by Melanie Rawn
“There are always the grandchildren.”
“But Mairid is mine.” He paused an instant, and then with calculated coldness asked, “She is mine, is she not?”
Mirzah gasped.
“Ayia, of course she is,” he went on. “She has my eyes, my cheekbones, my mouth—and my intelligence. She’ll make a fine Empress.”
“ ‘Empress’?”
He turned to her then, relishing the shock in her eyes.“Didn’t you know? Our son Addad is a fine man, but he lacks vision.” Or, rather, he thought suddenly, Addad would see things through the distorting flaws in the glass, not as they were but as he imagined them to be—as they looked prettiest and most interesting. “The other girls will have their own lands—or hadn’t I told you yet that Granidiya and Pracanza and Joharra will one day be a part of the Empire? I’m only waiting until Jemilha and Za’arifa are old enough to hold a country in their hands.”
“Why?” The silver of her necklaces and earrings shivered with her rage. “Why must you always have more? More land, more wealth, more women—”
“I care nothing for land, except as it nourishes my people. Wealth is useful for the same reason. As for women, I defy you to find even one who claims to have enjoyed my favor.”
“You haven’t slept solitary all these years!”
“Prove it,” he said. “Prove it, and divorce me—and see if your daughters wish to return with you to the Shagara tents, when I can give them kingdoms.”
“Take care lest those in the Shagara tents come to you, as they did to your father!” She gave him a sleek smile: I know things that even the great al-Ma’aliq does not! “There are many who agree with those who exiled themselves years ago rather than countenance the perversion of Shagara ways.”
“A few malcontents—”
“More than you know! And remember that they succeeded in killing your father where the mighty Geysh Dushann failed! You have used everyone, everyone—the Shagara, my daughters, my sons—without pity, without conscience—you’re not the man your father was!”
“Acuyib be praised for it,” he retorted.
“Chaydann al-Mamnoua’a be blamed for it! Azzad never used the people he loved! But you—you don’t love anyone at all, unless they can be of use to you!” Tears streaked her face, aging her. “And it kills, Alessid—being of use to you kills.”
He turned and left her, shutting the door behind him. He leaned against the carved wood, listening to the sound of her weeping. Long ago, he remembered, he had returned to her tent to find her crying over their Haddiyat sons. Her tears had moved him then. Not now. He wondered when he had stopped caring for his wife, and after a few moments’ thought decided it had happened just now, tonight. Today he had been proud of her as she met the people of Qaysh; he had watched with pleasure as they admired her mature and dignified beauty; he had smiled when she smiled on accepting flowers from little girls. Not his wife for years now, she was an able Sheyqa, and that had been enough to retain his love.
It was no longer enough.
Mirzah was the mother of his children—surely he ought to love her still for that. But what was she, truly, other than a woman who used to be his wife, who had given him children in the past, whose function was to appear at his side and smile? He respected her as a Sheyqa, but he no longer loved her as a woman. Perhaps she was right about him. Perhaps he only loved where there was usefulness to his ambitions.
No. He loved his children unreservedly. Each time he passed the place where Kammil had died beneath the walls of Hazganni, he nearly wept anew.
Kammil had died being of use to him.
Alessid was not Azzad. Why should he regret this? He was alive, and he would make his children rulers of vast lands. What had charming, foolish Azzad done to match that?
After a brief and entirely satisfactory little war, Za’arifa became Queen of Granidiya. Two years later, King Joaono do’Trastemar was deposed and killed, and Jemilha became Queen of Ibrayanza. Yet even watching what happened to its neighbors, the land of Joharra resisted conquest by the Riders on the Golden Wind. This was a curious circumstance, for its army had been wiped out and Count Garza killed. But Nadaline yet lived, and her son as well, in the fastness of a mountain castle said to resemble the ancient alMa’aliq lands in Rimmal Madar, and loyalty to the girl and her baby was comparable to that of the people for the al-Ma’aliq. Alessid reluctantly respected this and decided the easier lands would be added to his empire first before he turned his attention to Joharra once and for all.
