by Fuad Baloch
For she had been following everyone but herself.
Now, finally, she knew her destiny, her future laid bare. She wasn’t just meant to be the first sultana of the realm, but a new kind of monarch. One who didn’t rule on the basis of land or armies that she commanded, but for the manner in which she ruled over the hearts and minds of her subjects.
One who didn't care what enemies she faced—whether human or djinn or some other Rabb-cursed monstrosity—for her job was to light the flame of resistance within her people.
Only now could she see she had truly not been ready to sit on the Peacock Throne. Had she taken the throne then, it would’ve been as a puppet under her mother’s control. A little girl play-acting at being the absolute ruler of Istan.
Now, though, she was ready. Iron forged into steel by the tests of time and adversity. She was afraid of nothing, would offer any sacrifice, knowing full well she was leaving her people prepared, imbued with courage to defend themselves and their homes.
Her horse neighed, turning his neck this way and that in increasing agitation. She clicked her tongue, pulling back on the reins absentmindedly. Then, she came to a decision. They would send a delegation to the magi, ask them to send a representative, and resurrect the summit they had started at Ghulamia. This time, she would make sure it wasn't a sham.
Nodding, she turned toward Camsh. Had his father also seen the weaknesses in her she was only now seeing? If so, she had been wrong in mistaking Mahdu’s intentions. “Camsh, send—”
Her horse neighed as the men around her gasped. She turned around to face the castle.
“Is that,” Jinan grunted, squinting at the castle, a finger raised toward a figure that was shambling toward them, “Maharis?”
“Maharis?” she muttered, then squinted as well. She couldn’t tell for sure, but the figure moved like a man past eighty summers, leaning heavily on a cane in his right hand.
“Looks like we’ve finally got a representative from the magi,” observed Camsh dryly.
“Traitor,” snarled Inquisitor Aboor.
Nuraya turned her horse around, away from the magical battle raging behind her. “Pitch my tent and bring the magus over when he arrives.”
Nodding, her councilors melted away, leaving Jinan to shout orders. For a long while, she stayed still, watching her men jump off their tired mounts, begin setting up yet another temporary campsite.
She saw Shoki stride toward Camsh, both of them heading for her command tent. He wasn’t a part of her council, wasn’t someone she had asked to attend her meeting with Maharis. But he was—had—been a magus. And whether she liked it or not, it made sense to hear his thoughts as well. Nuraya caught a glimpse of the inquisitor cantering away toward the copse of trees in the distance. She narrowed her eyes. Instead of preparing his case for why the magi should be punished, where was he going?
Shaking her head, she turned her attention back to the peasant rabble that now formed the major part of her army.
She had started something here without even realizing. Had lit a fire that had been raring to go for a long time. She had come to that town as the siphsalar of an aggressor army and had left it with not just the few able-bodied men the town still had, but a sizable number of women, children under the age of fifteen, and men as old as the grand vizier.
Her stomach clenched.
For now, the peasants’ fury sustained them. They had a purpose, and enemies to fight. But how long would it last before they finally realized the harsh reality of long marches and bloody battles?
Maharis bowed deeply as he entered her command tent. “My sultana, it’s a great relief to see no harm befell you!”
Nuraya chuckled, vowing to not let rage guide her words. “Says the man who abandoned me at the first sign of trouble.”
Maharis coughed, his nervous gaze flitting from her to the inquisitor and Shoki in turn. The air within the tent was cool, but still, he dabbed at the beads of perspiration on his forehead. “I never abandoned you, my sultana. The only crime I am guilty of is cowardice. A charge that I’m not proud of but would gladly accept!”
“Sit!” she said, motioning the magus toward a divan.
Again, Maharis looked first at Shoki, standing to her left, then at the inquisitor seated on the opposite end of her tent. Then, nodding, he shuffled over and sat down.
Camsh rose from his divan, clearing his throat. “The purpose of this summit is straightforward. The Sultana, Keeper of the Divide by the grace of Rabb wishes to see peace reign within her realm. And to this extent, she wishes to broker peace between the warring parties of inquisitors and magi.”
