Chapter 15
Queen Lab’s palace was more sprawling than it appeared from the outside, and returning to my companions through a labyrinth of corridors and courtyards, enclosed gardens and empty banquet halls, proved its own journey.
The palace and its grounds seemed as vast as the town itself, and remembering what the queen said about her family’s shrine, I wondered if this palace preceded the surrounding city.
With that fierce river at the front and forbidding mountains in the back, it would have made a well-protected early settlement for whatever lost souls first found themselves here.
Whether that had been a raging sorceress flung in a magical prison or the first waves of shipwrecked refugees, I wasn’t sure yet.
The corridors were empty and dark save for the occasional brazier of burning driftwood and flashes of lightning.
The storm was in full swing now, and I took a moment to murmur a prayer for my crew back at the beach.
Theirs was not going to be an easy night.
A pale youth was my only guide and he spoke not a single word, shuffling in an oddly unbothered fashion, like a lost ghost. The only other sound breaking the smothering silence was the howling wind.
Well, that wasn’t true. There was also the sound of a middle-aged woman’s haggard breathing.
Indeed, perhaps I should have been glad for the solitude because I doubted the clammy, sweating mess of a nakhudha would have inspired my people.
Had the waves been slamming me into the hull for an hour before my men managed to fish me from the deep?
By God, but I ached, my head dizzy, my joints pulsing with a sharp heat.
“Are we nearly there?” I wheezed.
The ghost merely lifted his lamp, illuminating yet another corridor.
Pressing my hands to my temple, I staggered on.
Finally we emerged on a covered terrace.
Ahead, warm light beckoned from beneath a door and to the left was a dramatic view of the sea below, waves crashing like drums. The ghost headed toward the door, but the ocean drew me like a magnet.
Rain spraying my face, I leaned out over the railing, trying to get my bearings.
But it was a futile attempt. The empty stretch of storm-chased water offered no landmarks, and it was too dark to make out the shoreline.
All I could see—blacker than pitch and marked by rushing whitecaps—were looming protrusions of rocks.
If this was what passed for the city’s harbor, it was small wonder that sailing had been deemed too dangerous.
A bolt of lightning flashed and I instinctively stepped back—and then froze. The harbor was no longer empty.
Dozen—scores—of shattered vessels littered the churning water.
Ships of all sizes and makes: ancient triremes half sunk in the shallows, massive trading baggalas broken upon jutting black rocks, and smaller, overturned rowboats being carried over the rushing waves.
Debris floated everywhere: tattered sails, barrels, and enough broken timber to build a town.
It was a veritable graveyard of ships. And then, with another flash of lightning . . . it was gone.
A rush of blood surged into my head and I swore, pressing a palm to my brow even as I tried to search the roiling midnight sea. But a third strike of lightning, more muted than its earlier sibling, showed nothing but empty water.
“Nakhudha?” It was Majed at the now-open door, sounding concerned. “Are you all right?”
“I thought I saw . . .” I trailed off, staring in disbelief at the harbor. But there was no trace of even a single ship and it had all happened so fast.
Had it been a vision of the Unseen Realm? Uncertainty assailed me. It didn’t feel like it. There had been no hook in my heart; it seemed more like a dream. Racked with pain, so exhausted that I might have walked into a wall . . . was my vision even to be trusted?
“’Twas nothing,” I said. I didn’t need to give my friends more to worry about, nor did I desire to speak so openly in front of the queen’s servant.
“Why don’t we get you inside?” Majed took my wrist like I was a frail old lady and led me into the room, closing it in the blank-eyed servant’s face.
I blinked in the suddenly bright light. The room was a far cry from the dark passageways of booming thunder.
Candelabras burned so fiercely that it might have been day, and the delicious aroma of a waiting feast made my belly rumble.
Colorful tapestries hung from the walls, rugs softening the floor as though we were encased in a cozy cave.
Even Majed was dressed in a new robe of fluffy sheepskin.
“Well . . .” I commented. “You’ve certainly settled in. Enjoying the native dress?”
He set his chin in defiance. “Do not judge before you’ve tried it.”
“Is that Amina?” Tinbu shouted from another room. “Tell her she must see the baths. This place is a marvel!”
Majed rolled his eyes. “How will she see them if you never emerge?”
