Chapter 14 #4
The queen was a few paces ahead. She seemed to glide over the ruined stones and wet earth, heedless of her white gown and fine cape sweeping the ground.
Now that she was standing, I saw that she was indeed quite tall; not my height but not far from it, though her build was more willowy.
She moved with an ethereal grace, whether due to royal training or magical heritage, it was impossible to determine.
She was elegant and beautiful, yes, but still seemed quite mortal.
Was this truly my mark, the woman the peris had sent me to rob?
The witch Khayzur had warned nearly no humans escaped?
“You may walk by my side, Captain al-Sirafi,” she said, a gentle mocking in her voice as though she knew I was studying her. “I do not bite.”
Lab was so stunning that I suspected a great many people would not mind if she did bite, but I was feigning respectability and so I held my tongue, lengthening my stride to join her.
“It sounds as though you had a harrowing journey,” Lab commented. “I am sorry to hear of your losses.”
Firoz’s last scream came to me like a bladed thrust. I cleared my throat. “We all know it’s a risky life, but losing companions never gets easier.”
“Believe it or not, you are fortunate. Very fortunate. Very rarely does a whole vessel, with the majority of its crew, survive to wash upon our shores. It is more often a sole survivor upon a few shattered boards. My court historian could not recall a similarly lucky arrival in all his records.” She paused.
“It speaks well of your vessel and your capability.”
The revelation took me aback. There was a compliment there, but also a hint of suspicion, and I could not blame them. An unusual captain, an unusual ship and apparently the only one to beach itself in Khatti Ugal without falling apart and killing nearly everyone on it.
No, our cost had only been a half-dozen lives. But I pressed on. “I pray you may understand, then, why we are determined to repair it and try our hand at returning home.”
She sighed. “You will have to forgive Zidanta’s fervor. His son was among the last to drown in an effort to explore beyond Khatti Ugal. It was many years ago, but he spearheaded the law and very much views it as his legacy.”
“I understand the desire to protect your people,” I replied, even if privately I believed this sounded more like a way to control them—and to perhaps ensure that whatever fresh hands and resources washed ashore never left.
Before I could continue, delighted laughter and barking interrupted us.
A small dog suddenly burst through flower bushes and across our path, followed by a giggling child.
The boy wrestled the dog to the ground, attempting to pry a stick from his mouth as he spoke in the unfamiliar Khatti Ugalan tongue.
“Pares!” the queen called, the most genuine smile I’d seen lighting up her face. “My son,” she explained to me, gesturing for the boy to join us.
The queen has a son? For some reason, I hadn’t expected Lab to be a mother. Then again, I hadn’t expected most of what we’d seen and heard so far.
The prince approached shyly, winding his fingers in Lab’s cloak. He was dressed in undyed wool, but unlike the other locals in similar bone-hued tunics, he was wearing a cloak, one woven with intricate patterns in the fiber’s natural cream.
Lab wrapped an arm around his narrow shoulders. “Say hello to our visitor,” she said, drawing out the Arabic words slowly and then repeating them in their language. “She is a ship’s captain.”
Pares’s brown eyes went wide at her translation, and he pulled his mother down to whisper in her ear.
She chuckled. “He asks if you are like the shipwrecked sailor from Egypt who met an enormous serpent king in the stories of Amenaa?”
Surprised, I asked, “Do you have many stories of Egypt?”
“Only a few, but Pares demands them from his tutors in exchange for good behavior during lessons.”
“A fair exchange.” I winked at the boy. “I do not know this Amenaa, but I have met an enormous serpent. And I have plenty of stories.”
The queen translated for her son, and he grinned, nodding with enthusiasm before his mother tousled his hair and shooed him off.
The sight tore through my heart. I was trying to keep myself from thinking of Marjana, from my worst doubts hissing that I would never see her again.
But my very last vision of my daughter had been of her skipping back to Jamal’s house with her own little puppy at her side and the similarity was too much.
“You are a mother, as well.” There was no question in Lab’s voice.
