Chapter 3 #2
He bends down until we are level. ‘I haven’t.
She doesn’t hate you. She hates what you are.
She quickly realised a new daughter of the emperor who is related to a khan is a threat.
A child raised in the harshest alpine valleys, who learnt to hunt before she could speak, from a tribe that thwarts the threats at our borderlands .
. . you could be a formidable martial artist under the right guidance.
Poison was her way to test your resilience.
But how you respond matters more than your past.’
‘How shall we respond, Older Brother?’
‘In kind.’ He smiles with confidence before rolling up the velvet sleeves of his white and amber robe. ‘With poisons, little bird.’
‘More poisons,’ I say reluctantly. We enter the main corridors and I struggle not to step on his robes.
‘I’ve been informed you do not have a name?’
I shrink away. ‘I am waiting for Dada to name me.’
‘I can name you. Steppe-buzzard seems fitting.’ His eyes twinkle.
‘No. I’ve waited years for Dada to do it.’
‘Very well. The emperor wanted to name me Fatih, after himself. But Dunya refused and took me after her dada. Eliyas.’
‘Eliyas.’ I taste it. ‘I like your name.’ He tucks my hand close into his arm and I wonder if this is what it’s like having a real sibling.
He pauses abruptly in the corridor. ‘Come out. Enough hiding.’ From the stone pillars garnished in white-dotted dahlia, a familiar girl squeaks, then peers through the flora. Zhasna.
I startle back but Eliyas holds firmly. ‘Do not run, little bird. I will not let her hurt you again. I ought to lash her for her cruel actions.’
Zhasna draws straight, addressing me. ‘I-I tried to stop Uma. I didn’t mean to poison you.’ The girl’s eyes are wet, and she wrings her hands into the pleats of her milky qaftan.
‘Yes, you did,’ Eliyas snorts before he scruffs at his thin beard. ‘Dunya is like that, using her children instead of dirtying her own hands.’
Suddenly the girl’s tear-stained face, coupled with memories of the previous night and the soreness of my poisoned stomach, brings me up short.
My hands form into fists. Zhasna is probably lying.
I was na?ve to think I would find friends amongst the other young clansmen.
They only see me as an outsider – a threat.
‘If Dunya wanted to poison me, she should’ve used a faster one.
Maybe the bristles of a yellow-spotted caterpillar. ’
Zhasna opens her mouth and closes it. ‘You are strange.’
‘You are the stranger for poisoning your sibling.’
Wordlessly, Zhasna turns away down the corridor. Eliyas glances between us and sighs long. Watching her flee, my heart twinges in what feels almost like remorse.
Eliyas takes me to Uma who awaits us at the monastery between the outer and inner palace gates. The inner palaces are inside a circle-shaped wall, and outside that are the outer grounds with the paymaster, storehouse and scribe offices, eventually leading to hilly paths toward the central capital.
Behind the stone-bricked walls, an expanse of trimmed gardens holds delicate shrubs of glittering berry bushes and gnarled frankincense trees. On our way, Eliyas points out the polished stone of floral-themed stelae. Marbled monuments contest for space with honey-amber and blue geometric tiling.
I pause, recognising one, and Eliyas runs his hand against it.
‘The art of our winter capital is a homage to the creatures of the Unseen world – the jinn-folk – because this prefecture borders Sajamistan, and their architects were obsessed with the jinn. This stone relief is a karkadann. The first Azadnian tribes rode out on the beasts, to battle invaders during the Jinn Wars. Finding a karkadann in the hinterlands is rare. It takes months to tame—’
‘I know about karkadann,’ I interrupt without thinking.
Eliyas pauses. ‘How?’
I try to cling to the sudden memory, but a fog descends in my mind, the images cloudy. ‘Never mind,’ I mutter, and we continue along.
Other statues we pass depict tall, winged warriors with large pointed ears – the Heavens-condemned par?, creatures of fae and mischief.
The path continues into a meadow of lush pink-golden deciduous and pomegranate trees drooping under the weight of their own bounties, arils crunching beneath my white moccasins.
The hills reveal a monastery built into the centre of the spindly mountains.
We climb up the wet stone steps, and I almost slip but Eliyas catches my arm. At my right, a thin stream dribbles down the bedrock, into a pond with blights of pink and blue fish, buried under white firelotuses.
The sunlight catches the seven gold-burnished arches staggered against one another, rising from the bedrock, shaped into small complexes, like the round stalks of a . . .
‘White lotus,’ I breathe out, wondering why I hadn’t noticed it before.
