Wind and wildfire mages.., p.19
Wind & Wildfire (Mages of the Wheel), page 19
She had to tell him. She could not keep it from him, the way his parents seemed willing to do. But first, she would help him master it. She would. Even if it broke her heart.
He made a sound that might have been a laugh or a groan. “You think I have not wanted things? That I don’t…don’t want things right now?”
“Of course,” Dilay said, though it was hard to whisper with her pulse pounding in her ears and her body burning from head to toe. “But until what you want becomes more important to you than what you hate about yourself, you will never silence your magic.” She did not know how to respond to his hesitant admittal that he wanted what she wanted. More. What could possibly be between them that would not be more painful than joyful? “You have to accept what you are, and that wishing and punishing yourself will never change it.”
“It is easy to accept yourself when you do nothing but good in the world. When you are free to choose what you want to be. I am less than powerless.” He straightened a bit, giving her room.
“You are freer than anyone to choose what you want to be,” she said. “If I can free you from this”—she paused before forcing the rest out—“promise me you will be the man you want to be. The Sultan you want to be. Not what anyone else tells you to be.” This was the chance she had wanted. To beg him to be something else. But when she had that idea they had been complete strangers. Now…could she call him a friend? “Choose to do something good in the world.”
“That is a promise I could easily lie my way through. Would you trust me to keep it?”
“I will trust that if you do not, you will know, every day of your pampered life, that a poor judge’s daughter was braver, and more determined than a prince. And did far more, with far less.”
The pale swirls of his magic grew brighter and brighter, a rising sun in his eyes, illuminating his face and hers, the space between them, swirls of white light spinning down his neck and beneath his caftan, and she could see their light trails even beneath the fabric.
Magic manifested differently for each mage, and fluxed only for the strongest, Sival. His magic was beautiful. Light from the dark, the Sabris had once been called. Because it had been the Sabris that had risen up to drive destruction mages out of Tamar. Dilay had never cared for the term, because she did not believe in the breaking of the Wheel, in the edict that any magic was inherently evil. But his light made her understand why Tamar might have once called them that.
“You are a remarkable woman,” he finally murmured. “And have already proven yourself more fearless than I ever have. Why do you want to help me?”
“Because, I like you, Omar Sabri.” She laughed, a little. Just a whisper.
He made an airy sound of surprise, his head ducking toward hers and stopping only a hair span away. Then his body pushed, a fraction closer, crushing the fabric she held between them. Fire or ice or both lit every bit of her skin, and it was all she could do not to meet him. The moment stretched, strained and excruciating. After a heartbeat more of sensibility, she gave in and blew a little stream of air across his cheek in lieu of the kiss she wanted so badly to press there.
“That does not help me,” he intoned, “evil girl.”
“Or me,” she said.
“No?” he murmured. “What would help you?”
“To know you have been practicing silencing your magic. Show me.”
The light of his magic extinguished, abruptly, leaving her completely blind in the ensuing dark. Dilay smiled in triumph. She gave the balled-up fabric she held a little shove against his belly.
“Good,” she murmured.
“If I succeed at this,” he said, his face so close his words whispered over her lips, “will you let me kiss you?”
“I would never let a student kiss me.” She thought she did an admirable job of sounding flippant when she was so close to disintegrating into a puddle at his feet.
“Mmm,” he said. “What about a prince?” Her body buzzed like she stood in the center of a lightning storm. Or a Sabri tempest. Who knew someone so quiet could raise such a storm in a person?
“Which prince?” Dilay teased. He chuckled softly. He stroked one hand down the door to her left then straightened.
“I should go.”
Stay. Her body screamed. But that was foolishness of the highest order. He did not belong in her tiny bedroom, in her tiny house, bordering the poorest parts of the city. The son of a man who would have her hanged for defying his laws. With her near-revolutionary father just on the other side of the door. They did not belong together like this, wanting each other for the most tenuous of connections. She was being a fool, and once again Seda was right.
Dilay held the fabric up between them. Omar took it. He hesitated another moment before he stepped away to wrap it around his head.
She eased her window open. It was so small, she felt terrible watching him wedge his way out of it. She hoped none of the women who sat knitting at their windows to collect gossip could see him in the dark and the drizzle.
“I will come to the University tomorrow,” he said when he had collected himself on the other side. “We can try again.” He winced and grabbed the back of his neck. “The magic, I mean.”
“Tomorrow,” Dilay said. He walked backwards a few steps, then turned and disappeared into the dark.
Eighteen
“SHALL I HAVE THE WATER mages draw a bath for you, Efendim?” Ruslan asked as they strode down the hall toward Omar’s rooms.
“No, thank you.” He was too tired, too shredded mentally, too raw to be around anyone for another moment. Ruslan sensed that, he thought, but would never fail to perform what he considered his duties.
“Food?” Ruslan reached for the doors of the rooms, glancing at Omar as he pushed them open.
“I have kept you enough,” Omar declined. Ruslan’s brows rose, and he almost smiled.
“Be careful,” he said, quietly for an earth mage, “she seems to be rubbing off on you.”
