Every Spiral of Fate, page 14
With a sharp pivot, Firuzeh turned her attention to the others. “As for the rest of you? Well, I already know you, Hazan, duplicitous wretch that you are”—she smiled graciously—“and of course I know all about the street rat my deluded son made his home minister”—she beamed at Omid—“and I know a little of our apothecarist, here, whose shop is highly regarded in the royal square”—she tilted her head uncertainly at Deen—“but I don’t know a thing about you, do I?” Her eyes landed on Cyrus, and everyone turned in tandem to stare at him.
“The infamous, murderous king of Tulan,” Firuzeh said softly. “Shall I gasp? Do ladies swoon at the sight of you? Do they faint dead away at the sound of your name?” She drew nearer to Cyrus, then drew back. “Heavens, but you are grotesquely handsome for so depraved a soul.”
Cyrus said nothing.
“So serious,” said Firuzeh, her smile widening. “You will not say a word, then? You won’t gift me even a twinkle of the eye? Do say something—anything—so that I might at least know the tenor of your voice.”
“My dragons will need to hunt,” he said coldly. “I suggest you stay out of their way.”
Firuzeh laughed then with abandon, sounding sincerely delighted. “Oh, this is going to be so much more fun than I’d hoped,” she said, clapping her hands together. She turned her smile on Hazan. “Very well. You may call them now.”
Alizeh looked up at him sharply.
Twenty-Three
THERE WAS A SPARK OF motion as Hazan’s firefly appeared on his collar. The insect nosed its way around his neck, and Hazan, his eyes on the horizon, whispered something inaudible.
The firefly took flight.
The creature was almost indistinguishable from a common fly in the daylight, which made it impossible to know what it was doing just then, for its glowing abdomen was illegible in the sun.
Somehow, it didn’t seem to matter.
In the distance, a hive of fireflies came into view, first gathering, then crashing together in a buzz of static where they swirled for several seconds before appearing to dissolve, like dust motes, into the skies.
“Whoa,” whispered Omid.
Roughly a thousand men and women materialized then, as if out of thin air. Alizeh blinked and stepped back, astonished by the unusual display of magic.
But then—
Of course. These were no ordinary fireflies.
Alizeh had always known that the insects were inherently magical; not only could they communicate with Jinn, but they also lived mostly among the stars. It was only that she’d never realized they might imbue another with power.
Were all fireflies charged with such magic?
She glanced at Hazan, wondering what secrets he might be keeping from her; but his eyes were fixed firmly on the scene transpiring before them.
The mass of people assembled as warriors might, separating to form various organized factions, though their movements were less rigid, their dark outfits more informal. As they marched forward it became clearer that they were armed, though they carried a panoply of weapons, and in no particular fashion.
Jinn soldiers.
These were the militias Hazan had mentioned. The outpost, then, must’ve been nearby—or perhaps they already stood within its boundaries. Alizeh grew heavy with wonder as they approached. More than that: she felt nervous.
The weight of what she’d become was every day hitting her harder. That these men and women had been organizing in her name for years, holding faith in her ascension even when she was but a worthless servant enduring beatings from a housekeeper—
This was astonishing to her.
In every moment Alizeh was trying to grasp the depth of her responsibility, of what she might mean to so many. Her heart pounded at the thought. How long had her people withstood oppression without relief, without the promise of salvation?
She felt desperate, suddenly, at the thought that she might disappoint them.
As the various formations charged ever closer, Alizeh looked once more to Hazan, hoping for information, and instead she caught sight of Firuzeh, who was watching the soldiers with an easy familiarity; as if she’d seen this sort of display a hundred times before.
It was another shocking realization:
The princess of Ardunia, daughter-in-law to the late King Zaal, mother of the incumbent heir to the mighty empire, had taken up residence inside an illegal military outpost in the interest of protecting her son.
It was practically treason.
Heavens, but there was a great deal to unravel here.
Alizeh directed the blaze of her confusion in Hazan’s direction, and this time he caught her eye, offering her a bracing smile as he moved to stand beside her. At this small show of faith, she felt herself relax a degree.
Several feet away, the soldiers came to a sudden halt.
Alizeh should’ve known what would happen next—in fact, she should’ve expected it—yet she was still so unaccustomed to these displays of deference that it stunned her when a thousand soldiers fell together on single knees, pressing the first two fingers of their right hands to their foreheads in salute.
“They’re all here for you, of course,” said Hazan quietly. “These are four of the fifty-eight covert militias in Ardunia.”
Alizeh hardly knew what to say.
“It’s not much, I know,” he added ruefully, “but over the years we’ve amassed about twenty thousand soldiers across the empire—”
She gripped his arm blindly. “Twenty thousand soldiers,” she breathed. “Hazan—”
“I wish our numbers were greater,” he was saying. “Ardunia’s military is half a million deep—”
“How dare you apologize,” she said, turning to him in affecting anger. “Twenty thousand—”
Heavens above, she struggled to speak.
“Twenty thousand people,” she tried again. “You mean to tell me that, all these years, twenty thousand people have been searching for me?”
