THERE WAS A GROAN OF wood and metal as the door was pushed open, and through the narrow gap appeared first a delicate hand, then a slippered foot, and, finally, a familiar face.
“Aliz – I mean, Your Majesty? Are you awake? They said you were, and oh, I dearly hope –”
“Miss Huda?” said Alizeh, startled. “Is that you?”
The young woman gave a strange, birdlike scream, slammed the door shut behind her, clapped both hands over her mouth, then ran up the stone stairs and all but tackled Alizeh in a series of exceptionally unladylike behaviors. Alizeh laughed at this, then stiffened as she was gathered up in a severe hug, for she was not wearing any underwear, and did not know how
to extricate herself from the embrace without wounding the young woman’s feelings.
Eventually, Miss Huda pulled back, her face bright with emotion.
“You’re awake!” she said. “You have no idea how worried we’ve been!
And you mustn’t call me Miss anymore, just Huda will do, and anyway, we’re friends now, aren’t we?”
“Yes,” Alizeh said softly. “Yes, of course we’re friends.”
Alizeh’s mind was in turmoil. Her fears were so tangled and her confusion so great that she could hardly choose which question to ask first – and then she grew entirely distracted. There was something different about Huda, something vivid and fine, and Alizeh found herself staring at her friend, trying to understand this transformation before realizing the explanation was quite straightforward.
“Huda,” she said on a breath, “you look absolutely enchanting.”
The young woman’s color heightened as she pressed her hands nervously to her stomach. Huda was aglow, beaming as she stood there in a stunning velvet gown, the construction of which Alizeh couldn’t help but admire. The dark blue fabric was of the highest caliber, its details exquisite, its stitches undetectable. The dress accentuated her lavish curves in so elegant a manner that Huda looked a great deal like royalty. It was precisely the sort of garment Alizeh might’ve designed for her, had she had the opportunity. Huda possessed far too statuesque a figure to be encumbered by the latest fashions, and now, released from the stays of the current styles, she was remade. Even her dark hair, too often pulled back in a severe knot, was newly arranged in a low, loose bun, artfully chosen tendrils framing the graceful planes of her face. Her eyes seemed bigger, her sun-kissed complexion more radiant. Everything about her ensemble allowed her best features to shine, but –
More than that, Huda seemed happy.
“Do you really think so?” she said, drawing a hand down her skirt.
“Sarra says the dress suits me, though I’m not entirely – Goodness, look at me, my focus so easily diverted.” She shook her head, then took Alizeh’s hands. “It’s just like you, isn’t it, to emerge from a difficulty only to deliver me a kindness?” Huda beamed. “Much as I would love to discuss my
wardrobe with you, dear, I must first tell you how very, very pleased I am to see you awake. I didn’t believe it when they told me you were up, not at first, as we’ve been waiting weeks and weeks with no word and we’ve all been terribly distressed, and the Diviners haven’t made it easy, you know,
always warning us in their strange way that they can only keep the peace for so long before –”
“Weeks?” Alizeh blanched. “How many weeks? And what do you mean of the Diviners? And Sarra” – she frowned – “what do you know of Sarra?”
Huda paled. “Oh dear. I’ve really stepped in it, haven’t I? Please don’t tell me I’m the first one in to see you?”
Alizeh could hardly breathe around the mayhem in her chest. “Yes,” she said. “You are.”
“Oh dear,” Huda whispered again.
“What’s happening?” Alizeh said, backing away. “Where am I? Where is Hazan? Where is… everyone else?”
Huda went motionless, only her lips parting and closing as she prevaricated. She then clasped and unclasped her hands, looking around nervously, and jumped nearly a foot in the air when there was a sudden knock at the door. There was the whine of old wood, then –
“Miss? Can we come in, too? They said she’s –”
“Not yet!” Huda spun around too fast, her voice too high. “I need another moment alone with her, but then, you know, after that, you might pop in to say hello –”
“But – miss – Deen and I would really –”
“Close the door, Omid!” she practically shrieked.
There was the sound of a long-suffering sigh, then another whine before the door slid heavily closed.
Huda looked at Alizeh, then, smiling horribly, said, “Perhaps you should sit down.”
“I’d really rather not.”
“Yes, well, perhaps I should sit down, then,” she said, and sat heavily on the bed. Huda closed her eyes, drew a deep, bracing breath, and then coughed, her face souring as her eyes opened. “Good grief, how do you
breathe in here? I can hardly think straight for all the perfume.”
