Or had she lacked the bravery to speak the words, to invoke their power? Words are a profound burden, and for the storyteller, words burn and reshape old truths into new truths. Words change reality. She could not ignore hers.
This knowledge carries me onward and the crowd listens keenly, watching the shifting cosmos etching lines against the black. My heart expands and contracts to their rhythm, finding relief in the bleak thought that humans are like the stars: a circulation of light, seemingly infinite but nothing more than a brief cosmic flash, leaving behind nothing but darkness.
When I finish the tale, there’s a taut silence. By the time the crowd disperses, Yahya is asleep. I carry him in my shawl, the others stumbling sleepily to the pazktab communes. With the guard’s approval, I follow them inside.
Bidding farewell, the hurt yawns into my heart, tired of existing.These children are my firsts.Of what... I cannot name just yet. The stubborn resistance to affection refuses to admit it. But know they are my firsts.
‘Farewell, my nur,’ I whisper to them. ‘I may be your master, but in truth I was your student, learning lessons that none but you could have taught me. Now I must return home.’
We are brought together by our shared ambitions but separated by them too. What I cannot confront is that I no longer know what home means – if it’s a place or if it’s this – this emotion evoked by them.
Arezu clutches my sleeve, a wide panic in her eyes but also an offering. ‘Remember, we are your home.’
And you are mine, I wish to say, but I back away because I am used to every home I’ve had being destroyed; why not this, too?
29
When the last hour strikes before curfew, with most of the officers in the courtyards, I use my clearance to enter White-Pillar’s briefing rooms, across from the Sepahbad’s intelligence chambers. In my satchel, I have only the bone-seal, some parchment, pen and ink.
Three soldiers cross the hall. When they turn their backs, it grants me three seconds. With two steps, I jab the imitated bone-seal into the circular space set in the door. It presses and clicks. I dart inside.
My back rests against the entrance door, waiting.
Silence.
Inside, palm-wood shelves are stacked with parchments; the balcony overlooks gardens and fountains, filigree balustrades obscuring the view. The room is wide, with other locked doors, and niches for texts. An intricate gold divan and a tea table with a copper teapot and fist-sized teacups are beside a warmly lit smokeless hearth. Beside the window hang tasselled tapestries. At the centre is a long floor-desk. Behind it, smooth ivory walls glow with embossed warrior paintings of Jinn Wars and scriptures. One catches my eye, of a raven with a claw against the clay, showing Adam’s son how to bury the first corpse of mankind.
Smokeless firelight burns low from corner lanterns, shadows leering and lurching as I pass.
My lessons return: first, I note the dust; as long as the layer of motes on the desk remains the same as before I entered, the Sepahbad will not suspect an infiltrator. Two, I must take care in sweeping the textured rugs, so they display the same directions of footprints as before. As long as I step with my heel to the left, no new footprint will appear. Three, I must not lose track of time; I have perhaps an hour.
I inspect the largest shelves near the balcony. My priority isdevelopments in Ghaznia province and Izur and Arsduq along the Camel Road, because this intelligence is my empire’s salvation. Parsing out thousands of parchments in a room holding revered intelligence is near impossible.
For the next half hour, I withdraw and scan scrolls, only the archived ones with broken seals. The papyruses are scribed in a mismatched code; it takes furious minutes to deduce the codes I am familiar with, but still I am unsure if I understand it. Several have a number script at the top, numbers I can rearrange. After a painstaking moment, I find scrolls allocated to Ghaznia province.
The first reveals troop developments along the valley, which I note; in another, my eyes catch on a transcribed exchange with a spy reporting on the disappearance of another informant in Dhab-e after receiving a spiritual cleanse from a local Azadnian monastery. My eyebrows furrow. From the third scroll, I learn Sajamistan’s military is in correspondence with the eastern Zayguk region to obtain passage from the north-east front, into Izur, above Lake Xasha, in Tezmi’a. I nearly drop this scroll, cursing. Would Sajamistan intend to invade from both Ghaznia and the north-east, into Izur prefecture?
In the last scroll, my breath stutters. I find correspondence with a Qabl monk on jinn-poisons. The letter is short, vague and difficult to decode, but I make out a glyph of a huma feather and poison and the word for Ghaznia...and Arsduq. My brows knit as I lean closer.
‘Soul contract,’ I read aloud. Is this a jinn ritual? The symbols remind me of old sutras in the Qabl Order. But what would Arsduq prefecture have to do with a jinn ritual?
The main information I’ve obtained is on the north-east invasion and alliances –thisis important for the Zahr clan’s allies. After re-scribing the scrolls on my parchment, to memorise before burning them, I return the seals to their original order, blowing dust motes so it seems like nothing was disturbed.
When I am halfway across the room, the door clicks with a resounding echo. Time stretches in two drawn-out, impossible seconds.
As the entrance slides open, I lunge into the deep niche between the hearth and balcony, tucking into a ball behind the tapestry.
The Sepahbad is here before curfew?Every fibre of me shakes with fear.He will sense the water within my body with his affinity, he will wrenchme from the wall before snapping my arms like branches.By the Divine’s blessing, the hearth is here; its smokeless energy might mask my own.
From my narrow view, I see the Sepahbad enter, a courtly raven crouched on his shoulder, two scribes and Alif Adel at his heels. A gold cord trims the leader’s black wool robe, flashing beneath the dim lanterns, his hair windblown. He silently hands the scribes a bundle of parchment before dismissing them. After sitting cross-legged behind a low-table, he dips his reed pen and methodologically inks a parchment before rolling it up and melting an Alif seal. He pushes back his unruly curls, flashing the pictogram on his left palm.
Alif Adel lifts the crook of the hearth, poking it into the low fire. ‘Where is Yabghu’s last report on the girl? If I’m to be on this assignment with her, I should read it.’
I frown at this. The Sepahbad does not answer, simply flicks open a parchment and holds it out. A part of me has pondered why Yabghu, from the first day, was neutral – even at times kind – with me. It now seems obvious: he’d been tasked to report on me, the Azadnian. And I must not be the only Azadnian that the Sepahbad gathers reports on.
Adel begins to read the parchment. ‘I should warn you; I admire the girl’s mind—’
‘You have a family,’ the Sepahbad interjects drily.
