Chapter 14 #2
‘Time is up, rukhs!’ Scholar Mufasa raps his staff against his desk.
‘By the Easkaria code, examinations separate the studious warriors – the ones who aspire to be true intellectuals – from the indolent novices who assume being a warrior simply constitutes throwing a fist or wielding a blade. Each scroll shares a common theme – the art of reducing the enemy’s will, a worthy lesson in our history. ’
He paces before us. ‘Pupils must learn the essence of warcraft. War is the art of reducing the opponent’s will physically and mentally until an aim is achieved.
It’s countering an opponent’s strengths and exploiting his weaknesses by out-positioning him in peacetime or warfare.
And thus, we start after the Great Flood by understanding its themes in every major onset that fractured peace, beginning with Azadniabad and Sajamistan. ’
He scans the first row. Initiates straighten their backs, fearful of becoming the target of his temper. I can sense it congesting the air, a living thing waiting to pounce.
‘Rukh.’ He points at an initiate. ‘Present your answer.’
The boy crumples his parchment. ‘Scholar Mufasa, I did not finish translating it.’
Mufasa stalks to the boy. ‘Emirhan, tell me your answer.’
Emirhan pales to a waxy complexion. ‘I said I didn’t—’
Mufasa snatches the scroll, smoothing the creases. He emits a displeased sound before ripping the parchment to shreds. ‘You did not read this week’s material. Stand at the front. Do you not know better than to neglect your readings?’
‘C-certainly, my scholar.’
‘Your excuse is what?’
‘I have none, my scholar.’
Scholar Mufasa gestures at his tunic. Complying, Emirhan unfastens the gold-buttoned latches, revealing a thin undergarment. With little preamble, the staff strikes his back. The room jumps.
Emirhan’s mouth opens, to cry, curse – I cannot be sure except that his teeth sink into the meat of his tongue, red staining his teeth – but still, no sound escapes.
Scholar Mufasa flogs his back quickly, neatly. My hands tuck under my thighs, resisting the urge to clamp my ears against the din of slapping skin.
It’s not the flogging unnerving me – such a punishment was frequent in the monasteries from my childhood. It’s Emirhan’s lack of protest. There is no whimper. His submission stirs my curiosity – like looking at a dead body in fascination even when you should not.
After fifteen lashes, Mufasa gestures to the entryway. Emirhan shuffles like something is wedged between his legs, drawing attention to the yellow on his pale trousers, the piss odour permeating the room. I glance away in mortification as if I can erase the incident by not looking.
Mufasa sighs. ‘Mark my words, that’s the last you will see of him,’ he says before he resumes checking parchments of the rukhs named Yima, Sharra Aina. Finally, Mufasa’s sandals reach my kilim. ‘You, Azadnian.’
I rise to my knees before inclining my head. ‘Yes, my scholar.’
He glances down at my inked parchments. ‘Explain the alliances of Tezmi’a.’
When I speak, my voice cracks but I smooth it out, knowing better than to parade my fear in front of scholars. Be the clay, I will myself. Smooth and hardened beneath the sun.
‘The Camel Road—’
‘Speak louder,’ he snaps.
I clear my throat. ‘The trade nodes of the Camel Road between the empires to the north and south and east are guarded by the Dawjad, Usur, Khor and Qan frontier tribes. In the Tezmi’a gorge, the Xasha and Qan clans allied beneath the banner of Usur-Khan through proposed marriage alliances,’ I pause but he gestures at me to continue, ‘until the raid of 508.’
‘Stop.’
My lips clamp.
‘Sit.’
My knees collapse like an obedient dog. The room suffocates with a warring tension.
Scholar Mufasa holds my gaze for a long moment. Years of paying attention to the emperor’s every action clue me to his foul mood. His eyes, though calm and steady, do not trick me because his knuckles tighten on his staff. I have done something terribly wrong.
‘You believe the words you’ve just uttered,’ he says, pressing me.
‘Yes, scholar.’ Because hesitation would upset him more.
His grip tightens further on that staff of his. He punished one student today. I wait for a hit, a strike. Around me, students exchange glances. Still, he does not speak.
My lips almost part to beg punishment. I’ve learned fear stems not from pain itself but from the inability to foretell what form it will take, even as you sense it is forthcoming.
‘You have read the manuscripts for this week?’ he finally asks.
‘Of course,’ I answer.
‘And this was your interpretation? Marriage alliances, instead of raids across the borderland to bring the clans to submission and force the allyship? What else prompted the final raid that annihilated them?’
‘Famine,’ I state carefully but my fingers dig into my ankles as my head begins pounding.
Mufasa snorts but simply steps past me, green scholarly robes swishing against my shoulder.
From my right, Katayoun shakes her head. ‘Do not speak more.’
After listening to the rest of the rukhs’ answers, flogging only two more pupils, he passes the class.
He addresses the chamber. ‘These prompts prepare you for the final Wadiq tests at the end of the winter, the most difficult examinations in the entire institute. Today, after my lesson, you will be expected to scribe my lecture again, to test your rate of retention. To prepare you for the Wadiq tests, in the last quarter of the hour, we will run through strategy simulations about a chosen battle. Who will go first?’ he asks.
When pupils raise their hands, I grit my teeth. Yabghu had said the scholars’ classes influence rankings in the city. So I raise my own, before Katayoun grabs my arm, yanking it down.
