by Zamil Akhtar
I stared at the scimitar’s deathly sharp curve. Perhaps I, too, needed something to cut with.
It took two hours of nauseating, thigh-bruising riding to get to Pashang’s camp. Where else was I to go? Khizr Khaz, though supporting, wasn’t willing to spend his influence to help me. And expelling Mansur consumed his time and thought. But these Jotrids…they seemed oddly bored.
So bored that I found Pashang cutting the hair of his little brother, Tekish, with a heated blade outside an enormous, palatial yurt. I watched them from afar; he seemed enamored with the task, slicing hairs as if sculpting a statue. He would even pause and rub his beard, as if pondering his cuts.
The Pashang I saw seemed at odds with what I imagined and remembered. A rough boy, who punched first, with thick hands that broke what they touched. He’d become khagan of the Jotrids by killing seven claimants, each sadistically, if the stories were to be believed.
And yet, now he held that heated blade with slender hands. His cuts seemed considered. As I trotted near, he looked up and gave me an acknowledging nod, then resumed making deft cuts to Tekish’s mop-like head.
A line of warriors sat on a log, waiting their turn. Some munched on seeds, others rolled bones, a crude version of dice. Was Pashang going to sculpt them all such considered styles?
“You could use a haircut,” he said with a familiar wryness, “though, the women here are often stunned — in awe or anger — when I’m through with them.”
“Want to do something useful, Pashang?”
“Not really. I’m enjoying this sojourn. Though I know it won’t last.”
I jumped off my horse and let it go where it may. This was its home, after all.
“Can I talk to you in confidence?” I asked as he made cuts.
He gestured his head toward the palatial yurt. Alanyan-style dancing lions patterned its entire width. “Wait in there.”
I pushed through the flap. Inside was an auditorium of sorts. A dais sat at the center, bereft of any chair, and around it, cushioned floor seats laid out in concentric circles. On the far side, a dozen men holding quills clustered behind low tables. Upon my entrance, they hushed their buzzing conversation. This Jotrid gathering yurt didn’t resemble that of the Sylgiz; most things here were of an Alanyan style. They used less bone and more wood. Their carpets were silky with flowing patterns, whereas ours were rougher and geometric. No wonder my brother had defeated the Jotrids thrice: they’d grown soft, they’d grown Alanyan. It was easy to prey upon helpless rebels, but I doubted they could overcome Kyars’ richly provisioned, heavily armored gholam.
I settled on a cushion near the dais. Five minutes later, I was lying down from a crushing heaviness and staring at the open spot in the yurt’s center. Daytime stars flickered on my vision like phantoms. My sluggish, sweaty limbs cried for rest and sleep, and so I gave in, despite the discomfort of being surrounded by strangers in a Jotrid yurt and Eshe’s cry as a Philosopher hit him bloody ringing through my mind.
When I awoke, I wiped the slobber from my chin and sat straight. Khagan Pashang was next to me, scribbling on a parchment with a golden quill.
“You look healthier,” he said. “Not quite radiant, but getting there.”
“I don’t feel any better.”
“Oh? I hope your Himyarite companion is taking good care of you. Where is he, anyway?”
“That’s why I’m here. The Philosophers took him.” I breathed deep and could barely believe what I was about to say. “Pashang, I need your help to save him.”
He set down his quill and parchment, giving me full attention. “Philosophers?”
I nodded. “They took him to the Tower, and when the Philosophers take someone, it doesn’t end well. What hope do I have of getting him back, all alone? I need your help.”
“You want me to storm the Tower?” He hunched his shoulders. “The gholam won’t let us within a thousand feet of Qandbajar’s wall. How am I supposed to help?”
As I stared at his manicured, sand-brown beard, I wondered what the hell Pashang’s plan was. Khizr Khaz had made plain that the Order was about to move on Mansur, and yet Mansur’s most powerful ally remained so distant and detached. Just what was going on?
“You said something to me,” I inched closer to him, “last we spoke. Something about stars and a gift.” I wasn’t about to tell him I was seeing stars, nor that I grew a fresh eye, but had to extract what he knew. “What did you mean?”
