Firthun ran through the slick, rain-drenched cobblestoned paths slamming beneath his sandals.

He could hear the drizzling around him pattering on the roof of the earth. This roof would be a dome like the dome of a mosque, he always thought: the roof that protected the atmosphere. He had learned about it back when he used to attend the school. At some point, he had stopped, he did not know when exactly, it must have been somewhere right before Alassin’s self-immolation.

He remembered because he could not imagine the body of his friend, burning, light up just like that. A face he had known, a voice he had known, bursting into flames like that so casually, in an instant it must have happened.

He liked to imagine it that way sometimes – he had not been there to see it, and sometimes he felt ashamed of himself for that. He felt he should have been there to witness it, to behold as his friend ignited. To witness it would have been to respect him, his act of defiance. He wished he had been brave enough to do something like that. But he knew he was too much of a coward to pull off such an egregious act himself. It was utterly insolent, utterly disregarding.

He wondered what must have burned through Alassin’s mind as the flames licked his skin. Had he regretted it as soon as he did it? Had he wished that he had not acted so rashly? Or had he reveled in the act — because he would no longer have to watch his dying mother’s eyes, that he never again had to think of how they were going to starve because he could not bring them anything?

At some moments, when he felt particularly melancholy, Firthun liked to think that in those last moments of terror, of consciousness, his friend had found peace. He liked to think that the flames had washed clean Alassin’s pain, his fear, his hunger, his memories, until he had the memories of an unborn child – pure, an ounce of flesh bobbing in a fluid of maternal nourishment. Fire, after all, was still a source of sustenance, wasn’t it? — without which the earth would be cold, dead, dark.

Yes, Firthun thought as his feet slammed around the corner to Jalal’s Teahouse. Yes, he liked to think that the fire had consumed his friend finally so that he no longer needed sustenance ever again – the final, everlasting sustenance. He never had to worry about survival ever again.

Firthun slammed open the door to Jalal’s Teahouse.

He had come to bring news of blood and yet it had found him before he could.

______________________________________________

IMRAAN

“I should not be surprised my brother is late,” Asfan said as they stood in the dusty courtyard behind Jalal’s Teashop, leaning his tall lean frame on the makeshift wooden sword in his hands. His long brown hair was tied behind his head, accentuating his angular features and narrow hazel eyes. The soot beneath his nails revealed the blackened fingers of a steelsmith. “What do you have to do to get this man out of his study?”

The space was less a courtyard and more of a storage space with sacks of flour, pistachios, and dried herbs piled in wooden boxes. But it would have to do.

Imraan counted twenty-six recruits. They were fishermen, goat-herders, rice and cotton farmers, woodcutters, khatam-kari craftswomen, potters, and carpet weavers. Most of them were middle-aged men, some young boys, and women: some strongly built from hard work, some thin and scrawny from long periods of starvation or malnourishment. They did not all learn how to swivel a sword quickly, but all of them had a light in their eyes, burning a fire in the soul.

At one end near the sacks of cinnamon, several of the women were now talking to Surayyah, who would train the women.

“Probably lost himself in some dusty hundred-year-old book,” Imraan said. “I don’t know how he does it, stuffing his face in those musty libraries all the time. You’d have to hold a knife to my throat to stick me inside the dark all day.”

Asfan grinned, his cheeks prominent; for a moment, Imraan could almost remember him when he was younger, back before when Liassam was still alive and Asfan was not a father, but nearly a young man himself.

“When we were kids, he would never shut up about some old monk or fighter or emperor he’d read about,” Asfan said. “One time he was obsessed with Emperor Rulan and went on about his political genius maneuvering some war. I had to hit him with the book to make him shut up just so I could go to sleep. Those were hard times, I tell you, when we had to share a room.”

“He’s lucky I was never his roommate,” Imraan said. “I might have had to blame some of my actions on sleepwalking.”

Asfan laughed, and the tension in his shoulders seemed to lighten for a moment.

Imraan had noticed the way he held himself when he’d walked into the courtyard. Asfan, a steelsmith who made kitchen ladles, cups, and sometimes hammers, was going to lead his people to fight. He would try his hand at producing weapons. He had already made several attempts, and the results hadn’t turned out too bad, besides a few bent swords that resembled more of an awkward spoon at the beginning of his experiments.

