by Cate Rowan
She walked toward her quarters alone.
Had it really been just half a day since she’d arrived? Ludicrous. She’d experienced the crazy rise and fall of so many emotions—indignation and anger, empathy and grief, terror and hope—and beneath it all, a searing lust for a man six times off-limits. No—seven. She touched the scuffed ring on her littlest finger.
Priya had volunteered to keep watch over the patients through the night, promising to wake Varene with any news. Given the day they’d all had, the handmaiden had already outdone herself. On Varene’s elegant bureau lay an ebony-handled hairbrush, the extra gown and shift Varene had brought in her travel sack, a tooth stick, a cleansing cloth and luxurious towel, and a bar of soap that scented the air with jasmine. The heavenly aroma reminded her of the patio off her quarters, so she pattered there.
A delicious quiet filled the courtyard. She imagined the birds tucked in their nests, geckoes clinging silently to branches. All that remained was the song of a few crickets, up much later than their brethren. A crescent moon rode the night high above, escorted by a league of stars.
She wondered what the night would bring; whether life or death awaited the ailing, and what changes she might have wrought in their fates with her herbs and her magic.
“Psst. Healer,” came a whisper.
“Gunjan?” she responded doubtfully, and looked up at the roof. It didn’t sound like the bird.
Someone to the whisperer’s right gave an exasperated sigh. “Didn’t I tell you to stay quiet?” She recognized that papery voice as Gunjan’s.
“Oh, shut up. I have to get in somehow.” A male shadow dropped from the roof to the ground, then stood tall, backlit by the moon.
“Who are you?” Varene asked, narrowing her eyes and mentally measuring the distance to the door of her quarters.
The figure moved two steps closer and the starlight illuminated a wide grin, but not much else. “Prince Burhan of Kad at your service, Royal Healer.”
“Oh!” She gave a surprised curtsey, still trying to catch a better glimpse of him. “Then you’re Sultan Kuramos’s son?”
“By his Fifth Wife, the sultana Taleen.”
“I see. Well, no, I don’t, actually. It’s a little dark out here. Would you mind coming inside to the torchlight?”
“I’d hoped you’d ask.”
“Well, fine,” called the jencel from his perch on the roof. “Just abandon your friends to their loneliness…”
She shot his silhouette a droll look. “Would you like to come in, too?”
“Why yes, I would. Thanks.” He winged in and landed neatly on the back of the divan.
Varene stepped into the room and took a good look at Burhan. Lankier than he’d first appeared in the dark, he seemed younger, too—Varene guessed he was only fourteen or fifteen, though his tall body seemed to have won a growth spurt. He clasped his hands behind his back and stood with aplomb, shoulders squared. He’d be handsome when he grew up, with dark hair and intriguing copper eyes, much like his ailing mother. “May I ask, Your Highness, what were you doing on the roof outside my quarters?”
“Hiding.” His grin re-emerged.
“From…?”
“The Great Sultan of Kad, True Descendent of Naaz, Idu, and Kismet, Heir to the Sacred Dagger of Ayaaz and wielder of the Royal Scimitar.”
“From your father, eh?” I’ve been doing that, myself. “Why?”
“I’m not supposed to be in the palace. But I had to come to you.”
She raised a brow.
“My mother.” His eyes revealed his worry. “How is she?”
“Sleeping.” She no longer felt safe mentioning her magic to those who didn’t already know. “I’ve given her a remedy that may help, but we’ll know more tomorrow when she wakes.”
“So there is some hope for her?”
“I believe so.”
“And the other sultanas, as well?”
“The same.”
His gaze dropped to the rug and a deep sigh poured from him. “I couldn’t stand not knowing. The messengers said nothing had changed, but…”
“Messengers? Where were you?”
“One of our townhouses in the city. I was to stay there until everyone was well again.”
“But you couldn’t wait?”
He shrugged. “Would you, if your mother were ill?”
She smiled at him. “I suppose not. You’re a good son, then—if perhaps an impetuous one.”
