“DO YOU KNOW WHAT IT means?” Kamran asked.
Hazan shook his head. He picked up the book with a reverence evident in his eyes, his hands, in the stillness of his features. Carefully he flipped through its blank pages, then studied the cover with his fingers, searching its skin for something—
“There,” he said softly, pressing down on something along the spine. “Just there.”
“What is it?”
“A faint embossing,” he said. “It’s a symbol. Quite old.”
Kamran took the book in his own hands, searching the spine. When he found the mark in question, he frowned. It was the outline of two triangles side by side and interlocked—a third triangle forming where they overlapped—with a single, wavy line underscoring it all. “What does it mean?”
“Arya.”
Kamran froze, then slowly lifted his head, meeting Hazan’s eyes. “Like the mountain range? In the north?”
Hazan nodded, his eyes inscrutable. “Have you ever been?” “No.”
“It’s brutal up there. Blistering cold like you’ve never experienced and a snowfall that never ceases, reducing visibility near to nothing. It was the home of my ancestors,” Hazan said quietly. “It was where the Jinn built their first kingdom after the fall of Iblees. It’s been whispered among us that the Arya mountains hold a powerful magic accessible only by the true sovereign of the land—but most think it’s only an old story, for no one in documented history has ever found evidence of such a magic.”
“And you?” Kamran tensed as he studied his friend. “Do you think it’s an old story?”
Hazan hesitated, taking a breath before saying, softly: “No.”
Kamran dropped the book on the table, watching it land with a dull thud. “Heavens,” he whispered. “That’s what they’ve been doing here. All these Tulanian spies. All these months.” He shook his head, looked up. “I was wrong, Hazan. War will not solve our problem with Tulan. In fact, I’m starting to think it will make things worse.”
“How do you figure that?”
Kamran briefly squeezed his eyes shut, muttered a foul word under his breath. “Because,” he said, “it seems so obvious now that war is what they want. All this time, they’ve been goading us.”
“I don’t follow your logic. Why would they goad us into war? If they want war, they might launch a preemptive strike of their own—”
“If they were to invade our borders,” Kamran said, frustrated, “they’d be fighting us on our own land. An ant challenging a lion to a duel. Ardunia is enormous, our bases spread generously across the empire, our soldiers numbering in the hundreds of thousands. It’d be a suicide mission.”
Hazan visibly tensed, understanding dawning in his eyes. “But if we were to engage in a land war on their territory—”
“Exactly,” said Kamran. “Our soldiers would be compelled to leave their posts. Ardunia’s forces would be fractured; our priorities rearranged, our troops diverted, our empire far less guarded as a result. Tulan would take full advantage of our distraction to plunder the Arya mountains at their leisure, striking us where we’d least expect it. They’d sustain great losses in the process, but if this magic you speak of truly exists, their reward would be great indeed. Several thousand lives lost in exchange for untold, unknown magical power? It would certainly be worthwhile to someone like Cyrus.”
Hazan looked a bit shellshocked.
“All these recent offenses”—Kamran shook his head—“Hazan, you know as well as I do that neither of our empires is allowed to use destructive magic at the border—and in all our years of discord with Tulan, they’ve respected this, never breaking the Nix convention. But during the last water journey our ship was nearly overturned upon impact with a magical barrier. This alone should’ve been cause for retaliation, but despite my protests our officials would not see reason—”
“Yes,” said Hazan drily. “I can imagine how they struggled to see your point when you convoluted the issue by insulting them, suggesting that our exchanges with Tulan had become as familiar to them as their own bowel movements—”
Kamran silenced Hazan with a dark look, choosing to ignore this proof of his recent stupidity. “In the last two years,” he said instead, “we’ve detained sixty-five Tulanian spies, more than half of whom we intercepted in the last eight months alone. But spies have been infiltrating our borders for centuries. Did they suddenly forget the definition of stealth? Why would they be so sloppy now? It’s almost as if they wanted to get caught.”
Hazan took on a shrewd look. “And then, of course, there is the small matter of your grandfather.”
“Precisely,” Kamran said, his own eyes narrowing. “It was you who pointed out that never, in all these years of peacetime, had a Tulanian king accepted an invitation to one of our balls.”
Hazan drew a deep breath, releasing it slowly before he said, “It goes without saying that killing and disgracing the sovereign of a neighboring empire are grounds for immediate retaliation.”
“And yet.” A muscle ticked in Kamran’s jaw. “Our officials continue to hesitate.”
“It doesn’t compute.”
“Hazan,” said the prince. “I smell a rat.”
“A rat?” Hazan looked up, surprised. “But wouldn’t a rat aim to fulfill Tulan’s desires? If, as you posit, Tulan is goading us into war, would not the guilty official have pounced eagerly upon any one of these opportunities to strike back?”
Kamran hesitated. “Maybe our rat is awaiting new intelligence.” “Who? Zahhak?”
“I don’t . . . know,” Kamran said, his focus drifting as he remembered something his grandfather had told him just yesterday—he couldn’t believe it was yesterday. But Zaal had confessed to putting off war with Tulan all these years only for Kamran’s benefit, to spare him the loss of another parent, an immature ascension to the throne, a childhood forged in war.
