The Healer's Warrior (13 page)

 
Qadir is no worse than me and I am no better than him. I have never touched opium but he has never taken up a sword. He hurts no one, while I drag everyone into my misery. It is a shame that I can’t even tell you, father, what my baths are for. You’ve never had the capacity to empathize. It’s useless to explain myself. You’ve never cared to know anything about me.

“And your visits to that black whore on the Coast are cause for concern.”

 Tareq’s gaze sliced away from the window to meet the King’s eyes.  All at once, a thousand thoughts crashed together in Tareq’s mind and fell into a heap, leaving silence. What remained was the impulse to make certain the King never spoke again. Tareq started for the bed.

A hand suddenly gripped his forearm. “Prince Tareq?” called a gentle voice. Distracted, Tareq glanced down into
Saidah’s
cherubic face framed by a white headscarf, but he was still moving toward the bed. She pressed her fingers more firmly into his arm. “Would you like a glass of water, Prince Tareq?”
Saidah’s
large gray eyes pleaded him. Tareq blinked, slowly emerging from the violent fixation. “Prince Tareq, is there anything I can get you?”

Tareq finally shook his head. “No,
Saidah
. I’m fine.”

“Are you sure?”

Tareq nodded. “Yes.” Though it enraged Tareq to hear the King describe Jem’ya that way and to find out that the King had someone spying on him when he went to the Coast, at least the King did not know—or was pretending not to know—that  Jem’ya was in the palace.

Saidah
nodded. The King glared at her as she scurried backward to her post in the corner of the room. She swallowed and lowered her eyes.

The King coughed again. “I’m not too worried about the black girl, as long as she remains a secret so the situation does not become fodder for the public. I’m sure you have no plans to marry such a thing. After my unfortunate ordeal with your mother, I know that you have learned the lesson of marrying the right woman, no? I saw to it, did I not?” The King chuckled weakly at Tareq’s venomous expression. “After all these years you still protect
Mariza
?”

“Until the day I die,” Tareq affirmed. 

The King smirked. “I hope you protect the memory of me just as naively.”

Tareq looked away and gazed out the arched window again.

“The princesses of
Qamud
have been vying for your favor since you were a teenage boy. They are very beautiful and either one would make an acceptable queen.”

Tareq thought of the buxom brunette fraternal twins. The two were totally self-centered, loose, and uninteresting. Qadir had already slept with one of them, but Tareq always forgot which one. Qadir probably didn’t remember either.

“Though the people of Samhia would be more trusting of you if you had a wife, I believe a wife would only be a distraction. I advise you to be familiar with the reigns of this kingdom before you consider taming a young bride. I see a lot of myself in you, Tareq.”

Tareq cringed.

“I think you will work hard to maintain Samhia as the great empire that I’ve created. Samhia reached no farther than this capital when I inherited it. It destroys me that you don’t have nearly the ambition that I have, but a beggar cannot be discriminatory. You and Qadir are what I’ve been given.” He gave a raspy sigh of dissatisfaction. The sigh triggered another fit of coughs. “Go,” the King croaked out between gasps.
Saidah
ran to the withering King’s aid.

Tareq exited the stifling room. He took a deep, refreshing breath once he was out in the hall. As he headed for his private library, he considered the King’s insults.  His father couldn’t speak longer than a minute without making sure to demean someone. The way that the man had spoken of Jem’ya had made something snap inside of Tareq. For years, Tareq had controlled his hatred for the King. Tareq was like an archer eyeing a target, his arm straining to hold his drawn bowstring steady, waiting for the right time to release the arrow. It wasn’t easy to keep that bow drawn. Without Qadir, Bahja and the memory of his mother, Tareq would have assassinated the King by now.

When the King spoke of Jem’ya, Tareq almost let the arrow fly. Jem’ya had urged Tareq many times to let go of his anger, to put down the bow, but to forgive the King was to betray his mother and his brother. Tareq felt a twinge in his stomach as he realized that for Jem’ya, forgiving him was to betray her brother, her family and her people.

 Tareq pulled a set of keys from his pocket and unlocked the door to his study. He locked the door behind him. The table, water bowl, and oils were already set up. He removed all his clothes except for his black undershorts and stood leaning against the massage table, waiting for Bahja to bring Jem’ya to the room. Tareq chuckled as he thought of his father’s words. The King thought marrying a
Qamud
princess was wise. Those girls were spoiled brats. Their interests went no further than jewels, clothes and using their royal status to defy common decency. Jem’ya, on the other hand, would be a perfect wife and queen. She was a woman, not a girl. She held her head high but never looked down her nose at anyone, and she wasn’t at all materialistic. She would be a beautiful bride.  Tareq was pleased by a vision of Jem’ya in rich, regal, glittering fabrics and adorned with dozens of gold wedding necklaces, bangles and rings, and an ornate gold headpiece. 

Tareq heard the lock turn in the library door. Let in by Bahja, Jem’ya walked into the room, her face and figure shrouded by a black
burqa
. She removed it and placed it on the hook on the wall. The white cotton dress she wore underneath took Tareq’s breath away. It was a simple long white dress that delicately outlined her curves, yet somehow the extravagant wedding garb he’d envisioned could not compare to it. Tareq bowed deeply before her. He lost his balance on the way back up, stumbling to the left a little. He chuckled at himself and smiled at her. Jem’ya’s expression remained cold.  

The only reason Jem’ya had agreed to a session was to leave the dim confines of the cellar.  At least there was sunlight in the library. She saw Tareq’s handsome smile and wanted to smash his perfect white teeth in. The empathy she’d felt for him during the last session was long gone. She didn’t feel any tingles in her hands when she looked over his body.  All she felt was a growing irritation from being in his presence.

