by Alina Boyden
“Your highness, are you in here?” an unfamiliar woman’s voice called from outside the stables. No, not an unfamiliar woman’s voice—a familiar eunuch’s voice.
“Shiv!” I exclaimed, thrilled that he’d finally arrived. I rushed out to greet him. Though he was covered with the dust of the desert, he still looked like an elegant young lady in men’s clothing. He’d been cut young enough that he might have passed for one of us if he’d had any desire to do so, but he’d never once suggested that he had. I embraced him all the same, because even if he wasn’t a hijra, he was family of a sort. “I’m so glad you made it safely!”
“As am I, your highness,” Shiv replied, not hugging me back, but bowing awkwardly instead, as if reminding me that he was a servant and not a sibling. “We’ve brought the furniture, of course, and the servants, and all of your clothes, as well as cooks and implements for the kitchens.”
“Thank the heavens!” Sakshi sighed, because she’d been doing the cooking these last three days and she’d had nothing but camping supplies to work with. “Point me in their direction, Shiv, and I’ll get the kitchens up and running. Everyone here could do with a real meal.”
“They’re waiting in the second courtyard, my lady,” Shiv told her, gesturing in that direction.
“See you soon, little sister.” Sakshi gave me a quick hug, and then skipped off to do her duty, her lehenga’s crimson silk skirts flouncing about her ankles as she went.
“Did you bring workmen?” I asked Shiv.
“I did, your highness,” he replied, though he was eyeing the stables dubiously, along with the scorch marks on the paving stones and the damage to the other buildings from my attack weeks earlier. “Though perhaps not as many as I should have.”
“Anything is better than what we have now,” I assured him, because my father had left me with soldiers, munitions, and money, but little else.
“Do you have any specific areas where you would like the workmen to begin, your highness?” Shiv asked me.
“The stables must be our first priority,” I said, because without them it would be hard to keep the zahhaks safe and happy. “Once that’s finished, I think I’d like the pools and fountains in the inner courtyard repaired. I don’t know why they’re not working, but they’re an eyesore. And it wouldn’t hurt to do something about the plants. I don’t suppose you brought a palace gardener?”
He shook his head. “No, your highness, but one can be hired from the locals. It would be better that way, as the climate here is somewhat different from Bikampur, and I’m sure the plants are as well.”
That seemed like sound reasoning to me. “Well, I’m sure you’ll do everything you can, but as a personal favor, if you could get Lakshmi’s bed set up first, I’d appreciate it. I think if she has to spend one more night on a soldier’s cot with Sakshi and me, she’s going to launch a rebellion.”
“And I would be quick to join her,” Arjun declared, striding across the courtyard to join us.
I rolled my eyes at that, though I couldn’t deny that I too was a little sick and tired of the lack of privacy. One glance at Arjun’s smoldering expression was enough to make me bite my lip with anticipation. Tonight. Finally. It had been nearly a week.
Arjun bowed to me like a courtier. “Is there anything I can do, your highness?”
“Oh, I have a great many things in mind,” I allowed, drawing a smile from his lips. “But for now, I think it’s best we focus on getting the servitors settled.”
“Leave that to me, your highness,” Shiv said. “I will make certain everyone knows his or her duty, that the servants’ quarters are neatly arranged, and that all of your belongings are in their proper places before nightfall.”
“You’re a treasure,” I said, embracing him again.
His deep brown cheeks darkened still further as blood rushed to them. “I’ll see to it at once.” He bowed to me, and to Arjun, and then hurried off to do his duty.
Arjun wasted no time in pulling me close to him, one hand snaring the curve of my hip, the other brushing my cheek. “Seems that we’re alone at long last.”
“The palace will be swarming with servitors any moment now,” I warned him, though I didn’t pull away for propriety’s sake.
“We could go in the zahhak stables,” he suggested, his lopsided grin telling me how much he would enjoy the whispers that would follow us if we were caught there rolling in the straw. “The servants wouldn’t dare set foot in there for fear of being eaten.”
