Gifting Fire

by Alina Boyden

  “I’m overwhelmed,” I said, offering Asma a demure smile. “Your son is too good to me.”

  “He wants to make you happy,” Asma replied, sounding like she really believed that, which made one of us.

  “And I hope I can make him happy too,” I lied.

  That earned me a look of approval. Asma patted my cheek. “Karim adores you. He’s so happy that you’ve agreed to become his bride. And you two are going to have so many wonderful children together. I know that you’re not fertile yourself, but I’ve seen the way you are with Lakshmi. You’ll make a wonderful mother for my grandchildren.”

  “With you advising me, I don’t think it could be otherwise,” I said, wondering if I sounded too dutiful and submissive even for a simpering dolt like Asma.

  Her cheeks flushed with genuine pleasure, proving that she really was as simple as I thought. She wouldn’t have lasted five minutes in the zenana in Nizam, but I supposed Ahmed Shah liked his women dumb and tame.

  “Well, let’s get you out of those clothes and into these new ones,” Asma suggested.

  “Now?” I asked. “Is there some special occasion?”

  “No, but I think it would please Karim to see you wearing the clothes he commissioned for you,” Asma said, leaving me to decide whether or not pleasing Karim was something I wanted to do.

  “In that case, lead on, mother-in-law,” I replied, standing up alongside her.

  “I thought that might be your answer.” There was something smug in her smile, though I supposed it was just because she thought I had submitted to Karim’s rule over me. Wouldn’t she be surprised when I destroyed them all?

  Asma led me to my bedchamber, her servitors following close behind. I let them dress me in my new acid zahhak attire, and I had to admit that I liked the way I looked in it. But as beautiful as the clothes were, the fact that they came from Karim meant that they would always remind me of him, even when all this was said and done. Maybe I’d let Padmini burn them to cinders once I was free again.

  Soon. That was what I told myself as the handmaidens finished dressing me. Soon Haider would attack Ahura; I had to believe that. And then with Arjun and Sunil at my side, I would take Kadiro. Once that was accomplished, I would kill Ahmed and Karim, take their lands from them, and dare my father to do something about it. But that day wasn’t today. Today I had to be Karim’s blushing bride no matter how much I longed to stand up to him.

  As if to remind me of that fact, Karim arrived at the doorway to my bedchamber. For days now, I’d let him touch me, let him kiss me, though I was grateful it had gone no further than that. I thought I was gradually winning him over, and I needed to keep that up. I needed to remain above suspicion if I was going to be free to act when the time came. So I smiled at him, as if I were pleased to see him, and said, “Thank you for the lovely gifts, your highness.”

  Karim stared at me for a long moment, his eyes roving over every inch of my body in a way that made me feel like I was wearing nothing at all. He strode across my bedchamber and put his arms around me, leaning his face low, so that our noses were practically touching. I was grateful for all the training I’d had in Bikampur as a courtesan, because it kept me from flinching or showing my disgust.

  “You look exquisite,” he said.

  “Thank you, your highness,” I replied, keeping my gaze downcast, looking up at him only through kohl-darkened lashes, just as Ammi had trained me to do. The men in Bikampur had always found it irresistible, and Karim was no different.

  He rubbed my arms through the thin silk of my new blouse and seemed on the point of kissing me when he remembered that his mother was present. He turned his attention to her and said, “Your handmaidens have done their work well, Mother. I’ve never seen my wife-to-be look so beautiful.”

  “It’s your fine gifts that have highlighted her beauty,” his mother replied. She was beaming at the pair of us, like we were a happy couple deeply in love, and not enemies brought together by conquest and political machinations. To me, she said, “Daughter-in-law, you are looking so lovely that I think perhaps it would please us all if you would dance for us this evening. I know my son would appreciate it, and it would give you a chance to try out your new dancing shoes.”

  “Dancing shoes?” I wrinkled my nose, wondering what she was talking about.

  Even Karim laughed. “Mother, I know you’re not familiar with courtesans, but they never wear shoes when they dance. It’s always performed barefoot.”

