‘You look much better.’
Kalila’s eyes flew open. She didn’t know how long she’d been lying there, half-asleep, but now she was most certainly wide awake, and aware of Aarif standing above her. He was dressed in crisp trousers and a polo shirt, and he looked clean and fresh. Even though her swimming costume was modest by Western standards, Kalila felt exposed under his bland gaze.
‘I feel better,’ she allowed.
Aarif was silent for a moment, his expression guarded, and then when he spoke his voice was abrupt. ‘I wondered if you’d like to leave the palace compound for a bit. I could show you where the diamonds are mined, as well as a few other of Calista’s sights.’
Kalila’s heart leapt at the thought. Away from the palace—with Aarif. It was tempting; it was dangerous. ‘Yes, that would be nice,’ she replied, her voice amazingly level and calm.
‘Good.’ Aarif nodded. ‘We can go after lunch if you like.’ Kalila nodded her agreement, and without another word he turned and left.
Her nerves were too highly strung even to consider lounging by the pool with a paperback, so Kalila returned to her room to shower and dress.
A few hours later she had eaten in her bedroom, as usual, and was waiting in the foyer of the palace, dressed in a sleeveless cotton blouse in pale lavender and loose trousers.
She heard footsteps and turned to see Aarif, keys in hand,
coming down the stairs. He didn’t smile when he saw her, just nodded. ‘Good. You’re ready.’
He led her outside, and Kalila saw that an open-top Jeep had been driven round. Aarif opened the passenger door for her, and a few minutes later they were speeding away from the palace, away from the narrow, crowded streets of Serapolis, to the open stretch of desert.
They drove in silence, companionable enough, Kalila decided. She was content to simply enjoy the warm, dry breeze on her face, and the sight of the desert stretching away in graceful waves to a jewel-green sea.
‘We’ll drive to the river first,’ Aarif said after a few moments. ‘That’s where the diamond workshops are.’
Kalila nodded, pushing a strand of hair away from her eyes and wishing she’d brought a hat, or at least a hair clip.
Aarif saw the movement and gave her a sideways smile. ‘I’m used to seeing you a bit of a mess,’ he said, his voice low. ‘I suppose I like it.’
It wasn’t really a compliment, yet it still sent delight fizzing through her veins, filling up her head and heart with impossible hopes.
They didn’t speak again until the river, a winding stretch of muddy green, came into view, along with a few low, long sheds where Kalila assumed the diamonds were polished and honed.
Aarif parked the Jeep, and as they got out she saw where the diamonds were mined, a side of the rocky bank that was covered with a system of scaffolding and drainpipes.
‘The diamonds are difficult to access,’ Aarif told her, his hand under her elbow as he guided her along the uneven ground. ‘And at present they are mined only by skilled artisans. There is too much corruption in the world of diamond mining as it is.’ There was a hard note to his voice.
Kalila nodded, and Aarif led her past the river to the sheds. Aarif explained the process to her, how the diamonds had to be separated from the silt and gravel, then carefully polished
and cut. He unlocked a case to show her a diamond in the rough—it looked no more than a piece of dirty glass, yet once honed it would, Aarif assured her, be quite spectacular.
‘I prefer them like this, sometimes,’ he said with a small, wry smile. ‘Nothing gaudy or showy. All the potential—the best—still to come. The hope.’
Kalila nodded, her throat suddenly tight, for she understood what he meant. There was so much more excitement and hope in possibility, rather than in the finished product, known, certain, dull. She handed him back the diamond. ‘Yes, I see what you mean.’
‘I’m boring you,’ Aarif said as he locked the case up again, and Kalila shook her head. ‘I forget sometimes that most people are not interested in this as I am.’
‘No, you’re not,’ Kalila said. ‘I like learning about the diamonds—about you.’ Aarif kept his face averted, and Kalila took a breath and continued. ‘What made you first interested in diamonds?’
Aarif shrugged. ‘Someone needed to do it.’
‘But you clearly have a passion for it,’ Kalila persisted. It had been obvious from his voice, the bright gleam in his eyes.
His hands stilled for a moment on the case, then he tucked the key back in his pocket and shrugged. ‘It is important to me,’ he said, his voice strangely cautious.
‘What did you study at Oxford?’ Kalila asked, genuinely curious.
He frowned, then replied, ‘Geology.’
It made sense if he were to go into the diamond trade, Kalila supposed, yet with the conversation she felt as if she’d touched something hidden, forbidden. Something Aarif didn’t want to talk about.