Pashang folded his arms. “That’s the question, isn’t it?” He reached for my bandage.
I grabbed his wrist. “What are you doing?”
“Let me see it.”
“See what?”
His smile poisoned me. “I know what’s hiding there, Cyra. I saved you from the snowstorm, remember? And not just that. It wasn’t my first time in the Palace of Bones. I guided you through the stars and saw the gift you left with.”
I shuddered as memories stormed my mind: Pashang dragging me through a tide of whirling rocks and flaming comets toward a white tear amid endless black. “What is the Palace of Bones?”
“A fate worse than death,” Pashang said, his expression plain. “And a new beginning, for us both.”
“I don’t understand,” I shook my head. “I…”
He closed the distance, his dry breaths on my face. “I’ve never told this to anyone, but I’m going to tell you. I was lost in the deepest part of the Endless — the Red — for more than a year. Day and night, the sky never changes — puffed with bruised and bloody clouds. I found the Palace of Bones there. I went inside. And I, too, left with a gift.”
“What gift?”
I winced when he took my hand, but still, I let him.
“The gift of a new path.” His smile stretched. “One I walked alone. Until you. And visions…three visions, to be precise. We are in the midst of the second one — it began when I dragged you from the Palace of Bones, and it ends tonight. But my gift is nothing compared to yours. You, Cyra, are a starwriter.”
I shook my head, perplexed. “The hell is a starwriter…and why is it worse than dying?”
“A starwriter, with a flick of her fingers, can bring a city to heel.” His laugh was so guttural, the one familiar thing from his boyhood. “As for why it’s worse than death…I suppose you’ll find out.”
Too much to understand and too little time.
“I just want to get my friend back, Pashang. If you can’t help me, I’m leaving. And may we never see each other again.”
“You can leave. You seem to think I’m here to hinder you, but for me…” He clasped his hands. “Only one thing matters.”
I stopped myself from standing up. “One thing?”
“Getting my horde into the city. If only you could help me, somehow.”
Oh Lat, that I couldn’t do. If I counted Khizr Khaz as my ally, how could I help his enemy?
“Why? So you can back up Mansur? I won’t aid in his power grab. He’s trying to steal my husband’s throne!”
Pashang chuckled. “Do you really think Kyars will honor a marriage with the girl who murdered his father? And, you know, they say Ahriyya has eyes of all black.” He sighed, sharp and deep. “Insensitive of me, but I ought to state what is plain.”
“I didn’t kill Tamaz. I’m going to bring the truth to light. Kyars is a fair man. He’ll see it.”
“You didn’t kill Tamaz?” Pashang glared at me, eyebrows zagged in obvious confusion. “Then…who did?”
Seemed he didn’t know everything. “A sorcerer! A soulshifter who used my body!” I hushed, wary of the others on the far side of the yurt. “Has no one told you?”
“Soulshifter?” His jaw dropped, revealing worn, chalky teeth. “She’s here, in Qandbajar, now?”
“She? You know something?”
Pashang looked up, as if into his own mind. “I saw her in my third vision. But she was…at least a hundred years old…her face as dry and cracked as tree bark.” He shook his head as if shaking away the vision.
“She’s on our path, Cyra. A broken branch blocking the road to Paradise.”
“Paradise? Must I repeat what you said? ‘A fate worse than death.’” I suppressed a shudder. “Regardless, I’m going to save Eshe. And then I’m going to expose her, and then Kyars will know the truth.”
“Yes-yes.” Pashang grunted with annoyance. “It’s like a litany for you. I wish I could see my purpose so clearly. If we could get into the city, I’d help you with all of it. Not next week, not tomorrow — this moment.”
To my weary soul and body, such words were the sweet, uplifting beat of a tambourine. White-garbed men walked by toward the low desks on the far side, humming in conversation. After they’d passed, I said, “But how can we possibly get you into the city?”
“So you agree that we help each other?” he asked, eyes pleading.
If he could save Eshe and aid in exposing the soulshifter, then perhaps it was worth it. But could I trust the man who’d kidnapped and sold me? Who pulled me from my mother’s arms?
“What if you’re lying? What if you get inside, and then you run to Mansur?”
No, how could I?
