by Zamil Akhtar
I returned to the water falling from the wall. I put my hand in my armpit, then brought it to my nose — the salty smell of someone else. I pooled spit in my mouth and swallowed. Tasted like someone else, too — though she possessed seeker’s blood, like mine.
Adonia was her name. I washed, letting the waterfall feel every inch of me. The water tasted different, too: sediment-filled and sweet. I’d come to a new world.
Afterward, I dressed and walked through a tapestried stone corridor toward my room. Golden angels were emblazoned on the bright, hanging carpets on the wall: Adonia knew their names. Malak with a spider eye and legs taller than towers; the jellyfish Principus and his lightning tentacles, each large enough to hold a galleon; Cessiel with her wispy, feathered form and kind eyes arrayed in a diamond; Micah, his ten vertical eyes open or closed in no clear pattern.
I stopped at the angel Marot. Marot was just a man — faceless and indistinct. He held four cards in his right hand, each symbolizing a variety of sorcery: demonbinding, bloodwriting, sungorging, and — most terrifying — starwriting. He hid his left hand behind his back, not ready to show his other cards to mankind.
How pious Adonia was to know this story in detail. In fact, she’d memorized the hymns — they bounced around my head, melodious and deep. Somber, because they were about man’s failure to resist temptation, to choose faith over forbidden power.
In Adonia’s room — a guest room in the castle — a high and wide bed covered one wall. To climb it seemed a chore; while Adonia didn’t mind, I wondered why it was so far from the floor. The couch of blue and gold thread against the other wall seemed more inviting. Everything here was soft and pillowed and carpeted, like in the Sand Palace.
A half-woven tapestry, featuring winged men and women flying around a cloud, sat on the couch — Adonia’s hobby, perhaps?
But not her favorite hobby. When I opened the wooden dress closet, it was like opening a window to the sun. I pulled out the outfit of gold thread, with a headdress that resembled a spire. Sequins were sewn onto everything — the Alanyans liked to do the same but with pillows, not clothes. Although, the Abyads liked to sew sequins on their caftans — I wonder who came up with the idea first.
Adonia dressed, then twirled in front of the mirror pane. The leggings clung tight, though the sequin and gold dress covered them. Her twirling dizzied me, but only excited her. This was no hobby; it was her purpose.
I’d enjoyed hundreds of dances since coming to the Sand Palace: Kashanese, Sirmian, Abyad, Abistran, Silklander, Dycondian, and more from places I never knew existed. Some flowed, others made generous use of pauses; some were supple like streams, and others roared like tides. But I’d never seen a Crucian dance, and as Adonia left the room and strutted toward the great hall, I realized in horror that I’d be performing one.
There I stood; the sunshine through stained glass painted me red and gold. Upon the highest dais I’d ever seen sat the Imperator, his face shadowed by a canopy. Then I realized there was no dais; his throne…floated. Celene had told me magic was forbidden in her faith, but could that be anything else?
Around me in the massive, hollow hall, the court sat in groups of two or three on separate balconies. Purple was never out of fashion in Crucis, though some men and women sported teal robes, and yet others draped themselves in gaudy gold. How Alanyan. Adonia glanced at the balconies above, searching for Celene. She craved the smile of the one she adored — a sweetness to soothe her nerves.
I found her. Celene stared down from the third story. She leaned on the railing and smiled a honey-filled smile. I smiled back. Then the Imperator clapped twice, and I began to twirl.
Beneath the Imperator’s floating throne, a choir appeared, as if by magic. Perhaps they’d been on a platform that moved upward. All wore white and sang with deep, somber voices that sprang from their bellies and souls. I twirled and stepped, my toes holding my weight, as a wind blew from my heart and through my arms. A holy song, a holy dance — and I was one and holy — in the east, we would call it fanaa, but it was union with god, nonetheless.
How could a toe hold my weight as I twirled? I lifted my other leg backward and leaned forward; as I spun, I dragged the world with me. Time ceased, and the air itself disappeared, as if I would forever spin.
