by Alina Boyden
“But Akka . . .” Lakshmi protested.
“No more,” I warned.
Sakshi showed up to help, taking Lakshmi’s other hand. “Let’s sit down and listen to what Prince Karim has to say, all right?”
Lakshmi scowled, but she stopped complaining, which was what I needed right then, even though she was absolutely right to point out that Karim’s gifts were the hollowest of apologies for his actions.
I sat us both down on cushions beneath the chhatri’s umbrella-like dome. Karim sat across from us, still looking uncomfortable, his mother claiming a seat right beside him. I forced a smile and said, “I’m sorry for all of that, your highness.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, and he even sounded like he meant it, which surprised me a little. How could he be sorry for beating me, when he wasn’t sorry for forcing me into this marriage, or killing Hina’s brother, or any of the other awful things he’d done?
“I know, your highness, as am I,” I answered, because that was the right thing to say. Even Asma couldn’t find fault with my words, though she did roll her dark eyes to the sky and snort with derision.
Karim set the bundles in front of me and Lakshmi. My little sister crossed her arms in front of her chest and looked away, making Karim frown, which I thought was well deserved, but I reached out and took my package anyway, unwrapping the cloth to reveal a pair of shoes. Climbing shoes. These were proper ones, with carved wood laths and grippy leather and a steep, aggressive downturn to the toes. I dropped them like they were hot.
“I don’t understand,” I whispered, wondering if this was some kind of a trick or a trap or an insult. “If I’ve done something new to offend you, your highness . . .”
“What?” His confusion helped to quell the frantic beating of my heart. “No, I just thought that you might like some. You said you enjoyed climbing. You should be able to do it. There’s no reason to hide it from me. You can climb any building in the palace you like. Lakshmi too.” He gestured to the second bundle, and I knew it contained a second pair of shoes, sized for her. That was brilliant. It was a way to keep her safe when the time came to take the palace, a way that we could sneak to the zahhak stables together if it came to it, or run if we had to.
I pressed the bundle into Lakshmi’s lap and beamed at her. “Put them on!”
“Akka . . .” She looked hurt that I would force her to accept a gift from Karim after what he did to me, and in truth it hurt me to do it, but this was too important.
“I want to climb,” I said. “Will you climb with me?”
That got through to her where nothing else might have. She bobbed her head. “If it will make you happy.”
“It will,” I assured her. I glanced back to Karim. “That is, if it’s acceptable, your highness.”
“It is,” Karim said, in spite of the way his mother crossed her arms and glared at us.
I wasted no time in putting the tight-fitting shoes on, and I helped Lakshmi with hers, since she hadn’t worn any so aggressive before. And then we waddled over to the nearest wall and started climbing, both of us smiling—her because she was enjoying it, and it wasn’t boring, and me because it meant that Karim was showing some trust in me, all the while giving me new weapons to use against him when the moment came to strike.
CHAPTER 20
Did you sleep?” Sakshi whispered as she came to sit beside me on my balcony to watch the sun rise over the waters of the lagoon.
I shook my head, glancing around to make sure that there were no guards standing close enough to overhear. There were some around, like usual, but they kept their distance on Karim’s orders, and out of fear of Sikander, who had taken to spending more time with me, letting his men keep Lakshmi safe.
“Do you think Haider did what you asked?” She asked that question so softly that I almost mistook the sound for a gentle breeze.
“I hope so,” I whispered back, glancing to the pale form of the full moon, still visible as a hazy white disc against the bluing sky. Today was the day of the brother-sister festival. I’d asked him to attack last night. We’d see whether he’d followed through on that or not.
Sakshi put her arms around me as I fought to keep the tension in my chest from spilling out where others might see. I had to act the part of the innocent girl today. I couldn’t let anyone suspect that I had been responsible for Haider’s attack on Ahura, if that was what he’d done. Asma would blame me. Ahmed might too. Playing innocent was the only thing that would keep me alive today.
