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

the brass lanterns hanging from the ceiling. Half a dozen worries were vying for a place in the forefront of my mind, but the most pressing was the problem of guards. Had Asma increased the tower guards, or were there still only two men guarding this side of the palace?

I slid on my belly across the open gap between the protective shadows of the columns and the low marble railing that marked the balcony’s edge. I pressed my body tightly against the decorative stonework, peeking out through the finely chiseled rosettes, surveying first one tower and then the second. I swore under my breath. There were three guards in each tower now. Asma was taking no chances.

My heart pounded in my chest as I wondered what in the world I was supposed to do now. Sanghar Soomro’s men were counting on me to get those guards out of the way so they could climb into the palace without being shot. Hina was counting on me to get those men inside silently so that she and her celas wouldn’t be held hostage by the guards lurking outside my bedchamber. And Lakshmi, God, Lakshmi was in Ahura by now, all alone. And whatever designs Karim had on her, he would let Ahmed kill her once word reached them of my rebellion. I couldn’t let that happen. I wouldn’t let that happen.

So I did the only thing I could to prevent it. I rolled over the knee-high marble fence meant to protect me from plummeting to my death, and I dropped my feet and hips over the ledge of the balcony, my fingers getting tight grips in the railing’s rosettes. My feet scrabbled against the sandstone buttresses for toeholds, and I found myself missing the reinforced toes of my climbing shoes as my cloth slippers did little to dampen the bite of the stone’s sharp-edged cracks against my feet. Had I gotten so soft since my victory over Javed Khorasani? That worried me.

But the less time I gave myself to think, the better. I couldn’t do nothing. I couldn’t sit back and watch. I’d done that for weeks now; I’d played the part of the cowed damsel and I was sick of it. Tonight, I was going to free myself and free my sisters, and it didn’t matter if there were three men in the guard tower or thirty. They were going to die.

Of course, that was easy to say, and harder to do. I wasn’t sure, even as I began making my way along the wall, groping blindly for decorative lotus flowers and cracks in the masonry to support my weight, how exactly I was going to kill three armed men by myself. I was much less sure how I was going to do it silently. But it needed to be done. I prayed to God to give me the strength to see it through.

But even getting to the tower was no easy task. This wall was covered not with loopholes for toradars, but with fine screens so that ladies could look out at the water. That meant I couldn’t risk climbing laterally across the wall. There was too much chance that some servant girl would be gazing out at the moon, only to see my body sliding across her marble jali. So, I had to lower myself into the water as I had the first time I’d escaped the palace, keeping my head barely above the surface of the waves and praying that no crocodiles found me.

It was hard, physical work, dragging myself through the water by my fingertips, each pull requiring me to jam my hands into crevices made slimy by algae. I couldn’t go too fast, not without making noise. But going slowly was its own agony. My eyes were fixed on the guards in the western tower, visible beneath their brass chandeliers. The three of them were leaning on their toradars, chatting to one another, looking relaxed. That was something. A small advantage, though it meant that they would notice if I killed one of their number. My stomach was churning with anxiety as I reached the base of the tower. How in the world was I going to manage this?

I needed the right approach. I couldn’t risk climbing where I would be seen by someone from one of the other guard towers. That meant climbing up the far southwestern corner of the wall. The curve of the circular tower would keep me just out of sight of both the men on the western wall of the palace and the soldiers manning the southeastern tower. But once I reached the top, I’d be visible, as would the murders I was planning to commit. How could I expect guards all along the wall to just not notice three of their number being killed? It was dark, sure, but they were standing full in the light of the chhatri’s half dozen brass lanterns. There were probably sharp-eyed men and women in Kadiro who could have seen it.

I started climbing anyway. I had no plan. This was so stupid. My fingers were slick against the palace walls, from the slime and the damp of the alga-thickened water. My body was dripping wet, and the sound of all those droplets pattering against the tower and the surface of the lagoon was like a monsoon storm in my ears. How could the men on the tower not hear that? Were they completely deaf?

No. They were having a conversation. I couldn’t quite make out the words, because they were speaking Mahisagari, but they were chatting quite happily with one another, and that was drowning out the sound of my dripping clothes. I hung there, my fingers burning, my leg muscles aching, scarcely able to breathe for fear that I’d make enough noise that one of them would finally take notice.

Even with the breeze stirring the hot desert air, it was a long wait for my clothes to dry enough that I felt confident climbing.