A Kinder Poison

On the fifth night of the month of Shaban, Ilia surrendered her time in the comforting embrace of sleep for the glittering city of Shahme lying beyond her window. The moon hung low and full in a crimson-ringed sky, silhouetting the frail wings of birds as they flocked to rush against the growing darkness of nightfall when she began preparing for her journey to the city.

It wasn’t that it was far – she had to only pay a few jez for a skiff to make the crossing, but she always found herself battling an urge to pack half her inventory and drain her small purse to take Bekhne with her. To the city proper where storefronts saw a steadier flow of owners than customers. To where a gap in the wall had once snugly fit her grandmother’s apothecary.

Quaint, murky, veiled. Perfect for appointments with the Shifaqit of the Western Empire.

Bekhne stirred where she slept before the fireplace, her inky fur soaking the warmth of candlelight. Her bushy tail swished against two wooden bowls. One empty, and the other filled to the brim with fresh water. Ilia muttered a curse under her breath. She would have to make a trip to the butcher to buy meat and bones.

Ilia’s mind wandered as she filled a hessian bag with vials of honey-coloured liquids and herbs wrapped in thin parchment, broken pieces of charcoal and foul-smelling vinegar. When the items were sorted into the tight space, she secured the bag with a piece of red wool. She had inherited the habit from her grandmother.

Red wool to ward off the eyes of demons feasting on what we bring forth.

Ilia knew what her predecessor had brought forth. Pain and suffering. Dismay and death.

The death was why her grandfather had sold the apothecary that had been skinned down to its beams and columns and cleared of malevolent entities and the sort.

No evil spirits had resided there. Her grandmother – as disinterested and vile as any wicked entity – had been the sole reason the shop flourished. The legacy of her Shifaqit family took root in her, and she exploited it at the cost of her sanity.

As Ilia turned the rusted key in the lock, she stole a glance at Bekhne. A truth settled warmly over her bones.

She’d starve to death before she let her hound go hungry.

~

The fabric of her gold-and-maroon fustan rubbed against her skin brutally. Ilia managed to restrain her hands from launching at her wrists just as the Zayeem made his appearance.

In an ensemble as white as the first fall of snow, the Zayeem radiated that which he stood for – vitality, peace, and might. His silk trail was embroidered with gold and silver, a trail of yellow diamonds glittering in a pattern that resembled a twining spine.

Ilia had been frequenting his private court for a year. And yet, she never grew accustomed to the extravagance of Shahmean nobility. She assumed that the Zayeem’s interpretation of the Holy Law exempted him from the restrictions placed upon men to not adorn themselves with silk and gold.

She blinked away the wariness that clouded her eyes at her mother’s warning. Men will observe no restraints while manipulating the Divine Order. Shame and humility are forfeited in the face of power.

His strikingly green eyes trailed over the thick curtain draped to conceal a corner of the room – where Ilia sat with the remaining women who frequented his court. None of them had presented themselves today.

Through the horizontal slit in the curtain filled over with a net material, the Zayeem greeted her in the tempered voice he reserved for women.

“I see that Lady Ilia has graced us with her presence today.” His entourage looked indifferent as they settled on plush cushions lining the heavily curtained walls. “The journey here wasn’t harsh on you, I hope.”

He knew that she lived on isle Jamera, where her family had built a humble home from the money they earned by selling fish and providing labor.

That livelihood had been interrupted when her father died, leaving behind five sheltered daughters and a distraught wife. Their mother had never been a kind creature. But she grew exceedingly irritable and loathsome in the months leading up to her death.

The only memory Ilia had of her was the way her face sparked with joy whenever she returned from her monthly visit to the city to a table set with food her elder sisters had prepared. Another was the way her face had contorted with anger whenever Hena asked her about what sort of lives they could create for themselves beyond the isle. Beyond the city.

“The world will eat you all alive,” Mother spat. “Even your bones will be ashes on the wind.”

Ilia tucked away those parts of her mother and faced the man before her, who had been paying her fairly enough for her skill that she could fathom leaving the isle.

“The journey was kind.” A lie. She had run into a crowd at every corner she turned. “The others must be partaking in the festivities,” Ilia gestured to the empty cushions on her left.

“It is a good thing. Such an occasion is not often upon us,” The mother-of-pearl studded in his turban glinted in bright torchlight. The crowd gathered beneath the balcony they occupied seemed to thrum at his words. He chuckled, “It seems that you have been the charm of luck we were lacking all along.”

She doubted that.

It was true that cousins hounded the prince of Shahme, yapped and drooled at the crown as the royal crib remained empty, year after year for four decades. Ilia remained fairly certain that the problem lay with the prince rather than the many wives he married and divorced. She didn’t let her observations escape her tongue. Especially when the Zayeem sought her out as a replacement for the previous court physician.