To finish the dance, as the chorists’ tempo quickened with alternating high-and-low pitched hymns, I pranced forward, chest out, and spread my arms as if wearing wings, then stopped, turned, and slid onto my knees, arms above my head and back flat. Angelfall, the move was called, and I performed it as an angel would.
Clapping echoed across the four walls; it seemed millions cheered me. An entire empire. I’d never been under such attention nor felt my heart thud-thud with both elation and relief. A dance I’d practiced for months had been born — and now, I bathed in love.
The Imperator’s throne descended with a steamy hiss. The chorists parted, and he walked toward me, his metal-sole boots clanging on the marble. He held out his hand for me to kiss. On bended knee, I glimpsed the face of Celene’s father: youthful, hazel-haired, and handsome.
“Lord Imperator.” I put my hand on my heart and kissed his ring finger.
He said, “The priests say Cessiel performed this dance after the Fall. I fear we have all been witness to a miracle, this day. I fear faith is no longer enough for our hearts to enter heaven.”
Praise…cloaked in faithful words that Adonia understood, though I struggled to make straight. Nevertheless, I lowered my gaze and smiled at his boots.
“My daughter told me you were magnificent, but that is a shade of what you are. Ask for anything, and you shall have it.” But the one thing I wanted, he would never give. All Adonia wanted was Celene, and in Crucis like in Alanya, such a thing — even if attained — ought not to be spoken.
After leaving the great hall, I rushed to Celene’s room, where I knew she’d be waiting. It was, fittingly, in a tower, and I trudged up too many stairs in shoes meant for dancing. But I didn’t fall until I found her arms at the doorway.
She pushed me onto the bed. I wanted to resist, but perhaps it was best to let Adonia have her happiness. More importantly, to let Celene taste the reason she conjured this fantasy. In my mind, I pictured the drained water clock — drip-drip-drip — the cycle would end any moment.
Celene had just pulled off my clothes when cracks erupted on my vision, as if a bird had crashed into a window. When she stuck and wriggled her tongue in my mouth, Adonia melted with joy while I tried to stay apart from the ecstasy. I tasted Celene’s spit: milky with salty notes, almost like ayran, though unlike any flavor of blood I’d tasted. Could it be…yet another rare flavor?
The cracks shattered my vision, exploding it to pieces, severing Adonia’s ecstasy.
I awoke in the Sand Palace’s steam room, laid out as if asleep in bed, my towel a damp blanket. Celene shivered on the floor, her towel wrapped over her face.
I pulled the towel away to see red, tear-filled cheeks.
“Ad-Adon-Adonia,” she mouthed. “How...how…”
“I told you I’d send you home.”
She grabbed my hand. Squeezed. “Please, send me back. I want to go back. Please.”
I shook my head. “Dear, that would be all wrong. Where I come from, there were sorcerers who spent each day going back, who couldn’t endure their actual lives because what the bloodrune created was so much better.”
“You don’t understand,” Celene cried. “You don’t understand how good it felt…to be home again...”
“You didn’t go home, dear. It was a mirage. That’s the power of the bloodrune. It conjured what you wanted most. And I do understand. I was there, too. I felt…everything.”
She glared at me in disbelief. “You were watching?”
“No…I was there. I was…”
It seemed my eyes told her; she backed away in shock, redness filling her cheeks. “You…no…”
“It just so happens Adonia and I have the same common
flavor of blood. You’ve nothing to be ashamed of.” I paused to breathe; that journey had taken much out of me. “I understand you now, dear. I understand all you left behind, all you long for. I can’t even say I understood my own daughters as much.”
She said, hoarsely, “But I don’t understand you. I don’t know who you are at all. I don’t know what you want from me, or why. You…you revealed me, and yet you hide everything!”
“Because I have everything to hide. I’m the farthest thing from an open book. If you saw into my fantasies like I’ve seen into yours, you wouldn’t find some giddy girl prancing around a castle. You’d see a river of blood, snaking through time itself and stinking from the corpses of entire generations, entire dynasties of my enemies.”
