As I begin to drift off, I hear the emperor ask, ‘How is she?’, from the entrance of the apothecary. I keep my eyes closed, my breathing slow and sleep-like.
Eliyas answers as though a clenched jaw. ‘This is the third time she’s been bedridden this month alone. You promised one jinn-poison every lunar month, but you’ve forced her to ingest three in the past week. You rarely let her leave the apothecary now. It’s her prison. She’s hardly done being a child.’
‘She’s sixteen,’ the emperor snaps. ‘Her people from her uma’s tribe would marry and rule their tribe long before this age.’
‘Your Blessed, she’s under your clan and is your child. Not your weapon. Her soul cannot handle such poisons much longer,’ Eliyas continues in a tight voice.
Our father sounds bitter. ‘Know your place as my adviser, not a clansman. You ceded that right.’
Silence.
Eliyas’s voice turns to cold steel. ‘My Emperor, I am still your adviser. You hope to harvest the strengths of jinn-poison, to use it in your armies – to counter the Eajiz from Sajamistan, and your dissenting warlords. But it’s no use ifthe girl dies.’
I hold my breath, unaccustomed to hearing someone defy the emperor like so.
‘Please, Dada,’ Eliyas insists more gently. The rare use of the honorific thaws the emperor before he releases a heavy sigh.
‘I ought to throw you out for your disrespect.’
‘Ah, but you could never forgo your favoured son.’
I half squint as the emperor clasps Eliyas’s shoulder. There’s a strange clench in my chest watching the familiar ease at whichthey push and pull in their exchange. My father has never done this with me.
‘Understand, my son, that I have no choice but to use these jinn-poisons.’ The emperor turns toward me and crouches, hand cold against my head. ‘Daughter, tell me, did you not beg for a name? And to join my clan?’
I stir, blinking my eyes open fully, avoiding Eliyas. ‘Of course,’ I say, my voice hoarse.
‘You have yet to fully earn it. I do not want to test you like this.’ He caresses my cheek. A strange sensation rises in me. ‘But sometimes...’
Swallowing hard, I finish his sentence. ‘Sometimes pain is necessary for control.’
‘You will remain here until you’ve conquered the poison.’
After the emperor has left, Eliyas scowls at me. ‘He is worse. Paranoid, and desperate.’
‘He is backed into a corner.’ I watch Eliyas wring a wet cloth, bringing it to my forehead.
‘And that is his fault,’ he says.
It might be the fever raging in my head, but for a second, Eliyas’s lips turn down, defiant. My eyes narrow. ‘Do not speak of our dada like so.’
‘You defend him even when he hurts you; even when you are ill because of him –and namelessbecause he refuses to acknowledge you? Now he uses your body for these jinn-poisons.’
I startle and my hands grip the blanket tighter. ‘He does not hurt me.’ My tone is like ice.
‘He does.’ But Eliyas pauses as if reading something in me, that I cannot.
‘The emperorwillacknowledge me.’
Eliyas places the clay pot down with a thud. ‘Foolish little bird,’ he sighs. ‘The warlords are not wrong. Look at what I feed you. If we don’t have bread in the palaces, we certainly have none for our subjects. The emperor couldn’t defend our border from the raids or control the buffer tribes from taking the wheat trade in Yalon, so we all suffer. The famine out east is his doing.’
‘Which warlord?’ I demand, fearing the answer.
But Eliyas has already turned away, his pale robes brushing against my blistered skin. The clang of the pot is the only sign of his cold anger.
Nameless, he said. The emperorwillname me. I know the language he speaks, one of values and bargains.
At night, in the apothecary, I rummage through the poison manuscripts that the emperor had given to Eliyas, made of cotton-stuffed camel skin. There are also salt tablet copies, hieroglyphs etched in the red baked clay, and newer manuscripts written in standard cuneiform logo script. It’s rudimentary Adamic, derived from the original children of Adam.
