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

I planned to play that role to the hilt. “Like my twice-great-aunt before me, I have found myself here in Zindh not as its conqueror, but rather its defender. I have sworn to Jama Hina that I will punish Karim Shah for the death of Jam Ali, and that I will drive the Mahisagaris from Kadiro, and now I swear it to both of you. I give you my solemn oath that I will not rest until Zindh is free of invaders. I ask you both for your support in this effort for as long as it lasts.”

“We will serve her majesty for as long as we live, your highness, you can be assured of that,” Sunil replied, pointedly ignoring my request that he also serve me.

“And we recognize that in serving her, we serve you, your highness,” Pir Tahir added, no doubt to temper the harshness of Sunil’s words.

“That is enough for me,” I said. “I have no desire to extract oaths of personal loyalty from either of you. We have shared enemies, and we must fight them together if we wish to survive. I bring fire and thunder and money, and Jama Sakina brings fighting men. But at present our army is not nearly large enough to take Kadiro. If we wish to defeat Mahisagar, we will need far more soldiers. Do you men have any talent when it comes to recruiting warriors for battle?”

Sunil Kalani nodded. “I know every emir from Kadiro to Mirpur, and every village headman too.”

“Good, then I ask that you both go out into the countryside to collect as many soldiers as you can. You will be furnished with money, and with an escort if that is required, but until we have assembled an army capable of besieging Kadiro, we cannot risk an open battle against Mahisagar. Do you agree?”

“I do, your highness,” said Hina, before her men could say a word. “I believe this is a sound strategy.”

“Then we will begin recruiting an army at once, your majesty,” Sunil promised, bowing to her rather than to me.

Sikander squirmed, his shoulders tensing, but I gestured for him to be still. Sunil was testing my patience, but I had honed it as a courtesan, and I knew that if he couldn’t find its limit he would find it all the more difficult to view me as an enemy invader. So, I smiled and said, “I thank you for your service to Zindh, gentlemen. Shiv will see that you are well supplied with money and food for your journey. I wish you both the best of luck.”

CHAPTER 7

I lay in Arjun’s arms for what felt like the first time in months, though it was hard to give him the attention he deserved when there was so much uncertainty swirling around us. It hung in the air like a foul odor, one that even the strong desert breezes couldn’t dispel.

He traced my cheek with the back of a finger, the tingle of my skin beneath his touch driving away the dark thoughts that lingered in the back of my mind.

“Leave it,” he whispered.

“Leave what, my prince?” I asked, looking up into his warm amber eyes as he rested beside me, propped up on one elbow, the other hand caressing my face.

“This province and its worries,” he replied.

Leaving it sounded nice. I wanted to forget about Zindh for a few minutes, to not worry so much over armies and zahhaks and potential enemies. But the doubts could not be so easily banished. “How can I stop thinking about it, when there’s so much left to do?”

“I have a few ideas in mind,” he replied, bringing his lips to mine, the gentle, insistent pressure doing a remarkably good job of making me forget about being a subahdar. I reached up and ran my fingers through his hair, as his hands wormed their way between my back and the bedsheets. He pulled me close to him, until the hard, hot muscles of his chest were burning against my skin.

I let go of his hair and reached instead for the waist cord of his trousers, my fingers working it loose with two deft tugs. How often had I been made to practice that back home in Bikampur?

His hands began hiking up my ajrak skirt, but they paused as a trumpet bleated out a series of harsh notes somewhere in the distance. The cadence was as familiar to me as the steady thumping of Arjun’s heart against my own breast. It was the call a lookout sent when unknown zahhaks were spotted, and it was followed by their species and their number—thunder, sixteen; acid, five.

“Sixteen thunder zahhaks could be your father,” Arjun murmured, the threat of so many unknown animals in the air driving all the passion out of the pair of us. “But the Nizamis don’t fly acid zahhaks.”

“Our men in Vanga subah do,” I corrected as I rolled out of bed, slipping my feet into soft leather slippers. “But they wouldn’t be here, and my father has no reason to come back, not unless he wants to make war on Mahisagar.”

“The acid zahhaks could be Mahisagari,” Arjun allowed as he tied his trousers back into place and reached for his kurta. “But why would they be flying with your father instead of against him?”

“And how would they have five?” I asked. “They only had four a few weeks ago. Where would they have come up with a fifth?”

“So it’s Safavia, then,” Arjun reasoned, hurrying now to get his sash tied around his waist, to snatch up his flying goggles.

My heart hammered in my chest. Safavia might have got acid zahhaks from Ahura, or one of the other coastal islands. But Arjun was right, they were the only power on the continent that could field sixteen thunder zahhaks other than my father, or perhaps the Rakhans far to the north. If Shah Ismail was here