Chapter 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.
‘—but, Overseer, you are his lieutenant.’
‘And?’
‘If anyone can convince the captain to draft me for the Marka, it’s you.’
I slow, catching on to the word. Marka.
‘Earn it first, underling.’ Yabghu pats his shoulder before spotting me.
‘That took you long enough, rukh.’ The bang of a large daf – a drum – thunders through the monastery, the bone-stone domes amplifying the sound until the entire structure shudders.
No-Name crawls to the corner of the roof, huddled against a cupola.
‘Meditative rotations, for the monks,’ Yabghu explains.
‘We train here?’ I ask.
Yabghu nods. ‘On Mondays, we have classes inside with Grandmaster Umairah, an old warrior. Outside of that, trifectas are permitted to train anywhere. I prefer this roof or Little Paradise gardens.’
‘To scare us.’ Katayoun scowls at him.
He shrugs. ‘If you fall off the roof, may the Divine be pleased with you in the next life. The most fundamental relationship for an Eajīz to gain strength is simple and linear – the more pain you suffer, the stronger your bonds to the Heavens.’
‘Correct,’ a hard voice peals out. A man detaches himself from a wooden entryway connected to one of the tiled domes. He glances over me, grunting, ‘This is the piss of a girl?’
‘Yes.’ Yabghu lifts his curled hand before glancing at me. ‘Greet your captain, Fayez of Squadron One.’
‘May death be a peace upon you.’ I bow and take in Fayez, a formidable man with a rock-blade shaven head, smooth light skin blue-threaded with ababil and raven motifs, and a pale shawl tied under his bulging armpits.
He has the meandering look of an eroded riverbank, scarred skin and a lumpy nose carved out.
His blade displays five proud lines – a Fifth-Slash.
At my bow, the smile touching Captain Fayez’s features doesn’t falter.
‘I do not need your greeting of peace, but you will need mine, Azadnian.’ His dark sandalled feet step up on to a slanted dome until he is above me.
He plays with the clasp of a diminutive bone-pendant around his throat, nimble fingers knotting and unknotting with both hands, dextrous like mine. Like every high-rank here, I note.
‘Remember this, rukh – if you have any hope to climb the rankings of this city, it’s through my approval, worth its weight in gold.’
‘Does this include the Marka?’ I risk an ask and Cemil’s narrow gaze darts to me.
Captain Fayez raises a brow. ‘She knows about the Marka?’
Cemil steps between me and the captain. ‘He would never draft an Azadnian for the Marka.’
‘You speak as if I pose a threat to you.’ I calmly meet Cemil’s cold gaze. ‘I do not even know what it is.’
A beat of silence settles, as loud as the knell of the monastic drums. Captain Fayez stares between us, a muscle twitching along his jaw before his expressions flattens. ‘Very well.’ He points far into the distance, at the blue craters within the salt desert, swarming with herons.
‘Low-ranks are recruited into squadrons for the Marka of Za’skar, a sacred tournament dating back to the Jinn Era, when jinn tribes competed for territory like a game of polo.
These days, we have remade this tradition.
Anyone of Za’skar can choose their own squadron.
In each squadron, only a total of thirty rukhs can compete with a captain and their overseers.
The Marka is a strategy simulation. On the winter solstice, the recruited squadrons battle for territory.
The best low-ranks within each squadron are guaranteed a rank shift, moving up one slash.
’ Captain Fayez points to the five ivory lines on the hilt of his khanjar.
As if sensing my hunger, his lips curve up. ‘That’s how I received my first rank.’
I latch on to this revelation. If Captain Fayez drafts me instead of either Cemil or Katayoun for his squadron, I would jump to the next ranking, First-Slash, in less than a year.
‘– but you are a new rukh. Undisciplined. Selfish. Greedy, disrupting the command chain. Uniformity is achieved in three ways.’ Fayez points with his bone-stone pendant. ‘Obedience. Command codes. And restraint. Qualities that you’ve yet to gain.’ He waves his hand down. ‘Summon your affinity.’
