Neema wasn’t a proud fighter. All that mattered in a battle was the outcome. If she lived and they died, then the Gods had smiled upon her. Anyone who felt differently was an idiot. There was no honor in battle, no mercy. She’d seen the Pharaoh’s soldiers murder women and children on their knees and vowed to be just as cold and heartless as those monsters that called themselves men. For every innocent life the soldiers took, she promised to take ten of theirs.
An easy task since the Pharaohs’ men swarmed over the desert like ants on pastry.
Her job today wasn’t to extract her pound of flesh. Just like she forced herself to walk slowly, she stayed her hand when it would have been easy to kill. The scroll was the priority. She could settle her vendettas later.
The future was unfolding before her like a rose against the morning sun.
It was time for the resistance to move forward. They were done listening to the promises of a better tomorrow. They would make their future. A future where being born poor didn’t determine a person's worth for their entire existence. Caste systems were bullshit. Everyone deserves the chance to rise or fail based on their own merits. Jabari thought of the people as inconsequential.
He was about to learn the price of his arrogance.
The temple was in the center of the city, and while it was nice to know that religion was still at the heart of their people, a drop-off at a cozy little temple along the outskirts of the city would have made her life vastly easier. It was easy to hide along the fringes of Naroosh, but the heart of the city swarmed with Jabari’s men. The morning hour would lessen their presence but not eliminate it.
Every one of the hooded figures she passed could have been one of Jabari’s spies.
Not many of the soldiers would have been able to see through her disguise. Some of them might not even recognize she was a woman except for the veil she wore to cover her nose and mouth. Some of the bastard’s spymasters might be able to pick her out of the crowd by body type and uncovered eyes.
So while she had to move slowly, Neema also needed to be in and out of the temple like the wind. Then it was another slow walk out of the city before linking up with Matteo and the camels. The two of them would ride off into the morning sun like the famous bandit princess from their histories.
First, the scroll.
The temple came into view, and she couldn’t help but marvel at its size despite being here many times before. Every time she came to pray at the building it filled her with a sense of wonder. Maybe it was the brilliantly colored tile pools or the incense wafting lazily through the air, but Neema always felt at home once she was standing inside the temple walls.
After stepping through the entrance, she immediately knew something was wrong. A feeling of panic had replaced the sense of calm serenity that normally greeted her. There should have been a guard by the door. Stealing from the temple was a death sentence and an affront to the gods, but desperation often forced people to be reckless. The guards were merely there to discourage such foolishness.
Yet, they aren’t here now.
Neema drew her sword and picked up her pace. Having an open blade in the temple was sacrilege, but she had the feeling that someone had already broken that rule this morning. The last thing she wanted to do was die because she was more worried about being proper than she was about protecting herself. If she were overreacting, Neema would happily make a donation to show how seriously she repented for her callous actions.
All that mattered now was finding Yansesh and securing the scroll. The priest's quarters weren’t too far from where she was now. Neema started to run, and soon she was sprinting through the temple’s corridors like a woman possessed. Panic flooded her system. She couldn’t be too late.
How could anyone know about their plans?
Neema skidded to a stop outside of Yansesh’s room. Instead of kicking in the door and stumbling into trouble, she took a few moments to slow her breathing. It didn’t pay to get into a fight when she could barely stand. Deep breaths in through her mouth and out through her nose. As soon as she stopped sounding like a bull in heat, she reached out for the door handle.
Patience had never been one of her better virtues, but she was slowly taking Khalid’s lessons to heart. Sometimes it paid to be cautious, and other times a person had to be bold. The true warrior was the one who could read the situation and react faster than their opponent. Subtlety in battle was something she was still coming to terms with. It wasn’t only the killing blow that mattered but how you got there.
Picking where and when to fight was as important as the battle itself.
Neema’s left palm was sweaty as she reached for the door. Oddly enough, her right hand wrapped around the grip of her sword didn’t seem to be sweaty at all. Part of her was happy to know when it came down to fighting her nerves could handle anything. It was the anticipation that was killing her now. She knew what she would find inside but desperately wanted to be wrong.
Khalid had a saying, hope and the fool go hand in hand.
Neema was no fool. She made her own destiny. No one handed her anything; she clawed and scraped and survived. Now she was thriving. THRIVING. If someone was waiting inside, they better have brought a fucking army.
Her training took over at the last second, and instead of jerking the door open and charging inside, she pulled it open slowly. Inching the door open took more willpower than it should have, but she was a work in progress.
Khalid liked to tell her that he wasn’t the most skilled warrior in all the land, but he might have been the smartest. There were many fine warriors in the kingdom, but most of them were arrogant and overconfident. It was the fighters' boon and folly to believe they could always win. She had watched him fight more times than she could count, and it was always the same.
Khalid always played defense. It didn’t matter if it was a grand champion or a boy with a broomstick. The old warrior would watch and learn. When Khalid had seen enough to gain their measure, he would pounce. Death for the champion, and a welt along with a fatherly pat on the head for the boy with the broomstick.
