Daughter of the Salt King

by A. S. Thornton

  Where had these men come from? If these strangers were to challenge my father and win, we would have a new leader, a new king. I was uneasy, and so, too was my family and the villagers surrounding us. I could feel it in the silence that pervaded the tent, the uneasiness of the people who stood watching, shifting from foot to foot.

  The foreign men dismounted from their horses. They took their time settling and tying up their steeds. A few of their men began to remove the tack. So, they planned on a long stay. Wearing the same tunics and headscarves, none stood out as their champion. I felt foolish as we stood and watched the men unhurriedly go about their chores.

  When the men had all assembled before the entrance of the tent, a man walked up from the rear of the group. Grasped firmly in his hand was a long wooden pole with a bright blue flag attached to its end, flapping toward the ground. I stilled when I saw the golden details—a flower opened for its crescent moon. My hand flew to my mouth.

  So the Dalmur had come again, after all. They had decided to challenge my father officially, surely to win his jinni. Sons, why now? Masira had been flawed in her plan—failing to tell these traveling men that their king was already returned.

  I brought my hand up to my forehead. Had I caused this?

  If the challenger won, giving me freedom from the Salt King as I wished, what would they do when they did not find the jinni here? I edged away from Tavi and tunneled through the people until I stood at the edge of the ring we had made around my father and his challengers. I could to run out, explain that they would not find what they were looking for, that he was gone. Tell them to return home because Saalim was there waiting for them, that their palace and homes would be waiting for them, too.

  I tightly closed my eyes, pressing my fingers to my temple. What was I thinking? They would never believe me—I was no one. They wouldn’t believe any of us. If they learned there was no jinni to be found, these foreign men might kill us all unless the Dalmur hidden amongst us could convince them otherwise.

  “Which of you comes to challenge me?” the King bellowed. “I will not be kept waiting as you delay, fussing with your pets. You are lucky my men have not slain you on the spot for the atrocities your people have committed against mine—a respect not given to my people. It is honor that keeps me standing before you now. Something you know little of.” He strode up to the men, babbling about integrity and bravery, his guards flanking him heavily. The King readied his scimitar, holding it low at his hip.

  One of the men approached my father alone. He wore dark blue and black, and carried a long straight sword at his side. The King’s guards stood erect as the foreigner stepped toward them, their own scimitars ready in their palms. I could not make out the words, only the rumble of men’s voices.

  I was so focused on the intruders, I had not realized how many more villagers had arrived at the tent, their whispers an incessant hiss behind me. The warmth in the tent climbed as the bodies crammed in. Beaded sweat fell down to my neck, my legs, my arms.

  Finally, the King stepped away from the man, his guards at his heels.

  “Clear more space!” the guards bellowed at us, and quickly we stepped away, creating a large oval where none but the King, his soldiers, and the foreign men stood. The villagers were packed together now, and I felt people pressed against my back at all sides.

  As the white-clad soldiers separated from those in black, my father laughed as though great fun were to be had.

  Small children clinging to their mothers looked up in confusion, wondering why they heard laughter when there was so much fear.

  The King turned to his audience. I fell back with the crowd, hoping he would not see me. “My people! Thank you for your unwavering support, your loyalty. It has been years since anyone has threatened our village, challenged my throne. Few have been so foolish! But not these people.” He cackled at the men clustered together watching his speech without any indication that they were affected by his words.

  “Finally, they challenge us like honor demands. No more of their futile, subversive attempts at my life. Today we will be victorious.” He said calmly to his audience, a wicked smile stretching across his greasy, jaundiced face.

  The villagers shrieked their approval, startling me as I watched with breath held.

  How could he stand so confidently without the jinni at his side? He did not really think he could out fight the challenger? I shifted my gaze from my gloating father to the eerily calm men who watched him.

