"Princess Aliya!"
Panic edged Smora's words as my aged nursemaid called me from the other side of my door. I opened: her gaze wild as the last big sandstorm, her nose wrinkled beyond her many years.
Then the smell of burning papyrus hit my nose. No need to wait for an explanation. My silks brushed against the cool stone of the palace corridors as I ran to the palace library. It had been desecrated. Papyrus scrolls and vellum codices, now stacked as firewood. Replaced in their niches with taxidermized animal displays. Glass beads now stared blankly where vibrant eyes had once been, lifeless mirrors. The pitiful things had their essence replaced with sawdust.
And there was the biggest animal of them all: my younger brother, Kareem. He threw another priceless scroll onto the brazier by the window with a smirk. "Ah, Sister. Have you come to see the redecoration in process? I would have preferred that you wait and see my new hunting trophy room when it was done. Not all the beasts have even been stuffed yet."
What sacrilege. "First imprisoning Elias and now this? Grandfather would have YOU behind bars for what you're doing."
Smora had followed. "Run and go get the Captain of the Guard," I barked.
He leered triumphantly. "Well, Grandfather isn't here now is he? And what's more I asked our dearest, wisest father, and he gave me permission."
"Those scrolls. They were Elias' life's work. He was our Grand Vizier, the man who taught us mathematics, music, architecture, history, and statecraft. The consolidated wisdom of generations. They should still be here to educate the generations that come long after we're dust."
He shook his head in false pity. "He had you fooled, silly girl. Those writings would have people believe that truth lies outside the wisdom of their King. The old man disrespected his superior. Intolerable! No servant can be allowed to elevate himself above the King's household."
"He was helping you to correct your grain tax calculation, Brother." I retorted. "He was not being disrespectful. He didn't want you to be embarrassed if your work was released. I was there, remember."
He stamped his foot. "Still defending that irrelevant old man? How tedious of you!" He sighed and shook his head downwards. "But if you must. Isn't the tax rate whatever we say it is? The calculation wasn't important, just his attitude. Numbers are just tools of the gentry. They must never be elevated above royal intuition."
I wanted to scream! Numbers are the truthful language of reality: the accounting of a harvest, the strength of a beam. They're only an inconvenience to those who would build a kingdom on fantasy. To the people of our city, numbers are life and death. But screaming would gain me nothing. I took a deep breath, closed my eyes, and consciously tried to relax the muscles in my shoulders, just as Elias had taught me. Control the breath, control the self.
"That's fine," I said carefully. "Let's go see the King. I want to hear from my own ears that this is what he wants."
"I'm only too happy to oblige, dearest Sister." He gave me a mock bow. "I'll lead the way." He waltzed towards the throne room, a conqueror leading a procession of one.
The Captain and Smora caught us just as I walked through the doorway. "Have all these," I whispered to the Captain, motioning to the scrolls and volumes, "taken to my room." Then I turned to Smora. "Follow me. We're going to see the King." Elderly as my father was, she was ancient enough to have been his nursemaid too in her youth. "He might be more patient and reasonable with you there." Smora hung behind, she knew my father better than I did.
"Ah, Captain," Kareem spoke with rigid posture, "shall we continue our fencing lessons this afternoon?"
"Of course your Highness." The Captain bowed deeply, avoiding meeting his gaze. "It would be my honor." His jaw was a hard line, the muscle there a tiny, wiggling bird pushing to escape his skin. His voice, a flawless monotone, betrayed nothing. The man well aware that my brother was harmless physically, but if his words or actions were wrongly interpreted...
The throne room wasn't empty. Father squinted at the large map of the city behind his throne. Our entrance had made him lose his place. His finger traced from a spot well above the marketplace to the Dawn Gate. He wasn't seeing the city as it was now, he was seeing it as it had been decades ago, before his first wife died.
He was with the foreman of the Builder's Guild, gesturing at the map with wavering hands. The foreman's head dipped in a slow, strained agreement. My older brother Crown Prince Akram was meticulously scrutinizing his fingernails from the divan off to the side. I remember a different boy before mother died.
Father said to the foreman: "...Demolish it completely, I want no sign of it when the monument goes up."
"Demolition?" I interjected, studying the golden crown weighing down father's gray head. The weight of the gaudy thing craned his neck forward. How the lines across his features had deepened since mother's death! I was drawn back to the Desert Starsuckle flowers that adorned the crown in bas relief, a my mother's favorite flower. "Look, little one," she told me, with voice as warm as the sun, "when life gets too heavy, we just need to look around. Starsuckle flowers bloom in the desert, growing in even the tiniest cracks in the hardest stone. You too can find a way." At five, when she died, I'd barely gotten to know her.
"Yes, my daughter, I'm getting rid of that filthy bathhouse. The one between the marketplace and the Dawn Gate. It obstructs the view from my window from where your mother and I used to watch the sunrise."
"What an excellent, idea, Father!" Kareem bounced on the balls of his feet. "It's not only unsightly, but with those odors, it can't be good for anyone's health."
"No," I blurted out. "The bathhouse keeps the common people clean. The latrines keep the sewage out of the streets."
The King spoke: "Silence. Appearance matters more than common discomforts."
At the east entrance, the Captain of the Guard returned to his post. Being such a reliable man, he would have seen to it that the library materials had already been moved.
I just couldn't let this go. There were only two public bathhouses in the whole city. "The fever is already loose in the poorer parts of the city. It will spread. More fever. More deaths."
