All that day, smiles tugged at Kyrin’s mouth. She shot at bits of brush until her arms shook and her left forearm bruised under the leather guard she had made against the whipping string. Rocks made easy targets, but they would shatter her precious arrow points. She felt nearer to her father, with the bow’s firm grip in her hand. At the night fire she tied a twisted bit of camel hair around the bowstring so she could find the nocking place for her arrow in the worst light, or no light at all. As her father and Tae said, it was best to be ready.
The Nubian sat in Ali’s door, his bare blade between his knees. Kyrin pursed her lips. He cared for that blade like a child—oiling and sharpening, wiping it down—every dusk.
She found there were rabbits and sand grouse about when the sun rose and when it fell. One day she was sliding a fat, plucked bird into the slaves’ boiling pot when a huge black hand closed on her wrist. Kyrin dropped the bird with a hiss of alarm and spun to free herself, driving an elbow toward a muscular arm. She stopped with a sick jolt—a dagger lay cold and hard across her throat.
“Know who you strike—and where they strike.” The Nubian twisted the flat of his blade away from her skin and dropped his dagger hand. He leaned over to peer into the pot and frowned. “Bring two birds for the master with the rising sun.”
Kyrin nodded and swallowed back tears, hating herself. She had not been aware. To fight with a child’s unthinking, ignorant fear—she was yet a coward. The Nubian’s sandaled feet dwarfed her toes. He rocked back on his heels. She looked up.
He smiled, and his thick features lifted into gentle amusement. “Fear not, little one. You learn.” He walked easily away, his bare sword shifting at his side. Kyrin wiped her eyes.
So, Ali liked one thing better than rich clothes and fair slaves—his meat. And she had a reason to ride about the land. She frowned.
A riding camel could cover ninety miles between sunrise and sunset, like Ali’s white Munira, of Batina stock. Though a worthy beast, Lilith was bred to carry baggage. Lilith would keep her close to the caravan; Lilith, and the bewildering landscape.
§
“Come!” Ali rapped.
Kyrin stepped inside the tent and silently held out her sand hen by the neck. Her breath steamed. The Nubian had ordered her out early this morn, and it was as well. She had been curled up on the ground away from the others, watching the growing light snuff the last star, thinking she did not want to see Faisal ever again. But it might be better to keep the jackal in sight—he was more dangerous unseen.
Ali’s eyes raked her. “Keep your hair under that kaffiyeh.”
Kyrin blinked, holding back the urge to bite her lip. Umar and the Nubian were probably outside, laughing at her.
She had woken to Faisal’s black-on-black shadow looming over her, a pale gleaming length in his hand. She had exploded out of her blanket, dislodging Cicero from his warm nest between her arm and hip. She struck at Faisal’s leg with a wild swipe of her falcon dagger as she whirled away, flinging the blanket between them. And missed. He was expecting her, and she muzzy with sleep.
Cicero landed, spun, and growled, showing all his teeth. That was when Faisal flipped the shining length of his camel stick up in the air and caught it. His amusement was a short, sharp bark. He ignored Tae and Alaina, up and wary, watching him.
“Wretched Arab!” Kyrin bit out, shaking. Faisal’s shoulders heaved quietly. Heads popped up around the sleeping fires. Rolled in their cloaks, men chuckled. Kentar’s rumble carried widely.
Umar must have told Ali. Askar, indeed. Kyrin ducked her head, her cheeks hot, and held out the bird.
“Put it by the door.”
She laid it down and twisted her hair from sight.
“Do not forget your veil when you come to my table. In my house you will wear the half-veil, for I will see the eyes of all who serve me. Here, the kaffiyeh will keep you from what you do not wish; and the bee will keep his flower.” Her master grinned at her sourly.
Kyrin nodded and went out, glaring at the sand. Ali was in a foul humor. After Faisal it was too much, that her master believed her a dolt. She looked both ways—no Faisal—and mounted Lilith, who waited before the tent.
Alaina slipped around the corner, wiping her face, her damp curls springing from her tucked up kaffiyeh. Cicero left Lilith’s heels to put his nose in Alaina’s hand, and she leaned over, speaking to him in her low, warm voice. He licked her chin and whined.
