A Thousand Nights (28 page)

When my father returned to his tents along the wadi, his caravan stretched so far behind him that my sister said she could stand on the sand and look, without seeing its end. Then she smiled,
and said she had not looked too long, because when she saw the pale man who rode with my brothers, she forgot that the caravan was there at all.

“I knew it must be the man with bright metal,” she said to me. Her eyes gleamed with love for him, and I recoiled like she had struck me. I had made this in her, and I feared she
would hate me if she knew it. “No one else could look like that,” she said. “He was so pale, I saw why your brothers thought he must be ill. He had taken off his kafiyyah so that
it did not cover his eyes. He told me later that he wanted to see my father’s tents, but that he forgot to look at them, because instead he saw me where I stood waiting.”

“Sister,” I said to her. “Why do you love him?”

She looked down at her hands, which were lined with henna for the wedding. She did not hear my desperation.

“I did not know at first,” she said to me. “I saw him and I wondered if I loved him only because he was so different from any man I had ever seen.”

That, at least, sounded like my sister. She had always been more adventurous than I. It seemed fitting that she would see a man so strange and love him for it.

“He spoke of his mountains and of his time in the desert,” she said to me, “and my heart was heavy. I thought he meant to return to his home in the north. But he told me that
he wished to stay in the desert. He could go and get more ore to make the bright metal, but he wanted the desert to be his home.

“Then I was truly glad, sister of mine,” she said to me. “Because if I married him, I could stay here with my mother and with your mother, with your shrines and with our dead.
I would not leave my father’s tents, and my husband would not ask me to.”

She had not answered my question. She had not told me that she loved his eyes or the sound of his voice. She had not said that his touch lit a fire on her skin. Then it came to me: she loved him
because he did not seek to change her. If I had made him, or if my father had found him, it did not matter. My sister would have a husband who would not make her sit, veiled and weaving, in his
tent. He would not take another wife, as my father had done. She would be his, and he would be hers, alone. This was why she loved him, and it made my heart glad to hear it.

“Come,” my sister said to me. “Let me show you how we will end your husband’s rule.”

My gladness turned hard in my chest; and around it, the copper fire of a hundred prayers burned.

MY BROTHERS HAD TAKEN Lo-Melkhiin’s mother to a tent and left her there, with the boy and the old woman and three guards to stand outside. The tent flaps were closed, and
it must have been stifling, but I knew that no one would go in to see her unless my father ordered it. When my sister would have taken me around the camp and shown me off like a prize cow, I begged
her to let me go to Lo-Melkhiin’s mother instead.

“Do you think she has not counted the men, as I did?” I asked her. “Do you think she has not guessed what this wedding of yours will entail? Do you think she has not suffered
too?”

My sister relented, and took me to the tent. The eyes of men followed us as we went, my sister in her priestly-whites and me in my fine city dress. How different we had become in so short a
time.

“Here is Lo-Melkhiin’s mother,” she said to me when we reached the tent. “I will stay out here and wait for you, sister. Come to me when you have said your
words.”

I nodded, and held the flap open to go in. The tent was well-appointed and less hot than I had feared. Lo-Melkhiin’s mother would not wilt in the stuffy desert heat. There were rugs on the
floor, and a faint incense burned, as though someone had thought she would be offended by the smell of so many sheep and goats and men. Someone had brought tea and dates, like all visitors were
given when they came to my father’s tents, though I did not know if anyone had stayed to drink the formal welcome with her. Though I no longer dwelt amongst my family, I was still bound by
their duties to their guests.

“Welcome, lady,” I said to her, bowing, and then sat down across from her. “Welcome to my father’s tents.”

The tea was gone, but I held the bowl of dates out to her and she took one. I took one as well and then gestured to the boy, who fell on the bowl like he had not eaten in days.
Lo-Melkhiin’s mother coughed quietly, and the boy remembered to take at least one of his prizes to the old woman, who smiled as she ate.

“Shall we discuss the desert storms, then?” asked Lo-Melkhiin’s mother. “Or perhaps the state of the herds? There seem to be a great many of them here.”

“Mother of my heart, there is no reason to hide my family’s purpose from you,” I said to her, “for you have seen it with your own eyes. They do marry off my sister, as my
father said, but they also plot against your son.”

“They are not the first,” she said to me. “The first died so quickly their blood did not even stain the marble floor inside the qasr. Why does your father think he will fare
better?”

“He has many friends who will help him,” I said to her. “And they have a new metal from the mountains to the north, brought by the pale man who will be my sister’s
husband.”

“Ah,” she said to me. “The same metal that the Skeptics say was on the talons of the great bird that attacked Lo-Melkhiin?”

“The very same,” I said to her. “There are daggers made from it, and fletched arrows that will fly true.”

“True enough to hit Lo-Melkhiin?” she asked. “True enough to slay all his men?”

“Lady mother,” I said to her. “I do not think he will fight with men.”

The old woman stood quickly, grabbing the boy and pulling him into her lap. He struggled, probably having decided that he was too old for such treatment, but she was much stronger than he was.
She put both of her hands over his ears so he would not hear us. He fought her for a few moments more, and then gave up, the way the goats did when they realized that they could not escape us, and
that we held them for their own good. He settled, waiting, and she did not relax.

“You think there are other demons that will come with my son?” Lo-Melkhiin’s mother said to me.

“I know it,” I said, though until I said the words, I could not have said how I knew.

