It was impossible to know what could have levied such destruction.
For at first glance what appeared to be the result of a siege was now anything but. There were no signs of siege warfare anywhere. No arrows in the dirt. No ballistae iron buried into stone walls.
No signs of an encroaching army.
Instead, Khalid saw a woman pressed against the remains of a fruit stand. Squashed melons lay strewn about, their sickly sweet smell weaving through the noxious fumes. The woman was silent. Still. At her feet, a small child whimpered. Pleading with her to wake up.
Before Khalid could dismount, the soldier at his side had slid to the ground and scooped the little boy into an embrace. Though the gesture of kindness warmed Khalid, it did little to assuage his fears. Little to mitigate his fury.
They moved toward the palace at the city’s center, the small boy riding before his rescuer.
The men paused outside the palace gates. They were smashed to pieces, as though something had torn them from their moorings and hurled them through the sky. The damage stole Khalid’s breath. No weapon he could envision was capable of such destruction, save for a giant ax cleaving through the very battlements. Battlements of iron and steel and stone. Battlements that were meant to withstand a siege for days, if not weeks.
Now they had been reduced to nothing but smoldering rubble. In a matter of a night.
Sections of the palace lay in ruin. Two corners continued to blaze bright. Burning finery was scattered across the entrance courtyard. Broken goblets and shattered porcelain crunched beneath Ardeshir’s hooves.
As Khalid moved through the courtyard, he found a few brave souls remained within, continuing to usher others to safety.
There—beside the gurgling wreckage of a marble fountain—Khalid found Despina, tending to a servant girl’s broken leg. She directed those nearby as to where they needed to go—as to what they needed to do—without even once looking up from her work. Behind the fountain, Khalid’s cousin commandeered a gardener’s wagon and moved to help the injured servant girl at Despina’s side.
Khalid’s glance flitted about the space.
Again, the fear gripped his heart in a vise.
For Shahrzad was nowhere in sight.
He dismounted. “Jalal.” His tone was grim.
His cousin’s preoccupied gaze flew to his.
“You’re home early.” Jalal stood, struggling to straighten his dirtied cloak, then shrugging it off his shoulders with a huff.
Khalid proceeded closer. “What happened? What sort of evil brought about this? And where is Shahr—”
“Thank God you’re here.” Jalal crouched to the granite pavestones to assist the servant girl.
Without a word, Khalid shifted to the other side to lift her onto the wagon.
“What happened, Jalal?” he asked under his breath.
Jalal hesitated. Averted his gaze for a moment. “There was a . . . storm. A storm the like of which I have never seen.” His words were clipped. Precise. “A storm with the fury of all the gods at its back.”
At that, Khalid locked on his cousin. He spoke in a harsh whisper. “Where is Shahrzad?”
“She’s . . . safe.”
Khalid did not for an instant miss Jalal’s second hesitation.
With great care, they secured the young servant girl and sent the wagon on its way. Then Khalid turned once more to his cousin. Jalal’s words continued to churn through his mind, endlessly cycling and spinning about.
A storm. The like of which he had never before seen. The sort with the fury of the gods at its back.
What kind of unspeakable malice had befallen Khalid’s beloved city?
Despite all his previous disavowals—all his thoughts that this might be the work of Salim Ali el-Sharif—the answer to Khalid’s question took root, no longer the sinister echo of before.
“And I shall take from you these lives, a thousandfold.”
The fear he’d felt before was nothing now. Nothing compared to the horror of certainty.
All this death. All this destruction.
My fault.
Khalid gripped his cousin’s shoulder, forcing him to meet his eyes. Behind his cousin’s sweaty, ash-laden face, Khalid caught sight of dawn lightening the edges of the eastern sky.
“Where is Shahrzad, Jalal?”
Jalal looked away once more. “I told you. She is safe.”
“And that is—of course—the most important matter. But I want to know where she is.”
At that, Jalal inhaled through his nose, his expression harrowed. Then he faced Khalid head on. “I sent her away.”
“Where?” Khalid’s grip tightened.
“You must understand—”
“I said where!” Khalid’s voice carried into the changing light of the sky. His rage made the sound crack with the fierceness of a whip.
“She left the city hours ago,” Jalal replied quietly. “Not long after the storm began.”
“And you sent her alone?” Khalid could not maintain his preserve for much longer.