A Thousand Nights (22 page)

“Lady-bless!” cried the attendant, returning with a fresh shift. Heedless of her own clothing, she plunged into the pool beside me, and wrestled the brush away. I fought her. The
girl who had herded sheep and who had raced across the desert sands with my sister, our dark hair flying in the wind, might have won, but I was in the city now, soft and kept and wrapped in silk,
and no match for a girl who carried coal.

She threw the brush clear of the pool so I could not reach it, and examined my arms and back and belly. There were scratches there, but nothing bled. I had not had time to start my legs.

“No more of this today,” she said to me, and pulled me from the tub. I did not resist her.

She took me to a stone platform and made me lie down on it. I thought it would be cold against my skin, but the fire that heated the water must have heated it too. This was the constant warmth
of stone, radiating out to soothe me where the steam and water had failed. The attendant got out a soft brush, and soap scented with lavender, and washed me like I was a child. She poured water out
of a bowl to rinse me, rather than send me back to the pool, and washed my front when she finished my back. Only when she had touched nearly every part of me, from my forehead to my toes, did she
send me back to the pool. I did not like to admit it, but I felt better.

“Is that how you wash the sick and the old, when they come here?” I asked her. I pulled my hands lazily through the water, and laid my head back on the side where the stone was
wet.

“No, lady-bless,” she said to me. She had taken a comb and was sitting behind me to brush out my hair. “That is how we would wash the queen, if she would let us.”

They had only ever put me in the pool before, but I knew if they had tried this when I was in a mood to fight them, I would not have let them. I raised my chin so that I could see her as she sat
behind me, combing my hair. She was smiling.

“It was well done,” I said to her. “Thank you.”

“Only, be sure you eat,” she said to me. “Or you will feel ill again.”

She coiled my braid in a simple loop, apologizing as she pinned it that she had no skill with hair, and helped me dry and dress. I went back to the water garden and sat in the shade until the
sun went behind the walls. Then the henna mistress found me and bustled me inside.

“Lady-bless, we must hurry,” she said to me. “It is well you bathed already today, for now we have no time.”

“What has happened?” I asked her. I let her steer me to a seat and watched her light the lamps and lay out her pots and stylus on a cloth.

“A caravan has come, and asked for an audience with Lo-Melkhiin,” she said to me. “He has granted it to them, and said that you must join him too.”

I must play queen, is what he meant. I had spent enough time upset with Lo-Melkhiin today. I would not spend any more, unless he gave me good reason.

The henna mistress drew her designs quickly. She only marked my skin where it would be seen, instead of putting on the secret symbols to wear under my dress as she had done before. Though she
was swift, her work was not sloppy. She made not a single brushstroke out of place. The instant she was done, I was swarmed by the women who did my hair and dress, as if I stood at the center of
the flock with a salt-lick in my hands and the goats had finally noticed it. They did not chatter as they worked, and there was none of the soft comfort in their hands that I had come to look
forward to, but they were efficient and neat; before long, I was inked and dressed and veiled, and ready to go out to whatever awaited me.

I stepped into slippers so fine they might have been spun by silk-spiders. The henna mistress kissed me between my eyes, the only place my veil did not cover my face.

“You are ready,” she said to me. “Sit straight. They will look at you and see only a veil, even the king. Hear everything, and remember that if you smile or grimace, they will
not see you. Only stay silent, and they will never know your heart.”

She was correct, of course, and I made myself relax. The veil I wore now was heavier than the one I usually had on when Lo-Melkhiin came to my rooms. That was gauze and whispers, meant to hide
nothing. Dressed as I was now, I was hidden from everyone. They might stare at me for an hour, admire the fine red fabric of my dishdashah, and the bright gold embroidery that lined the hems and
collar, but they would never know my thoughts.

A serving girl took me to the hall where Lo-Melkhiin gave audience. He did not do it often, preferring to meet his supplicants informally. I knew the truth of that, though. He did not need to
awe any of his own subjects; they were already afraid of him. He did have to touch them to influence them, however, and that was difficult in the audience hall. Whoever it was that came tonight,
they must not be from the city.

Lo-Melkhiin stood at a doorway, waiting for me. His tunic was gold, embroidered in red, and his breeches were red as well. We would look a matched set, and remind all who gazed upon us that gold
and blood were two things Lo-Melkhiin had aplenty.

“Star of my skies, you take my breath from my body,” he said to me, and held out his arm. I took it. “Come, see how it is to be a queen.”

He led me through the door and into a broad, bright room I had not seen during my explorations of the qasr. A hundred lamps, some hanging from the high ceiling and some on tables or attached to
the columns, gleamed with clear light. Geometric designs made of hundreds of pieces of glass, most no bigger than my thumbnail, glittered on the walls. The floor was a white stone, polished so much
it shone, and the rugs laid upon it were of the finest silk.

Such a waste, to walk on them.

Lo-Melkhiin took me to a raised dais, where there was a large cushion. He handed me off to the side of it, a girl appearing from nowhere to help me arrange my skirt and ensure my veil was still
securely fastened, and then he sat down beside me. When he was settled, he nodded to the man who stood on the floor beside him. The man carried a large wooden staff, bigger than a shepherd would
use; at Lo-Melkhiin’s signal, he hammered the butt of it on the floor three measured times.

