The Ruby Prince: Book Two of Imirillia (The Books of Imirillia 2) (13 page)

“And so, the ten thousand miles of the world remain, and I stand my post,” Eleanor said, speaking more to herself than to Ammar.

The sound of a bird, alighting on a branch, touched the garden as Eleanor gazed down. Ammar sat still, looking contemplative.

“Now may not be the best time to tell you this,” the physician stated, and he finally stood, his hands behind his back. “But the emperor has decided your fate.”

“Which is?” Eleanor asked.

“Basaal is to be removed from his post, as commander of the Aemogen conquest, and it is to be given to Kiarash, fifth son. You will be hanged.”

Chapter Nine

“That was rather blunt of you,” Basaal said, his shoulder sore as he pulled against the taut bowstring. “What was Eleanor’s response?” He released the arrow, and it hit the target at the far end of the garden with a thud.

“She inquired after you,” Ammar said.

“Did you tell her that I would challenge the emperor’s decision?” Basaal frowned as he twisted the only red feather among the black away from his bow, notching another arrow.

“Are you planning to challenge him, then?” Ammar asked, sounding surprised.

Basaal pulled the bowstring, squinting his eyes and feeling the tension of the bow in his muscles. Then he let the arrow fly and turned towards Ammar.

“Of course I mean to challenge him,” he said.

“She must mean more to you than just what common human respect dictates.” Basaal felt Ammar watching him as he moved his fingers among the arrows of his quiver, pulling one out in a swift movement. “Tell me,” the physician continued with an interested smile. “Is she as a sister?” Basaal was set to release the arrow when Ammar had spoken these words. He grinned.

“Hardly,” he said, dropping his aim, as he threw a glance over his shoulder at Ammar.

“Is she your lover?” Ammar asked. Basaal released the arrow before turning fully to face Ammar. This time there was no smile on his face.

“Hardly,” he said again.

“Yet, you will enter a challenge for her life?” Ammar asked.

“I will,” Basaal said. “For her life and for my post.”

“Then, I will tell her so,” Ammar said, and he stood with his hands behind his back. “Has the appointment been made?”

Basaal nodded. “I go into the emperor tomorrow morning.”

The physician stood to leave, but he paused before ascending the steps of Basaal’s garden. “You do understand,” Ammar said, “that by doing this, you’re leaving yourself open for him to play with your mind? It’s also no exaggeration to say that this could cost you your life.”

Basaal’s only answer was to send another shaft slicing through the air into the center of the target.
Thud
.

Yes, Basaal thought, I do understand.

***

“So, you don’t agree with my decision?” Shaamil asked, and his words sliced the air in the room.

“No, I don’t,” Basaal said as he stood before his father in the great throne room. “I take great exception to it and feel it should be challenged.”

Through the lattice, Eleanor watched the faces of those in attendance especially, the face of the emperor. With a dangerously amused expression, he considered Basaal. Ammar, sitting next to her, flicked his eyes in Eleanor’s direction as if to ask why she was worth the chance his brother was taking. But Eleanor pretended that she did not notice his scrutiny. She had enough conflict in her lungs, and she didn’t need to add Ammar’s.

Shaamil stood and paced before his throne, surveying his youngest son with a strange satisfaction in his eyes. He paced with a thinking frown. And, each time that he moved his arms, the trailing of his long robes dramatized the scene. It wasn’t until Eleanor finally caught her breath that she realized she’d not been breathing.

“I will accept the challenge in two parts,” he said. Shaamil squared himself, facing Basaal. “To regain your position in the Aemogen conquest, you must fight Kiarash, fifth son, with the weapon of your choice,” the emperor explained. “Prove yourself, and you will retain your position.”

Basaal looked towards Kiarash, and they exchanged a nod. “As for the queen’s life,” Shaamil continued. “We will make the challenge a surprise. That will give you something to look forward to.”

Eleanor’s eyes narrowed, wondering what the emperor’s definition of a surprise was.

“Well, do you accept?” Shaamil lifted a hand to his chin, watching Basaal.

“I accept,” Basaal replied.

