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

and found that they were definitely too curved to make for comfortable walking, but when I approached one of the columns near my veranda, and put my toe against a tile rosette, I grinned. “Oh, these are good . . .” I scampered up the column much faster than I had the day before, feeling like a mountain goat thanks to the way the reinforced toe of the shoe hooked each and every crevice in the stonework.

I dropped down, and hurried to trade my peshwaz and fine silk trousers for a simple cotton shalwar kameez, the ajrak pattern consisting mostly of dark indigo dye, with splashes of lighter blue, white, and saffron. Ordinarily, I didn’t like wearing white at night, but I thought the little irregular patches of it would actually help to make me harder to see, because it would break up my silhouette, and I’d look less like a human-shaped shadow to prying eyes.

Hina stuffed a pair of ordinary slippers into the pockets of my shalwar. “I wouldn’t take anything else with you. If you’re caught it’s best that you can deny the worst accusations against you.”

“If I’m caught, we’re all finished,” I replied, because I knew better than to believe I could ever win Karim’s trust if he discovered that the whole time we’d been talking on the veranda I’d been lying through my teeth. He’d never believe another word I said.

“So don’t get caught,” Hina said, offering me a gentle pat on the shoulder.

“I won’t,” I promised.

“You’ll want to give my name to the man at the door to Sanghar Soomro’s haveli,” Hina said. “Tell him you’re one of my celas and that you have a message for Sanghar. That should earn you an audience. After that, it will be up to you to convince him to help you rather than kill you or take you hostage.”

“Sounds like fun,” I muttered, hoping that this man was as loyal to Hina as she claimed he was. Otherwise he might well earn favor with Ahmed and Karim by handing me back to them. But I would worry over that when the time came. I had to try to send a message, and if Hina thought this was the best way, then this was what I would do.

“May God watch over you,” Hina said.

“And all of you,” I replied.

“Oh, we’ll be having a restful night’s sleep in your bed,” she assured me, flashing me a grin that was confident enough to wrest a smile from my own lips in response.

“Don’t get too comfortable,” I warned. “I’ll be back soon.”

She nodded, her jaw tensing. “You’d better be.”

I decided that I could say good-bye all night, but that was just putting off the inevitable, so I turned and walked out onto my balcony, looking carefully into the darkness along the walls for any signs of guards or servants or curious palace women who might be able to see me from their own verandas or through their jali screens. I positioned myself in what I thought was something of a blind spot to the rest of the palace, but I’d be careful to move quickly and suddenly when the time came. That way, if someone was watching, they might think I’d simply gone back into my chambers. The less time they had to watch me climbing, the better.

So I flung myself over the railing, grabbing at the bottom edge of the marble floor with my fingers, kicking my hooked toes into crevices in the decorations on the buttresses below, and I hung there, holding myself close to the stonework, listening for cries of alarm from guardsmen, or shouts of surprise from palace women. But all I heard was the gentle lapping of the lagoon’s waters against the sandstone bricks below me.

CHAPTER 15

Most people would have been afraid of descending a fifty-foot fortress wall in the dead of night, but it wasn’t the climb that was eating away at my mind. I’d scaled enough havelis on moonless nights in Bikampur to be comfortable feeling along the wall with my hands and feet, searching out solid holds before testing my weight on them, and easing myself down. It was methodical, almost meditative. I’d have found it relaxing if not for the worries weighing on my mind. If I were caught, or if someone discovered I wasn’t in my bed, the punishment would be swift and severe, and I knew that I wouldn’t be the one suffering it. It would fall on someone I loved.

Hina would be first, I thought. Karim would kill her in front of me, and her celas too. He would know that he could do that and let the threat hang over my sisters, and that I would fall in line to preserve them. Just as I was sure that he knew if he touched one hair on my sisters’ heads, I would be his enemy for all eternity. He would save them for last. But Hina first. Nuri second. I saw it so clearly that my hands and feet froze in place on the wall, unwilling to move. If anyone discovered that I wasn’t in my bed . . .

No, I couldn’t let my doubts control me. I forced myself to find another good toehold, to put my weight on it, to lower myself down. Maybe Karim would find out what I was doing. Maybe he would kill Hina and Nuri and my sisters and me too. That was possible. I wasn’t stupid; I knew the risk I was taking. But I would never forgive myself if I didn’t go through with this, if I sat there like a helpless princess from one of the storybooks, contenting myself with my lot in life. Karim thought he could enslave me? Because for all the talk of marriage, that’s what this was, enslavement. He wanted to use my mind to his advantage, to keep me under his power for the rest of my life.