Chapter 24 #2
‘No one interferes, rukh.’ Negar digs her foot into Cemil’s back. He meets my eyes, his blazing in contempt.
I force myself to focus on the captain. ‘So you wish to duel me,’ I say, fighting a swell of hope.
‘Khamilla.’ Overseer Yabghu’s voice rises in warning. ‘This is the high of your victory speaking. Fayez has nearly mastered the martial system of iron-bone; he is a Fifth-Slash—’
Fayez’s eyes cut to him. ‘One more word and I will gut you.’ He returns his glare to me. ‘Name your stake.’
‘You are a Fifth-Slash,’ I speak slowly. ‘If I win our duel, I will take your highest-ranked military assignment scheduled this coming year.’
Fayez’s lips tilt up menacingly. ‘A high price,’ he warns.
‘My assignment is not as an auxiliary. To pay me equally in kind is through the next most valuable currency.’ His expression tightens.
‘Time. If you lose the duel, for three years you will not participate in a Marka, examination nor battle. You will rot and remain in First-Slash as my dog.’
‘What?’ I share Yabghu’s horrified expression, and the warriors surrounding us appear equally surprised, angry . . . and some hungry for my demise. ‘How is this a fair currency?’
‘One successful assignment with the high-ranks and you will never have to beg for another in your feeble life. That is, if you win the duel.’
‘One year,’ I plead instead. ‘The same benefits but a less ridiculous amount of time.’
‘Two and a half,’ he counters. He has trapped me. To refuse is to admit that I have nothing of value to a high-rank besides my own time. And it is true. ‘Is it not the philosophy of the Duxzam, to gamble away what one cherishes most?’
I clutch my chest, a cluster of wounds. Somehow, if I do win, I would be assigned with the high-ranks, accessing the best military intelligence on Sajamistan. Perhaps, I’ll gain enough from the assignment to defect from the army and return to my exiled clan.
Grimly, I nod. ‘When is the duel?’
‘After the month of reflection before the spring. Duxzam is forbidden in the fasting days marking Prophet Nuh’s departure from the ark.
Perhaps you can plead to the Divine to save you.
’ His grin widens like the expression of a soon-to-be rich man.
His eyes remind me of the leopards I once spied roaming the Ghaznian mountains in the silvery nights, snapping the necks of white hares slinking along the trails.
Staggering back, the blood loss finally creeps in. I fall to my knees, unsure if my dizziness is from injury or the frenzy of a hare backed into a corner.
‘We must bandage your leg,’ a Qabl medic tells me.
I support my arm on the window. The infirmary is attached to the monastery, with embossed schemes of greens and bronze, mosaics of paintings showing horned creatures treated by sages. My eyes dart upwards at the stars, living, flickering things against the black.
I imagine the cosmic light is my strength and if I so choose, I can light the dark world at the snap of my fingers; I can follow that light’s path to home. The fantasy is gone too soon at the reminder of the Duxzam: the key that returns me to my clan or the one that locks my chains in this city.
After the healer ties the bandage, she places at my floor-bed a tray of figs, mulberries and a bowl of yakhni floating with a film of milk fat and lamb bones before leaving. No-Name crawls to it and dips a finger tentatively into the bowl, then brings it to her mouth.
‘It tastes odd,’ she murmurs. She turns to the mulberries, and after licking one, her black eyes grow huge. ‘This is good!’ She dives into the bowl, but the mulberries fall past her tongue, unable to be swallowed by her immaterial form.
‘Stop that,’ I snap before rolling over in my wool quilt.
‘I’m hungry,’ No-Name cries, as I wonder how my students are faring in the other rooms.
As if thought brings them into existence, a flurry of footsteps rouses me. ‘Master,’ a voice hisses. ‘Are you awake?’
I sit up. ‘I don’t have a choice it seems . . .’ My voice trails off at seeing Arezu and the other students shepherded in by Katayoun.
She sighs. ‘They ruined my sleep and forced me to bring them to you.’ With a raised hand, Katayoun leaves quickly.
Arezu’s cheeks are bruised, a sleepy Yahya on her back. Sohrab’s arm is in a splint, and beside him, Yasaman looks well except for bandages around her fingers.
‘You should be resting.’
They exchange glances. I wonder how they do that, speaking silently in their own understanding.
‘We are,’ Arezu eventually answers before they slip on to my bedding.
Yahya throws himself across me, and the breath knocks out of my chest.
‘A-at ease,’ I sputter.
‘Order them to leave,’ No-Name says as she tries to snag a mulberry. Over the bowl, our eyes meet. It is only one night. Her expression furrows. ‘Hungry,’ she murmurs again.
Yahya snores into my chest and, gradually, after shoves and snatched blankets, the other students quiet into light dozes. Except Arezu – she clutches her stomach, curling in beside me.
