My anger bested the control of my affinity; anger at a man who let a daughter’s mother die for his ambitions. At a man who executed her brother in a breath. At a man who used me night and day.
‘It was a mistake!’ I cry to him. ‘I was angry.So angry.But you made me like this. You never permitted me to feel anything. You despised my emotions!’
The emperor crouches. ‘You hated me. And now I hate you. Tell me what you did.’
‘I killed you like Sajamistan. I did not avenge you.’
The emperor grips my throat and tightens his fingers. I could stop this – after all, it’s by my command that No-Name is the emperor. But if I can choose anything, it’s my own punishment. This is what I most deserve.
‘You never hated it. You wanted me to order you. You had no home and wished for my clan,’ he continues against my ear.
I wish to say no but that is another lie. He owns me. I like that he does because the not knowing of who would own me instead seems infinitely worse. If I escape him, who will swoop in and chain me next? The emperor is the poison that I choose, rather than handing my fate to another. The time-blanks are my checks and balances. The notion is morbidly laughable; the schisms in my mind are my own creation. I deflect memories. I erase them from existence. And why not? It’s betterto divide the brutality of my memories – the happiness, the urge to cry, the sadness – rather than feel everything at once. It’s better to dam the memories than endanger myself with a flood of emotions.
My mind is my own gameboard, the planes a conquered domain. Here no one commands me. Not even my father. Only I can.
No-Name returns to herself.
‘The emperor never hurt me.’ The words lodge in my throat. ‘When did he hurt me? Prove it.’
No-Name snatches my arm. ‘He created Mitra from you. He hurt you when you failed your poison tests. But you loved it because it meant your father held a stake in you and some acknowledgement was better than none.’ She throws my arm back down.
‘Who cares if he hurt me!’ The confession tears from my throat. ‘Pain, everyone feels it, it’s normal. The ones who complain of it,they are weak. It was discipline.’
‘No. The emperor made you nameless. Until he discovered, that out of all his children, you were the only Eajiz, and to his embarrassment, bred from nomads.’
Nomads.Suddenly, I am no longer with No-Name. Memories bombard my mind.
I am in a green gorge with the ones I’d made myself forget.
In this makeshift memory, I walk into a yurt. My lips shape their names as I kneel before the hearth. Beside me, Usur Khan snips a gold thread dipped in amber dye and mare milk. Thensheenters like a gall of wind – Babshah Khatun – yanking on my freshly threaded, bloodied arm. She guides me outside before the tribesmen.The girl who felled a karkadann with her tongue and an arrow at the age of seven, it is she who will carry with her the tales of your greatest joys and fears until the end of her days. She is your entrustment.
But I’ve forgone that oath.
Then I am in a different plane of existence.
‘Eliyas,’ I say. In this memory, he carries me on his back, whirling through the bazaar.
‘Look at the Heavens,’ he says in awe. We stop at a pit of performers, and he swings me on to my feet, and wraps his arms around me. ‘Let me tell you a secret,’ he whispers when I am not listening, eyes twinkling. ‘I told the emperor to name you Khamilla Nur-e-Sûltana, little bird of light.’
‘I am not a light.’ I curl into his chest, my voice shaking. ‘I killed you too. That is all I do. I ruin beautiful things.’
He tucks a small braid behind my ear. ‘You were a girl, yet you blame yourself? I do not hate you. My regret is that I did not give you the home you desired.’
‘I failed you.’ My words tremor like a prayer. ‘And more, the people we trusted failed us both. Your trust in Warlord Akashun was nothing as you imagined – he made worse the emperor’s machinations – and my trust in the emperor was a lie. I am sorry.’
He smiles, forlorn. ‘I wished for a hero. My other mistake was I dreamt more for our people.’
‘You were my hero. You deserved to rule. Maybe then our enemies in Sajamistan would not have been able to take and take from us. But I had you killed. I could not save my tribe, my clan, my brother or my uma. But I swear,’ my voice pierces my soul, ‘to atone for my mistakes.’
I reach into the bonds of my past, fingers trembling.I am sorry I’d forgotten you, I tell Babshah and Eliyas.
My mind goes to other instances. The times when I would catch Uma with her arms around her stomach, tears dripping down her delicate cheeks. But the emperor hated tears. Perhaps it was an excuse. I cared, but my fear of the emperor was greater than my care.
The muscles around my throat spasm but nothing regurgitates.
How sick am I that I ache for my father? The warring world is worse than any pain from his love. Because he did love me. And I believe that.
‘The Sepahbad was right,’ I breathe out. ‘I have no conviction; I am worse than greed, for I only follow. If someone commands kill,I kill. And now, the emperor has let me down – but all my heroes do.’
