Gifting Fire

by Alina Boyden

  “I know where he is, your highness,” Sanghar assured me, taking the letter and folding it up once he’d blown it dry. “I can promise you that he will be here, ready to fight. I just hope the rest of your allies are as reliable.”

  “So do I,” I replied, my stomach churning as I wondered whether or not my childhood friendship with Haider and Tamara would be enough to bring them thousands of miles across deserts and mountains to fight a battle that wasn’t their own. It was a question that was impossible to answer, so I pushed it from my mind. There was one last arrangement left to make.

  “You will attack the palace on the night after the full moon,” I informed Sanghar. “Get as many gunboats as you can. Approach the southern wall under cover of darkness. That’s where my chambers are. I’ll throw down ropes so that your men can climb up unseen.”

  “And the guards on that side?” he asked.

  “Just two,” I said. “One on each of the southern towers. I’ll kill them before you arrive. The way will be clear for you, you have my word.”

  “Then we will be there, your highness,” he assured me. “And these letters will reach their destinations, I promise you that. Whether anything will come of them . . .”

  I clapped him on the shoulder. “That is in God’s hands now.”

  “It is,” he agreed. He nodded toward the doorway, where the captain was leaning against a carved sandstone pillar. “You should go now, your highness. If you’re caught, these plans will all come to nothing.”

  I couldn’t argue with that, so I stood and hurried away, following the captain back through the palace. Now that I could see it, I realized that it straddled a canal, giving it a hidden set of docks on the bottom floor. That was why the men were able to bring weapons in and out of the lagoon without being spotted by Mahisagari patrols.

  “I need a small weapon I can keep hidden on my person,” I informed the captain. “I was disarmed when I was brought here, but if I’m going to kill the guards for you, I’ll need something to fight with, preferably a katar.”

  The captain led me to a crate, and when he popped open the lid, my eyes widened. Inside were dozens of talwars, neatly packed in straw, along with daggers of various kinds and several nice katars. He gestured for me to take my pick, and I settled on a pair of katars that fit tightly together in a single scabbard. They were shorter and narrower than the ones that had been taken from me, but that would make them easier to hide. I tucked them into the waistband of my shalwar, pleased that my kameez hid them completely.

  We turned back to the boat then, and I noted that the small cannons were being offloaded. They had a kind of swiveling mount with a spike at the bottom, so they could be stuck onto the wooden gunwales of the boat and shot in any direction. Each gun was about as long as a man was tall, but from the way they were being carried, I didn’t think they were very heavy.

  “How much do those weigh?” I asked the captain, my mind brimming with possibilities.

  “Less than you do,” he replied. He called one of his men over and barked an order at him in Zindhi. I didn’t know what he said, but an instant later the man was pressing one of the cannons into my arms. I expected to drop it on my toes, but was surprised that I was able to bear the weight without too much difficulty. It weighed about the same that Lakshmi did these days, and just like with Lakshmi, my arms started to burn after a few moments.

  I handed it back to the sailor and said, “Bring as many of these as you can when you attack the palace. We’ll haul them up with ropes and mount them from the windowsills and in the corridors. The palace guards will have us outnumbered, so we will have to use every advantage we can.”

  The captain grinned. “Sounds like fun.”

  I wasn’t sure that fighting a gun battle within the confines of an island palace qualified as fun, but it would be a relief to be free of Karim and his family. Twelve days and I would know whether or not Haider had answered my call. On the thirteenth, I would either be free or facing an impossible battle.

  CHAPTER 17

  Just a week left,” Hina remarked as I sat on the southwestern tower, in my favorite spot beneath the domed roof of a cobalt-tiled chhatri.

  I grunted an acknowledgment, but made no reply, because thinking too much about the impending battle tied my stomach in knots and made it hard to pretend to be “finding my place here” as Karim had commanded. I couldn’t control whether or not Haider came for me, couldn’t control whether or not Karim would leave for Ahura as I’d planned. All I could do was sit and wait.

