Chapter 210: Malik

Azeem, in the kitchens of Eden, sat grinning.

He grinned at the children, joked with the cooks, handed out bread and a loud, cheerful word for every person.

But his own plate sat untouched.

His rings had gone dull, unpolished.

It wasn’t obvious whether he had accepted what happened or not; perhaps that was on purpose.

Either way, the man did as he was ordered to.

That was his way of coping... living.

Yes, some Right Hand he was.

Kabir eventually found him asleep at the foot of a pillar with a loaf in his lap.

He draped his own cloak over the man’s shoulders and walked away.

Zafar sat in the cold.

He picked a corner of the Garden where the lantern-moss did not reach and sat with his knees pulled up and his white hair hanging in his face.

The man did not speak to anyone and only ate when food was put in front of him.

People left him alone, because he had the look of a man doing hard arithmetic, adding up every choice he had ever made and arriving each time at the same sum.

Zafar had betrayed the Sultan once.

He had crawled back and been forgiven. And when the day came to repay that forgiveness, he had walked out of a hall with tears on his face, because he had been told to.

’Dammit.’

It was the only word he had said in days.

He whispered it to his knees, again and again.

This was his prayer.

Duban never left the inn, or at least the closest they had to one.

He followed in the old footsteps of his mother, Layla, drinking his pain away.

His soldiers tried to set him straight, but he seemed to have given up entirely.

Most took up post at the gates of Eden, standing watch despite knowing that anyone capable of finding them would be far too strong for them to stop, never mind defeat.

There were many stairways that climbed up through the rock to sealed iron doors.

Beyond these doors lay a hundred feet of snow, and beyond the snow lay the world.

No one used it.

The Faraja had welded it shut once all arrived.

Kabir, the Giant, stood at the top of the main stairs every night.

He stood with his arms folded and his shoulders against the iron, facing the dark.

The Guard of the Fifth took turns keeping him company, three or four at a time. The ones who weren’t on watch sat in the tunnel below and listened to the silence pressing against the metal, thinking of their Sultan.

Noor worked.

She worked in a cramped chamber lit by a single lamp, with ledgers stacked to her elbows.

The Grand Vizier counted grain, blankets, lamp-oil, and the hours of Rukh left in the circles.

She drew up ration schedules for the people, a ridiculous number to be managed by one person. But she was more than capable of doing it, every page she filled coming out clean.

Noor did it because there was a Grand Vizier’s work to be done, and somebody had to do it.

Yes, somebody had to do it, even as their hands shook so badly that ink kept on spilling.

Safira healed.

She healed every wound in Eden, then healed the same wounds again.

Her light flickered on at dawn and did not go out until the lanterns dimmed, and she moved from cot to cot with a bright smile and a steady hand. Nobody had told her to stop.

She was the only one who never said the word dead.

"He’ll come back... Teacher always does."

The girl she was healing looked up at her.

"Is that true?"

"Yes."

Her smile did not waver.

Sinbad, the Crimson Owl, was ever watchful.

He sat on the beam above Amal’s bed and did not blink.

His wives, Isha, and his other children slept beneath his wing.

Sinbad had been a guardian to her once, and he was one still.

It was all he had left to give.

’Elder Brother.’

He had flown a hundred miles through ash and carried back an arm.

It was the only thing of him he had been able to find.

Somewhere out there, on a scorched hill, was the rest of him, and Sinbad did not know how to go back for it.

He couldn’t fail at this.

Amal and Layla were going to get through this.

Speaking of which, Layla had received a... letter?

Yes, a letter.

It sprang out from the ground in the Garden.

It was a single sheet of pressed leaf, folded in four.

The handwriting was elegant, but it did not say much.

[I have felt it, perhaps it is true, but...

Whatever you decide, do not say he is dead where my branches can hear you.]

Layla read it twice, folded it small, and slid it into her sleeve.

It was strange how it steadied her... how ashamed it made her.

The woman she had called a rival still held hope that somehow, Malik was alive.

Layla hoped the same, but that hand, the one she still carried, gave her an undeniable story.

She was forced into a limbo of hope and unfathomable despair, pulled from both ends.

Neither was mercy, for hope was far more painful.

Above the broken woman, the Twelve Moons hung.

The crystal below them dripped slowly with melted snow.

Behind her, tents stood in long rows, and from them came the thin sound of children crying in their sleep.

These were the orphans of the war, cared for personally by her, the Mother of Devil’s Maw.

O Sultan... the orphans are now crying in their tents.

They all beg for your return.

She pressed her hand against her mouth.

Hope is lost. My tears have dried.

I cannot handle missing you.

Patience has passed.

I don’t want to wait.

Let me die with you.

The words did not fall out of her.

They simply sat in her chest, very quiet.

O Sultan, O Sultan.

High above, on the far wall of the cavern, the Sultan’s banner hung from an iron pole.

They had hung it on the first day, to give the people something to look at.

Though it had stirred a little in the draft from the tunnels, it had never once touched the floor.

But as she watched, the rope gave way.

It slid down the pole with a soft rustle, and the cloth folded over itself.

The flag fell.

***

Darkness.

It was the first thing this stranger knew, and it was not the clean dark of a closed eye.

A strip of cloth had been tied tight across his eyes, and the knot had been drawn so hard that it bit into the back of his skull.

Metal circled his wrists.

Cold bands of iron, locked around both forearms.

There were runes etched into the cuffs; the man could feel them gnawing at him.

Every time he reached for his Rukh, the metal drank it down, and the place where it had been was left raw.

He did not know where he was.

He did not know what was happening.

He only knew pain.

It was an immeasurable amount, a pain so large that it had no end.

It came up through the soles of his feet and through the roots of his teeth.

His skin was on fire; he felt it crawling under his ribs, and he understood, in the faraway voice at the back of his mind, that he was being burned alive.

He drifted.

The dark swelled, and he went under it.

For a while there was nothing at all.

Then the fire pulled him up again, screaming.

The cloth was still across his eyes, and the cuffs were still gnawing at his wrists.

He fell back down.

He came up.

Down.

Up.

He had no idea how many times.

At some point, he lost track of time.

Perhaps only days had gone by; he didn’t know.

For him, with every nerve alight, it felt like an eternity.

The seconds stretched out until each one was a lifetime, and each lifetime held the same single thing, over and over, with no end in sight.

Failure.

He had failed the people of Devil’s Maw.

He had failed his family, his wife and daughter.

He had failed Hakim, continuing the cycle of fools.

An eternity of failure.

The fire rose again.

He bit down on the sound, because he had nothing else to bite on, and held still in the dark.

No one else could possibly survive the pain he was currently going through.

It was an impossible pain.

A pain only one man could endure.

Because he was a man familiar with the impossible.

Indeed, this man was the Sultan.

Malik.

He was still alive.