Chapter Twenty-Five: Sakina

If any of the riders, like Osmund, had been expecting the village to resemble the rubble they’d passed on the way there, they were soon proven wrong.

It occurred to him that Kaliany might’ve outgrown its label of “village” a couple generations ago.  Moreso than on his exile to Şebyan (when he’d been too depressed and numb to pay attention), the brand-new sights were overwhelming. It was all he could do just to passively take them in.

Though it lay on the crest of a mountainous path, the land up here plateaued into flat stretches into which the people had built their homes and businesses. The stony streets felt wide and public. The eaves on every building curved outward and overlapped one another, layer upon wooden layer, set with dangling lanterns and decorative chimes. Osmund’s enraptured gaze traveled from the architecture, to the unfamiliar signage, to the—oh. Right.

Awkwardly, Osmund ogled back at the local inhabitants, who could only watch as a massive company of mounted Meskato soldiers came riding through their gates. The children looked on in simple amazement; the adults with something sharper, more cautious and blade’s edge-thin. Osmund had never been looked at in this particular way before…except when he’d been riding alongside his father the king, he realized with a dour twist. It was the way people watched you when they believed themselves at your mercy, and didn’t trust your capacity for it.

In the center of town—a open paved area shaded by an ancient maple tree—people had gathered on the fringes to watch their approach from the safety of their thresholds. Cemil dismounted.

Two older men in opulent Meskato dress drew from the crowd to meet him. In both appearance and bearing, they stood out among the crowd of Anshan. “Şehzade Cemil,” one man greeted. “Welcome. We heard you were coming. Your brother sends his regards. Please excuse what passes for civilization here.”

Cemil offered them glancing politeness. “I’d like to speak to the matriarch,” he said.

A middle-aged lady (for a lady was what she was) swept forward, dignified and unassailable. (Lala Muharrem adjusted his glasses and peered at her with obvious interest.) Osmund was just close enough to hear the sounds of the words that passed between them. A language that Cemil had inherited from his mother, if Osmund wasn’t mistaken: the Anshan tongue.

It was eerily quiet in this enclave of a town, except for that unknowable conversation, and the quiet shuffles and snorts of the horses. The air was tense. The lady appeared to be standing her ground against Cemil. Perhaps the Anshan didn’t want to accept outside help. Osmund kept twisting his head anxiously for something to focus on. That’s when he saw her.

He couldn’t say at first what drew him to notice this woman, except that she was standing shock-still in the middle of the open square—like a single blooming flower on a well-trodden road—and that she was quite possibly one of the loveliest maidens Osmund had ever seen. She was full-figured and draped loosely in a simple linen dress, and her black curls hung to her shoulders. Though the Anshan weren’t monolithic in appearance, this woman stood apart. It was as though she’d stepped directly out of another scene—another place, another street—and somehow ended up transported here.

The woman, Osmund realized, was staring at Cemil. This was understandable—he was very handsome, after all—but she was seeing him like one might an apparition. She stepped closer, movements trancelike. Her lips hung open. Her eyes, even from this distance, were wide and filled with emotion.

She knows him, Osmund thought.

Cemil’s head was lowered as he debated with the town representative, but all at once his body reacted, as if on some level it registered her presence. He looked up. Osmund knew at once it was definitely too much to hope for that they were relatives.

The Meskato prince said a name. It wasn’t the sort of name Osmund would have associated with this lovely person. All at once, the two of them started towards each other. Osmund watched helplessly as if he, too, were part of this dizzying reunion. It was a novel come to life, impossible to look away from.

“Wh-who is she?” he stammered as the lovely woman and Cemil embraced each other, then immediately bowed apart, like that much contact all at once was simply too much for mere humans to bear. He saw that the unflappable Nienos, too, was stunned, his jaw hanging open comedically.

“You remember person I call Al-Katib?” the orc said, in a tone of voice that said he was mentally making apologies to his wife. “Well. Look a little different from last time I see.”

