‘My answer was correct.’
He whirls round, his outer robe flowing with the movement. ‘You may claim to know the answer, but any structure is worthless when the foundation is weak. No rukh of mine succeeds without knowing fundamental Za’skar manuscripts.’
My teeth grind together. ‘Then tell me which fundamentals. I will read them.’
‘You will break before you can. However, if you thirst for a challenge, I cannot stop you.’ He leans on his staff, as his apprentices watch me wide-eyed. ‘If you wish not to be sent to the pazktab or banned from the final examinations, you must memorise all five annals from the Great Library on the Jazatah Era. Give thanks to the Divine, an Azadnian is granted the benefit of a proper education.’
Another trap. ‘All five annals? That’s... thousands of parchments.’ Would my broken mind even let me accomplish such a task?
Displeased, he crosses the room and, with frightening speed, jams his staff into my knuckles. ‘That’s for answering without waiting for my permission.’ He lifts his staff again, slamming it down.
My eyes bulge as he leans toward me.
‘We know victory well, stateless brat. We tasted despair at the end of a shamshir blade when the ground was bathed with our bodies under your heretic kind. Your attitude,’ he says calmly, ‘is unacceptable. You must submit to a greater will, be obedient to your superiors, consume knowledge without question instead of fighting your masters at every turn. So yes, all five annals. Or get lost.’
Rivulets of sweat plaster my hair against my neck, the result of humiliation more than the sticky air. Glaring into Mufasa’s swollen face, I make a vow:I refuse to lose to a reeking poisonous snake.
He removes his staff from my hand. ‘On you, I read defeat.You are nothing, you do not belong here.’
If he thirsts for abject surrender, oh, I will state it as if it’s a proud name.
‘I am nothing, I do not belong here.I am nothing, I do not belong here.’ I say it clearly, no tremble to be heard.
The scholar studies me as if seeing me for the first time. ‘Get on, rukh.’
I avoid Katayoun’s stunned look, unwilling to be in the room for another second. I’ve been handed a warning and the scholars are not in the business of mercy to hand another. So, I get on, not bothering with a bow while Mufasa addresses the halqa behind me.
‘She does not possess an honourable bone in her body, but what honour does her kind have? Rukhs like her rely on the brutality of martial arts. If any of you fail my class, I will ensure you never climb a single rank. You will stay as you are, a Zero-Slash, unable to participate with any squadron in the Marka.’
At those words, I still against the archway, my fingers biting into the latticed wood. Can the scholar do that?
I feel the other students staring at my back. Perhaps the Sepahbad was correct in his read of me – feeble Khamilla, with no conviction, shuffling between halqas. She’s bereft of a clan, unaccepted and unbelonged, from not only her empire, but now by the scholars of history.
15
It’s dry-rutting hot in the Easkaria’s corridors, the stench of sweat clinging like clammy cloth against an armpit. I am unsure where to go, like I am drifting through borderlands, despised by all. Using the collar of my ochre tunic, I fan my neck. The rage only smoulders. My hands ball, cheeks hot: hating with force, hating the scholars, hating everyone.
‘Old fool,’ I mutter.
Sajamistan did nothing to deserve these institutes, these mountains of old parchments. More power, schools, trade, bodies. It was a stroke of fate. Once, my brother told me Eajiz’s affinities are tied to land, that is why Sajamistan has so many of them. A city of jinn magick and the resting place of Adam and the Heavenly Birds.
Scholar Mufasa is a damned Za’skar strategist and historian, the very type who constructs ideological weapons against my people, more powerful than even the sharpest sword. It is the winners of history who justify wars, who put ink to paper, scribing lies, who shift blame for strife from one empire to the next. I fear this man in a way I fear none other, not even the general of generals, for all revolutions are defined by their victors. And the victors are not kings and queens, but the historians – the living spoils of war who write their own stories.
My eyes screw shut. The daf sounds, indicating the next halqa. I straighten my tunic. A breeze from an open balcony, slanted by the mountainside, cools the flush in my cheeks.
‘I had a feeling,’ a sudden voice emerges with scathing frankness, ‘Scholar Mufasa would oust you from his class. Took him long enough.’
Cemil’s smooth tone only reinvokes my anger. When I turn, his gaze falls to my bruised knuckles.
‘He didn’t oust me,’ I say.
‘Oh?’ He raises a brow and somehow, he makes it look elegant.
‘I left on my own.’
His chin juts to ward the class chambers. ‘On my first day, he punished me by rapping my knuckles twenty times. I paced this exact corridor as an initiate, cursing the old fool. But by the next moon, I crawled back like the masochist I am. He respected it and quickly he favoured me.’
I wonder about the purpose of his words. At my silence, his grey eyes harden.
