The Lady or the Lion

by Aamna Qureshi

  She was tired of running.

  The words were for him and him alone and she would deliver them.

  It was nearly dawn. Asfandyar would be preparing for travel after the morning prayer. He wouldn’t be in his room. She would just slip it into his kameez pocket and disappear. Perhaps he would read it only when he was on the road. Perhaps ten years from now, he would look back and remember and smile at the memories.

  Perhaps.

  She slipped into the passageways, running her hand along the cold cement walls. Dripping water echoed behind her, mingling with the sound of her sure footsteps. She fingered the letter in her hand, smelled the ink. She pressed a final kiss to the paper as she arrived at Asfandyar’s room.

  But by the door, she found a little box full of letters.

  Biting back a smile, Durkhanai reached down and picked out a little note. She recognized her own handwriting. The notes looked worn, like they had been opened and closed many times.

  Durkhanai knew she should do what she came for and leave, but she couldn’t resist.

  Pressing down on the bruise of her heart, she picked up the box. She unfolded the letter on top, recognizing her own slanted handwriting from the night it had rained. They hadn’t been able to go distribute medicine, but they had exchanged letters deep into the night.

  She ran her fingers along the words, thinking of what a rosy-eyed fool she had been.

  But the box felt strangely full as she carried it to his bed and sat down. She didn’t remember writing so many letters to him.

  Then she saw handwriting that wasn’t hers.

  Her first thought was that of jealousy: that he already had a lover. But the truth was much worse.

  She read the letter at the top, the most recent, she assumed, and she didn’t understand: not who it was from or what was going on. But somebody was giving Asfandyar orders; somebody was growing impatient.

  Asfandyar had been sent to distract her.

  He had been sent to make her fall in love with him, so he could make a fool out of her. And suddenly things began to make sense: how he was always there, always finding her, always knowing what to say.

  Durkhanai saw that the letters were from two people: one outside, one inside.

  The one from within gave him tips and tricks.

  Durkhanai is overly emotional . . . she has never hated anyone in her entire life . . . she is young and foolish . . . she is naive and silly . . . Durkhanai enjoys being right . . . she is stubborn and childish . . . too easily trusting . . . her favorite line of poetry is . . .

  And the advice went on, saying how she was a princess doted on by all but one who craved someone to challenge her. The pretty little princess who wasn’t taken seriously and thus craved responsibility. The Shehzadi whose greatest weakness was her family. How she was overly emotional and could be reckless and barbaric and frivolous and much too easily trusting—and on and on.

  Somebody had given Asfandyar the blueprints to Durkhanai’s soul, and it had to be somebody close to her.

  Close enough to know her almost as well as she knew herself.

  But who could betray her thus?

  Durkhanai felt stripped bare in front of a laughing crowd, but no matter how she reached for clothing, she could not cover herself again.

  Somebody close to her, somebody who knew her and knew her well had been feeding Asfandyar information, telling him about her. She thought she recognized the handwriting but she couldn’t quite place it, but that was irrelevant, then.

  All she could think about was how everything between her and Asfandyar had been planned. It had been mechanical, all of it.

  But for what?

  Then she saw.

  The letters from the outside, giving him orders, telling him secrets. Describing where medicine would be, how the passageways worked, the ins and outs of the palace. How the people would react to certain things, but the Shehzadi would be too distracted to notice, too enamored to care.

  And all of this to keep the Shehzadi busy as Asfandyar ran his own investigations—to prove Marghazar was behind the summit attack. The letters told Asfandyar where to look, and when it seemed they couldn’t find anything concrete, the letters told Asfandyar all he had to do was get the Badshah’s seal—the evidence could then be forged.

  But who could have known such intimate details? Nobody had ever left Safed-Mahal.

  Worse still, she had fallen directly into Asfandyar’s trap. She had led him to the Badshah’s office. She had shown him precisely where the seal was.

