A griffon vulture perched inside a cage at the corner of Ardashir’s study.

It was the day before the courtroom compilation.

With Ardashir’s injury, we met him at the study so that he did not have to climb up the stairs to the calligraphy hall. He insisted on finishing the work.

But I did not want to see him, since the night of the Interpretations meeting.

And I hated composing myself as if I had not seen Nanu Salima’s village.

And I hated writing the words. I had contemplated several times burning down the damn thing even as I worked on it. I wanted to shout into the calligraphy hall the madness of it all, I wanted to tell them all.

But it would not matter — it would only get me certain banishment by Ardashir. No, I would have to wait until the day of the courtroom compilation, when scholars and Ministrels from all across the realm would be present. I wanted them to see, I wanted them to take the word back across Khardin, as far as it could reach — even if they thought it the words of a madwoman.

Zakariyyah and I gathered around a circular table. A high chandelier above us lit the small space. And it all seemed absurd to me, all the richness and the casual droning on of the days.

The griffon vulture stared out at me as if examining prey. A sharp, hooked beak and a small, curved head peered out over large, folded wings that graced the bird’s shoulders like that of a fur cape worn by royalty. Beside it lay the remains of a meal, tattered bloody feathers and the bones of a small bird.

Ardashir walked in with a gait as he emerged from the chambers attached to the study. “How is your injury, Baba?” Zakariyyah asked.

“It is healing,” he grunted, sitting down heavily at his desk.

I wanted to ask him how he knew the woman in auburn. I wanted to ask him if he had ordered the attack on Nanu Salima’s village.

Zakariyyah pulled a cushion from a corner and propped it behind his father. “The physician says a few more weeks should heal the muscle tear.”

I opened up the pages to the third section of the Interpretations notes, which we had begun editing.

As we worked, Ardashir reached for a page and stopped, held back a pained gasp. He muttered through gritted teeth, “Zakariyyah, go get my medicine from Ismail. He was supposed to have brought a new bottle.”

“Yes, Baba,” Zakariyyah said, rising and leaving the room.

Ardashir’s eyes darkened as he stared at the wood grains of the table. There were shadows beneath his eyes.

What has been keeping you up, Chief Ardashir?

“Physician Ismail should prescribe you poppy for sleep,” I said lightly. “Have you been sleeping at all?”

“The work must be complete. It is more crucial than ever.” He folded his woolen shawl over his hands. “Particularly because of dissenters like those damned villagers.”

“Did you see their village, sire?” I asked, my voice hard. “Did you see the burned bodies?’

He stared across the room at the vulture, a strange glint in his eyes. He was silent for so long I did not think he would speak at all. But then he spoke in a low voice I had never heard from him before. “There are things that are necessary.”

“Did you order the raid?” I asked, my voice rising.

Ardashir did not speak. But the griffon vulture shrieked from its cage, its sharp eyes watching me.

I held the vulture’s gaze across the room.

“Your bird does not seem to take a liking to me,” I said. The vulture shrieked at me again, and I rose and went to the cage.

“What do you have against me, griffon?” I asked the creature, leaning forward to level my eyes with the bird’s. Its eyes gripped mine as if the creature knew me, had known me all along, an old enemy.

I reached for a small glass bottle next to the cage that held the crushed remnants of an insect — crushed beetles?

I opened the tube and held it over the cage, pouring the contents inside. The vulture dashed for my fingers. Gasping, I pulled my hand away. The vulture eyed me with regret, but dashed for the beetle, crunching it loudly in its mouth.

“The Traitor is coming,” Ardashir’s voice said from behind me.

At the same time, as I held the vial in my hand, I felt something rising inside my head: A terrible grief, as I watched my father on the sickbed — but — no, it was not my own father. Why did I think it was my father? And then I was on an ash-stained night. A road scattered with rubble and blood. It seemed familiar, so familiar and — yet — an elation ran through me, a sheer exhilaration in my blood that nothing could quell, the thrill of a fighter, and as I raised my hands to strike the man on the ground with my sword, a woman charged at me — her hair wild, her eyes wide with terror or anger, and I felt a moment of terrible fear —

“…I will end him this time, and any who rally with him. We will purge the realm once and for all.”

