Gifting Fire

by Alina Boyden

  A man barked an order, and this time I caught the words well enough—“Get her in the boat.” It wasn’t Mahisagari, it was Zindhi.

  Strong arms reached down and snatched my wrists, pulling hard. I was lifted free of the water without too much noise, and thrown into the bottom of the boat, my shoulder slamming into the soggy wood with a dull thud. The boat started to move, but I couldn’t make much sense of where we were going, because one of the soldiers was pinning me down to keep me from sitting up, and a second had plastered his grimy hand across my mouth, pressing hard enough that I was sure I was leaving imprints of my teeth on the insides of my lips.

  My eyes flickered in all directions, trying to get as much information as I could, but the only things I could see clearly were the men holding me down, and the legs of the men sitting on the benches all around me, poised with their fishtail-stocked rifles, like they meant to shoot. Had they been intending to attack the palace? To what end?

  They kept silent as three men in the back of the boat worked a single, enormous sculling oar, propelling the vessel silently across the shadowy waters of the lagoon. Wherever we were going, I didn’t think it was toward the palace. My sudden arrival must have spooked the men and made them change course. That, or they thought I was a worthy enough prize to take back to their lair, wherever it was. I couldn’t imagine that these men kept an armed ship in Kadiro’s harbor right under Ahmed Shah’s nose. They must have had a hideout somewhere.

  Wherever it was, I didn’t get to see it. The captain of the vessel, a man whose proud nose and high forehead gave him a strong silhouette even so far from any sources of light, knelt down beside me and tied an ajrak scarf around my eyes, totally blindfolding me. In Daryastani, he whispered, “If you’re a good girl, and you keep quiet, there’s a chance I won’t kill you. If you scream or try to move, we’ll club you over the head and leave you for the crocodiles.”

  So there were crocodiles in this lagoon. I didn’t know why that thought came to me, when I’d just been threatened with murder, but I had fully intended to keep quiet anyway, so I didn’t feel that threatened. Whatever this man did to me, I didn’t think it would be as bad as being Karim’s wife. He could have pulled out my fingernails with a pair of tweezers and I still would have considered it a step up in the world.

  When he saw that I wasn’t going to say anything, the captain muttered, “Good.” I heard him move away from me, but I didn’t know where he was going, or what he was planning. The man who had been keeping his hand on my mouth finally let me go, as did the man holding my limbs down.

  I knew that I’d been ordered not to move, but I rubbed the life back into my arms all the same, trying to knead out the bruises the Zindhi sailor had surely left there. Nobody seemed to mind, because I wasn’t clubbed over the head and left for the crocodiles. I resisted the urge to sit up, or to give any appearance of looking around. It was difficult, because the longer the boat wobbled in time with the movements of its sculling oar, the more I worried that I was being taken too far from the palace to get back before morning. If I wasn’t back in bed by the time Karim arrived to escort me to breakfast, all would be lost.

  But I’d been told to keep quiet, and I was fairly certain that the captain intended to make good on his threat if I disobeyed him. He didn’t know who I was or what I was worth, and until I knew who he was, I wanted to keep it that way. So that meant staying put and keeping my mouth shut and hoping that I could get back before sunup.

  I heard movement all around me. There was the sound of metal clunking against wood, of cloth being moved. I felt something heavy land on the timbers on either side of me, and then my whole body was covered in a thick canvas cloth. It was draped loosely enough that I could still breathe, so I didn’t panic, but I thought I understood what was happening. These men did live in Kadiro, and they were hiding their weapons as they returned to the port, just in case a sharp-eyed Mahisagari guard caught sight of their boat. The silhouette would look like a fishing boat, not an armed gunboat.

  I didn’t really think that would be enough to save them, not when they were out so late with so many men packed into the vessel, but I supposed they had to take every advantage they could find. It couldn’t have been easy sneaking out into the harbor with weapons, not when the Mahisagaris were such natural sailors, and so accustomed to watching harbor traffic.