Kareem chimed in: "Losing some vermin from slums sounds like side benefit. Besides," He looked back at our father with tone oily as his brother's hair. "Besides, isn't the sight of royal grandeur the best medicine for any ailment?"
Father brightened and gave a little clap of his hands. "Yes. Absolutely!"
Another objection rose to my lips but he saw and stopped me with a sharp glare. "Silence, daughter. No more. I mean it."
I risked a glance back at the Captain. His expression iron as his sword. He'd sworn an oath to protect the Royal Family and the people of our city. He didn't see my brother, as a Prince. Just a rabid dog that he wasn't allowed to put down.
To punctuate his victory, Kareem threw his arms out in a theatrical bow, and knocked a goblet of wine off the table in the process. The crimson liquid crashed right onto the starsuckle design of the rug.
A reflexive gasp escaped me at the damage to mother's carpet, but Smora's reflex was born of a lifetime of service. Unable to catch the goblet before it hit the floor, she immediately stooped her ancient frame, knelt down, and began cleaning.
Rage erupted within me as I stared at my brother. He had the grace to flush, yet, even as he did so, I realized that showing anger was a mistake. You don't corner a serpent. He'll always find a way to strike back.
Father had also gasped at the damage to his wife's rug and was looking at his careless son the same way I was. I allowed hope to flicker, but that just made the situation more dangerous.
"Father?" Kareem said, suddenly devoid of emotion. "Is it not true that a servant's job is to anticipate our needs?"
The King assented warily. What kind of trick was he going to pull?
He continued, logic sharp as broken glass, "Then reaction after the fact represents failure, correct?"
The King nodded again, much more slowly. The trap was visible, even to him.
"Good." he said, his blank expression twisting back into a malicious grin. "I suggest twenty lashes for failing to remove the precarious wine and thereby damaging this beautiful carpet commissioned by the late Queen. It will set an example for the rest of the royal staff about what our standards are."
My jaw went slack. He'd done it again. Even to his own father's nursemaid. Twisted his own clumsiness into a weapon against the woman who had raised all three of us.
I turned to Smora. She was still kneeling, her back bowed in resignation. Her knuckles were white where she fiercely gripped the cleaning cloth. I reached out, my hand hovering over her thin, trembling shoulder, wanting to pull her up, to shield her. "Smora," I whispered uselessly. Twenty lashes would certainly kill her. She knew that too, but she didn't stop scrubbing with trembling white knuckles.
A languorous interjection came from the divan. "Twenty lashes does seem a bit much for someone who raised all of us..." My younger brother's smile tightened into a sneer as he leered at Akram.
"Very well, Kareem. A single stroke." The King flicked his wrist as if shooing away a fly. "No more about this."
"Well, Father," he basked triumphantly. "That brings us back for our reason for being here. Princess Aliya and I came here because we just wanted to make sure that you were ok with... repurposing the library."
The King directed his attention at me. "Yes. Your brother requested my blessing on cleaning it out and using it to house his trophies. I agreed."
He must have seen the utter defeat on my face. I couldn't hide it. No matter how hard I tried.
Something flared in Father's weathered features. Regret? But then he straightened, and I saw someone who'd grown more certain with each passing year that he needed no counsel, no books. "We can't be sentimental about these things, my daughter." His voice became soft, patronizing. "There's no point in ruminating on the dead words of a traitorous old man. We must always look to the future." He looked at his youngest son and his eye twinkled with pride. He finished his thought: "Forget the past. We'd be foolish not to be focused on the future of the Royal House. That's all that matters."
It was all the conversation I could stomach and it was all Father was in the mood for. I curtsied stiffly to him and walked out. As we left the throne room, I saw Crown Prince Akram, my older brother. For a brief moment, as he watched Father, his placid expression tightened, his jaw set. Then his eyes met mine, and the pleasant indifference slid back into place. He selected a honey-drenched fig to put his mouth as he combed his fair locks and hummed softly.
Kareem's lip curled as he took in the sight. His inspection started at his older brother's glossy black hair, all the way down to his glistening white sandals.
"One must always be ready," Akram said with a shrug, "You never know when a lovely and nubile visitor will arrive from an exotic land."
My younger brother's view was that, as a man of action, charm, and smooth words, he was the much worthier heir. All I could see was a vicious viper and a preening peacock, both fatally blind to the duties of their station. Watching my brothers together, the sons my father had waited so desperately for during those childless years with his first wife, I felt a stab of guilt. I was being unfair.
I walked silently, my mind churning. As we made it to the archway, it came to me, a desperate gamble. I detoured over to the Captain of the Guard. Spoke loudly so my father, Akram, Kareem, and the rest could hear. "Please have the library materials taken to the city dump and buried with all our other rubbish."
"Yes, your Highness." I could see the pain in his expression. He knew Elias as well as I did. But there was nothing he could do. "It will be done promptly as you say." He gave a sharp nod. He understood.
Kareem's eyes glinted at seeing me give the order, only seeing surrender.
The Great Heaps were mountains of refuse and filth. But out in the dryness of the Red Sand Sea, amidst the broken pottery and food that desiccated before it could finish decomposing, the precious scrolls would be ignored as nothing more than trash. Perhaps the future would value them more than the present.
Shivers crawled down my spine. Perhaps I had saved the Elias' writings, but in doing so they had been publicly repudiated. A man more noble than my flesh and blood was rotting in prison and his life's work, a gift to posterity, was treated hair scraped from a drain. Because of me.