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

was searching for any green scales or blue feathers that might hint at the approach of an acid zahhak from Ahura, but the sky seemed totally clear save for the morning patrol wheeling over the lagoon. It would be smarter to watch them than the horizon. They had a better view than I did, though they didn’t know to be especially watchful for a messenger today. Still, they flew in lazy circles, giving me no sign that there were any approaching zahhaks from the west.

I stood up and stretched, feeling at my still-sore neck. The bruises had largely faded now, and it wasn’t so tender. My nose was almost healed too, which was a welcome surprise. Seeing the mess Karim had made of me in the mirror had been a bit disconcerting. I didn’t like to think of myself as vain, but I’d spent most of my life making my living on my looks, so I was a little protective of that particular asset. After all, for everything I’d accomplished with my brains, I’d never met a man who had hired me for them.

Save Karim maybe. The irony of that wasn’t lost on me as I entered my bedchamber, and Asma’s handmaidens rushed to seem like they were sweeping or arranging my bedclothes—anything but spying. I laughed a little at that. “I know why your mistress places you here. You don’t have to pretend; it’s not a secret.”

They all bowed their heads and kept their mouths shut. I rolled my eyes and waited impatiently for Hina to get here with her celas so I could hide my climbing shoes in my pockets. If I was caught doing it, it would look suspicious, but if Ahmed and Asma managed to cast doubt on whether or not I had anything to do with the attack on Ahura, I might be moved to more secure quarters, and then I’d never be able to take care of the tower guards tonight like I’d promised Sanghar Soomro—not without some means of escape. I would need my shoes and my katars, and I couldn’t leave that to chance.

Hina wasn’t long in returning, and when she did it was with all fifteen of her celas. They filled the room in a crowd of ajrak skirts and dupattas, gathering around me in a semicircle that immediately rendered me invisible to the handmaidens, who stood up and craned their necks, trying to see what was going on. But Hina seemed to have concocted a plan, because she clapped her hands twice and said, “Let’s get her highness prepared to meet her mother- and father-in-law for breakfast! I want her looking perfect!”

And the next thing I knew, all sixteen of them burst into action. Hina was making me stand in one particular spot in the room where a pillar blocked me, while her celas rushed in every conceivable direction. There was so much frantic movement going on in so many different places that my eyes didn’t know where to look. Someone was fetching my chest of clothes, another my jewelry boxes, a third was for some reason bringing over the pillows from my bed while a fourth was snatching my cosmetics case, and at least two others picked up the mirror from its stand on the floor and started marching toward me with it.

Clothes were pulled out of the chest seemingly at random, and I was made to put on my ajrak skirt, but it felt oddly heavy, and it seemed to weigh even more once the blouse was thrown over the top of it. They put jewelry on my wrists, ankles, neck, ears—they even stuck hairpins in at a speed that frankly worried me. In a matter of moments, I was completely bedecked from head to foot like a Zindhi princess, as I had been that first day Hina had come to the palace in Shikarpur. I was aware, after the flurry of activity had settled down, that at some point, either before or after I had put it on, the hidden pockets of my skirt had been stuffed with my climbing shoes, their presence hidden by means of the large number of petticoats I wore with it. And at another point, my katars had been slipped into the waistband of my skirt at the small of my back, their handles hidden by the long Zindhi-style blouse. Had I been wearing the shorter, Registani variety, they would have been plainly visible, but between the blouse and the long, shawl-like dupatta, there was no chance at all of anyone spotting them.

Hina was smirking, enjoying the bewildered looks on the faces of Asma’s handmaidens. She guided me to the pillows her celas had set down and had me sit on one of them while she personally applied my makeup, being careful to hide my bruises and to mask the split in my lip and the suture in my nose.

“There,” she said once she was finished. “You look like a proper princess, your highness.”

“I feel like a proper princess,” I replied, knowing that she and her celas would understand that I was referring to my climbing shoes and katars, but that the words would seem innocuous enough to Asma’s handmaidens.

We exchanged a secret smile, and I stood from my cushion, smoothed out my skirts and my dupatta, making the gestures seem natural, though in truth I was ensuring that wherever Karim put his hands, he wouldn’t feel the weapons or the shoes through my clothes. He tended to like to touch my arms, sometimes my hips, but the small of my back and my thighs were usually safe enough. I just hoped he wasn’t feeling particularly eager this morning, otherwise I was going to have to be careful to use Sikander as a chaperone. The last thing I needed was for Karim to discover katars on my body just hours before word reached him of an attack on Ahura by unknown forces.

I had just finished composing myself when Asma came breezing into