But Mufasa sees it. A malicious glint flits through his gaze. ‘Oh, the Azadnian has more to say? Taking the curricula we’d assigned and warping it to your own conclusions?’
I drop my hand. ‘Scholar, I don’t follow.’
‘You fool.’ Katayoun briefly shuts her eyes.
The scholar points to my parchment. ‘You answered the question, which saves you from punishment, but you interpreted it to fit a narrative typical of your kind.’
‘What narrative?’ For years, I’d had the tutelage of the Azadnian scholars, but being in Sajamistan, none of that education seems of any worth. ‘I was born in Tezmi’a. I know my own history.’
‘Bias and pride.’
‘I have no pride.’
‘Then tell me, how many raids had the Usur clan instigated for the Azadnian emperor?’
‘None.’
‘Are you certain?’ Mufasa’s chuckling tone grates on me like he is the emperor administering a poison test.
My willpower snaps. ‘Yes, scholar.’
He waves a hand dismissively. ‘The same pattern of violence continued and continued until the Zahrs rose to power on the heels of invasions, taking the Camel Road to maintain their rule on its trades. At the cost of thousands.’
My ears feel hot. Uma was right, they hate us. They lie even about our sorrows.
‘Every Azadnian dynasty, from the Stone Empires down to the Zahrs, used the Camel Road as their fodder to fund expansion and stoke more war against their sworn enemies. They never cared about the people on the land, not when the land of the Camel Road was more valuable than any human life, to feed their rule.’
And what of your empire, that threw me out of my birthlands in the first place?
But the scholar speaks more, and it becomes harder to breathe.
My senses clog, my surroundings blurring like I am underwater until I am floating out of the planes of my body.
He is wrong, I repeat to myself five, and then ten, times.
I know how to defend against attacks. There exists a countermove for every offence, but how does one defend against an unseen manoeuvre?
This battle is not one that can be blocked with fisted hands.
The room begins to sway. I wish to crumple, but in a space full of enemies, I can do nothing except become still and obliging.
To distract myself, I start counting, skipping in twos, fives, tens, hundreds.
Again and again. Behind the scholar, wedged in the corner of the chamber, No-Name is silent as the shadow she is.
She is almost invisible, but when my eyes meet hers – I think the first time I’ve purposefully sought her attention – her body solidifies.
I imagine her small, scarred hands covering my ears; I imagine I am not in this room, and all of the liar’s words are muffled. Though Mufasa speaks, I find a counterbalance. An argument is only effective when acknowledged. I must ignore it.
It helps. When the scholar finishes his tirade, I remove my gaze from No-Name.
The flush in my cheek subsides, veins no longer burning. I send thanks to my father for teaching me tears are a weakness. Glancing around, I imagine the emperor.
You are my left-hand vizier, his voice reminds me. And tacticians in one moment of patience prevent a thousand regrets.
‘You have one last chance.’ Mufasa lifts the parchment I received at the start of class. ‘Re-answer this question for me, but without your molested version of history. Perhaps then I will reconsider your potential in my halqa.’
I know better than to throw this chance away. My mouth opens to respond before I realise . . . I do not recall the question. What was it?
A pressure builds between my eyes and I recognise this sensation, where I confuse words and time before failing to recall anything. I’ve time-blanked.
Mufasa’s eyes narrow, holding my parchment. ‘Answer the question, rukh.’
‘I-I do not know, scholar. The question, can you tell—’
‘Answer it.’
‘I cannot!’ I speak louder.
He slams his hands on the desk. ‘Worthless.’ He faces the class.
‘This is not a past we are learning, but a conviction. You train to become the greatest Heavenly warriors to stave off another, greater evil. Or else . . .’ He dips the corner of my parchment into a smokeless-fire lantern.
Ash weeps down like grey tears. I pretend it weeps for me.
‘ . . . you become another forgotten aspect of history, a failure for the future to laugh over.’
But that is only the first day.
For the next two weeks, to make a point of his disdain, Scholar Mufasa ignores me. Though he poses questions that I know – martial conundrums that are simple – he refuses to pick on me.
‘Explain the hierarchy of bone density in Eajīz warriors, dating back to Temirkhan.’
I answer before he selects a student. ‘Seven, like the levels of Heaven. A warrior begins iron-bone training with a spiritual bone density of three. With each ranking, it becomes a multiplicative factor of seven. The highest Eajīz warriors of the seventh rank have a bone density over 700 times that of a regular mortal.’
The scholar carries on as if I had not spoken, picking on a student who regurgitates my answer.
Later, he asks, ‘Tell me, in the Battle of Arsduq between the forces of Warrior Temirkhan and the Magician Junja Jazatāh, who was the hawk and who was the heron?’
For a moment, students take their time to scribe answers. I discard the parchment and stand on my cushion even as Katayoun yanks on my sleeve. Still, the scholar bypasses me.
My mouth opens anyway. ‘When one blazes through obstacles to achieve their goals, with ideas calculated in absolutes, they are a hawk. When one pays attention to little details, understands the world as complex contradictory parts and shifts strategy to take advantage of changing circumstances, then they are a heron. An apt leader is a heron but at times is required to make bold, hawkish decisions. Temirkhan used the glaciers of the Black Mountains to eviscerate Arsduq’s southern pass. He is the heron.’
The scholar pauses. ‘You spoke without permission, and thus, I did not listen. Why listen to the words of a girl who taints our history?’
‘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 Jazatāh 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 Sepāhbad 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.