House Davani
The men of House Davani have always occupied important positions in the empire
Kazem sat up abruptly, consciousness flooding back. In a daze he surveyed the featureless stone room in which he sat, lit only by the meager light of candles mounted in the corners. His eyes fell upon the bed where Kazra lay, chest rising and falling in uneven gasps as sweat soaked into the bandages around his torso. A ruddy stain had spread across the white fabric on Kazra’s neck.
“Brother...” Kazem murmured, taking Kazra’s hand into his own. It was cold and clammy.
Across the room a table made from cypress wood lined the far wall. During surgery it had been strewn with medical instruments. Now the table was bare except for a couple of pitchers and some goblets. Somehow this made the room gloomier.
Kazem turned his brother’s hand over, examining maroon scabs on the palm, the leftovers of scrapes sustained when Kazra had fallen from his karkadann. Kazem cursed. Kazra should never have been there. It should have been me, he thought bitterly. Not him. Not my little brother. Kazem was the eldest of his siblings, the heir to the noble House Davani. It was his responsibility to protect the members of his house. That went doubly for his siblings and parents. And yet, where had he been when his own betrothed had been taken? Standing tipsy and unarmed at the altar like a fool.
He should have set more guards near her room, and more outside the gate of the palace. There should have been archers on the battlements, spearmen at both ends of the bridge. He had been overconfident. He’d lulled himself into a false sense of security, thinking there was no way anyone would wish Ariana ill on her wedding night of all nights.
So stupid! He had done exactly what his father had always warned him not to do. He had assumed. He had acted as if he had all the information, when clearly he did not. What was the point of commanding the Shah’s armies if he wasn’t even clever enough to wield them effectively?
Kazem pressed his forehead to his brother’s hand. “I’m sorry.”
“Are you, now?”
Kazem sat up straight. He released Kazra’s hand, then stood and turned to meet cold, stormy gray eyes.
“Father,” Kazem greeted.
His father stood stiff backed and half in darkness, orange candleglow casting a sinister shadow across his gaunt features. Though the Davani head had withered some over the years, cropped black hair and beard beginning to show signs of gray and white, even still he looked ominous in the shadows and seemed no less potent of a man. He owed part of that to his physique. Considering he was in his early sixties, the man was unusually broad shouldered and lean. Perhaps all of those wartime deployments throughout Kazem’s childhood had done his father some good, after all.
“You’re wasting time,” Ashezama said.
“So you’re not here out of concern for your fallen son,” Kazem replied dryly.
“Your sarcasm is noted,” Ashezama said. When Kazem didn’t reply, he continued. “The hakim have assured me that Kazra will wake, and that he will make a full recovery.”
“You trust the word of those minor lords?” Kazem sneered.
Ashezama regarded Kazem with a scathing look. “I trust no one. No one but family. The only thing that wasting away at his bedside accomplishes, however, is you torturing yourself over what could have been, but the past cannot be changed.”
“On that we agree.”
Ashezama opened his mouth to speak, but stopped abruptly as a sudden chill filled the room. The candles flickered, one of them sputtering out entirely into wisps of white smoke that curled up from the melted wax.
“Lord Ashezama,” a dark cloaked messenger whispered from behind Kazem’s father. A greasy mist undulated out from the hallway behind him, thick and sinuous like ink as it curled around the entrance to the room. The messenger knelt and proffered a rolled, papyrus scroll emblazoned with a golden standard.
The Davani head took the scroll. “Thank you.”
The messenger nodded before gliding up and back into the fog, wraith-like, then faded into silhouette and disappeared. The fog vanished with him. A moment later warmth returned to the room. Kazem resisted the urge to shudder. He’d never liked djinn. There was something unnatural about them. He couldn’t put it into words, but somehow he knew they couldn’t be trusted. Kazem glanced at the golden ring on his father’s middle finger. A tiny ruby was woven into the metal like a drop of blood.
If Kazem’s father noticed his discomfort over the presence of a djinn, he did not indicate it. Ashezama broke the seal and unfurled the scroll. He turned toward one of the candles on the wall for better light, underlining words with his finger to guide himself as he read. After a few moments he cleared his throat, then closed the scroll.
“Is that from the Shah?” Kazem asked.
“We have work to do,” Ashezama said, scowling.
Kazem nodded. “How many warriors will the Shah give me?”
Ashezama slipped the scroll into a thin leather satchel attached beneath his belt. “You’re not going after them.”
The words slapped Kazem like a dehydrated headache. He had to force himself to unclench his jaw. “We’re not going after the crown princess?”
“You are not going,” Ashezama replied, expression unmoving, glacial.
Kazem balled his fists. “I’m the best spearman on the continent.”
“Yes, and you’ll not just go gallivanting on some personal quest, derelict of your duty. You’re the Lord Commander of the Shah’s army. What’s more, you’re a Davani.”
These words struck Kazem even harder, a second lashing atop the first. Always that phrase. You’re a Davani. Three simple words. A single phrase that encapsulated so much. Responsibility. Reputation. Like shackles weighing him down, restricting half his possible actions before he had even thought of them.
