Chapter 19
In the chilly night, dozens of trifectas crowd around the gates of Za’skar to depart for the Festival of Lights in the Sixteen-Gated Grand Bazaar. Apparently, Captain Fayez intends to announce his squadron tonight.
‘I find it a Divine miracle that you’ve left the libraries,’ Yabghu tells me as he knots a raven-feathered shawl under his armpits. ‘This is your first outing into Al-Haut?’
‘Yes.’ My tone is short. Do not expect it again, I want to tell him.
‘Her expression says she would rather be studying,’ Cemil remarks from my left. Tonight, he wears a dark muslin kerchief round his temple, making the grey in his eyes appear black.
‘Because the examinations are in three weeks and the Easkaria scholars would like to fail me.’
Yabghu smirks. ‘But you came, anyway.’
‘Cemil made me swear an oath.’
My overseer glances between us. ‘An oath? How did he manage that?’ Cemil has the decency to be truthful, but a sardonic smile plays at his lips. ‘Bribery. I agreed to help her in her studies if she came.’
‘Finally, you realised the use in bribery,’ Katayoun mutters.
I give them a disgruntled look.
‘It’s good she came. The captain might be selecting the Marka squadron tonight . . .’ Yabghu’s voice trails off as the crowd of trifectas abruptly stops at the citadel.
‘Bow,’ Yabghu suddenly orders us.
From a distance, our captain’s voice cuts through the air. ‘May death be a peace upon you.’ Other soldiers bow to a figure entering through Za’skar’s gates.
‘Bow,’ Yabghu hisses again because I have not moved. Shock has frozen me. I rub my tired eyes. No, my sight is not mistaken.
The anger takes me by surprise. That it is still so whole and pure after a year – when I had kneeled before him in the frost, with the deaths of my parents as my hidden wound – is a relief.
A flock of advisers and two senior officers stand between us, surrounding him.
Crouched against his neck is a courtly raven that fixes its beady eyes in my direction.
The power of a clan’s vengeance: it cannibalises itself without end, and I thank its resilience as I stare at the Sepāhbad, willing every ounce of my bloodied oath into the microcosm between us.
As if sensing its prickle, the Sepāhbad turns slowly.
The wind exhales a bout of sand into a dusty swirl and I hold out a quivering hand to stave it away.
The belly of the clouds rumble, bloated and grey, with an occasional blister of moon, yet no rain falls.
Heaven’s ominous warning is not lost upon me.
Just as the Sepāhbad faces me, I know better than to stare. I drop into a bow, only daring to look up when our shoulders brush as he guides his snorting white steed into Za’skar.
‘May death be your peace.’ He greets the trifectas softly.
My gaze lingers on his receding back. Cemil stares after him, too, but for reasons opposite, a hunger swimming in him.
He rubs at his jaw before casting a sidelong glance. ‘You look shaken.’
‘It feels like years since our encounter.’
‘You’ve spoken to him?’
‘It was he who recruited me into Za’skar.’ Cemil and Katayoun still at the revelation while Yabghu looks unsurprised.
Cemil presses me further. ‘Are the rumours true, then? Did you see into his eyes?’
‘His eyes?’ Katayoun asks.
‘He can control the Heavenly bonds within his eyes,’ Yabghu answers.
My thoughts slide back to his attack at the Ghaznia citadel, a part of me curious about his manipulation of Heavenly bonds. ‘That is what he used on me.’
My words echo louder than I intend. Other soldiers turn, Dara and a Third-Slash named Dil-e-Jannah.
‘Impossible,’ she scoffs. ‘You’d be dead.’
‘It was a misunderstanding,’ I speak quickly, omitting that he’d snapped my leg as well. ‘I looked into his eye bonds, and I could not move before he used Ifrit’s Strike, disabling my own Heavenly bonds.’
‘Count your blessings that you live,’ Yabghu says grimly.
‘The Sepāhbad’s affinity is a virtue of the original cosmic sphere.
The scholars call it Spring of Heavens, for he can control the substances that make up the springs of life.
Based on the conditions he set with the Heavens, he can pull water from the clay, air, rivers or the corporeal body.
Wielding eye bonds is a rare ability, even for Seventh-Slash warriors.
If you use it, opponents are forced to fight you almost blind, for if they look into your eyes, the Heavenly Energy paralyses them for a split moment.
Eye bonds guarantee an affinity hitting its mark.
This is the move Sepāhbad Jezakiel used to defeat her – the former Sepāhbad – in a Duxzam battle, to become our martial-vizier. ’
My mind flashes to a distant memory of my girlhood, recalling the female general I saw then.
‘Why did Sepāhbad Jezakiel overthrow her?’ I ask.
‘He took advantage of the fallout she faced for aiding Akashun’s insurrection against the Zahrs,’ Yabghu explains.
