Ma'in, the Imperial city-state along the coast of the Arabian Sea
Queen Zainab hurried to her chambers, distraught and furious at the revelation she just witnessed. Ordering all her servants out, she went to her bed to think. An overwhelming headache had consumed her and she needed to clear her mind. She could faintly hear the ruckus of the party down below and almost trembling in anger, wondered how a day that was supposed to be a celebration had turned out so badly.
Finding that her head hurt more when she was lying down, Zainab shuffled off it and tearing her trademark blue robes off, went to her window instead. Taking deep breaths of air, she worked at calming her nerves and cooling off. Zainab needed to think rationally and nothing would pan out if she didn't. In a matter of minutes she actually felt better. When there came a knock at the door, she was almost back to being in control.
"Enter."
The thin, hunched palace doctor walked in and cautiously approached the queen. He eyed the robes that were lying on the floor and bowing deeply, ventured a nervous question.
"A-are you decent, your highness?"
Zainab felt torn between laughing and throwing something at the old doctor. She settled on chuckling. The situation was just too dire for laughter.
"Have you forgotten the nights we spent rolling around like animals already? Sit down, old man, before I'm tempted to hurt you!"
The doctor nodded apologetically and quickly shuffled to a nearby cushion without looking up.
"I was told of your unfortunate treatment, are you feeling……"
"Shut up! I don't need coddling……I, I"
The doctor looked up, unsure if he had ever seen doubt in the old queen before. Perhaps she was hurt. But then her eyes changed and he realized that she wasn't. She was scared. Something he had seen maybe once or twice in the entire time he had known the tempestuous woman. This might actually be worse, he thought to himself.
"I take it you saw what happened in the grand hall?"
The doctor blinked and wondered what was the appropriate thing to say. Gossip was already running through the palace and by that night, no doubt, in the streets of Ma'in as well. It would be an embarrassing thing for the palace to deal with and something that they did not need now that the people were so unhappy. He secretly cheered for the desert dwellers that dared defy the ego driven Sultan, but he made sure no one saw him show anything but devotion to his queen. He almost felt bad for them in a way. Palace insiders like him knew right away that the queen would see to it that they never saw their beloved deserts again. As a matter of fact, they were probably dead already.
"Well??"
"Uh, yes, your highness. Most unfortunate. I am sure the captain will apprehend the intruders quickly and……"
Zainab rolled her eyes and tightened her lips.
"Those bastards will get away. Trust me, I know a fighter when I see one and that savage was no match for that imbecile of an oaf my son calls a captain."
The doctor blinked, not sure how to continue. This was a day of many firsts. He could not remember the last time the queen admitted that her opponent was stronger than her men. Then again, that was made very clear by the fight everyone had just witnessed.
"We'll catch them in the deserts, after they let their guard down and head back to their filthy people."
The queen smiled absentmindedly as she looked outside and the old doctor shuddered. He recognized that smile and it meant that whatever people she was talking about would soon be faced with a massive slaughter at the hands of her royal guard. Looking down at his curly shoes, the doctor nodded gravely. Sometimes the queen just wanted someone to measure ideas with and it was obvious she was thinking of many right now. He suddenly wished he could be somewhere else, but he knew better. Once the queen hashed out whatever ideas she had, he would go off and ignore his conscious and do nothing to stop her. It had slowly become his duty to turn the other cheek and do nothing. A few more minutes and it would be over. Just had to sit and nod in agreement a little while longer.
"I am sure he can be stopped there, your majesty. It will not be a problem for you. Umm, perhaps you would like to rejoin our guests……"
The queen slowly rose from where she was sitting by her window and walked to the doctor. The old man stopped talking and looked at her fearfully. She had a very far away look over her features and it was unsettling to say the least.
"There is something else. That savage is not just any desert dweller."
The queen finally reached the doctor and slowly lowered herself to the floor by the cushion he was sitting on. She rested her head right by his thigh and spoke in a softer tone. The doctor watched her in absolute shock, not sure what to do or what was expected. She hadn't been that close to touching him in years, and now there she was, obviously needing to be reassured or maybe even comforted.
"W-what do you mean, highness?"
Zainab smiled and took a long minute to answer the question.
"It's him. My brother's son."
The old doctor looked at the queen in absolute horror. Mouth agape, he stood up and walked away. Zainab put her head in her hands and looked at him with a strange amusement. The situation might be dire, but the old man was as comic as ever.
