The Diviner

the reins, now that they were almost marriageable, some of their prettier friends might be amenable to a dalliance....

He could see his mother’s face even now: stern, implacable, her dark eyes knowing every wayward thought in his head, and a single word on her lips as sharp as the silver needle that was her family’s name and crest: No. Whatever women he amused himself with, none of them could be of rank or wealth.

Then again, Za’avedra el-Ibrafidia might turn a blind eye to such an association, in the way of mothers who knew their sons. If he compromised a nobleman’s daughter, he would be forced to wed her. The very thought made him shudder. Getting married. Fathering children. Living a settled life. Doing something useful for the family— something unutterably boring. Staying with one woman for the rest of his life, or at least until her parents were dead. No, when he married—if he married—it would be to a girl with no relations whatsoever, not a single woman or man of her family alive anywhere to trouble him on her behalf when he wanted a little variety in his bed. Azzad considered it grossly unfair that only a sheyqa and her immediate family were permitted more than one spouse, the justification being that from them sprang the strength of the nation in the form of strong daughters and sons.

He snorted. Of all the descendants that Sheyqa Nizzira and her sons and daughters had produced so far, Azzad had heard very little to recommend any of them. Fifty of them now; he’d heard this morning that his cousin Ammineh had given birth to a daughter, and—

“Fifty! Acuyib save me! The celebration feast!”

Khamsin didn’t bother to swing an ear around this time, but when Azzad hauled back on the reins, the stallion snorted and pranced a few steps in protest. He wanted his stall and his evening feed, Azzad knew—but all the al-Ma’aliq had been invited to the palace tonight to celebrate Ammineh’s little girl, and in anticipating an evening with Ashiyah, the royal command had completely slipped his mind.

With a groan—he’d never get there in time and would have to think up some plausible excuse for his tardiness—he turned Khamsin toward the palace. A brisk trot and a shortcut or two, and maybe he’d arrive during the dancing or while an especially incredible creation of the Sheyqa’s kitchen staff was being presented, or—well, he’d spent all his twenty years being lucky, and there was no reason to think tonight would be any different.

“Esteemed Majesty,” the eunuch whispered at Sheyqa Nizzira’s shoulder, “not all of them drink enough.”

The Sheyqa smiled, clapping her hands in time to a spirited tune, following the dancers’ swirling silks and exposed flesh with her gaze. The youth on the far left, the one who was dark and muscular and half-naked, he might do for later tonight. She kept her eyes on him, annoyed by the interruption, knowing it was necessary to reply. Without moving her lips, she said, “I never meant them to.”

“But—Revered Majesty—your kinsmen from beyond The Steeps said—”

She saw the concertmaster watching her and gave him the signal that indicated her choice of the beautiful dark boy. He nodded once and turned to give his own instructions. To the eunuch, the Sheyqa said, “All that is required is that most of them are drunk. Go away. All will be as it should.”

“You have commanded it, Exalted One.” Bowing low, he melted away into the shadows.

She returned her attention to the boy, whose new role in the dance now required him to shed almost all his clothes. He was the coveted one, the desired one; all the other young men faded into the corners of the room while concubines belonging to Nizzira’s sons danced to tempt him.

“No difficulties, I trust, Highness?” asked the al-Ma’aliq seated nearest her—father of Ammineh, smug enough to make Nizzira’s palm itch for her knife.

Instead she waved a well-manicured hand, rings sparking a dozen colors by lamplight. “That silly eunuch frets as if he truly were a woman, instead of merely not a man. Do you enjoy yourself, my friend?”

“Truly, Highness, it is a night for jubilation at Acuyib’s great generosity to both our houses. For is it not said,” he added, his smile dazzlingly white below a luxuriant black mustache, “that the fiftieth of a sheyqa’s descendants shall be the joy of her age? My own father finds it so.” He directed a fond glance at the drooling ninety-year-old moron who, determined not to wait for grandchildren to fulfill his ambition, had killed seven successive wives in the getting of his first forty-nine offspring. The fiftieth, sole product of the eighth and final wife, attended the old man so devotedly that he practically chewed his food for him. The Sheyqa found this utterly disgusting, but what offended her more deeply was the reference yet again to the long-gone alMa’aliq power. That senile, toothless old man ruling Rimmal Madar? It didn’t bear contemplation.

What she said, in a mild tone, was, “I hope your daughter has given me a child just as fine for my fiftieth.”

“I am confident that she has, Highness.” Another raising of the wine to his daughter’s accomplishment.

The Sheyqa nodded, smiled, and drank. The exquisite young boy had spurned the attentions of all the girls, no matter what they did to entice him; it was his role to reject them and eventually to prostrate himself at the Sheyqa’s feet. She watched as he began the moves that culminated the dance, reflecting that it really was a fine thing to be past the age of childbearing and not have to limit herself to those men she had married for money or land or political alliance. Carelessness in this regard had been her own mother’s downfall—one did not bear the child of a Hrumman servant, no matter how tempting his golden looks might be, not when there had never been an al-Ammarizzad born with blond hair. Husbands were tedious at times, but not even a sheyqa could mortify them in such fashion. It was said she had died of a fever, and all her husbands were seen to mourn her—none of them less sincerely than Nizzira’s father, who had administered the “fever” in a cup of wine. The act had sealed Nizzira’s accession to the Moonrise Throne, for not only had her father taken on the task and thus the responsibility if caught, but he had not been caught—and that was warning enough. No one in the palace wished to be similarly administered to. The other husbands had been dealt with in Nizzira’s own time, and their offspring as well, and now all of her own husbands were either dead or divorced.

So she could have anyone she wished these days. Truly, it was most liberating. When the boy began his approach, she forgot to wonder whether what was between his thighs was natural or cleverly provoked by drugs. The latter, she thought, rightly judging the glaze in his eyes. But it mattered for nothing; he really was quite the loveliest thing she’d ever seen.

She was just beginning to plan the end of her evening when the first al-Ma’aliq began to vomit.

No one was on the last mile of the palace road. Azzad cursed. No other late arrivals with whom to slide, practically unnoticed, inside the gates. He couldn’t even pretend he’d been there all along, caught up in greeting friends or seeing to the comfort of his older relations. His esteemed father would see through that in a twitch of a lamb’s ear.

Khamsin suddenly froze—ears pricked, head thrown back, the whites showing in his black eyes. Azzad frowned. Usually he had his hands full preventing the stallion from challenging every other stallion on the palace road, for which the Qoundi Ammar on their grand white horses did not thank him.

But there were no Qoundi Ammar lining the palace road tonight.

He was alone.

And on the soft evening breeze his inferior senses finally recognized what Khamsin’s nose had already warned of: fire.

One hundred twenty-six of the almost four hundred al-Ma’aliq had to be helped from the banqueting hall to the outer courtyard, robes stained and bellies churning. The Sheyqa waved aside the mortified apologies of Ammineh’s father.

“Young men will overindulge, you know it is so,” she said as servants hurriedly cleaned up the messes. “Think no more on it, my friend. Come, let’s not ruin the celebration.”

On the expert advice of distant relations whose help she’d sought for this purpose, she’d made sure that all of the “drunks” would be young men, easily excused in their excesses. For their elders, she had something else in mind.

The eunuch approached right on time, bowing, begging Her Glorious Majesty to accede to the Qoundi Ammar’s request that they might demonstrate their joy in her fiftieth descendant. The Sheyqa smiled. “Very thoughtful. My thanks and compliments to the qabda’an, but it can wait until tomorrow. I shall even bring along my little Sayyida to see the salute in her honor.”