Hazan’s expression sobered as he studied her, his hazel eyes softening. “Far more than that, Your Majesty. Twenty thousand are only those who took up arms in preparation for your arrival. Rumors of your birth and your changing eyes spread fast across the land nearly twenty years ago. Your parents hid you so well that some lost faith in your arrival. But there were those of us,” he said, lowering his head, “who did not.”
She nearly kissed his hands.
“Hazan,” she whispered. “I don’t know how to thank you for your faith in me.”
He shook his head. “My faith in you is far less extraordinary than theirs,” he said, nodding at the assembled soldiers. “I had the benefit of having met you as a child. I’d seen you with my own eyes. But this—”
He turned to face the crowd. “Your Majesty, this is the first time they’ve ever seen you.”
Alizeh was shaken.
She looked over the scene with great emotion, searching the downcast eyes and bowed heads of those assembled. Far from homogeneous, there were no superficial traits to bind them all; Jinn, like humans, were not a monolith; there were no external markers to distinguish them from their Clay counterparts. Here, too, kneeling before her, was a diverse group of ages and backgrounds, younger soldiers wedged between others old enough to be their parents—
Or grandparents.
Alizeh was struck in particular by those among them who should’ve been resting in their advanced age, who should’ve been gently tended to by loved ones after a lifetime of hard living—and who were instead bent now before her in positions that put pressure on their tired bones. She could only imagine the nightmares that might’ve motivated each one of them to pick up a weapon in the name of a queen they’d never seen.
Alizeh didn’t feel she was worthier than any of them.
She dropped to her own knees before them, gently bowed her head, and crossed her hands against her chest in gratitude.
A ripple of audible shock moved through the assembled troops.
When Alizeh lifted her head, she saw that she’d unnerved them. They were all of them disassembled now, arrested in various half-bent positions, their eyes wide with astonishment.
Alizeh drew herself upright—feeling she might’ve done something wrong—but when she searched for Hazan’s eyes she found that he was looking at her through a rare sheen of emotion.
“Well done,” he said softly.
Alizeh returned her eyes to the crowd.
“Please rise,” she said, holding steady. “You need not bow before me, not when I am so humbled before you.”
Again, a tremble of surprise unsettled the soldiers, whispers lifting on the wind as they searched each other—then Hazan—for a directive. She felt Hazan nod slightly beside her, and it was enough to settle the issue.
With a shudder of sound, the soldiers rose slowly to their feet, the young assisting the old, all of them looking at each other in wonder. A low hum of voices soon animated the meadow, and a thousand pairs of eyes were now aimed at her in awe.
Twenty-Four
ALIZEH REMINDED HERSELF TO BREATHE.
One of the soldiers suddenly broke away from the group, and as she separated from the assembly, Hazan crossed the distance to greet her. He clasped hands with the older woman like a comrade, even as she looked up at him with visible admiration. Deferential respect.
Alizeh watched this exchange in fascination.
Always she was reflecting on her own transformations, but she felt she was every day discovering new facets of Hazan, too. She wondered then what other depths he held; which pains and sufferings motivated his own choices. She wondered what his interior life was truly like.
Hazan ushered the soldier forward for an introduction.
“Your Majesty,” he said to Alizeh. “This is Soraya of Rijal, who hails from Fesht province. She’s the group commander of these four assembled militias. Soraya has a great many talents, but she’s a preeminent archer, most notorious for her skill on horseback.”
Soraya bowed her head in deference, and Alizeh noted then the many streaks of silver woven through the dark lengths of her hair. The sight of so much gray—this proof of her patience—opened another ache in Alizeh’s chest.
“Your Majesty,” Soraya said on a breath. When she looked up, her brown eyes were vivid with feeling. “I hardly have the words. It’s the greatest privilege of my life to even stand before you. I joined the underground militia when I was eight, when my twelve family members were executed trying to escape a prison camp in Sheffat. I was the smallest, and the only one who managed to run free. I’ve lived every day with the dream that I might one day be so blessed as to serve under you, and to honor my family by giving my life to the liberation of our people.”
Alizeh took this like a blow to the chest. It was a moment before she could speak, for her throat had grown thick with emotion.
Feel, her parents had once said to her.
The shackles worn by your people are often unseen by the eye. Feel, they’d said, for even blind, you will know how to break them.
Alizeh let go.
She released the tension she held clenched in her body, and allowed the pain free rein to run through her, to change her. For so long she’d wanted to know her own people—had wanted to be the vessel that might carry their suffering and alchemize it into power.
Now, finally, she might have her chance.
She reached out and pressed the woman’s hands between her own. “We share the same dreams,” she said, her voice catching. “I, too, have only ever wanted to be in service of my people. You’ve not suffered in vain, Soraya. We shall realize our dreams together.”
Soraya’s eyes went glassy with feeling, and she soon bowed her head. “Your Majesty,” she whispered, a single tear hitting the ground between them.
Alizeh drew back, bracing against the sting in her nose, the heat threatening her eyes.
She lifted her chin.