‘I’ve hardly seen the Sepāhbad in Za’skar,’ Katayoun comments.
‘He returned today from the Camel Road,’ Yabghu answers. ‘With the strange disappearances in our borderlands, and the melees in Yalon province, led by Emperor Akashun—’
‘Akashun,’ I interrupt, the sound of the warlord’s name another shock. More wind lashes my face until I am forced to raise my shawl over my head.
This is the bitter reality outside Za’skar’s gates: my clan is fractured; Warlord Akashun still rules Azadniabad, and raids grow between our empires. Nothing has changed. Another reminder of my purpose.
‘– and after the Marka tournament, I’ll be departing for the late winter campaign at our northern outposts,’ Yabghu continues as the guards of the bazaar wave us through the crumbling bone-stone walls.
Surrounding us, the bustle of the bazaar makes Za’skar seem like a separate realm.
Though night draws a dark curtain as the moon teethes between the city’s suspended glass bridges and palaces, weaving high amongst looming mountains, Al-Haut does not rest in its mercantile trade.
The Grand Bazaar is located within the eastern quarters of the capital.
Attached at points to the citadel walls, sixteen welded gates of mosaicked stained glass and indigo calligraphy in geometric designs stand large, undeniably crafted from jinn masonry.
I gaze at sword dancers who perform aesthetic martial arts, to the delight of gawking onlookers.
Craftsmen dye swirling blue-threaded raven designs on the arms of children.
Enormous smokeless-fire filigree lanterns shine along each sand-packed alleyway, as if breathing out a false dawn.
Large triple-domed temples glitter, and priests, after evening remembrance, stand amongst open prayer niches in complexes made of glazed ceramic turquoise with raven epigraphs.
‘The Heavens have abandoned humanity,’ a priest bellows to a gathering of worshippers inside an open sehan. ‘We have no prophets nor revelation. Cursed are we, like the tribes swept away by the Great Flood.’
The din of shouting shawl-makers pierces the market; they display glistening coins embroidered on tunics, printed from shuttles of wooden blocks.
Carvers lift wares of worked bone: pendants, pottery and ivory seals.
How so many of us fit in such narrow streets is beyond me.
Dialects from Sajamistan’s different provinces chorus the air, so unusual compared to the barks and orders of Za’skar.
Notables wear raven-feathered turbans while sat cross-legged playing saktab, sipping steaming cinnamon kahvah from palm-sized coppery cups.
A wave of envy at the capital’s diversity hits me.
Are these bazaars common in Sajamistan? Do they always laugh and trade while on the other side of the city, children train for war?
‘Is something the matter?’ Cemil slows, letting Yabghu and Katayoun drift ahead with the other trifectas.
I watch the warriors marvel at sizzling skewers of sumac and saffron lamb kebabs, and piles of pilaf garnished in slivered carrots, barberries and cashews.
How can I be here, tempted, while my clan burned from these very same hands?
‘Khamilla?’
I startle. ‘What?’
He watches me for a long moment. ‘You look pale.’
‘It’s the chill.’ I glance away, anywhere but at him. ‘I think it will storm tonight.’ My hands wrap my shawl tighter.
As if on impulse, Cemil’s hand reaches up, brushing a loose strand of hair into my shawl. His finger lingers on the thin black braids rounding my temple before he retracts his hand suddenly. ‘Perhaps you are falling ill.’
‘That would be your fault. You forced me here.’ I step away before I let myself conclude that I do not despise the warmth of him.
To my left, Overseer Negar lingers with her rukhs Dara, Aizere and Aina; she catches my eye and leers. In her arms, she carries something obscured by a shawl.
‘This way, rukh,’ Yabghu calls out to me before I can look further, while Cemil splits off toward Negar.
Yabghu stands with Katayoun and other low-ranks from my halqa, Emirhan and Gulnaz. I spot a high-rank as well, Lukhman.
I hear Katayoun say, ‘You are our master, this outing should be on your stipend,’ her lips smirking.
Yabghu scowls but pays six coppers for each meal.
The merchant offers up clay mugs of stew with torn semolina noodles, green lentils, reeking black garlic and dark beans.
Yabghu tries to hand me one, and a kebab to Katayoun, his attar a comforting perfume of white clover.
But I am rooted to the ground, watching the bazaar from afar.
He nudges it closer. ‘Are you not starved?’ Yabghu asks.
‘No, I . . . I’m feeling ill.’ I jump back quickly. ‘And this is rotting.’
Yabghu frowns. Training is one thing, but accepting his outstretched food is a betrayal to my own kind. My head pounds and I back away down the alleyway, past merchants and smokeless lanterns. I did not know it was possible to be surrounded by throngs of people but feel helplessly alone.