Chapter 26
My eyes open to Arezu’s looming face.
‘You are awake!’ she cries, jolting Sohrab.
‘What are you doing here?’ My voice scratches out.
‘Your battle was mortifying, master. You could have done better,’ Sohrab says as my jaw clenches. ‘Well?’
I keep my voice level. ‘Your words are frustratingly logical. I have nothing to say.’
‘Good.’ Arezu smiles. ‘If it is any relief, during mealtime the low-ranks said Cemil’s been brutally flogged; it’s all they’re talking about. And apparently he’s been disciplined for the rest of winter.’
I notice purple splotches on her arm. Shame flushes through me. ‘Thank you for intervening in my fight. But never do it again. He was in a high because of Heavenly Energy and could’ve killed you.’ I point to the door. ‘Get lost, please.’
The students sigh, exchange looks, bow and get lost.
Alone in the room, Sohrab’s words smart. I dreamt of being the vizier of my clan, swiftly cutting Sajamistan by collecting intelligence against them.
Pointless. The word rises sinisterly, and I see the emperor walk to the corner of the room, raking his hand through his hair, looking out at Za’skar’s grandeur.
‘I am sorry,’ I say, and my fingers grip the woollen quilt. ‘You named me but I could never bear its burden.’ Grasping hope is like cupping water, only for it to stream through your fingers. The harder you try, the deeper your failures.
As a child, I knew this. I was so weak. But my father reclaimed us. It was a folktale: a great emperor whisking a lone mother and wide-eyed daughter to his rich courts. He became my master. He made me.
I vowed to be worthy of him, broken though I was. Even a shattered porcelain plate can be pieced back together, shards and all.
If I lose the duel, for years I will be trapped in my ranking. Discovering my identity, the Sepāhbad will torture me before this city, and worse. I imagine his tranquil features, his amusement while I scream.
My eyes burn, but, like always, no tears flow forth. To become stronger in a matter of two months, I must destroy my assumptions and my body – limbs torn, muscles shredded, mind wiped – before rebuilding, restitched piece by piece with blood and bone.
Glancing at No-Name, I know what I must do.
I hike to the woodland behind the barracks, the dregs of the stream dribbling against the riverbank. I prepare myself for what I must do, peering at its surface. The panoply of stars streams into the Simorgh’s constellation, the sister of my power, alike in its omen.
There lies my answer. ‘No-Name.’
She appears behind me, standing amongst a copse of pistachio trees.
She has changed, taking to the moonlight as stardust; her white hair curls long, her pale skin shimmers, and her eyes dampen like spilled black ink, swallowing the hint of white.
A discomfort itches through me. Her face structure has softened. Her features are mine.
A good believer would feel there is something unnatural in my intention; it defies the iron-rod conviction of belief to the Divine who rules over the Heavens and clay. But my eyes betray my faith by drifting to No-Name, fraying my will like worn yarn.
‘Change,’ I whisper.
No-Name morphs into Cemil, eyes blazing in hate.
It awes me. It terrifies me. I bestow a rare smile.
No-Name returns it. The Divine’s bountiful gift to me is my mind, and my mind is a cave of degradation.
I can compress months of training into mere days, for No-Name can be anyone and anything, and she can hurt me in ways no one else can.
At my command, Cemil-No-Name moves with a jinn’s force, blades skinning my torso, spinning me to the dirt before I can even blink.
‘Azadnians are the enemy,’ Cemil-No-Name says, leering.
‘Heretics, the killers of the Heavenly Birds.’ Pinning me, he digs his blade beneath my wrist until the skin splits opens, red gushing down.
His hand muffles my scream as the skin peels like pink ribbons until he reaches bone.
His voice becomes soothing like Uma’s, explaining how Sajamistanis hate me, how they will kill me.
My hips buck him off, and he vanishes with the immaterial movement of jinn-folk.
Then . . . my wounds disappear. Only shallow cuts remain. I do not know what to make of this. My stomach flips and I bend over, hurling the contents of my stomach all over the wild weeds. After I smear the sick from my lips, the smell curdling, I simply hiss, ‘Again.’
In the beginning, as the weeks crest and fall, No-Name wins every spar. She embodies not only the warriors of Za’skar, but even my clansmen. Some days she morphs into my siblings, Zhasna or Yun, wearing their faces to remind me of my mistakes.
The worst is when she drapes herself in indigo monastic robes, turning into that monk. I look away, refusing to believe it.
‘Don’t you recognise your Older Brother?’
‘I had no monk as a brother. I only recall a traitor,’ I reply, remembering what my father ordered of me.
