Chapter 28 #2
His gaze turns melancholy. ‘To open your eyes. You have one foot in Azadniabad, and another in Sajamistan. Both empires war over the borderlands of the Camel Road but Sajamistan has Za’skar, this is our epicentre.
For Azadniabad, it’s their tributaries in the Camel Road.
You know this; you are from Tezmi’a. The vassals and warlords are a tower of hastily stacked mud bricks; snatch one from the bottom and the entire structure crumbles.
Worse though for Azadniabad, the borderlands are ungovernable and the nomadic tribes are warmongers,’ he chides, as if the notion of self-rule for the steppe-lands is a foolish idea. I flinch.
My hand strokes the leather like it’s an intricate puzzle. I only wish I could reach from the Heavens above and switch the pieces of the map. As if I could play Divine.
I am assigned to prepare with Adel – a Seventh-Slash warrior in the Alif, an elite odd-numbered circle under the Sepāhbad – for the military assignment. It feels like an intentional decision from the seniors.
My first interaction with Alif Adel is not what I expect. When he steps into the briefing chamber filled with the assigned soldiers, I bow low.
To my bewilderment, he grabs my hands. ‘After your performance in the Marka, I announced to the clanhouses that one day I would marry you.’
I baulk, ‘W-what?’ before remembering he is a senior, and keep my head inclined.
Adel appears the same age as Yabghu, in his late twenties.
His features could be mistaken as familiar, for he has a face that could be shared by any apprentice in a bazaar – with eager brown eyes, a smarting of black stubble around his jaw, and embroidered muslin strewn around his tall, lithe form.
‘Of course, I have a wife. And a very young child. But—’
I glance helplessly behind him at Officer Samira and she rolls her eyes.
‘– a shame, really. Your fish-in-the-net tactic; the mobile barrage; the use of young students to make your opponents’ wills falter – tell me, whose brilliant idea was it to use that child’s piss? After all, the best tactics are the cowardly ones.’
‘My idea,’ I say in a small voice. ‘At least one warrior thinks my Marka win was not mortifying.’
‘Mortifying? Who spoke like so?’ He glances about, and no one answers.
I clear my throat and we begin. For the next few evenings after classes, I attend a phonetic halqa, practising the Ghaznian dialect again.
The language is rough in its grammatical structure, with four noun cases.
Outside, in the White-Pillar, Alif Adel and I practise our false identities.
I morph from Khamilla Usur-Khan to Leila Mahsahzad, an orphan raised in a Ghaznian monastery to mine in the northern borderlands.
We review signals, flicking our fingers or blinking in numbered sets; we create written codes for short reports to be relayed to another informant, who will convey the message back to the Ghaznian outpost.
Afterwards, when Alif Adel bids me farewell, he goes to the intelligence chambers to meet the Sepāhbad and his advisers.
The Sepāhbad’s triple-pointed bone-pendant flashes in his hands.
I realise it’s not a pendant at all but the same seal belonging to the vizier, used to enter his intelligence chambers.
An idea forms in my head. If I am to defect soon, this might be my only chance.
‘You are taking on a great risk,’ No-Name says, scowling. ‘Why risk infiltrating the Sepāhbad’s intelligence chambers?’
It’s bath day as I follow Katayoun to the hammam.
I will be defecting to Arsduq, to warn my clansmen.
If I don’t seize my only opportunity to gather more information, it could cost my clan and the warlords our only stronghold in eastern Azadniabad.
This information can regain the warlords’ favour because we have leverage against our common enemy infringing on our territories.
‘But you already have information,’ No-Name presses.
My lips tug down. I need more. The fate of my existence as the fallen emperor’s sword begs for me to do it.
In the women’s side of the bathhouse, hot steam curls around my face.
The baked brick cupola is divided into vaulted rooms, wooden partitions for segregation.
Spring waters, from the oases’ qanat system, circulates through geometric-tiled basins and hot stones, heated in part by the smokeless firelight at the top of the bathhouse.
Attendants glide around the partitioned chambers, from cuppers to cleanse spiritually polluted blood, to bathkeepers and shavers: the only luxury in Za’skar, sponsored by a notable in the sultana’s courts buying favour with the military.