Eliyas points upwards. ‘The lotus monastery is a timeless relic built when the founding Azadnian clan began their rule. Here the monks started the 1000 Wings of Crane School. They mastered the relationship between Brother-Nature and Heaven, using nature’s bounties, to prepare their fight against the magicians and jinn who’d invaded centuries after the Great Flood. ’
‘Magicians?’
He winks and pulls me up the final step. ‘Another time. Let’s go. Your uma is waiting.’
We remove our moccasins and cross long halls; the wooden flooring teemed with designs portraying an idyllic scene: olive rugs with threads knotted into ducks in a stream, with floral banks and with the three Heavenly Birds soaring in the sky.
The women’s quarters lay on the opposite side of a partition.
Uma is inside our room. She sets me out from her, inspects my limbs and neck. ‘Oh, child.’
‘Do not call me child.’
‘It is who you are to me.’
‘I do not feel like one.’ Hollowly, I touch the scabs at my collar.
Uma glances at Eliyas. ‘Thank you. The emperor forbade me from going to the apothecary.’
He bows. ‘Of course, Aysenor. You were once my Second-Uma.’ He departs with a promise to return at dusk for training.
When he’s gone, Uma pours chai from a copper-enamelled saucer before handing me two dark sugar cubes to place under my tongue. After passing the cardamom and saffron-scented drink, she tilts her gaze to the domed ceiling, the dark blue veil of her headdress dragging on the ground.
‘Sometimes I wonder if our enemies here are greater than out there. What would Babshah think?’
My brows furrow. ‘Who is Babshah?’
‘Is this an attempt at humour?’ Uma’s voice trails away at my blank expression. She studies me as if seeing something that I do not. ‘Impossible.’
A dull ache begins in my head, and I clench my fingers into fists. ‘Uma, all day I’ve remembered pieces of our tribe like a dream. But am I horrible if I do not want to remember the rest? Who is this Babshah?’
After a long moment where her eyes are hard and unreadable, she places a hand upon my chest. ‘I was selfish to encourage you to dress like our tribe. People are cruel but simple creatures. Under a royal clan, we cannot exist between worlds. We must choose one. In this empire, you are told to act, dress, eat and speak differently, to forgo your tribe’s ways.
Listen to them, then. Forgetting your pains might be a disguised blessing. ’
‘You do not resent me for forgetting?’
‘I do,’ she says honestly. ‘But if you truly love your people, they make up parts of your soul. When you ache for your tribe but cannot place who and why – they are here.’ She curls her fingers against my bosom.
‘Etched in your heart, they rest. Even if you forget, your soul will not, and your heart beats on. The greatest gift is to live for them. The ones you love are your soul.’
My shoulders drop, relieving the pinch in my chest.
Uma straightens. ‘Dunya has forbidden the other clansmen from allowing us to dine in their meal circles. For now, we’re to stay here with the monks.
But at night, the emperor has ordered me to a room in the women’s inner palace.
’ She swallows uneasily, fingers knotting the stray threads of her headdress.
My head bows. ‘I vow, Uma, we will dine with the clan tomorrow on the holy Friday. Watch.’
Pushing past my uma, I hurry left then right, down the winding corridors of the monastery. Spilling out of the illuminated archway on to the top of the stone steps, I catch sight of Eliyas. He stands below with some monks in medicinal gardens of blue poppy and balchar.
‘Older Brother!’ I shout. He ceases his talk and turns. I descend the steps. ‘I cannot wait until tomorrow. I want to show the clan, show Dunya – show all of the Azadnian court – that I too belong in the circles of the Heavenly Crane. I choose this path.’
He indulges my anger with a mulling look. ‘Little bird, do you have the willingness to train? For victory requires guile, and suffering. That is the true warrior’s way.’
‘Yes.’
The next evening, I keep to my promise.
With Uma, I arrive at the dining hall, to Dunya’s great displeasure. But still showing she is expecting me in her circle from the way she gestures to the silver cushion across from her, nodding at my qaftan, velvet waist-sash and crane feathers, identical to the other young Zahrs.
‘Peace be unto you.’ Dunya lifts her heavily draped blue sleeves, a thin strip of silver fur at the hem.
Her fingers are adorned with rings and bracelets stamped in the design of a firelotus, with petals woven around the band, glittering under the copper lanterns.
She smiles politely behind her sleeves. I only see the stark outline of black sormeh around her eyes.
I lift my sleeves to circle my fist. ‘And you, Second-Uma. Please, break the fast.’ Behind her, Eliyas nods, reassuring me. He sits cross-legged beside the senior officers of the emperor’s court. He informed me the emperor would not be at the meal, busy in the throne room meeting a delegation.