Chapter 10
The next day, at dusk, my uncle leads me to the Ghaznian citadel to enlist. The journey to the border of the central village feels short with the heat of fear pressing against my breastbone.
The cold is merely a nip against my skin, time a blink, before we catch sight of thick, intricately curved walls of mud brick and bone-stone.
The shadow follows at our heels, so silent and steady that I almost convince myself it truly is the blackness of my own shadow.
‘The Sepāhbad-vizier of their army is no fool. Every action of his is a test. A paranoid bastard,’ Hyat reminds me.
Then he speaks more about our training; about my false cover as a servant.
He reminds me of the information to search for if I successfully enlist: their battalions, their spies and finally, their knowledge of the Unseen world and jinn-folk.
At last, we slow.
We do not say farewell. Hyat simply lifts his Zahr khanjar and draws a line across his temple until blood weeps down his face.
At my waistband, I pat my curved blade. Hyat melted the ivory crane-stamped hilt in the hearth, and struck a great iron crook against it, chipping away the Zahr welding until the pale sheen is no more than a stub encased above a silver blade.
‘Remember your oath to the Heavens, little bird.’ Hyat points up at the sky. The wind rattles through the eve like the cough of a sick child; the sky is a deep feverish blue lit by the firebird constellation scarring the sky.
Uneasiness fists my stomach. Once, my uma had claimed the Simorgh is a blessing, but each time I’d sighted it, there had been only cruelty in its wake. I know one truth, which is that I’d been weak in that past: someone incapable of saving my tribe, my clan or my uma.
A profound conclusion tangles within me. This constellation and I
are one and the same, aren’t we? That of an omen disguised as a blessing of light, perfectly content with its deception.
‘I always will,’ I answer quietly, digging my nails into my thigh.
After my uncle disappears through the conifer trees, I march on to the citadel. It’s a defensive barricade above the river gorge, with looming turrets atop more turrets, of bone-stone engraved in gold cuneiforms of three-headed ravens.
Upon reaching the copper gates, I expect more fear, nerves, even anger, but strangely I am empty when I meet the gaze of the first guard.
‘State your business,’ she says flatly.
I hold my palm parallel to my chin, knuckles forward in their customary greeting. ‘I am here to enlist at your citadel.’ I speak slowly but her eyes narrow. Even two years of practising the uniform dialect of Sajamistan is futile. A native speaker will always weed out an imposter.
‘Enlistment? Into what?’
‘Into an army of Sajamistan.’
She blinks, taking in my peasant garb, my gaunt looks. ‘Take her scrolls. Search her before she goes in,’ she orders her comrade.
I cede the scroll which is a contract to a clan-master’s house in the Ghaznian village, prepared by my uncle.
Except for my pathetic dagger, I have no other belongings, but the guards are forced to pat along my limbs and back anyway.
They roll up my sleeves, so it does not take them long to notice the crane symbols marring my forearms.
‘Is this black humour? You’re from Azadniabad?’ the guard demands, her grip tight on my wrist.
‘I am, as my papers indicate. The merchants here will recognise me as a local servant for years. I was captured in a raid from Tezmi’a and taken as a servant to be a shepherd for my master.
But he died of an illness only last eve.
With my master gone, and no land or wealth to my name, his will ended my contract, and I want to enlist in the Eajīz battalion.
’ I say this part quickly, but it only infuriates the guard further.
She twists her foot, and in a blink, my arm is wrenched low against my back. I gasp out from the tearing of my shoulder.
‘Your kind dares,’ she breathes against my ear, ‘enter one of our armies?’
My teeth grit as she pulls harder, but I force out the words, ‘Bring me to an administrator. I am an Eajīz, and I can very well prove—’
She throws me on to the cold dirt, but my arms cushion the fall.
I lift on to one knee and breathe out a prayer before my right hand flicks forward, the Heavenly bonds along my knuckles splintering open.
Heavenly Energy surges through the bonds, summoning my affinity.
With a white splash, cold light manifests into a seductive amber, goading the worst of people to leap into its wrath.
As the nūr whooshes upwards between the guard and me – her eyes are owl-wide, making me conclude she must be a regular mortal, not an Eajīz – the air grows heavy and wet. Stunned, I touch my jaw at the sudden dampness.
The cold air pulls into a strange suction. It must be another affinity just arriving. My ears pop before water erupts from the density, dousing my nūr.
