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

“I was walking into the desert?” I asked, wondering what could have possessed me to do something so stupid. There was nothing beyond Bikampur in that direction except dunes until you reached Shikarpur. But that was too far to travel on foot, even for a healthy adult. Especially without food or water.

“I caught you, and started dragging you back to the dera, but you fought me,” Sakshi said, her hand reaching up to stroke my hair. “The whole time you were screaming that you had to get to Safavia, that you wouldn’t be safe until you found your big brother, Prince Haider.”

My cheeks warmed, and my heart ached. I didn’t remember any of this, but I knew it was true. “That was where I’d been going. That was why I ran west. I never told anyone, I thought.”

“I told you that if you kept saying things like that your father would catch you and kill you,” Sakshi said. “And then you fainted in my arms, and I carried you back home. When you woke up, you never spoke of it again, so I’ve always wondered if you remember it or not.”

I shook my head. “No. All I can remember is you caring for me.”

“Well,” she murmured, holding me tightly, “now we’ll get to see what sort of man your big brother Haider really is.”

“I suppose we will,” I agreed, though that did nothing to quell the tension in my heart. I had such fond memories of Haider.

“I’ve been wondering about that myself,” Hina admitted. When I looked a question at her, she clarified. “What made you so certain that Prince Haider would fight a war to help a hijra. You said that you were childhood playmates, but you were a prince then, not a princess.”

“Some of the time,” I allowed. “For formal functions and audiences and the like. But when I met Tamara, and told her how pretty her clothes were and that I wanted to wear clothes like hers, she let me. And Haider caught us. I thought he was going to beat me the way that Sikander would have, but he didn’t. He just smiled and told me he thought I looked beautiful. And after that, whenever we were together, I was Princess Razia. It was the best two years of my life. I never wanted that civil war to end.”

“And none of that ever got back to your father?” Hina asked in disbelief.

I frowned, because of course it had. “Why do you think he and Sikander let Karim do that to me? Why do you think it occurred to Karim that I might be a girl and not a boy?”

Sakshi rubbed my shoulders, but Hina was sitting up a little straighter, almost like she’d been pleased by what I’d said. I shot her a dark look and she immediately seemed more apologetic, but she said, “Forgive me, your highness, it’s just that Karim wasn’t shy about telling that story.”

My spine stiffened. “I am aware, thank you.”

“Well, did it ever occur to you that it might have got back to Haider all those years ago?” she asked.

That thought brought a smile to my lips too. If Haider had heard what Karim had done to me back then, then to be reminded of it now might make my plight seem all the more dire. At the very least, it added to our chances that he had struck Ahura last night.

“How long do you think it will be before we hear word?” Sakshi asked.

I shrugged and glanced to Hina, as she’d know better. I’d never been to Ahura myself.

“It’s an eight-hour flight at top speed over open water,” she mused. “Safer would be flying north to the coast and then following it to Kadiro. That would add at least an hour, maybe two. If they left last night under cover of darkness, then they’d have taken the safer route, I’d expect. But if they left this morning at first light, then they probably chose to fly directly. Either way, we should know something by this afternoon at the latest.”

“I hope it’s sooner,” Sakshi said, and I felt a little bit of the nervous tension in her fingers as she rubbed my shoulders.

“Me too, elder sister,” I muttered, though there was just nothing to do but wait either way. Well, wait and prepare. We had a few crucial hours left to us, I thought. And I knew better than to waste them. I leaned closer to Sakshi and whispered into her ear, “Tell Lakshmi to keep her climbing shoes in her pockets today.”

Sakshi nodded, her mouth becoming a hard line of worry. She knew that there would be no escaping the palace for her. No one had ever taught her to climb. I reached up and placed my hand atop hers on my shoulder. “I would never leave you.”

“I know, Razia,” she replied. She slipped away and went off to deliver my message to Lakshmi.

“Which of your celas has the katars today?” I asked Hina, grateful that I hadn’t been stupid enough to leave them in my chest with my clothes and the climbing shoes. They’d been passing them around among themselves, just in case any of them got searched by the guards, and they’d been careful not to ever let Hina have them, because she was under more scrutiny than her disciples.

“I have them,” she told me. “I’ll pass them to you tonight, if and when the situation demands it.”

“Fine,” I agreed. “I want you to get your celas together and bring them to my chambers. I want to distract Asma’s handmaidens and the Mahisagari guards so I can get my climbing shoes in my pockets without them noticing.”

“With pleasure, your highness,” Hina agreed, and she was smiling the first genuine smile I’d seen on her face in an age as she hurried off to collect her disciples.

I looked west, watching the gray horizon lightening toward blue as the sun rose behind me. I