I flattened myself behind a hedge.
Through the leaves, I saw a figure wrapped in a sleeping robe. He moved slowly towards a statue of a woman in the center of the garden. His shoulders slumped with age and heavy with sorrow. It was the King. He stopped before the largest Starsuckle bush, the one closest to where I had been kneeling. He didn't pluck a blossom. He simply reached out and gently caressed the cold cheek of the statue. His head drooped as if listening it. He inhaled deeply of the Starsuckle, and then, instead of a word coming from his lips, he exhaled a sigh. The breath was slow, deep and profound, as if he were reliving a memory and feeling loss anew.
I tried to stay as still as possible, hoping with each moment he would return. But alas, my leg shifted, a twig snapped with the crack.
The King's head shot up. The grief vanished from his face, replaced instantly by a curled lip and flared nostrils. His eyes, though they couldn't have seen clearly, locked onto my hiding place and he stepped towards me.
His voice, calm and colder than the stone statues around us, cut through the night: "An unusual choice for a thief. Most prefer gold."
I dropped to my knees, spilling the flowers, buds, and seeds. My hand tried to shield them.
The King looked down at me. A shudder racked him, faint but unmistakable, the tiny quake of someone on the verge of vomiting. I wasn't a thief to him, I was a cockroach in a meal, a piece of filth that had crawled out of the slums and into his private sanctuary.
My voice cracked. "My sister, Your Majesty. She's dying from the fever. This is the only cure. Her name is Dalia, Your Majesty. I beg you."
The cold voice spoke again. "You taint my wife's favorite flower with your filth and your grubby little tragedies." He stepped forward and used the heel of his slipper to grind the my precious cure into the dirt with his heel. "It is a royal flower. Its purpose is to please my eye and nose. Not to be squandered on slum vermin." With that, he clapped his hands.
Guards appeared instantly. The grabbed me by my arms and hauled my to my feet.
The King spat at them: "This one is not to be merely punished. He is to be made a public lesson. I want every cur in this city to see what happens when they touch what is mine."
As the dragged me from the garden, I heard one guard mutter to the other, "The King will forget this by morning. Just another stray." I foolishly allowed this to plant a seed of hope in my heart.
I was asked my name, lineage, place of residence and then thrown in a holding cell. When dawn came, any hope was crushed as I was brought out to the same stage where Smora was flogged.
The crowd assembled and the sentence was read: "Nadim, son of Hirajo, indigent, has been found guilty of threatening the life and person of the King himself. On a second count of attempted theft of Royal property, he was also found guilty. Third, he was found guilty of destruction of an emblem of the Royal House. For these crimes, he has been sentenced to public flogging of forty lashes followed by a lifetime of imprisonment where he will attempt to atone for his crimes."
The tormentor stepped forward.
The first lash fell across my right shoulder. My world narrowed to a strip across my back, a white hot knife of agony. I screamed Dalia's name.
Before I could recover, the second arced over my back. I could hear the whistle of the leather before the blow landed, coming close enough to brush my neck; I tasted iron and grit. I tried to focus my mind on the stars, on Dalia's face, the scrolls waiting in the cave, anything to give my mind an escape.
There was no escape. The third blow landed, then the fourth, and then the fifth.
The sixth, I think it was the sixth, I began to lose count in the fire. I do believe that the sixth was an unlucky one. It didn't land where the tormentor indented, instead it snaked around my torso and struck across my cheekbone. A jagged gash split flesh to bone; hot tears sprang unbidden as I felt the wet pulse of bone shards beneath the whip's leather tip.
A primal need to protect what was left of me impelled me to turn my head, trying to shield my face from the next blow. It was the most foolish, most hopeful, most fatal mistake I would make of my life. The stick-thin end wriggled free. The seventh lash caught me full in the eye. A crescent of agony snapped in my socket, sharp as shattered glass. I heard a pop, then everything went red. My tears mixed with blood, my vision flared white, then sucked away like water down a drain.
I staggered, mouth dry, hand groping at my ruined eye. The world tilted. I could taste every nerve-ending screaming as my brain registered the ruptured globe. In that terrifying new dark, I could only see one thing clearly. Dalia unable to think, move, or even breath. Wondering when I would come home. The hail of lashes fell again, pushing what was left of me into the void.