Celene stood and wrapped her towel around herself. “I can sew the holes. You’re a sorceress. You’re much older than you look. You’re a descendent of Chisti, and it appears you’re on a mission equally as weighty. Perhaps you caused the chaos in this kingdom, or perhaps you’re trying to stop it. But either way, it has nothing to do with me. And if I choose a side — whether your side or the other — then it’ll just be more reason for someone to lock me up.”
I, too, stood and wrapped myself. “Everyone will have to choose a side, Celene. I promise you. This is your chance to be on the winning side — your one and only chance. Because I’m going to leave this bath on my two feet, and then I’m going to fan the flames of a war — one that will engulf not just Qandbajar, not just Alanya, but the whole east.”
“Is that what you are? A bringer of war and ruin? I’ve had enough of that!”
“You’d rather just waste away in this harem, the plaything of some prince? Come with me, and I’ll make sure you go home. To your real home, not some mirage. And if this Adonia girl is still alive, you can make love to her every day for the rest of your lives.” I held out my hand. “You know what I am. You know what they are, out there. You’re either with me or with them. Choose.”
She stared at my hand. Stared at it for so long, it hurt to keep holding it out. I was about to retract when she said, “Last I heard, Adonia was alive. And so was my father. And I’d like nothing more than to be with them again. You’ve told me your secrets, and that means you trusted me, so…I’m going to trust you.”
We shook hands. And then I explained to her what I was about to do.
I still had some conqueror’s blood remaining from when Vera had collected it from Cyra’s lip gash, and I’d brought the tiny bottle with me to the bath. Once clothed, we began enacting my hastily crafted plan. First, I wheeled my chair to the doorway, then stood on the seat. With Celene holding the chair steady, I dipped my finger in the bottle of diluted blood and wrote a rune on a part of the doorframe that protruded an inch from the wall and faced the ceiling, so none would notice. The pattern resembled three eyes with a line cutting through. I invoked the star, and it glimmered.
“Close your eyes when you go through,” I said.
Celene did so, mumbling “Marot forgive me” as she walked out the bath and into the hallway.
“Someone help!” she cried in her awfully accented Paramic. She’d learned something, at least. “The sultana is hurt!”
A maroon-robed eunuch rushed into the chamber.
“Sultana,” he said, “are you all right? What has happened?” Then he clutched his head. “Oh my…suddenly I’m…very…sleep—”
His eyes glazed over; he fell in a heap on the damp, marble floor. I pulled him into the steam chamber, straining my muscles and bones, so the others wouldn’t notice him.
As Celene ran through the halls screaming for help, more eunuchs dashed in and met the same fate. Their snoring resembled a cave of sleeping bears I’d once encountered in the Endless, long ago. After five minutes, we had most of the harem eunuchs on duty asleep in the steam rooms.
I closed my eyes and walked through the door. In the emerald-lamp lit hallway, dozens of concubines had gathered to see what the fuss was. Among them stood Mirima; I stepped to her.
“Where is my son?” I asked.
“You’re walking again, Zedra dear?” She raised her eyebrows, obviously bewildered. “I heard you’d been hurt in there.”
“I’m fine, just had a little fall. Where is Seluq?”
Mirima’s eyebrows lowered into a limp expression. “My brother took him. You know what he’s been saying. I’m afraid I…” She cleared her throat. “I don’t know what he intends for your child.”
Hearing that was like swallowing a sword covered in flames: my worst fear realized, and not for the first time. I clasped my throbbing forehead and steeled my tightening limbs. While I could send a bunch of eunuchs into slumber, to get my child from Mansur, I’d have to pierce through his armed and armored household guard. And bloodrunes, whilst powerful, were no substitute for armies.
“Do you believe him?” I asked Mirima. “That I’m the worst kind of whore?”
She shook her head. “Of course I don’t believe such vile drivel. I’ve known you to be an honorable woman. I remember how you bled the first night Kyars laid with you, and the precise day and hour the healer deemed you were with child. My sight had not left you in that interval, and you didn’t so much as glance at another man.”
I took her ring-studded hand, which was rougher than I’d expected. “Thank you, sultana. Your faith means so much to me. But I cannot simply endure this while we wait for Kyars to return. I must do all I can to safeguard my son.”
