by Zamil Akhtar
“And why are you here?” I didn’t want to ask, but his mere presence chaffed. “Why bring the horde? The Disciples say you’re here to make trouble for Kyars. They, like everyone else, are so scared of you.” I stepped closer, so that he sat in my shade. “Call me foolish, but I’m not. After what I’ve seen, what I’ve experienced, I know you’re a just a small man casting a large shadow.”
He stood, reminding me how much taller he was. About Cihan’s height. “Do you remember, Cyra?” He came to my ear, whispered, “Do you remember what happened whilst you floated with all those brightly burning stars?”
I stepped back, my eyebrows raised in shock as the memory of falling into a star burned through my mind. “What did you say?”
An almost otherworldly smile stretched across his face. “You were falling. Floating. Flying. I took you by the hand, and we swam across a thousand worlds.”
I shut my eyes as the memories burned with every word. Stars birthing, dying, exploding, crying. I’d experienced too much for one mind, for one lifetime, that was why—
Pashang grabbed my hand, like he’d done in the memory. “She felt your suffering, as if it were her own. And so, in her compassion, she gave you something.”
I pulled away, overwhelmed by celestial images and sensations. I looked up at the sky; the stars burned like emeralds, each hymning its own distinct song.
“Two horses,” I said, barely able to stand. “Give us two horses.”
“You can have anything you want.” Pashang spread out his arms. “My camp is yours. My Jotrids are yours.” He tugged his collar. “I am yours.”
Once through the city gate, we stopped at Eshe’s house in the Glass District. His third story loft featured a stunning view of the glass sculpture of Saint Nora. On the saint’s birthday, once a year, men and women gathered to stone the statue, to show that it was unbreakable. It was the saint’s final miracle before she ascended to Barzakh and was so astonishing they built an entire district around it.
Eshe’s loft was not only spacious but filled with tapestries and carpets with a simple, geometric style I didn’t recognize. Himyaric, I assumed. He’d devoted an entire room for books, with niches on every wall.
Now he was tossing all the books on the floor.
“It’s not here,” he said. “Could they have…recovered it?”
“You’re really that worried about a book?”
“It’s one of the only copies of Flavors of Blood Volume Two in the world. And it contained a hidden code that I’d been deciphering, after learning the truth about its author from a drunk Philosopher. Perhaps the Philosophers broke in and took it back…but the door was locked and latched when we arrived…so how?”
“I’m more surprised the gholam didn’t break in. They must’ve gotten your name from Hadrith, Ozar, or Sambal and so know you were involved.”
He picked up a stack of books and dropped them one by one into a niche. “You’ve no faith in your friends?”
“None were my friends. And I know that to save themselves, they’d give up Saint Chisti himself. So best we not linger, lest someone sight us.”
“Do you really think we can trust the Order, though?”
“We’ve no other choice. And Sheikh Khizr was as sincere as I’ve ever seen anyone be. As the Grand Mufti of the Fount, he has tremendous access to the palace, to everywhere in the city, really. With his help, we’ll expose the sorcerer, surely.”
As Eshe continued to ransack his house for the book, I sat on his balcony and watched people dally about the district. Being among the richest areas in the city, too many buildings sported a dome — either green or gold — and around those domes hung vines. Glass panels, some colored with flowery patterns, replaced whole walls. Unlit streetlamps perched on the sides of the clean, cobbled streets.
It was then I began to feel faint. Sweating sickness — I’d had it twice or thrice before. Always best to stay in bed and sweat it out, but we hadn’t time for weakness. I rested my head on a silk pillow, hoping fresh air would relieve the scorch spreading from my core.
A dry hand clasped my forehead. I looked up to see Eshe crouching over me. “You’re heating up,” he said. “Perhaps it’s best we stay for a night. Trust me, my lodgings are a lot comfier than the Order’s.”
Too weak to argue, I nodded and moved to his bedroom. Silk sheets and a wool blanket, just like I had in the palace. While I got comfortable, Eshe pressed leaves into a bowl, mashed them with a stick, then headed to the kitchen to boil water. He returned with two steaming tea mugs. I sniffed; sugarcane and cinnamon streamed into my nose, calming me.