“Yes, Father will kill me when he finds out,” Burhan said cheerfully.
Gunjan harrumphed. “I was trying to teach His Highness how to hide. The finer points still need a bit of work.”
She swiveled to the jencel. “And why were you out there? Last we spoke, you were off to Teganne.”
“The sultan needed my help with your rescue.” He puffed out his chest. “I led him right to you,” he said in a conspiratorial whisper.
“Ah. Well, thank you, then. I doubt I’d still be alive if the sultan hadn’t arrived when he did.”
“You’re quite welcome. I’m happy to be of service,” he added loftily. “Anyway, I saw that you got that sugarwort you wanted.”
“I did. So why didn’t you join us after the rescue?”
“Perhaps you failed to notice that flaming arrow someone shot into your robe? I prefer my wings uncrisped. Since I couldn’t be sure other idiots weren’t going to follow his example, I flew as high as I could until you returned to the palace. At which point I spotted the prince going where he was not supposed to go.” He sniffed.
Varene eyed Burhan. “You snuck into the palace without anyone noticing?” She frowned and shuddered. “Doesn’t sound like this place is all that secure.”
“Oh, it is. The guards know me well, of course, and let me in. I didn’t start sneaking until I was inside. Didn’t want my father spotting me until I knew how my mother was.” He grinned again. “But I always miss the exciting things. I heard the mob and tried to see what was going on, but once the guards left the palace, I decided I’d better make myself scarce.”
“The riot wasn’t a great deal of fun, Your Highness.”
“I suppose not, from the looks of your gown.”
Varene glanced down at the soot and dust hemming her dress. “Definitely not. Thank Fate your father came to our rescue.”
“He’s amazing, isn’t he?” Pride reverberated in Burhan’s voice. “Gunjan told me what happened. It must have been quite a sight, him speeding through the market toward you, scimitar blazing in the sun, rioters scattering before his wrath…”
“It was, indeed.” His words recalled the intensity of the sultan’s green eyes, desperate and mesmerizing, as he raced down the aisle towards her. She cleared her throat. “So you’re in the palace now. What are your plans?”
“To sleep in my own bed and pretend I was always supposed to be here.”
“And when your father sees you tomorrow?”
“I was hoping that with all the commotion he might, er, forget he’d told me to stay away.”
“He doesn’t seem that type to me.”
“True,” Gunjan interjected. “But perhaps he’ll forgive?” he added with a wistful air.
Varene’s mouth twitched. “I doubt that’s his strong suit, either.”
“I should go, my lady.” Burhan tilted his head. “I thank you for the hope that my mother may recover.”
“I can’t promise it…but I wish it, too. When she wakes, I’ll send word.”
“My thanks, Royal Healer.” He turned toward the door to the hallway.
She laughed. “What, you’re not going to climb over the roof to your quarters?”
He flashed her a cheeky grin and sauntered out.
Varene stared after him. “That boy must be quite a handful.”
“Do you really think the sultan is unlikely to forgive me?” Gunjan asked in a fretful voice.
“You?” She pivoted toward the jencel. “We were talking about him forgiving the prince.”
He lifted a bronze talon and scratched vigorously behind his ear. “Well, since I still haven’t returned to my Cage…”
“Mmm hmm. Perhaps you should.”
“I did help save your very life today…maybe you could do me a little favor in return?”
She eyed him sideways. “What kind of favor?”
“I was hoping I might roost here at night for a few days, out of the sultan’s notice. Perhaps, if his family recovers, you might beg him…on my behalf…to set me free?”
“To release you from his service? That’s something you should discuss with him—”
“No, no! Just to live outside the Golden Cage. It’s still my honor and privilege to serve my sultan.” He flapped his wings in emphasis. “I’ll be very quiet. You won’t even realize I’m here.”
She rubbed the back of her neck. “Gunjan, I really think you should talk to him yourself.”