There was plenty to do in organizing the three countries already acquired. Tza’ab Rih flourished, as did his family. There were four grandsons and seven granddaughters to help Alessid celebrate his fifty-fifth birthday. He loved all of them—but part of his heart was reserved for the children his beloved Mairid would have one day. She was nearly sixteen, and it was time she married. He had kept her with him too long, cherishing her too much to relinquish her.
The day after his birthday banquet, he called her into the great tent in the gardens. He had done the same with her sisters to announce the names of the men from whom they would select their husbands. Ra’abi, Jemilha, and Za’arifa had all dressed in their finest, jingling with hazziri and swirling with silks, aware of the importance of the occasion even though it was private between each girl and her father. Mairid arrived in a plain work tunic and trousers, barefoot and bareheaded, filthy from working in the herb garden.
“I know what you want to say, Ab’ya,” she told him before he could do more than open his mouth. “But I’ve already chosen my husband.”
“Ayia?” was all he could manage.
“Ayia,” she agreed, smiling. “Jefar.”
“Jefar!” Alessid sat up straight on his piled cushions. “He’s twice your age!”
“If that’s your only objection—”
“It is not!” he roared.
She picked dirt from beneath her nails. “I can’t think of a single reason why I shouldn’t marry him. And I really don’t want to hear any that you make up for the occasion. Should you forbid me, I’ll simply take him into my bed. If you don’t want a scandal, Ab’ya, for all of Hazganni to tittle over the way they did over that silly Nadaline girl, then you’d better let me marry him without making a fuss.”
“You won’t be taking anyone anywhere if you’re locked in your rooms,” he said darkly. “And I find it difficult to imagine how you could become pregnant if Jefar is posted to a garrison in Ga’af Shammal.”
“Don’t be silly, Ab’ya,” she scolded, smiling. “You need him here. Don’t you want to know why he’d make a good husband for an Empress?”
“No!”
“He’s beloved of our people. He’s Shagara—and we al-Ma’aliq need a link in this generation, after the Harirri and Azwadh and Tallib marriages. He’s smart, and he’s watched you govern all these years, just as I have, so it isn’t as if I’d have to teach him anything. He’s a brilliant war leader—having proved that at your side time and again—and the troops trust and love him. Just as important, the barbarians in the north have been defeated by him personally, so they’ll know not to make trouble.” She paused, and for the first time a powerful emotion shone in her eyes. “And I love him.”
Alessid felt the air leave his lungs in a rush. She had thought it all through, like the Empress she would one day be—but she was also a young girl in love. He had never denied her anything, but he had to deny her this. Because it hurt him to do so, his voice was rough as he said, “Your feelings have nothing to do with it. You will not marry Jefar Shagara.”
Suddenly she was no future Empress. Her jaw jutted, her eyes ignited, and her fists balled at her sides. “I will marry him! You can’t stop me!” And with that she ran out of the tent.
Alessid jumped up and followed her. “Mairid!” he shouted, aware that it was undignified to be racing through the gardens after his wayward daughter. The workers were trying not to stare. “Mairid!”
She vanished into the
stables. Cursing, he went after her, and in the noise and bustle of a hundred splendid horses and their grooms and trainers, he lost her. Grabbing a grizzled veteran of the war against Za’aid al-Ammarizzad, he demanded to know where Sheyqa Mairid had gone. The old man dropped the saddle in his arms, trembling with nerves at this furious aspect of the usually self-possessed al-Ma’aliq. Nothing came out of the aged veteran’s mouth but panicky mumblings. Alessid abandoned him and strode along the alley between stalls. Beneath lofty rafters, magnificent stallions and noble mares looked curiously at him, many of them with Khamsin’s eyes. He reached the last stalls, where Mairid’s favorite filly, munching contentedly on oats, glanced around curiously when Alessid began a string of lurid curses.
