“Divorce? Surely not! You have made her Sheyqa of Tza’ab Rih!”
“A task at which she excels. But she would be just as happy returning to her tent, and her family, and the ways of the Shagara.”
Allim set down his cup. “So if this marriage is to occur, Zaqir must come to live in Tza’ab Rih.” He actually managed to sound reluctant.
“Yes. And his children would be called al-Ma’aliq—without the al-Ammarizzad.”
Allim’s lips quirked in amusement, and it was Acuyib’s honest truth that came from his lips as he said, “He would not mind. He loathed our late unlamented grandmother even more than I did. Ayia, when I return home, I will tell my mother all this—and Zaqir, too. I think they will agree. The Sheyqa desires this marriage.”
Alessid nodded. He knew that Sayyida had in fact told Allim not to return without a firm commitment: The sons of Azzad’s agents in Rimmal Madar were now working for Alessid.
“Aqq Alessid, you have not asked what kind of man Zaqir is, or whether he would suit Ra’abi.” Allim’s eyes had narrowed slightly, but there was a gleam of humor in them—as if he knew very well that Alessid already possessed more, and more intimate, information about his brother Zaqir than did their own mother.
Alessid pretended to consider. “She will not be shy about stating her views. If he believes talking is important in a woman, he is either extremely wise or an absolute idiot. If the former, Ra’abi would admire him. If the latter—” He grinned suddenly. “—she would most likely slay him.”
“Ah. I begin to wish I was not myself married.”
Alessid smiled. “More qawah?”
“Would that we marry off the other girls so easily—and so exaltedly,” Alessid told his wife that evening.
Mirzah made no answer. She had put Mairid to bed and now sat on a couch upholstered in sky-blue silk, a basket of mending at her feet and one of Jemilha’s tunics in her lap. Alessid watched her needle skim in and out of the soft green fabric, taking almost invisible stitches with the speed of long practice.
Perhaps Sayyida had pretended to be a sweet, gentle, useless woman who preferred to sit, and sew, and ignore the larger world. Mirzah would never have done so, not even to ensure her own survival. Shagara women did not pretend meek deference. Earlier, Mirzah had described the arrival of the forty Tallib women whose turn it was to guest in the palace and her plans for their stay. Each tribe was invited to send their most important women for a month in spring or autumn, when the weather was most pleasant and it was easiest to travel. The visits were Mirzah’s idea, as were the small gatherings at which the women of Hazganni met and talked with the women of the tribes—and found that despite differences in their everyday lives they had much in common. Mirzah’s next project would be to take groups out to a special encampment the Azwadh had volunteered to raise near the city, so that women who lived in houses could see how their sisters lived in tents.
The forging of a united country was not accomplished solely through the fellowship of men in war. Eventually there would be hundreds of marriages among tribes and townsfolk, and by the time the grandchildren were born, the people of Tza’ab Rih would think of themselves as one people, not many.
He watched Mirzah’s needle glide through Jemilha’s tunic, and he knew he had not only a wife but a true Sheyqa.
Still . . .
“Why don’t you have the servants do that?”
Her shoulders, covered by a white silk robe and draped in a flame-colored scarf, lifted in a shrug. She kept on with her sewing.
“For nearly two years you have been Sheyqa, and yet you do your own mending. Mirzah, my wife, not only are there servants to do it for you, but it truly need not be done at all. Jemilha and all the girls can have as many new clothes as they wish when their old ones wear out.”
“This is her favorite. I can hardly get her to wear anything else. And it’s not worn out. The fabric is perfectly good. She merely tore a hole in it, climbing a tree.”
Since coming to live at the palace, none of the girls could be kept out of the trees. Alessid understood. He’d spent his childhood leading his little brothers up every tree in Sihabbah, much to their mother’s anxiety. Jemilha, though, had a special reason for risking scrapes and bruises: She wanted the best possible view of everything, so she could draw its likeness. From the first moment pen and ink were set before her, she had scorned making letters for the more complex delights of making pictures.
“She could climb a hundred trees and tear a hundred holes in a hundred tunics, and—”
“That she may do,” Mirzah interrupted, her fierceness startling him. “You may call me Sheyqa of Tza’ab Rih, and we may live in this echoing great cavern with a hundred people waiting on us hand and foot—but if I want to mend my daughter’s favorite clothes myself with my own sovereign hands, then by Acuyib I will!”
“You miss your own tent,” he said.
Another shrug, and another silence, and another series of fine stitches.
“I understand, Mirzah.” He was not overly fond of living in a palace, either, except for what it represented. And he had spent much time, effort, and money changing what it represented. Workers had spent half a year gutting it of Sheyqir Za’aid’s atrocities. Most were merely ugly: tapestries of garish and improbable flowers, dreadful furniture with not an inch left uncarved. Some were truly ridiculous: the Sheyqir’s own crimson porcelain commode, which had small braziers on either side so the royal member would not be chilled and a cushiony velvet seat so that the royal rump would not be chafed. A few of Za’aid’s decorations were appallingly obscene: Alessid didn’t like to think about the lewd paintings in the bedchamber. The seaside estate had been even worse. Mirzah had ordered the disgusting playground of the al-Ammarizzad emptied from cellars to roof tiles, and given it to her brother Fadhil to be turned into a dawa’an sheymma staffed with Shagara healers. For this alone, Tza’ab Rih praised their Sheyqa’s name.
“I do understand,” he repeated, and she looked up from sewing long enough to give him a skeptical frown. “Come, leave that. I have something to show you.”
“I’m not finished.”
“Finish tomorrow. Jemilha can live for a day without her favorite tunic, and climb trees wearing something else. Come.”
He led her through the family’s quarters, down a flight of stairs, and along a stone corridor to a large double door. The wood was carved with an intricate tree that disguised the juncture. On the left panel was a lion; on the right, a griffin. Both beasts wore crowns.
He saw that she comprehended the symbols at once. The lion that was his own name. the griffin that had become his personal icon, and the tree of life that was the Shagara.
“These will be your rooms,” he told her. “I had hoped to have them ready for your birthday, to surprise you—but I think tonight you need to see them.”
“My rooms now are perfectly adequate.”
“Mirzah, don’t be so stubborn!” He opened the doors and heard her catch her breath. All the gaudy, tasteless al-Ammarizzad ornamentation had been removed. The entry hall was a soothing square of green tile floor and white walls and four rounded archways, with an intricacy of gilded plaster-work molding that spelled out excerpts from The Lessons of Acuyib dealing with family joys.
“To the right are your reception chambers,” Alessid told his wife. “To the left, your private rooms. And straight ahead—”
He guided her toward the far portal. Beyond a carved folding screen was an indoor garden, but without plants. Instead, artisans had created a cool, inviting haven of rich color and gentle sound. From a central fountain water chirruped into a shallow square pool tiled in a whirl of blues. The raised edge was green, as were the floors and the walls as high as Alessid’s knees; a winding maze of gleaming trellises rose ten feet high, dappled with flowers. Above this the tiles were blue again, darker and darker as they rose to the ceiling: a deep sapphire dome misted with tiny silver stars. From the dome’s apex depended delicate silver hazziri on nearly invisible chains that chimed counterpoint to the fountain. An arching alcove in the north wall contained a carpet, a real one, of blue and green and rose, matching pillows, and a small recessed shelf for a lamp and books.