This was a terrible mistake.
The Old One struck Iskari down, leaving a scar as long and wide as the Rift mountain range. For attempting to take his life, he stripped her of her immortality, ripping it off her like a silk garment. So that she could atone for her crime, he cursed her name and sent her to wander the desert alone, haunted by stinging winds and howling sandstorms. To wither beneath the parching sun. To freeze beneath the icy cloak of night.
But neither the heat nor the cold killed her.
An unbearable loneliness did.
Namsara searched the desert for Iskari. The sky changed seven times before he found her body in the sand, her skin blistered by the sun, her eyes eaten by carrion crows.
At the sight of his sister, dead, Namsara fell to his knees and he wept.
Two
Normally after a kill, Asha bathed. Scrubbing the blood, sand, and sweat from her body was a ritual that helped her transition from the wild, rugged world beyond the palace walls to a life that tied itself around her ribs and squeezed like a too-tight sash.
Today, though, Asha skipped the bath. Despite her father’s summons, she slipped right past her guards and headed for the sickroom, where the medicines were kept. It was a whitewashed room smelling of lime. Sunlight spilled through the open terrace, alighting the flower pattern mosaicked into the floor, then painting the shelves of terra-cotta jars in yellows and golds.
She’d woken in this room eight years ago, after Kozu, the First Dragon, burned her. Asha remembered it clearly: lying on a sickbed, her body wrapped in bandages, that awful feeling pressing down on her chest, heavy as a boulder, telling her she’d done something horribly wrong.
Shaking the memory loose, Asha stepped through the archway. She unbuckled her armor and gloves, shedding them piece by piece, then laid her axe on top of the pile.
One of the dangers of dragonfire—besides melting your skin to the bone—was that it was toxic. The smallest burn would kill you from the inside out if treated poorly or too late. A severe burn, like the one Asha suffered eight years ago, needed to be treated immediately and, even then, the victim’s chances of survival were slim.
Asha had a recipe to draw the toxins out, but the treatment required the burn to be covered for two days. She didn’t have that kind of time. Her father had summoned her. News of her return had probably reached him already. She had a hundred-hundred heartbeats, not days.
Asha opened cupboards and pulled down pots full of dried barks and roots, looking for one ingredient in particular. In her haste, she reached with her burned hand, and the moment she grabbed the smooth terra-cotta jar, pain seared through her and she let go.
The jar shattered across the floor in a burst of red shards and linen bandages.
Asha cursed, kneeling to pick up the mess one-handed. Her mind was so hazy with pain, she didn’t notice when someone dropped to his knees beside her, his fingers picking up shards alongside hers.
“I’ll get this, Iskari.”
The voice made her jump. She glanced up to a silver collar, then a tangle of hair.
Asha watched his hands sweep up her mess. She knew those freckled hands. They were the same hands that brought out Jarek’s platters at dinner. The same hands that served her steaming mint tea in Jarek’s glass cups.
Asha tensed. If her betrothed’s slave was in the palace, so was her betrothed. Jarek must have returned from the scrublands, where he’d been sent to keep an eye on Dax’s negotiations.
Is that the reason for my father’s summons?
The slave’s fingers went suddenly still. When Asha looked up, she caught him staring at her burn.
“Iskari . . .” His brow furrowed. “You need to treat that.”
Her annoyance flared like a freshly fed fire. Obviously she needed to treat it. She’d be treating it now if she hadn’t been so careless.
But just as important as treating her burn was securing this slave’s silence. Jarek often used his slaves to spy on his enemies. The moment Asha dismissed this one, he might go running to his master and tell him everything.
And once Jarek knew, so would her father.
The moment her father heard of it, he’d know she’d been telling the old stories. He would know she was the same corrupted girl she’d always been.
“Tell anyone about this, skral, and the last thing you’ll see is my face staring down at you from the top of the pit.”
His mouth flattened into a hard line and his gaze lowered to the tile work at their feet, where elegant namsaras—rare desert flowers that could heal any ailment—repeated themselves in an elaborate pattern across the floor.
“Forgive me, Iskari,” he said, his fingers sweeping up terra-cotta shards. “But I’m not supposed to take commands from you. My master’s orders.”
Her fingers itched for her axe—which was on the floor against the wall, with the rest of her armor.
She could threaten him, but that might make him retaliate by spilling her secrets. A bribe would work better.
“And if I give you something for your silence?”
His fingers paused, hovering over the pile of shards.
“What would you want?”
The corner of his mouth curved ever so slightly. It made the hair on her arms rise.
“I don’t have all day,” she said, suddenly uneasy.
“No,” he said, the smile sliding away as he stared at her raw, blistering skin. “You don’t.” Her body was starting to shake from the infection. “Let me think on it while you treat that burn.”
Asha left him there. In truth, the shaking worried her. So while he finished cleaning up her mess, she returned to the shelves and found the ingredient she needed: dragon bone ash.
