The king opened his arms, and Rahim stepped into them.
He would only have to play the king’s dutiful son until the king died or decided to abdicate the throne because of his poor health. Then the FaSaa’il would fall in line or be eliminated, and all Akram would belong to Rahim.
Enduring the king’s cloying embrace took enormous effort. When the king stepped back, he patted Rahim’s shoulder with one hand as he stared hungrily at the boy’s face.
“You’ve changed some. I always thought you had your mother’s eyes.”
“I believe he takes after you,” Fariq said smoothly.
The king leaned toward Rahim, raising his trembling hand from the boy’s shoulder to his cheek. “I’ve missed you.”
“And I you.” Rahim tried to sound sincere.
“Cousin, it has been a long and arduous journey for Javan. Perhaps we should let him rest.” Fariq gripped Rahim’s elbow and pulled him away from the king, but both of them froze when a low, menacing snarl rose from behind them.
Rahim spun and found himself staring into the amber eyes of a white leopard with black spots and a golden collar around its neck. The beast’s whiskers twitched, and its lips curled away from its fangs as it growled again.
“Malik! Don’t you remember our Javan?” the king asked, stepping past Rahim to shake a finger at the enormous cat.
The leopard sat back on its haunches and stopped growling, though it flicked its tail and kept its eyes locked on Rahim.
“Does it . . . he . . . Malik often get upset when people enter the palace?” Rahim asked.
The king frowned. “Sometimes, but you know we keep him in the residential wing. I let him out because you were coming home. I thought he might like to sleep on your rug again.”
Rahim thought the cat might like to disembowel him in his sleep, but he pasted on a smile and said, “It’s been ten years. I’m sure he’ll be used to me again in no time. But perhaps for tonight, it would be best if he slept elsewhere.”
“Perhaps.” The king’s gaze wandered away from the leopard, roamed the entry hall, and then landed on Rahim with startling ferocity. There was a keenness to the king’s eyes that hadn’t been there a moment ago, and though his body still trembled, the confusion was clearing from his face.
He knew.
The cat had given the ruse away.
If the king knew that Rahim wasn’t his son, he’d have to be eliminated immediately, but Rahim didn’t dare kill him while the leopard watched him with such unblinking malice.
Fariq stepped to the king’s side and said soothingly, “Malik is simply upset that Javan abandoned him for so many years. They’ll be friends again before we know it. Meanwhile, it’s time for your tonic, dear cousin.”
“Is it?” The king glanced outside in bewilderment. “I thought I was to take it only once a day.”
“The physician has increased it to twice a day. Don’t you remember? He told you this last week.”
Rahim drew in a slow, calming breath as the king agreed to be handed over to a page who would take him to his sitting room. Once he was out of earshot, Rahim turned to Fariq and whispered, “Lord Borak didn’t tell me the leopard might hate me.”
“I’ve been wearing a piece of your clothing each day for weeks. He should’ve been comfortable with your smell by now.” Fariq eyed the leopard, who sat still as stone watching them. “Hopefully he won’t try to kill you before we can get the crown on your head. I’d hate to have gone to all this trouble only to lose my shot at the throne.”
“Your shot?” Rahim’s voice rose. “You forget that I’ll be Akram’s king.”
Fariq’s laugh was cruel. “You? You’re the little bastard who was raised in a filthy hovel in some no-name desert town. Your only value is the fact that you are the same age as Javan. As it stands, I can’t inherit the crown because I’m not a direct descendant of the royal line. Once you are crowned, you will sign a law allowing any surviving member of the Kadar family to rule.”
Rahim shook with fury. “And then what? You try to kill me and take the throne?”
“Not if you do exactly as you’re told. You get to wear the crown in public. The FaSaa’il gets their property and favor restored. And I make the decisions from behind the scenes.” He smiled, slow and vicious. “I’ve spent a lifetime watching my cousin get all the power while never trusting me with a single bit of it. Cutting off my royal allowance when he thought I bet too often at the tracks. Revoking my diplomatic authority in Balavata and Ravenspire when their rulers complained that I was sanctioning slave trade. Ruining my reputation so that even though I’m making most of the decisions for him now, many of the aristocrats are watching me like a hawk, waiting for a chance to drive me out. That’s over now. I will take what I’ve been denied, and I will do with it as I see fit. Behave yourself, and once I die, the throne is yours free and clear. Understood?”
