Chapter 35
I decide to wait before defecting to Azadniabad’s capital.
Given its central location in the empire, it’s more strategic to maintain my cover as a Za’skar warrior and join Sajamistan’s troops moving westward along the Camel Road.
Therefore, after the melee, I am sent back to Za’skar to convene with my assigned squadron.
Upon journeying there, an unexpected longing swells up my throat.
No-Name understands my intent. ‘After today, you will never see the pazktab students again.’
‘You sound pleased.’
‘Because I feel sick when you see them.’ She spits as I hasten up the hills toward Little Paradise gardens.
It’s predawn, the heavens a dim blue. Trifectas trickle across the sand dunes for training; others stretch on the slanting roofs of the glimmering monastery suspended in the mountainside above the clouds; Qabl sages sweep away dirt from sandstone edifices around jinn-blown glass temples.
But a tension wrings the air from the impending war.
I wind up the hills, sighting pazktab students stance training on the grass.
‘Master?’ Yahya cries.
And the snotty thing throws himself into my arms. The lump in my throat disappears as the weight of him knocks away my breath.
‘Yahya,’ I say, but it takes a miserable will not to cry out his name. Sohrab comes up grinning and pauses at the sight of me. Yasaman drops her parchments and reed pens, pressing her hands to her face.
Only Arezu watches with a narrow gaze. ‘A foolish love.’
‘You are the foolish one,’ Sohrab snaps. I choke back a dark laugh at the word love.
Arezu smiles. ‘We know war has broken out across the Camel Road. Za’skar is emptying out its warriors. Our master is leaving, to be chewed apart by enemies.’
‘Arezu,’ I warn. ‘Do not say this before the others.’
She continues as if I am not there at all, eyes as flat as the salt plains surrounding us. ‘In war, they will not let our master die slowly. They will mutilate her.’
‘Arezu.’
‘Master die?’ Yahya murmurs.
‘I . . .’ My voice trails off. No child – none – should have bloodshed as a worldly perspective.
Even if I do not die, by defecting to kill Akashun, I can never return.
But how does one explain death to younglings?
Was this Uma’s duty? To crouch and smooth my cheeks, to look me in the eye and admit that I must learn to kill with a bow and arrow before I may speak, that I must learn to hide before I may roam free in the pastures, I must be old before I am young.
How does one tell a child this? But children are no longer children in war; their dreams vanish, and they simply become monsters.
As I stare at them, I conclude it is only a matter of time.
Sohrab reaches out to me but cold habit beats against me. I should find Overseer Yabghu. Why am I here? To inflict more pain?
To be selfish.
‘No.’ I step away.
Their faces fall. My blood pulses faster behind my ears. With Yahya curled in one arm, tentatively I outstretch the other. Sohrab and Yasaman cling into it, as if I can lift them to safety.
‘Swear a Heavenly Oath that you will return?’ Yasaman says. ‘Please.’
I cannot look at them. A cry chokes into my words.
‘I am a liar.’ And for once, the confession feels absolving.
‘I have lied many times and do not dare pretend that I have not. I have used you. But now, I do not wish to lie to you. Not about my intentions. Not about my identity. Not about my duties.’
‘Then kill the enemy!’
‘Do not say that.’ I stiffen, my eyes truly burning. ‘Killing cannot be done lightly, most of all by you.’
‘But. it is a war. You will have to kill.’ Sohrab’s words flow too easily, and a part of me wonders what he has seen. ‘When you are kicked into a corner and left to scramble, it does not make you a monster. It makes you human.’
Yasaman nods and brushes the necklace of bones at my throat. ‘Do that. Be a monster. To live.’
I cannot answer except to pull them closer. Yahya begins crying in his confusion, unable to parse where I will be going.
We remain until the sun crawls up between the mountains like a red creature, swallowing the black-blue into wisps of dawn.
Before they break away, I stammer, ‘Remember our stances. Continue with a bowl of water, and meditate in the treetops. But please, do not pick a fight with the karkadann to practise. And,’ I breathe, my chest caving, ‘even if you achieve the stature of Qabl master one day, I want you to always breathe steadily through your pain. I want you to protect each other. I want you to—’
Eajīz are tools. Our purpose is to become terrifying warriors; to be an empire’s weapon, the blade in a ruler’s grasp.
But despite such logic, all I can reason is no: I want them safe; they are mine.
They are young, and these empires have no damned right to tear them from me.
I was wrong to train them. I want to be their protector, to be their master, to be their mother.
But they will continue on their path, and I will walk mine. I hate that fact most of all.
‘We know,’ Sohrab grins lopsidedly. ‘You trained us.’
It’s that grin that seizes my spirit and shatters it. I want you safe, you na?ve fools. And sheer desire seems as good as a millennium of logic, giving me reason to believe that somehow, I could remain at their sides.
But Uma told me of innocent birds in a cage. They must be set free.
I add thickly, ‘I am no good and I am sorry for it. Please, on Judgement Day, do not testify against me before the Divine when you learn the truth of who I am.’
They giggle at that, deaf to the urgency. Sohrab clasps a hand to my cheek, kissing it gently. ‘You are no good, master. Not at all. But to us,’ he smiles, ‘your good was enough. And for that, you will survive.’
The grass dances at our feet, the wind echoes my whimper. ‘I might survive,’ I whisper, ‘for you.’
The drum from the pazktab school indicates the start of morning lessons. Sohrab has to rip a crying Yahya from my arms and they depart. But Arezu, who was standing far from the others, does not follow them.
