The Legend of Sheba: Rise of a Queen Read Free Page B

my throat. His other tugged up my gown. I clawed at him until I nearly lost consciousness and then squeezed shut my eyes.
    I lay in bed the next three days.
    My nurse called for the physician, who could find no fever in me. Only the stupefied torpor of one who no longer wished to livein her own skin. Sadiq had managed to leave no mark on my neck or face—just the scrapes of his rings against my thighs.
    I wanted to rise only to walk into the desert waste until the sands consumed me, but had no will even for that. As night came on the fourth evening, I called for my nurse. I would ask for the deadly nightshade that Hagarlat used to dilate her pupils. Or for the honey of rhododendron nectar.
    But she just blinked at me and said, “Why, child? Why do you want these things? You are beautiful already and such honey will only make you ill.”
    I couldn’t bring myself to give voice to the words.
    She gave me qat to chew instead, but even the stimulant leaves would not rouse me from my bed.
    The second time Sadiq forced himself on me, I said, “My father will have you killed. I will accuse you before the entire council!”
    “Will he? They will ask you, ‘Did you cry out? Who heard you? Why did you not come immediately to your king father the first time?’ When I claim you tried to seduce me and voice concern about your honor, whom do you think they will believe?” And I knew he was right: he was brother to the queen and master of waters. I was the daughter of a woman born under a bad omen, too often alone.
    “When they send for the midwife and she finds you not intact, I will have no choice but to publicly set you aside for the sake of my honor, and the queen’s.”
    I should have been filled with righteous fury. I should have accused him before my father if only to escape him—and any other man, as no man would marry me without a hefty bribe after such a public scandal. Instead, I was overcome with shame like the rot of worms beneath the skin.
    I begged Shara not to leave my bed at night. But she could not deny the queen if called for. Sadiq raped me twice more in themonths that followed, even as clouds gathered over the highland terraces and the first gusts of the coming season shook the trees on the hills.
    T he rains came and I kept to my bed. The torrents swept down the hills through the afternoon, carrying trees and earth and any building in their way into the wadi ravines. At last I slept through the night, exhausted by my vigilance of the weeks prior. For now, at least, I was safe; the master of waters was away from the palace, monitoring the floods and the condition of the canals with a labor force ready to repair any breach in the sluices.
    Sometime before dawn, I rose and walked to the window. I was a wisp beneath my shift, having lost the young curves I had only begun to come into. Clasping the sill, I threw open the latticed shutter. The first servants were in the yard; I could make out their shadowed forms against the faint hue of dawn. As I had on so many nights since my mother’s passing, I sought out the Sister Stars. But that morning the moon obscured one of them. I stood at the window long after the sky had brightened and the stars began to fade, watching it pass before their company.
    For the first time in years, I prayed. Not to Shams, the sun, who had failed to protect my mother . . . but to Almaqah, the moon god who had received her.
    Save me or let me die.
    That was all. I slid the ruby bracelet, the most precious thing I owned, from my arm and laid it on the sill before the fading crescent.
    Later that day, men came rushing into the courtyard, their shouts rising to the open window of my chamber. Not long after, a great, singular wail went up from the hall of women, so loud that it carried to my chamber.
    My nurse brought the news an hour later: one of the sluice gates had buckled. Sadiq had been carried away in the flood.
    I raised my eyes heavenward.
    I am yours.
    S adiq’s body was never