Omar grinned, easing past Ruslan into the sitting room that lay between his bedroom and his bathroom. Ruslan closed the doors behind him. Omar started to take a deep breath and stopped halfway through. His father sat on the only full chair in the room, his elbows propped on its arms, his fingers tented in front of his face. All the joy left from his time with Dilay shrank and disappeared. Something heavy pressed down on his shoulders so he thought he might go to his knees.
“Sultan.” Omar bowed, and when he straightened he clasped his hands behind his back.
“Who is rubbing off on you?” His father’s voice could boom, filling a room and demanding every bit of attention in it. But at this moment, it was quiet. Measured. And dangerous.
The only appropriate answer was silence. Fear for Dilay sealed his voice for him, turning his insides still and cold. What had he done? Who had told the Sultan? Had likely followed him when he thought he was safe, perhaps now knew Dilay. Bile seared the back of his throat and a wave of nausea made his scalp tingle. He squeezed his hands tighter at his back. He could grasp hard enough to chain himself, to silence all his feelings and protests and ideas, all his wants.
“You think I am an utter fool. That I do not know when my own son is out wandering the city like a vagrant?”
“Of course not, Efendim.”
“I indulged this pointless waste of time—this observing at the University. And now you seem to think you are free to do whatever you wish, no matter how it reflects on me and my rule.”
“Father—”
“Sultan.” He leapt to his feet. Omar ducked his head.
“Do you have any idea what you have done? Every guard and servant in the palace now knows I cannot control my own son.” His voice rose, ricocheting back at them from the walls.
“I was careful, Efendim. I disguised—”
The Sultan’s face turned purple.
“You are forbidden to leave this palace without a full contingent of guards and attendants. You will not attend the University again, you will not walk the streets again unless it is by my command, and only in your capacity as Vali Ahad. And you will never disguise yourself. You are a prince of Tamar, not some common market hawker. If you disobey me again, I will have you confined to your rooms.”
It did not matter that Mazhar was allowed all those things with nary a thought from their father. Omar was not a person. Not to his father. Not to anyone. Omar’s rising temper cooled and fell, pooling in his belly like tepid, two-day-old tea. Choose who and what he wanted to be, indeed.
“How can you confine me away from the city, the entire land I am supposed to one day rule? From its people? They do not know me, they know my clothes,” Omar said in disgust. “They fear my power. That is what you want?”
“They should fear you. A Sultan is feared and respected and from that comes obedience, and from that…love. You are weak-hearted, like your mother. And now, you have found some little diversion to entertain yourself—”
“Don’t,” Omar snapped. Fury melted the cold that held him frozen.
The Sultan raised an eyebrow, growing calm. Dread filled Omar once more. He only looked like that when he had won.
“The Viziers have presented the candidates for your marriage. You have done nothing more than embarrass yourself and whatever poor girl you have disillusioned.”
The air in the room funneled away.
“Your mother has the names, and has been looking for you all evening to discuss them before I make my decision.”
Omar bowed, because he could do nothing else, say nothing else. His father left without another word. Omar released his hands from behind his back, and shook them out, trying to banish the pins and needles of numbness. He sat on the floor, on the single step that raised the entry of his room above the sitting area, and tried to summon control.
All he summoned was Dilay. Her whispered voice, and her nearness. He could still feel the cool touch of her breath on his cheek, the ghost of the kiss he had wanted it to be. Wheel and spokes he wanted more than he should. More than he could ever have of anyone, let alone her. What a complete fool he was being. Letting this happen between them. He couldn’t have anything of her, even if he had been a normal man with restraint. And now his father might know who she is. What she was.
Omar pushed to his feet and left his room. Ruslan was gone, thankfully, so he walked in lonely silence.
Isn’t it lonely? she had asked.
He was lonely. Empty. Worthless.
He stopped in front of his mother’s door and knocked. Beste opened it, took a lingering assessment of his clothes, and said not a word as she opened the door wider. Omar moved past her into a room very much like his own sitting room, but with more pillows thrown about. And tassels. He had never understood all the tassels on everything. His mother stood half turned to look at him, as if she had been looking out the glass doors into the garden when he arrived.
“Anne,” Omar said.
She smiled sadly. “If you had told me, I could have helped you.”
“Helped me what?” he said, though he knew exactly what she meant. It didn’t feel quite as freeing to escape the palace as a grown man if he used his mother’s help. She batted away his pointless question with a flick of her fingers.
“Do you wish to see these names?” she asked. Omar crossed the room and sank onto a bench, propping his arms on his legs and hanging his head.
“Do I?” He could probably guess a few. The men his father most favored from the Council. One for each of the remaining four Houses on the Wheel. Women he knew in passing at least.
“Zehra Demir is the kindest. I think she would understand…everything…the best,” the Sultana said, as she sat on the little stool across from him. “Would you like some tea? Coffee?”
“Arak?” Beste offered in her brash way. Omar couldn’t help but smile a little, though he looked at neither of them.
“Zehra is also the most social. I cannot imagine a woman like that being content with being married to someone who…” That infernal burn at the back of his eyes began again. “Who would not—”
“I understand,” his mother said. Silence swelled for a moment before she spoke again. “Instructor Akar’s lessons…have they,” she hesitated, “have they helped you at all?”