  “From the barren desert, I have created a kingdom that rivals those of legend! I have spread my seed across the desert, and my power has grown. And you, my beloved people, have stayed by my side, trusting in my strength. Believing in the safety I have provided, in the strength of my army. Your army.” His arms were stretched wide as he made drunken circles through the sand. “Born from the sands of the desert, I am the strongest king who has ever lived. In the light of Eiqab’s sun, I will never fail you.”

  The people roared their approval. On my toes, I turned to peer behind me. Dozens more villagers had arrived. I was shocked that so many could fit within the tent. The bodies were crushed together, and I clasped my bag tightly as the people pushed closer to their king, pushed at my back, shouting his name in exultation.

  “Salt King! Salt King! Salt King!” Their heaving chests pressed against me, their voices loud in my ear.

  I held my bag at my chest, clutching Saalim’s things tightly. I glanced at my sisters and my father’s wives not far behind me. Did they feel the same fear? Most stood wordlessly, dread in their eyes. Only a few had joined in the frenzied chanting of the villagers.

  The King gestured for silence. “Let’s end this dallying and get on with it.” My father spoke to the crowd, bowing his head subtly, the people hushing their voices one by one to hear his words. Somewhere, a baby cried. The Salt King asked the challenger, “What say you to my people?”

  This was the opportunity for the challenger to convince the people that he would be a worthy ruler should my father fall. After his speech, my father and his opponent would release their birds to Masira. Their final sacrifice before battle.

  The man spoke to the King, and his words were sharp, vicious. “I am not here to convince your people of anything. I don’t care to own this settlement, your people. You have stolen from me, and I am here to take back what is mine.”

  Gasps emerged from the crowd. The King laughed to himself, waving a hand at the challenger. “On to the birds then. I wish for a rapid victory against this man!” The Salt King said these words carefully, turning toward his adversary. These words were something different, something that his audience did not understand. To them, it was a simple hope. But not to me. I heard it for what it was. It was a desire. A wish.

  My mouth fell open.

  He does not know. How can he not realize he doesn’t have the vessel?

  He indeed must have been lying with his wives when he learned of the challenger. He dressed in a rush, assuming the jinni’s vessel was still attached to his hip, the jinni still waiting outside his sleeping quarters.

  But it wasn’t, and the jinni was gone forever. But how did the King even remember the jinni? Shouldn’t Masira have erased Saalim from his memories? Maybe Saalim wasn’t gone after all. Hope took flight like a broken-winged bird. The cold cuffs and empty vessel dug their hardness into my skin, and I knew I was being ridiculous.

  My father stood, chin jutted forward with the ignorant confidence of a child. He had cast his wish, like always. He did not have to wonder if it would be fulfilled. It always was. His jinni was always there.

  Of course he wished for his victory. He was an ill, weak man who could never defend the throne on his own. Without Saalim, he was nothing.

  I bit my lip to keep from laughing aloud, humor emerging from the sea of hysteria. Eiqab help us all for what we are about to witness.

  I looked behind me, seeking an exit. Could I still escape? I could run from the tent and hide before my village fell to t
hese wild men who furiously destroyed everything in their hunt for the jinni they would not find on the Salt King. People were crushed together, hopelessly close from where I stood at the edge of the oval all the way to the tent’s exit. I could see people had even gathered outside. There would be no fleeing.

  The Salt King stepped toward his challenger, the faceless, nameless man. He explained the ceremony of the birds, spitting the words at the challenger while we all leaned in, desperate to hear this meeting of light and dark. It struck me then—surely, I was watching my father’s last moments.

  I hated the King and the court he created. I hated everything he believed in and fought for. But he was my father. I remembered what Saalim told me of his beginning, that he was not always an evil man. He stood before the challenger so confidently, so foolishly. Tears filled my eyes as I understood that I would lose him that day. I would be someone’s child no longer. And it was something I had done to myself. If I hadn’t made the wish . . . if Saalim hadn’t been freed . . .