Kyrin patted Lilith’s neck. Alaina often followed Tae on his camel leech rounds, watching him dress galled spots, pull the burden off a beast to rest it, or shift loads. Kyrin frowned. Her sister should not have to embroider Ali’s thawb collars and sashes over smoky oil lamps at night till her head ached. Mother would have helped her with her flashing needle.
Kyrin rubbed the callus from the bow string growing on her fingers. She, it seemed, could not do even that. She traced the embroidery on her date-colored sash. The lumpy stitches sat in front, crafted in sweat and tears on material hand washed and dyed. It had been scorned.
“That color of mud is for your country, and what destruction of thread is this?” Ali pointed at the awkward flowering vine. “Keep your hands from my robes, O my slave.” So Alaina labored over Ali’s things alone. Kyrin lifted her face to the sun. It moved slowly this morn.
“What do you think of?” Alaina peered up at her.
“Nothing,” Kyrin mumbled.
“A large nothing, that makes you frown so.”
“My embroidery is worse than a spider who tries to weave with your thread, and you—you have to do all of Ali’s robes. I am sent hunting and riding and—”
Alaina’s grin quirked. “You think of me, while our master sends you out before the sun rises? You could think of how hard your lot is, or of your comfort alone, as Ali does. But you think of me.”
“I should be able to use my needle better,” Kyrin said in surprise. Not to mention her dagger—Faisal proved that.
Alaina set her hands on her hips and tried to arrange her face into stern lines. “Your abilities are strong; that bow you carry and your hate of injustice. Each to his gift.” She smiled gently. “I take joy in my needle. And more than Ali behold the beauty of my designs with an appreciative eye.”
With a grateful twitch of her lips, Kyrin gave up. Alaina said nothing of what the entire caravan had witnessed before the sun raised its disk over the lip of the world. Would they ever cease laughing at her?
Her sister gave Cicero a last pat and stroked Lilith’s shoulder. She noted her flinch and clucked her tongue, opening a leather bag at her hip. Digging her fingers in, Alaina rubbed salve generously on Lilith’s galled shoulder, avoiding her flailing foot, and reached for the long neck, soothing. Lilith leaned into her hand, grunting her thanks for the cease from pain.
Kyrin shook her head. She preferred horses. Lilith hadn’t tried to bite since her first madcap, dry-mouthed ride, but camels were good at exacting their debts.
Like Faisal—that jackal of the sands. He promised Tae he would not put burrs on Lilith; instead, he humbled her before them all. She would teach him well.
Alaina ran her hand along Lilith’s hump. What was she checking for now? “Did you give the Nubian your rabbits?”
Kyrin slid from the saddle. Her sister worked too hard, smoothing things between her and their master. She made herself smile. “Yes. Ali has his bird. Come, it’s your turn to ride.” Alaina’s face lit up, and Kyrin held her hands for her sandy foot. “I’ll get another rabbit for us. No one cooks them like you.”
The corners of Alaina’s mouth turned up in pleasure.
Soon the caravan set off to the protesting cries of camels and the shouting of drivers. Kyrin helped Alaina down from Lilith before Ali passed them, swaying in his litter toward the head of the caravan and Kentar. Ali’s slaves did not ride unless they had reason.
Kyrin mounted
again and nudged Lilith on, glancing aside at Kentar’s brown mount. She dared not meet the dalil’s eyes and the amusement she would find. Kentar’s lead female strode over the expanse of the desert, equal to the bright land—and Arab jackals. Kyrin sighed, hot wrath rising in her stomach again. She let Lilith drift away from the caravan.
Did any grain of sand feel like she did—a trapped, unmoving speck in a vibrant world in a vast universe? She stared at the soft pink edging the sky and breathed in the vanishing coolness. Despite Faisal, the desert’s fierce beauty and power made a quiet place inside her, a sense of him who made this land for the wind to play in. The silence beyond the scritch of camel pads seemed eternal.
I miss you, Father. Lord Dain would have given Faisal a lesson he would not forget. When she mastered Subak, when she knew the sword, the land, and the twisting Arab language, when the birds built nests again . . . Surely then the Master of the stars would let her know she had enough courage, enough strength to escape to her father.