Fuck it.
Her patience burst like a damn as she flung the door the rest of the way open. There were two men inside facing the far wall. Neema could just make out Yansesh beyond their bulk. The priest had a cut on his arm and was pressing himself against the wall so hard it was as if he thought he might be able to will himself through it. His attackers looked startled at first, but now they were coming around.
Shit!
Neema had missed the early opening created by sneaking in through the door. Now both of her attackers were ready for her. If the men had any talent with a blade, she’d be in for one hell of a fight. She took a second to reflect on what went wrong so it wouldn’t happen again, then squared her shoulders and set her feet for battle.
The time for reflection was over. Now it was time to fight.
Her sword went through the first man’s ribs and up into his innards before he could even tell her to get the fuck out. The second man got his dagger up in time, but the lazy threat cost him his hand at the wrist. A look of pure horror spread across his face as the limb clattered to the floor still clutching the blade. The pain was about to hit, but before he could scream, she shoved her sword through his throat.
Both of Yansesh’s assailants were down, and the priest was safe.
“Tell me you have the scroll?” Neema thrust out her arm, voice cracking with tension.
Yansesh couldn’t meet her eyes as he hurriedly pleaded, “They killed the guards. They were going to kill me next. What else could I do?”
You could have died.
Neema knew that thought was unfair, but it didn’t stop it from coming. Death was something that terrified most people and was one hell of a motivator if you were trying to force someone into doing something they didn’t want to do. If it wasn’t their death that scared them, Jabari had taught that there were always friends, family, a mistress, an illegitimate child that could be
used for leverage. Everyone had something they cared about enough to give in. She’d watched Jabari’s men use the tactic again and again.
She wasn’t such a monster and would never actually harm the priest, but she also didn’t have time for the man to come back to his senses. There was so much on the line, Neema had to act now, or the people of Naroosh would suffer.
Yansesh was no fighter, and his family didn’t deserve to die for the resistance. The point of the whole fucking thing was to end the violence at some point. None of them wanted to end up being the next Jabari.
Neema couldn’t waste another moment. The further behind the looter she fell, the smaller her chances at recovering their future was. She had to find the document before it disappeared forever. Before she tried to squeeze any more information from Yansesh, she needed to check the bodies.
Maybe she’d get lucky.
It was one thing to kill a man in battle and another to dig through their pockets after death. It was a distasteful task, but she’d been forced to do many blasphemous things since they started their fight against Jabari. This one wouldn’t even keep her up at night.
On closer inspection, these men looked like simple thugs. They weren’t well dressed or well-armed enough to be soldiers. Knowing the scroll most likely wasn’t headed to the palace gave her hope. It was too bad she couldn’t question the men.
Dead men tell no tales.
“Who was it? Where did they go?” Neema snarled.
She could make her amends for being rough on the priest later. She wouldn’t let Khalid down, not on her very first mission. Her gaze hardened as she waited for the priest to find his resolve.
“I don’t know,” Yansesh blubbered.
Neema bent and grabbed the man by the front of his robes. Clearly, the thugs weren’t going to leave the priest alive. So maybe one of them had loose lips. “You had to have heard something.”
“They said something about a camp outside of the city, but I don’t know where.” Yansesh pulled away from her, trying to straighten his robes.
With a growl of frustration, Neema pushed the man back down to the floor. “You better have something more useful than that. It’d be just as easy for me to cut you down and say I got here a little too late.”
She held her sword aloft.
Threatening to kill a priest was wrong on so many levels, but she wouldn’t tell Khalid, and she could make peace with the gods later. Of course, she wouldn’t harm the man even if he didn’t know anything else. Killing should never become so comfortable that a person could do it without feeling it. Neema wanted to enter the next life with a clear conscience. Khalid would already be pissed that she put hands on the man let alone threatened him. It wasn’t as if he wouldn’t find out. Yansesh wasn’t exactly known for his secret-keeping abilities.
“He said something about a golden bird, and he had a tattoo of Vitaria on his forearm.” Yansesh held his hands over his head, tears leaking from his eyes. “I swear that’s all I heard. Mostly I was trying not to die.”
Neema put her sword away and slid the payment for the scroll into the man’s hand. “A deal is a deal. See that this goes to something useful.”
“It will, I swear it to you.” Yansesh looked pleased. “I must go to the healers and call for the guards. You should disappear before they show up.”
“That’s a good idea.” Without another word, Neema made her way from the temple.
She didn’t know if the golden bird meant they were camping by the monument to the god of flight and wind or if they were at the Smuggler’s Grotto. Setting up camp by a well-traveled memorial seemed less likely, so she would be heading to find the smuggler and her scroll.
It was time to discover if the gods would lead her true or if they had only littered her trail with falsehoods.
Chapter Ten
Calling the Smuggler’s Grotto infamous was an understatement of epic proportions.