Rahim matched Fariq’s smile with one of his own and said quietly, “Understood.”
ELEVEN
MAGIC HISSED THROUGH Sajda Ali’s blood, stinging her skin as she swept her long black hair into a ponytail, careful to leave the sides low enough to cover most of her ears. She ignored the bite of the magic she’d inherited from the father she’d never met and tucked her black shirt into her black pants as the underground prison of Maqbara slowly came to life around her.
She’d overslept, a rare mistake that would have cost her dearly if the warden had been in residence, but the woman hadn’t returned yet from her trip to negotiate for a shipment of monstrous creatures from the remote desert villages that dotted the Samaal. Frustration hummed through Sajda. She might not be in trouble for oversleeping, but she’d missed most of her opportunity to work on the only thing that truly mattered to her: a way to escape.
After splashing water on her face, she rubbed some on the tiny raised scars that crisscrossed the skin beneath the cuffs she wore—a reminder of the times when the magic in her blood had fought the rune-inscribed iron that was meant to keep it at bay. Every year, the warden locked new cuffs on Sajda’s wrists, the freshly carved runes keeping the iron free from rust and trapping the magic in her slave’s blood. And every year Sajda dreamed of finding a single instant, a tiny sliver of time between one cuff falling to the floor and the other one snapping into place when she could use her magic to overpower the warden and gain her freedom. But the warden was too smart to unlock an old cuff before the new one was in place, and Sajda didn’t have the luxury of dreams that would never come true. She hurried from her room. There was still time to make progress on her plan if she moved quickly.
Besides, she didn’t want to be caught alone in the fifth floor corridor when the iron bars opened to let the prisoners out of their cells. The last time that happened had been disastrous. She was still nervous about the precarious lie she’d spun to keep the prisoners from suspecting what she really was. It was hard to explain how a sixteen-year-old girl had nearly broken a tall, muscular man in half for attacking her.
She could handle two or three prisoners attacking at a time. She couldn’t survive an onslaught from the entire prison, and she had no doubt that’s what she’d be facing if the inmates of Maqbara ever learned the truth.
Shutting her door firmly behind her, she locked it and then moved swiftly down the corridor. The prison was lit with the subtle glow of dawn breaking through the dusty skylights set far above the cells that were carved like a honeycomb out of the bedrock beneath Akram’s capital city. The faint thud of hoofbeats clipped along the packed dirt streets aboveground, sending puffs of dust spinning into the faint beams of sunlight like bits of gold, and eerie cries of hunger drifted out of the stalls that housed the prison’s current population of monstrous beasts.
Sajda held her head high as she followed the narrow passage that wound around the fifth level, in full view of the prisoners who were now awake and waiting for the iron bars at the mouth of their cells to rise. To one side, a railing separated the corridor from the vast empty spa
ce of the arena far below. The first four levels of the prison were nothing but platforms of seats encircling the combat ring. The cells began on the fifth level. Each of Maqbara’s fifteen levels hugged the outside wall and was joined to the rest of the prison by narrow sets of stairs cut into the stone every thirty cells.
The light streaming in through the skylights at the top of the prison changed from faint yellow to rosy gold. The sun was up in Akram, and the aristocracy would be getting ready for an afternoon of bloody entertainment at the arena, though to their credit most of them attended simply because Prince Fariq had made it clear that those who didn’t would fall out of royal favor and be sanctioned accordingly.
Sajda moved faster as the prisoners began beating their bars with their fists, their voices raised as she passed.
“There she is. Pretty girl. Maybe you should join me in my cell tonight.”
“It’s the warden’s slave. Think you’re better than me? Lift these bars and find out.”
“Better stop ignoring me, ehira, or you’ll be sorry.”
