didn’t know what to make of this either. This young, ambitious servant girl could have offered her health and fertility to her rich employer in exchange for a leg-up in life, something a lot of women would do. But the man had died before she could cement her position with children and her only way to keep that luxurious life from slipping from her grasp was to claim the child was hers. The first wife’s history of fertility problems conveniently supported her claim.
“What about your husband’s family?” I asked Soumaya. “Shouldn’t they know which wife bore him a son?”
Soumaya shook her head and her braid along with it. “They live in Gül, my lady, on the other side of the kingdom. We haven’t seen them since his sister’s wedding four years ago.”
“And he doesn’t keep in touch with them?” Fairuza probed, arms still firmly crossed, tapping her long nails on sheer sleeves impatiently. “The birth of a firstborn didn’t warrant a note home to Mother? One that included the name of the woman who bore him an heir?”
“I’m not sure, Your Grace.” Soumaya aimed a glare at the flustered Marihan. “I wouldn’t be surprised if he gave it to her to send, and she instead threw it in the furnace.”
“I would do no such thing!” Marihan sought out any of our eyes, pleading. “She has always despised me, my lords and ladies, long before Elyas asked for my hand. She’s doing all this to punish me, because he chose me and because I did what she never could—give him a son.”
I understood Cora’s uncertain expression now, felt it on a deeper level. This was one baffling situation. Neither seemed to be lying, both had serious reasons to be upset, to dislike one another and to fight over the boy.
If Cyrus had handpicked this case, as he’d written the poetic, snarky responses within the metal boxes in our first test, then this proved him to be far more calculating than I’d thought.
Just how much of his servant persona had been great acting and how much of it harbored his true personality?
“You s
ee?” Soumaya jabbed her finger at Marihan accusingly, crying even harder, furious voice ringing off the walls. “She is using my past failings against me, to reinforce her lie that my sweet Armin is hers, so she can have everything for good, and punish me for once being her lady, and avenge her years of serving me.”
Cyrus leaned forwards, resting an elbow on his table and his chin in his palm. “Ladies, do you have any more questions or have you made your verdict?”
“This one is the mother, she has to be,” Cherine said, pointing to Soumaya, moved to tears herself.
Marihan pressed baby Armin’s face against her, crying out, “No! No, please! He’s my baby, he’s mine! I swear it.”
“Is this your final verdict?” The judge asked Cherine, who nodded vigorously. “What fuels your belief?”
“Look at her!” said Cherine fervently. “The woman is a wreck at the possibility of being parted from her baby. Giving him to that ambitious serving girl will be a great injustice that sullies the halls of ‘Adalat.” She wrinkled her nose at Marihan. “This one hasn’t shed a tear! She isn’t in the least bit invested in this child outside of the wealth and status he comes with.”
Marihan’s tan face paled to an unhealthy shade at Cherine’s words. “But I…”
“Lady Cherine is right,” Ariane cut her off, dabbing her eyes with her handkerchief. “Besides, look at the boy. He looks nothing like you.”
Ariane had a point. If anything, the boy with his light brown hair and hazel eyes looked like he could be Cherine’s younger brother.
But if this was the test Cyrus had set up, it made me reexamine the first one with its three boxes. The most obvious option had been to pick the gold one, but he’d ridiculed those who’d picked it for being shallow. The silver, a median choice to appear humble—or in Cora’s case, not invested—got a harsher assessment. But the biggest risk, the lead box I’d chosen, had gotten no response at all.
None written, that was. In hindsight, my choice, along with my performance in the rest of that test’s tasks, had spared me from elimination.