Chapter 14
Chapter Fourteen
RANA
There was something comforting about the marketplace in El-Huram—the colored canopies hanging over merchant stands, the vendors hawking their wares by shouting over one another, the milling crowd that was equal parts shopping and socializing.
The morning air was still cool, though the cloudless sky promised that the sun would win before the noon hour.
“I’m glad you dragged me out here,” Rana said to Aida as they stopped in front of a fruit stand. She picked up a mango and held it to her nose, inhaling the fresh, sweet scent.
“You didn’t have a choice. I wasn’t about to let you spend another day in that palace moping around.” Aida selected a small bunch of bananas and exchanged money with the fruit seller before putting them in her basket.
Rana replaced the mango and looped her arm through Aida’s as they continued their slow, meandering walk. “I wasn’t moping.”
Jasper appeared on her other side with Spot following at his heels. “You were moping. Or we could call it sulking, if you like. Brooding? Languishing?”
She rolled her eyes. “Why are you even here? Don’t you have work to do?”
“Can I not spend time with my favorite sister and her friend?” He blinked at them with overexaggerated innocence.
“Not when it’s interrupting our peaceful morning.” Rana spotted one of her favorite cloth merchants and gently steered Aida in the direction of his stand.
“How am I interrupting? I’m providing helpful commentary on your emotional state—a subject that Aida brought up, not me.”
“I didn’t ask for your commentary, which makes it an interruption.”
“A wise man once said that sometimes the things we need most are the last things we ask for.”
Rana smiled sweetly. “And a wise woman once answered that little brothers who don’t want to find their pants hemmed two inches too high should mind their own business.”
“Is there anything you need while we’re here, Jas?” Aida inserted, steering their conversation to more peaceful ground.
“Nothing here.” His arms swung easily at his sides as he walked. “One of the palace gardeners has a question for Teta. There’s a rose bush in the gardens by the main fountain that suddenly died, and he wants to get her opinion on the best way to replace it.”
“Shouldn’t he already know that? He’s a gardener.”
“But she’s Teta.”
Rana conceded the point with a tilt of her head as they reached the cloth merchant’s stand. She released Aida’s arm to explore the fabrics with both hands.
“Rana!” The merchant, a large man with a booming voice and a long, dark beard to match, held his arms out wide in greeting.
“I knew today was going to be a good market day. I told my wife, ‘There is something in the sparkle of the sunshine today, Nasrin. This is going to be a day of great blessing.’ And here you are! My favorite customer.”
She smiled widely. “Good morning, Khalil. It’s lovely to see you. Do you remember my friend, Aida?”
“Do I remember?” Khalil pressed his hands to his chest and threw them out again.
“Do I remember? She is the bride and beloved of my second favorite customer. Of course I remember. And I also recognize this rascal.” He pointed to Jasper with a wink.
“This boy and his tiger, always on the move but never too busy to stop and say hello.”
Jasper grinned.
“What can I help you find today?” he continued.
“I have some new silks that came in just last week with beautiful colors and patterns on all of them. Or perhaps you might be interested in this.” Khalil lifted a bolt of sea-foam green fabric and laid it on the counter.
“This comes straight from Helyos—no other merchant is selling this right now. Light as linen, but soft. And look at how it drapes!” He lifted a corner and let it fall over his arm to demonstrate.
“It’s beautiful,” Rana said diplomatically, fingering the fabric but not yet committing to Khalil’s enthusiastic sales pitch.
Aida joined her. “The weave is rather loose. Do you think it will be hard to work with?”
Khalil shrugged. “For some, maybe. But our Rana here is brilliant with a needle. She will not find it difficult to use at all.”
Rana smiled, won over by his praise. “I’ll take three yards, and two of that honey-colored silk.”
“Excellent!” Khalil took out a pair of large silver shears and began cutting her fabric. A commotion behind them drew Rana’s attention.
Yasmin, dressed in the blue linen dress that Rana had made for her, was engaged in a heated argument with the fruit seller they had recently passed.
Her face was turning red, and she waved her arms as she spoke, causing the gold bangles on her wrists to jingle together like a dinner bell calling the attention of everyone in the vicinity.
Aida tsked. “What on earth is she trying to do?”
“I believe she’s trying to convince Amar that he shouldn’t charge her for the piece of fruit that she took from his stand because she was only sampling it.” Rana shook her head, letting out a short, disbelieving huff. “I still don’t understand why they sent Inara home instead of her.”
“She knows how to play the game.”
