“That alone unnerved me,” Rahim recalled in a rueful tone.
“I should have known then. I should have seen.”
“Would that you were a seer of the future, Tariq Imran al-Ziyad,” Rahim sighed. “Would that we all were. Instead of being a useless third son, I’d be a rich man in the arms of a beautiful wife . . . with curves for days and legs for leagues.”
“I’m not joking, Rahim. I should have realized she would do something like this.”
“I’m not joking, either.” Rahim frowned. “You can’t foresee the future. And there’s nothing you can do about the past.”
“You’re wrong. I can learn from it . . .” Tariq dug his heels into his stallion’s flanks, and the horse shot forward, painting a dark smudge across the sand. “And I can make sure it never happens again!”
• • •
It was midmorning when Tariq and Rahim dismounted from their horses in the middle of Reza bin-Latief’s elegant compound, deep in the heart of Rey. A gleaming oval fountain of mazarine-glazed tile graced the center of the courtyard, and terra-cotta stones cut in an elaborate hexagonal fashion lined the surroundings. Green vines crept up each of the columned arches. At the base of every arch were small flowerbeds filled with violets, hyacinths, daffodils, and lilies. Torches of smelted bronze and iron adorned the walls, awaiting nightfall for the chance to showcase their faceted grandeur.
And yet, for all the home’s beauty, there was an aura of sadness to the space.
A sense of tremendous loss no amount of splendor could ever fill.
Tariq placed Zoraya on her makeshift mews in the far corner of the courtyard. She squawked with discomfort at her new surroundings and the unfamiliar perch, but quieted as soon as Tariq began to feed her.
Rahim crossed his arms, and a cloud of dust puffed out around him. “The damned bird is fed before I am? Where is the justice in this?”
“Ah, Rahim-jan . . . I can see little has changed over the past few years.”
Tariq turned at the sound of this familiar voice.
Standing beneath the curtain of vines in a nearby archway was his uncle.
Both young men stepped forward and lowered their heads, pressing their fingertips to their brows in a sign of respect.
Reza bin-Latief walked into the sun with a sad smile on his face. The dark hair on his head had thinned out even more since the last time Tariq had seen him, and his neatly trimmed mustache was peppered with a good deal more grey as well. The lines at his eyes and mouth that Tariq had always associated with humor had deepened to reflect something decidedly incongruous—
The smile of a soul haunted by specters.
All a part of the masquerade put on by a grief-stricken man whose cherished seventeen-year-old daughter had died one morning . . . only to be followed by his wife, three days later.
A wife who couldn’t bear to live in a world without her only child.
“Uncle.” Tariq put out his hand.
Reza grasped it warmly. “You made it here quite quickly, Tariq-jan. I was not expecting you until tomorrow.”
“What happened to Shazi? Is she . . . alive?”
Reza nodded.
“Then—”
Reza’s sad smile turned faintly proud. “By now, the whole city knows about our Shahrzad . . .”
Rahim paced closer, and Tariq’s empty fist clenched at his side.
“The only young queen to survive not one, but two sunrises in the palace,” Reza continued.
“I knew it,” Rahim said. “Only Shazi.”
Tariq’s shoulders relaxed for the first time in two days. “How?”
“No one knows,” Reza replied. “The city is rife with speculation. Namely, that the caliph must be in love with his new bride. But I am not of the same mind. A murderer such as this is not capable of—” He stopped short, his mouth drawn in sudden fury.
Tariq leaned over, clasping his uncle’s hand tighter. “I have to get her out of there,” he said. “Will you help me?”
Reza stared back at his handsome nephew. At the determined lines and the set jaw. “What are you planning to do?”
“I’m going to rip out his heart.”
Reza gripped Tariq’s palm hard enough to hurt it. “What you’re suggesting—it’s treason.”
“I know.”
“And, to succeed, you’d have to break into the palace or . . . or start a war.”
“Yes.”
“You can’t do this alone, Tariq-jan.”
Tariq held Reza’s gaze in silence.
“Are you prepared to start a war for her? Regardless of whether or not she . . . continues to survive?” Reza asked in a gentle tone.
Tariq grimaced. “He deserves to die for what he’s done to our family. I won’t permit him to take anything else from me . . . or from anyone else, for that matter. It’s time for us to take something from him. And if it means seizing his kingdom in order to do it—” Tariq took a deep breath. “Will you help me, Uncle?”
Reza bin-Latief looked around at his beautiful courtyard. Ghosts tormented him in every corner. His daughter’s laughter lilted into the sky. His wife’s touch slipped through his fingers like a handful of sand.
He could never let them go. Their memories, no matter how faded and broken, were the only things he had left. The only things worth fighting for.
Reza glanced back at the Emir Nasir al-Ziyad’s son—the successor to the fourth-largest stronghold in Khorasan. With a lineage of royalty.