‘What—’ I stammer, but icy coldness streams into my mouth, eyes, ears, filling my lungs until the crack of my ribs makes me curl into myself. I cry out, fighting for air.
I expected to be attacked, beaten, but not killed instantly without a chance to finagle my way in.
Blindly, my hand clenches the frost-ridden ground, and I push on to my feet. Then a voice whispers from behind my ear, ‘Not fast enough.’ A blurred figure ducks under my arm and faces me.
My gaze locks on to illuminated eyes, and something inhuman stills me. I try to move but for that split second, my vision is overtaken by the gold of a thick Heavenly bond. It shoots out of the pupils of those eyes, wrapping around my neck, keeping me rooted in place.
This Eajīz is using eye bonds.
‘Wait—’ But the world blurs.
The Eajīz’s hand curls into a claw, each finger jabbing into different points on my sternum, throat, torso, and when my wrist juts up to parry, they are somehow behind me, a finger pressed in the coiled spot between my shoulder blades.
The pain is not physical; it’s spiritual, as if my soul has been ruptured from its corporeal roots. Even though I’m desperately mouthing the Divine’s seventy-seven names, my soul can no longer sense my Heavenly bonds, the connection severed. Any Heavenly Energy within me thins like a frayed thread.
I need to run, or I will die—
The Eajīz reads my intent. ‘Be still now.’ His hand comes to a rest atop my head.
My vision begins clearing, enough for me to see that though his gaze is trained on me, he is addressing the two guards at the gates. ‘She might run. Make it clean and healable.’
One guard grasps my left leg.
‘No, I—’
She snaps it, a crack splitting the air.
A stifled scream tears from my throat, salty saliva stinging the skin of my lip.
The Eajīz catches me with his right arm.
My head spins and vomit crawls up the back of my throat, leaving me no choice but to empty chunks of half-digested flatbread over the lambswool of his coat. He does not flinch.
He speaks, unfazed, his breath a puff of smoke. ‘She won’t be running now.’ His voice is casual, like what he’s done is nothing but a passing occurrence.
I am an animal cornered beneath them.
My mouth opens and blood spills out, dribbling down my chin. ‘M-my soul, my bonds.’ I panic.
‘A shame. Even with power at your hands, you are reduced to this, crawling beneath someone else’s feet. So tell me, foolish girl, why you have attacked this citadel?’
He lifts his hand and a small pictogram engraved in black-threading rests at the centre of his left palm.
The dye is an indent of a black and red line.
A singular Alif of the Adamic language. Small but prominent, and I recognise such a pictogram.
I’d seen that marking years ago. It’s the mark of the Sepāhbad-vizier.
I take in the warrior’s pale mask, a blend of wolf and raven, in disbelief at the odds, before recalling Hyat’s grim warning.
This must be the new Sepāhbad that my uncle referred to. This is that dark-haired right-hand warrior I saw, when the previous Sepāhbad invaded our capital and killed the emperor and provoked my uma’s death.
This is the warrior who helped slaughter my clansmen.
A raven soars above the Sepāhbad before perching upon his shoulder.
From my peripheral vision, I spot other soldiers who look like they’ve just arrived from the village.
The Sepāhbad turns his head slightly and gestures once.
The soldiers disperse into the citadel until it is only us and the guards positioned at the gates.
‘You have not answered my question.’ Under his mask, I make out hard hazel eyes.
Through the pain from my left, I force out, ‘I-I did not attack first and . . . I never had any intention of . . . r-running.’ I brush hair from my face. ‘I came to enlist.’
The Sepāhbad pauses and stares at my features. Above his mask, a wrinkle forms between his brows. He unpeels his mask, letting it dangle around his neck.
‘Shepherd girl,’ the Sepāhbad says wryly, and I still.
‘Monk?’ I whisper in dread. It’s the young man who had bartered for honey on my behalf.
His lips twist up, but I am the fool because I’d wrongly assumed him to be a monk. He’d never claimed to be one. How can someone who appeared so generous – so in tune to spirituality – be the Sepāhbad, applauded for his brutality?
The Sepāhbad releases me and I stagger on to my good leg.
With his mask hanging from his neck, his features are clearer.
Like in the bazaar, one might call him unnaturally beautiful.
The black and gold embroidery of his tunic ripples in the dark.
A three-pointed bone-stone pendant rests against his collarbone.
He looks only a few years older than me, but Eajīz bear the long, cursed lifespan of jinn.
The truth lies in the Sepāhbad’s gaze, hinting at a wisdom far exceeding human proportions.