  Durkhanai recalled that day—how they left together, so he couldn’t have stolen the seal right then. But then she remembered how he had pulled her waist when he thought someone was coming—he must have stolen the key at that time, while she was distracted, then gone back to steal the Badshah’s seal.

  What a fool she had been.

  Then her gaze caught on a few lines.

  Marghazar will splinter with civil unrest, and faith in the Shehzadi will drop due to her association with you.

  So it had been deliberate. All of it a ruse.

  But why? He risked himself as well, and for what? But men were hardly blamed in such situations. She remembered how quick Rashid had been to assume her requests for help was more of a romantic gesture than a political one. She doubted Asfandyar cared what her people had to think of him.

  Heart hammering, Durkhanai kept reading.

  All you need now is a public display of affection to ruin the Shehzadi. The people won’t love a whore for a princess.

  So that was what this was.

  Just then, Asfandyar walked in.

  He froze, seeing the letter in her hand. Durkhanai laughed, not looking up.

  “And here I thought my love letter to you would have been the first,” she said bitterly. “You didn’t tell me you had a lover already, somebody you were making a fool of me for.”

  “Durre—” he began.

  “Who is it?” she asked, voice curious. It was an eggshell thin covering of the scrambled mess she really was inside.

  “Wakdar,” he replied simply.

  She blinked. “Wakdar was my father’s name.”

  There was truth in his eyes. “You’re lying,” she said simply. She took a step back. She refused to believe him, but she remembered a worn teddy bear.

  No. It could not be.

  Very calmly, she gathered the letters back together again, aligning all the papers. She put them back where they belonged, her entire being covered in a thick layer of ice. She would show no emotion.

  She would say nothing.

  She had to leave. Her heart felt like an emptying blood bag.

  “Wait,” Asfandyar said.

  And she did. Despite herself, she stopped in her tracks, back to him.

  Everyone had warned her, she remembered. They had warned her to stay away, not to fall, not to be fooled.

  But she couldn’t have understood, then. She couldn’t have known until after, when the hurricane was through and she was left to deal with the aftermath.

  What was so addicting about him? she wondered. What was so intoxicating that she just couldn’t let him go?

  Even then, she couldn’t let him go.

  “Don’t go,” he pleaded. “Let me explain.”

  “You’re lying,” she said simply, turning to face him. “My father died the night I was born. Poisoned. Killed.”

  “I’m not,” he replied. He pulled something from his pocket and dropped it into her palm. It was a chandi silver ring, the same ring that sat on her right ring finger, the same that sat on her grandfather’s and her grandmother’s.

  The family crest.

  It wasn’t possible . . .

  “Why are you here?” she asked, voice breaking. He fell to his knees. Her bones felt too heavy in her body, too thick, like instead of liquid her blood had turned to stew.

  “For you—because I am yours, entirely,” he vowed, reaching for her hands. She snatched her fingers away before he could touc
h them, cradling her hand to her heart, trying to contain the explosion.

  “No,” she said, shaking her head, trying not to cry. “Why did you come here? To Marghazar?”

  “I told you,” he responded, eyes blank, voice empty. “I’m a spy.”

  “For who?”

  “Wakdar,” he replied.

  Her father.

  “Why? Explain.” She tried to stay calm.

  “I am indebted to him,” Asfandyar replied. “I owe him my life, my blood. He swore he would exact revenge on the Badshah, and I swore I would help him.”

  “My grandparents,” she said, chest tight. “My family, my blood. You know they are most beloved to me, beyond anything and anyone, yet you speak so casually of exacting revenge on them? Why?”

  “They broke my heart,” he finally said, voice quiet.

  “And you broke mine,” she snapped. “Are you happy now? You are just as wretched as your enemy.”

  “There is much you do not know,” he said. Her heart had burned to ash, leaving nothing but the seared black bones of her ribcage, echoing emptiness.

  What could be worse than this?

