Empire of Lies

52

Dinner was a simple but filling affair of dane, which consisted of mutton and rice, followed by zirbaç, a sweet pudding made from raisins, plums, and almonds. They ate alone at a small family restaurant a stone’s throw from the inn, avoiding any unnecessary interaction, barely speaking to each other out of both tiredness and a desire to ensure they weren’t overheard. Nisreen barely touched her food, and Kamal, she noted, was kind enough to only mention it once. Even though her body was clearly craving it, she didn’t have the energy to eat. She barely had energy to breathe.

The break from the fear and the running had allowed all the horrors of the previous night to come storming back. The sadness that had been pushed aside by the rush for survival had returned, so profound and debilitating that she could barely lift a finger. Her husband and her children were gone forever. It was impossible to accept. She kept going over it, again and again, her mind refusing to process it and scrambling for some way out of it, something she missed that could bring them back. Perhaps more than the grief that was tearing her apart, it was this crippling sense of helplessness about the cruel finality of it all that was killing her.

They retreated to their room. They needed a wash and a change of clothing, but it would wait. They were both too wiped out to do anything more than just collapse on their beds and stare at the ceiling.

Nisreen was the first to break the silence.

“It’s never going to end, is it?” she said. “They’re going to keep coming after us. I mean, you know what they’re like; you know how they work. They’re never going to give up.”

“No, they’re not. Not given what’s at stake.”

“So this is how we’re going to live from now on? Constantly looking over our shoulders and worrying about who might turn up?”

Kamal shrugged. “We can go to another time. Try to lose them again. Make sure we don’t leave a trail this time.”

“But we can never be sure, can we? There’s always a chance that they’ll track us down again. There’s no limit to how many agents they can send back to all kinds of past times to find us. Which means there’ll always be that fear, that doubt.” She rolled onto her side to face him. “I can’t live like that. I won’t live like that.”

“We might not have a choice.”

“We always have a choice.”

An idea that had germinated in her head on the barge the night before was back, and it was clawing for attention. Taymoor’s appearance had breathed life into it; the anger and the feeling of helplessness were giving it wings.

“What you were saying last night… about how maybe you’d want to change things,” she said. “How you’d want to use what we know to make our world a better place. Maybe this is all much bigger than us. Maybe it’s not about figuring out a way to get back to our old lives. Maybe this has all happened to us for something much more important.”

“What do you mean?”

“The world we know—whether it’s the time we came from or being here now—it’s not how it was supposed to be.”

Kamal looked puzzled.

“He changed it. Rasheed changed everything. All this”—she spread her arms—“it’s the way it is because of him. The empire, our whole way of life, is still around because of what he did. But it wasn’t supposed to be this way.”

“What are you saying, Nisreen?”

“The only reason we’re here, whether it’s here now or back where we were, our whole lives—none of it would have happened if he hadn’t changed history.”

“You’re saying we owe our existence to him.”

“I’m saying everything we know about our world wasn’t supposed to be that way. It’s a perversion, a cheat of history. And I think we need to set that right.”

Kamal’s jaw dropped. “Set it right? It’s our world.”

“It’s wrong.”

“Nisreen—”

“It’s wrong, Kamal,” she insisted forcefully. “It wasn’t supposed to be this way.”

“He saved the empire and allowed it to spread its rule halfway across the world,” Kamal shot back.

“He perverted history.”

“To our advantage. To the advantage of our people.”

“And to the detriment of millions of others. People who would have, who should have, existed. Who should have had wonderful and tragic and happy and miserable lives but never got the chance because of what he did.”

“While millions of others did, including us.”

She scoffed. “And look how well that turned out.”

Kamal took a breath to calm down, then rubbed his eyes. “The world he described, the way it was before he changed it—it wasn’t exactly paradise, was it?”

“It wasn’t—but I don’t think any world can be, do you? Ours wasn’t any better. With everything you know about human nature—you of all people—surely you don’t think a world without conflict is possible?”