“They have hot and cold pools!” Tinbu called back. “And there are all sorts of soaps and elixirs . . .”
“He is going to end up putting floor polish on his head,” Majed muttered. “But come, let me give you the tour.”
Tour it was. The suite of rooms was astonishingly lovely, more suited for royalty than a band of achy thieves.
We each had our own chamber, replete with a soft bed piled with silk coverlets, beaded pillows, and wondrously woven throws.
They met in a shared room with a wide porch that overlooked the mountains, though their supposedly griffin-haunted peaks were concealed by storm clouds.
The wind was still vicious, but controlled, beating against the shutters.
I ran my fingers over the glass in the windows, marveling at the glaze.
The level of craftmanship seemed beyond such an isolated place.
“Amina?”
I jerked back from the cool glass, not realizing I had pressed my brow to it.
Majed was watching me with open worry. “You need sleep, my friend. Let me fetch Dalila. Perhaps she can brew you something for—”
I waved him off. “I will sleep once I’ve filled you all in on my meeting with the queen.”
“Then at least eat.”
On that demand, I was only too happy to comply, letting Majed lead me to a long table piled with platters of roasted meat and spiced vegetables.
I could identify little; the long-stemmed braised leafy orbs might have been artichokes if they were not beet red, and the berry-and-grained-stuffed birds might have been pigeons but were too big.
Stews and soups abounded, simmering dishes of tiny meatballs in a bright green sauce and chunks of brothy fish soaking in herb-scented croutons.
There was plenty of fruit, again mostly unfamiliar, and bread, including a tantalizing basket of sweet buns just in front of me.
After weeks of sea rations—vinegar-spiked water, rehydrated biscuits that were always too mushy at the edges and rock hard at the center, and as always, fish—any other food would have been appetizing, but this smelled truly scrumptious; the hint of rose hips and apple, honey gleaming on the buns and roasted nuts.
My mouth watered and I attempted to shift my chair closer, immediately bashing my bad knee into the table.
“Yes, the chairs take some getting used to,” Majed commented, sitting across from me.
“But the food is delicious. Here . . .” He pulled over two pitchers.
“Water and some sort of juice. There was wine—a lot—but Dalila claimed drunks made for more gullible victims, so we got rid of it, Tinbu helpfully pouring a great deal down his throat. However one of the ministers told us that wine is apparently a Khatti Ugalan specialty and offered with great frequency so you may wish to . . . prepare yourself.”
He chose his words with kindness, but I flushed.
Wine had been a vice that eased my criminal days and giving it up no simple challenge.
It had been a decade since a sip last passed my lips, and yet I could still remember the taste on my tongue, the promise of making my worries briefly lighter.
It was not a temptation I needed right now.
“Noted,” I muttered, digging into the food. “Oh.” I closed my eyes, savoring the perfectly seasoned mystery vegetable with a zesty dressing. “This is wonderful.”
Tinbu emerged from the baths, wrapped in a towel. He snagged a sweet bun from the table. “Let me get dressed and I’ll join you.”
“There are fresh garments in the chest with the painted birds,” Majed called to him before glancing back at me. “Warm shawls, shoes . . . even paper and ink. They certainly seem to have anticipated our needs.”
“Of course. New arrivals are the lifeblood of Khatti Ugal,” I replied, repeating the queen’s discomforting words.
Tinbu moaned from the other room. “Never mind, I’m not joining you. Oh gods, the bed is so comfortable. And the blankets . . . it is like being wrapped in a cloud. My poor Payasam, she would’ve loved this.”
“You cat has not the wits to survive here,” Majed countered. “She’s safer on the Marawati.”
“Would you fetch Dalila?” I called to Tinbu before helping myself to more food.
There was no rice, but as noted, plenty of bread; from buttery, flaky flatbreads to chewy rounds brushed with ghee and small pungent black seeds.
I partook of the fish and poultry dishes eagerly, including spicy fritters made with a tiny oily fish I couldn’t identify and a vast slab of grilled hammour with a bracing crust of mashed herbs and nuts.
Anything that appeared to be meat, I left untouched.
I was not typically the most diligent in ensuring my meals were entirely halal (a difficult if not impossible task while traveling in foreign lands under less than savory and occasionally starving conditions), but Jamal’s story about transformed livestock had lodged in my mind.