On her saddle, her falcon dagger tilted in its sheath, eyes eager, always ready. Kyrin studied it. What had the blade seen in its days under the sun besides her mother’s fall? What loving, lingering glances, a wordless touch of hearts before a coming attack? What cowards, what spirits leaving earth, what brave blows given with the last strength and heart’s blood?
Kyrin ran her fingers over the falcon’s jet eyes. Better the blade seen than the one in the dark. She grimaced and settled the falcon firmly in her sash.
To fight Faisal this night would be a relief. She would show him a djinn. Tae had had but one word. “If he comes again, leave him his life.”
They rode parallel to the caravan. The morning drew away over the sand. Many arrow flights beyond the dalil, brush grew thick around an outcrop of reddish rocks, the beginning of spreading, broken ground. There would be good hunting there. Cicero trailed at Lilith’s heels, tired from romping among camels and men and poking his black nose into everything in snorting excitement. Kyrin patted her leg.
Cicero trotted to her, brown eyes worshipful, his long mouth laughing. She patted his silky head. “Good Cicero.” His pale fur was short, even to the tips of his ears. He padded in Lilith’s shadow, his lean body supple, narrow head high. Her anger easing, she smiled. There was a being created for swift, joyful running. Soon he would course after gazelle.
Kentar and the line of camels skirted the broken granite outcrops, and Faisal gathered the pack camels near Ali’s white beast, ready to lead them to pasture in the broken land. The horses that Ali had traded many furs and the last of the pirates for in Aila, stamped and whuffled beside Faisal’s Waleed, their lead ropes in Faisal’s hand.
The two drivers ordered to watch over the precious horses slumped on the last camel before Kyrin, holding their stomachs. One of them slid down and made a dash behind a nearby rock, returning little relieved, his face drawn as a wilting olive. Kyrin hoped Tae had something that cured purges. She did not doubt Faisal worked his will again.
Faisal did not seem to mind that he held the lead ropes of thrice his worth of gold in his hand. He lowered the tip of his borrowed lance in salute to Ali, one knee hooked around Waleed’s saddle. His faded blue kaffiyeh draped rakish down the back of the bisht Tae had found for him somewhere. Kyrin scowled.
Tae would not approve of her following Faisal and the herd without Kentar’s men there. She shuddered to think of pitting her falcon dagger, no matter how keen, against a lance.
Faisal tapped Waleed with his stick. “Hai!” He chivvied his charges toward the outcrops. Her glare burned his back. The hunting hour was wearing away, and he was taking her direction. Where there was game, there was grazing.
She sighed. If she stayed in sight of the caravan . . . She gathered Lilith’s rein.
“Worthless one!” Ali called. She pulled Lilith up. And Faisal kicked Waleed past her, his lips twitching with buried laughter. Kyrin’s breath came hard and her knuckles whitened. The jackal gloated over his triumph, he meant to spoil her hunt.
But if Ali demanded she get more game she must go out of sight of the caravan and follow Faisal or risk losing herself in the vast loneliness—but she could hardly lose the herd’s broad track. As long as they did not hit another pebble plain. She turned Lilith toward Ali with more heel than necessary. Lilith spun her tail and groaned, lifting her long lip.
“I wish two hens and a rabbit by this even, slothful one. Or Umar will see that your aim improves. He spares his whip for no man or slave.”
Riding ahead of Munira, Umar grinned at Kyrin. The Nubian studied the air between his mount’s ears, his strong black face still.
“Yes, my master.” Kyrin bowed to Ali and dug her heels in, spinning Lilith. They rocked away from her master and the caravan.
She bit her lip as they circled the first towering column of red-pink granite. Faisal might think up another nasty trick. But she would take care to stay out of sight, and better his tricks than an empty pot for Ali and a sure whipping, with trouble for Tae and Alaina. She settled into the curve of the saddle. She must not fight Faisal unless there were witnesses. It was too dangerous. She must choose her ground.
She could not yet ride like Faisal, half-lying at his ease on Waleed’s back. Kyrin shifted. While she hunted she wished to keep her feet dangling, her balance ready for any swerve Lilith might make.
