Heroes in Training, page 7
“I think,” Kimet said, “they are still searching for you.”
To make you a statue.
She didn’t say it, but she knew from the Princess’s short intake of breath that she was thinking it as well.
Zarja’s chin jerked up, and she glared at Kimet for a long, nasty moment. “The war is to save my honor,” Zarja finally said, and rubbed her eyes with hands that shook. “Prince Emik broke the marriage alliance our parents made when we were born. After spending all last winter here, and all the parties we gave him! He was so handsome, everyone wanted him, but he was supposed to court me!”
She clamped her jaw, and tightened her fists again.
Kimet said, “What happened?”
“He wouldn’t kiss me. Even though I gave him gifts every day, and had all his favorite foods cooked, and ordered the musicians to learn that tweedle-tweedle music they like over there. I wore a new gown every day. After the masquerade on New Year’s, at the midnight masking, he refused to kiss me. He said it didn’t show proper respect. And I believed him. I believed his smiles and pretty words right up until he got home, after being escorted by Papa’s army to keep him safe from brigands, and Mama’s sister at their court sent a secret letter along with the official one breaking the alliance. It said that he entered King Orthan’s throne room and straight away declared in front of all their nobility that he wouldn’t marry me even to combine both kingdoms. Don’t you comprehend that that’s a royal insult? An insult to me is an insult to our entire kingdom, don’t you see?”
“No,” Kimet said. “Of course I don’t know anything about kings and princesses feel about things, but I know how other people feel. Even the Master Wizard, a little, for he’s kin. And I don’t think he’d like to go over to another kingdom and turn them all into frogs. I don’t think Captain Dormar and the guards would like going over to thrash up their kingdom—especially when a lot of the guards have family over there. Nobody would want to end up fighting his brother or cousin. And what happens after? If you feel royally insulted because Prince Emik doesn’t like you, their king is going to feel even more royally insulted if we do all those things to them.”
“As well he should!”
“So what if he sends a bigger army over here to smash up our houses, and his court wizard comes to turn the rest of us into scorpions? Then everybody would be miserable.”
“Except me. I’m really miserable now.” Zarja pointed at the window. “And so are my parents. That is, before they were turned into stone. Now they can’t feel. Or even breathe.”
Kimet didn’t say anything.
Zarja sighed. “I can see that Papa might not have considered the consequences of a war. But that’s because he’s used to relying on the Master Wizard for—” She stopped, and frowned.
“For ruling?” Kimet said.
Zarja stood up, then sat down again, quite suddenly. She turned away, turned back, wrung her hands, then stared down at the rings on her fingers.
Kimet watched, her body poised to turn. To leave. The Princess could not stop her. In fact, Kimet just had to go to the door or window and yell, and the Guard would come pounding up to take the Princess.
Zarja trembled, the diamonds on her rings glimmering like sunlight on water. She began speaking to those diamonds in a high, breathless voice.
“When I was small, he told me stories, sometimes weaving magical illusions to make them exciting. Stories about my ancestors, and the great things they had done. Sometimes he’d get terribly boring and preachy about ‘responsibilities’ and ‘duties’—as if I don’t know the royal schedule better than anyone!—but I was used to ignoring that from the Royal Tutors. And then on my tenth birthday, he made me a magic carpet. Fly, see the kingdom, he said to me. Really see it, Zarja, see all that you will one day be responsible for. I flew up nearly to the clouds, and looked down at everything that will be mine one day, and I never once felt scared. His magic was good magic, I thought. It made me safe—it made the whole kingdom safe. Why, my father trusted him! Whenever the least problem came along, he always said, right in front of the court, that he relied on Master Elcan’s great wisdom!”
Kimet shook her head. Leave that for the wizard, was what the King actually shouted, after a jovial laugh. Kimet remembered hearing that many times, when she had throne room duty. Whether it was a famine in River Valley, or a squabble between the Fishers Guild and the Boatwrights, the King genially called for the Wizard to fix it, and he’d go back to his games or his hunting. Kimet had been right there when the official news came from the returning escort that King Olivan’s son wished to break the marriage alliance. The King had laughed before calling out to the Master Wizard, Go find Olivan, and turn his royal court into frogs.
