Traitor to the Throne

The once-nameless boy’s brothers warned him against the lord’s daughter. They had all married poor girls who lived in the shadow of the great castle and though they were poor, they were all happy enough. But the once-nameless boy had read too many stories of worthy farmers’ sons who married princesses, and highwaymen who stole rich ladies’ hearts, to heed his brothers’ warnings. He believed that he had stolen the girl’s heart as well as gifted her his.

So the boy was greatly surprised when it was announced to the whole county that the lord’s daughter was to be married to the second son of the lord from a neighbouring county.

The once-nameless boy left word for the lord’s daughter asking her to meet him in their secret place by the water. He waited there all night, but she did not come. He waited the next night and still she did not come; and the next night after that, too. Finally, the night before the lord’s daughter was to be wed, the once-nameless boy walked through the walls of the castle and, there, he found the lord’s daughter, pale hair spread across a white silk pillow, beautiful and fair in the moonlight. He knelt by her bed and woke her from her slumber and asked her to come away with him, to run away and marry him. He was on his knees, but he did not beg because he never thought he would need to. He never imagined she would refuse him. But the lord’s daughter did not take his hand. Instead she laughed at him and called her guards, handing him back his heart on the way out of the castle.

And so he learned then that girls with titles did not marry once-nameless boys.

The boy became determined to no longer be nameless. So he signed his life to his queen and donned a uniform, pledging to earn his name by fighting for his sovereign and his land. He travelled to a kingdom across the sea, the land without winter.

There, instead of a name for himself, he found blood and guns and sand. He knew that nobody lost their names as quickly as the dead, so he fled once more. He hid himself in the sprawling city of Izman, a kaleidoscope of sights and sounds like he’d never known. When he first grew hungry he remembered what he had once been good at: going places he didn’t belong. He stole a loaf of bread his first night in the city, which he ate sitting atop a prayer house, looking out over the rooftops. On the second night he stole a fistful of foreign coins that he traded for a bed. On his third he took a necklace which could have easily fed all his parents’ children for a year. As he learned to slip in and out with ease among the streets, he heard a name being whispered. One that didn’t truly seem to belong to anyone. A legend. So he took it for himself. He used the name to take other things. Rich people’s jewels and careless men’s wives. He even stole a princess’s heart, like the thieves in the stories he knew. But this time he was not foolish enough to give his in return. He had learned not to give things away to anyone who asked.

And so he had a name. And it fit him so well that he almost started to believe it was truly his. Until he met the girl who it belonged to. The girl in the harem with eyes that could light the world on fire. She was asking for his help.

He was to carry a message to a general’s daughter. He found her home easily. It was a large house with a red door in the wealthiest part of the city. He waited on a corner, watching the door, servants coming and going, watching people wearing a small fortune’s worth of jewels on their hands wave at each other, as he waited for the girl.

Finally he saw the general’s daughter.

He knew her before she even placed her hand on the red door. She was beautiful enough that it was as difficult to look at her as it was to stare at the sun. She was like something crafted her whole life with the purpose only to be seen and coveted. And she moved with the easy certainty of someone who knew that her place in the world was above most.

As soon as he saw her he recognised her, though they had never met.

Her hair and skin and eyes were dark, where the lord’s daughter had been as pale as milk. Her clothes were colours stolen from the Djinn, where the lord’s daughter’s had been the colours of the rainy skies and the rivers and the fresh grass. But they were the same. She was the kind of girl who thought she deserved everything just by asking for it.

And he knew that if he knocked on the red door he would be turned away with a scoff and a wave. Because nameless bandits were not invited in to talk to generals’ daughters.

So he waited for nightfall in the city. Windows in the street lit up one by one and then went dark as silence drew down across the city. Except for the window that belonged to the general’s daughter. He watched that window into the dark hours of the night until finally that light went out, too. And the once-nameless boy did what he did best and walked into somewhere he wasn’t supposed to go, straight through the wall and up the stairs to where she slept.

She was sprawled across colourful pillows, dark hair covering her face. He knelt down next to her bed, to wake her from her slumber. But before he could say a word he found a knife to his throat.

It had happened so quickly he hadn’t seen the general’s daughter move.

‘Who are you?’ she asked. She didn’t look afraid. He saw then that he’d been entirely wrong. She was not like the lord’s daughter at all. She had not been crafted to be seen and coveted. She had crafted herself to fool the world. And the easy certainty of her step was the knowledge that she was being underestimated. And she got what she asked for because she asked for it from the right end of a blade. ‘Answer me quickly and correctly or you’ll never speak another lie again.’ She pressed the blade towards his throat.