Gifting Fire Read online

  But the history was right. Jahandar had been at war with the Zindhi emperor at the same time he was fending off attacks from Vanga and Virajendra. He’d made peace with Zindh, keeping it free and independent until my grandfather’s conquest of it in the years before my father was born, and had instead turned his sights on Vanga and the southern plateau.

  “And what do your stories say of this Shahzadi Sakina?” I asked Hina, while Nuri put gorgeous river zahhak–inspired bangles on my wrists, their exquisite plumage rendered in sapphire, turquoise, jet, and mother-of-pearl cloisonné.

  “Jama Sakina,” Hina corrected. “The stories say that everyone expected the daughter of Sultan Jahandar to be arrogant and to support her father’s concerns above those of the Zindhi people. They all knew she would be plotting to turn Zindh into nothing more than a Nizami subah, and that she would use any son she produced from her pairing with Nizamuddin to undermine him at every turn.”

  I grunted at that, not at all flattered by the comparison. “I see.”

  “Not yet you don’t,” Hina replied, her eyes flashing with just a hint of mischief. “You see,” she continued, as much to Lakshmi as to me, “when Jama Sakina arrived, she came to the people of Zindh dressed in ajrak.”

  “Ajrak?” Lakshmi asked.

  “This.” Hina held up the end of her dupatta, showing off the fine indigo block printing. “Ajrak is the cloth of Zindh, made to look like our beloved river zahhaks. It’s made nowhere but here, where indigo grows wild on the banks of the Zindhu.”

  “And Jama Sakina wore it?” Lakshmi asked.

  “That’s right,” Hina told her. “She wore ajrak, and she showed her husband perfect loyalty and faithfulness. And when war came with the Safavians, who thought to attack Zindh while Nizam was busy fighting against Virajendra, Jama Sakina took to the skies on her thunder zahhak and helped save Zindh from disaster. They say she used the lightning from her zahhak, and the zahhaks of her handmaidens, to tear up the earth itself, changing the course of a river, using its waters to flood the Safavian camp, drowning them all in one night.”

  “Is that really true?” Lakshmi asked, wrinkling her nose like she didn’t quite believe it.

  “I don’t know,” Hina admitted, “but that’s what the stories say. And there is a great lake to the north of Kadiro, the largest in all of Daryastan, and we call it Lake Sakina. The stories say that’s where she drowned the Safavian army and saved Zindh from invasion.”

  “And she looked like Akka?” Lakshmi asked, smiling at me with evident pride.

  “She was your akka’s twice-great-aunt,” Hina affirmed. “And, like all Nizami princesses, she had jet-black hair and eyes like emeralds.”

  “Just like Akka’s!” Lakshmi exclaimed.

  “Just like hers,” Hina agreed, a hint of sadness in her voice.

  I understood why at once. She had hazel eyes—the remnants of the emerald green that belonged to the Nizami royal line. If Jama Sakina was my twice-great-aunt, she was likely Hina’s own great-grandmother. She probably felt the same way about stories of Jama Sakina that I had when hearing stories of Razia Sultana growing up.

  And it explained the clothes I was wearing. They weren’t just lavish gifts from a new retainer; they would give me legitimacy in the eyes of the Zindhi people and their emirs. If I looked like Jama Sakina, then they would draw those parallels in their own minds, particularly now with their rightful king dead, and an enemy occupying their country.

  “Thank you, Hina,” I said.

  Hina didn’t reply right away. She just smiled and gestured to Nuri, who added one last piece to the costume. It was a magnificent necklace depicting two river zahhaks, each diving from my shoulders, across my collarbones, toward the center of my chest. Their sapphire wings were folded in tight crescents, their long blue topaz tails trailing behind them. Their necks were outstretched, jet scales glistening in the morning sunlight, their mouths wide, revealing diamond-studded fangs. Each was racing the other for the necklace’s centerpiece, an enormous fish with emerald scales and diamonds for eyes.

  “There, finished,” Nuri announced, stepping back and admiring her handiwork. “I think the necklace really suits your eyes.” She looked back to Lakshmi. “Doesn’t it?”

  Lakshmi nodded enthusiastically. “I think so!”