Of all the things Huda might’ve said, this observation came as an
unwelcome surprise. “I think it’s lovely,” said Alizeh, her brows drawing together. “Don’t you like the smell of roses?”
“A little, perhaps, is not so offensive to the senses,” Huda rejoined, looking around the room with renewed revulsion. “But this, I fear, is
egregious.”
“I like it,” said Alizeh, who was feeling oddly defensive. She shook her head. “Why are we arguing over the flowers?”
“I don’t know, dear,” she said, aggrieved. “I’m terribly nervous.” “And how do you imagine I must feel?”
“Better, I hope?” Huda raised her eyebrows. “Better than you did with
the arrow in your back, anyway. I can’t imagine that was very comfortable.” She laughed; Alizeh did not.
“Yes, well,” Huda hurried on, “I don’t know all the details, of course, as I am generally precluded from joining important meetings – and do you
know” – she lifted her chin – “everyone is odiously self-important around here, as if I can’t be trusted! As if I’d give away all the empire’s secrets!”
Alizeh shot her a look.
Huda crossed her arms. “And so what if I do occasionally divulge my findings? A tiny secret shared among friends is not so awful, is it? Though perhaps if they shared more with me I might not be so inclined to snoop!”
“Have you been snooping?”
She dropped her arms. “Only a very little, entirely innocent bit!” “Huda –”
“Perhaps later we can talk about all the discreet letters Prince Kamran has been writing” – she raised her eyebrows – “and all the mysterious trips King Cyrus has been taking –”
“You have been snooping.” Alizeh’s eyes widened.
Huda gave a brilliant smile. “I’m not entirely useless, am I? I don’t care what Mother says about me. Anyway, to answer an important question: we are currently at the Diviners Quarters in Tulan. It turns out that the reason you were feeling so ill the morning of” – she made air quotes – “The Unpleasantness, was that you’d been poisoned by dark magic.” She bit at her fingernail. “Which, you know, is why it’s taken you so long to heal.
Nearly four weeks you’ve been here at the temple –”
“Four weeks?” Alizeh cried. “I’ve been asleep for almost a month?” “Oh, it’s been torturous for all of us, let me assure you! Certainly not
more torturous than it was for you,” she hastened to add. “I don’t mean to imply that we suffered more than you did! I only mean to say that we did suffer, quite a bit, for even with the Diviners’ intercession it wasn’t a simple fix. No one was certain how long your healing might take, and it was the fact of not knowing that made it all the more brutal. They had to, erm” – she bit again at a cuticle – “bleed the bad magic from your body –”
Alizeh drew a sharp breath.
“Yes, disgusting! Grotesque, even! Though I don’t know if they actually bled you, to be honest? But it sounds awful, just awful – and anyway the thing is, dear, no one can figure out why you’d have such a poison in your
body to begin with, and, well” – she cringed – “naturally they’ve all been fighting over it.”
“I see.” Alizeh’s heart was thudding painfully.
Huda sighed, released her tortured fingers from her teeth, and stared at Alizeh. “The boys have been awful. I quite hate them now. Not Deen and Omid, of course – but the others are always fighting and brooding and muttering and ridiculous. And to think, I nearly swooned the first time I saw Kamran!” She clasped her chest. “The way he’d parted the crowd the night of that horrific ball! I thought I’d die there in that fiery ring, and suddenly
there he was – striding toward me like a hero, calling me a lady! Heaven help me, Alizeh, I thought I’d never seen anyone more magnificent in all my life.” Huda dropped her hand, then made a disgusted face. “Can you believe, growing up in the royal city, I always dreamed of meeting him?”
Alizeh raised her eyebrows. She was still trying to digest the fact that she’d been half-dead for a month when she said, faintly, “Yes, I believe it’s fairly common to be enamored of royalty.”
Huda laughed. “It’s generous of you to think of it that way. It makes my stomach turn to think back on the insipid dreams of my younger self, and yet – every time Mother was awful to me, or my sisters were cruel, or I discovered my pillows had been stuffed with rat entrails –”
“Rat entrails?”
“Yes, the rat entrails were particularly unimaginative,” she said, pursing her lips. “Anyway, every time something terrible happened, I’d lock myself in my room and then lock myself in my closet and then lock myself in my head, where the stupidest of all my dreams lived, and I’d imagine that one day I’d meet the dashing prince and he’d be everything good and glorious
and” – she hesitated, looking suddenly haunted – “well, I suppose I thought he’d be different. Kinder than everyone else.” She was quiet a moment, fighting a flare of emotion before returning her gaze to Alizeh.