“Ah, the Queen’s Contest, yes?” Khalil handed Rana two neatly wrapped bundles as he joined their conversation. “I’ve seen several of the girls here this morning. The ones in the blue dresses, right? Some of your handiwork?”
She nodded. “Though the whole point was supposed to be that they blend in, so I can’t say that I was very successful.”
“No, no. I only notice because I have an eye for such things. Other than the loud one over there, the others seem to have had a rather enjoyable market day.”
Rana’s eyes skimmed over the crowd, searching for other glimpses of blue as she reached for the small purse inside her skirt pocket.
Laila was interacting with a flower seller, her face the most open and animated Rana had ever seen.
Nour was sitting outside a small tea house, sharing her shaded table with a young woman wearing a chubby-faced baby in a sling.
She thought she spotted Aliyah’s back moving through the dense crowd, but there were too many people to tell for sure.
“Oh look,” Aida remarked brightly as Rana handed Khalil his payment. “Kamaran is here.”
“What?” Rana’s traitorous eyes followed Aida’s line of sight before she could catch herself.
Her gaze collided with Kamaran’s as he stood under the canopied awning of a bakery with his chief vizier at his side.
Even from far away, she could see that the smile he wore didn’t reach his eyes, which were weighed down by dark circles.
She was the first to break the connection as she dragged her attention back to Aida.
“We should go say hello.” Her friend had already taken a step in his direction.
“Oh, yes!” Khalil agreed. “And please extend my warmest greetings to His Majesty as well.”
Before Rana could argue, Aida had waved farewell to the cloth merchant and was pulling her along, taking advantage of the crowd that parted around them to give space to the tiger at their heels. “You can say hello if you want, but I don’t think having both of us approach him is a good idea.”
“Why not?” Jasper asked.
“Yes, why not?” Aida echoed. “You’ve already seen him, and he’s seen that you saw him. It would be rude to just ignore him now.”
“I…I might have said some awful things to him the last time we were together.” Rana flinched at the memory of the harsh words she had thrown at him.
Even worse was the bitter, hopeless way he had accepted them, as if he had only been waiting for her to realize how undeserving and useless he was.
The horrible things he had said about himself were too specific and came too readily for them not to have been words that he had heard before, either from himself or from others, and the sick, guilty feeling in her stomach only grew worse when she considered that she herself had expressed similar opinions about him.
Jasper snapped his fingers. “So that’s why he’s suddenly started making it to all of his meetings on time!”
“He’s what?” Rana’s head whipped to the side to face him.
“Yeah,” Jasper continued, as if it were all the answer she needed. “He doesn’t say much, just mostly listens and sketches things in the margins of the agendas. But he’s there, and that’s more than you could say about the last few months. Whatever you said to him apparently hit a mark.”
She shook her head slowly. “I doubt it has anything to do with me. Maybe he’s just trying to avoid Yasmin.”
Aida laughed. “While I can’t say that I blame him, if that’s truly the case, I think—”
“HEY! THIEF!”
The cry came from somewhere ahead, and Rana caught sight of a small figure barreling through the crowd, dodging hands that reached out to try to grab him, leaping over obstacles and dodging under outstretched arms with an agility that would have been impressive if not for the accusations of criminal activity.
Rana glimpsed the flash of something silver in his hands, though his sleeve was pulled down far enough that it was impossible to make out what it was.
The crowd, in their efforts to apprehend the thief, ended up effectively blocking the guards who were chasing him.
They added their shouts to the noise, urging confused citizens to move aside so they could get through.
Rana grabbed Jasper’s arm. “Send Spot.”
He hesitated. “But what if—”
The thief, sidestepping a swiping hand, stumbled over his own feet and slammed into Kamaran’s side. They both tumbled to the ground in a tangle of limbs, but the thief was up and darting away before anyone had processed what had happened.
“Kamaran!” Rana rushed forward but was stopped as the guards quickly formed a protective circle around their Sultan, and she was forced to watch from a distance.
Zamar knelt beside him. “Your Majesty, are you alright?”
Kamaran said something that was too soft to hear, but that elicited a laugh from his vizier, and her shoulders lost a bit of their tension. He started to push himself up to a seated position, then let out a gasp of pain and clutched a hand to his side.
Rana watched in horror as a stain of dark red started spreading through the Sultan’s robes. She turned wide eyes to Jasper, whose face had gone just as pale as her own felt. He hardened his jaw and turned to his tiger.
“Spot, hunt.”