The Night of the Starsingers

Candlelight flickered. Esmeray stared at herself in the bronze. Pearl earrings, a silken, silvery dress embroidered with thousands of glittering stars, cheeks blushed with rose; all the trappings of a courtier— as she was.

Two years of careful wait had led to this night. 

The Night of the Starsingers. 

Dark curls wove into a pearl-studded braid, loose strands framing her face. Heavy circles lay under her umber eyes, which she’d failed to conceal with powder. Esmeray would instead hide them with a smile, delicately crafted for court, to ease the discomfort of the nobles who glanced uneasily at the Esyri girl in their midst. 

Their distrust was justified. She was here to kill their king. 

Two years ago, Esmeray et-Syrra arrived at the Palace of the Unceasing River, presented to the Sultan by Kabil al-Ishaq, a wealthy once-lord from Esyri. Ishaq gifted his ‘daughter’ to the palace as a tribute from their conquered land. The Sultan, an old widower with no daughters to speak of, raised a brow, then immediately gave Esmeray’s service to Heba et-Myram, a female courtesan whose wrinkled brow was a sign to Esmeray that she was more a punishment than a gift. 

So she was treated. Heba was cold, and her other ladies-in-waiting had not a kind word to say, if any. Her first months in the palace felt like wandering the desert. Amongst the mosaic walls edged in gold, mahogany tables laden with honey and wine, and oasis gardens lush with iris and blood-lily, she was alone. 

Esmeray did not sway. While she missed the sandstone cliffs and poppy fields of her homeland, she knew her purpose. She listened. She watched. Courtiers were loose-tongued and conniving; in hallways shadowed by quivering torchlight they whispered secrets to each other. Courtesans like Heba were eager to gossip of their nights with the Sultan, revealing the fears and hopes of their bedfellow.

Outside the palace, from the mouth of a secret passage she had found, Esmeray would send a sparrowhawk back to Ishaq with all she heard. 

Much gossip regarded the prince: the first and only son of the Sultan. He held no courtesans, led no men to arms, and was rarely seen. Nariz al-Muhad was his name, and there was no end to rumors: They say he takes male lovers. They say he is slow-witted. 

They say he has been a ghost since his mother’s passing. 

Esmeray felt this may be true; she knew what it was like to fade into mirage, wandering in desert dream when loved ones were lost. 

It was why the Muhadi dynasty would end. The Esyri suffered under their rule: their burning weapons and cruel lords. From within, Esmeray would help Ishaq pick apart the walls of the palace until they crumbled. 

Esmeray first met the prince when they caught the other outside the palace one night. She had just released her sparrowhawk when a cloaked man slipped from her same secret passage, lantern in hand. 

Her dagger drawn, Esmeray retreated into shadow and steeled herself. 

Yet he spoke first, revealing his face.

“I’m not going to expose you,” the prince said softly into the night, “I only meant to meet who discovered the tunnel.” 

From the dark, she whispered, “I did not know it was your passage, Your Highness. Forgive me. I fear to show myself.”

The dagger was slick in her palm. She could kill him now, but Ishaq wanted to bide more time, plant more allies in the region. Not yet. 

His voice was easy. “It’s not truly mine. Someone long ago carved out this place, for some reason. Perhaps to escape in times of desperation. For me, it still serves that purpose. For you?”

Esmeray paused. “There are not many places for one to be alone in the palace, Your Highness.” Not a lie. 

“All those rooms and one still suffocates.”

“Perhaps company fouls the air, Your Highness.”

He laughed. “You suggest the courtiers are foul company?”

“Dreadful.” Esmeray marveled at the freedom she felt speaking with him. Something about the ebb of the lantern light, or his voice. 

“I agree,” he said, “though that’s mean talk coming from a courtier herself.” 

Her stomach plummeted. 

“Your Savayan is excellent, but your r’s still carry your accent. And I’ve only heard of one Esyri courtier.”

Esmeray kicked herself. Perhaps there was still time to kill him. 

“It’s alright. I won’t expose you, like I said. But if you come into the light, I could take you to where I mean to go. Far more room to breathe.”

Despite who she was, he didn’t sound suspicious of her. Perhaps there was something valuable in following the prince on his wanderings— information to gather for Ishaq. 

She stepped into the lantern light. 

Esmeray followed Nariz along a winding mountain path on the southside of the palace. Lantern light cast long shadows. He spoke little. There only was the crunch of rock and the pant of weary breath. 

Surely loneliness had driven her insane. Alone on the hillside with the crown prince of the Muhadi. 

Stones skittered. 

Bile suddenly rose to her throat at the memory of fire cutting into night, a roof caving, raining stone: the screams as flesh succumbed to burning earth. 

“Here,” Nariz said, interrupting her memory. 

Esmeray swallowed her hatred to answer. “It’s grass and stone, as was the base.” 

“May I snuff the lantern?” 

Perhaps he meant to murder her in the dark. But his gentle voice did not make her fear him as she should. Esmeray nodded. 

The sky erupted in stars.

 The river snaked the valley, its black waters reflecting the constellations as a mirror. Moonlight washed the palace roofs in milky light, the towers glistening like lilies wet with dew. For the first time, the Palace of the Unceasing River seemed beautiful.

“You’re right,” Esmeray whispered, “Here, you can breathe.”

Esmery shouldn’t have met with Nariz again. 

Yet, when invited, she didn’t refuse. “Perhaps,” she replied, slipping away.

The following days were restless, waiting to be exposed as an Esryi traitor, thrown to the court floor and executed. 

It did not happen. 

