Aliya

chapter twenty-six

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THE PALACE LIBRARY WAS located in the West Wing, on the first floor, blocked by doors clouding over with dust, spiderwebs and only Khuda knew what the brown-blue stain on the upper right corner of the hinges were — mold, most probably, but I couldn't be convinced that the palace staff would just leave mold hanging onto the doors of a castle.

At the same time, though, judging from the look of it, very few people had been here in what seemed to be an eternity. I wouldn't be surprised if no one had.

After all, even as I was sneaking over to the admittedly still blocked wing, holding my breath and sneaking behind altar shadows, praying that no maid or butler or, Khuda forbid, Ismal would be walking along and see me scurrying like a thief in broad daylight, the halls had been completely empty.

It shouldn't have been surprising, given that the 'incident' — it was tempting to use the word 'murder,' instead, but the word chilled the back of my spine and after breakfast, I wasn't sure whether I needed or wanted to take anymore cold sweats for the day — had happened on the third floor, instead, and there was no reason for the guards to patrol the corridors leading up to the library, but as I tip-toed up to the doors, there was an odd feeling I just couldn't shake.

Even if the first floor was not a place of concern, it seemed strange that security would be so lax around this area.

And, as I placed my hand onto the door knob — it was dusty, immensely so, and immediately coated my fingers with a thin layer of dark gray — I couldn't help but think that I made it here a little too easy.

Was Maria wrong? Has the West Wing already opened?

But no. Maria wouldn't be wrong — had the West Wing been opened, I would have long have been kicked back into my old room.

But the entrance to the palace is the ground floor. What if thieves made their way into the palace?

Admittedly, that was a far more far-fetched notion. After all, how could thieves even make their way into Palace grounds? Past the gates, the guards, the shadow men hanging onto the cement walls, wielding sabres that glinted and shone in the sunlight?

There wouldn't be thieves. Or trespassers. Or anything of the sort, because this was the Palace of Persia, the Home of the Gods. Even if there were no guards that I could see, there must've been something, or someone, protecting this place.

And if that's the case, then chances are, they've already seen me.

I have to go quickly.

Surprisingly enough, the moldy hinges didn't even make a squeak, and when I reached out to push the door close, I barely heard the ensuing thump.

Was that not even odder?

To have a moldy door hinge that didn't squeak, a dusty gate that didn't thump was odd. And I supposed I would have found it much, much odder had I taken the time to actually sit down and think it over, turning the thought over and over inside my head like a clicking, clocking mechanism much in the way that I always did, and once I had I'd probably find that the pieces didn't fit, and that there must've been something wrong with this library somewhere, somehow, and I should have gotten out.

One, not the first and most definitely not the last, of the many mistakes I would make in the Palace.

But at that moment, I didn't think the thought over. Because whatever thought I'd had of the door had quickly been chased out of the window the moment that I caught sight of the inside of the library.