‘What about you?’ he asked. ‘What did you study at Cambridge? History, your father said, I think?’
Kalila nodded. ‘Yes, and then I started my MPhil in medieval social history.’ She smiled wryly. ‘Not very useful,
but I enjoyed it, learning about people and the way they used to live.’
‘You started?’ Aarif repeated with a frown, and Kalila shrugged.
‘I would have finished around now, but—’
‘The wedding was delayed so many times,’ he murmured. ‘I suppose your father wanted you home.’
‘Yes.’
His gaze was distant, his hands still in his pockets. ‘And so you went.’
‘You’re not the only one with a sense of duty,’ Kalila said, trying to be rueful but sounding a bit sharp. Aarif sent her one swift, searching glance.
‘No,’ he agreed quietly, ‘I’m not.’ He moved towards the door. ‘There is a restaurant on the beach with a superlative view of the ocean. We can rest there.’
They drove in silence down the long, winding coast road, the sun starting its descent towards the sea, turning its surface to shimmering gold.
The restaurant was perched on a cliff top, with just a few rickety chairs and tables on a terrace, and the lone waiter, agog at serving royalty, nearly tripped over himself to provide them with glasses of orange sharbat and a plate of sticky sesame-coated buns, plump with raisins and sweetened with honey.
They ate and drank, chatting with comfortable ease that soon drifted into companionable silence. After a while, that silence became strained with unspoken tensions, memories, and thoughts. Strange, Kalila thought, how without a word spoken or a look given silence could become charged, dangerous, a palpable energy swirling around them.
Aarif’s eyes were on the distant, shimmering sea, his gaze hooded and thoughtful. At that moment he hardly seemed aware of her existence.
Kalila lay a hand on his sleeve, yet he seemed unaware of her touch. ‘Aarif, what are you thinking?’
He turned to her slowly, his expression still distant, as if he had yet to wake from the snarl of a dream, or perhaps a memory. ‘I was thinking about the sea,’ he said after a moment. ‘It is so peaceful now, a thing of beauty. And yet it can be so treacherous.’
Despite the warmth of the sun on her shoulders, the gentle maritime breeze teasing her hair away from her face, Kalila wanted to shiver. She did not know what held Aarif in its terrible thrall, yet she sensed it had come to grips with him again.
‘The hour is late,’ Aarif said abruptly, draining his glass. ‘We should return to the palace before people wonder where we are.’
Kalila followed him from the café, the waiter bowing and murmuring thanks behind them. Back in the Jeep, they drove back along the coast road in silence, and as the daylight faded into dusk so, Kalila thought, did that easy, companionable silence she hadn’t even realised she’d been cherishing.
She suppressed a sigh, and then turned in surprise when just a mile or two from the palace Aarif pulled off the road onto a lonely stretch of beach.
‘What…?’
‘I want to show you something,’ he said, his voice strangely brusque, and Kalila followed him across the rocky, uneven ground. The sun had faded, leaving only livid purple streaks across the sky and long shadows on the sand.
Aarif walked to within a few feet of the sea, which lapped against the sand with a soft, shushing sound. He gazed out at the sea, his hands thrust deep in his pockets, while Kalila waited behind him, conscious of the now-cool breeze that ruffled her hair and set goosebumps rising along her bare arms.
‘I haven’t come to this little beach in a while,’ Aarif said after a long moment. He turned around, and in the shadowy darkness Kalila saw that he was smiling, although it didn’t feel like a smile, and she didn’t relax.
Aarif came and sat down on the sand, his elbows resting on his knees. Kalila sat next to him. The sand was cold and
hard, and she waited, the only sound the continual lapping of the waves against the shore.
‘Sometimes,’ Aarif said quietly, ‘I feel that my whole life has been bound up in a single moment. Here.’ He raised one hand to gesture to the darkening beach before letting it fall once again. ‘Everything has been held hostage to what happened here.’ He shook his head, and Kalila waited, apprehension seeping through her with the chilling sand. ‘When I was fifteen,’ Aarif finally continued, ‘my brother Kaliq and I decided we wanted a little adventure. We were bored, I suppose, and restless.’ He paused, and Kalila wondered if he meant to go on. She could barely see him now, even though he was next to her. Darkness was falling fast. ‘We built a raft,’ Aarif continued finally. ‘Out of driftwood and some rope. It wasn’t a particularly handsome craft, but it did the job.’ He shook his head, lost once more in memories, and Kalila was left groping in a darkness that had nothing to do with the setting sun. Why was Aarif telling her this now? Was this—an innocent, boyish adventure—the dark memory that snared his dreams and even his desires? She couldn’t understand, and she wanted to.
