It would be their final act.
She had taken me into a dream. Maybe a memory.
I stood in Bakir Tower. Unlike the opulence of Usr Jasad, the tower’s limestone and mud brick leached away color and light. In the center of the narrow room, Niphran paced. Not the wispy Niphran in my dreams, but the woman herself. She looked strong, her long shoulders straight, cascading hair tied behind her head. Most surprising of all were her eyes—clear and lucid like they had not been in years. Black kitmer eyes.
“Mama?” I whispered.
She didn’t hear me. I moved closer. Niphran’s circuit around the room didn’t slow. She braced her hands at the window and gasped.
Outside Bakir Tower, the palace bells rang, and a stream of people marched into Jasad’s upper town. I couldn’t appreciate the heartrending tableau of Jasad as it once was. Screams rang out from the palace.
We were under attack.
Niphran’s door opened, and we both whirled around. A teenage Soraya stood on the other side.
“Where’s my daughter? Where’s Dawoud? The palace is under attack!” Niphran shouted.
From her waistband, Soraya withdrew a wavy dagger. “The palace is finally in the right hands.”
Through the window, I saw people climbing onto the palace’s roof, shouting from the minarets. The palace servants were led out on the ends of spears, cowing to their polished conquerors.
The Mufsids.
Niphran touched her temple, glancing around the barren room for anything she could use to protect herself. “The bedpost! Snap it from the middle of the hourglass curve,” I urged. She did not react. When I tried to reach for it, the wood passed harmlessly through me.
“My head feels clear for the first time in years,” Niphran breathed. “I can think again.”
Cruel amusement flashed across my young attendant’s face. “I would think so. It’s the first day you have been free from your special beverages in six years. I wanted you to see the true Jasad being born without an addled mind. You are the only royal left who can.”
Niphran and I latched on to different parts of Soraya’s declaration.
Special beverages? “Her madness… was just poison?” But how? Soraya came under the palace’s service two years before the Blood Summit, and Niphran deteriorated years before then. Niyar had waited to appoint Niphran as Qayida until she regained her health, and in the meantime—
In the meantime, Hanim had been chosen to lead Jasad’s armies.
My heart staggered to a stop. Niphran’s madness was Hanim’s doing?
“Only royal? Where are the Malik and Malika?” Niphran started forward, halting when Soraya raised the dagger. “Where is my daughter?”
The boredom on Soraya’s face wavered, just for an instant. Niphran went white. “No, no, don’t say—”
“She’s not dead yet,” Soraya snapped. “He plans to attack on the last day of the Summit, after the messenger carries news of your death.”
He. She could only mean Rawain. I’d known the true culprit of the Blood Summit all along, but the confirmation still cut the knees out from under me. My memories were true. I wasn’t crazy. But how had he done it?
I was watching my worst suspicions unfold into reality. The Mufsids had been working against Usr Jasad before the siege. It was they who’d slaughtered everyone in the palace, days before Nizahl even reached the kingdom. But why? The Mufsids belonged to wealthy wilayahs, profiting from Jasad’s gains long before the other wilayahs did. They had the least reason to hate the Usr.
Niphran covered her heart with both hands. “Essiya loves you. She had so few people left to love, and she chose you.”
“Shut up!” It echoed in the lonely caverns of Bakir Tower. “If I could have—” Soraya turned away, and to my utter disbelief, tears glistened in her eyes. “I want the rotten lot of you to fester under the earth. If I could have spared Essiya, do you think I wouldn’t have? No one can inherit Jasad! There can be no blood claim to the throne.”
Niphran wasn’t deterred. For someone resurfacing from years of lethargy, my mother was certainly thinking fast. “Then hide her. Give her a new name. Send her to live with Emre’s family in Omal. She is only a child, Soraya.”
“I have worked too long and too hard to rescue Jasad from the plague of royals. Essiya’s death is on the Jasad crown’s hands, not mine.” Soraya sighed. “She will join you soon.”
“Do your coconspirators know you intend to kill her?” Niphran pointed out the window, where flames had begun to burn in the palace gardens. I watched fire leap onto the same fig and date tree illustrated on the wall of the training center and wanted to weep. “I can’t imagine they’d go along with your scheme if they did. This is all for her magic, isn’t it? They want it more than anything. They want it enough to light a match over our entire kingdom.”