But it would have to do. Imraan felt he had thought this repeatedly every time Asfan told him of the logistics.

At what rate could they produce enough swords for all of these people? Imraan looked around at them all, gathering in the dirt-packed yard in their thin frames. But they retained a spirit that awed Imraan at times, as they laughed and shoved each other.

There was a chance they could fight back. But the truth of it was, even if they couldn’t, it was in the act of resisting that mattered, didn’t it? He had to believe that was true.

Asfan’s son, a boy with a head of brown hair and the same hazel eyes as his father, stood beside Asfan swiveling a wooden stick. He had insisted on joining the practice despite his father’s reprimands. “The stubbornness of Liassam, I tell you,” Asfan had said, shaking his head. “Refuses to listen.”

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“I am not going to let them take you, Baba,” Ali, the boy, had declared, swiveling his stick.

“Ali, come here,” Asfan called now. Ali, tongue at the corner of his mouth in concentration, lowered his stick and came to his father. Asfan put a hand on his shoulders. “You can practice, but you cannot be reckless,” he said. “You understand? When I tell you to do something, to leave, to go hide, you listen to me, alright?”

Ali scowled. “Why would I hide? I’m a man, baba.”

“You’re nine, and a little too stupid if you don’t hide when you need to,” Asfan said. “Stop moving for a bit.” He took him by the shoulders so that Ali had to stop fidgeting. “You’ll listen to me, right?”

Ali finally nodded and quickly ran off. Asfan shook his head. “Let’s begin then,” he said. “Irfan will have to catch up.”

Imraan stepped forward and clapped his hands. “Alright, then,” he announced.

The scattering of conversations dwindled as eyes turned to him. And all Imraan could think of was that each of those faces might die.

“Pick up your swords,” Imraan called. They each hefted up their wooden swords.

“Until we can get steel swords, you will practice the movements of one.” He motioned towards Asfan. “Watch me as Asfan and I parry.” He had shown Asfan the day before, and he had gotten the hang of it quickly. He hoped to the Creator that they, too, would catch on swiftly.

Asfan faced him, holding up the only other steel sword he had, raising it to the left. “You see,” Imraan declared. “I already notice that Asfan is left-handed, in the way he holds his weapon. You can use this to your advantage. As we parry, I will aim for his left.”

They began, and Imraan was impressed with Asfan’s skills within a day. There could be hope, in this simple metalsmith as a leader of the Jhansari.

After they parried for a while, Asfan split up the groups to practice. Heading down through the lines, monitoring their movements, he fixed their stances and postures. “Distribute your weight, lean forward, yes that’s it,” Asfan said, carrying on down the lines.

The swift striking of wood filled the courtyard, and for a moment, the sound filled Imraan with hope. They could do this, after all.

As he allowed himself to relax, to become accustomed to the possibility of hope, another sound distracted him. Something was pounding behind him, coming from inside the walls of the teahouse.

He headed for the back door and through the storage room, and the sound grew louder. A crash, then a shout. “Uncle Jalal? Mahmud?” He called.

He slammed open the door to find the older of Jalal’s sons, Mahmud, fighting a shimmering, fluid figure. Mizaran metal.

Shayfahan.

The blooming light in his heart left him. Imraan ran back to the yard. They were all still parrying. “Surayyah!” Imraan shouted, running to her. “Surayyah!” She was fixing the posture of one of the women when she glanced up.

“What is it?” she asked. “What’s happened?”

“Get them out of here,” Imraan said. “Or there will be a massacre, get them out of here now!” He ran back to the teashop, leaving Surayyah to gather them, calling for them to head out the back.

Even as Imraan stepped back into the tearoom, he found the Shayfahan man striking Mahmud in the heart.

“No!” Jalal screamed from the floor. Through the front door, six more armored men stormed into the shop, as the elderly customers in the teashop crouched in the corners.

“Where are they?” the cold metallic voice of the first Shayfahan man demanded as he held his sword to Jalal’s neck. It was said that something in the mizaran steel took on the characteristics of its wearer, and gave them the characteristics of the steel itself. And the voice of the Shayfahan had grown to an inhuman coldness. “We know Irfan has been recruiting them.”

