He heard Darvesh relaying the report to Hector, and took a moment to acquaint himself with the defensive systems of the Gadiran flyer. He also did his best to dredge up any recollection of tips for avoiding enemy fire. When Petty Officer Long had flown into Tanjeer’s spaceport for the sultan’s garden gathering, he’d descended to just a few meters above the ocean and slalomed back and forth on his approach. Good enough for him, good enough for me, Sikander decided. He put the flyer into a steep dive, bleeding off altitude.
The maneuver brought him to sea level about twenty kilometers from the palace; he could clearly see its golden domes and spires above the low cliffs. Doing his best to keep up his speed while zigzagging sharply, Sikander streaked over the long, rolling swells. Navigation markers and small working boats flashed by under his wings; distantly he noted more plumes of smoke rising from Tanjeer’s business district, and streets barricaded with abandoned ground cars or heavy transports. It looks like a war zone out there.
“Where should I land?” he asked Zakur.
The Gadiran monitored various vid feeds on his dataslate. “Head for the south terrace and land on the lawn between the palace and the ocean. The palace landing pads may be under observation.”
“Understood,” Sikander replied. He kept his speed up and altitude down until the last possible moment, coming in below the level of the twenty-meter cliffs that marked the seaward edge of the palace compound. Then he killed the flyer’s speed, flaring and powering its braking thrusters as he popped up over the edge. He eased forward over the gardens and verandas, and didn’t immediately see any patch of ground that seemed especially good for a landing. Sikander settled on a narrow strip of green between two arbors and rotated the flyer sideways as he dropped down.
He managed to knock down one of the arbors with the rear fuselage of the flyer, but the vehicle settled on its struts more or less evenly. “Er, sorry,” he said to Zakur.
“Think nothing of it,” the Gadiran replied over his shoulder as he opened his hatch and scrambled out. Sikander, Darvesh, and the remaining Royal Guards followed suit.
The instant Sikander got out of the flyer, he realized the seriousness of the situation in the capital. The smell of smoke was heavy, and the sound of gunfire—the distant popping of firearms, the shrill whine of mag weapons, and the occasional muted whump! of an explosion—rolled over the palace grounds like an approaching thunderstorm. He could hear crowd noise, too, the angry roar of many people gathered together not too far away. As bad as the situation in Sidi Marouf had been a week ago, the current troubles seemed to be an order of magnitude worse. Darvesh shot him a look of warning, but said nothing. This was the sort of situation he was supposed to keep Sikander out of, after all.
Sikander and Darvesh followed the limping Captain Zakur into the palace. Inside, the marble-floored hallways echoed with the shrill crackle of voice comms and people shouting urgently. Pairs of Royal Guard sentries manned post after post within the building, looking angry and tense. Sikander glimpsed palace staff hurrying to hide various treasures, removing pictures from the walls and small statuary from display stands. Are they expecting El-Badi to be looted? he wondered. That certainly did not seem to be a good sign.
They took several quick turns, and then entered a very modern-looking command center hidden in the middle of the palace. Large vidscreens loomed on every wall; Sikander saw images of riots breaking out in Tanjeer’s downtown areas, angry crowds surging along the boulevard just outside the palace grounds, armored scout-cars advancing slowly down a deserted street. A dozen Royal Guard officers and orderlies manned the room, all of them talking at once.
This looks familiar, Sikander decided. The Aquilan consulate was fresh in his mind, but he remembered observing other protests from the security center in his father’s palace at Sangrur … when Devindar came home, after the attack. That’s what this reminds me of. The night was hot—
—and humid. Sikander sleeps little. Near dawn he grows restless, and goes down to the palace’s command center to see if there is any news of the investigation. Nawab Dayan is there, watching the vid feeds from several different cities at the same time. Dozens of dragoons and civilian police crowd the room, filling the room with a tense buzz of activity.
Somehow Nawab Dayan notes Sikander’s approach without glancing away from the displays. “How are they?” he asks.
“Mother and Gamand are both sleeping,” Sikander tells him. The danger is over—he knows they will both survive, although Vadiya North will require extensive reconstructive surgery for her ruined face, and Gamand is in for months of difficult physical rehab to regain the full use of his arm. In fact, his mother will never look quite the same again, although Sikander doesn’t know that at the time.
“The nationalists could have killed us all,” the nawab says.
Sikander’s gaze falls on a news feed showing the site of the attack. The crawl at the bottom of the screen puts the death toll at seventy-three. The sheer shock of the attack is wearing off; now that he is no longer in the middle of the carnage, he is beginning to piece together exactly what he’d seen. “Good God. Who would do such a thing?”
Sergeant Reza of the nawab’s dragoons answers Sikander. “The Sons of Palar are claiming responsibility for the attack, Nawabzada.” That is the terrorist branch of the Kashmiri Liberation Party. Most KLP members stop just short of advocating open revolution or acts of terrorism, but the radicals call for more direct action against Kashmir’s aristocratic classes and their Aquilan patrons. Sikander can guess which faction is dominant this morning.
He shifts his attention to the vid displays his father is watching. They show the nawab’s soldiers descending on nationalist agitators all across Jaipur, and the KLP taking to the streets in protest. He recognizes one scene in particular: the administration building of the university in Ganderbal. A number of soldiers surround the building; he wonders what’s going on.
“Father, you must stop this madness!” Devindar hurries into the command center, angrily gesturing at the vid feed from Ganderbal. Sikander turns in surprise: He hadn’t realized that Devindar has returned already. His brother is bandaged on the side of his face and across his left arm. Sikander starts to welcome Devindar, but Devindar ignores him and confronts their father. “No one at Ganderbal is a terrorist!”
“If no one at the university is a terrorist, how is it that three of your fellow students set upon you with knives?” Nawab Dayan replies. “And why is Professor Howell barricaded in the chancellor’s office with a bomb? The matter seems clear enough to me, Devindar.”
“Dr. Howell had nothing to do with it,” Devindar says. “You are making a mistake.”
“Parmad Howell spent six years in prison before you were born because he was convicted of terrorist acts. He’s spent the last twenty years radicalizing any students stupid enough to listen to him.” Nawab Dayan folds his thick arms like a battlement across his chest. “After today, no more. Professor Howell can explain his incitements in court.”
“You can’t criminalize dissent!” Devindar snaps. “You are acting exactly like the tyrant the KLP says you are!”
Dayan North turns away from the vid displays, his eyes flashing dangerously. “The Ganderbal police inform me that there are eight or ten students holed up in there with Howell. I wonder whether some of them are friends of yours, Devindar.”