I stood, content to leave and abandon all thought of getting help from such an awful creature.
Pashang got to his feet and grabbed my hand. A shock passed between us — lightning in our veins. In a breath, I felt hot and cold, numb and awakened, frozen and on fire. The stars flashed in every direction, and as they orbited through my vision, they hymned like a breeze on my ears. With my other hand, I reached out and touched one; the star began to spin, and so I drew a line from it to another star. The line pulled them together, as if through a taut string, and then they danced around each other.
A scathing ache raged through my skull; I plunged, knees first, onto a cushion, clasping my forehead. Pashang held me, then laid my head on a pillow.
“What the fuck — what was that?” I said.
“I saw…a star. Did you see it, too?”
“I saw more than a star. Ugh, it hurts.” As if horses with iron hooves trampled my head.
“What if…this is the key?”
“Key?” I blinked until the stars disappeared, though the headache only intensified.
Pashang pulled my bandage off. I was in so much pain, I let him. He didn’t seem bothered by the freakishness of my black-on-black eye. With the cloth off, the stars spun around me once more, and only shutting my eye would put out their twinkling.
“The key to the city,” he said. “I’ve been praying for a way in, because one thing is certain — we’re attacking the wall tonight.” He spread out his arms. “The lack of readiness, of appetite you see among us — it’s a ruse. Meant to put the gholam at ease.”
“What? Why?”
“You were right about me, Cyra. I do intend to help Mansur. But I can’t let them know it until the moment we strike. So…tonight…you’re going to watch us attack the walls, you’re going to watch us try to get over them, and — unless you can align those stars in our favor — you’re going to watch us die.”
Like the Sylgiz or any respectable Waste tribe, the Jotrids were able to form up fast. Within hours, Khagan Pashang had thousands of riders hurrying to join the battle lines stretched across the landscape. I peeked out the yurt’s flap to see them fletching arrows, packing their steeds, testing matchlocks, and sharpening steel. Weary, I lied down and listened as they barked orders, dictated their last wills and letters to their loved ones, and sang throaty songs that inspired men to kill and die.
I got no rest hearing all that. Sunset came, and I sweat all over my pallet and sheets, so much that I hated my smell. When I sniffed my shoulder, the stench of a damp horse assaulted my nose. And it was everywhere.
Horse girl the concubines would call me when I arrived in the harem eight years ago. Although many hailed from the Waste, their tribes had been pacified, unlike the Sylgiz. So I truly was an odd thing.
While I could cover that up with glossy brocade, a fashionable hairstyle, and Alanyan manners, my accent was harder to shed. “You speak Paramic as if a horse is neighing,” someone once told me. I kept trying to speak like the others, like a proper Alanyan woman, but that only made it worse. A sad attempt is worse than no attempt, and trying so hard, everything out of my mouth sounded so falsely stretched. “Now you speak like a cow is yawning,” they would jest. So, for months, I barely spoke.
Tamaz noticed my silence, though. Once he’d pried the reason out of me, he assigned me a teacher, and for half a year, four hours a day, I practiced speaking a language I already knew with an accent that seemed impossible. The teacher had these special methods; she would make me sing, recite these tongue-tiring poems, and even instruct where I ought to settle my tongue for each word.
And it worked. All I needed was someone to tell me the right things to do, and I could follow. Sometimes all we lack is a little knowledge, some light to illuminate the path. The way I look and sound now, no one would guess that I lived my first fifteen years in the Waste with a tribe of horse warriors. I’m as Alanyan as it gets — for better or worse.
Pashang entered while I was on my side, itching my sweaty scalp.
“It’s time.” The man wore mirror armor inscribed with saintly verses and knotted with metals in six different colors. The Philosopher who tutored me once remarked that the mirrors on such armor were as useless as the inscribed verses — a ward for superstitions, particularly the evil eye. But if words written with blood could have power, and if I could touch stars with my fingers, then why not armor made of mirrors?
As Pashang held out his hand, I saw my sorry self in its reflection.
“I look like a yak took a shit.”
“A little excitement’s all you need.” Pashang chuckled. How was he so jovial?