“I’ve memorized most basic medical tomes,” he said with a huffed chest. “Short of an actual healer, you won’t find a better man to look after you.”
As I stared at his unfamiliar ceiling, I saw the faint edges of stars burning through sky and stone. I closed my eye, but that only vivified them, so I turned to my side and faced Eshe, who was sitting on a cushion and watching me.
“All that knowledge,” I said, “and yet you insult people for a living.”
“Knowledge is one thing, perception another, and insight a third. I honed all three weapons so I could serve. But they cut both ways.”
Watching him savor his tea, only then did I realize how alone Eshe was. As alone as me, expelled from where he belonged and grasping at faint, flickering hopes.
“I wasted my life,” I said, “I should have been sharpening my weapons, too. Because now I’m forced to fight with nothing but a dull blade.”
He smiled and shook his head. “You’re too hard on yourself. Yours isn’t a dull blade, not at all. You’re clever in ways that I’m not. And you rode that horse like a true khatun.”
“You flatter me, Eshe. But while you were memorizing rare books and hunting sorcerers, I was sipping coffee, watching dances, and gossiping with other vain, tortured women.”
“So you know their game, then. The game they play in the palace, where a poisoned word must be hidden beneath a pound of flour. I’d say that’ll come in handy.”
I chuckled, catching the bitterness on my tongue. “I wish I were more than that. I wish I were something. That’s why I wanted to be…” I hesitated to speak my shame.
“Married to Kyars? Or that little shit, Hadrith? It’s perfectly understandable. What other chance would you get to be something? We’re all hemmed in by our births. Being a Himyarite — dark as coal, as they say — people would think me a slave, if I didn’t wear silk, live in the Glass District, and speak with a lofty lilt.”
He really did have a lofty accent. But mine was just as lofty, so I hadn’t noticed. “You’re the farthest thing from a slave. In fact, you might be the most complicated person I’ve ever met.”
Eshe laughed, almost choking on his tea. “Now that’s a compliment I could never come up with.”
“I’m not sure it’s a compliment.”
“I know.”
We both laughed. How nice to feel camaraderie after so long.
I said, “When I was a child, we had nothing, but we were free. And then as a grown up, I had everything, but I wasn’t free.” I chuckled at the sadness of it all. “And now, I have nothing, nor am I free. But you, Eshe…you have everything, and you’re free. Why not find a nice wife and live out your days, savoring it all?”
“I’m not made for that.” He spread his arms, palms up. “This house, the gold — it’s wasted on me. I was happiest as a Disciple, sleeping on the sand, because I had purpose as fuel. Now…I’m starting to feel that again.”
“So my problems bring you happiness?” I chuckled.
“Something like that.”
I drifted to sleep amid our conversation. Dreamless, thank Lat. In the deadest part of the night, I awoke gasping for breath. My nose had congested in my sleep, and perhaps I wasn’t breathing well on my side. A layer of sweat swamped my skin, and heat radiated from my chest and forehead.
Eshe snored serenely, on his stomach. Best to let him rest.
>
I thirsted, so I got up and, despite my heaviness, headed for the kitchen. On the way, I passed a mirror. Amid the moonlight streaming through the open windows, I saw me, a soggy bandage wrapped over my right eye. But now, I didn’t feel sorry for myself, and a hopeful glimmer lifted my spirits. I wasn’t the only one in this struggle. I wasn’t alone.
Something buzzed at my ear. I swatted it, missed. It landed on the mirror: a firefly, twinkling green. How luminous.
It flew toward the ceiling. As I followed its path, stars burned on my eyelids. An endlessness of them, orbiting each other without pattern — twinkling in and out of existence — exploding — growing — shrinking — wailing — singing.
Pashang’s words played in my mind: “She felt your suffering, as if it were her own.”
I couldn’t hide it from myself. Not anymore.
