by Zamil Akhtar
As I sat against the moist walls, the soothing humidity calmed my insides. Sorrowful memories played as I drifted between alertness and dozing.
Father, dead. Betil, dead. Mother, about to be dead. The saddest part of me wanted to steal the fastest Kashanese horse from among the Shah’s racing steeds and ride to the Waste, just to hold her hand. But I was no longer her daughter, truly. This palace was my mother now. Its walls were all the embrace I needed.
That day when the Jotrids raided us, their khagan had forced my father to make humiliating concessions, me among them. How terrible the moment when their warriors pulled me from my mother’s arms. The Jotrids were blood enemies to our tribe. They prayed to the saints, like the Alanyans, whereas we prayed only to the Children. Lat hears our prayers because the Children live beneath her throne while the saints roast within a chasm of flame in the thousandth hell for their falsehoods. That was what I’d been taught, though I didn’t believe it anymore.
The Jotrid khagan, who had even lived with us for a time and was barely older than my brother, gifted me to the Alanyans. Though it took me far from home, in the end, it was for the best. Now here I sat, in a bath chamber fit for the sultana of the world, my belly full. And yet, my heart still ached from all that had been severed.
The steam pressed against my chest, oppressive, so I soaked in the lukewarm pool in the center of the bath chamber. I always avoided the ice bath. Being so cold that I felt my veins freezing reminded me of those frigid, starving days in the Sylgiz lands. While I shivered just thinking about that time, concubines flowed in and out of the bath chamber — the ones that didn’t hate me smiled with polite greetings. The rest were careful to avoid my drifting eyes. To think, after all I’d been through, I’d end up here.
Zedra entered. Her black curls fell past her breasts as she removed her hair towel and joined me in the lukewarm water. I sat up, smiled, and mumbled a greeting — hopeful not to have bothered her with my lack of attention, though she’d always been kind to me. Kind to everyone.
“I’m so jealous,” she said, giggling. Her reddened cheeks made it plain that she’d been drinking. “You’re an ambassador, now. Nay, Grand Vizier!”
“Nothing of the sort. It’s just, the man at the head of that horde happens to be my brother by blood.”
“You’ve the blood of conquerors,” she said. “Another reason to be jealous.”
“You’ve no reason to ever be jealous of me.”
“Humble too, yet another thing to be jealous of.”
“Stop it.”
I splashed water on her face. She didn’t even flinch and took it with a grin. I remembered when she first arrived in the palace, barely a year ago; she wouldn’t even bathe. She refused to get in the pools, despite the pleading of the eunuchs, and would instead sit on the floor and dump water over her head with a pail. She told me that was how they bathed in the Vogras, where she was from, but the other Vograsian concubines didn’t do that. Sometimes I’d catch her staring at the pool water in a daze. Strange woman, to say the least.
Though I was, by law, a free woman and Zedra a slave, her status towered over mine. After all, she was the beloved of the Crown Prince, a man loved by the people as much as his father, Shah Tamaz. And, out of all his concubines, she was the only one who’d given him a son.
Eunuchs wearing maroon robes placed fresh incense in the corner burners — a zesty scent with earthy tones, probably aloeswood with musk.
“So what was it like seeing your brother after all this time?”
What did it feel like? As if I’d been smashed by a hammer, hugged by a bear, and trampled by a horde; I tried to find measured words instead. “He felt like my brother…and yet, he didn’t. It was like he was the boy I knew and a complete stranger at the same time.”
Zedra nodded. “Time and distance make strangers, yet blood bonds are forever. I’m sure he felt the same as you.” She was so wise for a nineteen-year-old. Her expression tensed. “So…tell me, what’s going to happen now? Should we worry?”
I hadn’t noticed bombards in Cihan’s camp, so they couldn’t easily get inside the walls. If it came to it, the gholam who’d been sent westward could be recalled to deal with them. But despite reassurances, ants still crawled through my veins; I didn’t want war between two peoples I cared for.
“I think we’re going to solve it, in peace.”
Zedra bit her lip. “Can’t lift the veil, can you? What ever will I gossip about at supper?”
