Chapter 14
Well, we did wish to meet her,” Tinbu whispered as our spear-wielding new friends escorted us through Khatti Ugal’s labyrinthine streets.
“Not under these circumstances, no,” I hissed.
In an ideal scenario, there would have been no need to ever come to Queen Lab’s notice.
We’d discreetly break into her palace, find a convenient treasure hoard, pluck out the obviously cursed spindle, and then discover our passage home easier than expected.
Instead, we’d been abandoned on the edge of her kingdom, broken and destitute, and now under armed guard.
Majed must have sensed my tension. “No one need glean anything other than a partial truth: we are shipwrecked travelers requiring assistance.” He brushed his robes. “Surely we can present as respectable?”
Majed might present as respectable; he’d always been the most upright among us while I typically played the part of a criminal in our cons.
However, being a ship’s nakhudha could be respectable; I would simply have to pretend to be one of the more arrogant, noble captains.
The ones who would never dare cheat the customs tax and usually drown early in their career due to a refusal to be creative.
But we still needed a story, a journey to explain our arrival and keep our tales consistent.
“Do you remember our last cargo dump?” I murmured, beckoning the three of them to draw closer. “In Malacca, when the sultan accused us of ferrying weapons to the nephew trying to overthrow him?”
Tinbu furrowed his brow. “Weren’t we?”
“No, we were smuggling cloves for a client who didn’t want to pay the export tax .
. . Well, I suppose we were also smuggling weapons, but it was for his sister-in-law who wanted to depose her aunt on a different island—it was all overly complicated and why I stopped meddling in royal family squabbles. ”
“Oh, I remember their dungeon,” Dalila mused. “I shared a cell with the sultan’s former gardener, and he recommended an ingenious way to grow mandrake and henbane together.”
The man wearing the disc—Queen Lab’s steward according to Arno—glanced back with a frown. I gave him a bland smile and waited until the Khatti Ugalans were out of earshot before continuing. “Yes. That job. Remember our story? Let us use it again.”
Dalila scowled. “Wasn’t I a mute servant in that scenario?”
“Another reason I suggested it. No, don’t give me that look,” I warned. “Not after weeks of alienating everyone on the Marawati.” I didn’t want to come straight out and say that she was worrying me, but what trust typically lay between us was strained.
“But of course, nakhudha,” she said with false, cold subservience. “You always know best.”
“This place is a maze,” Tinbu commented as the guards led us deeper into the city and along another street that not only seemed to bend back on itself, but went under one building in a dripping tunnel and emerged in the courtyard of a random home.
A group of women grinding grain gave us curious but not particularly surprised looks as we passed them, continuing through an open archway. “Intentionally so.”
“It does seem that way,” I agreed. Granted, cities have a tendency toward chaos, growing in organic, spontaneous bursts that defy even the most determined urban planner.
New neighborhoods bloom out of the roots of simple alleys; shops and greengrocers evolve to tend to ever-changing groups of migrants; the cluster of simple buildings that cling to every city’s edge are enveloped and expanded in hungry, lapping waves.
But Khatti Ugal’s zigzagging streets seemed to have no logic at all.
In truth, some could scarcely be called streets, but rather routes, including several segments that required going up and down ladders to navigate the beehive-like buildings.
Had they never had a fire? It was impossible to imagine how the city could ever be evacuated.
Then again, it was equally impossible to see how it could be invaded, lack of wall or not.
Regardless, it was the cleanest, quietest settlement I have ever come upon.
Gardens of wildflowers and unknown fruits and vegetables were everywhere: growing from rooftops and alleys, balconies and sleeping quarters.
The walls were painted in calming whitewash, homes sporting elaborate tapestries and woven baskets of flowers.
Water was everywhere, in lily-filled channels that ran along the avenues and burbling from fountains.
I marveled at the irrigation knowledge that must have been required; for the city, otherwise, didn’t seem particularly advanced.
