Saladin Ahmed - Throne of the Crescent Moon

He was in a very small stone room without windows or doors. The throne-dais had somehow risen into this chamber, and it filled most of the room. The Heir’s unmoving body was sprawled across the Throne of the Crescent Moon, which was spattered with the boy’s blood. Pharaad Az Hammaz was hunched over the dead Heir.

And there was blood dripping from the man’s lips.

Adoulla fell to his knees, and his joy at having dodged a dark death fled. He screamed wordlessly at the foul act he was witnessing.

The Prince looked at him, the guilt on his face as visible as the blood was. “The boy asked me to do this, Uncle. He knew he was dying.” His voice was a rasp, with none of its usual bravado. “The passing of the Cobra Throne’s powers through hand-clasping was a lie, it seems. Its feeding and healing magics were a myth. But the blood-drinking spell. The war powers. These are real. I can feel their realness coursing through me.”

Adoulla wanted to vomit. He wanted to choke the Prince then and there. But it took all of Adoulla’s strength just to rise to his feet. He bit off angry words as he did so. “He was a boy , you scheming son of a whore! A boy of not-yet-ten years!”

And, just like that, the madman’s smug mask dropped. “Do you think I don’t know that, Uncle? Do you really think my heart is not torn apart by this?”

“Better that your heart were torn apart by ghuls, than that this child should die. You are a foul man to do this, Pharaad Az Hammaz, and God will damn you for it.”

The bandit wiped blood from his mouth onto his sleeve. “Perhaps. I did not kill the boy, Uncle. But he is dead now. His father is dead. There will be a struggle for this damned-by-God slab of marble, and I will need all of the power I can muster if I am going to keep it from falling back to some overstuffed murderer who lives by drinking the blood of our city. What was I to do?” The smug smirk returned.

The Prince’s matter-of-fact manner made Adoulla furious. Without quite realizing what he was doing, Adoulla lunged at the bandit, throwing out the right hook that he’d mastered back when he was the brawniest boy on Dead Donkey Lane. The man was absorbed in his newfound power, or Adoulla would never have been able to lay a hand on him. But the punch connected with a crunch.

The master thief’s eyes flashed with hatred and his hand went to his sword. Adoulla had doomed himself.

But then a slow, sad smile spread across the Prince’s face. “I suppose I deserve that, Uncle. That and more.” Pharaad Az Hammaz winced as he touched the corner of his mouth, which now dripped with his own blood. Adoulla looked at the floor, disgusted with the Falcon Prince, disgusted with himself—disgusted with everything on God’s great earth.

“Look at me, Uncle, please,” the Prince said. He sounded different, now—like a frightened child. Adoulla looked up and locked eyes with the man.

“Even… Even without the benevolent magics I’d hoped to hold,” the thief continued, “there is a chance to begin something new here. This is why, before he died, the boy asked me to do this thing. The Khalif claimed that it was God who set his line on the throne. I now know that you spoke truly that this man Orshado was sent by the Traitorous Angel to seek the throne. But me? I am just a man, Uncle. Just a man trying to do what is right.

“When I saw Orshado stab the boy, I knew what I had to do. And thanks to a trick of the old stonework I was able to do what needed doing in private. Now the question is what will happen when I lower the throne back into place and try to wrest order from this chaos. There are still ministers who support me, and my diplomats and clerks-of-law will help me twist recognition from the other realms. There is still some small chance to avoid soaking the streets in blood. Given time, my scholars might even find ways to use the Cobra Throne’s powers to help the people. But if word of this—” he gestured at the dead Heir and faltered.

The Prince swallowed and began again. “If word of this part of things gets out, even that small chance will fly out the window. It will mean another civil war, of that we can be certain. You and I are not here together through mere happenstance, Uncle. You would call it the will of God. I will simply say ‘Great sailors sail the same seas.’ But either way, I need your help. Your silence about what you have seen.”

Do you know what happens to whores in war? Miri’s question of two days ago echoed in Adoulla’s ears. He looked at the limp form of the Heir sprawled on the Throne of the Crescent Moon. If he kept this vicious, villainous secret there was a chance—a chance only—that this could happen smoothly, without ten thousand corpses in the streets. Adoulla watched a small splotch of blood—whether the Prince’s or the Heir’s, he couldn’t say—slide magically from his kaftan. Again he remembered his God-sent dream—a befouled kaftan and a river of blood. Was it Orshado that God had been warning him of? Or was it himself?

What a damned-by-God mess . He would keep the Prince’s secret. It was wrong, and it was foul, and he didn’t doubt he would answer for it when called to join God. But it was also the only way. And it might—right here and right now—save his city, his friends, and the woman he loved. He looked up toward Beneficent God, He From Whom All Fortunes Flow, and begged silently for forgiveness.

He looked at the Prince and made his voice as hard as he could. “If you turn out to be a liar, Pharaad Az Hammaz—if you don’t do everything in your power to keep this city safe and to feed its people—there will be a price to pay. A very heavy price. Don’t think that palaces and death-magics will protect you. If you betray this city, I swear in the name of Almighty God that I will drink your blood.”

The Prince bowed solemnly to him and said nothing.

Zamia stood with her companions in the early morning sunlight, staring at the burned and broken wreck that had been the shop of Dawoud Son-of-Wajeed and Litaz Daughter-of-Likami. The stink of burnt wood and charred stone stung her sensitive nostrils, and she had to stand back farther than the others.

Litaz had finally stopped screaming. The anger in her voice now was cold but no less powerful. “The Humble Students. May God damn them all to the Lake of Flame. While we were saving this damned-by-God city from the Traitorous Angel, they were doing… they did this .”

Raseed, his arm bandaged and his face bruised from the battle, frowned at the burned-out building. “This… this is not the work of God that they have done, Auntie. I am sorry.”

“It is the work of wicked men,” the Doctor said weakly, putting one arm around Litaz’s shoulders and the other around the shoulders of her husband. Even before they had discovered this destruction, Zamia noted, the Doctor had seemed unusually subdued.

After the group’s wounds had been treated by Pharaad Az Hammaz’s healers, they had left the chaos of the Crescent Moon Palace stealthily and under escort, the quiet thanks and blessings of the Falcon Prince following them out the gates. Even Raseed had stayed silent as they left, though his eyes had been like swords leveled at the master thief.

And now there was this.

“All I can say,” the Doctor half-whispered, “is what you said to me days ago: with weeks of work your home will be restored. You will—”

Dawoud held up a long-fingered hand and silenced the Doctor. For a long time they all just stood there staring.

Hours later the five of them sat in Mohsabi’s teahouse, sipping nectar and cardamom tea, and nibbling unhappily at pastries. The teahouse owner, a well-groomed little man with a goatee, had, for a few extra coins, shooed away his other customers and left the companions alone to discuss in private the aftermath of their battle in the Palace.