Chapter 9: Six | چھ

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The garden's rustling shrubbery and whistling petals in the wind surrounded the shehzadi like a metal band would encircle its crowning jewel.

The subtle noise complemented the silence Sultan Arzam Hyderi left in his wake.

Zartasha was sitting in the centre of the rosy garden, if she was impoverished she may have even made the mistake of sitting on the ground like a peasant at that moment, but the Malka-to-be was instead perched on the cold marble ledge attached to the water fountain.

Her head was bent downwards and the Fahim heir was staring at the floor, thinking and thinking and, oh, she could not stop thinking. Her conversation with the Sultan was not something she expected. And it was not anything she needed as of now either.

Adding to the list of things she didn't need were the shahi council's elders rushing to the courtyard's mehal entrance with Nusrat in tow.

Zartasha rolled her eyes and stood up, then she bristled past the quartet before any of them could ask her useless questions and waste her time. She knew they were worried (to some extent) but one simply cannot bring themselves to cater to the feelings of those they don't deem worthy enough to matter.

They were all a nuisance if anything. And now she had another thorn in her back to worry about in the form of a greedy Kalthuran ruler.

Breezing through the mehal's hallways of sandstone on her way to rain hell on Sherqul's military head, Hashim, Zartasha was still in constant thought of the Sultan.

He had the power, the sway, and the respect that royalty truly deserved. He had all that Zartasha had ever wanted as a little girl. But the soon-to-be Malka was aware she would have to be twice as cruel to be taken half as seriously in this dunya that seemed to be biased against women from the start.

She had always been envious of Arzam, even though her knowledge of him was limited. It was learnt only through the tales of terror that were woven about him and whispered by the less fortunate.

Anyone who crossed his path was less fortunate in her opinion and now she would consider herself one of them, but not because she was scared. It was never fear of another that affected the shehzadi. It was her anger. Before her interaction with him, she was vaguely jealous of a tyrant's rule and admired his twisted hukmarani. Now, Zartasha was seething because she would have to guard Sherqul like a loyal dog before she could lay claim to its throne as the queen.

What she didn't know needed the most guarding was her cold heart.

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"Allahu Akbar," The Imam's loud takbeer resonated beyond the courtyard of Gulzaan's largest public mosque. The interior of the mosque was plain. The threaded carpets had a simple design; their thin patterns tapering perpendicularly to meet in the middle, guiding one towards the qibla. It was a modest and calm place of worship. At least that was what the council told the Gulzaani people when they wondered why their money wasn't enough to decorate their devotion and polish their prayers.

Noman would never admit to having used the funds for elevating the shahi prayer chamber's grandiosity instead. Even now, he was looking at the ground. In fact, all of the men had their heads bowed as they were praying. It was a solemn evening. Thirty of Sherqul's royal guards were being prayed for. It was their janazah.

The women of the mehal including the soldiers' family members were mourning behind closed doors and inside confined rooms. The shehzadi, too, was sitting in her chambers with the wooden window shutters flipped open so that the Imam's resounding voice would drift up from the concrete edge where the mehal and mosque met.

Kalthura had struck again. And this time they had struck lightning.

A storm was brewing inside of Zartasha. She was staring at her mirror, her eyes of tempered coal were sighting herself but the soon-to-be Malka's mind was too deep in thought to grasp her reflection lined by the tarnished gold trim.

Vain anger was bubbling at Arzam's words.

The last bits of their infuriating exchange graced no ears other than the duo's own. And later she knew why; her guards had been bleeding rivers of surkh on the other side of the shahi garden's ivory fence. It was their loyalty to royalty that became their end.

The shehzadi wasn't daft, she knew Kalthura would come for Sherqul soon. The Sultan's hungry hands would never stop reaching for keys to foreign kingdoms, for a stranger's gold, for any broken pieces of the sun he could find on earth. All that was exorbitant was wanted by him.

And now he put a price on her too.

Upon hearing the third takbeer, Zartasha jolted up from her stool and summoned her maids in to assist with her vanity.

Her garments were shaded the richest of green. The material of the Malka-to-be's lehenga was dotted with bronze zardozi and beadwork, the blouse was enveloped in banarsi motifs. Her neck was littered in a golden choker of rectangular emeralds surrounded by a floral diamond pattern. Zartasha's maang tikka and jhumkian matched the rest of her ornamented self in colour as well as in design.

Decorated and determined, she felt the fire fuel her body. And so the shehzadi called out, ready to venture to a kingdom built on the blood of the miserable and victories of the violent, "Get my palanquin ready, and tell the guards to gear for a lengthy... endeavour."

With jasmine flowers braided into her hair, silk slithered onto her skin, and gold dangling from her ears, the shehzadi of Sherqul was ready to play the Sultan's game.

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Spiced cloves and saffron perfumed the air in the darkened dining room. The weekly feast was prepared to luxurious extremes because Arzam wouldn't have it any other way as it was his way of honouring Friday and the day's holy blessings.

The Jummah prayer jamaat had returned from Qalmazar's divine masjid and now the Sultan was seated across the table from his highest-ranked warriors. He paid them no mind since none of them were permitted to converse with one another anyway and it wasn't as if they would dare utter a word to their master either but even his self-regarding selfishness recognized that sometimes he needed a few puppets to dine with. It was his sick sense of companionship coming out to play.

Draped in a fine cloak of velvet, dipped in the deep greens of his kurta, Sultan Arzam Hyderi was chewing his first morsel of rumali roti when the room's glittering gemstone gates creaked ajar as his messenger waddled forward to inform him that unfamiliar visitors were in their city. And that they were spotted approaching the mehal.

The ruler of Kalthura was routinely solving the matter by dryly authorizing their death when he realized something and needed it confirmed.

"What colour were they wearing?"

The messenger, Waqar, was baffled as to how that related to their current conversation but he had long ago schooled himself to cease his train of thought and immediately do as the Sultan said so the frail man answered, "It's reported that the palanquin and frontal troop sighted seemed both a combination of scarlet and white in colour, Hukum."

Arzam smiled a knowing grin, then stood up from his illustrious chair of roaring metal to make his way towards a wide window he had carved in his minaret of granite stone.

It was placed in a position where one had clear visibility of any army advances even if they were at a distance of a hundred kilometres. The Sultan's success was simple, he had the resources to rule and this was one of his favourites.

When he viewed what he was waiting for, Sultan Arzam Hyderi ordered down to his guards stationed at the mehal's imposing entrance, "Welcome them in."

Then he looked up to the sky and chuckled in a softer voice, the syllables of his words melting together from the warmth in his tone, "What a woman, she brought her own doli."

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I personally enjoyed writing this chapter quite a lot and I am excited for the things that are going to come next but I need you all to give me your thoughts!! What did you like the most?

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