"I don't understand. What do you mean? It, it couldn't be. That was so long ago and……"
Not sure what else to make of it, the doctor crumbled down to the floor, deflated and close to tears. The queen watched him carefully, amused by his reaction but her headache returning once again.
"Don't be so dramatic. It was always a possibility with all those…… camel traders walking around the desert that at least one would see and rescue him. I can't say I'm very shocked. We always knew he could have made it."
The doctor looked up at the queen with heavy eyes. Zainab marveled at the fact that he looked ten years older than when he walked in. She snorted and questioned what she ever saw in him to begin with. Ah yes, no backbone. She could never resist a man she could break that easily. It was strange in a way, both of them speaking in hushed tones, while sitting on the floor, like a couple of kids conspiring to pull a prank. The desire to laugh wanted to overtake her again, but Zainab knew that if she did, it would all end in tears, and she could never, ever be that weak. She waited for the urge to pass, rubbing her temple slightly with two fingers.
"Are you certain? How could you be so sure?"
"Oh I'm very sure. The savage changed out of his clothes and into a guard's uniform for his escape right before my eyes. I saw it clear as day………… a crescent shaped birthmark on his left backside."
The doctor visibly recoiled at hearing the description, remembering how he first made that observation when he helped bring Lo'gan into the world and was only seconds old. He was so different then; young, ambitious, fearless. Looking down at his wrinkled hands, the old doctor wondered where that man had gone to. There was nothing left of him now. The doctor looked at the queen numbly, eyes slowly watering up. He knew she couldn't stand people crying, but he couldn't help it. The weight of their crimes was too great to revisit all at once. The doctor listened to her talk in an excited whisper, wanting to get up and run so that he wouldn't have to hear it, but too weak to actually do it.
"And if you look carefully, the little runt actually looks like his father. And he's got his mother's commonness. She was a camel trader too remember. He has that disrespectful air about him. A savage, through and through. Just like her. Exactly like her."
The old doctor watched as the queen absently rubbed her right thigh. She was no doubt remembering Lo'gan's mother's desperate attempt to stop Zainab from taking her son. The final move of a dying, bloodied woman to save the child she just pushed out into the world. It was something that he remembered often, particularly when he saw his queen struggle with her cane on her bad days. Zainab deserved it and he was often glad for the pain it caused her. He suspected that's why Zainab hated Lo'gan's mother so much. She was the only one that ever left her mark on the vain queen. In every step she took, Zainab had to be reminded of that beautiful girl, a true fighter like her son, refusing to die until Lo'gan had taken his first breath. Shaking his head to vanish the memory of the screaming and the blood, the doctor whimpered softly. The tears flowed freely now and he took a moment to recognize where he was. With great effort, he asked a question in a painfully cracking voice.
"What will you do then?"
Zainab turned so that she could see the doctor's face clearly. She always did love it when he cried. She hated crying in general, but watching the doctor was different and this particular topic never failed to make him cry. For years she debated whether or not to kill him, worried that he might spill their dark secret, but she soon realized that no, he never would. He was like one of the girls in her son's harem - born to be dominated by others. It was their lot in life and she was sure her good old doctor would be loyal as a dog until she put him out of his misery.
"Very simple, my dear. I will kill him. Him, that little green-eyed whore of his, his thief friend, his entire family. All of them. That was a stupid question."
The doctor looked up, pleading, stammering, and chilled to the bone at the response he got.
"B-but they travel extensively. How will you know where they are?"
"Well, obviously I'll go after as many clans as it takes. We don't need the desert dwellers as much as you think. With trade opening in Africa, they are expendable and I don't care if I have to kill them all to get to `him'."
The doctor watched in fear as the queen's features hardened again. Plotting always got her like this. She stood up and walked with a slight limp to her things, taking a bottle in her hand tightly, while searching for another robe to wear. The doctor absently wondered what had happened to her cane. She never went anywhere without it.
"That little interloper's son will pay. She tried to take what's mine and I eliminated her, just like I will eliminate this so called Lo'gan al Jabir. Even if it did take me over thirty years, I have found him again, you could say and he will not get away this time. He was lucky the first time, but that will not happen again."
"But it may not be him."
"Oh it is, trust me. I see her eyes in him and he looks just like my brother. But don't worry, old man, I have come too far to let it all go now. My son is the ruler of Arabia and it will stay that way! I'll never understand what possessed my brother to marry a commoner, but he paid and so did she. Just like this……this savage will. Nothing will take Arabia from my son and I will crush anybody to insure it!"
