Jackul's earliest memory of palace life was walking through the tiled palace courtyard surrounded by tropical flowers, minarets, and blue-green stone architecture as guards in open-chested kaftans manicured the courtyard gardens in complete silence. Rainbow-colored birds from around the world flew about the humid air amongst the flora and spoke to Jackul in languages he did not understand. Not far off, near the gate leading to the interior, serpent scaled lions from Cambria's interior basked in the evening sun, their cat’s eyes wide open watching the young prince unblinking through golden bars.

Jackul stared back at them in wonder thinking to himself where such beasts could have come from. He soon drew his eyes away from the gaze of the serpent lions to another tiled wall in the courtyard as he waited for someone. He found manifold patterns painted on the walls. The contrasting blue and green mesmerized his eyes. The patterns were enough to look at in their complexity standing still, but when one moved the effect was nearly overwhelming as the patterns appeared to come to life.

"Jackul! Over here." a familiar voice called.

The young boy turned his head to the gates across the yard leading to the inner keep of the Azure Palace. High above, the ornate minarets glittered in the low, golden light of sunset. His mother stood below beckoning him with a smile as two great doors behind her leading to the great hall of the Sultan's court opened with a groaning echo that echoed across the entire courtyard. Each side of the gate was flanked by armed gardeners dressed in the same linens as those who tended the gardens, hands on their weapons, skulls capped in red skin-tight caps, and faces made of stone.

One of the gardeners spoke.

"Lady Nadiya, you may enter now with your child," his tone was flat.

Nadiya nodded and beckoned Jackul with a somber smile to follow. Jackul hesitated with a concern he could not articulate, but he slowly approached his mother who took him by a hand. Now that he was close enough, Jackul could see several faces within small niches on the facade of the enormous gate leading into the depths of the palace. In each niche, there was a head of a recently executed criminal or prisoner. As the two walked past, the death-glazed eyes of each head flashed in the twilight of the setting sun giving a spark of life to each as Jackul and Nadiya walked past the gate. The serpent lions flanking each side of the gate finally stood and gave a shrieking hiss-howl as the two continued into the dark interior.

The closing gate swallowed them.

—

In quiet moments, memories of Jackul's early life often flitted through his mind. Sometimes, these memories changed subtly each time they came across his consciousness, changing slowly like tallest clouds high above. Some spots were clear blue, while others ran with the wind, and many more remained laden in a deep fog for reasons unknown to Jackul. Now, there were some in the periphery of Jackul’s memory. These were the storm clouds always on the horizon, tracing lightning through dark clouds with distant thunder. And no matter where he looked, he could hear their echo.

Jackul's next memory after entering the great hall at the entrance to the Azure Palace was a remarkably plain antechamber where his mother was being strangled against a marble floor with a silk handkerchief.

He keenly remembered the polished lapis lazuli tiles creating a mirrored reflection of the scene on the floor.

He stood pale in horror as his mother's face turned purple with a hint of green. Nadiya clawed blood with one hand in an attempt to stop the woman crouched on top of her from strangling her to death. The woman on top was dressed in rose gold linens marking her of the Old Sultan's harem. The woman's lips rolled inward against her teeth. Her eyes fixed wide with eager possession locked on Nadiya's neck. Behind the two, another boy thrashed in a cloth sack in a gem studded bathtub filled with water. The boy was coughing between gasps of air as he struggled to stay above water.

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Nadiya kept one hand clasped around the woman's silk as the other hand slapped the ground in desperation in search of a makeshift weapon. A lucky grasp found the neck of a sizable broken vase that had fallen and shattered from a nearby pedestal earlier in the struggle. In the next instant, the shard of ceramic lodged itself in the right eye of the strangler. The harem woman screamed and fell off of Nadiya allowing her a frantic inhale of air and a fit of coughing as she struggled to stand in a rapid stupor nearly falling back over. She looked about the room with her white and red weapon in hand. Her eyes found Jackul. Relief reflected off her eyes onto his. She ran to the terrified child to shake him back to his senses.