With the eunuchs snoring in the steam chambers, the way out of the harem lay open. But the gate guards outside were Mansur’s, and they wouldn’t let us pass. For that, I had a simpler bloodrune in mind, and it was time to go.
As I walked toward the exit, where I’d told Celene to wait, Mirima called, “Where are you going, dear?”
I turned and said, “I cannot save my son while a prisoner here.” Though I wasn’t sure where I would go.
Mirima picked up her dress and hurried to me. “Don’t be so hasty. You won’t get far alone. I’ll request a carriage, and we’ll ride to the one man who has any chance of saving you and your son.”
“But Kyars is not here,” I said, shaking my head.
“Not Kyars. I speak of the Grand Mufti of the Fount, Khizr Khaz.”
Mirima cleverly dressed Celene and me in teal caftans and veils so we’d resemble her handmaids. Her affection for my son had always resembled my own, and so I didn’t doubt her earnestness. By carriage, we rode to the Shrine of Saint Jamshid, home to both the order of the first saint-king and the Fount of Holy Scholars. Law set down by Tamaz’s father stated only the Fount could order the death of a Seluqal. And as the entire country considered my son to be one, it made Khizr Khaz a powerful ally in this struggle.
The flickering thought of my son crying in the clutches of that devil Mansur filled me with bitter despair. How many of my children had I already watched die? I would not let it happen again, no matter what. Not again, not again, not again. Let the world bleed, the Great Terror remake us all, but my son would not suffer.
And yet, I had a higher purpose than being a mother. My son was the Children. The Padishah of the Final Hour. I had to ensure his future, for everyone’s sake.
The carriage clop-clopped to a stop amid the traffic of Qandbajar’s thoroughfare. A wagon full of metal ingots had spilled onto the lane, so the riders guarding our front had to dismount and help clear it by hand.
“The steam…put them all…to sleep,” Mirima said, shaking her head. “I can scarcely believe it, and yet I saw it with my own eyes. What is this world coming to when servants think themselves entitled to our luxuries?”
After the eunuchs had woken, they’d been embarrassed to find themselves sleeping in the steam chambers. Any excuse they could make, they did. Sorcery, thank Lat, wasn’t one. Not one of my most thought-through plans, surely, but we were out.
Celene stared out the window, seemingly drenched in her thoughts. Perhaps Adonia was dancing upon her mind. We sat acro
ss from Mirima, who clasped her hands and complained about the poor service in the Sand Palace.
“What are the servants like where you come from?” she asked in Sirmian, meaning she was talking to Celene.
But Celene continued staring out the window. I nudged her.
“Oh…my apologies, sultana,” she said. “Where I come from, we don’t have slaves. It is forbidden in our faith for one soul to own another.”
“Surely you must have eunuchs, though,” Mirima said. “Who keeps watch over the women?”
Celene nodded. “Yes, we do have eunuchs, but they are free men, too.”
“And what does free mean, exactly? Can they just abscond from their service, any time they wish?”
Celene twisted her lips, as if perplexed. “Well, no, but they are paid, in the very least.”
“So is every slave in Alanya. What’s the difference?”
“A free man has his pride,” Celene said, her tone lacking confidence.
Mirima sighed bitterly. “A servant with pride — that’s the last thing anyone wants. Pride and service cannot share the same heart. To serve, you must admit you are beneath.”
“I’ve been serving,” Celene said, “and yet, I’m still proud of who I am. Of where I come from.”
Mirima, her back straight and regal, glared into Celene’s downcast eyes. “That’s the problem with you, dear.”
Wisely, Celene let it be. An uncomfortable silence reigned over the remaining ride.
I sipped hope when our carriage halted in front of the large shrine. Mirima still had a gholam escort, which surprised me, and they entered ahead of us. Minutes later, they beckoned us to leave the carriage, then guided us through a myriad of arches. Air seemed to pass so fast here, like there was more than a breeze. We came to a flat-roofed building behind the domed shrine. We stepped through its sunlit hallway, which the gholam had cleared ahead for our arrival, and into a room with a creaky door.