Tareq lie down on the table and Jem’ya began to pass her hands over his thighs, his back, his shoulders and neck. She waited for something, a feeling, a vision. The seconds ticked by. She felt nothing but the hatred beginning to boil anew inside of her. God was not intervening in this session. Her fingers curled. She dug her nails into his back and slashed them across his skin, leaving five thin bloody lines.

Tareq hissed. “Ah! What was that for?!” He flipped over on the massage table and sat up. He reached his hand over his shoulder to feel at the scratches but they were too far down. He arched his back in discomfort as the wounds began to sting.

She shuffled backward toward the door. “When will you let me go from this place? I don’t belong here!”

“I…I need to talk to you.”

“You want my company so you hold me hostage in a cellar? You’re absolutely sick! Why don’t you just admit that you wish I was dead?”

“Jem’ya, I don’t!” Nausea quaked Tareq’s stomach.

“You wish I would disappear, because you know I will never cease damning your name. I am the witness you want quieted, but who a shred of morality stops you from murdering. Instead you break my spirit so that I won’t speak again. You keep me isolated from everyone and everything that I love, to break my spirit and silence me!”

Tareq swallowed. “No.”

“Yes you are, Tareq!”

“No,” he repeated, quietly. He and Jem’ya sat in silence, Tareq studying the floor and Jem’ya watching Tareq. His shoulders were slumped. The tendons in his hands slid across his knuckles and his biceps twitched as he gripped the table’s edge again and again. His lips pouted slightly. A furrow was set between his brows. He glanced up at her from beneath his thick black lashes.  “I’m not social like my brother Qadir is. I’m not an open book.”

Jem’ya stared blankly at him, listening.

“I don’t share my thoughts or emotions very easily, if at all. It’s not uncommon for me to go an entire day and speak only a few words. But then I began to go to the Coast to see you.” Tareq lifted his face. His gaze was more direct. “In the span of a year I felt myself loosening.
Speaking.
Trusting.”

 Jem’ya recalled his steady transformation from a distrusting, stone-faced patient of few words, into a silly, bright and flirtatious young man who danced with her and would surprise her with gifts. Many times she’d cried, wishing he had not changed at all. Then she never would have been afflicted with a yearning for him.

“I could smile with you. You are the only person besides Qadir and Bahja that I would call my friend. Jem’ya…I know what it’s like to lose someone you love.” He stared at her with watery eyes. Jem’ya swallowed.  “My father was on a leisure trip, in the region of
Tusci
, on that peninsula north across the sea, when he met my mother,
Mariza
. He saw her beauty and fell for her immediately. My father always gets what he wants. She was from a very poor family, so it was easy for him to persuade her into marriage. To gain a better life, my mother returned with him to Samhia. She tried to love him. She gave him two sons, but she still did not grow to love him. It wasn’t her fault. My father is an impossible man.

“She grew so lonely in this palace. She had Qadir and me, but that wasn’t enough. She…She eventually took a lover, a servant who shoveled coal in the palace furnaces. The King found out.” Tareq paused to take some controlled breaths. His chest was burning and his head was pounding. Tears clouded his vision. “The servant disappeared. Rumor has it that the King killed him by his own hand and threw the body into a furnace.” He paused, swallowed. “My mother received a public execution. He made us watch. My brother and I had to watch.”

Jem’ya clamped a hand over her mouth as her eyes filled with tears.

Tareq ducked his head as tears began to stream down his face. “I remember her long black hair. It was her glory. She let it grow so long that it almost swept the floor when she walked.” Tareq wiped the tears from his mouth and chin with the back of his hand. “I remember her hair…” Tareq broke into a sob, gasping a few sharp breaths, but he managed to reign it back in. “I remember how the executioner lifted her hair out of the noose. It took forever. My mother stood silent and brave on the platform before the entire kingdom.” Tareq raised his arm and reenacted how inch after inch of
Mariza’s
silky black hair passed over the hangman’s arm. His arm dropped into his lap. He held Jem’ya’s sympathetic gaze. “I couldn’t speak for months. I had so much rage and despair inside. I felt trapped and controlled. We were never allowed to mourn, no, the King didn’t even let us have a funeral for her.

“So, as a teenager, I went into battle hoping to die. It was unbearable living under the King’s constant scrutiny.  Somehow, war gave me a certain release, an escape from my thoughts of ending my life. I gave no thought as to whether I was fighting the good fight. I rationalized battle as a means to an end, to one day rule this kingdom. I had no excuse. I’ve already sworn never to go to battle again unless I’m protecting my family. War was unfortunately one of the few things I’d found that took the edge off the pain inside. It destroys me, Jem’ya, to think that I have caused you anywhere near the amount of pain my father’s cruelty has caused me. The thought of you hating me as much as I hated my father for what he did…I can’t bear it. I can’t let you out of my sight until I know you do not hate me. That’s why I’ve kept you here.”

Jem’ya closed her eyes and inhaled deeply. “I don’t hate you. If I hated you, I would not be crying now for your loss,” she explained to him as well as to herself.

“But do you forgive me?”

“Did you ever forgive your father?”

“No,” he admitted.  

“Then you understand well how much you are asking of me.”

Tareq nodded and sighed. “I just want you to smile at me again. I want you to laugh like you did at the Coast when I washed up on the shore tangled in seaweed.” He gave her a sad smile. “I want you to be happy. But will you ever feel happiness again after what I’ve done?”