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

messenger. Tell me what messages you need sent, and I will have my fliers send them.”

I shook my head. “They must be written in my own hand or they won’t be trusted. Do you have paper and ink?”

“Pens too,” he quipped, a little of his ironic sense of humor returning. He gestured for the captain to fetch them, and the man returned with a lap desk and everything I needed to compose my messages.

I pulled back my damp sleeve so that I wouldn’t drag it across the surface of the paper, and picked up one of the pens. Immediately the emir raised an eyebrow. “Left-handed? Your palace tutors never corrected that?”

“There is much about me they failed to correct,” I retorted, and I set about writing my letters. I dipped my pen in the ink, and then paused. I might not get another chance to send a second message, or even to receive replies. This might be my only chance of arranging my plans. I couldn’t merely ask for vague help. I had to give specific instructions. I had to come up with a plan that would see Karim defeated and Kadiro liberated. That meant I had to arrange for all my allies to arrive on the same day. But what day?

I glanced up at Sanghar, who had positioned himself to read over my shoulder. “The next full moon is the brother-sister festival, is it not, emir?”

“It is, your highness,” he replied, though it was plain he didn’t understand what significance that had for my plans.

The next full moon was twelve days hence. It wasn’t much time, especially not if I intended for Haider and Tamara to receive their letters and have a chance to act on them. If Tamara wasn’t in Tavrezh with Haider, she’d be in the Khevsurian summer palace of Tamtra. I’d only been there once, and I thought it was the better part of two thousand miles away. Even a swift zahhak would need at least three days to make such a journey, and probably four was more likely, assuming the animal wasn’t fighting a headwind. Then she would need time to prepare, and to return. I was cutting it close. There would certainly not be time to compose any further messages. This was my one chance at freeing myself from Karim and saving Zindh.

I had a date, but I needed a plan. I had to find some way of getting Karim and his father away from the palace in Kadiro, allowing Arjun and Sunil to assault it, without the possibility that my sisters and I might be held as hostages. There was only one way to get Karim away from Kadiro, and it would require Haider’s help. If he didn’t answer my call, then all would be lost. But how could I convince a man I hadn’t seen since I was eleven years old to come for me in my time of need, to potentially start a war on my behalf?

I picked up the pen and began to write. To His Royal Highness, Prince Haider of Safavia, Lord of Artavila, Victor at Vendigar, First Captain of the Armies of the Faithful, and the Elder Brother of my heart: Greetings.

“Safavia?” Sanghar asked, his eyes widening slightly.

“Mm-hmm,” I murmured, but my mind was focused on the letter. In it, I told Haider of my plight, of the arranged marriage to my rapist, of the abuse I had suffered at his hands, of the way my father had abandoned me to my fate. I told him too of the brother-sister festival, a ritual tradition in Daryastan where girls tied amulets to their brothers’ wrists, binding them together, the amulet protecting the brother in return for the brother’s promise to protect his sister in her time of need. And I reminded him of the amulet I had tied around his wrist seven years before, when I had lived at the Safavian court while my father fought a bitterly contested civil war. I begged him, if he felt any affection for me at all, to make a diversionary attack on the fortress of Ahura on the night of the next full moon to draw off Karim and his zahhaks so that I might win my freedom. I signed it Your little sister, Razia Khanum, Princess of Nizam.

“Do you think he’ll come?” Sanghar asked me as I set the letter aside to dry and prepared to draft the next missive.

I shrugged. “You’re a man. What would you do if a princess from your childhood sent such a letter to you?”

“I think I’d attack that fortress, your highness,” he replied, with a bemused grin creasing his face.

The next letter was to My beloved elder sister, Princess Tamara of Khevsuria. I explained my situation, in much the same terms as I had to Haider, and I begged her to come with all haste to Kadiro on the day after the brother-sister festival.

“You want my messengers flying all the way to Khevsuria?” Sanghar asked in disbelief. “I don’t even think they know how to get there.”

“So send him to Tavrezh first with the other messenger,” I suggested. “Someone there will be able to direct him to Tamtra. Or one of Prince Haider’s men might deliver the message himself.”

I let Sanghar chew that over while I composed the most important message of all. To the prince of my heart, Arjun, I wrote, holding back tears that were threatening at the corners of my eyes, I have arranged for Prince Haider to attack Ahura on the night of the next full moon to draw off Karim’s zahhaks. The next morning, I expect he will be gone. That night, your men must be ready to attack the harbor fortresses of Kadiro, and to take the city itself. Your zahhaks must be prepared for battle. Everything depends on it. With all my love, Razia.

The last letter was to Sunil Kalani. I told him simply to arrive the night after the full moon with his army and his zahhaks