Gifting Fire by Alina Boyden (read my book .TXT) 📕

less sickle shaped than a thunder zahhak’s, making them swift in the dive, but quick to accelerate, and they were tremendous gliders, floating on the wind like they weighed nothing at all.

“They’re so graceful . . .” I gasped, watching as their riders skillfully brought them lower and lower in a cyclone of scales and feathers.

“They are,” Arjun agreed, and he was grinning too. “I can see what the Zindhi like about them.”

“They haven’t got breath,” said Sikander, as if that had anything to do with the way they flew.

“They’re heading for the palace,” Arvind observed. By now, we’d reached our thunder zahhaks, and had joined with them, but the river zahhaks were ignoring us, slowly spiraling down toward the palace’s inner courtyard. “What do you suppose they want?”

“Let’s find out,” I said.

I rolled into a steep dive, Sultana’s wings tearing the sky asunder with a sound like a silk cloth being ripped in half. I easily outdistanced the river zahhaks, which were circling lazily toward the courtyard, and pulled Sultana up short of the pavilion. She fluttered to the ground, and I climbed down from her saddle before leading the way back to my throne.

All around me, my retainers landed and took their places once more—all except the two thunder zahhaks who were still orbiting high overhead on their patrol. Still, we made for quite the fearsome sight, I thought—a princess on her throne, surrounded by four zahhaks.

The river zahhaks floated like leaves on the wind, coming to rest lightly on their wing claws and slender, mango-colored hind limbs. They were taller than they should have been for their bulk, like every part of them had been stretched out. I doubted if any of them weighed as much as Sultana or Sikander’s zahhak, Parisa, but they were all taller, with longer wings and longer necks and bodies to match. Our thunder zahhaks seemed squat and compact when set beside the willowy Zindhi animals.

The river zahhaks formed up into neat ranks of two and began marching across the courtyard like they were on parade. It was a pretty little display, and I had to smile at the sangfroid of their prince. He knew how to make an entrance, and he didn’t seem the least bit frightened by the zahhaks waiting for him, or the guards positioned on the walls and around the courtyard, their toradars loaded, curls of smoke rising up from their lit match cords.

It was when they got about halfway across the courtyard that I realized the zahhaks weren’t being ridden by princes, or even ordinary men, but by women. My eyes widened as I took in the graceful women sitting proudly in their saddles with all the competence of veteran riders.

I’d never seen female zahhak riders before, not unless I counted Sakshi and Lakshmi or looking at myself in the mirror. Was that what I looked like? They had their goggles pushed up onto their foreheads, the strap helping to hold their dupattas onto their heads. The dupattas were enormous pieces of cloth, more like saris than the shawls I was familiar with. And the silk was patterned all over with block-printed images of swirling indigo river zahhaks and bright turquoise lotus blossoms with saffron centers.

The women dismounted from their zahhaks, and I noted that they wore full skirts like a lehenga’s, beaded and embroidered, the decoration following the lines of more block printing in indigo, turquoise, and saffron, with splashes of white and black so the patterns would really stand out. They didn’t wear short blouses like Registani women, but rather long ones that fell to their knees, with high slits going up their sides. These too were block printed and covered in delicate embroidery and fine beadwork. Each woman had a mango-colored sash cinched tightly around her waist, into which was tucked a bhuj, a sort of stout cleaver-like dagger hafted onto a two-foot-long steel shaft. I noted that they had scabbards on their saddles, holding enormous muskets with swooping, fish-shaped buttstocks. I wondered if they used them to try to shoot other zahhaks in the air. It seemed an impossible feat, but I supposed I’d have tried anything if Sultana hadn’t possessed her lightning.

The women left their zahhaks under the control of one of their number, the other fifteen marching toward the pavilion. Now one of them took the lead, and the others fell in step behind her. Was she their leader, then? She was a tall woman, with fiery streaks of copper in her dark hair, but I was most struck by her eyes. They were hazel, the olive color halfway between the brown so common to Daryastan and the emerald green we Nizamis had brought with us from our ancestral home on the northern steppes. I’d never seen anyone in Daryastan with eyes that even verged on green outside of my own family, so I wondered where she came from, and who her ancestors were.

The woman approached the throne with no signs of trepidation and bowed properly, joined in the movement by all of her followers. She raised her hand to her forehead in salute and said, “Good morning, your highness. I hope you’ll forgive us for startling you, but I didn’t know where else to go.”

I frowned at those words, and suddenly I saw through the fine clothes and the jewels. The young woman standing before me had dark circles under her eyes that makeup couldn’t hide. The hem of her long dupatta was frayed in places, and there was something about her posture that conveyed a sense of extreme exhaustion. It was a fatigue I saw echoed on the faces of her retainers.

“What’s happened?” I asked. “Are you not with Ali Talpur and his army?”

The woman sucked in a sharp breath at the mention of Ali Talpur’s name, and I could have sworn she was fighting back tears, though none were visible at the corners of her hazel eyes. “Ali Talpur is . . . was . . . my brother.”

“Was?” I whispered, my stomach roiling. Ali Talpur was