The inquisitor scoffed, one hand crumpling the tail of his gray turban. “Peace can only be achieved between peoples of honor. These beings have no honor. Worse, these abominations lack even a soul one might appeal to, resorting to practices as vile as blood magic!”
“Aye,” snarled Jinan, rising as well. In one smooth movement, he withdrew his sword and advanced toward the magus. Shoki stepped forward, holding up his hand as if to ward off the big siphsalar. “There is no talking with these bastards! They made me a monster. They killed Mona. They—”
“Jinan, sit down!” said Nuraya.
“I won’t!” he shouted, turning to face her. A vein throbbed on his forehead, his chest moving like bellows. “And why should I listen to you, anyway? What do you know? It’s because of you that we’re here in this mess in the first place. Mona is dead because of you! Had it not been—”
“You’re a savage I should have put down after what you did at Buzdar,” she said, her eyes narrowed, her voice surprisingly calm and collected. “Yet I let you live. And you turned out alright in the end.”
Jinan blinked, the sword hand beginning to shake. “I—”
“Sit down before you disappoint me even more!” she said, then turned her focus back on the magus.
“Thank you—” Maharis began but Nuraya waved him off.
“Why are you attacking the inquisition castle?” she asked. “Your delegation I met at Ghulamia assured me they wanted to negotiate in good faith to achieve peace for everyone. What changed?”
Movement outside the canvas walls caused her to look up.
“Halt!” shouted someone, followed by half a dozen more.
“What’s happening?” demanded Ranal. “What’s—”
A tall man burst into her tent. Before anyone had had the chance to say anything, Inquisitor Aboor rushed toward the man, standing beside him.
“No!” wailed Maharis, raising a hand.
Nuraya felt her eyes widen as she finally saw the newcomer. An inquisitor dressed in an identical black turban, reaching into his robes to pull out a phial filled with red liquid.
Chapter 32
Shoki
Shoki strode toward the inquisitors.
“Stop, magus!” bellowed the inquisitor clutching the blood phial. “Not one step further or you’ll be responsible for what happens!”
“And what would that be?” asked Nuraya, still seated. Shoki turned his head around to glance at her, surprised by her calm manner.
“This abomination,” said Inquisitor Aboor, pointing a finger at Maharis who was on his knees and whimpering, both hands pressed together, “will be severed from his well.”
“W-what does he mean, huh?” demanded Ranal again. Once more, no one bothered to respond to him. Standing frozen in place, Shoki knew what the inquisitor meant though. They had Maharis’s blood phial. Two inquisitors armed with the blood of a magus were enough to sever him from the source of all jadu. That was what the inquisitor had admitted.
“Maharis,” said the new inquisitor. “Call off your dogs. Ask them to cease their attacks, and subject themselves to us.”
“So you can take their blood?” asked Nuraya.
“Don’t follow through, and you’ll taste divine retribution,” continued the inquisitor.
“Inquisitors,” said Nuraya, her voice no louder than before, but this time carrying a bite
to it. “You will not ignore your sultana, the patron of your order.”
The newcomer spat to the side. “Sultana of what exactly? This sorry mess of women and old men? I wouldn’t even—”
“Enough, Zeb,” growled Inquisitor Aboor. “Don’t let your mouth run off again!”
Muttering to himself, Zeb turned his eyes toward the magus. “We don’t have a lot of time.”
“Time for what?” asked Shoki, taking a tentative step forward.
“Not one step further,” said Zeb. Balancing the phial in one hand, he retrieved a dagger from his robes.
“Please…” whimpered Maharis. “Do not do this! I mean no harm to you. None, whatsoever!”
Shoki raised an accusatory finger at Inquisitor Aboor, the fog finally lifting from his mind. “You’ve been planning this all along, haven’t you? Maharis didn’t run away from us. He ran away from you! And when you finally got word out to the nizam to greet us, you sent another missive, this time warning your friends that it was Maharis who accompanied you. And then, when you saw him reappear here, you rushed off to send word for his blood phial to be brought.”
