This state lasted exactly as long as it took for the combined armies of Qaysh and Ibrayanza to reach Joharra. The siege and battles that ensued raped the surrounding countryside and nearly destroyed the city. But Joharra was at length retaken, and Alessid himself rode into its capital with its new Queen at his side: Za’avedra the Younger’s sister, Dabirra. Eighteen years old, mother of two sons, Dabirra was determined not to make any of the mistakes she perceived her sister had made. It was only by direct order that she was restrained from reviving an ancient custom of the Hrummans who had once ruled this land: the taking of one life in every ten as punishment for a nation’s crimes. Everyone knew who had given the command for mercy, and gratitude for Mairid’s leniency was matched by real fear of Dabirra’s wrath.
Alessid had come to Joharra with Mairid, Jefar, and three of their children. It was a pretty point of precedence, that entry into the city—Dabirra, after all, was now a Queen, but Mairid was the heir to the Empire. She let her cousin have her splendid day, following along last of all. For, as Mairid knew full well, once Dabirra and her husband and sons had passed beneath the war-shattered stone gates, all attention was on their future Empress. Alessid missed the spectacle, having ridden in front with Dabirra, but could imagine it. Beautiful Mairid, dignified gray-bearded Jefar; Rihana, sixteen and the image of her grandmother Mirzah at that age; Akkar, a scholarly fifteen and Mirzah’s favorite; and nine-year-old Qamar, gleefully certain that all this commotion was for him and him alone.
“After all,” he said to Alessid that evening, “was I not the very last one they saw? That makes me the one they waited all that while to see!” When Alessid laughed, stinging his grandson’s pride, the boy sulked. “Ayia, you just wait! When I’m bigger, I’ll make hazziri enough to show them all!”
And for the first time a chill settled on Alessid’s heart when he looked at Qamar, because for the first time he began to understand the emotion that had crushed Mirzah’s happiness.
Joharra soon settled under the iron grasp of Queen Dabirra and her husband. But she bore no more children, and her two sons were both Haddiyat. When she died young, with no female heir, Alessid consulted Mairid regarding what was to be done.
Her answer was simple: give the people of Joharra what they wanted.
Her father stared at her. She laughed lightly and leaned over his worktable to tweak his white beard.
“How often have you seen Rihana these last few years? Not often. She fell in love when we first visited, Ab’ya.”
“With a barbarian?”
“With Joharra. She will have it on any terms she can get. And I am of a mind to propose certain terms to her . . . and to Ra’amon do’Joharra. I think they will both agree.”
Had he grown stupid in his old age? He understood none of this—most especially not the love of a half-Shagara girl for the mountains and forests and river valleys of a foreign country. An idea returned to him that in the last years he had been too busy to pursue: the relationship of people and place. Rihana belonged to Joharra, it seemed, through a process Alessid could not comprehend. Had her ancestors breathed its air? Had its water soothed their thirst? Had its soil yielded food for their tables?
He realized then that although he had lived with the Shagara for many years, had married a Shagara girl, and his dearest intimates were almost exclusively Shagara, he had never felt himself one of them. He had never really felt at home in the desert. He did not belong to that land, any more than it truly belonged to him. Was there too much of his mother in him, too much of Hazganni and Sihabbah—or, grim to consider, too much of his father and Rimmal Madar?
He did not understand it. Neither did he understand why Rihana agreed at once to marry a man she had never set eyes on for the sake of a land she had desired since first setting eyes on it. An emissary was sent to Cazdeyya, and Rihana moped and fretted for months before the reply returned. As preparations proceeded for this marriage Alessid would never comprehend, his granddaughter spent most of her time taking lessons from Raffiq Murah in how to speak her future husband’s ugly language.
At seventeen years old, Qamar—who of course knew everything about everything—thought his sister a fool, and said so. His mother advised him to close his mouth and give thanks that not only had the matter been arranged to the satisfaction of all, but that Acuyib in His Wisdom had seen fit to move Ra’amon do’Joharra not only to change his name but his faith. He was as eager to return home to Joharra as Rihana was to make Joharra her home.
Alessid foresaw dreadful contention between them, despite the compromises each had willingly made for the sake of ambition. On the day Rihana departed for her new country and her new husband, he gave her a sealed letter, addressed to them both, to be opened the morning after the wedding. The contents were simple: a solemn reminder that peace and prosperity would come to Joharra not because of his name or her power but through a wise use of both. He urged the pair to let their mutual love of their land bind them to its service and recall always that their children would belong to Joharra and Tza’ab Rih in equal measure.
He did not write the words himself. In the last year or so, his hands had begun to stiffen and curl at the joints. Even lacking a single drop of Shagara blood in his veins, his fingers were as crooked as those of a rapidly aging Haddiyat. It was Qamar’s slim, supple fingers that had written the letter. The boy added a touch of artistry to the solemn words, drawing talishann at each corner of the page, familiar to all who had ever bought a Shagara charm as a wedding gift: happiness, fertility, love, fidelity.
As Qamar waited for wax to melt so the letter could be sealed, he looked at his grandfather with eyes as large and sweetly innocent as a fawn’s. Alessid knew exactly how much of this ingenuousness was a pose and how much was genuine: there was always a telltale quirk to Qamar’s mouth when he was playing at an attitude. Alessid arched his brows, and the boy grinned suddenly, knowing he’d been caught yet again by a grandfather much smarter than he.
“Ayia, very well—I’ll tell you,” Qamar said. “What I don’t understand is how Rihana’s children can be half Tza’ab and half Joharran. It’s one thing to be of two different tribes, like Challa Leyliah, or even two different countries, like you. I’m still trying to work out how Rihana can be so passionate about a place she doesn’t even belong to, but that’s another matter entirely. What I want to know is where her children’s real loyalty will lie.”
“It must be one or the other, you think?”
“Of course. I’m Tza’ab. An eighth part of me comes from Rimmal Madar, but it’s been a very long time since Grandsire Azzad left, and I’m sure that even if I went there I wouldn’t recognize any of it, or feel anything for it—not the way I did that year I lived with the Shagara.”
“Recognize?” Alessid asked. “What does that mean to you?”
“I felt at home there.” He shrugged elegant shoulders. “Maybe it was just hearing stories about it all my life, but maybe not. It just felt right, being there—as right as it does when I go to Sihabbah where your mother was born. Nothing tasted strange, the way it did when we went to Joharra.”
“Tasted—” He regarded his grandson with astonishment. “That’s it, you know. That truly is proof.”