  But then I thought of my mother, of my sisters, of my villagers, of the desert, of the Dalmur. All harmed—or killed—because of my father’s greediness, his need to put his possession of the jinni over everything else. We had all been dealt hands by Masira at birth. Some may have had it worse than others, having to do more to get less. But one could not judge a person by the hand they were dealt, only by how they played it.

  My father had become a monster from the choices he made. He was a cruel man who had doled out his savagery willingly. He warranted no sympathy of mine.

  He deserved the fate Masira devised for him.

  Chapter Thirty

  The King spat on the ground at the challenger’s feet and turned away. “Nassar! Bring the bird!” The King commanded. His gold-topped head swiveled back and forth, searching for his vizier. “Nassar!” he tried again.

  The challenger’s men stirred, many eyeing one man among their ranks curiously before looking to the King again.

  The King waited then stormed to his guards.

  “Your highness,” a man stepped forward clutching a small wooden cage, ignoring the King’s blunder. “I am here, I have it.” The man held the cage forward, revealing the agitated quail inside its walls.

  “Who are you?” The King spat. “Where is Nassar?”

  The man was taller than my father, but he looked very small as he bowed his head forward. “I am your vizier? Ah—Ahmed?” He said sounding as confused as my father.

  “Nassar, do you know this man?” The challenger said to one of his men. There was a mockery in his tone, a simmering violence behind each of his words. I was chilled despite the suffocating heat.

  A small man stepped forward and went to the challenger. When he turned in my direction, I gasped aloud.

  But I was the only one.

  “No, sir, I do not.” It was Nassar, the King’s vizier, wearing the enemy’s clothes, covered in dust like all the rest as if he, too, had ridden into the village on an enemy horse, his loyalty pledged to another. Aside from my own confusion there was no reason to believe it a charade.

  The King saw it, too. “Nassar?” he boomed, furious. “Eiqab’s fury! What pathetic act is this? You will be sent to death for this treason!” The King backed several steps away from the challenger, from his vizier, outraged. None of the King’s guard went to him, none offered their support.

  None but Ahmed, who seemed desperate to rein in his King’s madness. “Shall you release the bird now?”

  The spectators murmured to each other, confused by the turn of events. The people looked at their king, looked to the man named Nassar as if they’d never seen him in all their lives. The guards dithered beside my father, unsure of what to do. Villagers and guards alike all nodded their heads at Ahmed’s suggestion, eyes wide. Sons, let us move this shameful spectacle along.

  My hand shook as I pressed it to my chest, disbelieving what I saw. None knew who Nassar was. It was like he had never existed.

  They were not confused by the blatant rebellion of Nassar as I was, because they did not know him. In this new reality, in this world where Saalim did not exist as a jinni, Nassar was not a part of the King’s most trusted men.

  My mind spun. What was Nassar doing with them? Why, in this changed world, would he be loyal to them? I ran through my memories of him. How he came to the village, how quickly he ascended to the role of vizier. His sycophantic behavior as the King’s second in those early days, compared with how he had acted in the recent past, so incongruous with the malevolence I had come to expect from him.

  Was Nassar the missing piece? Was he the reason the Dalmur knew of the jinni? It had to be. It had to have been him all along. My fingers clasped the metal through my bag as I realized Nassar was never loyal to the Salt King. He was always loyal to the people of Madinat Almulihi, to the Dalmur.

  Nassar, like the others, was searching for his lost king, his better desert.

  The attacks, the poisoning, the undermining of the Salt King’s sense of security . . . it all began with Nassar.

  Rumors of the King’s impossible wealth and sudden termination of his nomadic ways surely had drawn the attention of those legend-seeking people. Nassar’s unknown history, his arrival on camelback alone all those years ago. My mind whirled. He must have been a spy for the Dalmur to learn if the King had called on magic to obtain his power. Had they spies in settlements all over the desert?