I flick Heavenly nūr on to my palm, using the method of the Azadnian monks: breathe meditatively into one of my bonds, send a prayer to the Divine and permit the affinity to channel forth from Heaven.
‘Rukh, not only are your bonds thin, you summon using the wrong value system. Look at this ignorance. It’s as if you are a child, using only prayers.
The best Eajīz meditate every morning and night on a relationship with death, until prayers are hardly required for your bonds to have Heavenly Energy. ’
I snuff the nūr. ‘What?’
‘But . . . you have potential.’ Then Fayez is glaring daggers at Cemil. ‘And you, swallow your arrogance. You might finally have competition. I only calculate one’s power and strength. I could very well pick her for the Marka over you.’
My interest piques at this, wondering about Cemil’s affinity. He clenches his fingers. ‘Yes, Captain.’
‘I’ve seen enough.’ The captain bows to our overseer, throws a look of disgust at the trifecta and departs. Katayoun shares his scowl, watching Cemil and me.
Yabghu orders Katayoun and Cemil to warm their blood through stance training while he runs to the corner of the roof. He roves right through the huddled form of No-Name, making me flinch. She does not react to this, staring at our trifecta in silence.
Yabghu returns shortly with a wooden staff in hand and . . .
‘Is that a bird’s corpse?’
He raises a pile of animal bones and severed wings. ‘These ababil birds passed naturally. But they left relics of their corpses— no, stop gagging.’ But my horror is difficult to tuck away, the disgrace of it all.
‘Because she’s incapable of leaving behind what she knows of Azadniabad,’ Cemil says, lifting a skeletal wing indifferently between his stances.
I take the severed wings. ‘No, I can do this.’
Yabghu rakes his gaze unforgivingly over me.
‘In knife fighting, we ease you into mastering the foundational nine stances. We meditate on the remembrance of death, for an Eajīz is a twin to the grave. Our connection to Heaven means we have one step in the psychospiritual world and one step in the temporal, mortal world. To die in battle is the highest honour.’
Cemil and Katayoun hold marble khanjars while Yabghu shoves a palm-sized onyx training knife aggressively into my hand as if I’m a babe. I almost curse at the insult of it.
Yabghu chuckles. ‘O rukh, whatever clan you crawled from, they knew nothing of the marriage between true Eajīzi and martial arts. And you,’ he examines me, ‘look frail. What use is building on a weak foundation? Now repeat my stances.’
My scowl deepens, prompting another of his laughs, but at least he is no Cemil nor Captain Fayez.
He is patient with me as we stoop low in the stance and breathe and recite the names of the Divine while contemplating death over the ababil corpse, the rancid scent making me gag again.
Eventually, after the first exercise, it settles into my bones.
A smaller, darker thought wanders into my contemplations. If death is a mangle of bones and rot, is this what Uma preferred to become – primed to take her own life at a moment’s notice?
‘What else had she lived for,’ No-Name says from behind my stance, startling me. Her pale bony body crawls across the glistening tiles – stooping to run the hole that is supposed to be her nose along the bird.
‘Stop that,’ I hiss at her.
‘Stop what?’ Yabghu lifts his staff. ‘Have you quit meditating so soon?’ In a blink, he strikes my swelling left leg, the weaker one, and I topple sideways, sliding down the slanted terrace. The tiles scrape sharply against my cheek before my fingers manage to scrape for purchase.
‘Careful, rukh,’ Yabghu dares to warn while I crawl to regain my spot.
‘You did that on purpose,’ I accuse, but his staff swings to my shoulder. My legs brace for it, stance balanced.
‘I did?’ He feigns.
I grit out another remembrance before saying, ‘I am not the only rukh.’
‘Of course.’ The bastard thwacks Katayoun before he grins. Meanwhile, Cemil eases into each stance without trouble, the Second-Slash that he is.