Alone, it was just as deadly as dragonfire, only it poisoned in a different way. Instead of infecting the body, dragon bone leached it of nutrients. Asha had never seen someone killed this way, but there was an old story about a dragon queen who wanted to teach her enemies a lesson. Inviting them to the palace as honored guests, she put a pinch of dragon bone ash in their dinners every night and on the last morning of their stay, they were all found dead in their beds, their bodies hollowed out. As if the life had been scooped out of them.
Despite its dangers, in exactly the right amount, with the correct combination of herbs, dragon bone was the one thing that could draw the dragonfire toxins out—precisely because of its leaching qualities. Asha popped off the cork lid and measured out the amount.
The mark of a good slave was to see what was needed before it was asked for, and Jarek only purchased the best of anything. So as Asha gathered her ingredients, crushing and boiling them down to a thick paste, Jarek’s slave tore strips of linen for fresh bandaging.
“Where is he?” she asked as she stirred, trying to hasten the cooling process. She didn’t need to say Jarek’s name. His slave knew who she meant.
“Asleep in his wine goblet.” He suddenly stopped ripping linen to stare at her hands. “I think it’s cool enough, Iskari.”
Asha looked where he looked. Her hands shook hard. She dropped the spoon and lifted them to her face, watching them tremble.
“I should have more time than this. . . .”
The slave took the pot from her, perfectly calm. “Sit,” he said, motioning with his chin to the tabletop. As if he were in charge now and she had to do what he said.
Asha didn’t like him telling her what to do. But she liked the violent trembling even less. She hoisted herself up onto the table one-handed while he scooped a spoonful of blackish paste and blew softly until it stopped steaming. She held her burned hand still against her thigh while he used the spoon to spread the grainy paste across the raw surface of her blistered palm and fingers.
Asha hissed through her teeth at the sting. More than once, he stopped, concerned by the sounds she made. She nodded for him to go on. Despite the horrible smell—like burned bones—she could feel the ash at work: a cool sensation sinking in, spreading outward, battling the scorching
pain.
“Better?” He kept his gaze lowered as he blew on the next spoonful.
“Yes.”
He coated the burn twice more, then reached for the first linen strip.
When he went to wrap it, though, they both hesitated. Asha pulled away while he hovered, frozen, leaning over her. The off-white linen hung like a canopy between his hands while the same thought ran through both their minds: in order to wrap the burn, he needed to touch her.
A slave who touched a draksor without his master’s permission could be sentenced to three nights in the dungeons without food. If the offense were more severe—touching a draksor of high rank, such as Asha—he would be lashed as well. And in the very rare case of intimate touch, such as a love affair between a slave and a draksor, the slave would be sent to the pit to die.
Without Jarek to give permission, his slave wouldn’t—couldn’t—touch her.
Asha moved to take the linen to try to bandage her hand herself, but he pulled away, out of reach. She watched, speechless, as he returned to wrap her hand—slowly and carefully, his nimble hands cleverly avoiding contact.
Asha looked up into a long, narrow face full of freckles. Freckles as numerous as stars in the night sky. He stood so close, she could feel the heat of him. So close, she could smell the salt on his skin.
If he sensed her looking, he didn’t show it. Silence filled the space between them as he wrapped the linen around and around her salved palm.
Asha studied his hands. Large palms. Long fingers. Calluses on his fingertips.
A strange place for calluses on a house slave.
“How did it happen?” he asked as he worked.
She could feel him almost look up into her face, then stop himself. He reached for the next strip—a smaller one—and started on her fingers.
I told an old story.
Asha wondered how much a skral would know about the link between the old stories and dragonfire.
She didn’t say the answer aloud. No one could know the truth: after all these years of trying to right her wrongs, Asha was still as corrupt as ever. If you opened her up and looked inside, you’d find a core that matched her scarred exterior. Hideous and horrible.
I told a story about Iskari and Namsara.
Iskari was the goddess from which Asha derived her title. These days, Iskari meant life taker.
Namsara’s meaning had also changed over time. It was both the name of the healing flower on the floors of this room as well as a title. A title given to someone who fought for a noble cause—for his kingdom or his beliefs. The word namsara conjured up the image of a hero.
“I killed a dragon,” Asha told the slave in the end, “and it burned me as it died.”
He tucked in the ends of her bandage, listening. To get a better grip, his fingers slid around her wrist, as if he’d completely forgotten who she was.
At his touch, Asha sucked in a breath. The moment she did, he realized his breach and went very still.
A command hovered on the tip of Asha’s tongue. But before it lashed out at him, he said, very softly, “How does that feel?”
As if he cared more about her burn than his own life.
As if he weren’t afraid of her at all.
The command died in Asha’s mouth. She looked to his fingers wrapped around her wrist. Not trembling or hesitant, but warm and sure and strong.
Wasn’t he afraid?
When she didn’t respond, he did something even worse. He raised his eyes to hers.
A startling heat surged through her as their gazes met. His eyes were as piercing as freshly sharpened steel. He should have looked away. Instead, that steely gaze moved from her eyes—black, like her mother’s—to her puckered scar, trailing down her face and neck until it disappeared beneath the collar of her shirt.
People always looked. Asha was used to it. Children liked to point and stare, but most eyes darted away in fear the moment they settled on her scar. This slave, though, took his time looking. His gaze was curious and attentive, as if Asha were a tapestry and he didn’t want to miss a single thread of detail.
