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

lose this fight,” I allowed, forcing myself to shrug like it didn’t matter, “but if you’re going to take away everything I care about anyway, then what incentive do I have to surrender to you?”

“Do you really hate me so much that you would see Lakshmi dead?” Karim asked.

“If you gave a damn about Lakshmi, or me, you’d never have invaded my province and put me in this position,” I shot back, my voice just as icy cold as I could make it.

But my words were like water off a river zahhak’s back to Karim. He smiled at me. “I think you’re just angry because you’ve been outsmarted for a change.”

“You think this is clever?” I demanded.

“I do,” he replied. “While you were playing princess with Arjun, I spent the last few weeks planning this. First we took Ahura, and its acid zahhaks. Thanks to you, the island was without a Firangi fleet to protect it.”

I scowled, regretting that I’d helped him and his father in their naval war against the Firangis, though if I hadn’t, I never would have won back Sultana, might never have even earned myself a position at Bikampur’s court. My life hadn’t been my own then. I’d had little choice in the matter. Still, it rankled that I’d given Karim the zahhaks he needed to carry out his invasion of Zindh, however indirectly.

“Then I invaded Kadiro and took it, knowing that the Zindhis wouldn’t be able to put up a fight.” He grinned. “And once I contacted your father with my offer to protect his province and his beautiful daughter in exchange for a marriage alliance, well . . .” He held out his hands to indicate our little meeting.

“You’re a fool,” I grumbled.

Of everything I’d said, that seemed to hit home. Anger flashed behind his dark eyes. “Is that so?”

“It is,” I insisted, though I probably shouldn’t have been taunting him. “The Safavians won’t let you keep Ahura. It was theirs before the Firangis took it, while they were busy fighting Tarkiva. Now that Shah Ismail has won his war against his greatest rivals, he is free to act. His first act will be to retake Ahura. If you had come to me as a friend rather than an enemy, I might have been able to use my influence in Registan, and my own zahhaks here in Zindh, to help you in that fight. But now you will face Safavia’s wrath alone.”

“I had considered that,” Karim said, the anger having left his face. “But it occurred to me that you might not be willing to start a war between Safavia and Nizam to help my father keep an island. However, after our marriage, the alliance between Nizam and Mahisagar will be a formal one. If Safavia attacks us, they attack Nizam too.”

I glanced to my father. “And this is acceptable to you? A war with Safavia when you’re so worried about Virajendra?”

“Mahisagar’s fleet and its armies more than make up for the possibility of war with Safavia,” my father answered. “With their assistance, we will finally be able to strike the Virajendrans where they live—along the coasts and out at sea. If they attack us now, they risk having their entire merchant fleet obliterated by the most fearsome pirates in all Daryastan.”

“That may deter Virajendra, but it won’t deter Safavia,” I told him. “And with Safavia fighting you in the west, you can be assured that Virajendra will seize the opportunity to attack from the south.”

“And Registan will join with Safavia and Virajendra against you,” Arjun added, staring straight into my father’s eyes with such a ferocious determination that he put me more in mind of a tiger than a man. “We rarely fight outside of our own borders, but if Safavia and Virajendra go to war, so will we.”

“You are the prince of Bikampur, not Registan,” my father scoffed. But I noted that Karim wasn’t scoffing; he was shifting uncertainly, tugging nervously at his mustache.

Arjun leaned forward, so that scarcely a handsbreadth separated his face from my father’s. “If you think you can take Razia from me, you are very much mistaken.”

“If you value her so highly, you should have offered her marriage, as I have,” Karim snapped. “You made her a concubine. I’m treating her like the princess she is.”

“As a creature to be bought and sold in exchange for an alliance, you mean,” I corrected.

“That’s what a princess is,” my father retorted.

“If that’s what will solve this, then I will marry her,” Arjun said. “My father will approve. I only held back because I thought you would refuse me.”

“And you were right, I do refuse you,” my father told him. “Bikampur is not Mahisagar. You have no fleet. Your army is smaller. You have far fewer zahhaks.”

“But if one Registani city is attacked, we all defend one another,” Arjun reminded him.

“Zindh is not Registani, nor will it be,” my father pointed out. “The maharajas of Registan will not march to the defense of Kadiro or Shikarpur—you know this, boy.”

“They would march for Razia,” he said, and though he sounded like he really believed that, I wasn’t sure that I did. I had helped Udai, and I had defeated Javed Khorasani, but the other lords of Registan owed me no real loyalty. Maybe they would help me and maybe they wouldn’t, but a war with Safavia was something that had the potential to destroy them all. They wouldn’t enter into that lightly—certainly not for a hijra, even if she was the wife of one of their princes.

My father shrugged. “Whether they would or wouldn’t is immaterial. I would be a fool to cast aside an alliance that I know will hold in the hopes of gaining a far more tenuous one. And it ignores the reality on the ground. Mahisagar holds Kadiro with fifty thousand men and a hundred ships and thirteen acid zahhaks.”

“Twelve,” Karim corrected. “The thirteenth is a wedding gift.”

“You’re gifting me an acid zahhak?” I asked, startled by that. Zahhaks were uncommon