A coup, the vizier’s father said, is months of decisions suspended in mid-air. The arrow before it strikes its mark. The mirrorface of still water before it is shattered by a stone. In that silver wink of quiet, you wait. You pray. Pray that the timing was right, pray for the sun to rise.
The vizier didn’t have months of decisions. He had a night.
A night that is now paling at the edges, worn thin by his fate: an inauspicious birth horoscope, charting dark planets and a sinner’s heart, bruised and bloodied and given wholly to the young king’s wife.
Now that king is dead. Guilt is not a question as wife and vizier face one another before a room full of war-hungry amirs.
Succession is.
And that is the one decision left to make.
The vizier kneels. The amirs’ attention sweeps to him, the rush of high tide, as he draws a dagger. Lays it across his palm, head bowed. Rubies well in a thin line, spelling an oath of fealty to a woman.
Now he waits.
And this is his prayer: that this coup, his gamble, his queen, might staunch his kingdom’s wounds. Stem the poison rotting its core. Renew, remake, redeem.
His kingdom. Him.
Behind him, knees bend to the flagstones. Steel sings as daggers are drawn, and one voice, and another, and another, murmur oaths of loyalty, layering over one another in rich tapestry.
“Dervish.”
His name, her voice. He lifts his face to her tousled raven hair, to the future reflected in her sea-silver eyes.
“Rise,” his queen commands.
He does.
And, at the frayed edges of the night, so does the sun.