“Tomorrow, then. And we shall see what comes of it.” As Shaamil sat again on his throne, his eyes moved from Basaal to Kiarash and then, briefly, towards the latticework where Eleanor hid. She shrunk from his gaze, her heart crashing into her stomach. Eleanor knew that he could not possibly see her, but she wondered if he had known exactly where she had been all along.

***

When Basaal was done with the food before him, he pushed it away and reclined against the arch of the window in his personal chambers, gazing down over the many layers of Zarbadast. The streets were now fading into long, purple shadows, and the sun would soon disappear. He knew that it had been his own resolve that had carried him so single-mindedly through the training of the day as he prepared himself for the challenge come morning.

Basaal did not have time for fear, and he did not have time to wonder. So, pushing any semblance of doubt from his mind, he sat on the white windowsill, absorbing the perfect temperament of evening in Zarbadast.

The sound of water trickled up from one of his personal gardens, water that had traveled in complex aqueducts from the northern mountains to grace the seven palaces with foliage and to provide the city with fresh wells. A menagerie of birds throughout the gardens brought from the far western coast, welcomed in the cool evening with their calls.

As divisive as the politics and as difficult as his personal reconciliations were, nothing matched the serenity of home to Basaal. And he sank farther into his own thoughts.

The faint ring of a bell carried through the translucent curtains of fabric hanging throughout his chamber, and a servant entered to remove his plate. The prince watched as the child approached timidly to take away his unwanted food. For the first time in his life, he thought it odd that he did not know her name. She would not meet his eyes.

They will perhaps love you,
the words he had spoken to Eleanor so long ago rang now through his mind.
But it is only because you are what they never will be
.

What is that?
she had asked then.

Immortal,
he had replied
. Just below the gods.

He remembered how Eleanor had laughed at that answer.

Basaal watched as the girl lifted his plate, the empty cup, and his other dining effects then turned carefully to leave. Is that how she really viewed him? Just below the gods? She was probably too young to have explored even the top of such thoughts, Basaal mused.

“What is your name?” he asked her impulsively as she was about to leave.

So frightened at being addressed, the girl dropped the plate from her shaking hands. It clattered against the floor, the brass ringing around the food spilled over the white marble.

Looking down in an obvious panic, her wide eyes full of fear, she dropped to the floor and tried to clean up the mess with her hands. Basaal slipped down from the windowsill and crouched near the girl. But she threw herself to the ground before him, her olive arms trembling under the white servant’s robes.

“It’s alright,” he said gently. “Don’t be afraid. No harm has been done.”

But she had begun to cry from fear.

“None at all,” Basaal said to assure her. He lifted her chin, and her large, dark eyes traveled to his. “Are you hurt?” he asked.

The girl shook her head, gulping and sniffling.

“Then all is well,” he said. “Will you tell me your name?”

“Sharin,” came the answer in a small voice.

“You are quite young for palace work. How old are you?” Basaal asked as he slowly gathered the spilled contents to put again onto the plate.

She sniffed again. “Five years,” she said, then the horror of her mistake filled her face once more, and her eyes glimmered as her lower lip began to tremble.

“Five?” Basaal said, caught unaware. “That’s ridiculously young for palace service!” His outburst seemed to have frightened her all the more, and she ducked her head again beneath her small arms.

“Does your mother work with you in the palace?” Basaal asked gently.

Sharin shook her head no.

Just then, a woman swept into the room, a lead servant in Basaal’s house. She saw the food, spilled on the marble floors, and the crying Sharin with one sweep of her eyes before bowing to the ground and apologizing to Basaal profusely, her face hovering mere inches above the floor.

“No,” Basaal insisted. “It was my mistake. Sharin has served well. I was clumsy.”

“It will not happen again, Your Grace,” the woman vowed and humbly began to finish cleaning while glaring at the girl. His presence only seemed to increase the tension in the room, so Basaal withdrew, wandering into the long corridor.

Guards in deep red and black stood at their posts, silent and watchful. Basaal acknowledged them as he passed, his thoughts lingering first on the girl, Sharin, and then turning towards Eleanor.