He didn’t need to reply.

“Look, it doesn’t matter if the world that Rasheed knew was good or bad,” she pressed on. “But from what he said, it seems to me that it was actually a much better place because of one fundamental difference: freedom. People had freedoms we don’t even dream of. They could say what they wanted, live how they wanted, go where they wanted. They could even choose their leadership. They had elections. And surely a world that open, a world where people can express their ideas without fear and engage in open debates about the big issues of their time, has got to be a world that wouldn’t allow the kinds of lies and manipulation and corruption that we’ve suffered from. A world where people can’t be ruled by thugs and live under an iron fist. These people were free to shape their destinies. And that’s something we’ll never have, not here and now, not ever.”

“Yes, but—”

“Rasheed’s world wasn’t a terrible place, Kamal. It’s not like he saved us from some nightmarish existence. And even if he had, that’s not the point. The point is that he decided for us. One man. A murderer, a violent, vicious killer—one man decided how we would all live. He took away the freedom of millions of people. He took away their lives. And that can’t be right.”

It took Kamal a moment to say anything. He seemed to be having a hard time refuting her point and processing the immensity of what she was driving at. “It wouldn’t be the first time one man decided that,” he finally said.

“What are you talking about?”

“We already follow the teachings of one man.”

It was Nisreen’s turn to be shocked. “Tell me you didn’t just say that.”

“All I’m saying is—”

“You’re not suggesting Rasheed is some kind of holy messenger,” she interjected, “guided by a divine hand?”

“I don’t know,” Kamal replied. “He’s certainly got the power of a god.”

“He got it by brute force,” she fired back angrily. “From a man who was his prisoner. A man he killed. Does that sound divine to you?”

“Of course not, but—”

“And if you’re going to think that way, then who’s to say we’re not the ones being guided by a divine hand?” she pressed on.

“Us?”

“Why not? Maybe it was God’s plan for us to come across it. To fix things. That’s just as plausible, isn’t it?”

Kamal was tongue-tied.

“There’s nothing divine about this, Kamal. I mean, it can’t be. I don’t know where this incantation came from. I don’t know why it was carved into the walls of that crypt all those years ago. All I know is that this—everything you see—this isn’t the way the world was supposed to be. He changed it. He stole history. And that’s got to be wrong.”

“How do you know someone else didn’t change it before him? How do you know the world he described was the way it should have been? Maybe there was a different world before it that someone else changed. And another one before that. It could be infinite.”

“Maybe. I don’t know.” She was frustrated, but she wasn’t giving up. It reminded her of the first arguments they’d had when things got bad, when Paris had begun to reel under the new sultan’s repression. “All I know is what he did. And I know—I’m sure—that it’s wrong. It’s a cheat, a lie, a despicable defilement of how it was meant to be. And we need to fix that.”

“Fix it?”

“We need to stop him.”

Kamal’s eyes shot wide. “You want to stop Rasheed from what—from making all this happen?”

“Yes.”

“We exist—we’re alive because of what he did.”

“I know. But it’s wrong. And we can change that.”

“That’s… nuts.”

“Is it? He did it. Why can’t we?”

“Because… because it’s—”

She gave him room to finish it. But he couldn’t. There was no because.

“We can stop him, Kamal,” she insisted. “We can go back in time and prevent him from changing history.”

“Nisreen—”

“Think about it,” she interjected. “You saw how this all ended up. Maybe you couldn’t see it, but we were living in a terrible, terrible time. People were being put away for voicing their thoughts, for challenging a ruler whose men didn’t hesitate to murder my husband and my children to protect this—this big lie.” She heard her voice falter, felt the onset of tears, but she pressed on. “We were ruled by a cretinous brute, and God knows how much worse it’s going to get. And stopping him, fixing this abomination—maybe that’s the best way to honor the lives of Ramazan and Tarek and Noor. At least, this way, maybe they wouldn’t have died for nothing.”

