She drew herself up. ‘I shall be careful, Sama, but if I don’t get out for a short while, I swear I shall run mad.’
‘As you will, of course.’
Sama opened the door and anxious voices floated up the stairs.
There was a swift pattering of feet, a light chattering sound and a small monkey hurtled across the patterned floor tiles. It was Hunter. Hunter had once belonged the middle Princess, Alba. Since Alba had gone, Zorahaida had adopted him.
Hunter skittered towards her and leaped on to her shoulder, quivering with tension. Zorahaida’s heart sank, something awful had happened, she just knew it.
‘Princess!’ Maura, her other maidservant, was calling.
Pulled by the panic in Maura’s tone, Zorahaida went to the head of the stairs. Maura stood a few steps below, panting for breath. Her veil was dark with sweat.
‘Princess, come quickly! The lily pond. It’s Yamina...’ Maura’s voice broke on a sob.
‘She’s fallen in?’ Zorahaida went cold. Yamina was her cousin, the sweetest of children, she was not yet three. Mind filling with horror, Zorahaida snatched up her veil, tucked it into her belt and flew down the stairs. She passed Maura and raced along the flagged pathway that led to the pond.
This wasn’t happening, Zorahaida told herself. Not Yamina...no, no, no.
At first glance, the pond looked undisturbed. Then Zorahaida saw a faint ripple. A small, starfish-shaped hand was flailing about near a water lily. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed a dark shadow next to a pillared trellis. The shadow seemed out of place, but Zorahaida dismissed it. That tiny hand was all that mattered.
It was a small pond and it wasn’t deep. She dropped to her knees. Yamina’s hand was tangling in the lilies, sinking out of sight. Heart racing, Zorahaida caught the hand and pulled.
Yamina emerged. Her lips were blue, and her small body felt horribly heavy. Limp. She wasn’t breathing. Zorahaida heard herself moan. She sat back, hauled the child over her knees and gave her a gentle shake.
‘Yamina, sweetheart, wake up.’
Nothing. She gave a more vigorous shake. Were the child’s lungs full of water? Was she too late?
‘Yamina, please.’
‘God be merciful,’ Maura muttered.
Yamina jerked and coughed and water left her lungs in a choking, sputtering rush. When she gulped in air and coughed again, Zorahaida turned her on to her side and watched the colour creep back into her lips.
Yamina opened her eyes. ‘Princess?’
Zorahaida’s throat closed. ‘God is good.’
Pushing to her feet with Yamina cradled in her arms, Zorahaida turned to Maura. ‘We must take my cousin to the harem. She needs her mother.’
Yamina started to cry.
Sama held out her arms. ‘Allow me, Princess. She’ll need dry things.’
Handing her cousin over, Zorahaida suppressed a shudder at the thought of what might have happened if she hadn’t reached the pond in time. Her uncle, Prince Ghalib, doted on his little daughter. If she had drowned, he would have been out of his mind with grief.
A chill came over her. It hadn’t been hard getting Yamina out of the pond. Maura could surely have dragged Yamina out herself, instead she had wasted time coming to fetch her...
‘Maura, why didn’t you get Yamina out yourself? Couldn’t you reach?’
Maura’s face was concealed beneath her veil, but she gulped and pointed towards the pillared trellis. ‘I dare not, Princess. Didn’t you see him?’
Vaguely recalling that dark shape by the trellis, Zorahaida swallowed down a feeling of nausea. All she could see was sunlight gilding the dancing leaves of a vine, the darkness had gone. ‘Someone was there? Is that what you are saying?’
Another gulp. Maura’s veil was trembling, she was terrified.
‘Who was it? Did you see?’
Maura’s head dipped. Her reply was inaudible.
‘Maura?’
‘He...he was standing in the shadows, Princess. It could have been anyone.’
Anyone? Zorahaida doubted it. She cast her mind back to the moment she’d arrived at the pond, trying to conjure the dark shape she’d seen. Stocky build. Bull-necked. A sense of solid strength.
‘Abdul ibn Umar,’ she said. Abdul ibn Umar was commander of Sultan Tariq’s household knights, the head of his personal guard.
Maura let out a little moan. ‘I didn’t say it was Abdul ibn Umar.’
Zorahaida looked at her. ‘I would take my oath it was the Commander under that arch.’
If her father’s commander had been watching, why hadn’t he intervened?
A cold stone lodged in Zorahaida’s belly. Could he have pushed Yamina into the pond?
The rivalry between her father and his heir, Prince Ghalib, had become bitter of late. Had her father’s hatred of his brother driven him to order the murder of an innocent child?
Indignation burned in Zorahaida’s breast and she glowered in the direction of the Court of the Lions. At this time of day, her father would be meeting his counsellors in an adjacent chamber. To put it mildly, he would not take kindly to an interruption.
An icy calm descended on her. She didn’t want to believe her father could order his niece’s death. Yet she knew the tales. The history of the Nasrid dynasty was long and filled with bloody feuds. Brother fought brother in the ceaseless bid for power. Betrayals were commonplace. More damning than that though, Zorahaida had seen for herself how the Sultan had kept his brother incarcerated for many years in Castle Salobreña. Yet feuding with his brother and heir was one thing.
Would he actually try to kill Prince Ghalib’s tiny daughter?
It was possible. The Sultan had always been jealous of his brother’s ability to father so many children when the Sultan himself had only sired three girls, Zorahaida and her sisters.
I cannot let this pass.
Bile in her throat, Zorahaida