Still shaking his head, Shoki took another step forward. “You wanted us to come here, to this particular castle.” He stuttered to a stop. “I suspect you lied and do indeed keep blood phials of magi here. A way to ensure you could retrieve what you needed and sever magi from jadu. A honey pot surrounded by elaborate traps. But… tempting as the phials would have been for the magi, that might still not have been enough for them to risk open attack here. Not even for minor artifacts. How would you then have encouraged them to attack this castle, drawing them to a battlefield of your choosing?”
“That’s a good question, indeed,” noted Nuraya.
Realization dawned in Shoki’s chest. All this time as they had been traveling toward the castle, he had been feeling a strange tug at his heart. Drained of jadu as he was, if even he had felt it, what would that have felt like to those magi with recently strengthened connections to their wells? “There are artifacts here. But no ordinary ones. Plenty… and precious enough to ensure you forced the magi to congregate here.”
“Very clever,” said Inquisitor Aboor, nodding appreciatively. “I can see your commander taught you the basic rules of detection well.”
At the sound of a chair being noisily drawn, Shoki turned. Nuraya was now standing, glaring at the inquisitors. “Aboor, you blamed the magi for negotiating in bad faith. Just how honorable are your ways here?”
The inquisitor’s bushy mustache fluttered. “In matters of war—”
“Everything is justified,” completed Shoki, tapping his eye patch. “You know, no one ever taught you what real honor is.” He bared his teeth. “A real shame, that is!”
“Boy, you know nothing—”
“Oh, I do,” said Shoki, taking another step forward. From the corner of his eye, he saw two figures crouch outside the tent. Feeling grateful he’d not trusted the inquisitor, he continued, “More than you realize.”
“Maharis,” said Inquisitor Aboor. “As far as magi go, you’re half-decent. Surely, you can see no good is going to come out of these futile attempts. Get your brethren to surrender to us, and no further harm will come to them.”
“And why would they trust you?” scoffed Shoki. “Your word?”
“You do not know the things I know. Do not let the pious, whimpering act these magi put on, confuse you. You were one of them. You saw how twisted all this can make a man. Do you really want monsters like these to run amok through the realm whilst it faces all these external enemies?”
That gave Shoki pause. He didn’t like what the inquisitors were doing and hated the manner in which Inquisitor Aboor had once more betrayed him, but if he tried, he could almost see what the inquisitor meant.
He had been a magus. And he had brought down the city walls. Maharis had turned Jinan into a monster under his control. The queen had almost single-handedly brought down the Divide that protected their world from the pari folk—whose intentions remained just as unknown now as they had been before.
And even now, the magi, despite knowing full well the expenditure of their wells hastened the demise of the Divide, continued to wield their jadu with little regard for what happened afterward.
Magi—his kind—were beasts forced by their nature to consume. Easier to force a lion to only ever eat grass than to force a magus to willingly give up his well.
Despite how the inquisitors had gone about it, if they could force the magi back to the state where they were regulated by the Kalb, no matter how harsh that treatment might be, that still allowed the future ruler of Istan an opportunity to mediate between them.
But even the inquisitors were blind to what was coming their way. An intuition he couldn’t quite rationalize.
Confused, knowing he was forced to pick a side, Shoki turned his gaze toward Nuraya. She, too, was staring at him, her bright eyes not blinking. Had she been thinking the same thing? Shoki exhaled, suddenly conscious of the vast differences between the two of them. While he was still adrift in the throes of self-doubt, she was a woman who increasingly knew what she wanted and what needed to be done.
Someone who could mediate between the magi and the inquisitors with an iron fist—when she had the chance.
A princess who would make a good sultana.
But would she ever truly realize the terror the magi lived under? How their lives were molded by these inquisitors with little regard for decency? How they first reared up children as beasts, then yelped when they bit back?
