Chapter 29
When the last hour strikes before curfew, with most of the officers in the courtyards, I use my clearance to enter White-Pillar’s briefing rooms, across from the Sepāhbad’s intelligence chambers. In my satchel, I have only the bone-seal, some parchment, pen and ink.
Three soldiers cross the hall. When they turn their backs, it grants me three seconds. With two steps, I jab the imitated bone-seal into the circular space set in the door. It presses and clicks. I dart inside.
My back rests against the entrance door, waiting.
Silence.
Inside, palm-wood shelves are stacked with parchments; the balcony overlooks gardens and fountains, filigree balustrades obscuring the view.
The room is wide, with other locked doors, and niches for texts.
An intricate gold divan and a tea table with a copper teapot and fist-sized teacups are beside a warmly lit smokeless hearth.
Beside the window hang tasselled tapestries.
At the centre is a long floor-desk. Behind it, smooth ivory walls glow with embossed warrior paintings of Jinn Wars and scriptures.
One catches my eye, of a raven with a claw against the clay, showing Adam’s son how to bury the first corpse of mankind.
Smokeless firelight burns low from corner lanterns, shadows leering and lurching as I pass.
My lessons return: first, I note the dust; as long as the layer of motes on the desk remains the same as before I entered, the Sepāhbad will not suspect an infiltrator.
Two, I must take care in sweeping the textured rugs, so they display the same directions of footprints as before.
As long as I step with my heel to the left, no new footprint will appear.
Three, I must not lose track of time; I have perhaps an hour.
I inspect the largest shelves near the balcony. My priority is developments in Ghaznia province and Izur and Arsduq along the Camel Road, because this intelligence is my empire’s salvation. Parsing out thousands of parchments in a room holding revered intelligence is near impossible.
For the next half hour, I withdraw and scan scrolls, only the archived ones with broken seals.
The papyruses are scribed in a mismatched code; it takes furious minutes to deduce the codes I am familiar with, but still I am unsure if I understand it.
Several have a number script at the top, numbers I can rearrange.
After a painstaking moment, I find scrolls allocated to Ghaznia province.
The first reveals troop developments along the valley, which I note; in another, my eyes catch on a transcribed exchange with a spy reporting on the disappearance of another informant in Dhab-e after receiving a spiritual cleanse from a local Azadnian monastery.
My eyebrows furrow. From the third scroll, I learn Sajamistan’s military is in correspondence with the eastern Zayguk region to obtain passage from the north-east front, into Izur, above Lake Xasha, in Tezmi’a.
I nearly drop this scroll, cursing. Would Sajamistan intend to invade from both Ghaznia and the north-east, into Izur prefecture?
In the last scroll, my breath stutters. I find correspondence with a Qabl monk on jinn-poisons. The letter is short, vague and difficult to decode, but I make out a glyph of a huma feather and poison and the word for Ghaznia . . . and Arsduq. My brows knit as I lean closer.
‘Soul contract,’ I read aloud. Is this a jinn ritual? The symbols remind me of old sutras in the Qabl Order. But what would Arsduq prefecture have to do with a jinn ritual?
The main information I’ve obtained is on the north-east invasion and alliances – this is important for the Zahr clan’s allies.
After re-scribing the scrolls on my parchment, to memorise before burning them, I return the seals to their original order, blowing dust motes so it seems like nothing was disturbed.
When I am halfway across the room, the door clicks with a resounding echo. Time stretches in two drawn-out, impossible seconds.
As the entrance slides open, I lunge into the deep niche between the hearth and balcony, tucking into a ball behind the tapestry.
The Sepāhbad is here before curfew? Every fibre of me shakes with fear. He will sense the water within my body with his affinity, he will wrench me from the wall before snapping my arms like branches. By the Divine’s blessing, the hearth is here; its smokeless energy might mask my own.
From my narrow view, I see the Sepāhbad enter, a courtly raven crouched on his shoulder, two scribes and Alif Adel at his heels.
A gold cord trims the leader’s black wool robe, flashing beneath the dim lanterns, his hair windblown.
He silently hands the scribes a bundle of parchment before dismissing them.
After sitting cross-legged behind a low-table, he dips his reed pen and methodologically inks a parchment before rolling it up and melting an Alif seal.
He pushes back his unruly curls, flashing the pictogram on his left palm.
Alif Adel lifts the crook of the hearth, poking it into the low fire. ‘Where is Yabghu’s last report on the girl? If I’m to be on this assignment with her, I should read it.’