“I think he did,” Sakshi told me.
“You think who did what?” Hina asked, having come to join us. She kept her voice low enough not to be overheard by Asma’s handmaidens, who were lurking in my bedchamber, just out of sight, but I knew they were there by the rustling of their skirts.
“Haider,” I murmured, covering my mouth with my hand like I was yawning to disguise it.
“Ah.” That was enough for Hina to understand the whole conversation. I was sure that she’d done nothing the whole night but wonder too.
“Do you remember when you first arrived in Bikampur, Razia?” Sakshi asked.
I wondered what had brought that up, but I nodded all the same. “I don’t think I’ll ever be able to forget it.” It was one of the most important memories of my whole life. I’d been near death, sickly, starving, and I’d found a home that accepted me and a big sister who cared for me.
“When Ammi brought you into the dera, you were so skinny and so weak from hunger and fever that I really didn’t think you were going to survive,” Sakshi recalled.
“And you never left my bedside.” I smiled and took her hand in mine. “I knew from the first moment I saw you that I’d finally found somewhere I could be safe.”
“Is that how you remember it?” she asked, raising an eyebrow. “Well, I shouldn’t be surprised, you were half-delirious with fever, after all.”
I frowned. “What do you mean? That’s the truth.”
She shook her head. “No, Razia, the truth is that after three days of watching over you, and caring for you, I got tired, and I fell asleep. When I woke up, Ammi said you’d run away, that you were talking nonsense, but that it wasn’t worth it to go after you, not when you were probably going to die anyway.”
“I ran away?” I asked, searching my memory, but finding nothing of that. Then again, as indelible as some of the memories of my arrival in the dera were, many of them were fainter. I’d been so sick that sometimes I hadn’t known what was real and what wasn’t.
“You did,” she affirmed. “I ran out after you, despite what Ammi had said. I asked around, and you were easy enough to find. You were staggering down the western road outside of town, barely able to put one foot in front of the other.”
“I was walking into the desert?” I asked, wondering what could have possessed me to do something so stupid. There was nothing beyond Bikampur in that direction except dunes until you reached Shikarpur. But that was too far to travel on foot, even for a healthy adult. Especially without food or water.
“I caught you, and started dragging you back to the dera, but you fought me,” Sakshi said, her hand reaching up to stroke my hair. “The whole time you were screaming that you had to get to Safavia, that you wouldn’t be safe until you found your big brother, Prince Haider.”
My cheeks warmed, and my heart ached. I didn’t remember any of this, but I knew it was true. “That was where I’d been going. That was why I ran west. I never told anyone, I thought.”
“I told you that if you kept saying things like that your father would catch you and kill you,” Sakshi said. “And then you fainted in my arms, and I carried you back home. When you woke up, you never spoke of it again, so I’ve always wondered if you remember it or not.”
I shook my head. “No. All I can remember is you caring for me.”
“Well,” she murmured, holding me tightly,
“now we’ll get to see what sort of man your big brother Haider really is.”
“I suppose we will,” I agreed, though that did nothing to quell the tension in my heart. I had such fond memories of Haider.
“I’ve been wondering about that myself,” Hina admitted. When I looked a question at her, she clarified. “What made you so certain that Prince Haider would fight a war to help a hijra. You said that you were childhood playmates, but you were a prince then, not a princess.”
“Some of the time,” I allowed. “For formal functions and audiences and the like. But when I met Tamara, and told her how pretty her clothes were and that I wanted to wear clothes like hers, she let me. And Haider caught us. I thought he was going to beat me the way that Sikander would have, but he didn’t. He just smiled and told me he thought I looked beautiful. And after that, whenever we were together, I was Princess Razia. It was the best two years of my life. I never wanted that civil war to end.”
“And none of that ever got back to your father?” Hina asked in disbelief.
I frowned, because of course it had. “Why do you think he and Sikander let Karim do that to me? Why do you think it occurred to Karim that I might be a girl and not a boy?”
