The Rose & the Dagger Read online

  Also by Renée Ahdieh

  The Wrath and the Dawn

  G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS

  an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  375 Hudson Street

  New York, NY 10014

  Copyright © 2016 by Renée Ahdieh.

  Map illustration copyright © 2015 by Russell R. Charpentier.

  Cover photography: Raul Rodriguez.

  Cover photo illustration & frontispiece: Michelle Monique.

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

  G. P. Putnam’s Sons is a registered trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

  eBook ISBN 978-0-698-18590-6

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Jacket Art Credit:

  Design: Theresa Evangelista

  Version_1

  To my sisters:

  Erica, Elaine, and Sabaa—

  This book would not be possible without each of you.

  And to Victor, always.

  Contents

  Also by Renée Ahdieh

  Title Page

  Map

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  PROLOGUE

  THE WATER LIES

  ALWAYS

  STORIES AND SECRETS

  AN INDELIBLE LINE

  A GATEWAY BETWEEN WORLDS

  WILLING TO LEARN

  THE BUTTERFLY AND THE BRUTE

  NOT A SINGLE DROP

  AS A ROSE UNFURLING

  THE FIRE

  BOUNDLESS

  THE BOY BY THE SEA

  WHERE THERE IS RUIN

  A MOUSE’S CALL TO ARMS

  A PERFECT BALANCE

  ONCE AND FOR ALL

  THE WINGED SERPENT

  THE DARK SIDE OF A MIRROR

  TO SLEIGHT AND FEINT

  AN ARROW TO THE HEART

  A BROTHER AND A HOME

  AWRY

  THE GREATEST OF ALL LIVING POWERS

  LIFE AND DEATH IN THE PAGES OF A BOOK

  THE SANDSTONE PALACE

  THE TIGER AND THE FALCON

  THE BURNING BANYAN TREE

  THE HEAD OF A FLYING SERPENT

  OUTMATCHED

  THE WHITE SHELL

  BARTERING, LIES, AND BETRAYAL

  UNWANTED ARRIVALS

  THE GATES OF AMARDHA

  THE ROSE

  THE DAGGER

  THE POWER TO LOVE

  EPILOGUE

  Acknowledgments

  The rose’s rarest essence lives in the thorns.

  Jalal al-Din Rumi

  PROLOGUE

  THE GIRL WAS ELEVEN AND THREE-QUARTERS.

  Three very important quarters.

  They’d been of consequence when her father had left her in charge this morning, with an important task to accomplish. So, with a world-weary sigh, she pushed up her tattered sleeves and heaved rubble into the nearby wheelbarrow.

  “It’s so heavy,” her eight-year-old brother complained, as he struggled to move a piece of debris from their home. He coughed when a cloud of soot rose from the charred remains.

  “Let me help.” The girl dropped her shovel with a clang.

  “I didn’t say I needed help!”

  “We should work together, or we won’t finish cleaning everything before Baba returns home.” She braced her fists on her hips while glaring down at him.

  “Look around you!” He threw his hands in the air. “We’ll never finish cleaning everything.”

  Her eyes followed his hands.

  The clay walls of their home were ripped apart. Broken. Blackened. Their roof opened up to the heavens. To a dull and forlorn sky.

  To what once had been a glorious city.

  A midday sun lay hidden behind the shattered rooftops of Rey. It cut shadows of light and dark across angry stone and scorched marble. Here and there, smoldering piles of rubble served as a harsh reminder of what had taken place only a few short days ago.

  The young girl hardened her gaze and stepped closer to her brother.

  “If you don’t want to work, then wait outside. But I’m going to keep working. Someone has to.” Again, she reached for her shovel.

  The boy kicked at a nearby stone. It skittered across the packed earth before crashing to a halt at the foot of a hooded stranger standing by the remains of their door.

  Tensing her grip on the shovel, the girl eased her brother behind her.

  “May I help you . . . ?” She paused. The stranger’s black rida’ was embroidered in silver and gold thread. The scabbard of his sword was finely etched and delicately bejeweled, and his sandals were cut from the highest-quality calfskin.

  He was no mere brigand.

  The girl stood taller. “May I help you, sahib?”

  When he did not answer right away, the girl raised the shovel higher, her brow taut and her heart hammering in her chest.

  The stranger stepped from beneath the sagging doorjamb. He threw back his hood and raised both palms in supplication. Each of his gestures was careful, and he moved with a liquid kind of grace.

  As he strode into a weak slice of light, the girl saw his face for the first time.

  He was younger than she expected. No more than twenty.

  His face approached beautiful. But its angles were too harsh, his expression too severe. The sunlight on his hands revealed something at odds with the rest of his finery; the skin of his palms was red and cracked and peeling—evidence of hard labor.

  His tired eyes were a tawny-gold color. She’d seen eyes like that once. In a painting of a lion.

