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

But all too soon, the city of Kadiro hove into view, and my heart climbed into my throat. It was a bigger city than Shikarpur, and had served for centuries as Zindh’s traditional capital. Nizam had made Shikarpur the capital of the subah because it held the strongest fortress, but Kadiro was the great port at the mouth of the Zindhu’s delta, a hub of trade all along the coast, and one of the two endpoints of the river trade that flowed up and down the Zindhu.

My eyes were struck by the bright blue tiles mingling with yellow sandstone bricks, by the domes of turquoise and gold, and by the stout city walls protecting Kadiro on its landward side. Its harbor was a natural lagoon, guarded from wind-driven waves by a barrier island that paralleled the seashore. The entrance, a narrow channel, was guarded by twin forts, small but stout, and bristling with cannons. The bulk of the city formed a crescent around the bustling harbor, but I noted that Hina was flying us not toward the walled city but toward a fortress that seemed to rise straight up out of the waters of the lagoon.

It was only as we drew closer that I realized the fortress wasn’t a fortress at all, but a palace of gleaming marble. On its northern side, a pair of retaining walls stretched out like arms, encompassing a harbor that was a miniature reflection of the city’s. The still waters served as lotus gardens, blue-petaled flowers standing out like stars against the deep green of the lagoon. Gleaming marble walkways and pavilions capped with cobalt-and-turquoise-tiled domes led from small docks to the first courtyard of the palace, where dozens of buildings sat nestled amid date palms and enormous banyan trees, their marble facades connected to one another by means of golden sandstone walkways that stood out in sharp contrast to the bright green of the manicured lawns and well-tended rosebushes.

“Akka! It’s so beautiful!” Lakshmi shrieked, pointing at the marble palace buildings, at the bright lotus gardens, at the scenic lagoons and the thoughtfully placed shade trees.

“It is!” I agreed, offering her a smile that was utterly at odds with the sick sense of dread that was settling like a pall over my heart.

“Maybe it won’t be so bad living with Karim,” she said, her tone so hopeful that it hurt me to hear it. She wasn’t old enough to understand that what she saw as a beautiful home was actually a gilded cage. So long as she was safe, reunited with her zahhak and living with her family, nothing else mattered. But I knew the truth. If we were going to live in this palace in safety, I would have to give up everything that I had become. I would have to let the man I despised most in all the world touch me whenever he pleased, and I would have to raise his children as my own. And all the while, I would be watched by his agents day and night. No, I didn’t think I could subject myself to that—not even for Lakshmi.

As we approached the palace, I spotted a pair of acid zahhaks winging their way across the lagoon toward us. They weren’t moving with much urgency, not when they could so clearly see Karim and his acid zahhaks behind us and above us in the position of advantage, but the patrol kept its height nonetheless, circling in behind us, joining Karim and his fliers, creating a six-strong formation of acid zahhaks in the perfect position to kill us all.

It went against every instinct I possessed as a flier to just sit on Sultana’s back and watch that happen. It went against Sultana’s instincts too. The poor thing kept craning her neck back to get a look at Amira and the other acid zahhaks, her hood flaring slightly from anxiety. She’d been in enough battles to know that giving up her tail feathers to an acid zahhak was a good way to get killed, even if she could never have articulated it the way a human mind could.

“It’s all right, sweetheart,” I lied, stroking the smooth cobalt scales of her neck. “We’re going to be just fine.”

“Razia!” Karim called, Amira flapping her wings until they were turquoise blurs on either side of her body as she raced to catch up. He pointed to the outer palace’s courtyard, and a particular marble baradari that must have served as the diwan-i-khas here in Kadiro. “My father is waiting for us there.”

“Of course, your highness,” I replied, and I forced myself to smile in spite of the anxiety eating a hole in my stomach. I steered Sultana toward the building in question, focusing my attention on bringing her in for a smooth landing on the sandstone path that led to the baradari’s bright white steps.

Beside me, Mohini settled to the ground, and Lakshmi was quick to throw off her saddle straps so that she could better reach forward and hug her zahhak’s emerald-scaled neck, shouting words of praise and encouragement. Hina landed an instant later, and within seconds, I found myself surrounded by the eight Zindhi fliers so effectively that Karim and Amira couldn’t find a way through the cordon.

He and his fellow Mahisagari fliers landed a short distance away, where they were soon joined by close to fifty musket-armed soldiers—or what passed for soldiers in Mahisagar. The men wore loose dhotis, and some hadn’t even bothered putting on their kurtas, letting their bare flesh take the force of Zindh’s harsh sun instead. With long, curved daggers thrust through their sashes, and battle scars marring their faces and arms, I thought they looked more like bandits than royal guards, but I knew from long experience that whatever they lacked in order or discipline, the Mahisagaris were the best fighters at sea to be found anywhere in Daryastan.

More Mahisagari men approached from the other end of