He’d been joking. But the Queen had added in a sharp, cruel voice, And send the army to burn their border towns. That’ll teach them to insult our daughter! She’d laughed, the King had shrugged and laughed, as he always did after the Queen’s words, and the court also laughed. And that’s how the war declaration came to be.
“Ruling,” Zarja said, her eyes narrow. “So you think Master Elcan wanted to be king all along?”
Kimet shook her head again. “I don’t know what he wanted, or wants now. I didn’t know about that.” She pointed at the window. “But it seemed to me—when I had duty—well, he was doing the real ruling. Then came this order to go to war.”
Zarja’s face flushed again. When she spoke, she said, “I wonder what this conversation would be like if you were the princess and I the page.”
Kimet was silent.
“Or,” sardonically, “the Master Cook’s son.”
“I don’t know,” Kimet said slowly.
“Sure you do,” Zarja retorted, though her voice still trembled, and tears gleamed along her lower eyelids. “You are a page-princess now. For you can get me killed in a heartbeat, by just giving a single shout out that window. Zarja’s here! What kind of reward do you think you’ll get? Rank? Gold? You say you’re kin to the Wizard, maybe he’ll crown you as princess.”
Kimet said in a low voice, “Don’t want to be any princess.”
Zarja gave her bitter, angry laugh. “Because I’m eeeee-vil?”
Kimet was on sure ground now. “Because it’s boring,” she said. “I’d like the fancy clothes, but I wouldn’t like sitting around all day with those false-faced noble girls who smile when you can see them, but as soon as your back is turned they start the whispering.”
Zarja jerked upright. “They whispered about me?”
“All the time.”
“What did they say?”
Kimet felt uncomfortable, wishing she hadn’t spoken. This conversation would have been easier with the angry, arrogant Zarja, but this tearstained face, puckered in confusion, was harder to address. “That you’re mean,” she said finally, leaving out all the rest about her looks, taste, and lack of success with Prince Emik. “Mean and . . . not knowledgeable, despite all those tutors.”
“Stupid,” Princess Zarja stated wryly. “Stupid and what else? Ugly, of course.”
To avoid having to answer, Kimet returned to the original subject. “Second reason I don’t want to be a princess—or a queen—is that it’s dangerous. You wake up with a bellyache or you get angry with someone, throw out an order, and people die.”
Zarja was silent.
Kimet said, “Kings and queens come and go. If they aren’t respected, they’re forgotten, except when children have to recite long strings of rulers for their tutors. What I want to do—restore tapestries—well, look.” She turned to the table, and carefully lifted a corner of the tapestry, where an embroidered patch, long faded, could just be made out. “A thousand years ago this was woven by the hands of Ulda Nim. Her name—right there on the old writing, her work—right here. And if I get my way, a thousand years from today, if someone lifts this corner, there will be another patch above that one, saying ‘This tapestry was restored by the hands of Kimet Darjabee.’ I will be remembered for my work.”
Below the tower a man hollered, “The Princess is still missing! Search the grounds! A reward for whoever finds her and brings her to the Wizard!”
Zarja’s eyes met Kimet’s. “My mother always told me I was ugly,” the Princess whispered. “She said I had to make myself feared. If you were beautiful people loved you, but then you had to give them gifts to keep their love as you aged, and jolly them, and eventually give in. If they feared you, no one ever dared to demand gifts, or place. They obeyed you and respected you.”
Obeyed and hated, Kimet thought. She didn’t say the words aloud. But she saw Zarja’s acute gaze, and suspected she knew it anyway.
Zarja gave her a crooked almost-smile. “It’s beginning to sound like your Master Cook’s son was following the royal example, isn’t it?”
Kimet shrugged, feeling very awkward.
Zarja rose up and paced about the room. Kimet watched, her gut growling, her head aching. But she waited, though right then she could not have said why.
