Traitor to the Throne

The other three walls seemed designed to match the window by night. Blue plaster, inset with what looked like yellow glass stars that would catch the sun in the day.

It reminded me of Ahmed’s pavilion. Back in a home that was gone now.

I tried to imagine my prince here, when we took the city, keeping the peace.

But right now we were still in the middle of a war and I wasn’t going to pass up an opportunity to find something that might win it.

The room was dominated by a huge desk that was covered in papers and books and maps and pens. I doubted he’d miss some of it if it went missing. It was just a question of what to take.

The Sultan is coming back. I tried to say the words out loud, but they wouldn’t cross my tongue. I was safe for now, as I started to carefully lift papers off the desk, holding them up to the glow of light from the city through the window. I tried over and over again to repeat the words as I worked. An early warning system. I found a sheet of paper scribbled with figures and numbers I didn’t understand. Another one was a map of Miraji. It detailed troop movements, but those I’d heard about already in the meeting earlier. My fingers faltered over a familiar-looking drawing of armour. It was the suit of metal they’d put on Noorsham. There were words scribbled along the edges. The ones used to control him.

There were more schematics like it underneath. And others for what looked like machine parts. One of the pieces of paper was held down by a tiny piece of metal the size of a coin. My name was carved into it along with a jumble of other words in the first language. So this was what I had under my skin. I fought my urge to fling it through the window and watch the glass shatter.

I took one of the sketches and kept exploring. I pulled out a few interesting-looking pieces of paper. One looked like supply routes. Shazad would be able to decipher that easier than I could. There was another one that looked like a map of Izman. There were dots of red ink interspersed across the paper. I held it up to the light, trying to figure out what they might be marking. But I didn’t know Izman.

‘The Sultan is coming back.’ The words slipped out into the silence of the room, setting off a jump of panic in my chest. I didn’t have any pockets. I shoved the papers into the waist of my shalvar as I hurried out of the study, tugging my kurti back down over it.

I was back at the table picking at my food when the Sultan reappeared, taking his seat across from me. ‘What did he want?’ I asked as he picked the knife back up. I prayed he couldn’t hear the raggedness of my breathing.

‘You.’ He said it in such a matter-of-fact way that it took me aback. ‘You know, in the Gallans’ so-called religion they believe First Beings are creatures of evil. And their children are monsters.’

‘I know what they believe.’ My mouth had suddenly gone dry. I reached for the pitcher of sweet wine. The sudden movement made the paper stuffed inside my clothes crackle and I stilled.

‘They want me to hand you over.’ If the Sultan had noticed the noise, then he was doing a mighty fine job of hiding it. ‘To be brought to justice, they say. Which is a pretext, of course. They are hiding behind religious righteousness because they don’t want to admit that you are a serious threat to their being able to lie to my face and sway an alliance back in their favour.’

‘One of them called me a barbarian.’ I heard the bile on my own tongue. As far as I was concerned, killing off First Beings and Demdji was more barbaric than killing a duck.

‘Good,’ the Sultan said. ‘It would serve all of them well to remember that the people of Miraji can hold their own. Even if it is just against a duck.’ I wasn’t sure where the swell of pride came from. ‘You want to know why you’re here, Amani, dining in my chambers? It sends a message. When we were allied with the Gallan I would have had to hand you over to hang. Now’ – he picked up the pitcher I’d been too frightened to reach any further for – ‘you are free to be my guest.’

‘You hate them.’ I couldn’t keep it in any longer. ‘They hate us. They’re using us. Why make another alliance?’ My voice had risen without my meaning it to.

The Sultan turned his dark gaze on me. It struck me again how Ahmed had his eyes. Then he grinned, like he was surprised by a child doing something particularly clever. ‘You sound a lot like the folk who follow my rebel son.’

‘You asked me about Dustwalk.’ I diverted his attention away from Ahmed. ‘I’m from the deepest, darkest parts of your desert. I’ve seen first-hand what your alliances have done to folk. Cities under Gallan rule where it was the law to shoot a Demdji in the head. Everybody in Dustwalk working for as close to nothing as you can get without starving to make weapons for foreigners. It made for a poor, starving, frightened desert.’

‘How old are you, Amani?’

‘Seventeen.’ I pulled myself up to my full height. Trying to look it. Careful of the stolen papers sticking to my skin as I moved.

The bone of the duck leg on his plate cracked under his knife. ‘You weren’t even alive when I took my father’s throne. Even those who were have forgotten how things were back then. We were at war. And it wasn’t one that we should have been fighting – the war between the Gallan and the Albish. We were a prize in the race between all of our foreign friends. Half the countries in the world wanted to claim our land. But in the end it came down to those two ancient enemies and their never-ending war of false beliefs.’