  “It’s okay to be nervous, but it’s a good plan,” Hina said, sinking to the cushion beside mine and taking my hands in hers. “Fate will decide what responses your letters will bring, but the important thing is that you were brave enough to send them.”

  I glanced over at her, keenly aware of how much strain she must have been under, how angry she must have been. She was still grieving the loss of her brother, and here she was, sitting in his conquered palace, living cheek by jowl with his murderers, and she still had the wherewithal to comfort me.

  “How do you do it?” I asked her.

  She didn’t need me to explain the question. She just heaved a sigh that was as heavy as the ones that so frequently left my own lips these days, and said, “The same way you let Karim kiss you good night every evening.”

  I shuddered at the memories of his lips grazing my cheek, my forehead, even my mouth from time to time. He knew just how far he could push things before Sikander would intervene, though the old guardsman spent most of his time keeping Lakshmi safe.

  “I’m sorry I wasn’t able to kill him before he could drag you into this,” Hina told me.

  I shook my head. “It’s my fault he came to Zindh at all. If I hadn’t been named subahdar, none of this would have happened.”

  “If you hadn’t been named subahdar, we Zindhis would still be living under Javed Khorasani’s thumb, and that was no better, I promise you,” she replied.

  “He wouldn’t have been subahdar if my father hadn’t killed your father,” I pointed out, recalling the aftermath of the Nizami civil war seven years before.

  “I don’t miss him,” Hina replied with a shrug. “He was a terrible man. He beat me every chance he got.”

  “My father always left it to Sikander to do the beating,” I muttered. I realized that the pair of us hadn’t had much chance to get to know each other these last few days, we’d been so busy plotting against Karim. “Did you run away from home too, then?”

  “He didn’t leave me any choice,” she said. “He despised me. He said that I would be the death of Zindh, that I was worthless, that it was lucky he had Ali, because I had no chance whatever of reclaiming our independence.”

  I managed a stiff nod, having more or less heard words to that effect for the whole of my life.

  “Finally, when I was thirteen years old, I just couldn’t take it anymore. We were in the midst of our uprising. Your father was fighting a civil war against his brother, and we sided with him, whatever his name was.”

  “My uncle Azam,” I recalled, though in truth I barely remembered the man beyond his name, having only met him a few times. “I was nine when that rebellion started. My father sent me to the Safavian court for safekeeping. I was eleven by the time the war was over and I could finally come home.”

  “Just a baby,” Hina teased.

  “That’s what Prince Haider of Safavia thought. He was thirteen when I arrived, fifteen when I left.”

  “Was he handsome?” she asked.

  “In his own way,” I said. “I mostly thought of him as a big brother, but his mother was the younger sister of the queen of Khevsuria, and like her sister, and her niece, Princess Tamara, she had flame-red hair and bright blue eyes.”

  “They’re Firangis?” Hina asked, raising an eyebrow at that. “And Prince Haider too?”

  I shook my head. �
��He takes after his father mostly. He doesn’t have pale skin like a Firangi, and his eyes are brown, but he does have unusually red hair.”

  “Hm,” she grunted as she imagined it. “Doesn’t sound very handsome.”

  “More so than you might think,” I replied. “And I always thought Tamara was beautiful.”

  “That would be the crown princess of Khevsuria?” Hina asked.

  I nodded. “She was very kind to me. They both were.” I pushed those thoughts from my mind before they could overwhelm me. I’d spent too many years wondering how my life might have been different had my father lost the civil war and I’d stayed in Safavia. Maybe it would have turned out the same way, but I didn’t think so. Haider and Tamara never would have let those awful things happen to me.

  It was the thought of everything that had happened to me after I’d run away from home that reminded me that Hina had been in the midst of telling me her own story. “So, you were thirteen when you left home in the midst of that rebellion?” I prompted.

