‘You spoke,’ I say in disbelief. The shadow that has accompanied me my entire life has never spoken.
‘Peace,’ she repeats. ‘Upon. You.’
I flinch but her voice is cool, like crystalline river water. I must be going mad. This thing cannot speak. It should not speak.
‘I can,’ she puts in, as if hearing my thoughts.
This could be a jinn.The Divine save me, I mentally pray.I seek refuge in you from the Unseen.
‘Stop that,’ the shadow snaps. My pulse is a moth’s tremor. Her voice is light, but unwanted, tangible and too powerful to ignore. No prayer can fling such a thing away.
‘Am I cursed?’ I grip the khanjar, hard enough that my fingers strain. ‘I’ve seen it all my life and it has never once spoken.’
‘I speak now because you’ve decided to need me, only at this moment,’ the thing retorts.
This is my end, I realise. I wish I could believe that she is an angel but I doubt angels look as sickly as she does, nor do angels have the free will with which she moves.
‘Perhaps this form is bad.’ She glances down at herself. ‘But I cannot change myself. I only took a form because is this not how one greets a companion?’
‘Companion?’
‘Yes, a companion of what you fear, desire and lust after. I’m you and you are me. I’m nothing and everything. Corporeal and spiritually immaterial.’ She shrugs. ‘You decide.’
My head begins aching at the nonsensical words like I’m reading sutras. Like my time-blanking.
‘All living things have names. If you are real, you should have a name,’ I speak slowly and my voice is uneven.
The shadow stiffens. ‘I am not a living thing. What is my name?’ She speaks like a child and with that, a sliver of my fear disappears.
The emperor once told me names hold power, for they grant one an identity, make one no longer a possession. My father resisted namingme. He’d stopped others from bestowing a name on me because no one should have power over me separate from his own.
This girl-creature does not need an identity. She does not need power.
She is simply a manifestation of my madness.
When I meet the creature’s expectant stare, I put force into my words. ‘You are a creature ofno name. And that is it.You are nothing and no one. Only a curse.’
She watches, so childlike. ‘You’ve named me No-Name?’
I blink. ‘What? No, that’s not a name—’
‘No-Name,’ she repeats and smiles. ‘A fitting name.’
‘Usur-Khan?’ Katayoun’s voice breaches the room.
‘Coming!’ I tie my robe, strap on both of my khanjars and flee past No-Name as she grins.
13
It’s a disorienting feeling having all your fears laid bare before you. I glance around at the city, then my overseer and the two low-ranks of our trifecta; enemies who, in a blink, would torture and hang me like the corpses in the amphitheatre, if they knew of my true identity. My hands raise and I curl them inwards, reminding myself of my dead clansmen, my slain parents. There is no point in resenting my reality – only bitter acceptance that I have walked into this pit of my own will.
Yabghu begins to take our trifecta up Za’skar’s seven-tiered monastery, fitted with protruding red domes. The winds lash our raven-feathered robes in a flurry of leaves, mist and dirt.
‘Catch up.’ My overseer waves his hand before bounding at a graceful speed up the sandstone steps. Jammed into the belly of the mountains, the stairs stretch toward the Heavens, floating in the clouds. It’s a winding staircase that sections off to different tiers and cloisters within the monastery, leading to the highest slanted roof.
‘And remember, do not fall, little rukh,’ Yabghu barks unhelpfully, already perched at the top, as I struggle not to trip over my flapping robes. The shadow of No-Name trails at my heels, as irrelevant but as eerie as the mountains displaying their jagged shadows against the clay.
The other two arrive at the roof first, and as I reach the last step, Cemil is standing off with Yabghu, his face stony, spine rigid below his long neck.