  “Thank you, Nuri,” I told the girl, giving her an affectionate pat on the cheek before turning back to Hina, who had been studying me carefully, no doubt trying to predict what effect my new clothes might have on the emirs I was meeting today.

  “Do you think they’ll accept me?” I asked. They’d agreed to abide by Hina’s decision, but that wasn’t really the same thing as being loyal to me as their ruler.

  “I think they will, your highness,” she said after a moment’s consideration. “They know we can’t win this fight on our own.” Her face betrayed real sorrow at that admission. “Zindh is a land rich in indigo and cotton, but poor in zahhaks. To our east and west, fire zahhaks occupy the deep deserts of Registan and Khuzdar, but Zindh has nothing except river zahhaks to protect her.”

  I was struck by the bittersweet tone in her voice, and I realized then that I was wearing cloth covered in swirling block-printed patterns of river zahhaks, their brilliant colors rendered in exquisite detail by a masterful application of ink to silk. I saw then the reason for the tone in her voice, for the look on her face.

  “They’re beautiful animals, and graceful fliers,” I told her.

  “But they have no breath,” she added, her voice tight, the tendons in her slender neck standing out through her skin.

  I tried to put myself in her place, to imagine growing up with a zahhak that was the living symbol of my homeland, to love her and cherish her and learn to fly her, only to discover that she was incapable of battling the zahhaks of other nations, that her very existence rendered all of my training as little more than quaint entertainment. The first half of that picture was easy enough to imagine, but the latter half tied my stomach in knots. If Sultana hadn’t had breath, I would still be a concubine left to pray that Arjun never lost his affection for me.

  “So you need my zahhaks,” I concluded.

  “And you need us,” she answered.

  I nodded, because that was the truth of the matter, but it brought a slight smile to my face. “Does that mean we can be friends?”

  She rolled her eyes, but she was grinning. “I’d like that very much, your highness.”

  “As would I,” I said, pleased to have at least one ally in this country. With Hina’s celas, and her ten thousand soldiers, I would be free of the threat of Sikander and his guards hurting me, but I knew it wouldn’t be enough to drive out the Mahisagaris. For that, I would need the emirs of Zindh to rally around me, and I had to start here in Shikarpur. “I suppose we should get moving. We don’t want to keep them waiting.”

  “No, I don’t think we do,” Hina agreed.

  We stood up and left my bedchamber together, Hina and her celas, and me with my two sisters. By now, Sunil Kalani, the soldier I had met the night before, and Pir Tahir, the sheikh, would be waiting for me to summon them to the diwan-i-khas. Sunil was the local emir, and Pir Tahir the spiritual leader of Shikarpur’s community. Without their approval, I would never gain control of my city, let alone my province.

  “Do you really have your own zahhak?” I heard Lakshmi asking Nuri as the pair of them walked hand in hand behind us.

  Nuri nodded. “Her name is Nalini. She’s the prettiest zahhak in the whole world. You can ride her with me if you want.”

  “Can two people really fly on a river zahhak?” Lakshmi asked.

  “They can if one of them is Nuri’s size,” Hina replied, giving the younger Zindhi girl a playful pat on the head. “They’re lighter than thunder zahhaks and acid zahhaks, but they have bigger wings, so they can carry more weight.”

  The thrilled lo
ok on Lakshmi’s face tugged at my heartstrings, and Nuri was growing on me too. But then I’d always loved children, especially children like me who were being given the opportunity to grow up as their true selves.

  “If you two want to go flying together, or to play in the gardens, there’s no reason for you to sit through a boring meeting,” I told them, because I’d hated meetings when I was eleven and my father had forced them on me.

  “I don’t like playing here; this palace is ugly,” Lakshmi muttered.

  That struck a nerve. I’d dragged her all the way out here to Zindh, to a war zone, and for what? So she could live in an ugly palace with no servants. She’d been so much happier in Bikampur.

  I sighed and put my hands on her shoulders. “I know it’s not everything we wanted it to be—not yet. But I’m working hard to make it better, all right? Once the workmen are done with the zahhak stables, they’ll get to work on the rest of the palace.”

  “I know, Akka,” she said. “I just miss Bikampur sometimes. It was like home.”