Jalal looked the man straight in the eyes, the collarbones of his neck pushing through his frail aged skin. “Kill me, you bastard. You’ve already killed my son. Kill me then if you’re going to. But I would never tell you even if they were here.”

Imraan launched himself towards the man, shifting his sword away from Jalal’s neck. “Uncle Jalal, go! Go!” Jalal scrambled backwards, and he and his youngest son Siran guided the elderly men out of the shop.

The Shayfahan struck towards Imraan, but Imraan’s sword clanged just in time to stop him.

Even as they swung back and forth, he could hear the other soldiers spreading out, searching, heading to the yard. “No!” he gritted his teeth.

But the Shayfahan man was studying his face now, strangely, through the flurry of steel before them.

“What is this?” the Shayfahan said. “Your face seems familiar.” He swung hard at Imraan’s side, and for a moment, distracted, Imraan was slow; the move caught his torso before he stopped it. Blood oozed from his cotton tunic, but his leather straps had caught the steel. He was trying to stop the man’s next blow, but Imraan could not stop himself from hearing the man’s next words.

“I know that scar—” the Shayfahan was saying, grunting as he caught Imraan’s next blow. “I fought against you on the Azram Plains, didn’t I? Imraan the Traitor of Khardin himself.”

They stood in the midst of the pool of blood, breaths heaving.

From the corner of his eyes, Imraan saw another Shayfahan reaching to strike for Uncle Jalal, who was heading for the back doorway. “No!” Imraan screamed, and launched himself to stop the blow. Uncle Jalal ran through the back.

And the one who had recognized Imraan, who still had his blade raised for him, finally caught Imraan, his blade at Imraan’s throat.

Imraan felt a blow to his stomach, and he was on his knees, the blade still held at his neck.

“I will be rewarded beyond my imagining for capturing you, traitor,” the Shayfahan’s cold voice said. “It is truly a shame that Ardashir gets to have the pleasure of killing you.”

Imraan breathed rapidly, his lungs fighting. He closed his eyes.

And the fluttering of robes came from somewhere. He opened his eyes to see a midnight-blue shadow move from the corner of his eyes. Surayyah. She had made it, then. Imraan hoped to the Creator that she had been able to get them out.

The midnight-blue figure held a blade against the neck of the Shayfahan. When the man turned, he found her and laughed. “A woman who thinks she can fight.”

Surayyah dug the point of the sword into the man’s neck, enough to prick a trickle of blood. “If you think I would not drive this through your throat, you will die a fool more than you already are.”

The man whirled around, his sword flying against her. In the center of the many-hued geometrical light thrown along the walls, they fought, steel upon steel clanging.

Surayyah blocked another swing, and the man launched himself, his sword held high. Surayyah blocked it, and kicked the man to the ground. Removing his helmet, she struck him against the head with the hilt of her sword. The man lay still.

“That bastard would’ve captured me if it wasn’t for you,” Imraan said, rising, stemming the flow of blood against his side. “Where are they?” He gasped out. “What happened, are they alright?”

“Some of them wanted to stay and fight, Imraan.”

He limped through the doorway into the storage room. The body of one of the carpetweavers lay on the floor. But there was another body in mizaran steel.

“They gave their lives to slow down the Shayfahan so they wouldn’t go after the others,” Surayyah said.

Imraan rushed into the yard, where there was only silence now, and two others lay on the ground.

And there, on the ground, Asfan knelt. He cradled the body of his son, his palms soaked in the pool of blood around him, sobbing against the body. “Wake up, Ali, wake up, my boy, please.” He rocked the body back and forth, willing Ali to open its eyes.

“Asfan,” Imraan choked out the words, but the father’s cries drowned him out. He was seeing Liyassam again, he was holding Liyassam’s bloody body again.

Footsteps flew behind them, and they turned to find a harried, wide-eyed Firthun. He moved his lips but nothing came out as he only stared around at the bodies around him.

Then Firthun saw Asfan on the ground.

“Uncle Asfan,” Firthun gasped. “I’m sorry — I — I came to tell you, they are gathering outside right now. The Shayfahan have arrested your brother and are about to execute him.”

Asfan stared at him blankly, his eyes unseeing.

Imraan pulled his blade from the floor. “Take us there.”