I pulled the bandage off and stared into the mirror. Stared into my right eye, which was black and without a pupil. When I shut my right eye, I saw only the world, but when I shut my left eye, I saw only stars.
“And so, in her compassion, she gave you something.”
And what a thing it was.
16
Zedra
By pretending I couldn’t walk, they’d let Celene continue to attend me. In the morning, we got permission to use the bath — naturally. And so Celene wheeled me there.
“There are new ships in the harbor!” Celene said as we passed through the sunlit hallway, the cool after-dawn air flowing through the open windows. “I noticed them from the balcony. They’ve the emblem of Principus on their sails — that means they’re Sargosan ships! Sargosa is a client of Crucis. Perhaps…perhaps they can take me home.”
I’d noticed them, too. Ghastly emblem that resembled a jellyfish with a single, bulging eye.
“Don’t get your hopes up, dear. They sailed from the east, from the Sargosan outposts on the islands south of Kashan. That’s even farther from your home than here.” I knew this from following Ozar as the drongo. He bought spices from the Sargosans and oft used their ships.
Celene heaved with disappointment. “Well…ugh…I knew it was too good to be true, like all my hopes.”
Once at the bath, I asked her to join me in the hot pool. The eunuchs had lit sticks of nutmeg in the incense burners: spicy, sweet, and penetrating. The water, though, seemed a tad frothy. With the fountain gushing, I whispered my intention.
“We’re leaving. Right now. If you want to go home, you’ll do everything I tell you, all right?”
She gaped, jowls pink. “What? What do you mean leaving? Where will we go?”
A steam cloud bubbling from the coal burner separated us. I waded to her front, so she’d see me clearly and not mistake my seriousness. “I promise, if you do what I say, I’ll see you home. Do you accept, Celene?” I held out my dripping hand.
Her agonized glare said it all. “I told you, how can I be sure?”
“How are you sure there’s an angel in the sky, hearing your desperate prayers?”
“I saw him.”
“Before you saw him, you had faith, didn’t you?”
She snickered and shook her head. “Are you comparing yourself to my god? That I ought to believe your words, the way I believe Angelsong?”
How to convince her that I deserved her faith? That I, too, possessed miracles?
“Come with me.” I pushed out of the pool.
Celene gasped as I walked on my two strong legs. “How long’ve you been deceiving everyone?”
“Longer than you’ve been breathing.” I took her hand and helped her out of the pool. “I want to show you something.”
She followed me into the steam room. I breathed deep, then pushed on the coal burner; getting it to budge burned my meager chest muscles. But with it aside, the bloodrune, and my handprint beside it, lay revealed.
I knelt and traced the rune with my fingers: three eyes around a star. How agonized I’d been when I made it, only a day after being brought here. To a new place, a new people, a new time.
“What is that?” Celene asked.
“Where I came from…and when I came from…there was nothing like this bath chamber. I was at once struck with wonder, full of agony, and suddenly alone. Not knowing how to even balance in a place like this, I slipped and hit my head. Thought I was going to bleed to death. So I made this bloodrune…for one final, joyous memory.”
“Blood…rune?” Celene gasped. “Are you some kind of…”
Trust requires trust, so I hoped to earn some with my truth. “Yes…I am. Deep in the Waste, in a place called the Red for the tinge of its sky, lies the God Sea. I was baptized there when I was six years old. I still remember how the water tasted…as if my mouth were full of coins. My ancestors learned about it, and how to make these runes, from a jinn tribe, and they claimed to have learned it from a god.”
“Not a god. An angel. The angel Marot.” Celene gulped. “Marot came to test mankind. All who learned magic from him would be cast into the fire, their lineages cursed for eternity, which is why it’s forbidden in my faith. Which is why I can’t be a part of this!”
I took her hand again, but she pulled away and turned her back.
“Will you at least listen to my story?” I asked.
She wasn’t covering her ears, nor had she left the steam chamber.
I said, “When I made this rune, I was just like you — yearning to be somewhere else. I hoped it would ease my longing. It does something remarkable, despite being written with my own, simple blood.”