  “Oh, right, that . . .” She grimaced, and I half wondered if she’d been letting me get sidetracked on purpose to avoid painful memories, but I kept quiet and she pressed on. “My father beat me pretty severely one night. I think he must have been upset that the war wasn’t going well, but most of it was that I’d been wearing one of my mother’s old lehengas, and he’d caught me doing it. He’d beaten me plenty of times before, but never like that.” She shook her head at the memory, her arms wrapping around her stomach, her shoulders hunching. “It had never hurt like that. Not ever. I thought he’d killed me.”

  I took her hand in mine, rubbing my thumb across her knuckles in gentle circles, hoping to distract her from the memory of the pain, because I knew exactly what she was talking about. Pain is a wonderful teacher, and I had not forgotten a single lesson.

  “I had to run away,” Hina murmured. “But I didn’t want to leave without saying good-bye to my brother. Ali had always been my protector. He’d known I was different, ever since I was little, but he’d never hurt me for it, never chastised me for it. Sometimes he would distract Father for me. Other times he would hide me in his room, or take me for a ride on his zahhak, back when Sakina wasn’t old enough to be ridden. He was my only friend, and I loved him fiercely, and I just couldn’t bear to go without saying good-bye.”

  Her voice was so thick with emotion that I thought I knew what was coming next. “And he ratted you out to your father?”

  Anger flashed in Hina’s olive eyes, and she glared at me for an instant before realizing that I hadn’t meant to impugn her brother’s character, that I’d just been responding from my own horrific experiences.

  “No.” She gave my hand a pat. “No, Ali was like Arjun. He never would have abandoned me—not for anything. He packed up his things, and helped me pack mine, and we took our zahhaks, and we rode off into the night sky together.”

  “He went with you?” I gasped, tears threatening at the corners of my eyes, because I’d wished more than anything in the whole world not to be alone that fateful night when I’d fled the palace of Nizam. God, how I’d wanted someone to come with me, but there had been no one in all the world I’d trusted—no one except for Haider and Tamara. What would it have been like if I’d had a big brother to protect me like Hina had? I couldn’t even imagine it. I doubted I’d have ended up in Bikampur, serving Varsha and learning to be a thief and a courtesan. And that meant I wouldn’t have my sisters or Arjun. That thought quelled whatever jealousy I’d been feeling. It was all right to dream about a past without pain, but I couldn’t regret any part of my life when it would mean losing the people I loved most fiercely.

  “He did,” Hina whispered, and tears did spill down her cheeks, reminding me that he was dead, and that Ahmed and Karim were responsible for it. “He supported me while I got my nirvan, and then we sold our services as scouts. He told everyone I was his sister, and no one batted an eye at a young noble girl with her own river zahhak, as it’s not at all uncommon here in Zindh. He recruited men, and when we had enough money, I started recruiting young hijras, training them to serve as my retainers, eventually becoming an unconventional guru, and then a nayak. If not for Ali, I don’t know what I would have done. Someone would probably have stolen Sakina from me—I wasn’t strong enough or tough enough to fend off an attacker, and while she’s big and strong, she hasn’t got any breath. And without Sakina, I’d have become a penniless orphan. I’d probably have had to join a dera and sell myself to men like a common . . .”

  She trailed off, her cheeks burning as she noticed the way I was staring at the floor, because I hadn’t had a brother to save me from that fate. “Forgive me, Razia, I didn’t mean . . .”

  “It’s all right,” I said, my voice tight with emotion. “I’m glad you didn’t have to go through that. None of us should have to.”

  “I couldn’t agree more.” She looked down at Nuri, who was riding Nalini all around the courtyard, and I turned my eyes to Sakshi and Lakshmi, who were flying lazy circles over the palace on the backs of their brilliantly colored zahhaks. Whatever had happened to us, we weren’t letting it happen to our sisters, that was the main thing.

  But then my eyes drifted over to Karim and I remembered that my own suffering was far from over. He was standing in the courtyard, one hand raised to shade his eyes from the sun as he watched Sakshi and Lakshmi flying overhead, the pair of them trailed by four acid zahhaks, just to be certain that they didn’t get any ideas into their heads of fleeing.