Asha knew what he saw. She saw it every time she looked in a mirror. Mottled skin, pocked and discolored. It started at the top of her forehead, moving down her right cheek. It cut off the end of her eyebrow and took a chunk out of her hairline. It stretched over her ear, which never recovered its original shape and was now a deformed collection of bumps. The scar took up one-third of her face, half her neck, and continued down the right side of her body.
Safire once asked Asha if she hated the sight of it. But she didn’t. She’d been burned by the fiercest of all dragons and lived. Who else could say that?
Asha wore her scar like a crown.
The slave’s gaze moved lower. As if imagining the rest of the scar beneath her clothes. As if imagining the rest of Asha beneath her clothes.
It snapped something inside of her. Asha sharpened her voice like a knife.
“Keep looking, skral, and soon you’ll have no eyes left to look with.”
His mouth tipped up at the side. Like she’d issued a challenge and he’d accepted.
It made her think of last year’s revolt, when a group of slaves took control of the furrow, keeping draksor hostages and killing any soldats who came near. It was Jarek who infiltrated the slave quarters and ended the revolt, personally putting to death each of the slaves responsible.
This skral is just as dangerous as the rest of them.
Asha suddenly wanted her axe again. She pushed herself off the table, putting space between them.
“I’ve decided on payment,” he said from behind her.
Her footsteps slowed. She turned to face him. He’d folded the extra linen and was now scraping the remaining salve from the bottom of the pot.
As if he hadn’t just broken the law.
“In exchange for my silence”—the wooden spoon clanged against the terra-cotta as he scraped—“I want one dance.”
Asha stared at him.
What?
First, daring to look her in the eye, and now, demanding to dance with her?
Was he mad?
She was the Iskari. The Iskari didn’t dance. And even if she did, she would never dance with a skral. It was absurd. Unthinkable.
Forbidden.
“One dance,” he repeated, then looked up. Those eyes sliced into hers. Again, the shock of it flared through her. “In a place and time of my choosing.”
Asha’s hand went to her hip—but her axe was still on the floor on top of her armor. “Choose something else.”
He shook his head, watching her hand. “I don’t want something else.”
She stared him down. “I’m sure that’s not true.”
He stared right back. “A fool can be sure of anything; that doesn’t make her right.”
Anger blazed bright and hot within her.
Did he just call her a fool?
In three strides, Asha grabbed her axe, closed the distance between them, and pressed its sharp, glittering edge to his throat. She would slice the voice right out of him if she had to.
The pot in his hand crashed to the floor. The line of his jaw went tight and hard, but he didn’t look away. The air sizzled and sparked between them. He might have been half a head taller than she was, but Asha was used to taking down bigger prey.
“Don’t test me, skral,” she said, pressing harder.
He lowered his gaze.
Finally. She should have started with that.
Using the butt of the axe handle, Asha shoved his left shoulder, sending him stumbling. He hit the shelves full of jars, which rattled precariously.
“You’ll keep this a secret,” she said, “because not even Jarek can protect you if you don’t.”
He kept his eyes lowered as he steadied himself, saying nothing.
Turning on her heel, she left him there. Asha had better things to do than drag this slave before Jarek and list his offenses. She needed to find her silk glove
s, hide her bandaged hand, and pretend everything was fine while she spoke with her father—who was still waiting for her.
She would deal with Jarek’s slave later.
Dawn of a Hunter
Once there was a girl who was drawn to wicked things.
Things like forbidden, ancient stories.
It didn’t matter that the old stories killed her mother. It didn’t matter that they’d killed many more before her. The girl let the old stories in. She let them eat away at her heart and turn her wicked.
Her wickedness drew dragons. The same dragons that burned her ancestors’ homes and slaughtered their families. Poisonous, fire-breathing dragons.
The girl didn’t care.
Under the cloak of night, she crept over rooftops and snaked through abandoned streets. She sneaked out of the city and into the Rift, where she told the dragons story after story aloud.
She told so many stories, she woke the deadliest dragon of all: one as dark as a moonless night. One as old as time itself.
Kozu, the First Dragon.
Kozu wanted the girl for himself. Wanted to hoard the deadly power spilling from her lips. Wanted her to tell stories for him and him alone. Forever.
Kozu made her realize what she had become.
It scared her. So she stopped telling the old stories.
But it wasn’t so easy. Kozu cornered her. He lashed his tail and hissed a warning. He made it clear if she refused him, it would not go well for her.
She trembled and cried, but stood firm. She kept her mouth clamped shut.
But no one defied the First Dragon.
Kozu flew into a rage; and when the girl tried to flee, he burned her in a deadly blaze.
But that wasn’t enough.
He took out the rest of his rage on her home.
Kozu poured his wrath down on its lime-washed walls and filigreed towers. He breathed his poisonous fire as her people screamed and wept, listening to their loved ones trapped within their burning homes.
It was the son of the commandant who found the wicked girl, left for dead in the Rift. The boy carried her burned body all the way back to the palace sickroom while his father saved the city.
The Last Namsara Page 2