Ilyas

It may have been Jem’s room, but that didn’t mean he had to stay in it all the time. I actually started to think fondly upon the prison cell. At least then, I had more than a few moments to myself.

Instead, Jem sat on the ledge and looked out the window at nothing. He only stepped outside the door for a moment, speaking to someone in a low voice.

Didn’t Jem have any duties to attend to? Hemi seemed to let his servant waste the day away. If we were in Nuriya, I’d have kept him occupied. Oh, who was I fooling? Had I had a few more weeks, I’d have broken my reserve, damn Mehdi to hell, and cradled my head in Jem’s lap. Then I’d finally have his attention, instead of being ignored in favour of his knees.

But we weren’t there. Very obviously. I shifted my shoulders, which ached with the lack of exercise. If we had been in Nuriya, with my room to myself, I would have been able to stretch in peace and solitude. But I refused to expose myself thus to Jem.

He’d returned my clothes, at least, and when I’d pretended to sleep hidden under the covers the night before, he had remained on the ledge. Watching me, but not taking advantage.

In fact, he acted as if my head would wind up on a pike should he turn his back for even a moment. As if somehow I was so stupid. It wasn’t that. I never would have run through that inlet if not for Jem. He’d thoroughly trapped me, before I’d even noticed. If I’d had someone like Jem at my side, then perhaps I could have slept better at night.

Being the eldest brother had given me some respite before I turned twelve. All my brothers had been too young to kill me. If they hit me too roughly in our play, I’d sit on them. I was twice their size. I could make them hurt.

But I’d known what was coming. My mother imparted the lesson of my father, and his father before that, going back all the way to the day Kalarati brought our people across the ocean to our new home on the fertile island.

The lesson said: Never trust anyone, especially not your own family.

But a day after I survived my first assassination attempt by the mother of an illegitimate brother, Mehdi came to me with an idea. He didn’t want to be prince heir, always dealing with machinations and court fripperies and assassination attempts. He’d be terrible at it, while I would be great — if only I was better at managing the trade treaties. For all that I could appreciate beautiful silk, he already knew more about the trade routes than I did. Mother had repeatedly reprimanded me for it. “He’s two years younger than you, Ilyas. Do you really want him to become king?”

I had shifted foot to foot, unable to answer Mehdi. I had no answer, not back then.

“So,” Mehdi had concluded with puffed chest and all the eloquence of a ten-year-old, “we should partner together.”

“Eww.” My lip snarled back.

“Not…” Mehdi sighed and rolled his eyes. “You have a one footpath mind. I meant, we should form a team. I’ll handle trade, while you handle the politics. Together, we’ll be the strongest king in Nuriyite history!”

A friend at my back. My tawam rohi, if he hadn’t been my brother. Even at that tender age, I’d already memorised all the tales of the tawam rohi, the ceremony and rituals beseeching Kalarati to bind two souls. Alone in my own quarters, I whispered the ritual incantations to myself, speaking in a language only Kalarati understood.

“You’ll wear the crown, of course,” Mehdi had added in my stunned silence.

I should have known it was a lie. Mehdi barely waited a week before destroying our alliance.

At age twelve and ten, we’d already been given our own quarters. Father had gifted me my first pleasure slave, who expected things of me, things that had made my throat seize up in nervousness. So I handled her with all the grace of a twelve-year-old — I ran away. Father had given me the afternoon off from shadowing him in court, and I couldn’t return to my quarters, so I roved through the corridors.

The nursery doors were open. I frowned. My younger brothers should have been in the library for lessons, and the wet nurse should have shut it for my new little brother’s nap. I crept to the door and peered in.

Past three child-sized beds, the hammock cradle was strung up at adult-height in the corner, leather tassels trailing down. Wavering on his toes to reach, Mehdi leaned over it.

“What are you doing?” I demanded.

Mehdi flashed me a grin. I shuddered, cold sliding down my spine, as if he’d sprinkled ocean water down my collar. I rushed to his side. Mehdi stepped back.

I peered into the hammock to the infant sleeping inside, bound up in his orange swaddling clothes, his head turned to the side. I sighed. Only sleeping. I’d thought myself ridiculous for considering anything else. But his swaddling clothes remained too still. I leaned my ear an inch from his tiny lips, like I’d seen the nursery maids do. I held my breath, but the only noise breaking the silence was Mehdi’s shuffling.

Our little brother, too young to even be named, was dead.

“Ilyas! What are you doing?” Mehdi yelled.

I whirled on him. Mehdi stared at me with a slacked jaw. Behind him, dressed in her white priestess dress, my mother approached. Her mouth was pressed into a grim line.

Mother had believed me when I babbled that I hadn’t touched the baby. Sometimes infants just died. They weren’t strong enough to live, she had explained.

And sometimes, their older brothers didn’t allow them to live long enough to grow strong. Sometimes, their elder brothers smothered them in their swaddling clothes. Sometimes, brothers pretended friendship to make it easier to sneak behind one’s back.

Never again, I had vowed. I would never lower my guard again. Affection was a lie, love only a means to an end. All anyone cared about was their own benefit, and if they gained more by spilling my blood, then they wouldn’t hesitate to stab me.

It was a vow I kept failing to heed. My other vow, to humiliate Mehdi at every turn, had worked out better.