Pushing through the back door into the sunlight, Alessid swore anew as he saw a slight figure on horseback galloping across the small paddock toward a fence. She had gone into the stables only to snatch a bridle from the tack room. Tempted to do the same and follow her, Alessid abruptly recalled days in his childhood when he had behaved exactly as Mairid did now. Frustrated, angry, unhappy, or simply bored, how often had he leaped onto a horse and ridden out of Sihabbah, putting speed and wind between him and his troubles?
He had done the same on that horrible night when his father and mother and sisters and brother had died. Escape—was there truly such a thing?
She was like him, his Mairid. She would return when she was ready. She would flee into the croplands, and then the forested hills, but eventually the horse would tire, and she would be back by nightfall. It wasn’t like when he was a boy, and his mother worried about the Geysh Dushann. There were no such dangers in Tza’ab Rih, especially not to its ruler’s favorite daughter.
Mairid did not come back by nightfall. Alessid worried, but told himself that a night spent sleeping on the hard ground wouldn’t do her any harm. She would have sense enough to return home when morning came.
But morning did not come. Instead there blew in from the Barrens to the south a thick, choking wind, laden not with fine white-gold sand but with heavy black grit, thick and sticky. To go outside was madness, yet the daily life of Hazganni demanded that people indeed go outside—bundled in cloaks and veiled in silk and scarcely able to see.
Jefar Shagara went outside, draped from head to foot, his horse protected by thin silk over eyes and nostrils. Alessid waited for him to return with Mairid. He sat in his maqtabba, listening to the whining dark wind, his gaze shifting slowly from lamp to glowing lamp by which he was supposed to be tending the business of his Empire.
At last a servant came in. “Al-Ma’aliq, they’re back.”
Alessid went to the windows that overlooked the courtyard, but of course they were tightly shuttered. Even had they been open he would have seen nothing for the obscuring dirt. He stared grimly at the bubble-distorted glass and the carved screens beyond it, and said, “Send her to her rooms. Let no one see her but the servant who draws her bath and brings her food. If she is hurt, send her grandmother Leyliah to her. But no one else. And she is not to leave her chambers for three days.”
The dark wind died down that night. Windows were gratefully opened to fresh air. Brooms wore out sweeping streets and zoqalos free of dirt. And everyone prayed to Acuyib for a swift rain to wash Hazganni clean.
When Mairid did not emerge from her rooms after the prescribed three days, Alessid surmised she was sulking. She was willful and stubborn, but so was he. Still, he called into his presence the servant who brought her food and water.
“What does she say when you leave her meals at her door?”
“Nothing, al-Ma’aliq. She has not come to the door to accept the food herself. The plates are left outside, and only the water is taken in.”
Scorning him by starving herself was the action of a spoiled child. Mirzah was right; he had given Mairid her own way for too long. But when the fourth day passed and no one saw her, his anger was such that he went upstairs to her rooms and flung open the door, bellowing her name.
She lay on the flowered carpet, a frail little figure in a white nightrobe soaked with sweat and stained with vomit.
When Leyliah saw her—tucked up in bed, mumbling with fever—she turned white to the lips.
Alessid, who sat at his daughter’s side holding her hand, felt his heart stop. “What?” he rasped. “What is this?”
“I cannot be sure,” Leyliah whispered, suddenly looking every one of her seventy-four years.
Mirzah, seated on the other side of the bed, wrung out another cool rag and bathed Mairid’s brow. “No, Mother. You are sure. Tell us.”
Sinking into a chair, the old woman drew in a shaky breath. “Shagara legend tells of a burning dark wind that killed hundreds of our people.”
“When their tents fell on them in the storm,” Alessid reasoned.
“No. It was a disease. Hundreds died—the very old and the very young at first, then—”
“But some survived it.”
Leyliah would not look at him. “Of every ten, four died.”
“Mairid will live.”
“Alessid—”
“She will live.” He stared Leyliah down. “Summon Kemmal. He will make hazziri for his sister. She will live.”