  The boat bumped into something. Men started piling out. They were moving quickly, but quietly. I felt their movement more than I heard it, as the boat slowly rose higher in the water as it was relieved of its burden. The cloth came off next, and I was grabbed an instant later by strong hands around my arms that hauled me to my feet. I hadn’t yet had the chance to change out of my climbing shoes, so it was hard for me to walk, but even through the reinforced soles of my slippers, I could feel that I was walking on stone rather than wood.

  “May I change my shoes?” I asked, because the man holding me was marching me along at a pace that made it almost impossible to keep up.

  He stopped for a second, and though I couldn’t see him, he must have looked down at my feet to check them. He let me go, and asked, “What are those things?”

  “Climbing shoes,” I replied, kneeling down and peeling them off my soggy feet, replacing them with the slippers I’d stuffed in my pockets earlier. I shook out the climbing shoes, trying to get rid of as much of the water as I could before I stuck them in my sodden pockets and stood up once more.

  The captain, for I had recognized his voice, took hold of me once more and we continued our march along the stone path. I didn’t know whether I was inside or outside, but the floor was so level and so smooth that I had to imagine we were indoors. “Where are you taking me?” I asked.

  “Enough questions,” he replied, his voice harsh enough that I knew better than to push my luck. I just shrugged instead, and kept walking.

  We ascended a stairwell, which must have been quite an impressive one, because the steps were shallow, and made of smooth stone, and after we reached a landing, we had to turn and keep climbing. We must have been in a haveli of some kind. There was a lot of light streaming through the ajrak cloth wrapped around my eyes, not enough to see by, but enough to know that there were torches or lanterns hanging at regular intervals along the wall, visible as dull halos through the indigo fabric.

  We turned a sharp corner and came to a stop. Somewhere in front of me, a man’s voice demanded in Zindhi, “What’s this?”

  “I don’t know, my lord,” the captain replied in the same language. Then he said a bunch of things I couldn’t follow, though I thought he was referring to me, because I heard the words for “water” and “boat.” But Zindhi was even more different from Daryastani than Mahisagari was, and I’d never spent much time in this province. And anyway, Daryastani wasn’t even my first language, Court Safavian was, and it was even more removed from the tongues of the common people.

  The lord, whoever he was, said something in Zindhi. His tone made it plain that it was a question, but I didn’t understand anything of it. There was a long pause, and then he asked a different question, in a slightly gruffer voice, and I knew it was Mahisagari, but I couldn’t follow that either.

  I sighed. “If you wouldn’t mind speaking in Daryastani, I’d rather not stand here all night until you’ve exhausted your linguistic repertoire.”

  He chuckled. “You’re educated. Who are you?”

  “Razia Khanum, princess of Nizam,” I replied, pulling off the blindfold so that he could see my green eyes, which were nearly proof enough of my identity in these lands, though they were so much more common on the steppes where my people hailed from.

  I had to squint against the brightness of the light pouring from half a dozen brass lanterns. It took my eyes a moment to adjust, to really let me see the figure standing before me. He was a tall, fit man, though I suspected he was at least twenty years my elder. His dark black beard hadn’t yet started
to become speckled with gray, nor had his full head of hair, which was mostly covered by a heavily embroidered Zindhi cap. He wore an ajrak kurta of fine silk, depicting block-printed river zahhaks racing across a background of pale indigo, the color calling to mind the waters of the sea on a bright day.

  His dark brown eyes met mine, studying them carefully. He examined my soaking-wet shalwar kameez, the ajrak pattern not so far removed from the one he was wearing. He pursed his lips as he considered the possibility that I was telling the truth. “Do you have any proof of that?”

  “Aside from my eyes?” I asked.

  He smirked. “Yes, aside from those.”

  I switched into Court Safavian, because I knew it wouldn’t be common here in Zindh. “Do you speak the language of the Nizami court?”

  His eyes widened a little, and he nodded. “Some.” His accent was unpolished enough that I heard it even from that one word. It would have got him laughed out of the diwan-i-khas in Nizam, but I supposed for a provincial lord it wasn’t terrible.