“It’s bad enough that the crown princess is now in the hands of the Scarlet Kingdom,” Ashezama continued. “I won’t have you humiliating yourself in a vengeful trailblaze across the continent because you’ve been cuckolded.”
Kazem’s eyes widened.
“You didn’t know,” Ashezama guessed.
He hadn’t. He’d known about Ariana’s doubts, but neither of them was a stranger to duty and doing things that they might prefer not to. Loathe as he was to admit it, his father was right. He was a Davani. She had known that, too, being the eldest daughter to the Shah. It was their lot in life. Kazem’s jaw tightened anew.
“That’s right,” Ashezama said. “Your betrothed ran away with Vahid of her own free will.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
Ariana was different from Kazem. Ironically she was more akin to the sort of child his father would have wanted; obedient, preoccupied with piousness and duty. She would never flee Tel Kellah over something like marriage. She knew her responsibilities.
“And now you begin to understand the gravity of the situation,” Ashezama said. “That is why you cannot chase them. We must appear strong, our Lord Commander unperturbed.”
“You’re worried about optics?!” Kazem snarled, incredulous.
“I’m worried that the crown princess is now in the hands of a Scarlet prince. Don’t you realize this means war is imminent?”
The hairs on Kazem’s arm and the back of his neck stood on end as a chill snaked across his vertebrae. A war with the Scarlet Kingdom. Could the empire survive such a conflict?
“The crown princess is in enemy hands,” Ashezama said. “We now appear vulnerable, both the Golden Empire and our house. If the Lord Commander leaves the city, we will appear even moreso.”
“You think that Gen will see this as an opportunity,” Kazem realized.
“They’ve been waiting for an opportunity like this for more than a decade. And if they ally with the Scarlets, they will be able to block imports to us and intercept our ships as we exit the Jurjun.”
Ashezama sighed loudly, all of a sudden looking more weary than he had initially led on. Only then did Kazem notice how deep the bags under his father’s eyes were. The shadows had hidden them before. Ashezama must have been up all night.
“I’ve always told the Shah that choke point will be the death of us one day,” Kazem’s father lamented. “It was a problem during the Long War and it’s a problem now. And yet still he refuses to spend the gold on securing naval outposts.”
“So what are we going to do?”
Ashezama knitted his eyebrows in consternation. “We must ensure Gen remains loyal to the empire, of course. Remind them of what will happen should they choose to rebel again.”
“Are you sending me to treat with Gen, then?”
“Were you not listening to a word I said?” Ashezama admonished. The older man stroked his beard. “I need you to remain here to help me plan. You will have your chance at vengeance when we sack Babosar.”
Kazem frowned. “You would never trust anyone outside the family to deliver this kind of message. You’ve probably already suppressed word about Ariana running away. By tomorrow you’ll have the whole city believing she was kidnapped.”
Now it was Ashezama’s turn to frown. “What’s your point?”
“Kazra is bedridden,” Kazem said. “If not me, then who could you possibly be sending?”
“Lord Ashezama,” a voice from the hallway interrupted.
Kazem whirled on the speaker, annoyed that the conversation had been interrupted a second time. In the doorway stood a man in his mid twenties with stringy muscles and a soul patch on his chin. He wore the typical red and gold dragonscale style garb inherent to warriors of Tel Kellah. Kazem recognized the man.
“Rosencrantz!” Kazem exclaimed.
The soldier’s eyes widened as he saw Kazem.
“Lord Commander,” Rosencrantz greeted with a full, two-handed salute: a fist to the heart, the other hand cupping his fist.
He seemed nervous to be around Kazem. Kazem knew him to be one of the two that Ariana had slipped past. Come to think of it, wasn’t Rosencrantz one of Ariana’s closest friends? Perhaps that explained the nerves. He could never be sure that he wasn’t suspected of aiding and abetting Ariana’s flight. Certainly there were some who might whisper about it behind the golden red soldier’s back.
Kazem, for his part, doubted that Rosencrantz had helped Ariana leave. Doing so would have entailed breaking oaths he had sworn as part of the warrior caste. It would have meant severe magical consequences, and Rosencrantz seemed unharmed except for a large welt around one of his eyes.
Ashezama turned. “What is it?”
“You have been summoned by the Shah, my lord,” Rosencrantz said.
Ashezama considered for a moment. “Very well. Thank you. You are dismissed.”
“My lord,” Rosencrantz said, bowing his head low before shrinking away into the hall.
Ashezama waited until the soldier’s echoing footsteps receded into the distance, then turned to the door. He looked back at Kazem as he made his exit.
“We’ll speak more later,” Ashezama said. Kazem was about to open his mouth to reply when his father cut him off. “To answer your question, I will indeed be sending someone else to treat with Gen. They are a necessary ally.”
“Who are you sending if not me?!” Kazem repeated.
Ashezama raised an eyebrow. “Your sister, of course. The Queen.”
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