  “And he killed your brother . . .” I whispered, gritting my teeth at the idea that a man like Karim Shah could continue to draw breath while Ali Talpur was dead and buried. Sometimes I wondered if there even was a God at all, the world was so full of injustice.

  “He’s going to pay for that,” Hina promised.

  “He is,” I agreed, my vow every bit as fervent as hers.

  “But enough of that talk,” Hina said, her tone changing completely as she plastered a smile across her face. I didn’t know what that was about, not until I turned and saw Asma marching across the rooftop toward us, trailed by her handmaidens.

  I stood up at once to greet her, bowing my head in proper deference, though all the while I was repeating, “Seven more days,” like a mantra in my mind. That was how long I had left until the full moon, how long I had to put up with this farce before bringing it to a bloody end. But for now, I exclaimed, “Mother-in-law, what a pleasant surprise!”

  Asma took my hands in hers, offering me a bright smile. “I’ve brought something for you, dear.”

  “Oh?” I asked, hoping that I seemed appropriately eager, though I doubted very much if she had the slightest idea as to what stirred my heart.

  “Your husband-to-be has had lovely gifts commissioned for you,” she said. “He tells me that he means them to be a symbol of your engagement, and your commitment to one another. My Karim is so pleased that you seem to have found your place here so quickly.”

  In another tone of voice, there might have been unspoken suspicions lurking behind those words, but Asma sounded genuinely pleased with me. I bowed my head to her, and smiled prettily, and lied just as boldly as I dared, “I am grateful that my husband-to-be is pleased with me.”

  “You two will make such a lovely pair.” She gave my cheek a fond pat, and then settled herself on the cushion I had formerly occupied in the chhatri. I took Hina’s place, shunting her away, which I thought was probably a blessing, as it meant she didn’t have to deal with her brother’s murderer’s mother directly.

  Asma clapped her hands, and one of her handmaidens came forward, laying a beautiful sandalwood box at my feet. When she opened it, she removed a blouse of emerald silk fabric, with darker green embroidery creating a pattern of scales all across its surface. Turquoise beads and tiny circular mirrors formed an eye on each scale like the ones found on a peacock’s tail feathers, just like on a
real acid zahhak.

  My eyes widened at the sight of such an exquisite garment. Lakshmi was going to be so incurably jealous when she saw me wearing it. And the skirt was just as beautiful, though rather than being green to look like an acid zahhak’s scales, it was the deep sapphire of their tail feathers, carefully embroidered with turquoise eyes in a ring around the skirt’s wide hem, the shisheh mirror-work making the fabric sparkle in the bright sunlight.

  “This embroidery style is traditional in Mahisagar,” Asma explained as she took the skirt out of the box, holding it up for me to admire.

  “It’s magnificent,” I whispered, not even having to pretend to be impressed by it, in spite of who it was who had given it to me.

  “He included jewelry, of course,” Asma said, “as it seems that your little sister has taken yours.”

  I smiled at that. “It meant more to her than it did to me. But this I’ll treasure.”

  A handmaiden opened a jewelry box, revealing bangles for my wrists and ankles, each one crafted from pure gold that had been cut and inset with sapphire and emerald cloisonné to form perfect tiny replicas of acid zahhaks chasing their own tail feathers. It wasn’t the most creative of gifts, as I’d received similar jewelry from Arjun, but the workmanship of these pieces was exquisite—the equal of anything any princess in all the world owned.

  There were matching earrings, of course, and a tall necklace that resembled a coiled acid zahhak twisting itself around my neck. The dupatta that went over my head was the larger style popular in Zindh and Mahisagar, but the fabric was the brilliant blue of lightning, marred by dark black stripes, just like an acid zahhak’s mane. It was a detail that the tailors in Bikampur had missed when Arjun had dressed me up as an acid zahhak to draw Karim’s eye. Just remembering that day made me wish I’d refused the clothes. Maybe if I hadn’t worn them then, I wouldn’t be sitting here now.