Gifting Fire

by Alina Boyden

  My heart skipped a beat as I wondered if I hadn’t underestimated my father’s anger. Was he going to torture me, then? Why the ruse of making me a subahdar if a slow death had been his goal all along? Why bring me here and sit me beside his throne like he intended to follow through on his promises?

  I arched an eyebrow, hoping I looked intrigued rather than terrified, and asked, “Oh? What is my fate to be, then?”

  “You’re going to clean up your mess,” he answered, and I had to fight back a sigh of relief. He gestured to the palace around us, to the dirty pits that were half-filled with rainwater. “Did you think being made the subahdar of Zindh was a reward?”

  “Far from it, Father,” I replied, as I’d been thinking of nothing these last few weeks but the struggles I would face here, and I was sure there would be plenty more waiting for me that I hadn’t considered. “But you didn’t leave me much choice, did you?”

  He smirked. “No. And now that you are a princess”—his tongue lingered on the word like it was a curse—“you’ll find that you have precious few choices left, Razia.” My name was pure poison in his mouth, but it was the implied threat that caught my attention—the threat of being under his thumb for the rest of my life.

  “You’ll need a bigger army than the one you’ve brought if you expect me to confine myself to the zenana like a fire-worshipper’s wife, Father,” I warned him, as there was no way I was going to let him force me to hide myself away in the women’s quarters, seeing the world only through jali screens, forced to issue my orders through servants and handmaidens. If that was to be my fate, I would go back to Bikampur, where at least I would be safe and happy.

  My father stroked his mustache, his eyes flickering over my face, still taking my measure. “You’ve changed.”

  Those weren’t the words I’d expected to hear from him, and I felt my cheeks burn, but not from embarrassment. From pride. Changing myself was what I’d wanted most when I’d left Nizam four and a half years ago.

  “I have,” I agreed, because whatever my faults, I wasn’t the scared little prince I’d been when he’d known me, not anymore. My time in Bikampur had forged me into something altogether different.

  “All the same, you’re going to have your work cut out for you here,” he informed me, his tone becoming more businesslike, less scornful. It was a familiar pattern. Back home he’d always alternated between rage at my effeminacy and seriousness about the practical lessons he had to impart.

  “I can see that,” I muttered, nodding to the empty stone pits ringing the courtyard, to the complete lack of any servants save his soldiers. This place looked more like a ruin than a palace.

  “If I were you, I’d waste less time worrying over the beauty of your palace and more time worrying over the state of your province,” he snapped.

  It was just the kind of unfair thing he’d always said to me back home, twisting my words to make me sound like some effeminate moron. “If you have reports from scouts and from zamindars on the state of the province that are so urgent, why waste all this time with empty threats and tired insults, Father?”

  “Do you even know anything about Zindh?” he demanded.

  My spine stiffened and my jaw clenched. Somehow, I’d let myself forget these little tests of his. My whole childhood he’d made me parrot facts and figures from every province in the empire. He’d made me recite the history of Lahanur and the religious practices of Vanga, and woe be to me if I made the slightest error. But the anger left as quickly as it came. Those lessons had saved my life, had given me the power to claw my way out of the sewer and back into the skies. God help me, I was actually grateful to the man.

  But even if I had changed, he hadn’t—or at least not as much. He was still waiting for me to parrot those facts, to prove that I understood the province he had given me to rule.

  I crossed my arms over my chest, letting him see how annoyed I was at being treated like a child, but I gave him what he wanted, the summary that my tutor would have demanded from me. “Zindh is the most difficult province in the empire to protect. Safavia and Khuzdar threaten its western border, Durrania its northern one, and Registan lies directly to the east, to say nothing of the fact that it is completely open to attack by sea on its southern coastline where it borders Mahisagar. Worse, it is one of the wealthiest provinces in the empire owing to the indigo trade, but one of the least populated owing to the deserts that surround it, making its defense even more difficult.”