“Good thing that’s sorted, isn’t it?” she said with forced brightness. “Anyway, do you happen to have any recollection of being poisoned? It would solve a great deal of our problems, I think, if you could remember whether anyone had poisoned you.”
Alizeh blinked steadily at the young woman, then sank down onto the bed beside her. She felt dazed; her mind was churning – roiling.
Had she been poisoned? She didn’t know. She couldn’t remember.
Had she really been asleep for four weeks? What had happened to the world in her absence? What of her people, to whom she’d made promises?
Her heart was racing, her panic multiplying.
Unconsciously, Alizeh placed an arm around Huda’s shoulder and squeezed, holding steady as the young miss yielded to this comfort. Alizeh listened as Huda sniffed sharply, retracting the feelings that had escaped her otherwise iron grip. The two of them were staring toward the window in
silence when Alizeh said, softly, “If anyone puts rat entrails in your pillows again, I’ll kill them.”
Huda choked out a shocked, watery laugh.
Alizeh knew it hadn’t been easy for Huda to be raised in high society as the unwanted daughter of a fallen woman; it hadn’t helped that Huda’s
scandalous bloodline had informed the curves of her body, easily distinguishing her from her sisters. Huda’s figure was voluptuous in a way that seemed to delight the worst vultures of a preying public, all while driving her stepmother to madness and cruelty. Alizeh had paid close enough attention to Huda to know that her loud, prickly facade sheltered a wealth of crushing pain – and a deep vein of untapped tenderness as well.
Why else would the girl have followed her all this way?
“I never thanked you for coming to save me,” said Alizeh, whose own smile was faint. “Consider it a repayment for your kindness.”
Huda laughed again, louder this time. She wiped her eyes and said, “Goodness, I don’t know why I’ve turned into a watering pot. I’m a bit overwhelmed, I suppose. It’s been nearly a month of worry, then too much relief, and now this generous offer of murder –”
“What are friends for, if not to kill your enemies?”
Huda collapsed into a fit of giggles. “Oh, wouldn’t it be lovely if we could choose our own sisters? I’d trade in all five of mine for just one of you.”
Alizeh reared back. “You have five sisters?”
Huda nodded even as her shoulders shook, her laughter slowly abating. “I’m the baby, if you can believe it. Youngest children are supposed to be spoiled rotten, aren’t they? But then Mother says I was born rotten and needed no spoiling to get there.” Huda was still smiling as she spoke, but Alizeh stiffened.
She turned carefully to face her friend, for she was remembering an alarming conversation they’d once had – something Huda had said –
If Mother discovers I’ve hired you to make me a dress I’ll be reduced to little more than a writhing, bloody sack on the street, for she will literally
tear all my limbs from my body.
The nosta had glowed neither hot nor cold at this horrifying statement, leading Alizeh to believe that Huda had been uncertain whether her mother might deliver her such violence. Alizeh was beginning to worry that Huda’s home life was a good deal worse than her sharp wit and untroubled air had led others to believe. She thought to test the nosta again now, to ask Huda a pointed question about her mother when she realized – in a blaze of fresh
panic – that she wore nothing but a silk shift. All of Alizeh’s things were gone: her cloak, her dress, her boots, her corset –
The nosta.
Had it fallen out of her clothes in this recent plummet to the death? Had the Diviners confiscated the magical object when tending to her wounds?
How might she be sure? Perhaps she could find one of the priests and ask? Her mind was spinning now, her uncertainties escalating –
“Anyhow, dear, it really would be grand if you could try to remember.
Do you even think it’s possible someone poisoned you?”
Alizeh’s head shot up at that. She could hardly think straight at the moment, much less remember anything useful. This conversation had dealt her so many emotional challenges she struggled even to flit from one thought to another, and yet – unfortunate as it was – a possible attempt on her life was the least shocking of Alizeh’s concerns. She’d been nearly murdered enough times now that such an event was no longer cause for surprise, and, in fact, was becoming quite routine.
“Yes,” she said, blinking. “Yes, I suppose it’s entirely possible.” “In that case, I have to say – reluctant as I am to reward Kamran’s
terrible moods – that Cyrus does seem the likeliest suspect for such a crime, no matter how many dramatic displays” – Huda gestured dismissively to the room – “he’s fashioned all around the city.”
Very slowly, Alizeh electrified.
She felt the tremble of awareness in her fingers first, then in her chest and elsewhere, her body coming alive with a terrifying quaver of feeling.
Her heart pounded dangerously as she looked around the room at the
infinite blooms; the endless, devastating beauty. Her words were a breath when she said, “Cyrus did this?”