There wasn’t a single bit of crime happening in Naroosh that didn’t move through their hideout in some way, shape, or form. The word on the streets was they paid an exorbitant amount of gold to Jabari for him to look the other way. Not a soul in Naroosh would have been surprised to find out the rumors were true. That was the kind of reputation Jabari had.
The payments must be the only reason the smugglers could still be in operation, that or Jabari ran them himself. It wasn’t like their location was a secret. Three hills marked the edge of the valley, and after them, there was nothing but sand for hundreds of miles. From there it would be easy enough to assume that the caves closest to the river would be more convenient for smugglers, and a person was well on their way to finding Naroosh’s den of iniquity. Not that anyone with half a brain would step foot inside the place.
Unless they were desperate.
Desperation and violence pretty much summed up the Grotto. There weren't many places people on the run from Jabari could disappear to and have a chance at survival. The desert was as unforgiving as their noble ruler and twice as merciless. No one lived out in the sands, so they went to the only place there was work outside the city.
Normally Neema would have been all for someone who needed a job finding employment, but the kind of work offered in the Grotto wasn’t fit for a monster. Killing, murder, rape, all just the tip of the iceberg for these assholes. Slavers. Murderers. Monsters. She wished she could burn the entire place to the ground, but Jabari had to answer for his crimes first. Without a foundation of stability, they’d never be able to shift the tide.
Still, a girl couldn’t right all the world’s wrongs in a day. She had to prioritize.
Maybe once Jabari was dead the world would get lucky, and the smugglers would kill themselves off. It wasn’t as far-fetched as it sounded when some new asshole was proclaiming himself king of the Grotto every few months. The smugglers spent as much time killing each other as they did killing others. There wasn’t a man or woman amongst them that wasn’t a seasoned fighter.
The Grotto wasn’t the kind of place you could wander in and out of like the wind. Everyone there was suspicious of everyone. They never knew when a rat hid amongst the group, and no one was shy about making accusations. When it came to strangers, a person had to prove their worth. Khalid had done some business with the smugglers early in the resistance's infancy, but now they had less detestable ways of acquiring resources.
No one in the resistance believed that a man or woman should be bonded in slavery. Workers deserved to be paid for their time and treated with a modicum of respect. Did the slaves not bleed the same blood, hunger for the same opportunities, indulge in the same passions as the rest of them? It wasn’t right for men to be whipped in the street like oxen and fed so little they died from starvation by the thousands.
Soon they would be able to end it.
Neema knew the only difference between her and one of the slaves was that Khalid saved her. By now Jabari would have grown tired of her, and she would have either been handed over to his men as a plaything and sold off or sent to the mines to labor until she died. It wasn’t a life she would have picked for herself and one she didn’t wish on any other.
Everyone deserved the chance to be free.
Spending too much time pondering the troubles of the world never did anyone any good. The real heroes were the ones out there doing things to fix it. Even in Naroosh, some people still believed in helping others. A heel of crusty bread might be trash to someone, but for the person who hadn’t eaten in a week, the crust of bread looked as good as a feast put on at the palace.
So when it came down to talking about things or doing them, Neema wanted to be a doer.
The hills were drawing closer now, and Neema motioned for Matteo to fall back. The Grotto was no place for a boy, and she wouldn’t have time to keep an eye on him. Going into the caverns alone wasn’t high on her list of things to do, but right now she didn’t have a choice. While she might not have any backup, it also didn’t mean Neema had to play by the rules.
Smugglers had their secrets, but so did the resistance.
Khalid had a secret entrance into the caverns. Neema wasn’t naïve enough to think no one else had found it over the years, but she hoped whatever wretched soul stumbled upon it didn’t seal it off. Going up to the front door and asking for the scroll back wasn’t an option, so she’d use the side door and hope for the best.
Gently steering her camel to the right, Neema followed a winding path up into the hills. So far she hadn’t seen a soul, but smugglers weren’t exactly known as morning people. In another ten minutes, she’d have to tie up her camel and proceed on foot. Khalid would have demanded she ditched her steed earlier, but time was of the essence, and patience wasn’t really her thing.
Bold and in your face was more her speed.
It wasn’t like the tattooed man was just going to hand over his prize. Her only chance was to intercept the scroll before he sold it off at the smuggler’s bazaar. She pulled the camel up short and hopped off.
Do not fail.
She decided not to tie her camel down. Why waste time when there was no guarantee the camel would be there when she came back? There was no reason to risk someone finding it close to their hidey-hole and following her. Or worse, waiting for her when she came back out. It was a risk, but so was everything else in life.
A few minutes later she found the entrance to the caverns. Sand partially covered the opening, and it didn’t look like anyone had been through the area in a while. After making sure all her gear was ready to go and her face covered, Neema ducked inside the entrance.
The place didn’t smell any better than she remembered. Despite access to the river, bathing was still considered a luxury that most people couldn’t afford. Who cared about taking a bath when any moment could be their last? Better to spend the coin on a strong drink. At least that was how she imagined the smugglers felt.
Personally, she loved bathing.
Deserts Of Naroosh Page 9