  “I didn’t mean to startle you,” the stranger said softly. His eyes shifted around the ruin of their one-room abode. “May I speak to your father?”

  The girl’s suspicion gripped her once more. “He’s—not here. He went to stand in line for building supplies.”

  The stranger nodded. “And your mother?”

  “She’s dead,” her brother said, stirring from behind her. “The roof fell on her during the storm. She died the next morning.”

  There was an unassuming quality to his words that the girl did not feel. Because to her brother, the words were not yet real. For after they’d lost nearly everything in last year’s drought, the storm had taken its final toll on their family.

  And her brother had yet to grasp this most recent loss.

  The stranger’s severity deepened for an instant. He looked away, and his hands fell to his sides. After a beat, he looked back at them, his eyes unwavering, despite his white-knuckled fists. “Do you have another shovel?”

  “Why do you need a shovel, rich man?” Her little brother marched up to the stranger, accusation in each of his barefooted steps.

  “Kamyar!” His sister gasped as she reached for the back of his ragged qamis.

  The stranger blinked down at her
brother before crouching on the packed-earth floor. “Kamyar, was it?” he asked, a trace of a smile adorning his lips.

  Her brother said nothing, though he was barely able to meet the tall stranger’s eyes.

  “I—I apologize, sahib,” the girl stammered. “He’s a bit insolent.”

  “Please don’t apologize. I rather appreciate insolence, when it’s dispensed by the right person.” This time, the stranger did smile, and his features softened.

  “Yes,” her brother interrupted. “My name is Kamyar. What is yours?”

  The stranger studied her brother for a moment.

  “Khalid.”

  “Why do you want a shovel, Khalid?” her brother demanded again.

  “I’d like to help you repair your home.”

  “Why?”

  “Because when we help one another, we are able to accomplish things faster.”

  Kamyar nodded slowly, then canted his head to one side. “But this isn’t your home. Why should you care?”

  “Because Rey is my home. And Rey is your home. If you could help me when I needed help, would you not wish to do so?”

  “Yes,” Kamyar said without hesitation. “I would.”

  “Then it’s settled.” The stranger stood. “Will you share your shovel with me, Kamyar?”

  For the rest of the afternoon, the trio worked to clear the floor of charred wood and waterlogged debris. The girl never gave the stranger her name and refused to call him anything but sahib, but Kamyar treated him like a long-lost friend with a common enemy. When the stranger gave them water and lavash bread to eat, the girl dipped her head and touched her fingertips to her brow in thanks.

  A flush rose in her cheeks when the almost-beautiful stranger returned the gesture, without a word.

  Soon, the day began bruising into night, and Kamyar wedged himself into a corner, his chin drooping to his chest, and his eyes slowly falling shut.

  The stranger finished arranging the last of the salvageable pieces of wood by the door, and shook the dirt from his rida’ before pulling the hood of his cloak back over his head.

  “Thank you,” the girl murmured, knowing that was the least she should do.

  He glanced over his shoulder at her. Then the stranger reached into his cloak and produced a small pouch cinched shut by a leather cord.

  “Please. Take it.”

  “No, sahib.” She shook her head. “I cannot take your money. We’ve already taken enough of your generosity.”

  “It isn’t much. I’d like for you to take it.” His eyes, which had appeared tired at the outset, now looked beyond exhausted. “Please.”

  There was something about his face in that moment, hidden as it was in the play of shadows, in the lingering motes of ash and dust . . .

  Something about it that signified a deeper suffering than the girl could ever hope to fathom.

  She took the small pouch from his hand.

  “Thank you,” he whispered. As though he were the one in need.

  “Shiva,” she said. “My name is Shiva.”

  Disbelief flared on his features for an instant. Then the sharp planes of his face smoothed.

  “Of course it is.” He bowed low, with a hand to his brow.

  Despite her confusion, she managed to respond in kind, her fingers brushing her forehead. When she looked up again, he had turned the corner.

  And disappeared into the wending darkness of night.

  THE WATER LIES

  IT WAS ONLY A RING.

  Yet it signified so much to her.

  Much to lose. Much to fight for.

  Shahrzad lifted her hand into a stream of light. The ring of muted gold flashed twice, as if to remind her of its mate, far across the Sea of Sand.

  Khalid.

  Her thoughts drifted to the marble palace in Rey. To Khalid. She hoped he was with Jalal or with his uncle, the shahrban.

  She hoped he was not alone. Adrift. Wondering . . .

  Why am I not with him?

  Her lips pressed tight.

  Because the last time I was in Rey, thousands of innocent people perished.

  And Shahrzad could not return until she’d found a way to protect her people. Her love. A way to end Khalid’s terrible curse.

  Outside her tent, a goat began to bleat with merry abandon.

  Her temper mounting, Shahrzad flung off her makeshift blanket and reached for the dagger beside her bedroll. An empty threat, but she knew she should at least fight for a semblance of control.