Fear was a jagged blade slicing through her, sending her magic churning. The skin beneath her rune-carved cuffs burned as the iron crippled her magic, leaving her with enough power to defend herself against a few humans but without the ability to do the one thing she’d longed for since the warden bought her from an auction block when she was just five years old: escape.
The prisoners’ voices rose, and Sajda moved rapidly toward the staircase. “They’re just words,” she whispered to herself. To her magic. They were words she’d become so accustomed to, she no longer heard them. Just the voices. The tones. The thin line between bravado and intent that would tell her if she needed to watch herself around one of the prisoners.
The fifth level was where the most dangerous prisoners were kept. These were the men and women who’d beaten their way up the rankings of the last few tournaments. Who’d survived every bloodbath with a body count in their wake. These were the top contenders for this year’s prize, though there were plenty of newer prisoners who were hungry to take their place.
None of it was Sajda’s problem. She simply had to keep the prison stocked with vicious beasts, run the tournaments that lined the warden’s and Prince Fariq’s pockets with coin, and stay alive.
Most of all, she had to stay alive.
Rounding the corner to the stairwell, she plunged down the steps until she reached the arena’s floor. Hurrying around its outskirts, she entered the double row of iron stalls that hugged the wall closest to the hall that led to the warden’s office.
Drawing in a slow, unsteady breath, Sajda ducked into the stalls, her body now blocked from view by the iron wall that kept the prisoners from seeing the predators they’d be facing in the ring. Howls and hisses filled the air as she moved quickly toward the last stall on the right.
“Hush,” she whispered. “You’ll get fed in a few minutes.”
Her words went unheeded, and she rolled her eyes. It was a testament to the amount of time she spent around monstrous things that she’d started talking to them as if they could somehow understand her.
The last stall on the right was currently empty, though that would change with the next delivery. Shoving a drift of hay aside with her boot, she grabbed the small ax she’d hidden there years ago.
Pausing for a moment, she held perfectly still and listened.
No footsteps. No clamor from the beasts as someone other than Sajda walked through the stalls.
She was alone.
A hay trough, roughly the length of Sajda’s legs and the height of her waist, rested against the far wall. Sajda pushed it aside. Dust fell from the opening behind it. Ducking, she crawled through a tunnel that was only slightly wider than she was. After several paces, the tunnel opened up enough to allow her to crouch. She’d hollowed out a space nearly as big as her room with the idea that if the prisoners ever turned on her, she’d have a place to hide, though hiding wasn’t her goal. Escaping was.
Moving through the hollowed space, she reached the back where another tunnel was burrowing through the stone. It wasn’t much—she couldn’t even fit her entire body in it yet—but it was a start. One day, it would lead all the way out of Maqbara, up through the bedrock, and into the open air of the city itself.
Pressing her lips together to keep the dust from getting in her mouth, Sajda began swinging the ax. Bits of rock chipped away, falling into a heap as she painstakingly scraped another thin layer off the back of the tunnel.
Sweat dotted her brow as she finished what she could for the day. Hurriedly scraping the rock shavings into her hand, she stuffed them into her pants’ pocket and left the tunnel. She pushed the trough back in place, hid the ax, and left the stall. She was swinging the door closed when a voice from her right said, “Busy morning, eh, little one?”
Sajda spun, her fists clenched, magic itching in her blood. A short, stocky man with salt-and-pepper hair, a bushy beard, and kind eyes stood two stalls away, his left hand rubbing the arthritic knuckles on his right.
“Tarek, you startled me.” Sajda’s voice was low and calm, though magic still sparked along her skin, painful little nips that burned like ice. She stalked past him and placed an open palm against the stone wall beside the entrance to the stalls to steady herself. Drawing in the solid, immovable strength of the rock—a trick she’d learned by accident her first week in the prison when, overwhelmed with fear and loneliness, she’d pressed herself against the wall and wished for its strength to become her own. She’d been shocked when the stone had obeyed.