“Inquisitors,” said Shoki, turning around before Nuraya could get a word in. “Give me the phial and walk away. If you do intend for us to mediate between you, show us an act of goodwill and send us ambassadors truly empowered to make concessions. The time for that is now!”
“Shoki, you are no one to make concessions on behalf of anyone!” said Nuraya, her voice cold.
The inquisitors exchanged a glance. Maharis continued to whimper on the ground. Camsh, Jinan, and Ranal watched each other, neither of them appearing any more certain than him. Shoki exhaled. So, this was it then.
The time when their inaction forced him to make a choice.
“Inquisitors!” said Shoki, shaking his head, and taking another step forward. He was close. Close enough to reach out and yank the dagger from Inquisitor Zeb’s hands. Unlike Aboor, Zeb was tall but gave no indication of having been a military man. A man who had lorded over the peasants all his life, secure in his sense of superiority over the magi, assured of his place in the established hierarchy. “Give me the phial.”
“Maharis!” said Inquisitor Aboor. “Last chance. Agree to help us, or we will sever you! First of many to follow!”
“Shoki,” drawled Nuraya.
“They will never give themselves up,” wailed Maharis. “Surely, you know that just as well.”
“Inquisitors!” shouted Shoki.
Inquisitor Aboor shrugged, started to turn toward his companion.
Time froze. Shoki squeezed his eye shut.
This was it.
He snapped open his eye and raised his hand. “Now!”
Four things happened at once.
Bright sunlight flooded the room as two figures rushed inside. The inquisitors shouted and turned around. And Shoki reached out for the blood phial, missing out by a whisker as the inquisitor dodged his lunge.
Deraman and Liaman, men Shoki had set to watch for Inquisitor Aboor’s movements after he’d seen him at the plaza, wrestled with the inquisitors. Shoki had been right about Zeb. Though he had been holding the dagger, it proved no deterrent to Liaman who chopped at his hand. Zeb faltered back, the dagger almost slipping from his hand. Snarling, the mercenary smashed head-first into the inquisitor’s stomach. Inquisitor Zeb stepped aside clumsily, failing to fully deflect the attack. He howled as Deraman turned around, facing him once more.
To their left, Liaman roared as Inquisitor Aboor punched him in the gut, then kicked his fee
t out from underneath him.
Ignoring Liaman, Shoki lunged at Inquisitor Zeb again, and this time his fingers finally found the phial.
“No!” shouted Inquisitor Zeb. Inquisitor Aboor turned around, then groaned as Jinan kicked him in the ribs.
No more than a dozen breaths had passed and already the fighting had stopped. Both inquisitors swayed on shaky feet, all fight drained from them. Maharis, too, stood. Nuraya remained quiet. Deraman and Liaman blocked the exit with Jinan beside them.
“That was easier than chopping onions,” said Deraman, thumping Liaman on the back who gritted his teeth. He turned his chin toward Shoki. “These two bastards—pardon my language—are still standing. Not right. Want us to remedy that?”
Shoki shook his head, turning his eye toward the phial. The red blood splashed within. Blood. Something each human possessed a great deal of. But in this case, it was more than that. Not just evidence of a man’s life, but his very life itself.
“Shoki, don’t give the phial to them,” said Maharis. “For all that’s holy, give it to me.”
“And free him from all accountability?” scoffed Inquisitor Aboor. “Boy, in a way, you’ve forced the matter. Give it back to us, and together, we will put down their bloody revolt. Give it to him, and you stand against us until the end of time.”
Shoki inclined his chin. “Do you forget I was the one who reconstituted your order when you had been disbanded?”
“Prove your words then,” said Inquisitor Aboor, extending out a hand.
Time slowed down again.
Shoki had a choice to make here. One he hadn’t wanted to, but now forced to otherwise. No walking away from this. His eye fell on Nuraya. She was glaring at him. Quiet. Thoughtful. Yet he could sense the fury bubbling within. She, too, waited to see how he would cast the die.
“Please…” wailed Maharis.
There were dangers the inquisitors knew nothing about. His best bet was the magi.
