Saladin Ahmed - Throne of the Crescent Moon

The boy had the same face-shape as the Khalif. The Heir. Little Sammari akh-Jabbari akh-Khaddari sat cross-legged on a cushion in the center of the room, a huge illuminated book open before him. His mild expression was replaced with shock as he seemed to suddenly notice the mad racket filling the palace. Adoulla guessed that there had been a silencing spell cast on the brass door. So much money and magic wasted on sheltering these fools from unpleasantness .

“You—You are—You are him ,” the boy stammered with a bit more grace than his father had. “The Falcon Prince!”

“INDEED I AM, O TYRANT-IN-TRAINING!” the Prince boomed, advancing with his sword still drawn on the timid-seeming boy, who was practically bowled over by the sound. “I am the Falcon Prince, and my wrath is terrible! I have come to—”

“You are my hero,” the boy said quietly, brushing a strand of long black hair from his face.

“I warn, you, spawn of a—eh?” Pharaad Az Hammaz blinked, his bombast dropping away. It was the first time Adoulla had seen the thief look unsure of himself. “What did you say?”

The boy looked ashamed that he had spoken, but he repeated himself. “I said ‘you are my hero.’ ” The Heir looked at Adoulla, but only seemed to half-see him. An alarm bell clanged again.

It was quite a thing, Adoulla thought, to see the loudmouthed Falcon Prince speechless. It only lasted for a moment, though. The Prince turned and closed the brass door behind them, cutting off the sounds of chaos. With an effortless strength he dragged a heavy ebonwood couch over to bar the door.

“Hero?” The Prince asked at last.

“Yes!” the Heir said, closing his book and growing more excited. The Thousand Tales of the Pirate Pasha , Adoulla noted. Probably the most expensive edition of the cheap, tawdry book that had ever been scribed. The Heir stood up. “Yes! A hero like those in the books! Feeding the poor. Vanquishing villains with a sword and a smile. My advisors say there are no such men, but I know better. Almighty God willing, someday I will do the same!”

Adoulla thought that, if the Prince had been a pious man, he would have dropped to his knees right there and thanked Beneficent God for this bit of kind fate.

As it was, the master thief smiled from ear to ear and clapped a big hand on the boy’s shoulder. “Well! It would appear my spies don’t know everything about what goes on in the palace after all. You are certainly a better fruit than the rotten tree you fell from, boy. Not nearly the insufferable, power mad little shit I expected you to be.”

The Heir smiled the smile of a child that had never been allowed to be naughty. “You don’t call me Young Defender! I like that. Do you know that even my playmates called me that when I was a little child?”

“When you were a little child?” Adoulla sputtered. “You are— ”

The Prince cut him off. “Well, you don’t call me Pretender or Madman. We shall get on splendidly, boy!”

The Heir’s glowing smile slipped. “But, uh, what is going on here, O Prince? Do you mean to kill me? Have you killed my father already?” To his credit, the boy did not sound frightened.

Pharaad Az Hammaz gave the boy a long look. “I will not lie to you, child. I am here to seize the Throne of the Crescent Moon. It holds grand magics locked within its marble, magics with which I can help the good people of Dhamsawaat. And I mean to seize the palace, too. There are sick people who need the medicines kept here. Starving people that might feast on the palace granaries.”

The boy smiled sadly. “When I speak of such things to my tutors they say it is the will of Almighty God that some have and some have not. And that I should not admire you because you are not a prince at all, but a murderer and a bringer-of-terror.”

Pharaad Az Hammaz took a deep breath, and then his voice took on a booming tenor again. “ I am a murderer? And what of your father, who dares call himself ‘Defender,’ but has others do the fighting and bleeding and killing and dying for him? Beggars and street-widows starve to death while your father’s grainhouses are bursting, but that is the ‘will of God,’ eh? Cartmen and porters waste away from fevers that your father’s physicians could cure! But I am the violent one! The bringer of terror! I have felt both hunger and the sword, my young friend! I would rather die of the sword. It is kinder. Faster. I’ve killed men, yes, but with my own hands, looking them in the eye. Your father, though, is the weak and lazy sort of killer. The kind who pretends he is not a killer. Is that what you wish to become?”

“No,” the boy said, strong and clear as one of the alarm-bells that was still ringing away outside the room. “But what of my father, O Prince? What of me?”

“Your father has the blood of many men and women on his hands, Sammari akh-Jabbari akh-Khaddari. But if you aid me in this, I will let you and him go peacefully into exile, perhaps to—”

“No,” the boy interrupted with an air of easy command that belied his bookish appearance. “If you want my help with this, O Prince, you must kill my father. I have sworn an oath before God that I would see him dead.”

Adoulla watched the Prince gape at the boy and didn’t doubt that he was gaping also.

“I… but… Why…?” Pharaad Az Hammaz stammered.

“You are wrong about my father’s laziness in killing, O Prince. Perhaps you have heard that my mother, God shelter her soul, died from a fever. She did not. I watched my father strangle her because he thought he had seen her make sugar-eyes at one of his aides. When I tried to stop him, he beat me. He said I would understand when I grew older. This was five years ago, before he became the Khalif. All I have come to understand in that time is that it is my sacred duty to see him slain.”

Behind them, the couch blocking the door creaked and began to split as someone tried to force their way in. The familiar bloodlust lit Pharaad Az Hammaz’s eyes. His saber was at the ready.

This boy’s storybook notions will fly out the window if he sees the Prince slaughter his protectors before his eyes. Adoulla put up a hand to the Prince. “Please. There is another way here—if, Young Defender, you will follow my lead.” The Prince considered him and seemed to understand. The Heir said nothing.

The door behind them burst open in a shower of ebonwood splinters, and three armed guardsmen flew into the room.

“Young Defender!” the foremost of them shouted, his body starting to bow before his mind recalled the circumstances. “Who are these men? Is that…? Almighty God, stand back, Young Defender! We’ll save you from this thug!”

Adoulla stepped forward. “Are you men mad? If this were truly Pharaad Az Hammaz, do you think the Young Defender would still be alive? Would we be here chatting? We are agents of the Defender of Virtue, assigned to protect the Young Defender in a time like this, and disguised to sow confusion in the Defender’s enemies!”

The man looked skeptical, but he and his men did not advance. “Who are you, old man? What is your name? Why have I never—?”

The Heir’s voice took on a powerful tone of command. “You have never seen these men because you are a mere guardsman and not privy to the Defender of Virtue’s plans! Our father has assigned these two to protect me until the real thief has been found and killed! Half of your order has betrayed Us—indeed these two men tried to slay Us,” the Heir said, gesturing to the corpses of the two door-guards the Prince had dispatched. “Go, now, and do your duty to Us! Now!” Perhaps he is not so soft after all .