The funeral of Seylim ibn Tahir al-Din took place at dusk, three days after his death. His body was washed and wrapped according to the rites of the One Covenant. The bier was carried through Solymer by his sons, brothers, and emirs, past shuttered markets, past the blackened shrine, past silent crowds who had come to mourn the Sultan they had known and to fear the Sultan who would replace him.
Zayn walked at the head of the procession, neither weeping nor speaking. His back was straight, his face set, and the people watching wondered what kind of ruler grief would make.
Seylim was laid in the citadel’s eastern court, in the shade of old Heredan stones, beside the graves of his father and uncles. Rashid, permitted to attend under guard, spoke the funeral prayers. His voice carried across the courtyard: it had blessed the treaty, argued with Hishan in the gate court, and shaped the legal bones of the peace.
When the prayers ended, Zayn stepped forward.
He drew his sword and held it point-down before the grave.
“By the blood of my father, I will bring my brother home.”
The emirs answered, “The One hears.”
“By the blood of my father, I will answer treachery with steel.”
“The One hears.”
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“By the blood of my father, I will not rest until the west has learned what it means to break faith with the House of Tahir al-Din.”
“The One hears.”
Farid, standing at the edge of the court, did not speak. Rashid closed his eyes. Sitt Malika, veiled in black, leaned on her cane and watched her nephew with a face that revealed nothing. Behind the screen set for the women of the house, Seylim’s widowed wives keened in low, disciplined voices, measured enough to be heard as dignity and grief at once. Nur clung to the sleeve of an elder nurse and did not understand why no one would let her run to the grave. Seylim’s remaining children stood in a frightened cluster among aunts, tutors, and half-brothers old enough to know that a father’s death could become a struggle for rooms, stipends, marriages, and survival.
Seylim’s other brothers and sisters stood according to rank near the Heredan stones, some weeping openly, some already watching Zayn, Farid, and Hishan carefully.
That night, Zayn ibn Seylim, Sultan of Al-Marwiyah, sat in his father’s study and wrote letters.
To Mawasil: Prepare your cavalry. The west has murdered our Sultan and stolen our prince. The peace is broken. War comes.
To Azran: Muster the levies. Every man who can hold a spear is to be ready by the summer moon.
To Qahirat: Send physicians, jurists, and men who understand siegecraft. We will need all three.
To the northern provinces, the emirs of the interior, and the tribes of the Mardun hills: The House of Tahir al-Din calls. Answer.
He wrote until the lamp burned low and the words blurred before his eyes. Then he sanded the last sheet, sealed it with his father’s ring, and gave it to a waiting rider.
“Ride,” he said.
The letters went out through the night.
And in the burned shell of the House of the Returning Light, one lamp still burned. A surviving shrine-sister had crept from the crypt after the mobs left and found oil unspilled in a corner of the ruined sacristy. With shaking hands, she set a wick on the broken altar and lit it.