  “The Badshah has allied himself with the Kebzu Kingdom,” Asfandyar continued. “It was him who told them about the summit.”

  “Impossible,” Durkhanai said, but she wasn’t so sure.

  “It’s why I’m here,” Asfandyar explained, voice thick with self-hate. “I’ve been distracting you, stirring civil unrest, as Wakdar prepares.”

  “Prepares for what?” Durkhanai asked, filled with dread.

  She had to warn her grandparents.

  “Durkhanai, please, sit down, let me explain to you—” he began, but she held up a hand to silence him.

  “I don’t want to sit down,” she hissed. “You need to tell me exactly what is going on, right now. Starting with why?” Durkhanai’s voice broke, and she hated herself for it. “Why did you do all this? You said you owe Wakdar your life, your blood, but why?”

  “I killed one of his own,” he replied.

  Durkhanai stilled. One of his own—that would make whoever it was one of hers.

  “Who?” she seethed. Asfandyar looked miserable, but he had to tell her.

  “His daughter,” Asfandyar replied finally, voice quiet. “My fiancée.”

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Asfandyar’s Tale

  “She was my best friend,” Asfandyar began.

  Suddenly, he was no longer nineteen, but fifteen again, falling in love for the first time. Back in Jardum, the song of his childhood played around him, memories unfurling to the distant melody.

  Naina had been around for as long as he could remember, with her startling green eyes and freckles and the dimple on her right cheek. She was of another noble family, so it was said, but Asfandyar learned the truth when he got older: that his father, the great General Afridi, had crossed paths with Wakdar Miangul at the frontlines. Wakdar had saved his life from the Luhgam Empire, and it was because of this that Wakdar found sanctuary with Asfandyar’s tribe.

  So Wakdar joined the Afridi tribe, and nobody had the standing to question Asfandyar’s father. No one had questioned him when he married a Black woman, either, because it was Asfandyar’s brave father who kept his men alive at the frontlines.

  They all owed him their lives.

  So Asfandyar grew up with the pretty green-eyed girl as his neighbor. He and Naina grew together, but Asfandyar always knew she was different, not their blood, even though she was raised just as he was. She was half, for her father was different. He stayed indoors, and if he ever did make an appearance, his face was cloaked, hidden in shadows.

  There were rumors, of course, of who the mysterious man was, but Asfandyar, only a child then, did not care. He only cared about Naina, his best friend.

  They grew up chasing peacocks trying to find the most beautiful feathers and played in the stream and told each other scary jinn stories at night. An innocent time.

  For a boy of seven, this was love.

  Then, they grew a little older, and Asfandyar’s father passed in the war, and his mother shortly after. Asfandyar went to live with his chacha, and sadness followed him wherever he went, until the girl with the blue-green eyes brought him a peacock feather she had saved for years.

  For a boy of twelve, this was love.

  Then, Asfandyar began to grow from a boy into the strange creature that preceded manhood. He began to chase chickens and break their necks, began to throw little daggers into trees as target practice. He began to fight in the streets when his chacha was asleep, and it was Naina who would sneak out in the middle of the night with a wet washcloth and clean his wounds, scolding him, always worried but always curious to know if he had won. He always did.

  For a boy of sixteen, this was love.

  Then, Asfandyar went to war, and he watched his brothers and his people die, so easily, so callously. When he came home, he was a changed man, and Naina had become a woman. She understood the haunted look in his eyes, for she had seen the same in her father’s. She knew not to push, just to be there, solid, sure, alive.

  For a boy of seventeen, this was love.

  By then, Asfandyar knew enough of the world to seize it the moment he could. He gave Naina his mother’s gold bracelet, the bangle Mama had given him for safekeeping before she had left him. Asfandyar went to the man whose face always remained cloaked and asked for his daughter’s hand.

  The man refused.