Sakshi rubbed my shoulders, but Hina was sitting up a little straighter, almost like she’d been pleased by what I’d said. I shot her a dark look and she immediately seemed more apologetic, but she said, “Forgive me, your highness, it’s just that Karim wasn’t shy about telling that story.”
My spine stiffened. “I am aware, thank you.”
“Well, did it ever occur to you that it might have got back to Haider all those years ago?” she asked.
That thought brought a smile to my lips too. If Haider had heard what Karim had done to me back then, then to be reminded of it now might make my plight seem all the more dire. At the very least, it added to our chances that he had struck Ahura last night.
“How long do you think it will be before we hear word?” Sakshi asked.
I shrugged and glanced to Hina, as she’d know better. I’d never been to Ahura myself.
“It’s an eight-hour flight at top speed over open water,” she mused. “Safer would be flying north to the coast and then following it to Kadiro. That would add at least an hour, maybe two. If they left last night under cover of darkness, then they’d have taken the safer route, I’d expect. But if they left this morning at first light, then they probably chose to fly directly. Either way, we should know something by this afternoon at the latest.”
“I hope it’s sooner,” Sakshi said, and I felt a little bit of the nervous tension in her fingers as she rubbed my shoulders.
“Me too, elder sister,” I muttered, though there was just nothing to do but wait either way. Well, wait and prepare. We had a few crucial hours left to us, I thought. And I knew better than to waste them. I leaned closer to Sakshi and whispered into her ear, “Tell Lakshmi to keep her climbing shoes in her pockets today.”
Sakshi nodded, her mouth becoming a hard line of worry. She knew that there would be no escaping the palace for her. No one had ever taught her to climb. I reached up and placed my hand atop hers on my shoulder. “I would never leave you.”
“I know, Razia,” she replied. She slipped away and went off to deliver my message to Lakshmi.
“Which of your celas has the katars today?” I asked Hina, grateful that I hadn’t been stupid enough to leave them in my chest with my clothes and the climbing shoes. They’d been passing them around among themselves, just in case any of them got searched by the guards, and they’d been careful not to ever let Hina have them, because she was under more scrutiny than her disciples.
“I have them,” she told me. “I’ll pass them to you tonight, if and when the situation demands it.”
“Fine,” I agreed. “I want you to get your celas together and bring them to my chambers. I want to distract Asma’s handmaidens and the Mahisagari guards so I can get my climbing shoes in my pockets without them noticing.”
“With pleasure, your highness,” Hina agreed, and she was smiling the first genuine smile I’d seen on her face in an age as she hurried off to collect her disciples.
I looked west, watching the gray horizon lightening toward blue as the sun rose behind me. I was searching for any green scales or blue feathers that might hint at the approach of an acid zahhak from Ahura, but the sky seemed totally clear save for the morning patrol wheeling over the lagoon. It would be smarter to watch them than the horizon. They had a better view than I did, though they didn’t know to be especially watchful for a messenger today. Still, they flew in lazy circles, giving me no sign that there were any approaching zahhaks from the west.
I stood up and stretched, feeling at my still-sore neck. The bruises had largely faded now, and it wasn’t so tender. My nose was almost healed too, which was a welcome surprise. Seeing the mess Karim had made of me in the mirror had been a bit disconcerting. I didn’t like to think of myself as vain, but I’d spent most of my life making my living on my looks, so I was a little protective of that particular asset. After all, for everything I’d accomplished with my brains, I’d never met a man who had hired me for them.
Save Karim maybe. The irony of that wasn’t lost on me as I entered my bedchamber, and Asma’s handmaidens rushed to seem like they were sweeping or arranging my bedclothes—anything but spying. I laughed a little at that. “I know why your mistress places you here. You don’t have to pretend; it’s not a secret.”