A spark of hope shone in Leyliah’s beautiful eyes. “In that time long ago, there were no Haddiyat—” She stopped, and wonderment spread over her face. “Of the Shagara who survived, within a generation—”
“Then it’s not inevitably fatal. Mairid will live.” He looked at Mirzah. She nodded slightly. For that scant moment, they were in complete harmony.
“Yes. She will live.” Mirzah’s lips tightened as if to hold back other words, but within a moment they escaped, cold and bitter. “Al-Ma’aliq has decreed it.”
At first the illness was confined to the poorer quarters, and people who tended animals, and those who worked in the fields. Not everyone took sick of having been outside, but there was no pattern to immunity. And soon the disease spread, and with it fear as more and more died.
The initial fever was followed by violent purging, as if the body tried desperately to rid itself of sickness. But this only weakened the victim, so that when the fever returned there was no defense. The tongue turned black, and death followed within hours.
Shagara healers were overwhelmed. Alessid sent to their summer encampment for others, but the disease had struck in the wilderness, too.The Haddiyat forsook their usual fine craftsmanship to make hundreds of crude hazziri, and after a time the specific combination of gems, metals, and talishann was discovered that could see a victim through the disease—although the work of some was more effective than the work of others.
But this took many weeks, and all the while people were dying.
—RAFFIQ MURAH, Deeds of Il-Nazzari, 701
17
He did not leave her bedside. He paid no heed to Leyliah, who urged him to eat, to sleep, to guard his own health. Mirzah came and went. She brought news that others were suffering among the family. The whole of Tza’ab Rih was in mourning for the Black Rose. Alessid felt a vague sort of pity. But he was too preoccupied with Mairid, too intent on her every breath and movement, to allow himself to think that soon he might be grieving. The disease ran its course; those who could not withstand it died, and those who were strong and blessed by Acuyib survived. By the twentieth day after the dark and stifling wind swept into Hazganni, no new cases were being reported.
Yet Mairid lay in her bed, fevered and insensible—not dead, praise be to Acuyib, but not recovering, either.
“It is interesting,” Mirzah said one afternoon, while she bathed Mairid’s parched and fevered skin, “that it took this to teach you how much you can love.”
Too weary to contend with her, he said nothing.
“Then again,” Mirzah went on, “if Mairid dies, she is of no use to you.”
“Be silent.”
“Who did you have in mind for her? One of the Tabbors?”
With sudden passion: “She can wed th
e King of Ghillas if she pleases—if only she will live.”
“Careful. She might have heard that.”
He glared at her over their daughter’s frail body. “Get out.”
“When I am finished here.”
“Now.”
She ignored him, and completed her task, and eventually rose and dried her hands. “Alessid, summon Jefar to her.”
He felt something akin to hatred. Jefar, who had ridden out in the dark wind and stayed as well and healthy as ever. Jefar, whom his daughter loved.
It was bitter for Alessid to see Mairid’s head turn feebly toward the sound of Jefar’s voice. To see her dry lips curve ever-so-slightly in a smile when Jefar took her hand. To see the helpless agony in Jefar’s eyes as he looked upon her fever-wasted face. To know himself supplanted, defeated. A bitter well from which he was compelled to drink deep. He watched them for a time, and then, when he saw in Mairid’s eyes that she was lucid, clasped his own hands around theirs and said, “I betroth you, Mairid my daughter and Jefar my friend.”
It had always been enough to be loved by those few whose love he desired. Now, to watch his daughter turn her eyes to another man, loving him more, Alessid knew there was more to love than being loved. And in proving his for Mairid, he had lost her. But surely, surely there was someone in whose eyes he would see it returned in full unchanging measure, someone in whose heart he would always be first.
His people. Yes. He had created a nation out of nothing. They knew it; they revered him; they loved him without reservation. When Mairid recovered and her marriage to Jefar Shagara was celebrated, their cheers were for Alessid as the bridal party walked through the streets of Hazganni. They cried out his name. It was release from worry and sorrow after the long months of sickness and death, but it was also love for him. For him. He had made them great. He would make them greater still. And he knew how he intended to do it.