“But I just want to stay out of the Cage, even if only for a few more days. Please hide me here. And it could make all the difference if someone else were to petition for me. I believe he’d listen to you, I really do.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re in Kad to do him an enormous favor. You’ve done a favor for him, and I’ve done a favor for you, so…”
She shook her head. “I’m not here with expectation of a reward.”
“No, of course not. But still.” His eyes ascended haughtily. “Mere hours ago, I did help save you from a bloodthirsty mob.”
“Yes, Gunjan,” she sighed. “I’m quite aware of that, and grateful. Truly. But I can’t just lie to the sultan about your whereabouts.”
“Can’t you? Even for me?” His voice quavered pitifully. “It’s not even a lie, really. You’re simply…not disclosing something.”
“And if he asks where you are, and I have to feign ignorance?”
“All right, technically that would be a lie, but a little white one. And since I helped save your life, and thus your freedom, can’t you help me gain mine?”
She stared at him in amused disbelief. “I can’t believe I’m being coerced by a bird.”
“A jencel-bird. We’re far from ordinary, you know.”
“So I understand.” She ran a hand through her bedraggled hair. “Fine, you can stay. And I’ll make your request when the time seems right. But we’d better get a few things straight if we’re to be roommates. I’m going to go take a bath, and there’d better not be any peeking.”
“As if I’d want to! Humans are so disgustingly…bare.”
When she emerged from the attached bath, cleansed and dressed in her clean shift, she found Gunjan asleep on the back of the divan, his head tucked under one wing. She climbed into the bed, which was wide and low-slung, with a mattress like a private cloud.
Every time she closed her eyes, she recalled scenes from the day—the guardsmen’s spears, the feverish coughs of her patients, the heat and flames rising from the logs at her bound feet. The sweaty forehead of little Tahir, the pleas in her patients’ eyes. Above it all, the unfaltering gaze of the sultan of Kad as he’d rescued her from assassination by a horde of his own subjects.
And after, when she’d clung to him for support, and felt the stirrings of something unforeseen. Of her own body, unexpectedly alive.
His gaze. Those eyes…
She twisted the ring on her pinky, round and round and round.
The right thing would be to leave Kad as soon as she could. She’d discover the origin of the illness and make sure it couldn’t recur, then return to the safety of her familiar life in Teganne. Where no one was going to burn her at the stake for being a foreigner. Or for sleeping with the sultan, for that matter. All temptation would be removed.
Maybe that temptation was just due to her emotional state, anyway. An attraction wrought by grief and the terrors of the day. People often did stupid things when emotions ran high. Perhaps her fascination, this silly crush, would simply evaporate in a day or two.
And in the meantime, it didn’t matter what her body wanted. She didn’t have to act on that want. Decades of being alone had honed that strength.
But there, in the Kaddite night with the moon’s pale glow on fresh sheets, the width of the bed seemed only to highlight that she occupied it alone. As usual.
She rose, tugged the blanket from the bed and crossed to the divan.
Gunjan opened one eye and stared at her as she neared. “I did mention the issue about human bareness, didn’t I?”
“Made it exceedingly clear.”
“Good.” He closed the eye again and she curled up on the divan’s cushions, watching the moon’s path until her over-stimulated mind glazed into oblivion.
Deep in dreams, the silver moon became Varene’s torchlight, a guide through the corridors of the palace with their smooth marble and tapestries and graceful arches leading her to new rooms, other lives and their stories. The people who lived and worked within its walls, each with their own tale, had gathered here to serve their realm and their sultan.
The hallways were deserted. Guards should have been keeping watch regardless of the hour, but she knew everyone was asleep. No matter which hallway she walked, she closed in on her heart’s desire. Joy flooded through her, even as fear rose and twined with it… here in the palace of the sultan, of the son of gods, in a land so far from her own.