Kamal felt beaten down by the sheer intensity of her delivery.

Still, what she was proposing—it was reckless, if not mad. “So you don’t want revenge anymore?” he asked.

“What do you mean?”

“Before we jumped. You said you wanted them all dead. Celaleddin, the ones who sent the men after you—after us. You wanted them dead. We could jump forward and do that. They wouldn’t know we were coming after them.”

“I don’t have the incantation for going forward, remember? I just know how to go back in time.”

“Maybe you can figure it out.”

“Maybe. But this feels much more important.”

“You want to honor their lives?” he pressed. “Why not go back a few years—I don’t know, five, ten years, to get away from Taymoor? Why don’t we escape from here to a safe time and then work to change the future—our future, this world’s future—from there? Why do you want to destroy it all—’cause that’s what he said, didn’t he? The empire didn’t survive in his world.”

“That wouldn’t be making things right. Maybe the empire should never have survived. And anyway, it’s not an option because they know we’re here. They’re going to keep looking for us; you know they are. They could send a bunch of men back ten, twenty years; they could have them put out alerts for us across the empire, across time, just to make sure they shut us down permanently. We know the truth, and we can use it. We’re a huge danger to them. And anything we try to change, anything we do to warn about the bad times coming, it’ll just be a flag announcing where we are. We’d be giving ourselves away. They’re never going to leave us alone. No, the only way to fix this, the only way to guarantee that they never find us, the only way to change things permanently so that they can never undo what we do, the only way we’ll ever find peace, is to make sure none of this ever happens in the first place—which means going back to its source. Which is Rasheed. We have to stop him before he changes things.”

Kamal had no valid arguments left to challenge her with. “Even if we wanted to, it would be impossible, surely.”

“He managed it.”

Kamal let out a tense, tight sigh. “So you want to—”

“I want to go back to the only place we know he was at. The only place we can find him; the place where it all started. The fields outside Vienna in the month of Ramadan of 1094.”[7]

“You want to go back to 1094?”

“Yes.”

“And do what?”

“I want to make sure the sultan’s army doesn’t take Vienna. And I want to kill Ayman Rasheed to make sure he doesn’t find a way to undo what we do.”

“You want to kill him?”

“Yes. I don’t see any other way.”

Despite everything he’d just heard, this was to him the most shocking part. Nisreen—idealistic, righteous, principled Nisreen—was again talking about killing someone in the most casual of tones. Not even casual. This time, she was coldly committed.

The world had truly spun off its axis.

“Besides,” she added, “don’t forget: Rasheed is still out there. He escaped. He’s out there somewhere in the past. He could come back. Anytime. He could find us. He could show up here tomorrow. And your idea about going back a few years and changing things for our future—he could easily undo anything we do if he doesn’t like it.”

“So could Celaleddin and his men,” Kamal noted.

“Not if we go back to the source. Not if we stop Rasheed before he changes things. If we do that, Celaleddin won’t be part of the future anymore. He won’t be around to send anyone back. He will have never existed.”

“Nor will we?”

“We’ll be in the past already.”

“Yes, but we’d have got there from a future that never existed.”

“It did when we were in it. And we’d already be back there. We’re not going to suddenly turn to dust or just cease to exist because of it. Rasheed didn’t.”

Kamal just studied her for a moment, stunned by what he’d just heard. He had to move her off that path, to rein her in—and not for the sake of the empire, but for her own safety.

“Nisreen, can you hear yourself? You actually want to go back to a war zone and kill the sultan’s most valued advisor? You think you can just show up there and make it happen—how? How would you get to him? And how do you think you would kill him? They didn’t have guns like ours back then. They had muskets. Do you even know how to use one?”

“No.” Her eyes were still burning fiercely, but they softened up a touch as she added, “But you can teach me.”

