Gifting Fire, Alina Boyden [books to read for self improvement .txt] 📗

what was happening, but I didn’t want Lakshmi to be scared. Karim was a horrible man, he was evil, and cruel, and he had raped me when I was Lakshmi’s age. I wanted her nowhere near him. But that wasn’t a choice that I had, so the best I could do would be to shield her with my body and my mind, and hope that it was enough.

“It’s true, then?” Sakshi asked as I stepped beneath the pavilion’s domed roof. Her collarbones were standing out from her skin as she sucked in a tense breath to steel herself for my response.

“We will be flying to Kadiro with Karim Shah, all of us,” I said, nodding to Hina and her celas so that they would know they were included too.

“Kadiro?” Hina asked, not missing the fact that we hadn’t planned for this. “Is your household not coming with you?”

I shook my head. “It is not.”

She said nothing, not here, not where others might hear, but the grim expression on her face spoke volumes. It asked me all the questions I was already struggling with—how would we get our messages out without Shiv? How would we contact Sunil Kalani to let him know where we were? How would he contact us? How would we get a letter to Haider to ensure that Safavia attacked? My plans were already falling apart, and it had only been an hour since I’d made them.

I didn’t have answers to those questions, not yet. I knew that platitudes like “We’ll think of something” were worthless here. We might well not think of anything. It might be that Karim kept us as virtual prisoners in the palace. But I did have some good news. “There will be no wedding before the tax revenues are assessed next year. That gives us some time to make preparations.”

Hina nodded. She saw what a relief that was. Our situation had changed drastically in the course of a single day. Months could shift the balance of power back in our favor, if we were careful, if we used our time wisely.

“Are you really going to marry Prince Karim, Akka?” Lakshmi asked. She didn’t sound disgusted at the prospect, just confused.

“I am,” I lied, because I didn’t want her to know about our plans; I didn’t want to risk her telling anyone. And if she believed that I would marry Karim, then maybe it would help convince him and his men that I was serious about it.

“But don’t you love Prince Arjun?” she asked.

“I do,” I admitted, my heart aching for him already, “but my father arranged for me to marry Karim instead.”

“I thought you didn’t like Prince Karim,” she said.

“It’s complicated, little sister,” I told her, reaching out and running my hand over her jet-black hair. “We’ll have plenty of time to talk about it, but for right now we need to fly with Karim to Kadiro.”

“And Nuri is coming too?” Lakshmi asked, nodding to indicate Hina’s twelve-year-old cela.

“She is,” I agreed. “All of Hina’s celas are coming with us. But we all must be unarmed. They’re not going to be soldiers and bodyguards anymore, but handmaidens and companions.”

Lakshmi frowned. “But they’ll still get to be zahhak riders?”

“Yes, we all get to keep our zahhaks,” I assured her, as well as Hina’s disciples.

Hina surrendered her weapons to one of her soldiers and had her celas follow suit. All sixteen of them gave away their fish-tailed Zindhi rifles and their bhuj axes, and in a flash they were reduced from a troop of women warriors to a retinue of pretty handmaidens as you might find in any palace in Daryastan. Seeing that strengthened my resolve to beat Karim. I wasn’t going to let Karim strip us of everything that made us special and powerful. He had won this battle, but the war was far from over.

I returned with my sisters and Hina and her celas to where my father was still standing with Arjun, though I noted that Karim and his men were gone, and Sikander too. That worried me.

“Where are Karim and Sikander, Father?” I asked.

“Fetching the zahhaks from the stables,” my father answered. “I’ll be sending Sikander and two fliers with you.”

Two fliers? That didn’t make sense. I’d stolen four thunder zahhaks, including my Sultana. That meant that I needed at best one Nizami flier, not two. Was he gifting me zahhaks from his personal retinue? If he was, then that would bring my numbers up to six thunder zahhaks. With so many flying on my side, I would have Karim outnumbered on the flight back to Kadiro. Why not use that to my advantage and kill him?

Or was my father sending extra men to keep me under closer guard, to even things out in the event I decided to attack Karim’s five acid zahhaks with my sisters? That made a certain amount of sense too, but I doubted very much if any Nizami soldier would kill me to protect a foreign prince. So why the show of force?

Before I could finish puzzling it out, the men returned, mounted on their zahhaks. Sikander was riding Parisa, his personal mount, and two Nizami men followed him, riding zahhaks I had taken from Shikarpur, while leading Sultana and Ragini by the reins.

“Akka, why is he riding my zahhak?” Lakshmi asked, pointing to the soldier who was mounted on the back of the animal she had chosen for herself.

“I don’t know, but we won’t let him keep her,” I assured her.

Karim followed close behind Sikander and his men, mounted on Amira’s back, the brilliantly colored acid zahhak strutting across the palace grounds, her bright red eyes and her hooked beak giving her a menacing aspect. He was attended by three of his men riding acid zahhaks of their own, but a fourth man was leading a fifth acid zahhak by her reins. Was this the gift Karim had promised me?

“Mohini?” Lakshmi’s voice was filled with hope and doubt as she stared at the acid zahhak