At the far end of the hall, the great doors were pulled open. Six men stood there, and when their way was clear, they walked slowly into the room. It was hard for me to see in great detail
through my veil when they were that far away, but I could tell that they were not men of the city. Their capes were the color worn by men who crossed the desert with the caravans.

Those men came into the city often enough. The serving girls talked about markets and bazaars when they did my hair. But they had not said that some traders come to the qasr, and certainly they
had made no mention of any traders gaining audience with Lo-Melkhiin.

Thinking of him made me look his way. As the henna mistress said, I did not move from my straight position, but rather I slid my eyes across under my veil. The viper’s smile was back upon
his mouth, though it was softened by something I did not recognize. Perhaps he could not be fully cruel here, where he spoke with men who brought wealth in trade. Perhaps the dark spot in his mind
was stronger here, in the room where Lo-Melkhiin should serve his people.

When I looked back, the caravan men were on their knees, their faces on the floor before us. Their capes caught my eye again. Now that they were close enough for me to see them clearly, I
realized the patterns along the borders were ones I recognized, though they were stitched in purple, which was an expensive color to wear into the desert.

“Welcome, master of the caravan,” Lo-Melkhiin said. “And welcome to your sons.”

They raised their faces from the floor, and I looked into the eyes of my brothers and my father.

W
hen my kind first began to take, when we pulled weavers from their beds, and smiths from their forges, I was young enough to wonder why it was
so easy. The older ones told me it was because men were weak, because they could not fight us. They lived only to serve.

But I was not so sure.

My first weaver was old, and he did not scream when I pulled him away from his wife. I set a picture of her before him, younger and with fewer lines around her eyes, and he wove happily for
me without stopping to eat or drink. In the end, his fingers bled and stained the cloth, but I liked the pattern, so I cut it from the warp before I set fire to the loom, weaver and all.

My first smith was old, but he could still pull the air and raise the hammer. He worked without crucible or tongs when I showed him his children, still alive. In truth, they had died in a
sandstorm and left him alone with his craft and his age. He had no hands at all when he was done, but I had pretty gold.

My first glassmaker blinded himself in the fires he used to glaze his work. My first spinner used his own finger bones for a spindle. And all of them came to me without a struggle, when they
thought I had something they wanted.

Lo-Melkhiin was my first challenge: the first time I knew that I was correct, and my elders had it wrong. He did not wish to serve me, and I thought it was not just because he was already a
king. Lo-Melkhiin fought until I showed him his mother, wasting away to her death in the hot sand. It was that image, the idea of her death, that weakened him enough for me to grasp him; and then
it was only a matter of time until I shut him away inside his own mind.

After that, with Lo-Melkhiin’s hands and Lo-Melkhiin’s voice, it was easy. Merchants fell over themselves to please me, and I rewarded them. Men did great works, and knew it was
because I was their patron. My army was strong and my coffers were full, and if I had cared who was in my bed, I would have wanted for nothing there, either.

But it was not me they served, and I could not forget it. They thought they served Lo-Melkhiin.

It galled me. The man I had taken in the desert was all but gone, a screaming wraith whose voice delighted me alone, and still they told stories of his power and his wisdom in the lands I
ruled. I had done my task too well, taken so discreetly that no one even knew what I had done. My own kind, content to stay in the desert and pick off artisans one at a time, were ignorant of my
accomplishments, and I had nothing but another man’s hands and another man’s name.

But
she
knew
—
the girl I had found in the desert and taken for my wife. The one who did not die. She knew that I was more than what I seemed. That galled me, too, that
she could know I was not a man and yet still sit there, weaving, while I stared at her. She could lie beside me in the night and not fear that I would murder her. It almost made me want to do it
out of spite, except that then I would have been alone with my secret once more.

I went to the women in the spinning room, but they had made no great things. Their thread snarled and their weavings fouled the looms on which they worked. She had spent too much time with
them, and they were part of her world to begin with: the world of women. I had made a mistake, and I would not make it again.

I did as my kind had done, taking craftsmen one at a time to steal their work and their hands and their blood. Then, I had taken a king, and his kingdom had laid itself at my feet. That was
how I had to go on now. I had to start with her, and when she was mine, she would bring the women with her.

She would fight me; I knew it in Lo-Melkhiin’s bones. It gave him hope, which amused me greatly. He knew this girl would defy me, and it brought him joy. He was almost more pleased to
see her family than she was. I would crush him again soon enough. First, I had to have her, and I could not fight her from within herself.

I had to do as I had always done, as my kind had always done, without realizing we did it. We did not take men because they longed to serve us. We took them because they followed us into the
fire for something they thought we offered them. A younger wife. A restored family. Wealth. Honor. Fame. Those had always been what we tempted men with.

And I would tempt her just the same. I would give her a choice that was no choice, so that any way she chose I would get her, and all she brought with her, when she was done. She would not
burn as the others had, and neither would she serve. I had called her common, but she was better than her sand-crawling kin. I was done with murdering little girls. This one would be my
queen.