Now, her pulse slowed, and the painful prickle of magic mixed with the essence of the rock and became a cold, unyielding calm encasing her like armor. Pain seared the skin beneath her cuffs and then subsided. Keeping her voice soft, she said, “I’ve warned you not to sneak up on me.”
His smile revealed a missing front tooth—courtesy of the one and only stint he’d done in the arena eight years ago. “Sorry, little one. Thought you would’ve seen me. Must have been lost in your own thoughts again.”
“I could’ve hurt you.”
Tarek’s smile gentled as he handed her an orange from the prison’s kitchen. “You’d never hurt me.”
“Not on purpose.” Sajda stood beside the older man. “Where’s your breakfast?”
“Cook wasn’t finished with the porridge yet. I’ll go back up in a bit and get some.”
Sajda frowned. “Make it quick. I have to feed the beasts, and I don’t like you going to the kitchen when the other prisoners are there unless I can go with you.”
He patted her on the shoulder. “Nobody cares to bother an old man like me.”
“Not if they know what’s good for them. Is Batula here yet?” Sajda asked.
“On her way.”
“Good.” Sajda tore into her orange and devoured the slices quickly. Within moments, Batula stood outside the stalls, her hands sheathed in leather gloves. Sajda had long since given up trying to guess how old she was. Maybe forty. Maybe eighty. Her golden skin was leathery and sagged along the edges, but her eyes were clear and she was strong enough to help Sajda wrestle the creatures into the arena. She’d lived in the prison since before Sajda’s arrival, and Sajda had never figured out if, like Tarek, Batula was a prisoner the warden was using for her own purposes, or if she owned Batula like she owned Sajda.
“Hurry along, now.” Batula gestured toward the sacks of food that lined the wall beside the stalls. “These beasties won’t feed themselves.” Batula reached for the crank on the wall that operated the pulley system for the cell doors. “Guards in place?”
Tarek craned his neck and scanned the fifteen levels above him, searching for the black-clad guards who entered the prison at dawn and left at dusk once the cell doors were back in place. “Guards are at their stations,” he said as one of the guards set the first bell tolling, its mournful tone rolling through the air, fat and thick.
“Another day in paradise.” Batula cackled as she turned the c
rank. The harsh clicking of metallic gears catching on chains filled the air, followed by the scrape of iron bars lifting into the stone ceilings. Prisoners poured out of their cells. Most headed toward the kitchen on the ninth level, but some came straight for the arena to get a look at the beasts they might be unlucky enough to face in the afternoon.
Sajda donned a pair of leather gloves and grabbed a sack of sheep innards delivered that morning by one of the local butchers. Breathing through her mouth to avoid the worst of the sickly sweet scent, she opened the sack and moved to the first stall. A man-size white worm was coiled inside a cistern of water. Sajda tossed a handful of sheep guts into the cistern and shuddered as the worm’s head whipped up, its jaw stretching wide to reveal a glistening row of sharp fangs.
“I hate the water beasts the most,” she muttered to Tarek as he threw guts to a gaunt wolflike creature with red eyes and foam dripping from its muzzle. “Though I think we’re having something worse in round three—”
“What have I told you about sharing details of the upcoming combat rounds?” A thick, gravelly voice spoke from behind Sajda.
Sajda’s stoic shield of calm cracked, a tiny fissure of pressure that snaked along its surface, finding her weaknesses and burrowing in as she whirled to find the warden standing at the entrance to the stalls.
“You’re back!” Sajda reached for the indifferent composure she’d borrowed from the stone, but it disintegrated beneath the menace on the warden’s face.
The woman’s iron-gray hair was pulled back in its customary bun, and one dark eye watched her slave. The other was hidden beneath a bandage that covered nearly half her face. When she caught Sajda staring at it, she said, “It pays to watch yourself. One moment of carelessness, and the tables turn on you. Do you want me to turn on you, slave?”
Sajda froze, her magic scraping at her skin like tiny knives, her breath clogging her throat as she fought to keep her fear out of her expression. “I didn’t share the tournament details with any of the competitors. It’s just Tarek—”