  I hugged her close to me, taking deep breaths to keep the tears from flowing. Home. The word was loaded with so much meaning for girls like us, girls who had been driven from our homes, who had been forced to start over, sometimes more than once. But she was right. The palace in Bikampur had been our home, right up until I’d gone and ruined everything by attracting my father’s ire.

  “I miss Bikampur too, sweetheart,” I whispered. I wanted to tell her that this was going to be our new home, that I was going to build something wonderful here for her, but I knew how hard it was going to be to dislodge Karim and his men from Kadiro, and I didn’t want to build her hopes up only to destroy them. I didn’t want to be made a liar. So I kissed her on the top of her head and let her go, turning to Hina, who had been watching all of this, her brow knitted with sympathy.

  “Sorry,” I said.

  “You have nothing to apologize for, your highness,” she replied. “My girls and I all miss Kadiro. It’s hard to start over.”

  I felt some of the tension in my chest ease at being so readily understood. I’d forgotten what it was like to be surrounded by others of my kind, other women who knew exactly what it was like to give up their homes and their families to be their true selves, who understood how tenuous all the good things in life could be. If God had brought Hina to me, then maybe he intended for me to win here in Zindh, because she was just the ally I needed.

  I took that thought with me into the gardens, where a knot of river zahhaks had gathered together near one of the courtyard’s many empty pits. They seemed to be staring into it with disappointment written on their faces. It was the kind of look Sultana gave me when she saw other zahhaks flying but didn’t get to go up herself.

  “What’s going on?” I asked Hina, nodding to the zahhaks.

  “All Zindhi palaces have fish ponds and lotus gardens,” she replied. “The river zahhaks are usually left free to wander the inner courtyard, dining at their leisure.”

  “Ah . . .” I murmured, understanding dawning at long last. The empty pits were all reflecting pools, fish ponds, aquatic flower gardens. Once upon a time, this courtyard would have been staggeringly beautiful, filled with the splashing of fish, the bubbling of fountains, and the gentle rushing of water through stone channels. I wondered why the palace’s ponds had been left in such poor repair, but only for an instant. The answer presented itself swiftly enough.

  “Javed Khorasani let them fall into ruin as an insult to the Zindhi people,” I murmured.

  “Just so,” Hina agreed.

  “Well, I’ll have them repaired,” I promised her.

  She flashed me an encouraging smile, though the gesture didn’t quite reach her eyes, which were still gazing sadly into the empty pits all around us. “I know you will, your highness.”

  Arjun and Sikander were waiting for us, just inside the diwan-i-khas. I hurried to them, eager to summon Sunil and Pir Tahir. The sooner I took command of Shikarpur, the sooner I could begin planning for how to deal with Karim.

  “You look beautiful,” Arjun said, standing as I entered the marble pavilion.

  “The spitting image of Jama Sakina,” Sikander agreed, giving Hina a meaningful look.

  “You’ve heard of her?” I asked, surprised by that.

  “I may be a soldier,” Sikander admitted, “but I’ve studied history like all generals, and I fought a war against Jam Rustam Talpur, who was Jama Sakina’s grandson.”

  “A war,” I murmured, remembering for the first time that Hina’s father had been killed by my own. I couldn’t believe I’d let something like that slip my mind. I supposed we were going to have to talk about it sooner or later.

  Arjun tore my mind away from those thoughts with the warmth of his hands on my arms. “Well, I don’t know anything about this Jama Sakina, but if she looked anything like you, then she must have been the most beautiful queen in all of Zindhi history.”

  “She was—until I was born, anyway,” Hina answered, flashing us both a lopsided grin as she took her place on one of the cushions beside my marble throne.

  Sikander gave a loud snort of disapproval. “If I were in your position, I would not be flaunting my disgrace, boy.”

  Hina fixed the old man with a withering glare, and she wasn’t alone. All fifteen of her celas joined in, as well as Sakshi, Lakshmi, and myself. It was Lakshmi who spoke up, before any of the rest of us could. She balled her hands into little fists, stormed over to Sikander, and growled, “We’re not boys!”