  “Oh!” Asma exclaimed, holding a hand to her mouth, her cheeks reddening. “Forgive me, I feel so stupid . . .”

  “No,” I rushed to say, “it’s a common enough mistake.” It wasn’t, but I wanted to smooth things over with her. I needed to keep things calm until the full moon.

  “You’re such a sweet girl,” Asma told me, but her tone was all wrong. The embarrassment that I’d seen on her face had vanished in a flash. Her dark eyes seemed somehow harder and sharper. She snapped a finger and one of her servant girls came forward, producing from behind her back a pair of slippers with reinforced soles, giving them the curve needed to get good toeholds on boulders. They had wear marks, and were discolored from the waters of the lagoon, and they should have been hiding amid my clothes from Shikarpur.

  Asma took the climbing shoes from her servant and held them up in front of my face. “If these aren’t dancing shoes, daughter-in-law, then what kind of shoes are they?”

  I was too shocked to speak. This whole time I’d thought Asma was an idiot, that she was completely naive, and the truth was exactly the opposite. She’d been playing me for a fool all along.

  Karim’s arm had tightened around my shoulders, but he was still plainly confused. He didn’t know what kind of shoes they were. If I could find some reasonable explanation for them, I might be able to get out of this alive.

  Asma had been watching me closely, and she must have seen my decision to lie written across my face, because the moment I opened my mouth to speak, she cut me off. “You see, dear, I assumed they must have been dancing shoes, because the only time I’d ever seen their like before was many years ago, back home in the mountains of Yaruba, where shoes like these are sometimes used for scaling rocky cliffs. But I can’t for the life of me imagine what use you might have for climbing shoes here.” She looked pointedly at her son as she finished springing her trap. “And yet . . . they seem well-worn.” She tugged at the fraying fabric and worn leather on the toes with interest.

  I glanced up at Karim, and one look at the black rage building behind his eyes told me that the full moon might as well have been a decade away. I wasn’t going to survive another week here. I might well not survive another hour.

  CHAPTER 18

  Your highness, I—”

  Those were the only three words I managed to get out before Karim threw me up against the wall so hard that it drove the breath from my lungs. His hand flew up and clutched my throat, squeezing it shut just at the moment when I needed air most. My chest heaved and my body convulsed as I tried to breathe, but no air came. My vision was going gray at the edges and my legs were turning to jelly beneath me. If I didn’t do something fast, I was going to faint.

  The trouble was, I wasn’t sure there was anything I could do. Oh, I knew how to fight, I knew where to hit him. I thought maybe I could make him let go, even though he was a lot bigger and stronger than I was, even though he was angry and ready for it. But if I did that, then what? I’d been roughed up by enough clients over the years to know that if I hit back it was always worse. They had the power, and I didn’t, and they never let me forget it. And Karim had power over my sisters, and Hina too. If I hit back, if I defended myself, he might punish them for my crime, and I couldn’t bear that.

  And anyway, I’d waited too long. My knees went weak. The world started to get well and truly dim. I’d been counting on him to let go, but as I hung there by the neck, al
l of my weight supported by the bulging muscles of Karim’s arm, I realized that I’d miscalculated just how angry he was, just how cruel, just how willing to see me dead. I’d believed too much in my own value. I’d thought he wanted the throne of Nizam enough to spare my life, but maybe I’d been wrong about that too.

  I woke up when I hit the floor, aware only then that I’d been unconscious. I was gasping for air, clutching my throat, which was so tender that it made it hard to breathe. I had barely managed to recover my senses when Karim grabbed me by the hair and jerked me to my feet. My scalp burned with pain, and I feared that he might tear my hair out in his rage. I kicked with my legs, getting them under me, standing on my tiptoes to take the pressure off.

  He was shouting, bellowing really, sounding more like an angry beast than a man. He’d been shouting the whole time, but I’d been so disoriented that I hadn’t heard a word of it. Now I did. “Where did you go? Answer me!” He was shaking me, like that would pry the answers loose.