I chuckled. “Don’t gossip about this, all right?” Secrets always spilled in the Sand Palace, but I trusted Zedra and needed to pour out my worries.
She zipped up her lips.
“Someone beheaded three Sylgiz traders and framed Shah Tamaz. We need to prove it wasn’t him.”
She gasped, holding her hand to her mouth, her ruby rings dripping. “Who could…who would ever do such a thing?”
I said the first thing on my mind: “The Jotrids. I mean, I don’t know if it was them, but they’ve every reason to foment war between us and the Sylgiz. Their khagan, Pashang, is as cruel as a broken slipper.”
Zedra chuckled, then splashed water on me. “By Lat, what is that saying?”
How embarrassing — my cheeks tightened. “Just something my mother would say. Us Sylgiz have the dumbest sayings.” I’d always tried to avoid showing where I came from. My tribe was not liked in Alanya — we followed a different path toward Lat, our language was bitter, our ways violent, and our customs savage.
The lukewarm water began to bore me, and I yearned once more for steam. I pushed out and wrapped myself in a star-patterned towel.
“Let’s go into the city later,” Zedra said, “just you and me. It’s been a bit dull around here. Oh, apart from the siege and all.” She laughed.
I was planning to go anyway, to tend to a certain scheme I was part of, so I nodded and went toward the coals.
Strange what a siege does to a thriving city. The food bazaars were bursting with haggling and desperation. Stall sellers had raised prices, a precaution if a long siege would choke their supplies. City folk sought to stock up on whatever they could: dried fruits, vats of well water, teeth twigs, lye. As for Zedra and myself, we rode together in a carriage surrounded by mounted gholam and watched the crowds from our windows. As we neared Laughter Square, the air of wealthier folk seeking a good time replaced the panicked atmosphere of the food bazaar.
Upon getting out, Zedra raised her hands and twirled like a Vograsian dancer — how carefree and fluid. The Vogras, where she was from, was a mountainous part of the Waste and a different world from that of the Sylgiz, Jotrids, and other lowland tribes, so I didn’t know too much about it. Strange that, until today, it had all seemed so unimportant. Though I’d learned about the world since coming to this city, the Philosophers who’d tutored me focused little on the Waste, its tribes, and its geography.
Today, Laughter Square lived up to its name. Men and women lined up before an array of poets, each poet standing upon a richly tapestried dais. The treasure chests at their feet overflowed with all manner of coin: Alanyan, mostly, but I noticed coins with the soaring falcon emblem of Kashan, the aggressive peacock of Sirm, and even some with blocky western letters.
Of course, Zedra and I went to the front of the line, ignoring the glares and foot-stomping of those we’d cut past. Her favorite poet, a man draped in so much green silk he resembled a pig covered in grass, glowed with an eager delight. “The moon has just risen,” he turned to me, “and with it the sun.”
“Ooh!” Zedra clapped. She tossed a silver coin into the treasure chest below his dais. It made a satisfying clank as it landed. “I hope that was merely a taste.”
I looked behind. Too many were staring, either upset we’d cut in front, or perhaps enraptured by the sight of women from the palace. Uneasy, I wrapped my veil over my face and turned back toward the poet.
The poet glowered. “The sun has just gone out, leaving us bereft! Oh lady of the sky, do not dep
rive us of your light!”
Clever. Begrudgingly, I loosened the veil.
Zedra said, “Hmph!” and shook her head. “I paid you to praise me. The moon needs adoration, too.” She grinned impishly.
“Radiance leaps from your sandstone cheeks — ancient eyes full of love — a spirit that sails, piercing the mists with its bow…”
While the poet flung flowers at her from his tongue, I studied the square. Snaking lines stood before all the favorites: Babar of Zunduq, from a city deep in the jungles of Kashan, positioned himself near what I believed was a pleasure house and sat high upon a mechanical elephant. He rained warlike songs upon the gholam, pashas, and khazis who lined up before him. At the entrance to a coffeehouse, a beardless boy named Jilqees composed rhyming verses, mostly about magical, faraway places, which he’d learned about from the pirates and sailors who frequented his nighttime job. But the longest line belonged to a man I’d never seen before, who sat upon a brass throne studded with fake emeralds and rubies. A Himyarite, judging by his skin, which was the color of deep soil. Unlike the gholam around us, who were mostly Himyarites too, this man seemed frail of build. And he wasn’t shouting his verses, like the other poets, but writing them on parchment with a rather fat brush. Why was he so favored?