She began to listen more attentively to the rumors swirling the prince: He sleeps on his balcony, or by lantern light. He dislikes the dark. 

He and the Sultan do not get along. 

This, she shared with Ishaq, who replied: ‘Perhaps then, he is amenable to our cause.’

Esmeray doubted it. There was nothing the crown stood to gain by freeing the Esyri people from their overlords. 

Yet, a fortnight later she was sitting on their mountaintop observatory beside Nariz, watching the stars crawl by. 

“The astronomer Jaleel al-Nayyir believed the stars you were born under determine your fate,” Nariz said, twirling a blade of grass, “We read them the day the first spring rose blooms.”

“Starsingers,” Esmeray mused. Each spring, the court gathered in the observatory to read the sky that first day. The precise location of every constellation meant something.

Every year, the stars sang greatness to the nation of Savaya. 

“What stars were you born under, Your Highness?” 

A pause. “My stars were all ill omens, I’m afraid. I think it is why my father has disquiet dreams about my reign.” 

Esmeray shifted her weight.

“My mother was a Starsinger,” continued Nariz. “She taught me the constellations. Their stories. She was excellent at telling stories.”

“As was mine.” Esmeray remembered the woven blanket her mother had kept their family history in, threads capturing generations in the artistry. 

The tapestry had been lost with her. 

“How did you lose your mother?” he asked. 

Esmeray stared ahead.  “When the Savayan occupation took my father’s land, soldiers burned down our home. They did not warn us.”

They shared a long silence. 

“I’m sorry, Esmeray.”

“Me too.” 

‘How soon?’ wrote Esmeray to Ishaq.

Days passed before the sparrowhawk returned.

  ‘Come spring, our men will be ready to move after you.’
 

Esmeray reasoned why she kept meeting Nariz on the mountain night after night. Two lonely souls, she justified. He was fragile, in a way, susceptible to the way others thought of him. The shadow of his father’s legacy was long: a bloody path riddled with conquering wars.

Since his mother’s death, he couldn’t sleep in the dark. 

Esmeray found herself sharing things, too. The poppy fields of Eysri. The taste of her mother’s homemade mansaf. Her hunger for a brighter future.

“I am the future of Savaya,” Nariz said, “I can bring that for the Eysri. I don’t want to carry my father’s sword any further.”

Esmeray soaked in the thought. There in her mind’s eye, she and Nariz were meeting in the daytime, under a blue sky, in a poppy field kept by her people. Free. 

“I hope you mean that,” she replied. 

The Sultan died that winter, taken by his age and old battle wounds. Nariz al-Muhad wore mourning white the night he was crowned, in a somber hall filled with courtiers, priests, and Starsingers. 

“The crown looks terribly heavy on him,” murmured Heba. 

Esmeray couldn’t help but agree. 

One moonless night thereafter, Nariz was on the mountain, already waiting with the lantern. Esmeray stormed up the path, hissing the moment she laid eyes on him. 

“Why are they saying Saam al-Taj was executed?” she demanded, breathless. 

“Good evening to you, too.” His voice was dull. 

“Don’t give me wit,” Esmeray snapped. Shadows sharpened every feature of his face. “Only the Sultan can permit an execution order.”

He didn’t reply.

“You don’t deny it? Did you not hear his case?”

“He murdered two soldiers—”

“He was defending his family against intruders in his home! They would have killed everyone in that house. You know this— you know this.” Her voice broke. Her father had been friends with Saam. “I’ve told— I’ve— told you. About Esyri.” 

Nariz took her shoulders. “I cannot change the river’s course overnight. My lords demanded justice. I must hear their side, too.”

Something in Esmeray withered. 

“Esmeray…” That gentle voice. The softness of his hands.

“Dont’!” she gasped, yanking away. She started down the mountain. Her legs shook as she recalled a saying in her people’s tongue:

The fangless viper can still strangle. 

The first spring rose bloomed. The Night of the Starsingers arrived. 

Esmeray stood in the observatory in her shimmering gown. The black-robed Singers solemnly noted the positions of the stars at nightfall. The Sultan waited aside, anxiously pacing. The court drank idly and waited for the same news they received every year. 

A grim-faced Singer whispered to the Sultan, whose expression darkened. He was out the door in a moment, the court stirring in confusion. The first ill omen in decades.

Esmeray didn’t wait to hear the reading. She vanished from the crowd, knowing where the Sultan had gone. 

On the mountain, Nariz stared down at his city. He acknowledged Esmeray’s arrival with a glance. “I didn’t know if you’d come. Did you hear the reading?”

Esmeray didn’t respond. She reached to her hair and pulled out a sharp, pearled hairpin. 

“My reign is doomed.” Nariz sank to the ground. “My father was right.”

Esmeray kneeled before him. She cupped his face in her hand. Lantern light reflected on her starry gown, dappling their skin. 

“Nariz.” 

He met her eyes. They were closer than they’d ever been. 

Like falling asleep, Ishaq had told her the night before she left for Savaya. Should you use it, they will feel nothing. 

At the time, she savored the thought of the dagger. Now, she was grateful for the poison as her fingers found the nape of Nariz's neck. His skin was cool. 

Her pin just barely pricked his flesh. His hand brushed his neck as if bitten by a fly, his eyes dark and lost. He shuddered. 

“I’m sorry,” he said, wearily. “I’m sorry I’ve failed.”

Who he spoke to, she didn’t know. She held him as he grew limp in her arms. 

“The stars,” he murmured. “They…they said…” Then he stilled.

Esmeray blew the lantern out.