The riders from Şebyan made use of the rows of public stables waiting for them, which were of nice, sturdy construction, with those same layered roofs that were so pleasing to the eye. Looking at them, it was hard to believe this was a town currently besieged by gryphons. Since they’d arrived, Osmund had only seen a few buildings with visible damage. He prayed mightily all the same that Banu and her fellow horses would be safe.

Cemil ordered the party to try and eat and rest while he assessed the situation. (By “assessing the situation”, it was clear he meant that he would be talking with her.) To Osmund’s shock, the Meskato prince called him over before he could melt into the crowd with the others, which meant he had to walk on his strange new legs over to where those two unearthly beautiful people were waiting for him, side by side, like a god and goddess.

“This is Osmund, a recent addition to my house, and a confidant of mine,” Cemil was saying in Meskato. The lovely woman (Al-Katiba?), whose big and not-at-all-sad eyes were now focused intently on him, took Osmund’s hand.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you.” Her voice had an interesting lilt. “Please call me Sakina. I, too, am a friend of our prince.”

Osmund stammered out a “likewise”. Of all the things he’d thought to expect from Cemil’s long-lost former lover, that she would actually be a woman had not even crossed his mind. He was beginning to doubt his own memory: he was sure everyone had said she’d be a man. Somehow he felt it would be incredibly rude to ask, and ridiculous besides. Anyone who looked at her could tell she was anything but male!

Cemil cleared his throat, which Osmund had begun to realize was something like a nervous tic. And so, it stood to reason that the şehzade…was nervous. Am I here for emotional support? Osmund realized with a surprised jolt. It was some explanation, at least.

Sakina continued to regard Osmund evenly. So much for emotional support; he too felt incapacitated by her attention. “What’s your story? What’s brought you to the empire?” she asked, as if the answer was of great importance. He’d barely said anything at all, but apparently she’d heard his accent and knew he was a foreigner.

“I—” Osmund began, fretfully.

“He comes from Valcrest,” Cemil cut in, perhaps attempting to spare him. But Sakina hadn’t looked away.

“I was asking you, Osmund.”

“I’m really no one,” he demurred, eager to have that firmly established so that she and Cemil both could move on to more pressing matters. It was overwhelming to be beneath her eye. “Cemil—ah, th-that is, Şehzade Cemil, he kindly offered me work. And now I’m. Here?”

Sakina looked at Cemil with a faintly amused expression. “He calls you ‘şehzade’,” she remarked. “How impersonal.”

“…Sakina,” Cemil said in a vexed tone, and the name was strange on his lips, like he was still learning the shape of it. “Leave him be.”

The lovely woman turned to Osmund again. Much like Nuray, Osmund realized, she didn’t seem like she was teasing him to be cruel. “No one is no one,” she said. “If you’re here by Cemil’s side, it means he trusts you.”

The Tolmishman just nodded. He really had no other response to give. The bracelet on his wrist felt like it was burning him, and he swallowed down his shame.

Sakina turned to Cemil. For the first time, she seemed to waver. Perhaps this was the beginning of whatever they’d been desperately holding at bay. “I knew you would come,” she said quietly. “Thank you.”

Cemil didn’t reply at first. He nodded. Once, then again. Then, he said, “Where is the nest?”

“Cemil. There’s no need to rush into things.”

“We have no intention of rushing anything.” He sounded defensive, almost childlike. “I want to gather information. It makes sense to begin at once, before tragedy has a chance to strike again.”

“You should rest. Eat. Like your soldiers.”

“Don’t concern yourself.”

“With what? With you?” Sakina clearly wasn’t going to back down. “If my empire’s only decent prince gets killed fighting gryphons, that’s very much my concern!”

Cemil wore a very small frown, but the lines around his mouth were deepening the longer they argued. “I can handle gryphons.”

“You don’t even know what these people want. I didn’t write to you asking you to slaughter these creatures. I was hoping your Lala Muharrem, at least, would be able to tell you my real meaning!”

Her voice had slightly altered. She paused, as if to her collect herself.

“The Anshan of Kaliany have lived beside the gryphons since they settled here,” she continued, this time more steadily. “What they want is for someone to stop the attacks. Without killing them.”