That said, Zainab flung the bottle she had in her hands and watched as it shattered on the far wall. Point made, she turned and walked back to the window seat to contemplate her next course of action. The old man could see the scheming in her eyes and knowing she was done talking for the day while she contemplated things, gradually stood and quietly walked out of the massive bedchamber, his mind heavy with all he had just learned. But in her insane logic, Zainab was right. Lo'gan did have his mother's intensity and his father's manner. Zainab might have meant it as an insult, but it was true. Lo'gan was a strange mix of desert dweller and royalty that made him stand out in any crowd. The doctor did not need to see the crescent mark to know. It was really him, the child he had tried to kill for Zainab only moments after being born.
Running quickly out of the room, the old doctor hobbled as fast as he could to his own bedchamber, desperate to forget everything that haunted him. Shutting his own room door just as his legs collapsed under him, the old doctor thought back to all the years he lived in torment over his decision to help his then lover to ascend to the throne. Lo'gan had grown without a mother and father because of Zainab and him and Zainab would destroy everything he had found since out of sheer spite. It would be simpler to just let Lo'gan go back into the deserts. He obviously didn't know who he really was and would not come back. But the queen was bloodthirsty and she would not let things lie as they were. It was not her way.
Cursing the cruel irony that made Lo'gan ever come back to Ma'in, the old doctor also sat to contemplate things. For hours, he cried bitter tears of regret for his unforgivable sins. He held his sharp instruments in his hands, wanting to pierce his heart with one, but too afraid to go through with it, settled on disrobing and adding a few lines to the hundreds that laced his body, where no one could see.
It was an old habit, not that many years in practice, but one that helped clarify things. The pain was exquisite, enough to burn, but not kill. His skills as a doctor told him exactly how deep to go, just enough to cross the layers of skin and fat, just enough to punish himself for everything he once did in the name of lust. Lust for a serpent that slithered around on a cane. A serpent that would now set to finish the task that they couldn't complete over thirty years ago. The ruthless task of eliminating an entire family. And for what? Power? For the rights to rule? No. He knew it was more.
The doctor had glimpsed into Zainab's twisted heart and had seen hatred. Hatred for a common woman her brother made queen above her. Hate for a love she saw between them that she herself would never understand. It was jealousy. Enough jealousy to make him do what she had wanted. Enough jealousy to destroy two people he knew were righteous. And now that jealousy had festered and hardened enough to kill many more. Entire clans to find just one man among them. The last trace of a legacy Zainab detested.
The doctor slapped a hand over his left pectoral, trying to hold in the blood slowly dribbling out. He was fading, slowly slipping into unconsciousness. He prayed this would be the one, the one time he wouldn't wake up to the same heavy guilt he had lived with for so long. But he knew it wouldn't be. It never was. He still had many years of torture left ahead of him.
Closing his eyes with a final shallow breath, the old doctor wondered. The gods had looked over Lo'gan once before, maybe they had plans for him again. That was the last conscious thought the doctor had before his head touched the cold marble floors.
He was instantly transported to another place and time, where a girl was fighting death itself for a chance to speak to her son. A son whose father was being murdered at that very same instant at the hands of his own sister.
The doctor saw his younger self, watching in awe as the girl defied logic to stay alive despite the dagger sticking obscenely out of her chest. When the child finally did come, her eyes glassed over and she smiled. Despite his orders, something in the young doctor turned. He held the writhing, screaming baby in his hands and watched the beautiful young girl slowly beckon with her bloodied hand. He took the baby to her, not bothering to even clean him up. She reached out and touched him and the baby immediately stilled. The doctor handed him over, both knowing what was to happen to him in just a few minutes. But thinking back, the doctor wondered if her words were the ones that saved Lo'gan's life. She was a fighter after all. Maybe the gods did have a sense of justice. Maybe they did occasionally makes things right.
The young doctor watched as mother and child regarded each other tiredly. Zainab walked in at that moment, hands still crimson with the Sultan's blood and even she had to stop and stare. The love that the mother and child radiated hypnotized them in place. Even in it's awfulness, the moment was perfect between the two. After that, everything went wrong, but for that instant, even Zainab's hatred was dwarfed by their love. With a fading voice, the dying woman murmured into her baby's wet hair, their blood intermingling for the first and final time.
"My love……my little Lo'gan……be strong and live long…… true ruler of Arabia."
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