“And you are perceptive,” I replied. “Yes. I have a daughter a few years older than your son.” My throat tightened and I spoke again without meaning to. “One so desperate to spend more time with me that she stowed away on the first leg of my journey.”
Sympathy—the first I had glimpsed—seemed to soften the queen’s expression. Only by the most fractional amount, but it was there. “I understand then why you are so determined to return home.”
“We all are. We are travelers, accustomed to spending long periods of time away, but to never return? God forbid.”
Lab’s expression was subdued. “We do what we can to settle new arrivals, but I don’t imagine that’s a rift that ever truly heals.”
We kept walking. I was tempted to plead my case—Tinbu was not the only one ready to take up arms to protect the Marawati—but I suspected Lab had invited me to accompany her for a reason and so I let her direct our conversation.
We passed through an orchard heavy with pale blue fruits that resembled mulberries and through wild patches of thorny roses, their petals the darkest crimson I’d ever seen.
The rain remained a patter, but the cloud cover had faded even as the air grew mistier.
On a stony hill just ahead was a small ruin.
Three wet deer grazed on patches of clover surrounding it, and one glanced up as we passed.
I started at the sight of two curving fangs jutting from its mouth like tusks.
They reminded me far too much of Raksh’s beastly form.
But then the ruin caught my gaze, holding it.
A tumbling-down building so bowed with age, it took a moment to discern the walls from the scrubby hill grown around the structure.
Just underneath was an entrance, marked only by a dark hole.
I could not help but stare at that hole, shivering as I did so. “What is that place?” I asked.
Lab followed the direction of my stare. “A sacred spot for us: the first structure my ancestors built in Khatti Ugal. It is where my foremothers rest and where my bones will be buried in turn.” She hesitated, gazing upon the building with raindrops glittering in her eyelashes and upon the sharp points of her diadem.
“And that is all I know. There are creatures painted on the walls, alongside inscriptions, sculpted figurines and plastered skulls set into niches, their meaning lost to time.” She glanced at me.
“That is how long my people have been trapped here.”
Trapped. Now, that was an interesting word to use, the first that corresponded to Khayzur’s tale when so very little else did.
Who are you? I wanted so desperately to inquire. What are you? Unable to ask that, I attempted a compliment. “You and your ancestors have built a kingdom to envy. Your people seem hale, happy, and safe. Your markets and fields are flush—”
“But our maritime technology is, what’s the word you used?
Backward?” When I flushed, she shook her head.
“No, you are right to call us backward. It is what we are. Many of my councilors believe our isolation keeps us safe, but not everyone in Khatti Ugal subscribes to such notions. And though the possession of an oceangoing vessel is forbidden, there are still people who try to sail away, typically a few a year.”
A mix of hope and trepidation swirled in my heart as I remembered the man Raksh had apparently rescued, the incident that had landed me here. “Are there?” I asked.
She nodded. “They are often young men, or those of the lost who have struggled to settle in. They secretly build boats in the jungle and slip away in the darkness with their dreams and what supplies they can muster. Their bodies and whatever remains of their craft usually return to us by the next tide. It seems Khatti Ugal is determined to keep even the dead.” She paused. “But not always.”
I chose my next words carefully. “There are those who don’t return.”
The queen nodded, but her tone grew firmer.
“I do not believe they escape. No one among my wisest and most experienced subjects—from scholars to fishermen—believes this is possible. More likely their bodies are scavenged by marine predators or wash up somewhere inaccessible. We keep the small boats we use to fish under lock and key, and hold to our law so as to not tempt others. It is our belief that false hope is worse than none.”
She took a deep breath and then continued.
“Unfortunately, a member of my court—a man quite dear to me—got it into his head that he knew a new way. I forbade him from trying—from even contemplating it . . .” There was deep regret in her voice.
“Then, a few months ago, he vanished, leaving nothing but a letter promising to retrieve help from the outside world. Advanced sailors and ships that would bring Khatti Ugal into the fold of the modern world.”