“The workmen will start their repair work today,” I reminded him, but I didn’t resist as he tugged me closer to the stable doorway.
“They’ll be too busy gathering materials to look inside,” he replied, his face hovering so close to mine that our lips were already nearly touching.
“And what about Sultana? She might get confused and think you’re hurting me,” I teased.
He reached forward to tuck a loose tendril of black hair back behind my ear. “No, she knows me better than that.”
I opened my mouth to agree, but at just that moment there was a crack like thunder. Both our heads swiveled to the stables, worried that one of the zahhaks had decided to try to break free, but then there was a second pop and a third, and I realized it wasn’t thunder, but musket fire.
“There!” Arjun exclaimed, nodding toward the huge arched entryway that led to the main gate of the palace and the road beyond.
I rushed with him in that direction, my mind struggling to come up with some explanation for why my soldiers would be shooting. “Is someone attacking the household caravan?” I wondered, as I couldn’t imagine what else it might have been.
“Could be bandits,” Arjun allowed, though his tone told me that he didn’t think it likely, and neither did I. The road that led from the palace spiraled down a steep hill before entering the city of Shikarpur itself. For bandits to have reached us, they’d have had to pass through the city first. Why would the citizens let them pass? Why would the bandits attack a fortress instead of the outlying homes and shops, which would be much easier marks?
“You think it’s rebels . . .” I muttered, my mind summoning the likely answer to my own questions.
Arjun shrugged, I think because he didn’t want to worry me by saying it out loud, but I was plenty worried enough. His hand fell to the hilt of his khanda, the straight double-edged sword that had claimed more than one life in the short time I’d known him. My own hand fell to the handles of my katars, thrust through the sash around my waist. They too had claimed a life, though I wasn’t in any hurry to do it again. Not that they would do me much good against men armed with muskets if Jam Ali Talpur’s army of rebels really had arrived at my doorstep.
We ran into the palace’s outer courtyard, where a huge tumult was taking place. Camels were straining against their lead ropes, their backs burdened by heavy pieces of furniture or bundles of fine cloth. Horses pranced alongside them, as the Bikampuri soldiers Arjun had sent with the caravan struggled to keep their mounts under control. Their heads were twisted in the direction of the fortress’s parapets, where a haze of white smoke hung over the heads of the Nizami soldiers who were rushing to reload their toradars.
“Arjun, get your men together and join me on the parapets!” I shouted to be heard above the clatter of horseshoes against the courtyard’s paving stones. If it was a rebel attack, we’d need all the muskets we could get.
“Right,” he agreed, rushing off to follow my orders without a second’s hesitation. So many other men would have had their pride piqued from being bossed around by a hijra, but Arjun was different. While he dealt with the men of Bikampur, I raced toward the gatehouse that protected the fort’s main entrance.
A sound that was so deep and so loud that it struck me like a physical force roared out from the gatehouse as a cannon belched fire and smoke. What were we dealing with if we were having to shoot our c
annons at it? A whole army? My heart raced as I took the stairs to the top of the gatehouse two at a time to find out what in the world was happening.
“Hold that volley until they show themselves again!” Sikander was shouting, his form partly obscured by the white fog of gun smoke hanging thick in the air.
I rushed to his side, near the edge of the battlements, where the wind was blowing the smoke clear, giving me a view of the dirt road that led back to the city far below us. The whole hillside seemed clear of any enemy soldiers, or any people at all for that matter. I saw nothing but green shrubs and yellow sandstone boulders. Whatever was attacking us, it definitely wasn’t an army.
“What are the men shooting at?” I demanded.
“Zindhi soldiers, your highness,” he replied, and he pointed across the river, where a whole army had appeared on the plain seemingly out of nowhere. There were thousands of them, all soldiers mounted on horseback, ready for battle. More had already crossed the river on boats, and were moving through the town.