"Azizam! Come now!" She looked at the golden bathtub with the thrashing boy, started in that direction, then saw that her adversary was regaining her composure. Without turning, she pointed at the drowning boy in the bathtub and yelled, "Help him, Jackul!"

The attempted strangler drew a dagger from a leg under her long, multicolored skirts. She took one stumbling step after another moving slowly towards Nadiya, dagger outstretched in hand. Her one eye beamed mad with rage while the other dripped blood onto the floor in a puddle behind a fist clasped with the same silk she attempted to strangle Nadiya with. "Be damned the bloodless rules! You're a fucking whore anyways!" she screamed.

His senses returned, Jackul rushed over to the thrashing sack in the bathtub and heaved with all his might against the heavy, saturated cloth. The boy thrashing about hit Jackul several times with panicked movement, but Jackul managed to tip the entire tub over with one last great pull. Water rushed across the reflecting lapis floor mixing with spilled soap oils from earlier in the struggle.

The woman dashed at Nadiya who stood between her and the boys. Her gaze was so enamored with rage that she didn't see the soap-oil slick below her feet as she rounded on Nadiya. Quickly falling, the edge of the dagger kissed her ribs in a deep cut. The woman let out another shriek as she dropped the silk in her other hand to hold closed her new wound.

Nadiya seized the opportunity and dove on top of the stumbling woman, pinning her against her dagger. The woman's scream was cut off by the shock of the dagger finding itself deep within her abdomen. Nadiya grabbed the dropped silk cord wrapping it around the thrashing would-be strangler's neck. As the cord tightened around her neck, the woman in a last fit of strength, rolled backward throwing Nadiya onto her back. Nadiya's head clipped the marble floor, but she held tight and buried her head into the back of the woman's shoulder avoiding her flailing limbs. Tears rolled down Nadiya's eyes as the body now above her convulsed and jerked in a final fit just before death.

Meanwhile, with tears raining from his cheeks, Jackul found the knot tied at the end of the sack and undid it revealing the unconscious prince within. The boy wasn't breathing. All Jackul could do now as he held the younger boy was yell, "Mother!"

Nadiya held tight through closed eyes to ensure the woman was dead long past the point when her convulsions stopped. Pushing over the dead weight of the corpse, Nadiya got up again slower than before mustering the strength she lad left to help the prince.

The only sounds that echoed in the amphitheater were of Nadiya trying desperately to resuscitate the prince. Suddenly, the boy began to cough up water in great wheezing gasps. She took the boy into her arms. His bloodshot eyes cracked open at once in fear until he recognized the woman who held him. Overwhelmed with emotion, the boy began to cry in Nadiya's arms. Nearby and unsure of what to do next, Jackul began to weep.

"Prince Mustafa, are you hurt? It's okay, I'm here now," Nadiya comforted the weeping boy pressing him against her body with his head over her shoulder like a baby. Prince Mustafa threw up more water between wailing cries as Nadiya patted him on the back. The boy was no older than 5 but he weeped like a newborn.

Through wheezing cries of physical and emotional exhaustion, Mustafa asked a simple question to Nadiya, "Ma… Mama?"

Nadiya looked at the corpse of the woman laying on a floor covered in soap scum. Her body somehow had already begun to take on a green hue.

Nadiya caressed the boy's head pulling him close again. She moved her body between the boy and the woman so he couldn't see. "Shhh now child," she whispered in the boy's ear. In the shock of what had happened, it was all Nadiya could think to tell the child.

She turned to her son, Jackul, and beckoned him over with a hand cut from where the woman tugged against the silk. Her son, only a year older than Mustafa, attempted to stifle the tears running down his cheeks. He walked over wiping away tears on his sleeve while grasping for his mother with the other.

"It's okay now, Jackul. It's okay, Mother is here," she said as she squeezed them both.