  “That’s half the picture,” my father agreed, my understanding of matters having tamed his temper somewhat, “but the internal affairs of Zindh are an order of magnitude more complicated. For centuries it was ruled by—”

  “—its own royal family,” I interrupted, finishing his sentence for him, enjoying the look of irritation that flickered across his face. “The Talpur dynasty, the members of which have long served as the—”

  “—jams of Zindh,” he said, speaking over me. “And many people in Zindh are still loyal to the members of their royal family and will stop at nothing to see its rule restored.”

  I frowned at that. “Restored? I thought you had every Talpur killed seven years ago for supporting Uncle Azam’s rebellion.”

  “I killed Rustam Talpur, their precious emperor,” my father grumbled, “but his sons escaped. I kept it quiet, but now the elder of the two boys, Ali, has reclaimed Kadiro, Zindh’s only port city.”

  “Which means our trade revenues will be crippled until he’s dealt with,” I concluded, seeing then why my father had been so annoyed with me for focusing on the palace.

  “Correct. But it’s worse than that.”

  I didn’t need him to spell it out for me. I could see the picture developing in my mind’s eye, even without the scouting reports. “With Javed Khorasani dead, and his men gone, Ali Talpur’s rebels will have their run of the province.”

  “And it will be your job to pull them out, root and stem, and restore order to this place,” he concluded.

  I frowned as I mulled over the magnitude of the task before me. Even with my zahhaks, I’d need an army to defeat Ali Talpur’s men, maybe more than one, to say nothing of artillery, ammunition, food, and supplies. At present, I had none of those things.

  “How many zahhaks does Ali Talpur have?” I asked, as that was the most pressing issue. With just two or three fire zahhaks or acid zahhaks at his disposal, he might make retaking Kadiro nearly impossible.

  “More than thirty,” my father replied, “but they’re all river zahhaks.” He gave a dismissive gesture with his hand.

  River zahhaks. Of course. My eyes flickered to the slender, colorful animals decorating the marble throne. River zahhaks were a peculiar species native to Zindh. They lived here in such large numbers that even ordinary noblemen were expected to learn to ride them, but where most zahhaks spat fire or acid or lightning, river zahhaks possessed no breath at all, making them virtually useless in warfare outside of scouting and messaging duties. It was one fewer thing for me to worry over anyway.

  “And how many men are you leaving me?” I asked.

  “You think I’m leaving soldiers for you after what you did?” my father asked, his voice mild, his expression anything but.

  “I think that if you expect me to fight a war without soldiers then you have a higher opinion of me than I ever imagined possible,” I retorted.

  “I can spare you five hundred men,” he said, his words sounding strangely flat without their usual undercurrent of scorn.

  “Five hundred men?” I gasped. That was what he was leaving me? Not in my worst nightmares had I ever imagined it would be this bad. I forgot our sparring match, our anger at each other, and I asked, with genuine concern in my voice, “Are there no levies left under our control at all?”

  “This province has always been difficult to hold together,” my father told me. I didn’t know if it was a response to
my sudden display of worry, or some long-buried instinct, but he wasn’t yelling at me like usual. He was explaining things the way he had when I was little and he’d still wanted me to take the throne. “The local emirs, their petty lords, hate interlopers, they still worship their infernal king, and they and their levies are loyal to him.”

  I looked out at the nearly empty inner courtyard of the palace. There should have been courtiers, there should have been servants, there should have been more guards. I understood now why there weren’t. “There’s nobody left in this province but rebellious lords and resentful nobles.”

  I wasn’t the subahdar of Zindh, I saw that clearly. I had five hundred men and six zahhaks with which to fight Ali Talpur, the rightful king of Zindh, and to quell a populace numbering in the hundreds of thousands. It was impossible. I’d be dead before the week was out.

  “My father can send men, Razia,” Arjun said. I didn’t miss the urgency in his voice, the fear for my safety. “And I have friends I can contact, young princes of Registan who are bored sitting at home in peace, and who might enjoy an adventure in an exotic new land. They could bring fire zahhaks—at least three or four.”