They all bowed their heads and kept their mouths shut. I rolled my eyes and waited impatiently for Hina to get here with her celas so I could hide my climbing shoes in my pockets. If I was caught doing it, it would look suspicious, but if Ahmed and Asma managed to cast doubt on whether or not I had anything to do with the attack on Ahura, I might be moved to more secure quarters, and then I’d never be able to take care of the tower guards tonight like I’d promised Sanghar Soomro—not without some means of escape. I would need my shoes and my katars, and I couldn’t leave that to chance.
Hina wasn’t long in returning, and when she did it was with all fifteen of her celas. They filled the room in a crowd of ajrak skirts and dupattas, gathering around me in a semicircle that immediately rendered me invisible to the handmaidens, who stood up and craned their necks, trying to see what was going on. But Hina seemed to have concocted a plan, because she clapped her hands twice and said, “Let’s get her highness prepared to meet her mother- and father-in-law for breakfast! I want her looking perfect!”
And the next thing I knew, all sixteen of them burst into action. Hina was making me stand in one particular spot in the room where a pillar blocked me, while her celas rushed in every conceivable direction. There was so much frantic movement going on in so many different places that my eyes didn’t know where to look. Someone was fetching my chest of clothes, another my jewelry boxes, a third was for some reason bringing over the pillows from my bed while a fourth was snatching my cosmetics case, and at least two others picked up the mirror from its stand on the floor and started marching toward me with it.
Clothes were pulled out of the chest seemingly at random, and I was made to put on my ajrak skirt, but it felt oddly heavy, and it seemed to weigh even more once the blouse was thrown over the top of it. They put jewelry on my wrists, ankles, neck, ears—they even stuck hairpins in at a speed that frankly worried me. In a matter of moments, I was completely bedecked from head to foot like a Zindhi princess, as I had been that first day Hina had come to the palace in Shikarpur. I was aware, after the flurry of activity had settled down, that at some point, either before or after I had put it on, the hidden pockets of my skirt had been stuffed with my climbing shoes, their presence hidden by means of the large number of petticoats I wore with it. And at another point, my katars had been slipped into the waistband of my skirt at the small of my back, their handles hidden by the long Zindhi-style blouse. Had I been wearing t
he shorter, Registani variety, they would have been plainly visible, but between the blouse and the long, shawl-like dupatta, there was no chance at all of anyone spotting them.
Hina was smirking, enjoying the bewildered looks on the faces of Asma’s handmaidens. She guided me to the pillows her celas had set down and had me sit on one of them while she personally applied my makeup, being careful to hide my bruises and to mask the split in my lip and the suture in my nose.
“There,” she said once she was finished. “You look like a proper princess, your highness.”
“I feel like a proper princess,” I replied, knowing that she and her celas would understand that I was referring to my climbing shoes and katars, but that the words would seem innocuous enough to Asma’s handmaidens.
We exchanged a secret smile, and I stood from my cushion, smoothed out my skirts and my dupatta, making the gestures seem natural, though in truth I was ensuring that wherever Karim put his hands, he wouldn’t feel the weapons or the shoes through my clothes. He tended to like to touch my arms, sometimes my hips, but the small of my back and my thighs were usually safe enough. I just hoped he wasn’t feeling particularly eager this morning, otherwise I was going to have to be careful to use Sikander as a chaperone. The last thing I needed was for Karim to discover katars on my body just hours before word reached him of an attack on Ahura by unknown forces.
I had just finished composing myself when Asma came breezing into the room, trailed by one of her handmaidens, who must have rushed out to warn her that something unusual was going on. I forced myself to smile, because that was how the game was played, even with our hatred of each other out in the open now. “Mother-in-law, how lovely you look this morning.”
“And you as well, daughter-in-law,” she replied, plastering on a fake smile of her own. “Your makeup is so expertly applied, it makes that mutilated nose of yours look almost normal.”
“Thank you,” I replied, my eyes flashing with malice. I strutted over to her, enjoying the look of surprise and fear on her face. I reached over and tugged at the silken hem of her blouse. “This is so beautiful. Is it new?”