Her work revolved around formulating simple concoctions for all that ailed the royal family – headaches, insomnia, a failing liver, diseased lungs, sickening heart – and creating poisons that would leave a person paralysed from the waist down, uneasy and sick until they coughed up blood, watered their veins.

When the Zayeem handed her pouches full of gold at the beginning of each month, a part of her withered away knowing that there was likely no good cause for which her poisons could be administered. No justification for the misery they caused. She caused.

But she had to get away. Leave the city and the Western Empire to find Hena and Shazi in a city that slept by daylight and awoke when night fell. Reina and Sahar had charmed men from well-earning families into asking for their hands. Lived in disguise as kind, gentle creatures in the Middle Empire when their mother’s soiled blood had made them leave their sisters to fend for themselves.

“I only supplied the princess with herbs that would help her conceive. Nothing out of practice. I pray that the new prince leads a long and healthy life.” Ilia placed her hand over her heart. She would tend to the child’s every stomach ache and cold if it added weight to her pocket.

The Zayeem’s face twisted with amusement as he said, “Don’t they all?”

Ilia barely heard his words over the outcry that sounded from the grand hall. People were whispering, some yelled. They all circled a woman dressed in the finery of a princess.

Her tall, lean figure hid something in her arms from view while her cry echoed through the hall, hushing the crowd. The prince had been preparing to make an entrance; Ilia could tell from the way his trail remained unclipped and dragged behind him, a retinue of gold-armored soldiers clearing the haphazard assembly as he advanced towards his wife.

Ilia strained her ears and as the crowd parted for the prince, she saw a bundle of emerald-and-red limply flaying in the livid princess’s arms through the latticework framing the Zayeem’s private balcony.

The crowd gasped – some outrightly wailed – as the prince held his child’s lifeless body, still laden with golden bangles, a silver circlet cresting his tiny forehead. The child had turned blue, like he’d been left out during a hailstorm.

With Shahme’s weather mirroring a desert’s, the likelihood remained that the child had either been smothered in his sleep or…

Cold, primal terror washed through her as she turned to face the Zayeem. The man grinned in the face of the dismay that permeated from the royal audience, the wild rage that thundered off the prince as he demanded who had laid a hand on the child. With the heir-apparent dead, Shahme would again face uncertainty, but the Zayeem only looked towards a cluster of royals who peered upwards at him. Visiting princes with smug smiles.

He was behind her in the blink of an eye, tearing away a curtain between the lattices that veiled the balcony, face turning somber. “Behold! A Shifaqit in our very court, working as a disguised healer.” The Zayeem’s grip burned as he yanked Ilia’s hand, hauling her up. “Demon solicitors. What cause does she need to kill an innocent child? To ruin our prince’s rule?”

Ilia hadn’t seen the prince before. His face was set in fury, wrinkled and aging, as the Zayeem continued, “I ask our prince to put this killer to trial at once! End her reign and be done with the treachery of poisoners.”

His words weighed over her bones as if a sentence had already been delivered. It came from the prince a moment later, his eyes boring into Ilia’s from a distance, noting the similarity between her and her forerunner. She didn’t know if he’d known her grandmother or her mother, any women of her family. If he had, she wouldn’t be walking away from this.

“Beheading at dawn,” The prince rasped, returning the child’s body to a sobbing princess.

Before the Zayeem’s guards could drag her away, before shackles dug into her hands and feet, Ilia’s mind acted on its own. She faintly remembered the qufid she’d packed within a slit in her bag that was sprawled inches from her foot.

One drop in tea can put to sleep. Her grandmother’s voice whispered in her memory. Four can kill.

Ilia didn’t give herself time to think as she swept beneath the Zayeem’s feet and tore the vial from its pocket.

Smash the very bottle, and it diffuses into the air.

His fingers dug into her shoulders, nails tearing through cloth, and she drew a breath, breaking the vial on her knee. Purple liquid gave way to an effervescent smoke.

Saccharine and burning.

~

They circled her isle. Desecrated it with their very presence.

Ilia had run home the second the smoke had downed the entire balcony. Now, her grandmother’s voice bore into her skull, whipping away instructions and recipes she somehow remembered from her childhood.

This was what her mother had warned her about. Why Shifaqits had chosen to keep their practice separate from the court. Men, in their pursuit of power and glory, were brutal. Unforgivable.

The Zayeem would never be questioned for killing a child. He wouldn’t be questioned for manipulating the Divine Order to fit his will. As long as his kind reigned – as long as her kind unknowingly fed his power – he would flourish.

Ilia palmed the heirloom knife her Shifaqit ancestors had left for her. Adorned with silver belladonna and a gleaming peridot hilt. Tip perfectly curved to break into vials.

Evil or good. She silently made her decision.

Bekhne sniffed at the doorway, at the good rulers that lingered beyond, a growl ripping from her throat.

With a trusty hellhound to rely on and poisons to kill with, The old Shifaqit poem rippled through Ilia as she threw the door open, your power will remain yours to wield.

No matter the cost, her power would remain hers to wield.