The wagon rattled over the bumpy ground, crates sliding with each dip and lean. I hopped out as soon as we reached the outer throng of the square. Booths lined each side of the main road, backed by merchants dressed in the colors of their kingdoms. They shouted as I passed, pointing at their fruits and jewelry and scarves. The crisp air carried music and the notes of burned sugar and grease. The visitors from the Omalian lower villages swarmed the main road in shades of white and blue. A mass of children sat in a circle, playing with dolls in the images of the Awaleen. A woman with a red triangle scarf tied over her curls slapped a few thieving hands from her ghorayeba platter and hollered for Yuli. Yellow coins sewn into the scarf jangled with her motion.
“I wonder if I sing the beautiful woman a song, will she dance?” A man roughly my age plucked his lute as he approached. The sweet strum of the instrument transported me to quieter nights, standing barefoot in Hirun as the river flowed around me. Several paces behind him, his partner giggled as she drummed her tubluh. “Will you give my music the honor of moving your spirit and body?”
“Certainly,” I said. “I am going to move my body far away.”
Skirting the crestfallen lute player, I almost knocked over a young man holding a tray full of steaming cups of reddish chai above the crowd. The sounds of the lute and tubluh followed, the melody weaving through the air, twining with the cries of the hawking merchants.
“An ula for your kitchen, ya anisa? Engraved by the finest artist in Lukub!”
“Abayas, abayas, come try on your new abaya! Embroidered by Orban’s Hany Barrow himself!”
My brows shot up. What merchants with the full privilege of their sanity would come to Mahair all the way from Orban or Lukub? The closest border for Orban required six weeks’ travel west, not including the voyage through the desert flats. Three weeks if they cut through Essam, but such shortcuts were rarely taken. Over thirty years later, and the siege of monsters remained too fresh. Stuck between Nizahl and Orban, a border-locked Lukub had recently expanded its territory south, into the woods. The trip to Mahair from Lukub would take a mere week traveling south—but only by braving the woods. Otherwise, any Lukubi merchant with eyes on Omal’s lower villages would need to circle through Orban or Nizahl to reach us.
Perhaps they intended to remain in Omal until the waleema in the upper towns. I heard the Omal palace preferred to host their own waleema a day or two before the Alcalah’s second trial.
Rory had given me permission to explore the booths before joining him. I didn’t have much interest in purchasing trinkets I couldn’t take with me when I fled, but circling the road would give me an opportunity to scan for Arin and his guard. I compared daggers from Gahre masons, sampled powdered jellies, and chewed on nuts hardened in sugar syrup. I was maintaining my frugal self-control until I reached a merchant with barrels full of sesame-seed candies. I had devoured the pile Sefa and Marek gave me in a fit of stress.
Oh, what did it matter? I filled my basket and poured ten coins into the merchant’s palm. Either the Commander would transport me to Nizahl to die at trial or I would flee this village as soon as he left. His arrival had plunged my already uncertain future into bleak nothingness. I had earned the right to fill my belly with as many of these candies as I could.
Marek hustled behind the tavern’s collar-shaped booth, pouring ales faster than should be possible. Yuli must have loaned Marek out for the day. He waved, gesturing invitingly at an overflowing cup of ale. I shook my head at the offering with a shudder. Intoxication had always lacked any appeal. My uglier insticts were difficult to control on the best of days; I dreaded to think what could happen with my inhibitions lowered and my tongue loosened.
Since I had already planned to spy on Marek and he appeared on the verge of collapse, I heaved a sloshing barrel into my arms and set up a serving space next to him. I lost myself in the routine of scooping and pouring. The attention of so many strangers scraped against my nerves, but they were better than Mahair’s residents, who had taken it upon themselves to try to gossip with me about the Nizahl Heir. Increasing the general inebriation level of the crowd would serve me well.
When the surge lapsed, Marek flung himself to the ground, pressing his cheek to the well-beaten rug. “Sylvia, I love you,” he said. “I will bring you flowers and sesame-seed candies until the day I die.”
I nudged his head with my boot. “I would rather have the candies and a portion of your earnings.”
Marek laughed, rolling onto his back to look at me with dancing eyes. “How un-Omalian of you to ask me for money.”
“How un-Omalian of you not to accept.”
His smile slowly disappeared. A solemnity passed between us, heavy with words unsaid. Neither of us belonged to Omal, yet neither of us laid claim to our true kingdoms. I doubted Marek or Sefa had considered the possibility I was a Jasadi. I had not performed a single act of magic in the entire time they had known me. But they must have suspected I was more than I claimed.
Marek’s replacement arrived to relieve us. We lounged in Nadia’s borrowed chairs and watched two men grappling on the platform. The fights were my favorite part of the waleema. Mahair’s craftsmen constructed a raised platform for the matches taking place between the first and last hour of the waleema, with the last hour reserved for serious contenders. Buckskins and boiled leather cushioned the platform, preventing a hard fall from cracking open any skulls. Men and women hoisted themselves into the ring for a chance at victory. There could be no celebration of the Alcalah without a competition, and Mahair preferred the physical kind.
“Are you competing?” I asked Marek.
He lifted a shoulder. “Could be.”
I stifled a snicker. He’d be in the ring within an hour. I’d always wanted to compete. Indulge the tempting opportunity to win the prize and buy myself a new cloak with nothing more than an hour’s effort. But I could not risk exposing my skill.
You mean exposing your savagery, Hanim said. Would they treat you the same if they knew you could snap a man’s neck without a thought?
I shoved a candy into my mouth, crunching until I drowned out Hanim’s voice. I wound my way back to Rory’s booth. A cheer rose as performers leapt from roof to roof, swiping long torches to light the lanterns hanging over the road. A rosy haze illuminated the mosaic of fire above us. Children chased each other, dodging legs and swinging baskets, their laughter ringing louder than the lute players’ cheery melody. Mahair in its full glory.
For the next hour, my voice grew hoarse explaining the purpose of each oil and ointment to the visiting Omalians while Rory snored lightly on my right.
By the time Fairel crashed into the booth, I was ready to hurl a jar at the next person who asked why we used frog fat in the plaster. Someone had tried to braid Fairel’s short hair into twin tails. The resulting braids curved over her ears like a ram’s horns. A smear of what I fervently hoped was chocolate covered her nose, and she wore a clean, lovingly tailored frock woven in Omal’s white and blue. I had seen her running between the booths all afternoon, dragging around the chairs Nadia loaned to the Gahre merchants. Her Orbanian work ethic at full play.
“Are you busy?” She vibrated with anticipation. “Raya said I can watch the matches if I have company.”