  Once he became the King’s vizier, surely he had seen the immense piles of salt, the King’s impossible, unflagging strength, heard tales of his improbable feats. Did he glimpse the jinni? Or did he just see the same golden cuffs on different slaves and soldiers? Either way, Nassar—at least the Nassar I had known—must have come to find the jinni, and he found him. And once he was sure, he had summoned an army of navy and gold to come fetch their prize.

  After all, was it not Nassar who was responsible for meeting the runners and messengers, approving or denying their entrance to our home? Matin had been only the beginning. I remembered how Nassar had led the man into the throne room. How he had seemed so oblivious to Matin’s agitation. Of course, it was all an act. He was leading the predator right to its prey.

  Then why hadn’t Nassar simply stolen the jinni when he learned of Saalim so long ago? I considered my father and his obsession with the vessel. That it was always to be found in the palm of his hand or fastened to his waist. It was a mere accident that he had left it behind when Matin attacked, the suddenness of it all causing him to forget himself. His beloved vessel, lost amongst the fray. There had been no attack since the last challenger to the throne ten years prior. Of course the King was caught unaware, careless. Otherwise, he was never without it. There was no way Nassar could have stolen it short of stealing it off the King’s own body, which he never could have done with sentries standing guard around him. He could not have killed the King, either. Not with the jinni who was commanded by a wish always to protect his master from death.

  Nassar could not have taken the jinni by himself. He needed the help of others. Matin, the Dalmur. But really, he needed Saalim.

  Only I could do it, because I had jinni’s magic at my fingertips.

  My mind raced through the last few moons, when Nassar’s harshness toward me whittled away to something akin to benign neglect.

  What changed? I tore away at my web of memories, trying to understand. I bit my lip, eyes shut tight, rubbing my forehead, tearing, tearing, tearing . . . My hand dropped to my side. I looked up.

  He had known this whole time.

  Nassar knew I was meeting with Saalim. He must have suspected it after I had arrived back in the palace from the oasis, when he heard me speaking with a man but found me impossibly alone. But, of course, he was not yet convinced. No. Not until he saw me speak with the slave who wore Saalim’s golden manacles at the courting or until he saw me fling an unfeasible amount of salt into the chest of the guard as I fled my home in search of Firoz. The day he had been standing with the healer
.

  Surely, too, the healer had told Nassar a king’s daughter was the woman they sought—the woman bearing the jinni’s mark. So then, they just needed to wait. They placed their hope in me, trusting I could do it.

  And I did.

  But, what about this Nassar? Why was he here now, with these men? Why didn’t they know?

  “Bring me Anisa,” the challenger called. A man from outside walked in with an enormous golden eagle on his forearm. Whispers traveled through the crowd. Eagles were not easily manned. And to have traveled such a distance showed a well-trained bird and an expert falconer.

  The challenger took the eagle’s jesses from the man and coaxed her over until she stood on his arm. He slowly removed her hood, speaking softly to her.

  Ahmed handed my father the caged quail. “Whenever you are ready to release, your highness.”

  My father’s face was pinched, lips pursed as he looked from the golden eagle to his quail. He opened the cage and shoved his hand in, grasping the frightened bird. He held the weightless creature to his mouth and closed his eyes, murmuring his words for Masira.

  The challenger continued to whisper to Anisa as he carefully untied her jesses.

  “Go to the goddess,” my father called, throwing the quail above him. It fluttered its wings, panicking at the enclosed space, flying in jerks and spasms above the crowd, who yelped when the bird came too close. We waited for the quail to find its way out and carry the King’s message to the sky. But it was frightened by the people and the confinement. So instead, it made tight, panicked circles above the King.

  “Go to the goddess,” the challenger said, and the eagle stretched her wings, and flapped them once, twice, then rose from the man’s arm. She was not alarmed by the enclosed space, at the spectators who screamed and ducked when she neared them. She knew her exit. Hovering above the crowd, she glided to the opposite side of the tent, gaining speed, then circled around. We all watched the predator with wonder, and I held my breath as I watched to see her fly out into the day, into the sky.