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

I let my spine stiffen, like her words had hurt my feelings. She didn’t know the half of how dangerous I was, but she would see. Tonight I would show them all, and I would find some way to get Lakshmi back. I swore it as I marched under heavy guard back to my chambers.

CHAPTER 22

No appetite, your highness?” Fatima, Asma’s chief handmaiden, taunted as I sat on the floor of my bedchamber in front of an uneaten thali. There were a dozen Mahisagari soldiers all around me, leering at me. They didn’t usually get to visit the women’s quarters of the palace, and they seemed to be enjoying having a woman to intimidate. Of course, they didn’t know that I wasn’t so easily intimidated.

“No, as a matter of fact,” I said, glancing out my jali screen at the deep gray sky. The sun was just setting. I didn’t know how much longer I could wait before making my move. Arjun was on his way, and so was Sunil Kalani. If they attacked as soon as it was dark, then that would alert the Mahisagaris, and I’d be killed before I could get Sanghar Soomro’s men inside the palace. I had to make my move now.

“In fact, I’m tired,” I declared, shoving the thali away like a petulant child. “I would like to sleep. Please have these men removed so that I may change into my nightclothes.”

Fatima grinned and shook her head. “No. The men stay. Lady Asma was very clear about that. Besides, you’re a man anyway, what do you care if they see you?”

It was a stupid thing to say when surrounded by eighteen hijras, but Fatima didn’t seem to care. She must have felt pretty invincible with all of the guards gathered around her, knowing that Asma hated me and would reward her for hating me in turn.

I bit back any sharp replies and said, “Please send one of your girls to Lady Asma to relay my request that I be permitted privacy to undress. What harm is there in asking?”

“No,” Fatima replied, grinning at me from behind the sheer fabric of her yellow dupatta.

I leaned closer to her, keeping my voice low, and said, “You are serving your mistress well. That’s good, you’ll earn her favor that way. But Karim intends to make me his wife, and that is also what Lady Asma intends. So, someday I will be the sultana, and Lady Asma will be dead. You’re younger than she is; you may yet be a servant in the palace when that day comes. What do you think I will do to you then? I have a long memory, Fatima, ask anyone.”

She frowned, seeming a lot less sure of herself then. I watched as she worked the puzzle out in her mind, folding her arms across her chest, trying to decide if honoring my request would be enough to forestall the fate I had outlined for her. In the end, she must have decided it couldn’t hurt after all, because she said, “Zahra, you’ll go and relay her highness’s request to her majesty.”

“Yes, my lady,” a pink-clad handmaiden replied, and she rushed off to see it done.

“Thank you, Fatima,” I said, offering her a friendly smile, though I knew there was nothing that could save her now. She had chosen the wrong mistress, and that was going to cost her far sooner than she believed.

Fatima managed a stiff nod, but said nothing more. Evidently, she hadn’t stopped to consider what the consequences might be for taunting the princess of Nizam.

I waited anxiously for Zahra’s return, expecting at any moment that Arjun’s forces might attack, or Sunil’s, that warning cries would spring up in the fortress and I would be held at gunpoint by the guards. I had to get out of here before that happened. I had to deal with the men in the towers and I had to get Sanghar’s men inside the palace. Everything depended on it.

As it happened, Zahra returned quickly, but she wasn’t alone. Lady Asma herself was with her, and I hurried to stand respectfully, keeping my face covered with my dupatta and my head downcast like a properly chastened young maiden. She would know it for an affectation, but from the way she strode into the room, it was plain that she also viewed herself as a conquering heroine of sorts, so my submission was probably what she had envisioned.

“You wanted to speak with me?” Asma asked me, no doubt so she could have the joy of refusing my request in person.

“I would like to sleep, your majesty,” I said, keeping my voice quiet and polite and deferential—and exhausted. I wanted her to think that I’d been broken, that I was giving up, surrendering myself completely to my fate. “Would it be possible for the guards to step outside so that I might have some privacy to undress?”

Asma pursed her lips and I was certain she was going to refuse me, which would make all this so much more difficult. But then she said, “I will permit you to undress and to go to bed in the privacy of your handmaidens and mine.”

“Thank you, your majesty,” I gasped, shocked that it had been that easy.

“If,” she added, smiling like she’d just caught me in a trap, “you hand over your climbing shoes.”

For a moment, I was angry, but then I realized that this was even more perfect. She would both have her suspicions of me confirmed and have a reason to believe that I was well and truly helpless at long last. That would give me the freedom I needed to act, I thought.

My shoulders slumped. I reached into my pockets and took out the climbing shoes, noting the way that her eyes widened behind the fabric of her dupatta, seeing the triumphant grin spread slowly across her face. I