Vashti let the old woman dress her. She was limp and unmoving as the crone, the last of the serving maids, pushed thick bangles on to her wrists, oiled her hair, painted her face. She imagined herself underwater, at the bottom of a lake, watching up and seeing the world pass in a flicker of rippled moments.
“There now, dear.” The maid stepped back to admire her, and reached out to straighten the embroidered veil. “You’ll be pleased with this marriage, I warrant. Prince Rahim still has meat on his tables.”
She swam to the surface, forced herself out of her stupor. “So do we.”
“But his meat ain’t dog, is it, deary?”
There was that, Vashti thought. She rose and her bracelets clinked softly against each other, silk hissed against her skin. They were waiting for her downstairs: a crippled elder to oversee the binding and the vows, her father, and the Prince.
#
Rahim’s land was dry as her father’s. The plague had reached this far, leaving the empty fields strewn with the corpses of the karakul. Plague crows pulled fat entrails from the bloated bellies. The stench lay on the ground, thick as mist.
Vashti looked through the veils of the palanquin, over the sweating backs of the slaves and saw scrubby plants, brittle with death, and the bleached bones lining the road. Away in the distance were the towers of her new home. The setting sun stained the stones red. Already the air was turning cold, and her new husband was commanding the caravan to stop and rest for the night.
He came to her in the tent.
“It’s the first night, my love, and the first lesson is obedience.”
“I have pledged that to you,” she said as she watched the tall man pace.
“And now I would have you prove it.” He crouched down and held out his hand. In his palm was a scrap of meat, small as a jewel.
As Vashti watched, she realised that it moved still. She looked up at her husband. “What is it?”
“The heart of a nightingale. Eat this for me.”
Without a second thought, Vashti took the beating heart and swallowed it whole, so small and tender. It fluttered in her throat for an instant.
“And now you will always speak the truth,” Rahim said. He cupped her chin in one leathered hand and kissed her. Vashti let herself be kissed, and tasted blood and wine and sugar.
When dawn came, she woke in his arms; their legs twined, their hair curled together like a meeting of storms. He pulled away from her and said. “This is the first morning, wife, and the second lesson is trust.”
He bid her kneel, her back to him. The first blow felt like a cut, and Vashti screamed as her skin opened under the scourge, but the only sound that came from her mouth was the liquid trill of the nightingale’s song. She sang as she bled, and until the pain closed in like darkness around her.
She woke to the stroke of a hand down her back, the wounds sealed and numbed, each touch healing them.
“Remember to trust me always,” said the Prince, and pressed a kiss between her shoulder blades. It stung like a whip.
#
They reached his tower by midday. The sun beat the sands, hazed the air, and Vashti felt sweat burn the memories of her wounds. She shivered in the heat and laced her fingers over her flat belly.
“This way to your rooms, my love.” Rahim led her up to the highest room in the citadel, and from its windows she could see the land stretched out like a parchment, scribbled with figures. All the furniture in the room was pale ivory, old bones – magic-melded. Vashti could feel their sorrow.
“Tonight you will dine with me, that my people can meet you.” He gestured to a small woman who stood behind him. “Dress her appropriately, “ he said, and the tiny dour-faced woman nodded, and Vashti saw that her teeth were filed small and sharp like a desert-fox.
The woman hustled and bustled when Rahim left, pulling silks and cottons from the wardrobe, humming under breath as she held one against the other. Vashti watched her in silence, and then let herself be dressed. The princess moved blankly, like an overgrown doll, and the woman’s narrow fingers pinched her with their little pointed nails as she pulled the silks straight.
She was led down to a hall with fine tiles underfoot, blue and dark as the sky before a storm. The table groaned under the weight of the platters. The smell of blood was strong and Vashti could hear the bone chairs screaming in her head. The serving woman led her to her place opposite where Rahim was sprawled. Vashti sat on silk cushions and looked through her lowered lashes into the face of her husband. He grinned at her and waved his hands over the meat and wine.
“Drink,” he said. “Eat,” he said.
And because he had made her obedient, Vashti swallowed the raw meat and drank the herbed wine. Inside, she wept, and the tears froze hard as diamonds, and tore her throat. She washed them down with the bitter wine.
Around her the people of his court watched in silence as she ate their tongues.
