I took that cheerful thought with me into the palace’s inner courtyard. It seemed strangely desolate. I was accustomed to Bikampur’s lush gardens of rosebushes and mango trees, its marble fountains, and the channels of water that fed them. But here, the limestone footpaths cut straight lines across bare grass. A few old banyan trees spread their shade over stone-lined pits, which had been partly filled by the monsoon rains. Were those cisterns of some kind? They were unsightly, whatever they were.
More empty stone pits were connected to one another by means of channels, rather like the ones that had conducted water to the fountains in Bikampur, but there was scarcely a finger’s depth of brown slurry coating the bottoms of these cheap imitations. The channels all met in the middle of the courtyard, their sludge flowing into an enormous square moat that surrounded a white marble pavilion, its round dome covered in fine glazed tiles of cobalt blue, turquoise, and gold.
“Why is it so ugly, Akka?” Lakshmi asked, her brow furrowing in confusion as she stared at the same empty pits that had attracted my attention.
“I don’t know, little sister,” I replied, putting my arm around her shoulders, acutely aware of the fact that I’d promised her a beautiful new home, “but we’ll have to work on it together, and make it look nice.”
“It’s going to take a lot of work,” she observed, and I couldn’t argue with her.
I’d have said more, but at that moment I caught sight of who was waiting for me in the shade of the baradari’s tiled dome. My father, Humayun, sultan of the greatest empire of Daryastan, sat atop a marble throne that was inlaid with precious gems, lapis lazuli, and obsidian, producing the most remarkable images of zahhaks dancing across its surface. I knew better than to keep him waiting.
I crossed a small footbridge over an empty stone moat, which must have once been a pond, but as I passed into the shade of the pavilion and my eyes adjusted a little, my stomach gave a lurch. I hadn’t seen my father sitting on a real throne for the better part of five years, and the sight of it took me right back to being a disgrace of a thirteen-year-old prince in a palace filled with servitors who despised me.
I recovered my composure quickly, plastering a neutral expression across my face, hoping my father hadn’t noticed my discomfiture. No, as my eyes flickered up to scan his face, I saw that his emerald eyes were still wide with surprise. Of course. He’d never seen me in my court finery before either, and like Sikander, it was clear he hadn’t imagined I could ever look so much the part of the Nizami princess.
I allowed myself the barest trace of a smile, because for all of my anxiety, I had planned my entrance carefully. My clothes marked me as a royal Nizami woman, and my sisters, who trailed behind me, were similarly attired. Lakshmi wore her acid zahhak–inspired sari of emerald and kingfisher blue, and Sakshi was borrowing the fire zahhak lehenga that Arjun had given me for my first trip to the palace of Bikampur, which seemed almost a lifetime ago. The three of us looked like wealthy princesses from three different kingdoms, not a trio of hijras from one of Bikampur’s less savory neighborhoods. And if there was one thing I’d learned in my life, it was that for all of the poets’ talk about inner beauty, people’s judgments were based almost solely on appearance. If you looked the part, people tended to believe you belonged to it, and I definitely looked the part of a princess of Nizam.
While Sikander went to stand beside my father’s throne, I made my obeisance. I stood before my father, bowed slightly, and raised my palm to my forehead, ceremonially offering him my head. I’d grown familiar with the gesture during my childhood in the palace, but the whole thing seemed so much grislier with Sikander’s gnarled hand resting on his talwar, his grim face staring into mine.
“Peace be upon you, Father,” I said in Court Safavian, my head still bowed, my palm still raised. I hoped the rest of my entourage were doing the same thing—I’d certainly spent enough of the morning teaching them how to greet the sultan of Nizam properly.
“And upon you peace,” my father replied, which was my signal to straighten up and to lower my hand.
My father gestured to a cushion on a dais beside his throne, the place of honor in the pavilion. “Sit.”
Now that the greeting was over, he was perfectly willing to dispense with ceremony. I’d always thought the man was more comfortable on the back of a zahhak than in the fine trappings of a palace, and I could see that little had changed in the years since I’d run away from home.
I took my seat while the rest of my entourage sat on cushions arranged at the base of the throne, under Sikander’s watchful eyes.
My father grunted with amusement. “I wasn’t sure if you’d have the courage to come, but I suppose you’ve got more ice in your veins than I credited you with.”
“Not exactly a high bar, Father,” I replied, unable to keep a hint of bitterness out of my voice. He had never recognized my talents.
“Well, look at you,” he growled, gesturing to my peshwaz, my jewels, the way I was sitting like a proper young lady on my cushion, with my hands folded neatly in my lap.
I looked around in mock confusion. “Do you not like my peshwaz, Father? I had it made especially for this occasion.”
“I still have half a mind to kill you,” he replied, and this time there was no anger or bluster in his voice,
