The Desert Falcon

Chapter 26, The Lion's Descent

Navigating my horse into the stables, I was unmistakably startled by the sudden movement of the people around me.  A flurry of activity from the stable hands attended to me, fussing about unecessarily, as if punishment would befall them should they delay their attentions. I dismounted, shaking off the dust from my early afternoon ride, just as Fatimah approached me, followed by a bevy of other maidservants that had been assigned to her for the expressed purpose of seeing to my every need.

Another neccesity apparently.

I found it almost comical that, adorned as they were in their finery, befitting of their new exalted station, they shone brightly like the brilliant north star in the darkness of the desert night.  The heat of the day was beginning to grow relentless, casting it's anger upon the delicate skin of the maidservants. Even the stable hands seemed to be in awe of their magnificently-splendored attire and jewels, as if they were somehow magically conjured from a golden lamp or drawn from apparitions cast by the prolonged exposure of the desert's harshness.  Even I was half-blinded by their finery and if no one was the wiser, a man could mistake Fatimah of royal heritage, rather than I, dressed in my plain, sweat-soaked, riding garb. 

Fatimah had no more than six attending servants with her, excluding the count of Imai and her younger sisters. I knew Imai and Hamza had two others to assist them each.  Mariam and Zamia were too young at the moment to have their own servants to assist with my needs. 

My newly exalted position as the Sultan's intended, had necessitated the requirement that my needs be met with extreme precision of detail that befitted the army of maidservants that were at my leisure. It was rather unnecessary, but I could not argue against such extravagance, for such a position as maidservant to the future Sultana was the highest honor and an enviable position that these women could ever hope for.  They were paid and provided for in a manner that outcompeted whatever employment they would hope to seek outside the palace.  I would be doing them an injustice if I dismissed them from serving to my needs and in this reality of the world I resided in, it was one of the few sources of independence a woman could hope to gain that was not granted to them at the leisure of a man.  They were under my employ and what I chose to do with them was my prerogative, gifted by the Sultan to me.

Rashid would not hear of me refusing such an extravagance.  His argument, apart from the very fact that he wished to have me comfortable in the palace, was that my brother and my grandfather would take it upon themselves to reeducate him on how to treat a woman that was to become his Sultana.

It was not lost upon me that he believed the way to treat a woman was upon the guidance of my recently-discoverd kin, as if they were paragons of respectful decorum on the proper way to treat one's wife, given their historical precedence of the occasional woman my brother kept for his leisure or the fate of my grandmother and mother and their history with my father and grandfather.  I was half-tempted to point such an illogical thing out, but instead I reserved what energy would have been consumed by doing so for another day.

Anger swiftly rose at the thought that he was merely obligated to provide for me, rather than the startlingly simple notion that perhaps it should become him to treat me with the respect I deserved rather than from fear of my newfound kin.  I certainly did not require his gifting of an army of maidservants.

I snorted and pointed out sardonically that such treatment befalling me, but not extended to the courtesy of other women, including those of the harem and of lower station, did not endear me to him any further.  Selective preference in his treatment only cemented that he believed he had every right to overtake my life as he saw fit. 

Rashid had merely glanced at me from his lounged position, as we once more partook in our evening meal, forced to endure his company.  He simply raised his brow in challenge. "While it may suit you to think it was your brother and your grandfather that I am afraid of displeasing, seeing as how I am to be related to them, I assure you that I am not fearful of their retribution.  You are at my mercy not I to them.  If I wish, I could procure an imam and we would be wed before the next sunrise and they would not be able to stop it.  My earlier statement was procured as a sardonic jest."