I frown at this. The Sepāhbad does not answer, simply flicks open a parchment and holds it out.
A part of me has pondered why Yabghu, from the first day, was neutral – even at times kind – with me.
It now seems obvious: he’d been tasked to report on me, the Azadnian.
And I must not be the only Azadnian that the Sepāhbad gathers reports on.
Adel begins to read the parchment. ‘I should warn you; I admire the girl’s mind—’
‘You have a family,’ the Sepāhbad interjects drily.
‘– but I have a feeling that you do not speak the full truth of her. You would take such a gamble of trust on this military assignment?’
The Sepāhbad’s mouth curves wryly. ‘When do I not? If what I assume is true, you would say my idea is one of a mad man.’
‘Even you cannot predict one’s actions like that.’
‘My clan maintained a belief,’ he says before switching in dialect. ‘The path of the mule across the plateaus is not a path shaped by the primal instincts of hunger, but instead a great hand swirling the sea of creation, without a care for the consequence.’
My fear morphs into gutting shock. I know those words, that dialect and that verse from a proverb. My memory sails into the past. He said his clan but that would mean—
The Sepāhbad is from a nomadic Azadnian clan?
With renewed focus, I try to make sense of him.
That proverb . . . it belongs to the nomadic tribes in the juncture between the Dawjad Khaganate in Izur and Tezmi’a; the very north of the Camel Road.
The proverb, passed down for centuries, conveys that no choice is coincidental – every action is a piece within the great cosmic equation crafted by the Divine: the only designer.
Staring, I know in the deepest marrow of my bones that I am missing something. Something threading right before my eyes but too far to grasp. His words – it feels as if he was not speaking about the Divine at all.
With it, asperity rises, that he who is of Azadnian descent refuses Azadniabad. But how is he in Sajamistan? Does he descend from a clan in both?
After resealing the parchment, Adel bows and takes his leave.
A new fear reverberates through me. At any moment, in the quiet, the Sepāhbad will sense me.
‘Having fun?’ No-Name’s voice is calm, but I startle, elbow glancing the wall.
The Sepāhbad’s head snaps in my direction and his raven rises. My hands grasp wildly at No-Name. The shadows grow around us. If only I could disappear like her.
His eyes seem to pin me. He stares and stares. I open my mouth to say something, anything, to fill the horrific silence but—
No-Name clamps my lips. The shadows, the darkness, surge until I’ve melted into their black. I do not know how I command them – if I commanded them at all – or if it was No-Name’s doing.
The darkness hides me. From the corner, the hearth folds into itself, a gentle core of red.
‘I cannot maintain this for long. He cannot see or hear you either,’ No-Name explains, arms around my neck. From his lack of reaction, she speaks the truth. A triumph thrills through my veins.
His eyes narrow and stray to the space between us. I follow them, unable to see what he can. Then his gaze flits upwards – to the corners of the room – and he mouths something before blowing against his fingertips in the direction of the hearth. It must be remembrance to thwart jinn.
The Sepāhbad stands and comes forward; I, too, creep toward him, until we are face to face.
But he takes another step, then another, and another, and instinctually I back away as each foot of his scuffs my own, until I hit the half-opened balcony doors.
His hand reaches out to my face, astonishingly close, but in the reflection of his eyes, I do not see myself.
His hand curls, simply passing through me, yanking shut the balcony doors.
My soul chills like the frost of black winter as his finger briefly touches my face.
After stepping back, his head cocks down to the raven curled against his collar. ‘O, Rasha, speak of what you see.’
It can speak? The raven stares forward – through me – with the bereft stillness of death. ‘Darkness, master,’ it rasps.
At that, the warrior smiles with no humour and sighs out, tired.
‘Like always, creature of the grave.’ His finger grazes its feathered ebony head in one firm stroke.
‘It might never leave.’ The raven and Sepāhbad exchange a silent look.
Then: ‘I must forgo you, old friend,’ he says, low, to the bird.
‘Forgive me. We will meet again, soon, in the forsaken lands. Where you mourn.’
The Sepāhbad draws straight and his eyes narrow upon me once more, but he merely shakes his head. He blows out the lanterns, snuffs the hearth with a swift snap and departs.
‘How have you made me disappear?’ I ask No-Name.
‘Everything I do is your will. We are one.’ She vanishes with a secretive smile and a terrible feeling comes over me.