  For the first time in his life, Sikander was totally outnumbered. Back home in Nizam, when he’d said such things about me, there had always been a dozen male courtiers bobbing their heads right along with his inane insults, but here there were nearly twenty hijras fixing him with eyes alive with anger, to say nothing of Arjun and Arvind and even Shiv, who were joining in. There wasn’t a face beneath the pavilion’s dome that wasn’t betraying its disapproval.

  “Don’t waste your breath on him, little sister,” Sakshi advised, snaking an arm across Lakshmi’s shoulders, which were still tense with anger. “Men who like to beat helpless girls don’t have any shame at all, so there’s no sense in reprimanding them.”

  Sikander narrowed his eyes, like he intended to challenge that description of himself, but then he glanced to me, and there was a moment of hesitation as he recalled all the times he had beaten me. I could almost see him reevaluating each and every moment, one after the other. I didn’t know if it brought him to the realization that I had been a helpless girl on each and every occasion in the past we’d shared, but at the very least, he seemed to have enough sense to keep his mouth shut, which was better than I’d hoped for.

  “It’s all right, Lakshmi,” Hina said from her place on the dais. She kept her expression mild, her hands folded daintily in her lap, her eyes slightly downcast, but her tone cut like Arjun’s mother on a bad day. “Men like him are natural cowards. They can’t help it. They’re so frightened of things they don’t understand that they try to destroy them.”

  Sikander’s temples bulged as his jaw clamped down hard, his face darkening with anger. For a man who prided himself on his battlefield prowess, the accusation of cowardice couldn’t have been more carefully calculated to enrage him. “What need have I for lessons in courage from a man in a skirt?” he demanded.

  “You think it doesn’t take courage to wear a skirt, Sikander?” I asked him, slipping free of Arjun’s grasp and strutting toward him, the silk of my own skirt swishing as I went.

  He gave a toss of his head. “I do not, your highness.”

  “Do you think me a coward?” I pressed, looking into his eyes to divine the answer. He’d certainly called me one often enough, but he knew what I had done to steal back my Sultana, and he knew how I’d performed in the battle that had followed.

  “No, your highness,” he said, and I knew he wa
sn’t lying for my benefit. “You show remarkable courage when the situation requires it. Few men would have scaled the cliffs of Shikarpur as you did.”

  “Know this, Sikander,” I told him as I took my place on my throne. “Scaling the cliffs of Shikarpur with my bare hands, knowing that a single false move would send me plummeting to my death, took not one-tenth the courage it takes to wear a beautiful lehenga in your presence and my father’s.”

  His eyes widened slightly with understanding, and I drove the lesson home. “Imagine what your father’s reaction would have been, had you dressed as I dress, had you spoken of yourself as I speak of myself, had you behaved as I behave, and tell me again whether or not you believe it takes courage to wear a skirt.

  “Or better yet,” I said before he could respond, because I didn’t really want his answer anyway, “remember all the times you beat me for dressing this way, remember all the harsh words and harsher blows I suffered at your hands, and tell me again whether or not you believe it takes courage to wear a skirt.”

  “What I did, I did for your own good, your highness,” Sikander protested.

  Hot anger rose up from the pit of my stomach on hearing those words, but my voice was colder than ice when I spoke. “You think so, do you?”

  Sikander gritted his teeth, realizing, I thought, how perilously close he was to being executed, but he nodded all the same. “Had I succeeded in making a man out of you, we would not be in this position.”

  I sighed. “Has it still not occurred to you, after all these years, that it was never something that could be changed? That you can’t beat a person’s soul out of them?”

  His gaze flickered from me to Sakshi, to Lakshmi, to Hina and all her celas, his jaw working in time with the movements of his eyes. “I thought perhaps with more time . . .”

  I let him shake his head slowly, let him draw his conclusions from the presence of so many of my kind in one place. All of us had lived through the same hell, run away from our homes, fought to be recognized for who we truly were. Sikander had likely never seen so many of us before. I had been alone in the palace in Nizam, the only one like me, but here I was one of nearly twenty, and there was a strength in that. I wasn’t some lone deviant, some prince who wouldn’t accept his duties and insisted on acting like a girl. I was one of a larger category of person, a member of a group whose shared history lent credence to her claims in ways that no amount of tearful begging in Nizam ever could have.