Though the locals appeared well nourished, even plump, with no evidence of disease.
There was a sleepiness in the air, even the children playing silently.
After some time, we turned out of the clustered warren of buildings and onto a wide, paved boulevard of blue-gray stones. Towering pine trees lined the road, leading to the impressive facade of a gleaming palace.
A white palace. White as Jamal’s story, white as that which I’d seen blazing from my ship days ago.
Shining like a pearl, the palace was not particularly large but still quite imposing, with silver and ivory tiles covering its elegantly sloped roof and a forest of marble columns surrounding the main building.
Enormous brass doors were set in the center, reflecting the sun so brightly that the entrance might have been ablaze.
The steward paused with a proud smile. “Lovely, is it not?”
“It is stunning,” I agreed. And then, curious as to what the Khatti Ugalans believed about the origins of their queen and her city, I inquired, “Is it very old?”
“Oh, quite. The queen believes the palace to be at least five hundred years old, though a great many of our records were lost in a blaze during her grandmother’s reign.
There’s an even older structure at its heart: the remnants of the first building her earliest ancestor erected upon arriving here eons ago. ”
Ah. So much for Khayzur’s immortal queen—though surely if Lab was a sorceress, she might very well have the kind of magic required to seemingly age and be “replaced” by another.
But it seemed a lot of effort at pretending for a docile population.
More and more, I was struggling to reconcile Khayzur’s account of Lab with what my own eyes were witnessing.
Jamal’s account, however . . . that had yet to be disproved. A lovely palace, an unusual city, both we had seen. Now we’d just have to see if this queen was a lusty fool overly fond of birds.
Or livestock.
As we continued walking, the sound of rushing water grew louder until we came to a turbulent river running between the palace and the city.
The boulevard crossed over it seamlessly in the form of a flat bridge, but the water flowed so fiercely and so high that sections of the bridge were damp from the spray.
The river looked too natural to be a moat and yet its location gave me pause.
The happy Khatti Ugalans we’d met thus far might have only positive stories of their benevolent queen, but I have visited a great number of cities and kingdoms, and as a rule, typically the more tyrannical the leader, the more barriers there are to accessing them.
“That is quite the river,” I remarked as we crossed, the water close enough to chill the air as it rushed below in churning rapids.
“The Iluuyu, she is indeed fierce,” the steward agreed. “We believe there is likely ice melt somewhere in the mountains beyond, for she always runs highest in the spring.”
“Has no one ever explored?” Majed asked. “We heard about the griffins in the mountains, but surely in all these centuries—”
“We do not go looking for trouble in Khatti Ugal,” the steward cut in. “Why risk a grisly death when life here is so pleasant?”
We left the bridge and began climbing the worn steps, an air of serenity enveloping me the moment we passed the first row of columns.
The roof was lined with malachite slabs, giving an emerald shade to everything.
Fruit trees bearing golden-green apples sheltered flower bushes whose pale petals reflected various shades of mint and pea.
Wisteria climbed trellises overhead, creating a tunnel of green-hued purple blossoms. Parrots sang merrily, soaring from bough to bough, and colorful pendants fluttered from ribboned garlands.
Here and there, tapestries hung from the walls.
Whatever dyes had been used were astonishing, and leaning close to examine one, I could not help but marvel at the fine details in the weave, creating a dizzyingly intricate pattern, like a language I could not read.
A curious marvel for an island rumored to be home to an enchanted spindle.
Granted, Khayzur had said that the Transgression I was to retrieve spun fates, not fiber.
But as with everything in Khatti Ugal, the stories and the reality before us seemed to be drifting further and further apart.
Even so there was an air of unease. The beautiful palace felt cold and strangely lonely in the eerie jade light.
The vast halls spiraling away were largely empty of the bevy of stewards and scribes the running of a government should have required, even for a city this small.
“Our queen is currently reviewing petitions but asked that you be brought in straightaway,” the steward explained as he led us down a corridor glittering with dew.