“There’s nothing simple about you,” Celene whispered, her back still turned.
“I’m going to make it glow, and then I’m going to hold your hand, and you’re going to touch it.”
I whispered the incantation to the Morning Star; the rune glowed briefly.
Celene turned to look. She stared into it, almost entranced. “This is sin. You and your ancestors failed Marot’s trial. You’re cursed — I’ll not join you!”
I took her hand. “You want to go home, don’t you?”
She nodded. “Of course. It’s all I want. But I can’t touch that!”
“The moment we entered this palace, our rules didn’t matter. What we wanted didn’t matter. Kyars made me realize that rather quickly. Now, I’ll do the same for you.”
I took her other hand. She tried to pull away. I caught her terrified eyes with my assured gaze, as I’d done countless times with my daughters.
Her hands fell limp, as if she’d resigned her strength. “Marot forgive me. Twelve forgive me. Archangel forgive me.”
She’d feel less guilt if I forced her. So I hung my arm around her neck, then pushed her trembling hand onto the bloodrune.
I awoke in another bath, but it was nothing like the one I’d come from. A water clock hung on the stone wall, numerals written on the glass for each hour of the day. Drip-drip-drip.
An organ sat on the far side, its pipes stretching to the ceiling. No one played it, and yet it bellowed. The keys…pressed down by themselves! Could it be a jinn intent on mischief? I moved closer and studied it; this was no magic: as water from the glass pipe on the wall passed through, some clever mechanism pushed the keys. The Philosophers had similar contraptions in the Tower, I recalled. And the music this organ made: so thunderous, as if some world-ending battle were to begin. Around me, water gushed from the walls like they did from the waterfalls where I grew up. But I wasn’t anywhere near there — no, I was farther than I’d ever been.
I stepped into a fall and let the water douse my long, tawny hair and fair body. Whoever I was inhabiting, they were more carefree than I’d ever been; I even twirled and hopped, landing on my tiptoes — what country’s dance was this?
“Adonia, my flower, are you ready?” Foreign words — as if you took Paramic and stretched it, then sunk it under the sea — yet, somehow, I knew what they meant.
I turned to see Celene, wearing the daintiest outfit, whilst I was damp and naked. A necklace with layers o
f diamonds and sapphires in a chaotic mix hung around her neck. A bright purple cape covered her shoulders and wrapped around her front; marching lions in rose gold adorned the base. But more stunning was the tiara that sunk onto her head, a size too large: pearls dangled from it, intermixing with her bright hair. I could scarcely huff out a word with how awestruck I, or rather Adonia, was.
“You like it so much?” Celene said, giggling. She twirled. Then she closed in, as if to hug my dripping, naked form with her royal garb. But instead of putting her arms around me, she pushed her lips up to mine.
I stepped back. Whereas I was stunned, the mind I’d inhabited fluttered, enraptured by the kiss.
“No one’s watching,” she said. “Stop being so coy.”
My cheeks got hot and red. “Sorry, my lady. I’m just overcome by…how beautiful you look.” Speaking a language I didn’t know, yet somehow understood, was like plucking flowers out of air.
“Don’t ‘my lady’ me. We’re in my home now, my castle. There’re no priests here to fear.”
I wondered where we’d been before. I could smell the memory, though it wasn’t mine. Some place…holy. Long, drafty dark-stone corridors. Thin air, views of the lowlands, as if we were perched on a peak. Crucian hymns, thick dusty robes, old tomes, and tiresome chores.
“You’ll do wonderfully today.” Celene put her hand on my bare waist. It was warmer than the steam around us. “Remember, if you get nervous, it’s only the imperial family.” She snorted mischievously.
Laughter came from high in my throat. “That’s supposed to make me less nervous?”
“You can imagine us naked.” Celene pressed her head against my breast, wetting her gown. “Though you’ve left naught to my imagination.” Another chuckle.
I eased her off. “I’d best get ready, then.” I could only guess what for.
Celene grinned and nodded. “You will do great, I mean it.” She blew me a kiss while twirling out the bath, bereft of a princess’s grace.