But the late king was also the first to confirm—despite the reticence of all the other nobles—that war with Tulan was absolute. It was in fact one of the last things King Zaal had said to the prince.
War is coming, he’d whispered.
It has been a long time coming. I only hope I’ve not left you unprepared to face it.
Kamran found his nerves would not settle after that; some unspoken unease had come alive in his body like a warning, as if the last of his grandfather’s betrayals had yet to reveal itself.
“I’m not sure,” Hazan was saying, his steady voice pulling the prince free of his reverie. “I’d like to believe Zahhak is a rat—he fairly looks like one—but I’ve also known him too long. He’s been brutally loyal to Ardunia for decades.” He paused, his brows pulling together. “When did you say we began to intercept the bulk of the spies? Several months ago?”
Kamran took a sharp breath, regrouped, and nodded. “I was on a tour of duty the first time we brought a cluster in for questioning. It was fairly unprecedented to capture so many at once, and we’d foolishly congratulated ourselves on a job well done. This was seven, eight months ago—”
“Cyrus took the throne eight months ago.”
The prince’s jaw clenched. “You think they were under his orders to be captured? Or do you think Cyrus has been doing reconnaissance?”
“Both. The other rockfalls you’ve been reading about—perhaps they were distractions. Decoys to divert our attention from their true aim.” Hazan shook his head. “Perhaps Cyrus was deluded enough to think he’d be recognized as the true sovereign of the land, that Arya would open its arms to him. But if he’s spent months searching the mountains with no success, it follows that he’d then seek out someone who might be able to possess it— and if the stories are true, there’s only one person alive for whom the Arya mountains will give up its secrets.”
“The lost queen of Arya,” Kamran whispered. Hazan stilled. “Where did you hear that?”
“She told me,” Kamran said, remembering. “She said her name was Alizeh of Saam, daughter of Siavosh and Kiana. That I might know her better as the lost queen of Arya.”
Hazan took a step closer, studying Kamran now with a renewed focus. “Why would she tell you that?”
“Because I asked her. I’d wanted to know her name.”
“Was this when you went to Baz House? When you were meant to search her rooms—and claimed you’d found them empty?”
Kamran, who was perturbed by the look on Hazan’s face, considered lying but didn’t see the point. “Yes,” he said.
“Angels above,” Hazan said quietly, horror awakening in his eyes. “You kissed her, didn’t you?”
Kamran felt uneasy now. “Why does that matter?”
Hazan turned sharply away, pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes. “How can you not understand?” he all but exploded as he spun around. “She is the hope of an entire civilization—she is not some girl to be trifled with, to pass the hours on a dull day—”
“You misunderstand me,” Kamran said sharply, “if you think I ever—” “I should call you out right now, you arrogant bastard, for treating her
so poorly—that you’d ever dally with her and discard her—” “I did not dally with her—”
“You speak of killing her!”
“I would’ve married her,” Kamran cried.
Hazan stiffened at that, his features frozen in a strange shock. “You lie.” Kamran laughed, laughed like he’d lost all reason. “I only wish I were. I wish I felt nothing for her. I wish I could rip this useless organ out of my chest for all the trouble it’s caused me. I was so deluded—so disgustingly besotted—I even named her as a possible bride to my grandfather. I had the gall to propose as my queen the young woman prophesied to be his
downfall, and he nearly chopped off my head in response.
“I’d asked her to give me hope, Hazan. I asked her to wait for me. It was she who didn’t want me, who didn’t want to be with me. I never trifled with her. If she’d given me even a little encouragement I would’ve laid down my life for her—happily, I would’ve made her my queen, I—”
“Wait.”
“No— You accuse me without evidence—” “I said wait,” Hazan cried angrily.
“What on earth for?” Kamran shouted back.
“Just—shut up a moment.” Hazan swiped the book from the table, scanning the inscription on the back once again. When he looked up, he appeared confused. “Maybe,” he said, his frown deepening, “maybe you are supposed to marry her.”
“What?” Kamran blinked; his anger vanished; his heart wrenched in his chest. “What do you mean?”
“Braid the thrones, it says.” Hazan studied the book again, touching his fingers to the embossed letters. “This is a clear message to the chosen sovereign. The last Jinn kingdom existed a millennia ago, and the empire
comprised only Jinn; it was a purely homogeneous contingent for a number of reasons, namely in the interest of our safety. But here”—he tapped the book—“this message is both evident and unprecedented. She’s not meant to lead the Jinn in an isolated empire—she’s meant to braid us all together. In this woven kingdom, clay and fire shall be.”
“That may well be true,” Kamran said, still struggling to calm his racing pulse, to quash the hope blossoming inside him. “But you’re thinking of the wrong thrones. You forget that she is betrothed to the Tulanian king.”
Hazan pushed a hand through his hair. “I cannot accept that,” he said, frustrated. “You’ve leveled accusations against her that do not withstand reason. She would never betray her people. She would never accept assistance from Iblees. And she would never agree to marry Cyrus.”
“You don’t actually know her, Hazan,” Kamran said quietly. “You only know who you want her to be.”
Hazan swallowed. “Well, then,” he said. “There’s only one way to have our questions answered.”
“What’s that?”
“We go to Tulan.”