“What makes you think I know? Nisreen, this is insane. It’s suicide—and it’s not fair to everyone who—”

“I’m doing this, Kamal. It has to be done. My life here has no meaning, no purpose. What are we going to do, start new lives in this time, alone in this world of strangers, with no one apart from each other, no one else who means anything to us? You want me to plod along for the rest of my life as if nothing ever happened? Maybe you could live with such emptiness, but I can’t. I wouldn’t want to. And I couldn’t sit back and do nothing, not knowing what I know. We owe it to history to fix things. Or at least to try. And if you’re not going to help me, then we really don’t have anything left to say to each other.”

She stormed over to the door and yanked it open, but before she could step out of the room, Kamal had darted across to her and blocked her from opening the door fully.

“Nisreen, please—”

“Get out of my way.” She pulled the door and tried to barge past him.

He pressed back against it and reached out, grabbing her by the shoulders. “Nisreen, listen to me, this isn’t the—”

She batted his hands away. “Leave me alone.”

He held his ground, his arm outstretched and blocking the door from opening fully. “No. I’m not going to let you end up dead in some godforsaken past. Let’s think things through more carefully.”

She shoved his arm back, her anger now turning ferocious. “We just did. It has to be done.”

He moved to take hold of her, but she swatted him off. They both went quiet and just stared at each other in loaded silence.

“How can you not see that this is the right thing to do?”

“Nisreen…”

He stilled his tongue, taken aback by the gut-wrenching cocktail of anger and disappointment radiating out of her eyes.

She was breathing hard, just glaring at him. Then she shook her head slowly. “Where did the old Kamal go?” she finally said. “You used to be so… valiant. So headstrong and untamed. When you first joined the Hafiye, I thought, why? You’re intelligent; you could have chosen any number of safer, better-paid careers. But you didn’t. You said you wanted to make a difference, remember? And you have no idea—no idea—how much I admired you for that. You put your life on the line for us, for this city. For strangers. And when the first bombings happened, I’d stay up late at night, worried about you. Wondering what doors you were knocking down, what dangers were waiting for you.” Her jaw tightened, and she sighed. “But then things got ugly… and you couldn’t see it. You couldn’t see the path we were on. And, worse, you couldn’t see that you were part of it. Part of the horror that was taking over. But even through the worst of it, even when I hated everything you stood for and couldn’t bear to hear your name, deep down there was a part of me that for some perverse reason still admired your strength, your commitment, the way that you didn’t just sit on the sidelines but fought for something you believed in, even if it was something that was gone, something that no longer existed, something that had turned into the exact opposite of what you had always defended.”

Kamal felt an invisible vise tighten up around his rib cage so hard he could barely breathe. “I know I’ve made mistakes. But this…”

“This needs to be done, Kamal. Maybe you can’t see it now, but you will. It’s the right thing to do. If we do nothing… we’ll be on the wrong side of history.”

He drew a long breath and studied her intently, feeling her gaze burn into him. “I can’t talk you out of this, can I?”

“Not a chance.” The steely commitment locked into her face was indisputable. “I’m doing this.”

The question remained unasked. But it was there, looming over him. With crushing force.

And there was only one possible answer he could give her.

She was right. Their past was never going to leave them alone, whether that was Taymoor or others coming after them or the memory of what had happened to Ramazan and the children.

The latter he couldn’t do anything about, but the former—there was a chance to end it. A slim one, but a chance.

“I can’t let you do it alone.”

“I can’t have you doing anything for my sake,” she said.

“I’m not.”

And maybe that was true. Maybe he saw sense in what she was saying. Or maybe he was just too worn out and depleted to think straight. Or maybe he was just too damn in love with her to have ever had a chance of replying in any other way.

“You’re right,” he finally told her, his tone soft and even. “We should do this. For Ramazan. For Tarek. For Noor. For everyone.”

She looked at him, and, for the first time in as long as he could remember, he saw a flicker of warmth light up her eyes and detected a hint of genuine affection and—far more crucially—respect.

And that alone was enough to pulverize any doubts about any other way he might have responded to her crazy, reckless, and radical plan.