Her footsteps, as hushed as they were, echoed in the cool corridors like quiet drums, or heartbeats. She turned again and moved through another corridor, wider and more splendid than the others, with a keyhole doorway at the end flanked by two torches. Rugs with golden tassels muted her steps as she passed down the hall, on and on. She realized the arch of the door and its torches were pulling away from her, standing now more distant than when she began.
Confused, she halted and peered behind her, but only cool shadows and silence lay in her wake. Emptiness.
The wall on her left melted away, exposing the hall to the pearly touch of the moon. The garden outside grew and flourished, blooming in the silver rays as if it were the fabled First Morning.
The wall on her right melted away. Stars shone beyond, as if the sky had tilted down and joined the edge of the world, which was the rug under her feet. She inched closer, halting just short of the tassels, afraid she’d fall into that sky and forget all she knew and loved.
She retreated to the middle, caught between the moon’s light and the starlit sky, and looked again toward the end of the hall. The torches had neared again, flanking her destination. So far away, but so desired…
She stepped forward.
And fell through the rug into the Void—utterly, infinitely lost.
She woke then with a cry, clutching her blankets, alone in the palace of the sultan. Even Gunjan had abandoned his perch sometime in the pre-dawn.
Sleepless now, Varene stared out at her garden and waited for the sun’s rays to warm her world.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Kuramos knelt on the prayer rug in his chamber as he’d done all the long hours of the night, pleading and thinking, his mind treading the same paths over and over.
Tahir, his mere cubling of four, looked likely to succumb to the curse. Mishka, his gift of love from Maitri, had only just reached nine, and in any case he could not allow a girl to ascend the throne, especially one so timid. Burhan, at fourteen? No! Not even under these desperate circumstances. With all the force of his frustration and grief, he slammed his palm against the thick carpet.
Impossible. None of them could lead Kad. With Dabir gone, there wasn’t even anyone he could trust to act as Regent. Rajvi would have been exemplary, but she might not live to see Naaz’s sun again. His children’s mothers were each unsuited for the crucial position—Sulya because of who she was, and Maitri and Taleen because they, like Rajvi, were under the curse’s claws.
But what if he must choose one to rule Kad, in order to save them all?
His fingers clutched the rug. Javed. His firstborn son would have been nearly
160 years old by now—fully trained, seasoned by wisdom and experience. Kuramos imagined his son’s dark hair streaming behind a burnished helm as they charged Kad’s enemies together on the battlefield. But only a year into the sultan’s marriage with Rajvi, the brunet Javed had been stillborn. Her womb had never again quickened.
He’d adored Zahlia’s two daughters, both fiercely intelligent and full of mischief like their mother. Vanani had died in childbirth, taking her unborn twin sons with her, and Ilya had been kidnapped from her husband’s home and brutally murdered. The earlier visit from Ubaid the messenger demonstrated that the powerful House of Faysal, united with Kuramos first by two marriages and then by grief, had already begun to waver.
Nireh’s warrior son Seif had joined Kuramos on the battlefield fifteen years ago, and there had earned the love of his people and the eternal respect of his father. And there Seif’s jugular had been severed by the sword of their enemy’s general. The killer’s life had ended at Kuramos’s own hand. Kuramos had shattered the rebellion and the mutinous pasha had paid dearly for his insurrection, even yielding Taleen, his newly widowed daughter-in-law, to mend the chasm—but nothing could heal Kuramos’s heart.
His heart had broken again five years later, when Seif’s sister had drowned in the river bordering the palace. The bridge railing Lahari habitually leaned on during her morning meditations had been stealthily cut. The murderer had been discovered only recently, and could never have been brought to official justice—so he’d avenged the loss his own way. Naaz herself sanctioned such redress. And yet…
All this left only Kuramos’s littlest ones. And a dilemma he had never again expected to face.
The softest of taps at the door pushed the past away and alerted him to a visitor—someone new, who hesitated and had never before knocked on his door. He rose to his feet. “Come in, Varene.”
His keyhole door swayed open. “How did you know it was me?” she asked, quietly shutting the door behind her and glancing around the front room of his quarters.