#
Every night after her father had sold her into marriage, Vashti ate the flesh of Rahim’s people, and drank wine salted with tears. During the day she would weave with black wool, and watch out her tower windows.
It had been near a month, when the peddler-hag stopped below her window and called up to her. “What make you there, little man-eater, little dog?” and Vashti dropped the carded wool and leaned out to get a better look at the peddler.
“I’m making a robe of sorrow and death, so that I can shroud myself. It is the only way I’ll leave my love,” she said, because she could speak only truth.
“Nay, death is a coward’s choice, little dog. Think you you will fall to the plague, and crawl to your maker?” The peddler shook her head. “There are other ways to leave. My sons cheated death, and they can command the very sands, and the molecules of the air. I could tell them to free you.”
Vashti sighed. The woman was marked with the old scars of disease, and her sons would be too. Djinn-touched, the plague-survivors would eat sand, believing they had turned it to sweetmeats, drink piss they knew they’d made into wine. There was no hope from them.
“Is that so? And what would you have in exchange?” she said, to humour her.
“A marriage, little dog. My youngest son has need of a wife.” Under the sun, the woman’s eyes were amber flames.
“So be it,” Vashti said, and bid the mad-woman farewell. She picked up her abandoned carders, and brushed the wool mechanically, each stroke measuring out the day.
#
It was midnight when the eldest son came, he howled beneath her window and Vashti saw him black as a shadow under the silver moon. He said one word, and the sand sprang up, twisting and winding until it reached her window. She glanced back at her sleeping husband. He snored and muttered, turning away from her.
“Come,” said the first son, and held out his hand.
Vashti slipped on her embroidered shoes, threw her mantle of fur over her shoulders and raced down the staircase of sand. As she passed each step, the sand fell behind her.
Three more men stepped from the shadows, one of them holding a basket cage in which five rats were scrabbling. He released them and spoke, and at his word, the rats turned into fine dark horses, each saddled and bridled in red leather.
“Mount,” said the second one, and kneeled to help her onto the horse’s back.
A bellow shattered the still night, and Vashti turned to see her husband’s enraged face at the window. “How dare you,” he said. “Did I not tell you be obedient to me only? Do you not love me?” Before he could say any more, the third man stepped forward and blew through his curled fist, and silver blades screamed from his hand as he opened it. They shot forward and buried themselves in Rahim’s throat, spilling his blood on the sand below.
“Run,” said the third. “Before the blood wakes.” And even as he spoke, Vashti could see the sand and blood gathering shape, rising.
Four of the horses surged forward, leaving the last brother to fight Rahim’s blood. They sped over the desert, until they came to a lone tent far from the citadel. The peddler-hag stood outside, and she grinned when she saw them come.
“Oh, my good, good boys,” she cried as they drew close, her arms wide to welcome them. “But where is your brother?”
“He stayed to battle the Prince,” said the third son, and he bowed his head, and silver tears spilled down his cheeks.
“Do not weep,” said the hag. “His death has not yet spoken to me.” She went into the tent, and came out wearing the spotted skin of a desert cheetah, and she fell to her hands and knees. The fur swallowed her, and she took the form of the cat. She chirruped once and then sped away across the sands.
Vashti dismounted and as she did so, her horse became a black rat once more.
“Thank you,” said the second brother, whose steed had also changed back. The rat bowed, before he and his companions melted into the night.
One of the brothers gave her cold white wine to drink, and dried peaches to eat. The princess watched the moon pale and the sky lighten, until on the horizon, with the coming dawn, three figures approached. It was the hag and her youngest son, and walking on a leash of woven hemp, the sand and blood homunculus that had been Vashti’s husband. He stared at her with glittering eyes and saw nothing. Someone had dressed him in the black woollen robe that Vashti had made for her death.
“See now,” said the hag. “What a fine servant we have gained in the bargain.” The dawn light shimmered around her like flames. “What great joy this day brings to my family.” She clasped Vashti’s hands in hers and kissed both her cheeks.
“And now,” said the youngest, turning to the princess. “We must marry, as you promised.”
“But I do not love you, “ Vashti said, with the nightingale’s voice.
“Ah,” he said. “That is no matter.” He smiled and his teeth were very white and very sharp. “In the evening I will teach you obedience, and in the morning I will teach you trust, and you will eat the meat of my table and love me.”
——-