I interrupted some syrupy nonsense about how Zedra was a lioness on a mountain peak to ask, “Who’s he?”
The poet in green silk squinted at the Himyarite and said, “Oh, that fool. Been here a week and everyone is falling over his verse.” The venom in his voice could kill a snake.
“What’s so special about it?”
The poet huffed. “Toss a silver at his feet and he’ll spew the vilest insults — truly unholy, vulgar.”
“Insults? About whom?”
“About you, my dear. Whoever pays him.”
Zedra gasped. “You mean to say people pay him to be degraded?”
“Indeed!” the poet said with a growl. “It’s despicable and should be forbidden! What is this country coming to?”
“Sorry.” I touched Zedra’s arm with both my hands. “I’ve just remembered, I’m to meet someone at the Grand Bazaar. Briefly. Do you mind?”
“Of course, dear,” she said. “Go flutter about wherever you may. I’ll be here, wasting my time and money.”
I fingered the scroll in my pocket and let out a tense breath. I’d joined this scheme by choice, days before my brother arrived, and couldn’t back out now.
With an escort of four gholam, I proceeded on foot across the Bridge of Saint Jorga toward the Grand Bazaar. How much it’d changed in the eight years I’d lived in Qandbajar. When I’d first come to the city, it was an overstuffed series of lanes and stalls that sat stinking in the city center. Now it stood as a hollow, open-air stone pyramid with nine levels. Nine! A Philosopher had designed it, and it dwarfed even the Sand Palace. The only taller building in the city was the Tower of Wisdom.
At the first level of the Grand Bazaar, cloth, sheepskin, and leather merchants draped their wares across wooden stalls, which were arranged like a maze. Barely room to walk, but everyone stepped out of the way of the gholam and myself. I’d not regularly worn such common materials since moving here, so stared straight as we ascended the stairs to the next level.
Fruits. As we walked through the slightly less crowded area, fruit sellers lowered their gazes, their hands outstretched with whatever ripe perfections they’d reserved for the palace that day. Before handing over the treats, a gholam would pick off a piece with a gold-hilted knife and test the taste. Soon, tangy grapes, spicy dates, and sweet oranges were falling into my hands.
I devoured a date. The spices danced on my tongue and burned down my throat — a rather Kashanese taste. Considering I could barely fit into this pearl-studded caftan Grand Vizier Barkam had gifted me last year, I declined the other delights.
The third floor was nothing like the others. In perfect rows, spices of every color — even sky blue — sat piled in polished glass cauldrons. Cinnamon, turmeric, ginger, saffron, sumac, cumin, caraway, coriander, cloves, cardamom — to name the ones I was familiar with. Every food smell imaginable invaded my nose, as if an army of kababs, lamb shanks, and mutton balls were on the march. And it was all the work of one man. He controlled Qandbajar’s — nay, Alanya’s — spice trade, and upon seeing me, he smiled with warmth. He bent his neck, despite his rank exceeding mine: he was a pasha, after all. And he looked like one; down the middle of his caftan, purple pearls twinkled as if stars burned within.
“When I awoke this morning,” he said, “I prayed Lat would bless my eyes. And by the sight of you, a humble man’s prayer is answered.”
“A humble man?” I looked around. “Has he run off?”
Ozar chuckled, a good-natured grin seizing his pastry-filled cheeks. “Sultana,” he said, granting me a title I did not possess nor deserve. “The clouds part when you arrive. The breezes burn with fire. The mystics fall over themselves, drunk and debased.”
“Keep your day job, pasha. You’ll be laughed out of Laughter Square with verse like that.”
He wagged a thick, ring-covered finger. “Not my words, sultana. The wise Eshkal himself breathed them to life.”