  As if to mock her, the shrill sounds beyond her tent grew more incessant.

  Is that a . . . bell?

  The little beast outside had a bell around its neck! And now the clanging and the bleating all but ensured the impossibility of sleep.

  Shahrzad sat up, gripping the jeweled hilt of her dagger—

  Then, with an exasperated cry, she fell back against the itchy wool of her bedroll.

  It’s not as though I’m managing to sleep as it is.

  Not when she was so far from home. So far from where her heart longed to be.

  She swallowed the sudden lump that formed in her throat. Her thumb brushed against the ring with two crossed swords—the ring Khalid had placed on her right hand a mere fortnight ago.

  Enough. Nothing will be accomplished from such nonsense.

  Again she sat up, her eyes scanning her new surroundings.

  Irsa’s bedroll was neatly stashed to one side of the small tent. Her younger sister had likely been awake for hours, baking bread, making tea, and braiding the contemptible goat’s chin hair.

  Shahrzad almost smiled, despite everything.

  Her wariness taking shape in the gloom, she tucked the dagger into her waistband, then stretched to her feet. Every muscle in her body ached from days of hard travel and nights of poor sleep.

  Three nights of worry. Three nights spent fleeing a city set to flame. An endless fount of questions without answers. Those three long nights of worry for her father, whose battered body had yet to recover from whatever damage it had incurred on the hilltops outside Rey.

  Shahrzad took a deep breath.

  The air here was strange. Drier. Crisp. Soft bars of light slanted through the tent seams. A thin layer of fine silt clung to everything. It made her tiny world appear as though it were fashioned of diamond-dusted darkness.

  On one side of the tent was a small table with a porcelain pitcher and a copper basin. Shahrzad’s meager belongings were perched beside it, wrapped in the threadbare carpet given to her by Musa Zaragoza several months ago. She knelt before the table and filled the basin with water for washing.

  The water was tepid, but clean. Her reflection looked strangely calm as it stared back at her.

  Calm yet distorted.

  The face of a girl who had lost everything and nothing in the stretch of a single night.

  She slipped both hands into the water. Her skin looked pale and creamy below its surface. Not its usual warm bronze color. She fixed her gaze on the place where the water met the air, on the strange bend that made it seem as though her hands were in a different world beneath the water—

  A world that moved more slowly and told stories.

  The water lies.

  She splashed some water onto her face and dragged her damp fingers through her hair. Then she lifted the lid from the small wooden container nearby and used a pinch of the ground mint, white pepper, and crushed rock salt stored within to cleanse her mouth of sleep.

  “You’re awake. After you arrived so late last night, I didn’t think you would rise so early.”

  Shahrzad turned to see Irsa standing beneath the open tent flap. A triangle of desert light silhouetted her sister’s slender frame.

  Irsa smiled, her gamine features coming into focus. “You never used to wake for breakfast be
fore.” She ducked into the tent, securing the tent flap closed behind her.

  “Who can sleep with that damnable goat shrieking outside?” Shahrzad flicked water at Irsa to divert her inevitable onslaught of questions.

  “You mean Farbod?”

  “You’ve named the little beast?” Shahrzad grinned as she began plaiting the tangled waves of her hair into a braid.

  “He’s quite sweet.” Irsa frowned. “You should give him a chance.”

  “Please tell Farbod that—should he persist in his early morning recitals—my favorite meal is stewed goat, served in a sauce of pomegranates and crushed walnuts.”

  “Ha!” Irsa took a long stretch of twine from the pocket of her wrinkled sirwal trowsers. “I suppose we shouldn’t forget we’re now in the presence of royalty.” She bound the length of twine around the end of Shahrzad’s braid. “I’ll warn Farbod not to further offend Khorasan’s illustrious calipha.”

  Shahrzad glanced over her shoulder into Irsa’s pale eyes.

  “You’ve gotten so tall,” she said quietly. “When did you get so tall?”

  Irsa wrapped both arms around her sister’s waist. “I’ve missed you.” Her fingertips grazed the hilt of the dagger, and she pulled back in alarm. “Why are you carrying—”

  “Is Baba awake yet?” Shahrzad smiled overbrightly. “Can you take me to see him?”

  The night of the storm, Shahrzad had ridden with Tariq and Rahim to a hilltop outside Rey, in search of her father.

  She’d been unprepared for what they’d found.

  Jahandar al-Khayzuran had been curled in a puddle around an old, leather-bound book.

  His bare feet and hands were burned. Red and raw and abraded. His hair was falling out in clumps. The rain had gathered them in the mud, smashing the strands against wet stone, like so many discarded things.

  Her sister’s dappled horse was long-since dead. Its throat had been slashed. The blood had drained in rivulets from a vicious wound at its neck. Veins of mud and drifting ash had melded with the crimson to form a sinister tracery across the hillside.

  Shahrzad would never forget the image of her father’s huddled body against the red-and-grey slope.