I turned slowly to meet Ardashir’s eyes.

His gaze had taken on their usual sharpness. They resembled the searing gaze of the bird behind him. “I will wipe out these vermin until there are no rebels left.”

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My lungs had gone cold. I could not speak.

Because as he spoke, I saw a light in his eyes, the sheen of death I had seen once before, the same which I had seen behind a liquid steel mask which I could not forget.

The same ash-stained night. Over it all rose the silhouette of a rider on a white horse against raging flames, eyes of death against the night.

And I was in another time, another sun’s circle ago, another place…

***

Bayrun, Five Sun’s Circle Ago

I sat by the east window of the house smoking jasmine tobacco. The smoke drifted out over the terracotta-brick walls and the jute rug spread in the drawing room where the women played, the sound of rolling dice drumming across the board with their shouts and laughter.

A light breeze carried in through one of the doors left open in the warm night. Out on the verandah, the fragrance from the potted florals gathered thick in the air. The cardamom-laced chai inside the house competed with the scents of white coral jasmine, the citrus fragrance of kamini petals, and bright orange hibiscus.

It was Friday, when we gathered for tavla and poetry. Qamarah had begun to call these evenings “Ansary’s Teahouse.” But it was she who had chosen my house for these gatherings.

It was, of course, not a real teahouse — not of the public kind like the ones Qamarah’s brothers Kiran and Wasim went off to, where men spent hours smoking hashish, drinking chai and playing endless rounds of backgammon; where they exchanged debates and ideas like seeds scattering in the wind.

The greatest thinkers and writers in the world were borne within the miasma of tea and coffeehouses, historians said — fueled by their exposure to travelers and minds from all across the land.

Yet in all those centuries, all the women barred from teahouses and schools — where did their ideas go? Was it supposed to fester away like a wound in their heads? Or suffocate and drive one slowly to madness — only to be attributed to their ‘natural weakness.’ But what happened when the strength of one’s living mind was chained — if it could not go anywhere? If it could not explode, perhaps it had to implode.

One evening Qamarah had announced, “Sisters, I induct you into the Ansary Teahouse,” as she tapped both mine and Haniya’s foreheads with a twig.

“And what, do I dare ask, is that?” Haniya thrust the branch away from her sister’s hand.

“It is where poetry simmers along with pots of coffee and cha’a,” Qamarah said with a flourish of the twig. Her silhouette was lit by the firelight behind her, casting her in a shadow.

“Oh, Qamarah,” Haniya muttered. “I’d rather play tavla, not recite insufferable poetry.”

So Qamarah decided to do both.

“As long as you have an endless supply of cha’a and tavla, I’ll put up with the poetry,” Haniya eventually agreed. “So long as I don’t have to concoct any of my own.”

I discovered ghazals in the schoolhouse’s dilapidated old library. By summertime, Qamarah and I began reciting ghazals and epic poems the likes of The Age of Kings. Soon we were composing our own scraps of poems inspired by Rabi’a of Khartum, Kazi of Asansol and Rubi of Mazandran.

These were followed by rows of ever-increasingly competitive tavla matches.

By late summer, the fig tree was beginning to bear fruit again. Word of our ‘Ansary Teahouse’ Friday night poetry and tavla competitions somehow spread around to the rest of town. I suspected Qamarah’s tendency to chatter.

I would rush to put more pots of cha’a on the stove while the women cheered on the opponents. Layla the farmer’s daughter played ferociously against the weaverwoman who exclaimed curses every time she was on the verge of losing.

The smoke from my jasmine tobacco unfurled around me, the laughter of the women faint.