  “Thank you, my prince,” I said, though I thought we both knew that it wouldn’t be nearly enough. And anyway, if Ali Talpur’s men commanded the forts on the border with Registan, which I had no doubt they did, then the Registani soldiers would never be able to get through.

  “We can ask Prince Karim for help, Akka,” said Lakshmi, with far too much hope in her voice. It broke my heart. I’d promised her a new home, and I’d brought her to a tomb. But the pain in my heart didn’t change how I felt about Karim Shah. I wouldn’t ask him for his help if he were the last man in Daryastan.

  “Prince Karim and the Mahisagaris have their own worries now,” my father said, more to me than to Lakshmi. “The Safavians have won their war with Tarkiva. The Safavian shah, Ismail, is preparing his victorious armies for new campaigns. He wants to enlarge his territory, and for the first time in a decade, he has the freedom to do it. Karim and his father will be too worried about that to help you here.”

  I swallowed hard against the lump of fear hardening in my throat. I hadn’t counted on a threat from Safavia. They were a larger empire even than Nizam, with massive armies and hordes of zahhaks. If they turned their sights eastward, Zindh would be the ripest target for their veteran armies.

  “Father, I know you’re angry with me,” I said, “but I would think that this province would be more important to you than a feud with your own child. I can’t reclaim Zindh with five hundred men and six zahhaks, let alone defend it from Safavia. You might as well hand it over to Shah Ismail right now.”

  “Welcome to being a ruler, Razia,” he replied, and for the first time he was saying my name without the least trace of scorn. He didn’t even sound angry with me, just tired. I saw then what I hadn’t let myself see before—the dark circles under his eyes, the wrinkles creasing his face. He was getting older, and the cares of the empire were weighing on him.

  “The Virajendrans heard about what happened here,” he said. In a different tone of voice, it would have been an accusation, a reminder of my betrayal, but he was just stating a fact. “They’ve been launching raids across our southern border, probing our defenses, testing us for weakness. If I don’t respond in force, there will be an invasion.”

  I saw it then. This was a calculated loss, a strategic withdrawal to strengthen the empire in the long term.

  “If Zindh falls, we’ll have a river between Lahanur and our enemies,” my father said, laying it out for me. “Lahanur is one of our strongest provinces, filled with soldiers and fortresses, and unlike Zindh, I won’t have to cross the most barren desert in Daryastan to resupply it. And if Lahanur becomes our westernmost province, then Registan will serve as a buffer between us and the Safavians. As rich a province as Zindh is, the difficulty in defending it makes it expensive. I’m not sure our revenues will even suffer very much.

  “But if I let the Virajendrans cross the Bhima River,” he continued, “they’ll swallow up two whole provinces before I can stop them. Maybe more than that. I can’t let that happen. Far better to content myself with the loss of Zindh than to endanger the heartland of the empire in some foolish bid to save it.”

  It was all perfectly logical. All except one thing. “Why the charade, then, Father? Why not just take your zahhaks back and leave me in Bikampur where you found me? Or just kill me. That would be simpler.”

  “I had intended to,” he allowed, and my heart lanced with pain, not from fear, but from sorrow. “You’re right, it would have been simpler just to execute you and be done with it. But Prince Karim of Mahisagar changed my mind.”

  “Karim?” Had he gone and visited my father after the battle? “What did he say to you?”

  “You were there,” he replied. “After the battle of Rohiri, Karim said that you had devised the plan to defeat the Firangi fleet, that you had stolen zahhaks from a heavily guarded palace, that you had devised a battle strategy that had crushed Javed Khorasani’s army, and that you had killed Javed and his son in aerial combat.”

  I remembered that speech. It had been so out of place from a selfish bastard like Prince Karim Shah.

  “It occurred to me then,” my father continued, “that if anyone in Daryastan could save Zindh, it would be the girl who had pulled herself out of the gutter to become a princess.”