Finally Zarja looked up. “What do you think—Kimet? Are you going to shout out that window?”
Kimet sighed, wishing with sudden intensity that she had left. Of course she could leave now. There was no one to stop her. She knew the back ways. She could just turn her back on the Princess, slink down the servant ways, and pretend nothing had ever happened. Act surprised when she saw the other pages and someone mentioned the statues. Let life return to normal.
Except it wasn’t going to return to normal. For bad or good, everything had changed. She still did not know how—the Wizard could be busy making statues of all the nobles, or all the Stewards. It was even conceivable he would make a statue of a page who had dared to hide a princess.
Meanwhile right in front of her were those eyes, not angry, or arrogant. The Princess had asked her a question—because she wanted, perhaps for the first time, to hear what a page might say.
Not just a page. She had used her name.
“No,” she said. “I won’t.”
Silence. From outside a faint cry, “She’s not in the wood!”
“Queens,” Zarja said in a low voice, “are expected to risk others’ lives. I never thought it might be my own. But it should be, shouldn’t it, if I am the Queen, even for one day?”
She got to her feet, marched to the door, and yanked it open.
For the last time the two stared at one another. Princess Zarja shook out her skirts, smoothed her hair with trembling fingers, then gave an odd, crackling laugh that betrayed far more pain than humor. The sun in the window shone full on her red nose, her puffy eyes, her dust-spattered dressing gown and disarrayed hair. “I believe—if he gives me the chance to speak—I’ll ask him to put me in the stable with the Master Cook’s son. Maybe I’ll learn what I wouldn’t learn in the royal rooms.”
Kimet had always admired the Princess’s clothes, her possessions, the ease of her life. Now for the first time, she admired the girl inside them.
No, she respected her.
Yes, things had changed. For bad or good Kimet did not know, nor could she predict. The Wizard might turn them both into statues, or he might listen, but Kimet had decided her own first step in this new life, and it seemed right and true.
“If he does, I’ll come and help you,” she promised.
And she held out her hand.
Zarja took it.
Together they walked down the stairs.
THE CHILDREN’S CRUSADE
Robin Wayne Bailey
Aryamand knelt at prayer in his small room and, with eyes closed and head bowed, tried to contemplate the nature of God. The words he whispered, though, were mere recitations, rote verses without enthusiasm, and his knees hurt. He wanted to be devout, but his mind churned with too many questions and too many doubts about the things they made him do.
His stomach rumbled with hunger, and he hesitated in his prayers until the sensation passed. Then, listening for any sound in the hallway outside his door, he bit his lip. He could go to the market, pick up a bit of fruit and be back before anyone knew he was gone. Everyone else was at prayer; nobody would miss him. But he pressed his head to the floor again. Hunger was no great burden.
A stern voice grumbled from his doorway, startling him. “Get up, Ari. I need you to do something for me.”
Aryamand squeezed his eyes shut briefly, then rose and turned to face his uncle. No smile or hint of warmth brightened the weathered, dark-bearded face that stared from the shadowed arch, and his uncle’s dirty fatigues made him almost invisible in the poor lighting. Ari’s gaze went to the pistol belt his uncle wore and to the brown paper wrapped box he held.
“Not at prayer, Uncle Abad?” Ari bit his lip, regretting the note of sarcasm.
Abad’s eyes narrowed to dangerous slits as he looked down on his nephew. “Take this to the Khafafin Mosque. Wait for your opportunity and place it behind the minbar. Then come right back. Someone will be watching.”
Ari’s heart sank. “A mosque?” he protested. “Are we making war on our own people now?”
Abad clenched his teeth, but he knelt down and took Ari by the shoulders. “We do what we must,” he answered. “Our people will blame the Americans and take to the street demanding revenge. You have to do this. We are the Hands of God.”
Ari looked down at his scuffed shoes. Was it blasphemy, he wondered, to think that God’s hands had a lot of blood on them? He had no love for Americans; their bombs had killed his mother and his two young sisters. Remembering, he took the package from his uncle.
“The timer is short . . .”
