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Over the doorway, a painted wooden sign read Kofi’s Clinic in cracked and faded letters. Underneath, in a smaller but darker script, someone had translated it into Dilmuni, as if the Free Democratic City-State of Qilwa was still part of the queendom.
think this plague is curable, and if anyone spent time on people other than the rich, we could get it under control.”
“Really, you’re reading this garbage? Abbaass is notorious for not giving other cultures their due. All he does is celebrate our history, as if it’s only ours.”
Firuz struggled constantly whether their family should suffer more to feed morsels to another.
“I do have one bit of good news. One of Kofi’s old university friends gave us a bunch of books. One of them has a whole chapter on alignments.” Parviz’s entire face changed: the tired sag of his eyes widened, his thick brows lifted, his lips parted. “Really?” “I’ll get to work on the spell as soon as I can.” Firuz nodded to the binding vest hanging on the side of the bed, a hand-me-down from before their own alignment. They’d kept it out of a weird sense of nostalgia, and their brother had requested it before they’d all left Dilmun. “Then you won’t have to wear that anymore. Although we can
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😭😭😭😭
Ten months in Qilwa, and they hoped, though were not naive enough to believe, it would be the last of the unrest. At least, for a while.
Another place, another life, another Firuz might not have bothered, but this Firuz, in Qilwa, had little recourse.
The new home was farther from work than the last one, but it was worth it. What a relief to live in their own space, where their mother could have a corner altar and Parviz a real table at which to study.
He munched a piece of plum lavaashak Firuz had picked up from the one Sassanian vendor in the affordable section of the bazaar, who hid zher ethnicity with Qilwan heritage.
They might not have such feelings of their own—romance was not only foreign to them but completely uninteresting—but they could appreciate a spark between others.
“This is my brother, he-Parviz. Parviz, this is she-Afsoneh.”
Almost a year in Qilwa, and there still wasn’t a proper school that would accept Parviz. It annoyed Firuz to no end.
“The . . . brand, the one your medars had put on you. It’s a structural prevention from letting you access the energy of the universe. I hear it’s a painful process—”
Skies, the girl needed a real education. What were they teaching in that muddy school? What had she learned in whatever backwards town she’d been reared in?
“Is it supposed to still hurt?” “The fracture is fixed, but your body still needs rest for it to fully heal.”
but they were only one person, and they were doing their best.
In addition to what they’d prescribed earlier, they added a suggestion of grilled liver, red-meat kabobs, dates filled with walnuts. All foods meant to boost a person’s energy.
So at night, limiting their sleep, the eavesdropped conversation between healer and patient drove them: they buried themself again in the text with its chapter on alignment, and a few others on anatomy and puberty and magical theory, and sketched out potential spell pathways, and turned stolen afternoon hours to the subject of their ward and trainee.
Blood was responsible for so much—carrying nutrients and air to organs and tissues; fighting disease and infection; clearing waste or depositing it where it could be processed for excretion. If the marrow increased its output to an unsustainable level, might that impact the type of blood produced, make it less effective at its various jobs?
Any machine, with enough use, broke down. A body was a complex machine fitting together thousands, if not millions, of parts; too much pressure on any one could cause a malfunction that collapsed the whole thing. A spell targeting blood, which reached every tissue, every organ—such a spell could do untold damage.
Of course, visiting the governor was no laughing matter, and neither was Kofi’s real distress, but if Firuz didn’t laugh, they’d scream.
And Kofi gave them a pleading look, a desperate look—a hopeful one. The look of a Qilwan who’d taken a Sassanian refugee under his wing and wanted to show the results.
heard the governor went on a trip south a few years ago and has since changed the decor. What say you, Firuz-jan?” Firuz grabbed a washcloth for themself. “Uncomfortably overcompensating, which I suppose is the point.” Kofi laughed. “This is why I like you, they-Firuz. You say what’s on your mind.”
the governor was the picture of soft kindness: braided hair pulled back from her round face, a twinkle in her eye, clothes bright pink and blue and red. It seemed unimaginable that such a woman was behind the vicious laws shunting Firuz’s people into extreme poverty and pain.
“Though many of your kind neglected to go through such proper channels.” Firuz felt their smile grow icy. Your kind, as if Qilwans and Sassanians were so fundamentally different. “Fear for one’s family and own life can do that, Chamberlain. I pray you will never have to experience it.”
The lie was so foul, Firuz could smell it from the slums.
“Because if this is what needs to happen to be funded by the government, then I will no longer take such money.” Kofi nodded. “Good day Governor, Chamberlain. Come, Firuz. Our patients await.”
Dilmun might have been the Sassanian ancestral home, but that was not enough reason to stay in light of a genocide.
Puberty had taken them unawares, not because they did not know it would happen but because their body began to morph into a thing unknown, a thing untenable with their own image of themself, an image they hadn’t realized they’d held so firmly.
Nia snarled, whirling on her wife. “You saw what they did! The way they cut into him—the blood! Everywhere!” “I saw a healer doing a job I do not understand, using a tool I understand even less.”
“Captain,” said Kofi, “if you would, please interrogate my assistant at a later time. As a personal favor.”
“It’s a matter of the heart and mind both. All peoples are proud, and all want to be their own. First we were part of Sassanid, and then Dilmun, the only part of the empire they did not free. It is only now, one thousand years later, that we can be ourselves without another’s oversight.”
What did it mean to belong to a people who had once subjugated another before becoming subjugated themselves?
How had Firuz not guessed it before? Kofi was the most dedicated healer they’d ever met. He’d stop at nothing to find every way, unconventional or dangerous or not, to help his patients.
Limitless potential for so much healing—what would it mean to use a dying individual to build hope for the living?
Sure, things had been peaceful for a time, but then a monster appeared in the sky. Then a genocide began. Blood magic was as much a death sentence as it was a potential gift, dooming more than the user, should a mishap arise. Hadn’t its misuse here proven as much? No matter how many Sassanians Kofi had saved, so many more were dying.
“Your elders,” spat Kofi, “oh yes, your elders, your skies-cursed elders.” His vitriol took Firuz aback; the only time Kofi sounded this bitter was when discussing the governor. “Tell me, how have they helped you over the past two years? What has listening to them taught you other than pain and fear?”
Firuz grabbed the energy in their blood to snap the link tethering the three of them. It felt as meaningful as abandoning one’s home to avoid a genocide, only to die in the gutters.
What was perhaps more shocking than Malika believing Firuz was her willingness to help.
“I’m sorry I’ve been such an ass about it.” Not letting go of Afsoneh’s hand, Firuz kissed the top of their brother’s head. “I’m sorry I’ve been a shit sibling.” Tone a bit too bright, Afsoneh said, “At least you’ve been shit siblings together.” “Shit siblings, all three of us,” agreed Firuz.
“You’re not allowed to die, remember?” Parviz looked far too serious for the joke. “We still have sessions left on my chest.”
What does it mean to be oppressed when you were once an oppressor?
Firuz is not a hero, and Kofi is not a villain. Their ideological clash ends in violence, as so many often do, but Firuz does not come away with the triumphant knowledge that they won. They didn’t win. As they began the story, so they conclude it: a marginalized person in a country afraid of its own recolonization.