He let out a sound that was neither laugh nor breath, a pained sound, and clutched at his head, bending deeper toward his knees, as if it would help crush the rising feeling of despair.
“I know you don’t want her to help me, Anne, but I cannot live like this,” he said. “I cannot bear it.”
He looked up reluctantly when she said nothing, and he caught sight of a tear sliding down her cheek before she stood abruptly and turned her back on him.
“Is that who you were meeting in the city?” she asked.
Omar nodded, even though she was no longer looking at him. He hadn’t meant to cause her sorrow. Wheel, he could only disappoint people, couldn’t he? His father because he was not the man he was expected to be; his mother because he tried so hard to walk in his father’s path; whatever woman he was to marry because he was no kind of husband; Dilay because he had been such a selfish, smitten fool.
“Yes,” he said. He had never lied to her. Not outright. Not after what he had seen in her mind. What his power had stolen from her that day was forever etched in his memory. The sadness, the loneliness. Her blazing love for him and Mazhar. The tenuous grip she had on her crumbling self-pride. He could not bear the deeply etched pain of others. The brutal, human truths entombed in each person’s mind.
“For lessons?” There was hope in her voice, and despair.
“Yes,” he said. “And”—he released a breath—“and I like her.”
“I see.”
“Anne,” Omar said, and his eyes and throat burned like they were on fire, “I like her so much.”
Air hissed between her teeth as she looked at Beste. He buried his face in his hands again because he could not bear the pity he knew was about to be bestowed on him.
“Tell me about her,” she said, instead.
“I can’t.” He laughed bitterly. It was locked inside him like a precious secret, feelings he could neither control nor stop, and if he spoke them out loud they would only hurt more. “And now I can’t…” The realization punched through him. How would he ever see her again? She wasn’t going to be able to help him if he couldn’t see her. “Father confined me to the palace.”
“There is nothing but pain in this,” she said, gently, but firmly. “More than you can understand.”
“I know. I did not mean for any of it to become this.”
“Then perhaps your father’s edict is for the best,” the Sultana suggested. Still her voice held that gentle tone, as if he were going to shatter apart.
“Yes, Anne,” he said, and forced neutrality into his voice, “tell me the other names.” He could mourn and rail by himself. As he always had.
She read them off, none of them a surprise, but with each he went a bit more numb. He did not know any of them well. But he knew of them. Zehra Demir, daughter of the Grand Vizier and a well-known socialite. She was kind, friendly, though he did not know if she had any particular interests beyond people. An earth mage, like her father. It could be hard, for more than the obvious difficulties. Air and earth were in opposition on the Wheel, and often butted heads.
Kadri Gur, cousin to Kudret and Sirhan Yavuz, he had met her once, at a season celebration. He remembered her as funny but judgmental. A fire mage. He could only imagine the judgment she’d level on a husband who would not touch her.
Afet Erem, daughter of the Vizier of Agriculture. He had never met her, did not think he had ever even seen her at court. Air. His head began to throb as the muscles between his shoulder blades drew tighter and tighter.
“And Lalam Kahya,” she said. Water. Omar kept his flinch mental. Lalam was beloved at court. Beautiful, smart, and lively. Behram knew her…quite well. The Second House was a sensual House. Known for its love of all things pleasurable. Omar did not think poorly of that, he just knew she would suffer at court for it. Something she did not deserve on top of being saddled with a husband who could give her nothing of what she wanted. He liked Lalam, what little he knew of her.
None of them deserved to be chained to him. To this life.
“You choose.” He stood.
“Think about it, then I will if I must,” his mother said. She handed him a stack of envelopes, each with calligraphy and wax seals that had been broken when she read them.
A prison door closing on him might have felt less soul-numbing. He nodded, and turned.
“Omar, stay,” she said. His chest tightened.
“I cannot.” When he looked at her she nodded, hiding her pity with a downturned face. He tried to smile for Beste, who had as good as raised him and Mazhar alongside their mother. But her expression was the same. Sorrow. He left.
He could not leave Dilay like this. With no explanation, no reason for disappearing. Could he send Ruslan with a message? But that would be insulting, wouldn’t it? Not only to be discarded like she had never meant anything to him, but to find out through someone else.
A letter. He could say more in a letter, explain why he couldn’t give her access to the library, like he had promised. He wouldn’t risk the gossip or his father finding out who she was, if he did not already know. And at least a letter was something she would have of him. If she even wanted it. Or maybe the letter was for him, and not her at all.
Nineteen
DILAY LOOKED DOWN AT HERSELF, kneeling on the stones in front of her home, covered in dirt from repotting the fig tree she had been trying to coax into growing for several seasons. It had produced a single fig in its life span and appeared to believe its job complete. She had employed every trick from every green thumb in the neighborhood, and nothing helped. She turned the pot one way then the other and scattered more dirt in to fill around the edges.
“Dilay?” her mother said. “Will you go to the market for me?” Her mother stood framed in the doorway to the house, her hands wound in her apron as she dried them.