A guard shouted, “Your highness, zahhaks!” and my mouth went dry. Sixteen thunder zahhaks were flying straight at the palace, and I knew they weren’t my father’s.
CHAPTER 5
We meet them in the air!” I exclaimed, racing for the stables with Arjun and Sikander hot on my heels. I got Sultana saddled in record time, fear surging through me as I feared we’d never get up in time to save ourselves. I strapped myself into the saddle, lowered my goggles over my eyes, snapped the reins, and she took off at a run for the cliff at the garden’s far end. I was followed closely by Arjun, Arvind, and Sikander on their own animals. That gave us six if I counted my patrol circling the city. We’d still be outnumbered, and our adversaries would have the altitude advantage, but it was all we could do.
Sultana leapt into the air, and I urged her into a tight, climbing turn, her wings beating for all they were worth. Sikander kept pace with me, but the fire zahhaks were slower, and Arjun and Arvind couldn’t keep up. But we all climbed as quickly as we could toward our thunder zahhaks, who had spotted the danger and were maneuvering against their sixteen adversaries.
We weren’t going to be able to reach our enemies’ altitude before they passed overhead. I bit my lip. That wasn’t good. They could just roll over on top of us, having the advantage of speed and maneuverability. They’d be able to pound us with their breath weapons, and it would be hard for us to muster any reply. It was only the two thunder zahhaks I’d kept in the air that had any chance at all of saving us. If they could break up the enemy formation, then we might be able to make a fight of it.
“What the devil are those things?” Arjun demanded, his voice loud enough to carry across the dozen or so yards between us.
I squinted to get a better look at our opponents, and I immediately felt my stomach twist. For a long moment, I was convinced that we were facing sixteen thunder zahhaks. They were the right size to be thunder zahhaks; their wings were swept back and pointed, their tails long and straight. But as I drew nearer, I saw the little details that I’d missed before. Their scales were all wrong for thunder zahhaks—black on their heads and necks, white on their bellies. Their wings had turquoise underparts rather than gold, and upper feathers that were indigo, black, and white in a blocky pattern. Their tails were colored the same way, and as they wheeled above us, I saw that they were forked like a kite’s. Like thunder zahhaks, they had snouts rather than beaks, but theirs were longer and skinnier.
Even though I’d never seen them before in my life, there was something oddly familiar about them. It took me a moment to recall the strange animals I’d seen inlaid in my white marble throne back in the palace.
“River zahhaks!” I exclaimed. “They don’t have breath weapons! Don’t attack them!”
“Don’t attack?” Sikander asked, twisting his head over his shoulder to show me how insane he thought that order was.
I pulled up alongside him. “They can’t hurt us. They can’t have come to fight us; it must be a parley.”
He shrugged, seeing the logic in that. We continued climbing, and the river zahhaks did a funny thing. They started a spiraling dive. They were magnificent fliers. God, with those forked tails, they could change direction in a heartbeat, and their wings were longer and pointier than an acid zahhak’s, but broader and less sickle shaped than a thunder zahhak’s, making them swift in the dive, but quick to accelerate, and they were tremendous gliders, floating on the wind like they weighed nothing at all.
“They’re so graceful . . .” I gasped, watching as their riders skillfully brought them lower and lower in a cyclone of scales and feathers.
“They are,” Arjun agreed, and he was grinning too. “I can see what the Zindhi like about them.”
“They haven’t got breath,” said Sikander, as if that had anything to do with the way they flew.
“They’re heading for the palace,” Arvind observed. By now, we’d reached our thunder zahhaks, and had joined with them, but the river zahhaks were ignoring us, slowly spiraling down toward the palace’s inner courtyard. “What do you suppose they want?”
“Let’s find out,” I said.
I rolled into a steep dive, Sultana’s wings tearing the sky asunder with a sound like a silk cloth being ripped in half. I easily outdistanced the river zahhaks, which were circling lazily toward the courtyard, and pulled Sultana up short of the pavilion. She fluttered to the ground, and I climbed down from her saddle before leading the way back to my throne.