  I fumbled for a response, but my mind was moving too slowly, and Karim was in no mood to be patient. He backhanded me across the face, tearing my new nose ring from my nostril. I hit the ground like a sack of grain and clutched my face, blood pooling in my palm. But he wasn’t finished. He kicked me in the ribs with his shin, sending me sliding across the polished marble floor.

  Self-preservation kicked in then. I scrambled to my feet as he stalked toward me like a hungry tiger, his eyes too wide, his pupils too big and too black. I held up my hands to ward off whatever punch he threw and gasped out, “Shikarpur, your highness!”

  “What?” he growled, but he paused, and that was the opening I needed.

  “Shikarpur, your highness. I wore them when I scaled the cliffs of Shikarpur. I brought them with me from Bikampur when I came to Zindh, and they must have arrived with my other clothes in the same chest. I didn’t even know they were here!”

  “Then why didn’t you say so?” he demanded.

  “Because she didn’t give me a chance to speak!” I exclaimed, gesturing to his mother. “And neither did you!”

  Karim gritted his teeth, but a lot of the anger seemed to have gone out of him. He took a step toward me, but I backed up, flattening myself against the wall. He sighed. “Razia . . .”

  I held my bloodied face in my palm, thinking of all the ways I could use this misstep on Asma’s part to my advantage, when the old hag spoke up again. “I had considered that these might be those shoes you wore on your now-famous ascent of Shikarpur’s cliffs, daughter-in-law.”

  My stomach lurched. There was something about the smirk on her face that told me there was more, that she knew more than she’d let on. God, had I underestimated her again? If she proved to Karim that I was lying about those shoes . . .

  “But the fabric used to make them is the fabric I supplied to Hina and her celas to repair their clothes and their shoes,” Asma said. “So, naturally, I assumed they were dancing shoes. But if they are climbing shoes like the ones you used in Shikarpur, and they are newly made, then why are they worn? Where have you been going, daughter-in-law?”

  Karim looked to his mother, his fists clenched. “You can prove this?”

  “I can, dear,” she assured him. “I know that you love this . . . creature, but you cannot put your faith in a cross-dressing whore. He lies about everything—even his sex.”

  Karim whirled on me, his eyes narrowed. “I should have known!”

  He stepped toward me, and there was nowhere left for me to go. But at that moment, Sikander came into the room, and I saw Hina and Sakshi hanging back by the doorway, and I knew that Hina had gone to fetch him the instant Karim had started beating me. Sikander took one look at my bloodied face, at the bruises on my neck, and he turned and marched toward Karim, his face purple with fury.

  Karim opened his mouth to say something, but he didn’t know Sikander like I did. When my old guardsman got that look on his face, I’d always made myself scarce, because there was no reasoning with him. I realized, as his fist smashed into Karim’s jaw, that he’d never looked at me that way before. He’d reserved his true fury for men who had failed in their duties, not for those under his protection. It wasn’t that he’d never beaten me before, but those had always been carefully controlled affairs. Not like this.

  Karim reeled from the impact of the punch, but a second was already on its way. The Mahisagari prince blocked the second punch with his forearm, but Sikander had been expecting that. He was powerful and stocky and created by God himself for wrestling. He grabbed Karim’s arm and twisted his body, dropping to one knee as he hurled Karim over his shoulder to make the throw that much stronger.

  I’d never in my life heard anybody hit stone that hard before. Karim made a kind of wheezing noise as all the air was pounded out of his lungs. I expected that to be the end of it—Sikander had made his point—but he pulled back his fist, and I realized that he wasn’t going to stop, that this wasn’t about making a point, that he had seen me bloodied by Karim so soon after being reminded of his failure to protect me from being raped by him six years prior, and now he was going to avenge the both of us.

  I couldn’t have that. If he killed Karim, then I’d be killed too. We’d be the first casualties in my father’s new war with Mahisagar. And much as I wanted to see Karim’s face pounded into mush, I knew that Ahmed Shah wouldn’t tolerate it, even if the consequence was a war he couldn’t hope to win.