Then she guts me, intestines spilling out like long worms; she jabs my eyes until the pupils burst into liquid.
I feel the pain – every blazing second of it – when she tears my body apart and my heart stops beating.
But at the end of each fight, my wounds disappear, and only a small amount of pain remains.
It is awful, so awful, the urge to curl up is dizzying. At my lowest moments, the temptation to concede overwhelms me.
The gore of it puts me in a fervour. I no longer sleep; I hardly eat; my eyes ring in shadows; my bleeding-cycle does not appear again.
Every morning and night, I wrap my broken flesh with cloth to conceal it from prying eyes.
I hurt myself to become stronger and I begin to like it.
When the urge to rest for even one day, when the traitorous parts of me whisper that one evening would not make a difference, No-Name careens into the emperor.
My presence becomes rare in my trifecta study sessions.
As the First-Slashes engage in discourses in the Great Library, a pang resonates in my chest; I was there because Cemil showed me it, but it was he who thrust forward my weakness.
And so, No-Name clamps my ears, ensuring I’m never tempted to respond to other First-Slashes.
I make no more allies and I do not care.
I do not want friends if their companionship is a ruse shielding their violence – like Cemil’s hatred. I want power.
Katayoun notices the change. It’s the end of the month.
The days of fasting have arrived, and with them, spiritual acts.
Monks lecturing about Nuh’s lessons. The exorcism wards emptying.
Shops closing and reopening only after sunset.
With no water or food to supplement my energy, my endurance increases and my Qabl meditation soars.
After convening for trifecta training, I hand over Katayoun’s portion of my monthly stipend.
She fingers through the pouch and takes one ingot. ‘Keep the rest.’
‘But you are not generous.’
She yawns. ‘Listen. You can bribe me any which way, but you look so pathetic, you might need this more.’
I flinch. Evoking pity from the girl married to greed feels somehow lower than the thrashing from Cemil.
‘You’ve regressed back to your initiate days. You hardly speak, even in classes. When Yabghu returns, even he will notice.’
If my methods are so wrong, why are they working?
After a string of losses, I begin to hold my own in the spars against No-Name.
And with this obsessiveness, something within me changes like the weather – one day sun, and another day storm.
At night, darkness grins at me. I see creatures as if the Veils of the Unseen are peeling back.
The shadows accompany me wherever I go, a warning of my forsaken path.
Instead, I turn the Sepāhbad’s khanjar in my hands and repeat my vow: he shall regret gifting this to me.
No-Name changes, too, into more woman than girl. But I fling these disturbing observations away. Fear is weakness. Pain is strength. And the thrill of training through pain is the bleak reward at the end – an addictive high – and I crave it, hoping to get it again and again.
In the last weeks before the Duxzam, the pazktab students seek me deep in the woodlands, finding me hanging upside down from a tree.
‘We have a proposition,’ Arezu announces.
Sohrab shoves her away. ‘Please!’ he begs, falling to his knees. ‘The Marka is over but we need you! Be our master again!’
I sit upright and squint, pretending to think about it. ‘No. You expect me to continue holding your hands?’
‘Yes, please. Hold me.’ Yahya tugs at my tunic.
To my startlement, Sohrab’s features harden in the first streak of genuine anger I’ve ever seen on him. And I am stunned at how much I despise myself for causing it. ‘You need us.’
My shoulders lift. ‘Not anymore.’
‘We are your only friends. The other warriors resent you for the Marka victory.’
‘I have friends,’ I defend. ‘Like Yabghu.’
‘Yabghu hates you. He is forced to be your overseer, and you defy him at every chance.’
My teeth clench. ‘It is the allure of our blossoming friendship – built on hate, but all a pretence. Besides, I have Katayoun.’
‘You pay her into your loyalty,’ Sohrab argues.
‘Such honeyed lies, master.’ Arezu smiles coyly. ‘The victory has bloated her head. Goodbye and may death never be a peace on to you.’
At Sohrab’s elbow, Yasaman drops to her knees with a scowl and Yahya clumsily follows.
Arezu sneers at their backs. ‘You fools concede so easily.’ Her jade eyes flick to me, cold. ‘My proposition is simple. We help you, and in return, you train us, for a reduced time.’
I glance at No-Name, who shares my scepticism. But the students’ watchful gazes make my guilt well like blood on a shallow cut. So I announce: ‘Half of the hour.’
‘And if we want more, will you refuse to train us?’ demands Arezu.
If I admit that, it will make me awful. ‘Yes.’
Sohrab speaks in Arezu’s ear and she suggests, ‘Fifty minutes.’