All around me, my retainers landed and took their places once more—all except the two thunder zahhaks who were still orbiting high overhead on their patrol. Still, we made for quite the fearsome sight, I thought—a princess on her throne, surrounded by four zahhaks.
The river zahhaks floated like leaves on the wind, coming to rest lightly on their wing claws and slender, mango-colored hind limbs. They were taller than they should have been for their bulk, like every part of them had been stretched out. I doubted if any of them weighed as much as Sultana or Sikander’s zahhak, Parisa, but they were all taller, with longer wings and longer necks and bodies to match. Our thunder zahhaks seemed squat and compact when set beside the willowy Zindhi animals.
The river zahhaks formed up into neat ranks of two and began marching across the courtyard like they were on parade. It was a pretty little display, and I had to smile at the sangfroid of their prince. He knew how to make an entrance, and he didn’t seem the least bit frightened by the zahhaks waiting for him, or the guards positioned on the walls and around the courtyard, their toradars loaded, curls of smoke rising up from their lit match cords.
It was when they got about halfway across the courtyard that I realized the zahhaks weren’t being ridden by princes, or even ordinary men, but by women. My eyes widened as I took in the graceful women sitting proudly in their saddles with all the competence of veteran riders.
I’d never seen female zahhak riders before, not unless I counted Sakshi and Lakshmi or looking at myself in the mirror. Was that what I looked like? They had their goggles pushed up onto their foreheads, the strap helping to hold their dupattas onto their heads. The dupattas were enormous pieces of cloth, more like saris than the shawls I was familiar with. And the silk was patterned all over with block-printed images of swirling indigo river zahhaks and bright turquoise lotus blossoms with saffron centers.
The women dismounted from their zahhaks, and I noted that they wore full skirts like a lehenga’s, beaded and embroidered, the decoration following the lines of more block printing in indigo, turquoise, and saffron, with splashes of white and black so the patterns would really stand out. They didn’t wear short blouses like Registani women, but rather long ones that fell to their knees, with high slits going up their sides. These too were block printed and covered in delicate embroidery and fine beadwork. Each woman had a mango-colored sash cinched tightly around her waist, into which was tucked a bhuj, a so
rt of stout cleaver-like dagger hafted onto a two-foot-long steel shaft. I noted that they had scabbards on their saddles, holding enormous muskets with swooping, fish-shaped buttstocks. I wondered if they used them to try to shoot other zahhaks in the air. It seemed an impossible feat, but I supposed I’d have tried anything if Sultana hadn’t possessed her lightning.
The women left their zahhaks under the control of one of their number, the other fifteen marching toward the pavilion. Now one of them took the lead, and the others fell in step behind her. Was she their leader, then? She was a tall woman, with fiery streaks of copper in her dark hair, but I was most struck by her eyes. They were hazel, the olive color halfway between the brown so common to Daryastan and the emerald green we Nizamis had brought with us from our ancestral home on the northern steppes. I’d never seen anyone in Daryastan with eyes that even verged on green outside of my own family, so I wondered where she came from, and who her ancestors were.
The woman approached the throne with no signs of trepidation and bowed properly, joined in the movement by all of her followers. She raised her hand to her forehead in salute and said, “Good morning, your highness. I hope you’ll forgive us for startling you, but I didn’t know where else to go.”
I frowned at those words, and suddenly I saw through the fine clothes and the jewels. The young woman standing before me had dark circles under her eyes that makeup couldn’t hide. The hem of her long dupatta was frayed in places, and there was something about her posture that conveyed a sense of extreme exhaustion. It was a fatigue I saw echoed on the faces of her retainers.
“What’s happened?” I asked. “Are you not with Ali Talpur and his army?”
The woman sucked in a sharp breath at the mention of Ali Talpur’s name, and I could have sworn she was fighting back tears, though none were visible at the corners of her hazel eyes. “Ali Talpur is . . . was . . . my brother.”