  The air went out of me in a rush. God, that was the nicest thing he’d ever said to me in my entire life. I was so confused. Why say something like that while leaving me here in this province to die? There was only one explanation that sprang to mind. “You think I can win?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know anything about you, Razia. I don’t know what you’re really capable of. My son, Prince Salim, was a spoiled brat and an effeminate disgrace. If he were in charge of this province it would fall within the hour. But you’re not him, are you?”

  “No, Father,” I said, trying and failing to keep my voice from crackling with emotion.

  “No,” he agreed. “You’re not a pampered prince. You’re a whore who was clever enough and ambitious enough and ruthless enough to make herself a provincial governor.”

  He let that hang in the air for a moment before saying, “I don’t think you’re clever enough to save Zindh, but I’d have to be a fool to underestimate a courtesan who somehow orchestrated the worst defeat Nizam has suffered in my twenty-seven-year reign.”

  I stared at the floor, torn between wanting to hug my father and wanting to murder him. I should have been so proud that I’d finally impressed him, finally made him see my worth, but it was hard when it was so clear that he didn’t see me as his child at all, just a pawn in Daryastan’s never-ending political game. Just once in my life, I wanted him to be a father to me like Udai was to Arjun. I wanted him to tell me that he cared about me, that he was proud of me. I wanted him to admit that I was more than just an effeminate disgrace. But I knew that was too much to ask.

  My father stood up from his throne. “Come along, then, Razia. We’ll review the men I’ve left for you.”

  “Yes, Father,” I murmured. I followed him out of the diwan-i-khas, but my head was still spinning from the things he’d said about me. I was hearing them over and over again in my mind. If anyone in Daryastan could save Zindh, it would be the girl who had pulled herself out of the gutter to become a princess . . .

  CHAPTER 3

  Sixteen cobalt-scaled thunder zahhaks stood in neat ranks of four, their riders holding them steady with firm hands on their reins. It had been years since I’d seen my father’s honor guard fully assembled, and the sight of them squeezed my heart with a familiar pressure of loss and longing. There could have been just one reason for all of my father’s fliers to have gathered outside the palace stables.

  “You’re leaving now?” I couldn’t keep the note of surprise o
ut of my voice, but I thought I managed to hide the hurt. It was silly; I wasn’t a little girl who clung to her father’s kurta and never had been. That opportunity had been stolen from me like so many others by the circumstances of my birth. But somehow, even after all the bitter arguments, the traded barbs, the harsh insults, there was still a part of me that longed to have my father in my life. The fact that he would only spare half a day for me at a time like this only served to remind me how forlorn that hope of mine really was.

  My father arched a black eyebrow at the question. Maybe I hadn’t hidden the hurt as well as I’d thought. His mustache quivered slightly as his lips tugged into a superior smirk. “Why? Are you going to miss me?”

  I shrugged, letting him make of that what he would, and nodded to the flame-red orb of the sun, which was sinking below the waters of the Zindhu to the west. “It’s getting late is all.”

  “I like night flights best,” he replied.

  His words brought with them a flood of memories. I could still recall my first night flight, so many years ago. I’d been so little then, small enough to cram myself between my father and his saddle’s front cantle, the pair of us sharing the safety straps. His zahhak, Malikah, had nuzzled me gently with her snout, making sure I was safe and secure. And then we’d taken to the skies together, the tiny orange flames of the palace’s lanterns glittering like stars in the darkness below us, the heavens bright above us, suffused with the brilliant light of a silver moon.

  My eyes flickered up to meet my father’s just as his lowered to meet mine. All traces of his superior smirk had been erased from his face, replaced by deep furrows in his brow. I wondered if he’d just been reliving the same memory I had. I wanted to ask him. I wanted to reach out across the gulf between us, to say something, anything that would make him understand that it wasn’t my fault that I was the way I was, that I’d done the best I could, that I’d never meant to cause him any pain or shame, that my whole life all I’d ever wanted was to make him proud of me.