She refuses to meet my gaze. Minutes pass, perhaps longer, before she glances up, her eyes glimmering with unshed tears. ‘You do not wish to lie, but lie to me. The way you spoke – you are never like that. Something in you has changed. Whatever is happening, you are never returning, dead or alive.’
‘Arezu, I am not worth your tears.’
‘I am not crying!’ she bursts out before aggressively wiping a stray tear. ‘I know you hate me. I know we are pests buzzing at your ears and I know I say I do not like you, but that was never true. I—’
I clasp her shoulders, heart fluttering faster than the wings of a sparrowhawk. ‘Never,’ I answer carefully. ‘I could never hate any of you. You are pests but,’ I wipe her tears with the end of my shawl, ‘I cannot explain all of my feelings to you.’
Another truth hits me. The idea of her disapproval is the worst. I crave Arezu’s regard more than I crave that of my superiors or even my own father. I want Arezu to remember me as anything other than what I am – a selfish creature.
Her eyes slide up. ‘Do you love us?’
‘I do not understand what love is,’ I admit.
She smiles then, a rare expression. ‘Neither do I,’ she says before embracing me, face buried into my chest.
‘I can never understand you,’ I blurt. ‘You have your family in Khor but you are in the pazktab. Why leave them behind at such a young age?’
‘Age? Age is irrelevant. I could have waited in Khor for more raids, helpless to them. But no, I will defend my family here, and there, until my last breath.’
‘You fool,’ I say as she shivers, and I bunch my cloak around us.
She clenches the bone necklace at my collar, gifted by her, smiling up at it. ‘You are the stupid, illogical fool. Not me. I fear for your soul. Will you be like them? Someone who must kill?’
‘All warriors kill,’ I state carefully. ‘Though in the spiritual laws of war, soldiers consent to conflict, and so the gravity of death is not equivalent to cold murder.’
‘I mean taking pleasure in it,’ she rolls her eyes, ‘until the knife that accidentally strikes an innocent is not so damning anymore. Like the raids.’ Then her eyes stream with more tears. ‘It is so wrong.’
I speak unflinchingly. ‘You might be the same. You enlist in less than a year now.’
To my surprise, she shakes her head. ‘I decided, after you left, that next year I am returning to Khor. Not even to serve a clanhouse. With my pazktab education, I can be useful. I will teach at the Khorinite monasteries, train their novices even if they are not Eajīz. To help my village. We had great warriors, we can achieve it again.’
‘That is good,’ I say slowly but her tears keep rolling. ‘Why are you upset at this?’
‘Because of what you said! You are content to kill more and more!’
‘I’ve already killed,’ I speak flatly. ‘I come from a clan full of it. It should not matter to you.’
‘It does,’ she snaps before shoving me. ‘I care about you and your afterlife. All of it.’
An unexpected warmth billows in my chest, that someone even thinks of my afterlife. ‘Then pay alms-taxes for my grave.’
‘Dead and you will still be cheating me of money,’ she mutters.
This is all I needed, I marvel. If this is how I must depart, I can accept this fate. I decide then, I will lie for her.
‘You want the truth? This war is nothing for low-ranks. I will be stationed at the Kin Basin, the northernmost frontier, away from any invasion.’
Arezu pauses. ‘So I wasted my tears on you?’
‘You know what else?’ I kneel, wrapping my shawl tight around her flushed ears, tucking it into her collar.
‘When I return, we will buy lamb-stuffed non for Yahya, because that is all I can afford. Then we will go to Overseer Yabghu and borrow his generous stipend and lie about repaying the debt. And we will trade for dates with walnut paste. And we will bribe the pazktab students for favours.’
‘Really?’ Her eyes gleam wide, almost in relief.
‘By the Divine.’
She chuckles and I cannot tell if it’s from sorrow or joy. ‘Promise me, you will speak another story, around a fire.’
‘Yes,’ I vow, suppressing my trembling. ‘One day I will tell you every folktale, the ones of my Babshah Khatun. You will be the best folkteller in the Camel Road.’ I beam at her even as the memory of my girlhood is tight and crooked, like folding my arms into an old tunic whose sleeves no longer fit.
‘And your smile . . . it is like Older Brother. There was not one day he went without it. Even at death when a sword hung above him, he smiled. For he believed in a better world—’ I swallow hard.
‘Looking at you, the students – I believe him. I believe this world has some good left in it. But not from myself.’
‘You have an even prettier smile, master. I wish you smiled more so you can see yourself from my eyes.’
‘No one has seen my true smile nor called it pretty, but I think the Divine was saving the blessing to come from you.’
‘Then after this war you must smile more.’
I want to weep through the thin joy. ‘I will,’ I lie, because would I even live long enough to try?
Her eyes shut. ‘Thank you.’
Our heads tilt, foreheads together, and her thumbs cup my cheeks.
I cradle her in my arms, pretending I can keep her forever.
I memorise the sensation of her skin, and the last of her warmth that I cannot keep.
The golden horn of the sun finishes its rise, the clouds like white teeth in the bloody mouth of dawn.
I have never said farewell well in my entire life.
Is a goodbye a simple peace of death be unto you, an assurance of the next life?
Or are goodbyes like the dawn, a blaze of light that seems to promise something wonderful, but in fact assures nothing at all?
Arezu opens her eyes. She feels like my dawn. Then she smirks through her tears. ‘Please get lost, master.’
The dream fades.