The moonlight glimmered upon the river-town like cold silver. The roads were not yet silent, the merchants from the bazaar returning home from their stalls, the men whiling their time outside the teahouses. Oil-lamps came alive inside the houses as mothers set chawwal and gosht-makhni for supper, calling the children.

Abba would be on his way home soon from his lessons in Na’zain.

Beyond on the horizon, I saw something moving in the shadows over the hills, as if the hills were rolling down, a shimmering in the air. Setting the tobacco aside, I leaned peered into the darkness.

A voice cut through my cloud of smoke: “What are you doing there so far away from us, Rahena? Why don’t you join us?” There was a smile somewhere within the voice, but I knew it was not a smile that met the eyes: calculating and condemning.

I turned, and the flicker from the oil lanterns cast shadows upon the women’s faces as they watched me in a huddle across the room. The shadows shifted across their features, moving like the reflection of a light beneath the river in the darkness, and for a moment I could do nothing but stare back at them.

“Rahena?” Qamarah’s voice called. “Bon?”

“She is not your bon though, is she?” came Nasreen’s voice, a light laughter following. “Not like you and Haniya, certainly, blood-sisters?”

“What difference does that make?” Qamarah’s voice snapped at her.

“It makes all the difference in the world, does it not?” Nasreen said, smiling, leaning back with her hands resting against the jute rug, her knees folded, the silk shawl of her banarasi-stitch falling over her shoulders.

“What concern is that of yours, Nasreen?” Qamarah said, her golden eyes cutting through over the tavla board between them. The others stirred silently, silks shuffling uncomfortably.

I lowered the hand with the tobacco. “I’m content by the window for now.” I turned away from them and looked out towards the hills again — but it no longer shimmered. A stillness had fallen.

“Not even for one game, Rahena?” Nasreen called. “I’ve heard you are quite the player – why don’t you show us your prowess? How do we know to believe the rumors otherwise, right, sisters?”

Some of them snickered — they knew Nasreen was speaking about more than tavla.

“Alright, I’ll show you how to play.”

From the tavla board, Qamarah moved away from her spot and I faced Nasreen.

A rustling of silks moved along the group of women as they leaned forward to watch, the chaa-cups forgotten in their hands, set beside them along the jute rug on the floor.

Nasreen smiled, and I cleared the board with one hand. I began to set up the board for a new game, and Nasreen settled her own pieces.

I rolled the dice and began, making the first move on the board. The women exclaimed.

“Not bad,” Nasreen said, her kohl-lined eyes glinting in the flickering light. “Where did you learn to play like that?”

“Why don’t you make your move?” I said, returning a cold smile.

Nasreen rolled and said, “Your bon Qamarah tells me you learned from your father.”

“He is a master player,” I said.

“I am sure he is, but he is quite the curious one, is he not? I have heard that he goes to lessons with Mahmud Saladin in Na’zain.”

The women stilled, watching the two of us.

“He’s devoted to learning the Qitab,” I said.

Nasreen leaned in over the board, whispering. “Are the Interpretations not good enough for your father, as it is for everyone else in Khardin? After all, Mahmud Saladin’s establishment is banned for a reason.” She cocked her head to the side. “Does he associate with rebels, your father?”

I leaned forward holding her gaze. “Are you scared I will beat you, Nasreen? Is that why you are so eager to distract from the game?”

Some of the women laughed, Qamarah and Haniya among them.

Nasreen continued, “Or perhaps there is another reason your father seeks out answers from strangers. He seeks to find a cure for your…madness. Your sorcery.”

The women did not move as their eyes watched me: the question on all their minds, the whisperings for years.

I met Nasreen’s gaze, my hands holding the edges of the board tightly, gripping the wood. A glint of pleasure rose in Nasreen’s eyes.

A rumbling shook our bones, and I thought for a moment that I was shaking. But the wood beneath my fingers shook, too, as did the ground.

Screams rose from outside, a heavy stomping of hooves. I rushed to the window, the board forgotten.

Metal glinted in the moonlight: like the shimmering upon the hill.