She gazed out upon the thousand soldiers standing before her, and she understood then, with a certainty she’d never felt before, exactly why she’d been born.
Alizeh was meant to be a conduit for all this pain.
She was built to bear it. She would draw it into her veins and transform it, and unleash it as rage back upon the world. All these years of uncertainty; all her hours of doubt; all the grief she’d carried like rotting bodies on her back. Now, finally—
Clarity.
Just shy of her thirteenth birthday, Alizeh had held her mother’s disintegrating hand as the woman had been burned alive in her childhood home, the sound of her mother’s screams seared indelibly into her memory. Her parent had not survived the inferno that was meant to finish off her family, but Alizeh had proven miraculously fireproof. She’d emerged from the ashes physically unscathed yet charred inwardly beyond recognition.
It was then that she’d seen the wink of a single, worn object—the Book of Arya—still intact among the remains of her life.
It was then that she’d gone into deepest hiding.
Alizeh’s father had been killed the year earlier. Prior to her parents’ murders, her tutors, mentors, and family friends had been slaughtered in quick succession. Nearly every person she’d known had met a bloody end.
The last six years of her life had been marred by endless strings of attempted murders or else sickness, poverty, cruelty, debasement, and abuse. Alizeh’s life was so colored by suffering that she was often surprised by her ability to carry on. Injustice raged at her from every corner of the earth. It was indeed astonishing to her that the pain of life itself had not already killed her.
And yet—
She’d begun to realize that it was pain that had built her; pain that had both softened and scarred her; pain that had prepared her most for this moment.
Alizeh straightened as she faced the crowd. She was without a plan. She’d not even known she might speak until suddenly it seemed urgent that she did. She’d not known how she might feel until suddenly it crashed over her in waves.
“My dear brothers and sisters,” she called, her voice carrying across the valley.
They stiffened; a silence fell; a bird sang out a song.
Alizeh could feel her friends assembled around her as palpably as she felt the breeze, yet she couldn’t have known then how they perceived her, her eyes glinting in the bloom of morning sun. She only knew it was time to step forward.
Alizeh moved deeper into the clearing, closer to the soldiers, standing as tall as she could make herself as she looked upon their stunned faces. A swell of feeling expanded in her chest, stole her breath.
She exhaled slowly.
“My dear brothers and sisters,” she said again. “I should like you to know me. I should like us to know each other. I feel I should confess to you now that I am not immune to grief. I am not hardened against the casual cruelty of this world. Were you hoping for a toughened leader, I will be sorry to disappoint you.
“I believe in the unfailing pursuit of justice,” she said, her voice rising. “The acquisition of which demands, without exception, the blood of tyrants. I am not afraid to kill my enemies. But I am neither indifferent to death nor am I eager to slaughter, for true justice requires the retention of compassion.” She paused. “Without it, carnage might be limitless; without it, wars would not find their finish; without it, we would not know how to revive ourselves in the wake of so much bloodshed.”
Here, the soldiers began to stand taller.
“I have willingly traded my shields for this tender flesh of humanity,” she cried, bringing her hand to her chest. “And for this sacrifice, I am pierced through the heart every day. Every day the blades of this world strike me unguarded, rend me to pieces. I wonder, always, how a body might sustain such brutalities. It is no less than a miracle that we bear witness to the unceasing savagery of injustice and still find the courage to smile. Some days I can’t breathe around the magnitude of this agony, and yet I do not pray for my pain to end, for I never wish to be deadened to the suffering of my people.”
Now they began to stomp their feet, a slow rumble awakening the ground beneath them.
“Should you pledge your allegiance to me today, know this: My heart is not my own. My hands are not my own. My life belongs to those oppressed on this earth, and I will not stop until I’ve done everything I can to secure our freedom from tyranny.”
The soldiers broke into a chaos of cries, their shouts and cheers building to a deafening crescendo that soon resolved into lines of a familiar chant—
For the land that once was ours
For the millions who were slain
For the rivers red with blood
For the centuries of pain
For our parents in the ground
For the coffins that we built
For the tiny hands and quiet hearts
of the children who were killed
Our armor is our hope
Our weapon is the truth
We sleep each night inside our graves
We pledge our faith to you
Twenty-Five
CYRUS HELD HIS COOLING CUP of tea, absently swirling the leaves at the bottom as he stared into the blinding distance. Cold sun slanted through a bank of endless windows, which enclosed the room in a perfect circle. Bright winter birds occasionally shot past like flung jewels, casting brilliant color against the glass. The famed, silvery-white Arya mountains rose in stupendous glory just beyond, so mammoth in size and scope they appeared close enough to touch.
In fact, they were woefully out of reach.
Their familiar group was assembled at present in worn, squashed chairs gathered around a blazing wood stove forged in the shape of a teardrop, and which anchored the center of a circular cabin, its sooty black chimney shot straight through the ceiling like a stamen. Outside, several other structures surrounded this round house, arranged just so, like petals about a flower head.
On a whim Cyrus peered up through the window at the sunlit skies, and there, quitting the clouds, was the shimmer of a white flake whorling drowsily to the ground.
