He frowns. ‘Dhab-e would transfer miners with no clan affiliations, no family. Why not us?’
I pause at that. If he is correct, we would be transferred across the borderland. I should be eager; I will be close enough to defect. But there is no relief in this outcome, only the cold truth that I am ascending upward in hope that my clan triumphs.
‘Is something the matter?’ Adel must read my hesitancy.
I glance at him, and the bitterness swells because he is one of the Sepahbad’s right-hands. The vizier they serve is also Azadnian, as Azadnian as me.
Or is he neither Sajamistani nor Azadnian, but wholly an identity of a borderland, one carved into this continent, rejecting the loyalties forced upon him? It had never occurred to me that such freedom could exist. He is everything that I can never hope to be. He has escaped the bonds of his identity, has he not?
‘Nothing is the matter,’ I answer.
After all, everything is as it should be.
Adel’s prediction comes to fruition when, the next evening, my mining overseer informs me I will be transferred north with a small group of workers, past the border. My hands slicken in anticipation – I would be in Azadniabad, able to defect to Arsduq.
But that evening, our caravan rests for the night at a local monastery, near the mining village bordering the valley between Arsduq and Ghaznia.
‘No one is permitted inside before blood-cupping,’ an apprentice announces to the caravan. This is common in the mountains, to cleanse non-locals of the evil eye and lingering jinn. During evening prayers, an apprentice of the monastery sniffs around the labourers. At many, she shakes her head. Eventually, she reaches me.
‘Come now, sister,’ she orders. ‘It’s your group’s turn for blessings.’
A question forms on my tongue, but curiosity wins instead. I’ve little choice but to have her take me through the clay-rammed tunnels, under the monastery, with two other labourers. As we billow through the deep labyrinth, my ears ring. Not from sounds... but from the lack thereof. My feet slow. My chest tightens as if my soul is convulsing behind my ribs.
‘Sister?’ the apprentice reproaches. Behind her, my eyes skim over veneers carved into the clay walls. Inverted three-pronged pictograms that I can hardly make out in the dimness, other carvings of figures around a distorted crane.
At the end of the tunnel, the apprentice presses her hand against a carved triangular red seal that somehow appears familiar. To my surprise, it shifts, the bedrock trembling, revealing more tunnels leading to partitioned cavities beneath the monastery.
The other two labourers are each left in a chamber before I am taken to my own room, which is barren except for the ceramic domes used for blood-cupping, a small cot and torchlights. Inside, there is another woman who introduces herself as Farzaneh. Strangely, both women wear teal scholarly robes with a mustard cord around their waists – a dark pictogram inked on their hands indicates their stature. Not what I expect of monastic clothes.
At my hesitation, Farzaneh places a hand on my shoulder. ‘Behave.’ The way she speaks is wrong, and she wears a mask of indifference asshe inspects me, her gaze sweeping over me like I am an animal, a thing. ‘Now strip.’ She nods coolly toward the corner. ‘Clothes go there. Then we will begin.’
When I am bare, she circles me while scribing on her salt tablet. She prods my naked skin with a leathery finger. I begin counting in my head, up by fives, then down by twos.
She lifts my tongue. She pokes at my breasts, the rings of my hair, my spine. She pauses at the threading on my arms.
Then she lowers to my genitals, and I yelp. ‘What kind of blood-cupping is this?’
Her eyes flash. ‘Dhab-e is your coin, and you serve them. They work under the Great Father. Obey. We could make this difficult or easy. You choose.’
I want to hurt her. The thought is so sudden and violent, my breath hisses through clenched teeth. She moves to my feet and lifts a needle and spool of thread with the ceramic cup.
I feel a prick from the needle and thread in her hand. My eyes flit down. My foot is red from the cupping. Below my ankle is a strange triangular pictogram from the threading. I flinch back, wondering what I’ve got myself into. I only needed to reach the borderlands to defect—
My vision blurs, pain reverberating up my feet.
Her words are softly uttered but fill me with the kind of fear before an arrow thuds into its target: ‘By the Great Father, young one, I am only following orders.’
I awake to rope around my wrists. The panic wells. From my position on a cot, I spot a low-table below me, holding a copper cup swishing with crimson liquid. On me is a thin, rough wool tunic. My head cranes, taking in the new chamber. We must be further underground, for the cavern is laden with wet dirt, the protruding bedrock etched with hieroglyphs across its jagged face. One emblem is stark: an inverted triangle seal glowing red, like the one on my foot, with the glyphs of a corporeal heart, eyes and body.
The soul.
There are many carvings; others show figures prostrating to horned creatures. One cuneiform shape is difficult to read, for it’s inscribed backwards – completely inverted in its lines. Shadows bend at the corners of the chamber, and an odd wind fills the air – almost like anedifice of the Unseen, where the Veil has peeled away from the physical world.
I look down at coasters of incense aligned in triangular patterns along the cavern floor, but its perfume is choking, none of the comfort of monasteries. My soul tingles, the bonds etched within me thinned.
‘She’s awake.’ A voice breaks through my fear. I jerk up to see two robed women standing at the entrance.
My lungs contract. This feels –unholy. I’ve only seen these triangles in the annals about the Jazatah tribes.