  But his daughter would not take no for an answer. She did not eat for three days and three nights and her father relented in the way that fathers do for their daughters. Naina always said it was because her father had witnessed what separating love did to people and did not want his daughter to experience the same.

  Asfandyar was seventeen; Naina was fifteen. Too young, too naive, too bright-eyed. They were fools, but they were fools in love, so they did not notice or they did not care.

  It was then that Naina had confided in Asfandyar, told him that her father was actually the crown prince of Marghazar, to be the next Badshah. Asfandyar had always known Wakdar had come from some faraway place under strange circumstances—he hadn’t realized just how strange.

  Wakdar had run from Marghazar because of how barbaric the Badshah was: too strict, too severe. His parents had caused him great pain. Which was why he had sought refuge in Jardum, where he had remarried and had Naina.

  But after Naina’s mother passed away, her father became sad. Tragic. Haunted.

  “Perhaps if we reunite him with his parents, with him home, he will be able to heal,” Naina suggested, hope burning bright in her green eyes. She had such a big heart.

  “I’m not sure,” Asfandyar replied. What had he known, then?

  “I can’t bear to see him so lost, Asfi,” Naina had said. “Please?” She pouted. “For me?”

  What had he known, then, save for his love?

  In secret, Asfandyar prepared for the trip. One quiet night, he and Naina snuck away, embarking on the journey with nothing but a little silver ring in her hand as evidence of her lineage. It was the Miangul family crest, and Naina was sure it would grant them entry into the famed Safed-Mahal.

  “I can finally meet my grandparents!” Naina had exclaimed, excited. “Can you believe it? I wonder how they will be.”

  They were both young and optimistic and naive and foolish. It was a long journey, but finally they reached the mountains of S’vat. Reached the edge of the capital city, where they were stopped.

  Nobody could enter; nobody could leave. It was how they kept their land and their people pure, they were told. Only those from their own tribes were allowed in.

  “I am from the Miangul family,” Naina said, holding up her hand to show the ring on her index finger. It was too big on her. “I have come to meet my grandparents.”

  The guards led them in, granting them entrance, only to lock them in a prison cell just on the other side of the gates. They waited a day until the guards finally
returned, and even then, Naina remained confident, poised.

  “They are my family,” she kept saying. “My blood.”

  Until Bazira Miangul, the Wali of S’vat herself, came. She was silent as stone. Naina looked nothing like her.

  “Dhadi!” Naina had cried, smiling. The Wali bristled but did not react except to motion for the guards to bring the pair out of their prison.

  It was the Wali’s eyes: Asfandyar knew right then that they were doomed.

  He had seen disgust before—he was half-Black, after all—but never like this.

  “Naina,” he whispered, hoping to shield her from this, but it was too late.

  “How dare you enter my lands?” the Wali asked calmly. “Claim to be my blood?”

  “I am Wakdar’s daughter,” Naina said, quick to explain. Asfandyar remained quiet. “I am your granddaughter.”

  There was a crack in the air as the Wali slapped Naina. Shaken from the force, Naina tumbled to the ground. Asfandyar reached for her, but he was held back by guards. He watched in horror as the guards lifted Naina, too, holding her up.

  “I have one granddaughter,” the Wali said calmly. “She was birthed from the mountains. She has no father as I have no son.”

  “Please,” Naina said, lip trembling. “Just listen to me.”

  The Wali slapped her once more.

  “Do not interrupt,” she said. “You have insulted me by claiming to be my own, by claiming to be my granddaughter’s equal. You are nothing like her—she is pure, you are not. She belongs, you do not.”

  “Where is your hospitality?” Asfandyar cried out.

  “You are not my people,” the wali replied. “The Marghazari never return, for they never leave—certainly not a Miangul. If they ever dared, they would lose their status and their lineage—they would lose their blood. The penalty for such treason is death.”

  “Okay, alright,” Asfandyar said, trying to keep his voice calm. “I apologize—we both do. With your permission, we would like to go home now.”