Eleanor. The apprehensions he had carefully dispelled throughout the afternoon pricked at the back of his neck again now. Basaal lifted his hands to his head as he walked the corridors, breathing out audibly. He had now been home for over three weeks, and he had seen Eleanor only twice. But they had not spoken.

It was wise—this physical separation—Basaal reminded himself as he slipped down a staircase and wandered into his own gardens, now dark from the sunset just passed. But he struggled as he sought for greater emotional distance. Basaal knew that Ammar was the safest ally Eleanor could have in Zarbadast, and Basaal had entrusted her to him. Basaal could not risk bringing any more of the emperor’s attention her way while Eleanor’s fate still remained undecided or while her fate was still tied to his own.

Basaal passed a silent guard, who stood at the foot of a long staircase that ascended to the pavilion set aside by Basaal for prayer. As he approached the pavilion, Basaal removed his boots and entered the holy space with bare feet. Several incense sticks were burning, filling the room with a sweet smoke that floated in a hazy drift into the night. The soft light of one hundred candle flames flickered and danced against the high patterns of the decorated archways. He stood in the center, bowed his head, and placed his hands together before his face.

First, he uttered a simple prayer of supplication and preparation before dropping to his knees and placing his hand over his heart. Alone in the flame-lit pavilion, Basaal cleared his thoughts, releasing the tension from his muscles and the difficulties from his mind. The world around him seemed to clear away as he replaced each thought with expanding space and with the light of the sun, moon, and stars.

“Let it fill me,” Basaal pleaded, “that I may understand the task before me and my honor in it.”

Basaal repeated these words several times before touching two of his fingers to each Safeeraah, repeating his covenants, then lifting his fingers to his lips. The image of Eleanor, as he knelt before her, flickered through his thoughts, but Basaal let it pass, working hard to hold in his mind only the clarity that he sought and nothing else.

Later, when Basaal returned to his silent chambers, he stripped off his shirt, extinguished his candles, and fell onto his bed. As he lay there, awake in the darkness, Basaal permitted himself a painful indulgence, he thought of Aemogen and of the memories he had there. He could see the queen, standing atop the western battlements after the ceremony of the seed bringers. He could also see her on the night before the battle run, when her beauty had almost shamed him.

Crispin, he thought. Aedon. Edythe. The princess held a special place for Basaal, and he wondered how Edythe fared now, half a year away from Blaike’s death. Blaike. Basaal turned onto his stomach, folding his arms above his head, and again he saw the scene of Common Field before him, the bodies lining the road. Eleanor, her resolve, and the sound of her reasoning through a question; the expression on her face the moment that she saw him for who he really was; the feel of her skin against his hand. It all flooded through him now in a way that he hadn’t allowed since before arriving in Zarbadast.

And, with the thought of Eleanor before his mind, Basaal slipped into sleep.

***

It was nothing in particular, neither sound nor movement, that caused the hairs on the back of Basaal’s neck to rise in warning, but when he opened his eyes in the darkness of night, he knew he was not alone. All was still and silent, but Basaal slowly moved his fingers up, under his pillow, in search of the dagger that he kept there.

Then, a noise from the lower streets of Zarbadast rose up through the large, open windows as Basaal’s fingers tightened around the hilt of his knife. He closed his eyes and uttered a prayer of life and then pushed himself up to his knees on the bed, his dagger raised.

No one.
All was still in the darkness. Then Basaal thought he saw a shadow, passing behind the light curtains that hung in his room, and then it was gone.

“I know you are there,” he whispered to the darkness. “Show yourself.”

Nothing.

He moved only his eyes, being careful in the consuming dark, feeling sweat beading on his forehead. There was no moon tonight to illuminate his lavish quarters, so he inspected each shadow carefully again. The guards that stood out in his corridor made no sounds.

“Who sent you?” Basaal whispered, gripping his knife tighter as he slid from his bed to stand barefoot on the floor. A soft, cool breeze crossed the room, touching his chest. “What is the price?” Basaal asked quietly.