Jem dropped down from the ledge. I straightened, my back leaving the wall. But he didn’t leave. He knelt gracefully beside the tick and pulled out a square wood slab.

It was below me to make a face, but I did since he’d turned his head away. But he flicked his sapphire eyes up to me. He didn’t say anything, just turned away holding a board and two small boxes.

“You know, you can leave me alone for more than a minute,” I said. “Unless it’s suddenly become summer.”

“It hasn’t.”

I resisted rolling my eyes. “Then leave.”

“I must protect you from yourself.”

I gagged. He had to protect me? From myself? I was not a child wandering onto the ice. Not again, knowing full well what would happen. I sniffed. “Fine then. Entertain me.”

“No.”

No? Just no? “But I’m bored.”

I cringed mentally. I hadn’t meant to sound so whiney. Or even a little bit. It was something Mehdi would do, and proved how little he was ready for the great affairs of state the prince heir must handle.

Jem glanced again at me, amused. His thoughts were written on his face. A bored Ilyas must be a safe Ilyas. Jem dragged the board away from the window. “Look outside then.”

“But there’s nothing to see!”

He jerked, as if my words surprised him. As if he didn’t know full well there might as well be no window at all. We had oceans in Nuriya. Better oceans, turquoise in full light, and violet for that brief time in twilight. The ocean was surrounded by spice trees and ferns and turmeric-coloured sand! And for that matter, my own quarters would be covered with brocade silks and painted glass lanterns and metal screens and gold-rimmed glass teacups. Every glimpse was a wonder in itself.

But Jem did not agree. “There’s plenty to see. There’s nothing to block the view.”

I growled in frustration. “Like what? Ocean, ocean and more ocean?”

“Yes.”

Yes, just yes. If one could be crowned king of monosyllabic and useless answers, it would be him. “You might like boring, but I’m used to better.”

Jem opened the boxes, revealing tiny round stones carved from ebony and ivory, or whatever worthless rocks the Lumians scraped up from under the ice.

I folded my arms over my chest. “I’ll hang myself if necessary to escape this boredom.”

“No, you won’t.”

“I will,” I said. “Then where will you be? A complete failure, that’s where. I’m sure your Prince Hemi is itching to lay his leather into your backside.”

The box lid snapped closed, echoing through the bare room. Finally, I’d manage to pierce his equally boring monotony.

I waited for his next move. If I pressed him hard enough, would he rush from the room to escape me? Was that the way to get one moment to myself to plot?

“There used to be birds.”

I arched a brow at him. “You think pigeons would distract me?”

“Beautiful birds,” he said. “Birds that would satisfy even you. When they swim in the moonlight, their scales flash a multitude of colours found nowhere else.”

Swim? Scales? “You mean fish.” I was trapped in a room with an idiot. “Fish is what we call the things that swim in the ocean. Even you should know that.”

He gave me an odd look, as if I was the one who didn’t know the difference between fish and birds. “Birds swim through the air.”

“They fly.”

“Like these birds, like the katara.”

There was no telling him. “So what happened? They finally realised what a wasteland this village — pardon, Lumi — is?”

“They were eaten.”

I stared at him. “Eaten?”

He shrugged.

Barbarians. They couldn’t even appreciate the finer things in life without thinking of ways to shove them in their mouths. But regardless of whether or not there had been something nice about this ice hole, it still left me in the same state I’d started in: bored. Bored, bored, bored!

I slammed my hands onto the tick, but it neither alleviated my boredom nor attracted Jem’s attention, which was rather for the best.

Instead, while I heaved my exasperation with this whole state of affairs, a snap echoed through the room. Then the sound of wood scraping against stone, then another snap. Snap, scrape, snap, scrape, snap, scrape.

Jem bent over the board. A grid had been burned into the surface, and Jem had set the ebony and ivory stones on the intersections. He snapped another black piece down and twisted the board to the other side. Then snapped a white piece, and then back.

A game, the one Jem had played on the ship, which had swam across my vision in the drug haze, the snapping and scraping drilling between my eyes. I’d managed to focus my eyes enough to catch the devastated look Jem had given the first mate upon his announcement we were due in port any moment. Nor had I missed his looks of longing and regret to the half-filled board as he gathered up his scant possessions.

I crossed the room and sat on the other side of the board. It was a two-person game, I assumed.

Jem looked up and frowned, as if he had trouble comprehending why I sat across from him. So I took a white stone and placed it onto a square.

“It’s black’s move,” Jem said.

“And when the prince heir of the Kingdom of Nuriya makes a move, it’s his move, whether others agree or not.” I crossed my arms, daring him to disagree.

Instead, he swiped the piece from the board and dropped it back into the box.

“Oi!” I took back the piece and dropped it onto the board.

“It’s not a valid move.”

I tilted my head back, crossed my arms again, and stared down at him imperiously. “Prince heirs don’t follow the rules. They make the rules.”

“It’s supposed to be on an intersection.”

I glanced down. All of Jem’s pieces were on intersections, while mine was in the centre of a square. Blast. I returned my imperious glare back to Jem, daring him to disagree.

Jem removed the piece again, and before I could replace it, snapped a black one down. He reached to move the board around, to play from white’s side, I presumed, but I was quick enough to place my piece on the grid.

He looked up at me, and I grinned down at him. He furrowed his brow. “Do you… do you want to… play with me?”