‘I don’t know what might have happened,’ Aarif said slowly, ‘if Zafir hadn’t found us out. He was my little brother, six years old, and he insisted that he come along with us.’ Kalila heard the
was
, and felt another, deeper chill of apprehension. ‘I said he could. You see, I was in charge. I always had been. Kaliq and I might be twins, but I was born first and those eight minutes have made all the difference. I’ve never forgotten that it was my responsibility to look after the younger ones, and especially little Zafir, the apple of my father’s eye. There wasn’t a soul alive who couldn’t love him.’ Aarif’s voice took on a ragged edge and he turned his head away from Kalila, tension radiating from every taut line of his body.
She raised her hand, wanting to touch him, to take away some of his pain she felt like a physical thing, but he flinched, and she dropped her hand again.
‘That raft took us out to sea,’ he continued, his voice toneless now. ‘We had no idea what we were doing, and before we could even credit it we were over a mile from shore. Then we saw a ship in the distance, and we thought it was our salvation. We flagged it down—took off our shirts and waved them. The ship came closer, and even then we didn’t realise…’
‘Realise what?’ Kalila whispered.
‘Diamond smugglers,’ Aarif said. ‘Modern-day pirates. Perhaps they would have left us alone but Zafir—little Zafir—told them we were the sons of the King of Calista and they would be rewarded for rescuing us.’ He smiled bitterly. ‘Well, they exchanged reward for ransom, and took us aboard.’
‘Oh, Aarif—’
‘They took us to a deserted island, one of the many scattered around here, and tied us up like animals. I’d never seen Zafir looking so…so
bewildered
. He’d only encountered goodness in his life, love and warmth, and now this…! At six years old. Those men were fiends. Demons.’
Kalila shook her head, unable to even imagine the terror and helplessness they all must have felt.
‘After a few days,’ Aarif resumed, ‘Zafir loosened his ropes. He managed to untie us both—he was so brave! When our captors were busy—drunk, most like—we tried to escape.’ Even in the dusky half-light Kalila could see the bleakness in his eyes, and she felt it in her own soul.
‘And?’ she whispered, for she knew the story did not end there.
‘And we almost made it,’ Aarif said. ‘We made it back to the raft—they’d left it on the shore, most likely to use for firewood. Then…’ he took a breath and let it out slowly. ‘They saw us leaving, and they knew if we escaped, they were all dead men. My father would see to it. They had nothing to lose, and so they began shooting. One bullet hit me—little more than a graze, but I fell into the water.’ His hand went to touch the scar on his face, although Kalila doubted he was aware of
the action. ‘I couldn’t see for the blood, but I could hear. I heard Kaliq fall in the water too, and Zafir…Zafir…’ He broke off with an almost-shudder. A full minute passed and a cold breeze blew off the water. When Aarif spoke again, it was in that terrible, toneless voice that made Kalila want to both weep and shiver. ‘The smugglers dragged both Kaliq and me back to shore. But Zafir was lost on the raft. The last thing I saw was him on the horizon, nothing more than a speck. And I
heard
him…’ His voice choked before he continued. ‘I always hear him, asking me to help him. Save him. Me. He looked to me…and I failed him. I did nothing.’ He shook his head, lost in the terrible tangle of his own thoughts.
‘What happened then?’ Kalila asked eventually, for, although all she wanted to do was put her arms around Aarif and smooth the furrows from his forehead, kiss and comfort his pain and sorrow away, she knew the tale had not ended.
‘The smugglers took us prisoner. They were furious—and desperate. They took that out on us, but nothing,
nothing
seemed to matter any more.’ Kalila remembered the scars on his back, and knew just what Aarif meant. ‘My father paid the ransom, and we were returned. The smugglers were brought to justice, though they sought to escape it. But—’ he drew in a breath ‘—we never saw Zafir again. Not even a trace.’
Kalila swallowed, her eyes stinging. ‘I’m so sorry, Aarif.’
‘I don’t speak of it,’ he told her. He turned his head so he was facing her, his eyes dark and determined. Kalila felt a quiver of apprehension ripple through her. ‘None of us wish to remember. My father—and even my stepmother—were never the same again after we lost Zafir. It was as if all of our lives had lost an easy joy, and we were never to know it again.’