Soldiers recline on marbled benches, propping their feet above the steaming stones. Others teeter in high wooden clogs – a precaution to avoid the molestation of the smallest, most perverted of bathhouse jinn-folk. Ceramic walls are painted with pictorial art of warriors on the backs of huma birds.
‘Even if your idea is sensible, how would you take from the Sepāhbad?’ No-Name pauses. ‘After all, he is the most feared warrior in the empire. You cannot just steal it.’
I gaze pointedly at the partition between the bathhouse. I will not steal the seal. I will borrow it.
Instead of bathing, I tie my robe and walk along the latticed partition, stepping away from the women’s quarters. Around the corner of the slab, in the public side of the bath, I see young men, scholars, even pazktab boys, relaxing shirtless in their loincloths, conversing.
The Sepāhbad is where I expect him, next to Za’skar advisers and Alif warriors.
Even Adel is present. I can hardly see the vizier’s profile, except that his back is flush against the centre of the filigree partition, the wink of the bone-seal secure against his throat.
I try to calculate his exact position in my mind.
‘You perverted girl,’ Katayoun tells me when I return.
I jump. ‘No – I . . . that is not what I was doing. I was . . . lost,’ I mutter.
In the women’s section, I test my theory.
Katayoun hands me a loincloth and we disrobe quickly.
I wade through the oily rose waters to the centre of the wall, back against the wooden partition.
My hand presses at it. This slab of palm wood separates us by a nail’s length but the Sepāhbad does not know it, not how close I am to him, nor what I am to do.
If I was to stand and reach over the narrow gap between the partition and ceiling, he would be right below, hair merely a finger’s brush away.
Our proximity means the bathwaters between us are connected.
Sinking my hand deep into the water, I increase my finger bonds to one-third of their expansion.
The bathwater clashes with the cosmic cold nūr – so dense from the Second-Stratum, it forces the water’s temperature to drop.
The smokeless fire above us flickers and sizzles, reheating the room to compensate.
After twenty minutes, across from me, Katayoun flinches and – to my amazement – removes her bone necklace, placing it on the carved niche beside her.
I continue this and watch other warriors remove some of their bone-pendants due to the hot air heating them, until immense steam rises and wavers like a white sheet hung by a thread, obscuring my sight.
After another moment, my left silver earring sears against my ear, the metal hot from the clash of temperature below and the heat above. It confirms my theory.
Short on time, the next week, on bath day, I execute my plan. If I am to temporarily borrow the Sepāhbad’s bone-seal, I will need a bar of red clay soap.
I unclip my left earring and place it in the dressing chambers along with my makeshift soap-mould.
In my loincloth, I settle in the springs with Yasaman and Arezu, who I’d told to join me in the hammam that evening.
As they bicker beside me, I discreetly alter the bathwaters with my nūr.
My back slides against the laces of the partition, gooseflesh tickling my neck despite the heat, for on the other side of this screen, a handspan away, the Sepāhbad should be with his advisers, sitting with his back against the slab separating us.
Based on my observations, that is the same location where he and other senior officers tend to rest. My gamble is steep because I cannot rely on seeing him to make this work.
After cooling the waters with the densest nūr I can discreetly summon beneath the surface, I lift from the tub, tie on my robe and excuse myself from the students.
I round the women’s section, pretending to walk to the dressing chambers. In the public corridor, I glance at the pale ceramic walls, containing a slight reflection of the public side of the bathhouse, revealing a view of the Sepāhbad. His seal is on his neck, still.
The smokeless firelight flickers and the skin around his neck seems to redden from the hot air.
Adel reaches out, brows furrowed, and lifts the Sepāhbad’s bone-seal, snapping something at him.
At the moment, it is no longer around his neck but on the edge beside the niche of the basin, near Adel’s hand.
From the hot temperature, steam curls and thickens until the seal is hardly visible.
I return to the bath, which Arezu has left to try blood-cupping.
‘Yasaman,’ I say after a moment. ‘I need help.’
She floats to my side. In a hushed voice, I say, ‘Remember my earring? I think I dropped it below this partition.’ I point behind me.
‘It slipped through the cracks but I am too embarrassed to go to the men in my immodest state. Perhaps if you summoned the white beetle we used in the Marka – discreetly, as to not surprise anyone – you might command it to retrieve the earring. It’s on the edge. I would be in your debt.’
Yasaman huffs, ‘No debt needed, master.’