“I sent Sikander with her, and I ordered him to hang an ajrak dupatta from the window after nightfall to mark the room she’s in,” I replied. “I’ll fly to the fortress, land on the roof, and climb down to her window.”
“And how will you get back to the roof?” Tamara wondered, scrunching up her nose.
“Lakshmi and I will climb the walls. We’ll leave a rope for Sikander. He’s old, but he’s strong; he should be able to manage.”
“Climb the walls?” Haider’s eyes widened, and he looked from Arjun to Udai to Sakshi, seeming totally surprised that none of them saw fit to comment on the outlandishness of that plan. He shook his head. “Little sister, someday you’re going to have to tell me all that you’ve accomplished since you left Safavia.”
“Someday soon I will, your highness,” I replied. “But we don’t have that much time tonight.”
“We don’t,” Sakshi agreed. “I’ll go find your climbing shoes. You’re tired, you’ll need them. I’m sure Lady Asma has them in her quarters.”
“See if you can find my katars too,” I suggested. “Karim and his father took them from me.”
“I’ll have a look around,” she promised. She motioned for a squad of Zindhi soldiers to follow her as an escort, and they obeyed so quickly that it brought a smile to my face. We were going to make a princess of her yet.
“She really grew up on a farm?” Tamara asked in disbelief.
I nodded. “She’s special.”
“If all hijras can scale walls like they’re stairs, fly zahhaks, and issue orders like that, then one wonders why you haven’t conquered the world yet,” one of the Registani fliers quipped.
“We’re working on it,” I shot back, drawing laughs from everyone around. It helped to ease some of the tension in my chest. The less I had to think about Lakshmi being stuck in Ahura, the better.
I decided to see how Hina was getting on. That would give me something useful to do. But as I approached Sakina, it didn’t look like the Zindhis needed much assistance from me. They’d mounted the cannon on the zahhak’s front saddle pommel, and they were working on giving it two positions: an upright position for when the zahhak was on the ground, since her neck was in the way of the barrel, and one that would be lowered to shoot once the animal was airborne. That was clever, as were the metal hooks they’d devised to hang extra mug-shaped breechblocks from the sides of the saddle for easy reloading. They’d even thought to add wide leather straps to the saddle itself to help absorb the shock of the cannon’s recoil. Even now, old men with years of sailing experience were working hard with awls and strong canvas thread to sew the straps into place, their deft fingers moving so swiftly that it beggared belief.
“If we’re going to truly test it, we’ll need a target,” Sunil was saying.
“What about a bedsheet?” I suggested.
“A bedsheet, your highness?” he asked, with a good deal less scorn in his voice than he’d shown me up till this moment.
“I’ll take a bedsheet up on Sultana, flying in front of Hina, and I’ll release it into the slipstream behind me as I make a hard turn. Once I’m clear, she shoots it. That’ll test if she can hit something in the air or not, and it will give us a chance to see what the bullet scatter looks like on the cloth.”
Sanghar shook his head, grinning. “Like holing an enemy’s sail.”
That got all of the Zindhis nodding together. I didn’t know anything about naval combat, but it seemed to please them, so I said, “I suppose.”
Hina quirked an eyebrow. “Could it be that there’s something you don’t know everything about?”
“I’ll leave the matters of sailing in your capable hands, your majesty,” I replied, bowing my head to her.
She grinned. “Sanghar, have one of your men fetch a white bedsheet. We have to test this quickly if we’re going to save her highness’s sister.”
“Right away, your majesty,” Sanghar agreed.
While they went to deal with that, I noticed that my fellow fliers had drifted over to watch Sakina’s saddle be outfitted with a cannon and breechblocks. Arjun was scratching his chin, his brow furrowed. I recognized that expression.
“You have thoughts, my prince?” I asked him, wrapping my arms around one of his, taking strength from his warmth.
“Questions,” he corrected, nodding to Sunil Kalani. “If you can carry passengers, then why not just have the passenger shooting a rifle at the enemy while the other person flies the zahhak?”
“We can’t carry a grown man with a rifle,” Sunil replied. He frowned at the reinforced saddle, with the weight of the cannon and five extra breechblocks. “Even this much weight is pushing our luck, and it’s not as heavy as you are, your highness.”
“But if you could carry a passenger with a weapon, he can shoot just fine,” Arjun pressed.
“She can, your highness,” Hina agreed, and I noticed how she’d feminized the sentence. “Sometimes I would go hunting with my brother on the back of his zahhak when I was little. He’d let me shoot gazelles while he handled the flying. They were moving targets, and not easy to hit, but I was a good shot.”
“We do the same thing in Registan for sport,” Udai agreed.
“How many of these cannons do you have?” Arjun asked, nodding to the gun in question.
“With us?” Sanghar shrugged. “Each of my boats carried a dozen. So nearly fifty.”
“As did mine,” Sunil added. “And my count was closer to two hundred. More than enough to outfit all of our zahhaks.”
“What are you thinking, my prince?”