Lo-Melkhiin had never said that there were more of his kind directly, but he had hinted at it. He had said that he would find a way to take my sister, and I knew he could not do it himself,
bound as he was by the laws of men. Yet he was so sure he could, if he wished me to suffer, that I knew he must have other demons at his call to do it. They might not be as strong as he was,
perhaps because they were living in the desert, but I knew in my bones that they would be stronger than my father and my brothers, and all the men who would fight beside them.

“I do not want my son to die,” Lo-Melkhiin’s mother said to me. “He is a good man.”

“He might have been, my lady mother,” I said to her. “But the demon has used his skin for so long, used his hands for such awful things. Do you think he is a good man still? Do
you think when he is free of the demon, his heart will be whole?”

Sometimes men go mad in the heat of the sun, and beat their children as they would their goats and sheep. My father never tolerated such behavior in his tents, because those children sometimes
grew up to be cruel too. I feared that Lo-Melkhiin, the true one, had been locked so long inside a monster that he would be a monster himself, even if the demon were driven away. We had a demon for
a king already; I did not wish to replace him with another. Yet I had seen the dark spot within his mind, and I knew not to fear it. Perhaps Lo-Melkhiin’s mother’s wish was not so
desperate, but I wanted to be very, very sure.

Lo-Melkhiin’s mother had a strip of purple cloth around her wrist. I saw it now, when she raised her hands to me. Her face was lit by the lamps that burned inside the tent, and the
lion-mane wig cast a tawny aura around her.

“I will pray,” she said to me. “Not to the smallgods of my own family, as I have done before. They are far from here, near the blue desert, and maybe they are too busy with the
blue desert’s troubles to hear me. I will pray to the smallgod who sits in my tent, and who is married to my son.”

I was not surprised that she knew. It seemed that my sister had done her job well and spread the story of my smallgod to everyone who might listen, just as she had promised on the day
Lo-Melkhiin took me to be his wife.

“Lady mother,” I said to her. “I cannot fight a war.”

“Daughter of my heart,” she said to me. “You have been fighting a war since you decided to take your sister’s place. Only keep fighting it now, and we shall see who
stands at the end—demons or smallgods.”

I went out from the tent, where my sister was waiting for me. I did not ask if she had heard. I did not care if she had. I looked into her face and saw a light of hope, one that sang for blood
and fighting to get the end she desired. I was less willing to face deaths other than my own. I did not know how we had changed so much since I had left her, and yet I knew that I had caused her to
change.

We went back to the tent that our mothers shared, and there was a basin of clear water there. I halted, confused by it, and my sister laughed at me. Her laugh was still the same.

“Sister of mine,” she said to me, “I will still wed tonight.”

Our mothers came, and we washed together. It was not as easy as the baths in the qasr, but it was familiar. We shared the water bowl and the soft soap made from ashes and sheep fat. We rinsed
the lather from our bodies. My mother sang to us—the old songs, not any of the new ones they were singing for me—and when the desert air had dried us, we began to dress.

As she had said, my sister would take no pins from me to do her hair. It hung to her waist, straight and black and uncoiled. We put her veil over the top, securing it with the bone pins that she
had worn the day before. Her dishdashah was yellow, as I had seen in the dream; there, if I looked to see it, would be the spot of blood. I did not look. She wore no shoes, and so I left mine off
too. They could not have borne dancing in the desert sand, in any case.

My dress was blue, and as plain as I could manage. The serving girl had brought it, but I sent her back to wait with Lo-Melkhiin’s mother, and told her that my sister and mothers were help
enough for me. I did not braid my hair either, but let it fall as my sister had done. It was unseemly that a married woman should wear her hair loose under her veil, but I thought that if any man
tried to criticize me, I would only remind him whom it was he sought to wage war against.

As we dressed and my mother sang, the words of Lo-Melkhiin’s mother weighed heavy on my spirit. She was so sure he was a good man. I had seen flashes of that, or else I thought I had, but
I was not certain that there would be enough to resurrect him. If my father and his men were successful, there would be a dead king and no one to take his place. It would be as Sokath, His Eyes
Uncovered had feared—a dead king and no one but the grasping merchants and petty lords to take his place. We would fight until the children who tended the sheep were old, if they did not die
fighting themselves.

My dress was such a simple thing, for all it had come from the qasr, because I did not wish to outshine my sister on the day she wed. If I could think of a solution as simple as the dress, it
would be better for everyone, but my mind was too full of worry to think. When I closed my eyes to focus, I saw my father’s blood on Lo-Melkhiin’s hands, and my brother’s children
with no fathers left to care for them. There were too many people here, and too much noise. I could feel the copper fire burning inside of me, but I could not direct it. When I tried to spin it, it
unwound. When I tried to weave it, it tangled.

My mother painted my face with kohl, and my sister’s, too. I had to be patient. I had to get through the wedding feast and the dancing, and then, when the night was quiet, I would try to
find a good path for my copper fire to take. If it made me ill, Lo-Melkhiin would not be here to heal me, but there was nothing I could do about that. I had to make hard choices at every turn, it
seemed, but I needed make none of them yet.

My mother pulled me to my feet, and turned me slowly around before her. “My daughters are here together again,” she said to us. “And I am glad.”

My sister smiled, her heart showing in her eyes. I tried to do the same, but all I could manage was the smile itself. Quickly I pinned up my veil, hiding from all of them at once.