Hot Arabian Nights

Azhar’s smile was twisted. ‘There are some anterooms at the rear of the kiosk, it is bigger than it looks from the outside, but this room is where my father spent most of his time.’

Julia shuddered. It was an intimidating space for one man to occupy, but then she supposed that was the point. ‘Well, now I can at least understand the garden,’ she said. ‘Of course it is a very clever design trick,’ she added, when Azhar looked at her questioningly, ‘It seems so wild, uncontrolled, so natural and yet that can only be achieved by meticulous planning.’

Azhar was prowling restlessly around the room, stopping every now and then, his eyes drawn to the divan. Judging from his stormy expression, his memories were extremely unpleasant. ‘My father liked to control everything, even nature,’ he said bitterly. ‘It was in this very room that I last saw him. It was here that he informed me that if I left I would never be welcomed back. Growing up, my father tried to shape me and cultivate me like that garden out there. Tame any wildness, impose order. As I grew older the constraints became unbearable, but the more I protested, the more repressive he became. I am a man of action, have always been a man of action, yet he would not let me do anything. He wanted to control every minute of every hour of my time. Growing up here as heir, Julia, my life was not my own.’

He spoke with such passion, she couldn’t help but empathise. Her marriage bonds were as nothing to the bonds a king-in-waiting must bear. ‘I can see now why you felt you had no option but to leave.’

‘He gave me no option. I was desperate to go earlier, but until I was twenty-one I could not do so without his permission. At the time, all I wanted was the taste of freedom, not to leave Qaryma for ever, but to be free to leave for a period and then return. He would not grant me even temporary freedom.’

‘Perhaps because he knew that once you tasted freedom you wouldn’t come back,’ Julia said.

Azhar shrugged. ‘It is impossible now to know whether that was true. If I had left at sixteen or seventeen or even twenty, with my father’s good wishes, without the need to make my own way, to pay my own way, I would not have started my business. I would not have sown the seeds of the life which I have grown for myself outside Qaryma. I would in all likelihood have returned, but I cannot be certain.’

‘Your father was a fool, if you ask me,’ Julia said. ‘I’m sorry if that is treasonous, but it’s true. He should have known that trying to keep you in Qaryma was a recipe for disaster. There is nothing more tempting than forbidden fruit. His behaviour more or less guaranteed your departure.’

Azhar laughed dryly. ‘As the date of my birthday drew nearer, I began to dread that my father would be taken ill. That he might die before I could escape was one of my greatest fears.’

‘But you did escape.’

‘On the very morning I achieved my majority. “I am twenty-one,” I said to him, “you can’t stop me from leaving.”

‘“But I can prevent you from returning,” he said to me. And so, in a way, he granted me my freedom. Freedom, Julia.’ Azhar grinned. ‘For the first time, to be free to do what I wanted when I wanted, to go where I wanted—to answer to no one. You cannot imagine how good that felt.’

‘I can,’ she said warmly.

‘Of course you can.’ He pressed her hand. ‘We want the same thing, after all. As time passed, as I began to establish my business, to make a life for myself, I quickly realised that I would never return. That my father had actually done me a favour by exiling me.’

‘And allowing you to become a man of action.’

‘With every action my own. I had escaped. I was no longer a King-in-waiting defined by my kingdom, I was my own man defined by my own success—and in the early days, my failures too. I love my business, Julia. It is a—an integral part of me. If I remained here, as King, I would have to give it up. I won’t do that,’ Azhar continued, his tone harsh. ‘I left my father with a son who valued what I did not, a son he could have moulded into his image as he had tried to mould me. Kamal is much more malleable. But my father...’

‘You think that your father was blind to Kamal’s weaknesses?’

‘I doubt it. But I don’t understand why he didn’t take steps to remedy them.’

‘Perhaps, despite your conviction to the contrary, it was because your father secretly hoped you might return.’

‘No! I am here as a punishment, not a reward. Kamal will rule, Julia, because I will not surrender my life to wed myself to Qaryma.’

‘Is it really such an onerous task?’ she asked hesitantly. ‘Couldn’t you appoint agents to run your business? I’m sorry, Azhar, but if being a king is truly so awful, then frankly I don’t understand why a weak man like your brother would be so happy to take it on.’ She flinched at Azhar’s thunderous expression, but she had gone too far to stop now. ‘I know your brother only through what you have told me of him, and what you’ve told me has led me to surmise that he is selfish, that he is lazy and that self-sacrifice is anathema to him.’

Azhar said nothing, but his eyes were flinty. He didn’t like what she was saying. She hated saying it, but she owed it to them both to continue. ‘The people of Qaryma love you, Azhar. They respect you. They want you and not your brother. I know you think that it’s undeserved.’ She paused, but still he said nothing. ‘You think that because Kamal remained by your father’s side, that he deserves it more,’ she forced herself to continue, ‘but—but you are the legal heir, you are the heir your father wanted, not Kamal. What’s more, with every sleepless night you spend trying to make this kingdom safe for your brother’s rule, you prove that you love it. How can you see this as a prison sentence, when it is so obviously what you are destined to do?’

She felt quite sick with dread, for she knew how painful her words were to him, but beneath it all she was proud of herself for having had the gumption to speak. Azhar slowly unclenched his fists. When he whirled around, she thought he was going to leave her, but instead he strode over to the divan and sat down.

