Chapter 19 #2
At the end of the path, No-Name is there but distracted. Her long pale fingers flicker over a tea stall. Her form shrinks until she is a girl dressed in a crane-feathered qaftan. My feet slow.
No-Name changes, somehow becoming more than a single person. Now she’s a wispy girl on the shoulders of her brother, who is dressed in monastic robes as he flaunts her across the bazaar, their laughs tumbling forward from the past.
‘Stop that.’ My breath catches as the memory slides into place like two lovers snug against each other.
It reflects to me: my arm pulled by my half-siblings toward a bazaar beneath showers of stars, smelling the wealth of velvet in stalls, walking my fingers across rolls of silk before we all gather under platanus trees between evening poets.
My hand grasps out to the bright memory, yearning . . . for who, I cannot be sure, but, like nūr, the light is extinguished soon between my fingers.
I return to the present with wet cheeks, not from tears. Thunder quakes the skies; the clouds have broken. Huddling under my shawl, I watch the rain punish the late crowd, beating paths on the sand, forming long puddles.
I back away, right into Cemil.
‘Usur-Khan.’ His voice is tight, hand steadying my arm. It slides down, finding the old scar he inflicted on me.
‘Has Yabghu summoned me?’
He hesitates. ‘Yes, but it was a mistake to have you accompany us.’
Does he expect me to be offended? In fact, I am a little relieved. ‘I agree,’ I tell him. ‘This was a waste of my time. But if I leave, Yabghu will—’
‘No.’ His grip is almost bruising. ‘You have to go. Now.’ He glances over his shoulder before shoving me forward. ‘Go—’
‘There she is.’ Overseer Negar looms over Cemil, replacing his hand. ‘It’s good that she’s here. Captain Fayez has decided to draft the squadron, now, in the bazaar.’
Cemil presses his lips together and speaks no more. My eyes narrow but I’ve no choice but to obey an overseer’s orders.
As we walk toward the assembled squadron, merchants shutter their stalls and city folk flee toward the temple or find cover in grasping date trees, palms flipped outward in prayer.
Preachers seize on the omen. At least this fear, both empires share: rain, a moment for prayer to remember the Great Flood.
Captain Fayez must not fear the rain, for he grins from the centre of the bazaar, calling out to us. ‘What better, more sacred time than during rainfall to announce the underlings of my Marka squadron.’
Wiping my face, I slide on to a flat stone beside Katayoun beneath palm trees. No-Name comes forward.
‘I think we should go,’ she says quietly. ‘I sense something. It makes me uneasy.’
Captain Fayez prowls round the centre, overseers flanking him. To the side stand two captains from other squadrons, here for the show: Madj and Osman.
Fayez begins drafting low-rank warriors. Many are inevitable: Lukhman, Dara, Gulnaz. Thirty rukhs out of over three hundred. In some trifectas, Fayez skimps, and in others, he selects two low-ranks.
Eventually, Fayez reaches our trifecta, the last one.
Rain is frightful for it reminds the people of how Nuh’s nation was forsaken.
My head tilts up, taking in Heaven’s grief.
Fayez too looks at the sky, and parts his mouth, rainwater trickling in.
He swallows and licks his lips, accepting its curses as if he’s beyond forsaken. Then his eyes come to rest on me.
‘Usur-Khan.’ His fingers fiercely grip the bone-pendant strung around his neck, until his nails bleed white. I stand, watching his hands. ‘You would like to be in my squadron.’
It is not a question. My gaze flits up. ‘Yes.’
‘Will you obey my first order?’
‘Order me.’ I bow.
He unlatches his waterskin and pours it on to his sandals. ‘It’s simple. Lick this kahvah off my feet.’
I unfold from my bow. ‘W-what?’
‘Will you?’
I blink at his condition. A prideful sort. This is a simple decision. As I summon an answer, he suddenly faces the crowd of Za’skar warriors.
‘In the face of an enemy, what does Squadron One do?’ he demands of them.
‘Snip the strings of fate, fan the flames and devour the ones who march against us.’ The torrid wind carries their chant.
Fayez nods like the script hails from a holy book rather than the mouths of military dogs. ‘Does she understand it so?’
It takes me a moment to realise what he has done. I gaze mistakenly, at the hundreds of eyes drilling into me and then Negar’s slow smile, so I miss Fayez’s quick movement. His iron-fist slams into my torso. I stumble back, legs collapsing to the dirt.
He hit me. The wind screeches, the wet air an invasion rather than a cleansing when it sweeps grit into my lungs.
‘This is the enemy.’ Fayez grounds his heel into the old injury in my leg.
Pain blisters up my nerves. ‘As if I would allow an Azadnian into my squadron.’ Then I see it, the deep fury in his eyes – the hate.
How was I blind to it? ‘But you were an excellent rival to string along Cemil, bringing him to such potential.’
His foot slams down again, and the iron-bone makes my head flinch against a rock. Distantly, I hear Yabghu yelling. My eyes seek Cemil, but the deceiver is unable to meet my gaze, hands clenched into fists, veins corded up his neck.