My ignorance of poetry laid bare. How embarrassing. “You need not call me that, pasha. I’ve not attained such rank.”
His face twisted. “Are you not the daughter of a Sylgiz khagan? Considering the men at our gates, I’d wager your rank on the ascent.”
“Yours may be, too.” I reached into my caftan pocket and took out the parchment, then handed it to Ozar.
“What’s this?” He snapped his fingers; one of his retainers brought him a spectacle. Ozar squinted through it as he unrolled the parchment and read its contents.
“Dear Lat,” he said, his eye enlarged and bulging through the spectacle. “I’ve been begging the Majlis for months. By the thousandth heaven — by the saints beneath the glorious throne — how on earth did you get this?”
So bombastic. “I have my ways,” I said with a curt grin, knowing it would drive him mad.
“My dear, do you not realize how valuable this piece of paper is? Barkam has been hounding me for years. ‘Ozar’s monopoly on spices must be broken!’ is the first thing he says when waking up, and his final prayer before sleeping. ‘Ozar’s price wars are against the laws of the Shah and the Fount!’ is what the Grand Vizier whispers in his wife’s ear when making love.” Ozar covered his mouth. “Excuse my crudeness, but I can scarcely contain myself. How did you get him to stamp a paper granting me exclusive rights to the Koa spice lane?”
Now he really was prodding me to bare myself. “The more important question is — what do I want in return?”
“I’ll give you half the world, and the other half too.”
“Wonderful. I like being owed favors by rich and powerful men.”
He raised an eyebrow in surprise. Perhaps he thought I’d ask for my return now. But, like any debt, it’s better to call it later — with interest.
“You know, sultana, you’re nothing like that girl they dragged from the Waste, eight years hence. Thin-wristed, stinking of horse manure, barely a legible word on your tongue. You’re truly a woman of the city, now. To see you climb so high has been a pleasure.”
To have the richest merchant in the land owing me a favor — that was the real pleasure. Or it would’ve been had this exchange been genuine. I couldn’t ignore the shudder in my bones when I thought about the parchment I’d just given him, and who had given it to me.
Zedra clapped as the little monkey danced on the red-tusked elephant’s back. She tossed a gold coin — how excessive — at it; the monkey caught it with its hard, red cap and then flipped it toward its owner, who beamed beneath his gray mustache.
“Our sultana is as generous as Saint Kali,” he said.
A deadpan expression seized Zedra’s face, as if she were insulted. Slowly, a smile spread across her cheeks, but her eyes remained sour. Strange. “That’s too much prais
e for a paltry gold. You’ve trained the creature so well — you deserve a thousand more.”
I gave the owner a polite nod, then said to Zedra, “Feeling a bit faint. Would you mind if I went home?”
“Been a long day for you, dear. Of course, go and rest.”
Wonderful, she’d bought my excuse. But the four gholam escorting me would be harder to trick. As we traveled by carriage toward the Sand Palace, we passed by the Shrine of Saint Rizva. Barely anyone beneath its sandstone arches — an almost-forgotten relic. Shouts and clamor from the adjacent coffeehouse assured worshippers would get no peace, anyway.
I ordered the carriage driver to stop and stepped outside.
“I would pray, for a moment,” I said to the gold-clad gholam captain sitting high upon his horse.
“Mistress,” he said. Ah, at least someone knew my proper title. “This shrine is known as a gathering place for degenerates. You can pray at Saint Jamshid’s, up ahead.”
I shook my head. “Saint Rizva was a peacemaker. I would seek her intercession, so my diplomacy with the Sylgiz bears fruit.”
“We’ll come with you, then,” the captain said.
“Into the women’s section? That would be scandalous.” I raised my eyebrow. “I think I can survive five minutes in a shrine.”
The gholam captain nodded begrudgingly.
Elderly women sat on the faded sandstone in the women’s section, reciting holy words and flicking prayer beads. They ignored the tall and frankly stunning man standing behind them. Hadrith stood with his arms crossed; he’d cut his curly hair short, but his combed beard grew longer each day, now reaching his chest.
“You kept me waiting,” he said, obviously unamused, “and I only wait for good news and god.”