‘I am Sheikh al-Farid, King Azhar of Qaryma,’ he declaimed. ‘I am the source of all power, all wisdom, all happiness. I am the infallible one. I make the laws and I enact the laws. None can question me. None can harm me.’

Her jaw dropped.

‘These are the words I would speak at my coronation, and his father before him. You may think those words ridiculous, mere ceremony, but it is what many people here in Qaryma believe. As King, I would wield absolute power, Julia. That is how Qaryma has always been ruled. There is no other way to rule, except not to rule.’

He pushed off his headdress to run his fingers through his hair, then held out his hand for her to join him. ‘Such power comes at a high price. It is extremely hard work to appear infallible,’ he said wryly. ‘My life would not be mine to command, it would belong to my people. Those words, the promises I would make if I took the crown, would require me to put this kingdom and these people first, before everything else.’

‘As you did, I imagine, over the last ten years, while building your trading empire.’

His smile became a grimace. ‘Exactly like that, which is part of the problem. Unlike my brother, I am incapable of doing things by half-measures. In ten years, I have never been satisfied with my achievements, have always been driven to conquer one more summit and one more. Can you imagine how I would be, when placed in charge of a kingdom?’

‘Selfless,’ Julia said.

She meant it as a compliment, but Azhar shook his head grimly. ‘No, for that implies that I would not resent it, and I would.’ He took her hand, lacing his fingers between hers. ‘You ask if I could appoint agents to run the business I have grown from nothing, the business which it the only thing I have of my own. The answer is that, yes, I could, if all I cared about was the money, but I don’t.’

‘No,’ Julia said with a smile. ‘It is the doing that you care about, isn’t it?’

‘Yes. The doing,’ Azhar repeated, pressing her hand. ‘And the travel—or at least—it is not so much wanderlust, that craving has been satisfied in the last ten years, but there is a difference between knowing that I can go wherever I choose, and knowing I can go only where my kingdom requires me to go, do you see?’

She nodded once more. She was beginning to see very clearly. Azhar’s reference to Qaryma as a gilded cage seemed now an appalling understatement. ‘You would be wedded to your kingdom.’

‘And expected to wed for the kingdom,’ Azhar said dryly, ‘a fitting bride taken for the sole purpose of producing an heir, whose sole purpose would be to inherit all this. And so it would go on. I won’t do it, Julia.’

She pressed his hand to her cheek. ‘The problem is, Azhar, that you are so honourable, and so incapable of giving anything less than your all, that you would do it, if you had to. You could not be half a king, could you?’

‘No. Now do you understand why I cannot be one at all?’

Julia bit her lip. ‘Yes,’ she said. It was not a lie. She understood perfectly why he would not, and why he must leave, but she could not imagine how he was going to salve his conscience afterwards.

Chapter Seven (#ub915ee44-d9cc-576a-82bc-32f661f6b28f)

Action, Azhar resolved, action was what was required to demonstrate to Julia that he was right and she was quite wrong. Yes, three weeks was ambitious, but where there was a will, anything could be achieved, and he had a will of iron. Curse Julia and her doubts and her endless questions.

He stopped his furious pacing and gazed out of the window. He was not thinking straight. Her assertion that his conscience would not allow him to stay away from Qaryma was of course nonsense, but there was no harm in admitting, just to himself, that he did care for the kingdom where he had been born and raised. He did care for the people too. He wished for them only the king they deserved, a king who wanted to reign, and who was fit to reign. Not a king who saw his kingdom as a millstone around his neck. Not a king who had abandoned them ten years ago. And who would leave again in three weeks’ time, for ever.

He pushed open the window that led on to his private terrace, taking his coffee with him. As far as Kamal was concerned though, he should be viewing the points Julia raised in a positive light. Shortcomings which could be addressed, not fatal flaws which could not.

Actions. Azhar knew exactly what actions he would take. Summoning a servant, he rattled off a series of commands. The fresh perspective which he’d asked Julia to provide was already paying dividends.

* * *

Having spent the morning writing up her notes, one of her least favourite and most neglected tasks, Julia had eaten some fruit for lunch and fallen asleep on the couch in her sitting room. When Aisha shook her gently awake she was confused, the beginnings of a headache niggling behind her eyes from the sun streaming through the curtains she had left open. It took her a good five minutes to understand that Azhar required her presence in a room whose name she couldn’t translate but which was located in the Second Court.

At Aisha’s insistence, she changed her crumpled clothing for a matching tunic and pantaloons in navy blue, a sky-blue scarf fastened over her face as she made her way through the palace. By the time she arrived at the Second Court, hurrying after the huge sentry, Julia was beginning to wonder if Azhar had decided he’d had enough of the honesty he’d demanded from her, and was having her expelled from Qaryma.

The huge door slammed shut behind her and the scene before her convinced Julia that she was right. Though the chamber was much smaller than the Divan, and in a way more ornate, the air was oppressive with authority. The walls were panelled and painted, the ceiling vaulted and tiled, the floor marble. In the centre, the throne was more like a low chair with clawed feet covered in gold leaf. And on the throne sat Azhar in a white-silk tunic and cloak. His headdress was also white, though the headband which kept it in place seemed to be made of golden rope.

Hovering in the doorway, Julia pushed back her veil. ‘You look extremely regal,’ she said. ‘What is this place? Ought I to kneel?’

Azhar got to his feet, extending his hand in welcome. ‘It is the Hall of Pleas, and of course you should not kneel.’

‘You mean it is a court room. Am I on trial?’