‘What potential?’ Glaring at them, I smear away blood. ‘I see no hawkish raven, but a soft yellow tit, or – dare I say – a snakebird. At least have the gall to look me in the eye, Cemil.’
Fayez grins at that and slams his foot a third time, sucking away my words.
‘Captain!’ Yabghu wrenches me upwards and shoves himself between us. ‘She is still my student. And you will incur his wrath; you do not know that the Sepāhbad recruit—’
‘Has my own lieutenant turned against me?’ Fayez snarls. Yabghu’s hand eclipsing my wrist tightens but he cannot disobey his superior before the entire squadron.
‘Enough,’ I say with an equally ironclad tone.
My fingers ready, clammy, and my legs crouch.
But I cannot throw a fist. My breath slows and I count upwards then downwards.
‘Captain, you brought me outside of Za’skar so the senior officers will not see this offence.
But you mistake me for someone with pride.
Tell me, how do I show you that I deserve a place in your Marka squadron?
You asked me to lick the kahvah. Shall I do that? ’
The captain looks down his long nose, scrubs his rough, splotchy, henna-dyed beard.
I meet his gaze. My legs bend until I am on my knees, moving toward Fayez’s feet.
I think about my scattered clan; about Hyat Uncle waiting for me to feed him information; about Older Brother Yun, surrounded in Arsduq, facing Sajamistani incursions at the borderland.
My overseer blinks in naked astonishment. ‘Usur-Khan? Have you no self-preservation?’
‘None at all.’ I smile.
‘Your ambitions will cost you your life,’ Yabghu hisses.
‘No one in this army will respect you.’ Then he glares behind me.
‘Grab her.’ He grasps my left arm; a small hand takes my right.
To my bewilderment, it’s Katayoun attempting to drag me back, her right hand holding her kebab.
I shove both of them away, lowering back down like an onager, face hot even in the wet.
My pulse pounds militantly against my throat. Pride does not matter in my battle.
The captain grins through my humiliation. His sandal comes to rest atop my head, forcing it into the dirt. ‘See, she loves it. And I love an Azadnian begging. It simply proves our theorem. You are Azadnian. Lesser.’ His hand raises. ‘Bring it.’
Overseer Negar thrusts forward the object shrouded by a shawl.
Fayez whips the cover off. A surge of bile fills my mouth.
It’s a cage. Inside is a delicate white creature smeared in russet brown.
A crane. Three long talons dig into its belly .
. . a raven, pecking at its rotting flesh, which swarms with brown locusts, legs curled into its matted feathers.
‘See that. This is natural. Just like this.’ His foot hammers into my neck and I spasm out blood-tinted saliva.
‘Like your natural inclination to bow at my feet. To never resist. To obey. A hierarchy of power; this is good for order. You are trying to break that order. Cemil is two ranks above you; a stronger martial artist.’
In the captain’s shadow, Cemil wavers. He takes one step toward me but does not move closer.
Once again, his gaze settles on my forearms, so like his own with its gold whorls, yet so different.
His gaze hardens with an imperceptible anger.
It is laughable: our fates on opposite ends.
What separates us is an arbitrary border stroked in sooty ink that puts his tribe into Sajamistan and my maternal tribe into Azadniabad, both from the Camel Road.
Yet, no one blinks an eye, accepting him as their own.
Perhaps I should be grateful, saved from the fate of being him.
‘The difference between you two is pride. Cemil would never beg as you do, below me,’ Fayez says.
‘No.’ I splatter blood into my hand. ‘Pride is chains to a warrior. I have no pride. I do not need it.’
‘Pride keeps order.’ Fayez glances round the bazaar, a reflection of his words: an orderly metropolitan that deceived even the jinn into labouring away to produce the riches of this city.
‘If you proved yourself stronger, if Azadniabad conquered our lands, I would not hate you. I would accept the natural outcome,’ he crouches, finger grazing the blood against my lips, ‘and I would respect you. Not begging. Not petty tricks.’ He recedes.
‘For this, I will ensure no squadron will ever select you.’
‘You are worse than Qabil.’ I spit at his feet the curse of Adam’s son. ‘Violence is your natural order.’
‘Tell me, do the bites of fleas affect the might of a flying serpent? No. Your anger, your attacks, do not affect me. I am an azhdahak. A flying serpent.’
I feel so small that I kneel lower, though I yearn to stand at his level.
The illusion of equality is better than the truth of inferiority.
My fists bury in the wet sand. Months of grovelling in this army and I haven’t managed a single rank, while my brethren are cornered by this empire and vultures like Warlord Akashun.
I’ve tired of this helplessness. I will force my way into the Marka even if it requires a squadron of my own.
My throat burns as I swallow hard and look between Fayez and Cemil, smearing the blood from my face on to my palm, presenting my vow: ‘You force my hand. And you will regret this. My kind does not forget a blood oath.’
From behind them, Katayoun sighs, and lifts her skewer of sumac lamb, indifferent. ‘This is the outcome when you have useless ambitions,’ she says before her teeth tear into its meaty flesh.