‘Will she even survive?’ Zhasna prods Eliyas, who presses a tangy herb-steeped cloth to my forehead.
‘Helpful you both were, not stopping Dunya,’ another girl snaps, facing Eliyas and Zhasna.
‘Well, the girl had to prove herself,’ a gruff voice supplies, belonging to an older boy resembling Eliyas.
‘Yun is correct. A Zahr does not soften oneself for a stranger.’ Zhasna crosses her arms.
‘Shut it,’ Eliyas scolds and pushes them back like the eldest he is. ‘As if you didn’t enjoy this affair, bloodthirsty ghûls.’ He lifts my body, cradling me to his chest despite the vomit staining his white robes.
‘Sorry, Older Brother.’ I smile weakly. Eliyas soothes my hair back, presses a kiss to my temple, and I gasp out. No one had ever done so to me.
‘Take rest, little bird; you did well. I’m here. And your clansmen accept you into their home.’
4
years 508–510 after nuh’s great flood, era of the heavenly birds
Training comes as swift as a storm in a summer pasture: a moment of peace before an onslaught that drenches me in the sweat of chores, tasks, lectures and lashings under stern senior monks.
It begins when I am almost fully recovered from the poisons. Eliyas helps me climb up the monastery steps, warning me what is to come in my training.
‘—and the monks do not take tardiness lightly, unless you wish to have your meals withheld, back lashed -’ At the entrance, Eliyas pauses, eyes catching above. A trinity of ravens curls on to the seventh archway, black forms silent, still, as if in mourning.
Eliyas raises a palm, muttering names of the Divine. ‘As a dream-interpreter, I learnt that sleep is the twin of death, and to understand death, I must study the living. Ravens can be an omen of living death.’
My heart is a flighty thing. ‘But whose death?’
He shakes his head. ‘Do not worry. We do not dislike ravens, nor do we revere them.’
‘So you fear them.’
‘Think of the story of Prophet Father Adam. The raven directed Adam’s sinful son to bury his brother – the first murder of mankind. It’s human instinct to fear these creatures, for who wishes to be obtusely reminded of their own mortality? Worse, ravens are the symbol of Sajamistan: masochists obsessed with death, tombs, jinn-folk. Was it not clans of Sajamistan’s borderland who massacred your tribe?’
My head pounds and a flash of images penetrates my mind: raven-feathered masks and arrows. I taste copper, the blood of thatnight seeping into the present. Clumsily, I imitate Eliyas, silently praying to the Divine to protect me from a dishonourable death, but the ravens simply shriek in protest.
‘I cannot fear that which I must defeat.’
Eliyas wears a bitter smile as he steps into the monastery. ‘Indeed.’
With that, my lessons begin. Due to the crane’s contemplative relationship with nature, I spend my dawns in the monastic gardens, beside Eliyas, meditating on olive orchards and black juniper or blue poppy – all kinds of flower beds, to unify my relationship with Brother-Nature.
I don’t know if the emperor learnt of my victory against Dunya, but beneath his strict aspect, I detect pride, or perhaps, simply relief. It becomes custom that Uma and I are invited to dine in the circle of his closest clansmen.
Poisons are no longer a weapon to threaten me, but a keen art for the clan to observe each other’s resolve. There are eight great courtly clans in Azadniabad’s court – each specialised in the wealth and cultivation of particular plants, herbs and stones, trading these wares to merchants, monasteries and kingdoms across the continent.
I learn poison is commonplace in court, that it happens all over the palace as a means of manoeuvring alliances. In the first months, at the end of the meal, clans across the lower courts presented me gifts of delicacies from their fiefdoms. As the new daughter of the emperor, I had no choice but to accept them.
‘Taste it,’ they’d urge without deception.
After the first gift, I quickly learnt it’s a game of poisons to satisfy their intrigue after Dunya’s challenge.
Healing and poisons are the realm of the Azadnian courts, but I couldn’t forget the first time I was poisoned, the sensation of paralysis, my body at a plant’s mercy. I never wish to feel so weak again. I begin to master poisons under Eliyas, not to simply identify their properties but to build a slow resistance, to surpass the masters in the royal courts. I find that, past the pain, most rewarding.
As time passes, I learn more about my siblings.
Yun, my older half-brother, is crueller than the others, but for that, less guarded. After I recover, he invites me to train with the younger Zahrs. Outside the monastery, in the courtyards, we practise under theroyal temples’ senior martial artists. Yun shares a striking resemblance to Eliyas; they would be as twins, if in another life the older brother hadn’t renounced his ranking in the clan and shorn off his hair. Younger than Eliyas by a year, with trimmed curls, identical coppery eyes and sharp features cut from stone, Yun is a hard reflection to Eliyas’s softer nature, as a prodigy martial artist, and he knows it.
Azra is the daughter of the emperor’s second wife, and quiet but disciplined in her martial routine; she’s a regular sparring partner for Yun, and the monks’ favoured student.