The bisht Alaina had made her wrapped her comfortingly, tapping her ankles like a friend. It blended with sand-colored Lilith and the stone below. The odd, clumpily-dyed pattern made her part of the desert, her form melding with Lilith, bush, and stone.
Cicero whined. Kyrin halted Lilith, slid down, and lifted him before her saddle. She stroked his knobby back where he rested before the leather pad, and he turned his head and licked her fingers, for he liked his swaying perch. After his desert journey he had ridden in a saddle sack, only his head sticking out, till his feet healed. She’d have to catch him to make him ride in a sack now. Every day he ran and drew closer to the wind’s tail, or so he thought. Kyrin grinned and tugged his petal-soft ear.
They rode across dips and around rocks and up a hill. She squinted across a wide gravel plain on the far side, staring into shadows of rocks and bushes for resting rabbits, glancing down to reassure herself of the herd’s tracks. They were wandering widely. Who was herding whom?
She could not see Kentar or the caravan behind her. But she needn’t worry, for Faisal could not hide his charges’ tracks. The gravel plain was small.
A sand-lark called sweetly, and Cicero raised his head, ears pricking. A cloud roiled over the desert horizon ahead, a flat-topped mushroom. Kyrin straightened.
It didn’t smell like rain, and the cloud looked like no storm she had seen. Cicero sat and balanced on his paws, trembling, nose questing. He was quiet, a good sign, but the wind was with them. Kyrin pulled Lilith to a stop. Probably an animal had scared the camels in hope of easy meat and stirred up the dust cloud. Maybe an old lion.
Her mouth tightened and she tensed. Then she grinned. A lion.
Tae’s lion call and the bit of hide she was curing for Alaina’s needlework might have been made for her—for this moment. It would work.
She nudged Lilith onward. Oh, she would get him. She would bring Faisal to blushing confusion. Her laugh was a half-snort.
By Faisal’s count at the night fire he ran off two lions every seven-day. This time they would see who ran, and who fulfilled the hunt, and the night -fight would see it finished.
If there was a lion—Kyrin rested her bow across her lap and reached behind her leg for an arrow from the quiver attached to her saddle pad. Her bow was made for smaller beasts. It would kill larger if she put the arrow in a soft spot at close range, but that was a harder shot. She nocked the shaft, fingers anchored around her nocking knot.
She would be ready if hen or rabbit roused from the shade along her way. She squinted at the cloud. So
mething moved near the bottom.
When she reached the last dying dust swirls she found several camels grazing about the mouth of a wadi that plunged between walls of basalt and granite. The main herd had veered around the mouth of the wadi, where rocky gullies and scarps and towers spread out. The camels ignored her, their teeth grinding, throats gurgling as they swallowed. Kyrin threaded Lilith between them and down along the sandy wadi bottom.
The shade of the wall felt good on her back. The red-flecked sand beckoned. Her stomach rumbled, eager for dates and milk. She coiled a bit of hair about her finger. After she ate she would raise the lion’s scream on the far side of the rocks. Then she would creep away when Faisal came. If he saw her it might mean more than his usual glare. She shivered, with a little laugh.
But she wouldn’t care, she wouldn’t—not after the drivers’ laughter followed her through breakfast. Kentar’s chuckles had burst from him when Faisal passed his fire, and again when Kyrin handed him his bowl. The dalil’s eyes had twinkled.
I almost hope that jackal’s heart tries me. I will tell Cicero to take him down and he will race to do it. This time my hours of training will not fail. At least under Faisal’s dagger of shadow she had not frozen in fear. She had not turned to ice. Kyrin smiled grimly. Where was Faisal?
Cicero leaped after her to the ground. Faisal might be chasing the camels among the rocks far from here, or—she warily eyed the forty-foot walls—be about to leap out at her on those soft feet of his. What was he about? Faisal would not leave three of his camels behind. Not for any coin.
Kyrin stopped short. The herd’s trail. She had seen none of the horses’ prints for some time.
Had Faisal run from Ali with a goodly spoil? Was that his mind? She frowned.
At least there would be no more spiders, or laughter, or worse. Or was it something else? That Faisal. She struck her saddle with her fist. Tae would want to know.
Falcon Heart: Chronicle I an epic young adult fantasy series set in medieval times Page 13