  “Sikander, stop!” I exclaimed.

  I was shocked when he froze in place, when both he and Karim twisted their heads in my direction, like they hadn’t expected anyone to intervene.

  “Please get off of my fiancé. This has gone far enough,” I said, keeping my voice calm so that I wouldn’t add any more fuel to the fire.

  “But your highness, he struck you,” Sikander reminded me, still clutching one of Karim’s wrists in his fist, his other fist still poised to slam down into Karim’s face.

  “I was in the wrong,” I said, shocking everyone in the room, except perhaps Asma. She was narrowing her eyes at me, waiting to see how I would spin this. The mask was off now; she wasn’t pretending to be naive any longer. “Everything the sultana has said is true. Well, nearly everything. I do not lie about my sex.” I glared at her for that.

  “No, just about everything else, it would seem,” she replied.

  “I had shoes made for climbing,” I said, looking at Karim. “And I used them to climb the columns in my bedchamber for practice, because I enjoy it. And I didn’t tell you, because I knew you wouldn’t like it. So you may punish me for that however you wish, your highness.” I nodded to Sikander. “Let him up, for God’s sake.”

  Sikander let go of Karim, but he came to stand between us, just in case Karim got any ideas about hitting me again.

  “You expect us to believe that you just climbed columns for fun?” Asma scoffed.

  I shrugged. “I don’t expect you to believe anything I say, your majesty, but I ask you—where would I go? You keep me under close guard at all times.”

  “Not at night,” Asma pointed out. “You might have scaled the palace walls then.”

  “And gone where?” I demanded. “We’re in the middle of a crocodile-infested lagoon.”

  “To a boat you had arranged to meet you, obviously,” she retorted.

  “Arranged how?” I asked, and I felt vindicated when she couldn’t come up with an answer, when it didn’t occur to her that I was suicidally brave enough to swim in a crocodile-infested lagoon to send messages.

  Karim had been listening closely, and when his mother failed to come up with any plausible way for me to arrange for a boat, he said, “I believe you, Razia.”

  I crossed my arms over my bruised ribs and scowled. “Why?”

  “Yes, a very good question I would like answered as well,” Asma agreed.

  “Because it fits,” he said, and he
sounded pretty regretful. “It explains the shoes, and the lies, and also why you have been trying so hard to fit in here, to learn your place, why you have been working so hard to please me. I should have known you wouldn’t leave all of your old self behind, shouldn’t have expected it of you. But I do believe that you’re trying your best to make me happy.”

  “Darling, women are expert liars,” Asma warned him.

  “I thought I wasn’t a woman,” I shot back.

  “And courtesans lie best of all,” she added, sneering at me.

  “If you think her highness is a whore and a liar, then I will return her to Nizam,” Sikander declared. “You have assaulted her, and insulted her, and Sultan Humayun was very clear what the consequences would be if you mistreated his daughter.”

  “My mother does not speak for me,” Karim told him. “As I have said, I believe her.”

  “And yet you did this to her.” Sikander gestured to my bloodied nostril, to more blood spilling from my split, fattened lip, to the bruises around my neck. “Why? Because she chose to amuse herself by climbing columns?”

  “And you struck my son in return,” Asma replied. “Which might well be considered an act of war.”

  “As was his assault on her highness,” Sikander growled. “And it was not his first assault on her.”

  Asma’s eyes widened, and I realized that, for all of Karim’s boasting about it to other lords, either she didn’t know or she was pretending that she didn’t.

  “No one told you that he raped me when I was a child?” I asked her.

  “You can’t rape a whore,” she replied, her eyes narrowing to slits.

  “Shut her mouth, boy, or I’ll shut it for her,” Sikander warned.

  “Don’t you threaten my mother, old man.” Karim’s hand fell to the hilt of his sword, and I realized just how close we were to starting a war that would see me and my sisters killed in its opening shots.

  “Enough!” I exclaimed. “I have said that I will accept whatever punishment my husband-to-be deems fit for my mistakes. Does that not satisfy everyone?”