With a heave on my throbbing muscles, I sat up. “You’re really going to throw yourselves at that high, gholam-filled, double-layered wall…for Mansur?”
Pashang shook his head. “For what Mansur promised — heaps of treasure and river-fed land.”
“I’d say you already have enough, but a wiser fellow once told me that riches and power make a man more ambitious, not less.”
“It’s not about what I want. The Jotrids, as you know, are more of a…confederation of tribes. Our lands once spanned from Merva to the Vogras.” He sighed. “Then your brother took half. If not for Mansur’s golden embrace, I’d be a bloated corpse at the bottom of the river. And if I don’t continue to provide for those above and below me, I may yet be.”
I almost retched upon imagining a bloated corpse. “You know what I think? You’re too at ease to be guided by fear.”
“Because I’ve seen this day — I know how it ends.”
“Tell me, then. Because I’m…afraid.”
He looked away, as if hiding something. “You need to be.”
His expression reminded me of when he and Cihan shaved a crude Sylgiz word onto a camel’s side and then pretended it wasn’t them. But far gone was that innocent time. I knew, in my soul, that we were invoking something we shouldn’t. Everything about the Palace of Bones, about that giant, snake-limbed creature who guarded it, and even swimming with the stars — these were not things on the path of a faithful Latian. The straight path. And yet, when had the straight path worked for me? What had it gotten me, except maimed and left for dead, my hopes drowned in a deluge?
I grabbed Pashang’s hand; he pulled me up into his chest. His armor emanated a coolness, and I let it relieve the boiling between my bones. For a moment…until I felt disgusted at his touch and pushed away before it got too awkward.
I followed him outside to a breezeless evening sky. The crescent moon hung high and cast everything in a milky tone. A thorny disgust pooled in my throat upon seeing these Jotrids lined up on their steeds, backs straight, bone bows hugging their shoulders. The Jotrid sea filled the grass plain by the Vogras River and extended into the bushy scrub and even the desert with its dunes. They were the enemy of the Sylgiz — my enemy —
and yet, I let Pashang escort me into a carriage. To my surprise, he sat with me.
“Shouldn’t you be in the vanguard?” I asked as I settled on a pillow and covered myself in the horsehide blanket I’d brought.
Pashang sat across from me, facing away from the direction of travel. “Tekish is leading.”
“I neglected to bathe today,” I said. “And now…I’m sweating like a glass blower.”
He leaned over and sniffed me, then sat back, his face plain.
“Don’t do that,” I said. “It’s not endearing.” I huffed. “Might as well tell me — do I smell like a damp horse?”
He shook his head. “You smell…but they don’t call it sweating sickness for naught, so what’s the matter? You weren’t so self-shamed as a child.”
“You don’t know what it’s like...being so uncomfortable in your own skin. Stuck between two worlds, neither this nor that.”
“Do the sultanas in the harem sweat musk and ambergris?” he said with a restrained bitterness. “Fuck the Seluqals. I saw Kyars, once. If that shit wasn’t born a prince, he’d be an underthings sniffer.”
I chuckled with less restraint. “And you lived your adult life serving such people. What does that tell you about the way of things? You’ve got your horde, but long gone are the days when Seluq conquered the east with arrows. You’ll be up against gholam guns — and I’ve heard they fire very fast, now. They’ll throw bombs and launch rockets from the wall, and your horses will scatter in fear. That’s why we live free in the Waste or die in Alanya as servants of these…underthings sniffers.”
The carriage started rolling. The smooth, canal-fed grassland made it a bearable ride, even in my abject and pained state.
Pashang must have felt the sting of my words; he sat in silence, staring out the grated window.
“You’re not wrong,” he said. “Sometimes I want to turn it all on its head. But…it’s like you said — gone are the days when some khagan from the Waste could subdue the world. Unless…”
“Unless?”
He smiled with a fire’s warmth. “I once listened to two Philosophers argue about fate. The first said there was no such thing — that we, each, choose our paths. The second said we were like ants crawling on a fine Abistran carpet, deciding our way but ignorant of the wondrous pattern already laid out. If only we could see it from a bird’s eye, then we would know…but if we could see from a bird’s eye, we wouldn’t be ants anymore, would we?”
