I lean my back against the wall, legs trembling. If I do not warn the Zahrs about this infiltration, then an invasion into our eastern and northern prefectures would finish any stronghold we have left. I must warn them – the only leverage for my clan.
But I’d have no choice except to defect from Za’skar as soon as I am on this assignment.To home. But resisting that comfort is a cruel truth. My mind darts to my trifecta, and then to the pazktab students, wondering what they will think when they learn of my true nature – that I used and discarded them.
My chest clenches before cold hands grip my shoulder, No-Name frowning. ‘You cannot have doubts now, not after your sacrifices.’
I clutch my conviction closely.You owe this city nothing.
The officer finishes by holding up a thumb-sized pouch. ‘Powdered azhdahak poison. One lick and you die in the event of capture.’ I cannot mention that I am immune to it.
As the assigned warriors depart, I catch sight of Scholar Mufasa outside the chambers, holding a stack of scrolls near a leathery map decorating the sandstone corridor.
It’s of the Camel Road, heavily marked with cuneiforms of traded goods. Silver and glasswork, pistachio and sesame, silk, and steppe-camels, in pictorial drawings along the inked thoroughfare.
My thumb rubs against the dark lines of Sajamistan’s borders, stark, unyielding. If any calligrapher attempted to blot it from existence, they would find the task impossible.
Scholar Mufasa scrunches his forehead. ‘Usur-Khan.’
‘Peace of death,’ I greet.
The scholar follows my gaze to the map. ‘You embark on your first military assignment, so study this map well. It reveals Azadniabad’s constant weakness: its peripheries. Holding on to the Camel Road is the adhesive binding their economy together.’
I stare at Yalon, but on the leather, it’s a province of Sajamistan. Once, it was the Zahr winter capital. ‘It could also be lies. Maps seem to be very different interpretations of a story.’
He chuckles. ‘Maps show that an empire-state’s true borders represent an end to expansion. Azadniabad dares call itself sovereign, with no provinces and hardly any unified governors. But a true state has no need to war within itself. Isn’t that how Akashun came to power, from infighting warlords?’
Conflicts that Sajamistan stoked, I almost hiss. But a small begrudging part of me acknowledges the sense. Sajamistan inks arbitrary lines upon a map, allocates their sovereignty and names it for themselves. Borders are spaces, they are barriers on maps. People do not know they live in cages, yet each day, by pen and paper, they choose them willingly. The entire notion confuses me, but if it’s so wrong, why is Sajamistan superior in every way to Azadniabad? Perhaps Azadniabad should do this too.
‘What is the point of this, scholar?’
His gaze turns melancholy. ‘To open your eyes. You have one foot in Azadniabad, and another in Sajamistan. Both empires war over the borderlands of the Camel Road but Sajamistan has Za’skar, this is our epicentre. For Azadniabad, it’s their tributaries in the Camel Road. You know this; you are from Tezmi’a. The vassals and warlords are a tower of hastily stacked mud bricks; snatch one from the bottom and the entire structure crumbles. Worse though for Azadniabad, the borderlands are ungovernable and the nomadic tribes are warmongers,’ he chides, as if the notion of self-rule for the steppe-lands is a foolish idea. I flinch.
My hand strokes the leather like it’s an intricate puzzle. I only wish I could reach from the Heavens above and switch the pieces of the map. As if I could play Divine.
I am assigned to prepare with Adel – a Seventh-Slash warrior in the Alif, an elite odd-numbered circle under the Sepahbad – for the military assignment. It feels like an intentional decision from the seniors.
My first interaction with Alif Adel is not what I expect. When he steps into the briefing chamber filled with the assigned soldiers, I bow low.
To my bewilderment, he grabs my hands. ‘After your performance in the Marka, I announced to the clanhouses that one day I would marry you.’
I baulk, ‘W-what?’ before remembering he is a senior, and keep my head inclined. Adel appears the same age as Yabghu, in his late twenties. His features could be mistaken as familiar, for he has a face that could be shared by any apprentice in a bazaar – with eager brown eyes, a smarting of black stubble around his jaw, and embroidered muslin strewn around his tall, lithe form.
‘Of course, I have a wife. And a very young child. But—’
I glance helplessly behind him at Officer Samira and she rolls her eyes.
‘– a shame, really. Your fish-in-the-net tactic; the mobile barrage; the use of young students to make your opponents’ wills falter – tell me, whose brilliant idea was it to use that child’s piss? After all, the best tactics are the cowardly ones.’
‘My idea,’ I say in a small voice. ‘At least one warrior thinks my Marka win was not mortifying.’
‘Mortifying? Who spoke like so?’ He glances about, and no one answers.
I clear my throat and we begin. For the next few evenings after classes, I attend a phonetic halqa, practising the Ghaznian dialect again. The language is rough in its grammatical structure, with four noun cases. Outside, in the White-Pillar, Alif Adel and I practise our false identities. I morph from Khamilla Usur-Khan to Leila Mahsahzad, an orphan raised in a Ghaznian monastery to mine in the northern borderlands. We review signals, flicking our fingers or blinking in numbered sets; we create written codes for short reports to be relayed to another informant, who will convey the message back to the Ghaznian outpost.
Afterwards, when Alif Adel bids me farewell, he goes to the intelligence chambers to meet the Sepahbad and his advisers. The Sepahbad’s triple-pointed bone-pendant flashes in his hands. I realise it’s not a pendant at all but the same seal belonging to the vizier, used to enter his intelligence chambers.
An idea forms in my head. If I am to defect soon, this might be my only chance.
‘You are taking on a great risk,’ No-Name says, scowling. ‘Why risk infiltrating the Sepahbad’s intelligence chambers?’
