#sadhri

Sadhri stared uncomprehendingly at the messenger in front of her.

“Dead?” she whispered.

“Yes, your imperial highness.”

Her legs gave out and she fell to the floor, her greyed hair coming loose from its bun and hanging in front of her eyes. Sycophants and courtiers rushed forward to help her, all babbling useless condolences.

One phrase in particular stood out in the cacophony of voices.

“Are you alright?”

Izil’s legs shook. He was caked in mud to keep the flies off of him and stank from the swamp so badly that he made himself want to throw up, hadn’t slept in two days and was carrying Sadhri, who had managed to lacerate her feet on razor grass.

Sadhri had never been very religious. Priests spoke of a divine flame within everyone that drove them to greatness, but she had never seen why greatness had to follow so many rules. She was especially suspicious due to all of those rules seemingly being bent on making her act like a brainless idiot for some man in the future that she would be expected to marry. In her experience, it was the men who needed the rules to control their behaviour, not the women.

So why was she automatically excluded from nearly all paths to power? The best person for the job should get the job, not the person with extra flesh between their legs. The emperor had admitted that she was his favourite child, and the best suited for the job of ruling. Her brothers were at best drunken whoremongerers, and at worst enjoyed slaughtering their own people. None of them had any interest in really ruling; they had no drive beyond fulfilling their own pleasures. And yet, her sex made it impossible to get the throne until all of the slaughterers and whoremongerers were dead.

Izil had been the first that had seemed to understand. The harsh life in the desert and steppes and the destruction of most of his tribe after his father’s death left no room for any silly concepts of someone being automatically superior due to how they were born.

But the battle had left him injured. Badly injured. And so, she had come back to religion, spitting and cursing inside all the way.

Izil hated the heat in this gods-be-damned kingdom. It was nothing like the dry heat that made one’s lips crack in his home country. No, this heat made the air shimmer and felt like someone was smothering him with a wet towel. Mold grew in the wool of his people’s flocks and the whole world seemed to be waiting for rain.

Sadhri’s seeming comfort with it made him feel even angrier. She hummed and arranged the pieces on the board that was the court, taking advantage of other’s sloth during this season to create more plans and schemes to eliminate her competition for the throne. All of her brothers had to die, and she had a lot of brothers.

Izil groaned and threw his arm over his eyes. Only the faint rumble of thunder in the distance promising rain kept him from just giving up and leaving all of this behind; this smothering land, this overly-complicated court, Sadhri’s plans, his people, everything.

He wished that he was still a boy with only a boy’s troubles sometimes.