  I returned to Daryastani so as not to embarrass him. “Would you be kind enough to grant me your name, sir?”

  He worked his jaw, considering his answer. I knew he must have heard what had happened to me by now. Word of a marriage alliance with Nizam would have made its way through the ranks of the common soldiery of Mahisagar like wildfire, and from there the common people of Zindh would have heard the rumors too. If he believed that I was Karim’s willing wife, then he’d have done well to keep his mouth shut. But I had to believe that Hina hadn’t left Kadiro without making her plans to ally with me known to her emirs. So didn’t that work in my favor?

  “I am Sanghar Soomro,” he said.

  I breathed a sigh of relief, scarcely believing my luck. It was hard to keep a smile off my face. “Hina said you would help us.”

  Sanghar Soomro quirked an onyx eyebrow at that claim. “Is that so?”

  I nodded, but then I suddenly felt the weight of fatigue crashing over me, and I abruptly sat down beside a silk cushion a few paces away. I’d have sat on it, but I didn’t want to ruin it. While the warm breezes of a desert night were doing much to dry my clothes, they were still sodden enough with lagoon water that I didn’t think I could risk it.

  “Please, sit down, your highness,” Sanghar said, the ironic tone in his voice bringing a smile to both of our lips.

  “Forgive me, it was a long climb down from the palace and a difficult swim, and that was before your gunboat nearly battered me to death.” I rubbed the spot on my shoulder where I’d been struck—the same spot where I’d landed when I’d been thrown into the bottom of the boat. I was going to have a massive bruise there in the morning.

  “And what were you doing swimming in the lagoon at night, your highness?” Sanghar inquired, once he’d taken his seat on one of his plush cushions.

  “Coming to see you,” I replied.

  “Oh?” He didn’t look like he believed that.

  “Hina and I have sworn to each other that we will fight Karim Shah and his father to the death,” I told him, looking him squarely in the eyes, hoping he could see the determination in my own. “To do that, we must send messages to rally our allies. She assured me that you remained loyal to her, and that you had the necessary river zahhaks to see those messages delivered with speed.”

  “Perhaps what you say is true,” Sanghar allowed, “but perhaps it isn’t. What assurances do I have that you’re not simply trying to trick me into committing treason against your father-in-law?”

  “Ahmed Shah is not my father-in-law,” I growled.

  Sanghar spread his hands in apology. “Father-in-law-to-be, then.”

  “He will not be my father-in-law,” I assured Sanghar. “What he will be is a corpse. But to do that I need fighting men, and I need zahhaks, and to get those I need to send messages to my allies. Now, you can either help me do that or you can refuse me, but I need you to make your decision quickly, because if I am not back in that palace by sunup, Hina will be the one paying the price for it.”

  His brow furrowed with alarm, and I knew then that he was truly loyal to Hina, that he wouldn’t let anything happen to her. He pursed his lips like he’d tasted something sour. “All right, your highness, it seems I have no choice but to trust you. I will serve as your messenger. Tell me what messages you need sent, and I will have my fliers send them.”

  I shook my head. “They must be written in my own hand or they won’t be trusted. Do you have paper and ink?”

  “Pens too,” he quipped, a little of his ironic sense of humor returning. He gestured for the captain to fetch them, and the man returned with a lap desk and everything I needed to compose my messages.

  I pulled back my damp sleeve so that I wouldn’t drag it across the surface of the paper, and picked up one of the pens. Immediately the emir raised an eyebrow. “Left-handed? Your palace tutors never corrected that?”

  “There is much about me they failed to correct,” I retorted, and I set about writing my letters. I dipped my pen in the ink, and then paused. I might not get another chance to send a second message, or even to receive replies. This might be my only chance of arranging my plans. I couldn’t merely ask for vague help. I had to give specific instructions. I had to come up with a plan that would see Karim defeated and Kadiro liberated. That meant I had to arrange for all my allies to arrive on the same day. But what day?

