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

beautiful view, and true to Hina’s words, a cooling breeze flowed through the marble jali screens, driving out the worst of Zindh’s heat.

But the beautiful view and the comfort of the sea air came at a price. My chambers were as far from the docks that led off this island as they could possibly be. They were as far from the zahhak stables as any rooms in the palace. If I ever wanted to get out of this place, I would have to cross the palace’s innermost courtyard, where every servant and every guard could see me. Then I would have to pass through a heavily guarded gateway, into the central courtyard of the palace, where more open gardens would leave me exposed to the sight of more servants and more guards, before finally reaching the zahhak stables. And if I wanted to take a boat? Well, then I would have to pass through a second gateway, a third courtyard, and then reach the docks under the watchful eyes of more Mahisagari soldiers than I could count.

“What do you think?” Hina asked as I paced the yellow sandstone patio that projected out from the palace walls. It let me look down at the waters of the lagoon, with only a knee-high decorative railing standing between me and a fifty-foot fall.

“I think we have our work cut out for us,” I muttered, keeping my voice low, though Hina’s celas were guarding the entrance to my chambers, so I knew that no servants would be able to overhear us.

“These are the most secure rooms in the palace,” she explained, gesturing to the long drop to the water below. “But they’re also the most remote. If Karim wants to bother you, he’ll have to do a lot of walking to get here.”

“That’s something anyway,” I allowed, because the thought of Karim visiting me in my bedchambers sent a shiver of dread running through me.

“And choosing secure chambers will help you to avoid suspicion,” she added. “That’ll be important if we’re going to continue with the plan.” She hadn’t phrased it like a question, but I sensed the tension in her voice. She was worried that I was giving up.

“The plan stands,” I assured her. “I presume that if I can find us a reliable messenger, you know men in Kadiro to whom we can send our missives?”

“I do, your highness,” she replied. “But it won’t be easy to find a loyal messenger here. Who could we possibly trust with letters to Arjun or the Safavians?”

“I don’t know yet,” I confessed, “but we have a little time to figure it out.”

“Not much,” she warned. “Arjun said that it would be best if we attacked within a fortnight, and he wasn’t wrong. Sunil will be able to piece an army together, I’m sure of it, but it won’t hold for long, not without money and supplies. And the longer the Mahisagaris remain here, the stronger their control over Zindh will become. Better we push them out soon, your highness.”

“I don’t want to wait any more than you do,” I said, “but if we move too quickly and too clumsily, we will be caught. You will be executed, and I will be married to Karim for the rest of my life, kept a prisoner in his palace to be used as he pleases.” Just saying those words out loud made my stomach tie itself in knots, made my fists clench with fear and frustration. “Believe me, I am going to do everything in my power to get us out of this mess, Hina.”

“I believe you, your highness,” Hina said, resting her hand on my shoulder. But then she added something that I wished she hadn’t. “I hope it’s enough.”

What if it wasn’t? That was the thought that was gnawing away at the back of my mind. Karim had me right where he wanted me, trapped in his palace, separated from my zahhaks and from Arjun and from any friendly guards or soldiers. He had won my father’s support in this marriage, which meant that Sikander couldn’t be trusted to take my side in this dispute, not unless Karim violated the terms of the marriage agreement. And while I was accustomed to dealing with opponents who had all the advantages, I was also accustomed to being underestimated. Karim wouldn’t make that mistake, not after everything he had seen me accomplish in Bikampur.

I sighed and leaned up against one of the golden columns that supported the patio’s roof, my fingers wrapping themselves around a decorative rosette of blue-glazed tile, made to resemble the lotuses that grew in the palace’s water gardens. It was one of many, running in equally spaced bands around the fluted sandstone column. More such rosettes had been affixed to the outer walls of my chambers, to provide a splash of color to the otherwise uniform yellow-brown sandstone blocks.

Hope went through me like the electric jolt I sometimes got when Sultana was about to unleash a bolt of lightning. I rushed to the knee-high railing at the edge of the patio, moving so quickly that Hina actually grabbed my wrist to stop me from going over.

“You can’t give up that easily, your highness,” she told me, her voice stern.

I shook off her grip with a deft twist of my arm—a wrestling technique I’d picked up in Nizam. “Relax. I’m not going to kill myself just yet.”

Instead, I knelt down and leaned over the railing as far as I could, to get a better look at the walls of the palace beneath me. The yellow sandstone was festooned with carved floral motifs, with stylized zahhaks and checkerboard patterns, with vines and leaves, all covered with turquoise-, cobalt-, and white-glazed tiles, creating belts of raised decorations that ran the length and breadth of the walls all the way down to the calm waters of the lagoon some fifty feet below. The lip of the patio projected about five feet beyond the walls, which would make things a