Ari didn’t wait to hear any more. No warning and no sermon would make him feel better or ease his conscience. He obeyed his uncle because Abad had taken him in and given him a home, and he would do this job as he had done all the others Abad had given him. He glanced at his prayer rug, thinking that he should roll it up, but there was no time.
In the space of a heartbeat, he shifted. His small room faded in a brief flash of blackness, and when the blackness dissolved he stood in a shadowy alley across the street from the Khafafin Mosque. The street was filled with activity, and four armed Shia guards stood outside the entrance to the mosque. The open vestibule beyond, however, appeared empty, and Ari shifted again.
The silence inside the mosque startled him. Even the street sounds seemed reluctant to enter through the ancient, arched doorway. Mindful of his package, he crouched low, hoping no one had seen him, but as far as he could tell he was alone. At prayer time, the mosque would be full.
Wetting his lips, Ari spotted the minbar at the far side of the inner chamber and shifted once again. Still crouching, he reappeared behind the cloth-covered altar. His pulse raced, and he breathed faster as he dared to look around the altar’s edge. A sound caught his ear; a door opened on the north side of the chamber. A bearded imam paced across the tiled floor with a Qu’ran in the crook of one arm and vanished into still another room. Ari heard voices.
Out of sight behind the minbar, he sat down and stared at the brown paper wrapped box. A deep sadness came over him as he thought of his mother and two little sisters. He missed them so much! This is for you, he told himself as he pushed the box beneath the minbar’s overhanging cloth. Yet he knew that wasn’t true. This was for his uncle Abad.
Ari heard the imam’s voice again as a door opened, and he shifted once more. Empty-handed, his package delivered, he leaned from a rooftop parapet above the alley where he had first appeared. If he was too close, he didn’t care. Staring toward the mosque, he began to count.
The bomb blast shook the air. Pressure cracks fractured the mosque’s façade. A great cloud of dust and plaster roiled into the street and up through a newly gaping hole in the roof. Struck by fragments of stone or blown off their feet with bloody ears and noses, passersby screamed.
Gunfire sounded, random staccato shooting that caused Ari to look further down the street toward another building—the Saladeen School. Shia militia protected it, too, but they abandoned their posts and ran to defend the mosque.
Then, unexpectedly, a second blast more powerful than the first followed. On his rooftop perch, Ari felt the shock wave like a fist against his face and chest. He staggered backward and fell with his hands pressed to his head. Eyes stinging, filled with outrage, he got painfully to his feet again.
A black cloud of dust and fire shot upward from what remained of the Saladeen School. Rubble fell like rain. For an instant after the blast, absolute silence hung over the neighborhood, and the few people still on their feet in the roadway gaped, too stunned to seek shelter or protection. Then came the wailing and screaming.
Ari pressed himself against the parapet and strained to see through the smoke. The school’s entire eastern wall was gone. As he watched, a huge section of its roof collapsed, and the building next to it groaned and sank inward in a shower of brick and mortar.
Ari’s attention returned to the school’s main entrance as a pair of burned and ragged young boys stumbled out. Another boy came behind them, too much in shock to cry. No more than seven or eight years old, he tripped on a piece of debris and didn’t get back up.
The mosque, Ari realized, had only been a diversion to lure the militiamen away while another bomber got into the school, which had been the real target! Not clerics and imams, but children! It made no sense! Squeezing his eyes shut, he pounded clenched fists on the stone parapet and cursed himself over and over again, not knowing which was greater, his anger or his shame.
Then he snapped his eyes open. More children with bloody hands and faces staggered from the devastated structure, and he knew there must still be more inside. Without a thought for himself, he shifted, leaving his rooftop to reappear at the school’s entrance. He didn’t care who saw or who witnessed. He swept up the fallen seven-year-old in one arm, and gathered the first two boys in the other, and then shifted again.
He’d only seen the hospital on the American base near Baghdad Airport from a distance, but he knew it well enough. Pain flashed through his body as he materialized with his charges on its doorstep. He’d never shifted so quickly and with so much weight before.