‘Were you injured during the Marka?’ I glance down at her.
‘I was only wounded on my arms. So why is my,’ her voice drops, almost mortified, ‘stomach sore?’
After a moment, I ask, ‘Have you ever bled?’
She shakes her head. ‘I’ve heard the other pazktab girls speak of it, but I’ve never had it.’
I study her, dumbfounded. At sixteen, Arezu has not had her bleeding-cycle? And is it not the duty of a parent to tell her about these matters? A curiosity ensnares me, but I bat it away.
I cannot fathom being a parent; children are fat whining pigs. Who would willingly choose to have them?
More aggressively than perhaps I should, I grit out, ‘When it happens, come to me, then.’
She pauses, not expecting my offer. ‘Something has changed within you. I-I am still waiting . . . for a scolding, for disobeying you in the Marka.’
‘You are not a babe nor that young. I am only a few years older.’ But I feel much older.
‘Yahya was almost hurt.’
‘He shouldn’t have been there in the first place,’ I admit with a swirling mass of guilt in my gut.
‘Arezu deserves a scolding,’ Sohrab mumbles, eyes opening sleepily. ‘When my uma lived, she would scold us.’
‘Scold,’ I repeat. ‘I am not your uma.’
They go quiet, and again, a peculiar feeling resonates through me. I regret my words, unable to parse why, except that I would never blame my failures on someone else, least of all them. If I cannot give them the scolding they want, is that their fault or mine?
‘Uma?’ Yahya brings his head up from my chest. ‘Master, my uma.’
They all still at that. The light voice, the light words that seem so small – do they not understand the weight? The responsibility?
‘I am your master,’ I whisper. ‘Not uma. Not uma.’ Yahya’s lips tug down and, to my horror, his eyes water. ‘Wait—’ I panic and Yasaman goes to grab him but I halt her. My hand comes atop his dark curls, soothing the frayed strands until his eyes droop again.
A curiosity takes hold of me and this time I do not fight it. ‘Where are your clans?’
‘Here, in a small village of Al-Haut.’ Yasaman stifles a yawn. ‘Uma was a bone carver; she was martyred giving birth to Yahya.’
‘And your dada?’
‘He was a bone merchant who travelled north and disappeared.’ She frowns. ‘Fortunately, I was chosen as an apprentice to a court librarian; he even sponsored Yahya in the pazktab. My old master taught me my letters to be a scribe.’
I blink. ‘You truly wish to be a scribe? Not a warrior?’
‘Like the scholars, Yahya and I will specialise in the Easkaria, to be scribes for the vizier.’
‘Tell me the point of writing pages of suffering? It’s worthless,’ I mutter.
She flinches. ‘War is more worthless,’ she snaps, loud enough to startle Yahya. I glare above his head. ‘You cannot study a war without the scribes.’
‘Master,’ Arezu scolds. ‘You love your proverbs; here is one for you: the ones who claim books are beneath them fear the knowledge they possess. You are being a coward.’
‘I am trying to save her,’ I snap back but I am no longer there in the room.
I am drifting far, far away. My voice lashes in a way it never has before.
‘I’ve seen it. I’ve lived it. I made her mistake.
Accepting the stories of a people is a burden she will never be able to fulfil.
It’s the worst curse to pen the history of the past. One day she will break. ’
‘Master?’
I tuck Yahya into the quilt and hobble on my good leg. Something is wrong with me; I have lost my cool over something so small.
Arezu lurches forward, catching my arm at the entrance. ‘I see you now.’ But I fear what she reads inside of me.
She follows me out into the corridor and we slide down the cold marbled wall. As if to mollify the taut silence, Arezu offers a question. ‘Master, why throw yourself into another battle after the Marka? Why take such risks when the odds are against you?’
‘You would not understand.’
She pins me with her gaze. ‘Then make me understand. I hate when you are like this: here before us, but also not.’
I lift my forearm of gold-threading and dare close to the truth.
‘Like you, long before this, I had a home. My tribe was determined to ignore the outside world, but the world was determined to take every bloody bit of its offerings from us. I was accepted into a new home, and I do not want it pillaged again. Now I train in Za’skar because I want to save it. ’
My words are still honest, for she does not know what home I refer to. To her, home is here: Sajamistan.
Arezu says, ‘In Khor, we faced all kinds of raids in my village; many Sajamistanis did.’
She calls herself Sajamistani when she is of a Khorinite tribe. I swallow my protest. I call myself Azadnian, despite being born in Tezmi’a. It is easier to cede to the empire.
Arezu continues, ‘You think we are not alike, but my own brother died from a raid when he was only two.’
I now understand how she grew to be so fond of Yahya. ‘I didn’t know.’