  I glanced up at Sanghar, who had positioned himself to read over my shoulder. “The next full moon is the brother-sister festival, is it not, emir?”

  “It is, your highness,” he replied, though it was plain he didn’t understand what significance that had for my plans.

  The next full moon was twelve days hence. It wasn’t much time, especially not if I intended for Haider and Tamara to receive their letters and have a chance to act on them. If Tamara wasn’t in Tavrezh with Haider, she’d be in the Khevsurian summer palace of Tamtra. I’d only been there once, and I thought it was the better part of two thousand miles away. Even a swift zahhak would need at least three days to make such a journey, and probably four was more likely, assuming the animal wasn’t fighting a headwind. Then she would need time to prepare, and to return. I was cutting it close. There would certainly not be time to compose any further messages. This was my one chance at freeing myself from Karim and saving Zindh.

  I had a date, but I needed a plan. I had to find some way of getting Karim and his father away from the palace in Kadiro, allowing Arjun and Sunil to assault it, without the possibility that my sisters and I might be held as hostages. There was only one way to get Karim away from Kadiro, and it would require Haider’s help. If he didn’t answer my call, then all would be lost. But how could I convince a man I hadn’t seen since I was eleven years old to come for me in my time of need, to potentially start a war on my behalf?

  I picked up the pen and began to write. To His Royal Highness, Prince Haider of Safavia, Lord of Artavila, Victor at Vendigar, First Captain of the Armies of the Faithful, and the Elder Brother of my heart: Greetings.

  “Safavia?” Sanghar asked, his eyes widening slightly.

  “Mm-hmm,” I murmured, but my mind was focused on the letter. In it, I told Haider of my plight, of the arranged marriage to my rapist, of the abuse I had suffered at his hands, of the way my father had abandoned me to my fate. I told him too of the brother-sister festival, a ritual tradition in Daryastan where girls tied amulets to their brothers’ wrists, binding them together, the amulet protecting the brother in return for the brother’s promise to protect his sister in her time of need. And I reminded him of the amulet I had tied around his wrist seven years before, when I had lived at the Safavian court while my father fought a bitterly contested civil war. I begged him, if he felt any affection for me at all, to make a diversionary attack on the fortress of Ahura on the night of the next full moon to draw off Karim and his zahhaks so that I mi
ght win my freedom. I signed it Your little sister, Razia Khanum, Princess of Nizam.

  “Do you think he’ll come?” Sanghar asked me as I set the letter aside to dry and prepared to draft the next missive.

  I shrugged. “You’re a man. What would you do if a princess from your childhood sent such a letter to you?”

  “I think I’d attack that fortress, your highness,” he replied, with a bemused grin creasing his face.

  The next letter was to My beloved elder sister, Princess Tamara of Khevsuria. I explained my situation, in much the same terms as I had to Haider, and I begged her to come with all haste to Kadiro on the day after the brother-sister festival.

  “You want my messengers flying all the way to Khevsuria?” Sanghar asked in disbelief. “I don’t even think they know how to get there.”

  “So send him to Tavrezh first with the other messenger,” I suggested. “Someone there will be able to direct him to Tamtra. Or one of Prince Haider’s men might deliver the message himself.”

  I let Sanghar chew that over while I composed the most important message of all. To the prince of my heart, Arjun, I wrote, holding back tears that were threatening at the corners of my eyes, I have arranged for Prince Haider to attack Ahura on the night of the next full moon to draw off Karim’s zahhaks. The next morning, I expect he will be gone. That night, your men must be ready to attack the harbor fortresses of Kadiro, and to take the city itself. Your zahhaks must be prepared for battle. Everything depends on it. With all my love, Razia.

  The last letter was to Sunil Kalani. I told him simply to arrive the night after the full moon with his army and his zahhaks to help assault the city with Arjun. I suggested arriving by boat on the Zindhu, to avoid the city walls, especially since Karim’s zahhaks wouldn’t be there to attack any approaching ships on the water. I handed that letter to Sanghar and said, “I don’t know where exactly he is. He might be hard to find.”