The Last Namsara

by Kristen Ciccarelli

  Six more days until the moon disappeared completely. After that, Asha would belong to Jarek.

  If only she had more time. . . .

  “There’s something I need to do first.”

  Turning away from the sight, Asha gathered up the wasters. She felt her cousin’s gaze on her back. This time, Safire didn’t put a voice to the questions burning inside her.

  But that didn’t mean Asha didn’t hear them.

  “As soon as it’s done, I’ll tell you everything,” Asha said. “I promise.”

  She knew Safire wouldn’t betray her secret. Knew it better than the old stories buried in her depths. But if the dragon king found out Safire knew his daughter was perpetrating criminal acts, it would be the end for her. Asha couldn’t put her cousin in a situation that would require more grace from the dragon king—because there wasn’t any grace left for Safire.

  The less her cousin knew, the safer she was.

  A Tale of Caution

  Once there was a slave named Lillian. Like all well-trained slaves, she kept her head down and did as she was bidden. She waited on the dragon queen with patience and care, dressing and bathing her, plaiting her long hair and sprinkling her neck with the finest rose water. Like all well-trained slaves, Lillian was invisible.

  The second son of the dragon queen was named Rayan. Like most young draksors of high rank, he wore only the finest clothes and drank only the finest wine. He bet on the strongest dragons in the pit and broke in the most unruly of stallions. Like any handsome son of a dragon queen, Rayan caught every woman’s eye.

  One day, returning early from a desert ride, Rayan strode through his mother’s orange grove and stopped short. Someone was singing. Someone with the voice of a nightingale.

  Rayan paused, unseen, beneath the blooming trees. He watched, transfixed by the sight of a barefooted slave as she spun on her heel, her plain dress twirling around her as she danced to the tune of her own voice.

  Every day after, Rayan returned to the orange grove to wait for his mother’s slave. He only ever meant to watch her. He never meant to be seen.

  But Lillian saw. Her dance paused midstep. Her song broke midtune.

  Lillian fled.

  Rayan pursued, trying to explain: he hadn’t meant to find her that day beneath the blossoms. He hadn’t meant to return every day since. He only liked to watch her dance, to hear her sing. The sight of her was like a still pool. Like a calm and soothing place.

  Lillian stood with her back against the wall, trembling and wide-eyed, refusing to look him in the face. She fell to her knees, begging. It confused Rayan, who kept telling her to rise.

  And then, all at once, he understood.

  She thought he’d come to take her against her will. The way a stallion takes a mare.

  The thought struck like a blow.

  This time, it was Rayan who fled.

  When Lillian looked up, she found herself alone. She picked herself up from the marble floor of her mistress’s salon. She looked and looked for the son of the dragon queen—but all trace of him was gone.

  The next morning, Lillian woke to a bouquet of orange blossoms—delicate white petals in the shape of a star—and a note that said, I’m sorry.

  Lillian returned to the orange grove. She found Rayan waiting, his back to her, looking up into the dark green boughs above. She could have left right then. He never would have known.

  But she didn’t.

  Lillian said the name of the second son of the dragon queen, and Rayan turned. His face changed at the sight of her, filling with light. When he stepped toward her, she didn’t run. She let him look. And as he looked, Lillian reached to touch his hair, his cheek, his throat.

  After that day, their eyes met across courtyards. In dark and narrow halls, their hands brushed. Beneath the cover of night, in secret gardens and forgotten alcoves and tucked-away terraces, Lillian and Rayan gave themselves to each other.

  It wasn’t long before a child grew within her. But such a thing was not permitted for a queen’s slave.

  Betrayed by a fellow skral, Lillian came before her mistress, begging for mercy. When Rayan found out, he was beyond the city walls with his stallion. He raced back through the narrow, cobbled streets. He ran through the palace corridors. He burst into his mother’s throne room.

  “I love her,” Rayan confessed. “I intend to marry her.”

  Perhaps it was his youth. Or perhaps it was the foolishness of love.

  His mother laughed in his face.

  Rayan tried to defend himself. What he felt for Lillian was not infatuation. It wasn’t even love—it was something more. Love happened between a man and his wife. But the day he found Lillian in the orange grove, Rayan felt like the First Namsara laying eyes on his hika—his sacred mate, his holy match, fashioned for him by the Old One.

  Lillian was his hika, Rayan declared.

  His mother told Rayan to get out of her sight.

  The dragon queen waited for the baby to be born, but no longer. She dragged her slave to the heart of the city and burned her alive in the public square while her son watched, held back by soldats, helpless to stop it.

  Three days later, Rayan took his own life. He left behind a wailing baby girl. A girl who bore the name her mother gave her: Safire.

  Three days after that, the queen was found dead in her bed. Some say she died of shame. Others say she died of grief. But whatever killed her isn’t the point. The point is this:

  The son of a dragon queen dared to love a slave, and it did not end well for anyone.

  Seven

  Asha took the fastest route to the north gate: through the new quarter, past the temple. She moved quickly through the narrow streets. After Kozu’s attack, when this quarter burned for three days straight, her father ordered it rebuilt. The effort took almost six years and the labor of thousands of slaves.

  Now, as Asha walked, a sea of green surrounded her. Green, the color of renewal. Slaves painted the walls green as a tribute to those who’d died in the flames.

  The streets were no wider than a donkey cart, and while she was nowhere near the city’s largest market, merchants’ stalls clustered along the walls. Mountains of saffron, anise, and paprika rose out of rough canvas bags. The pungent smell of leather wafted from sandal stalls. Brightly colored sabra silk rippled in the breeze.

  At the end of it all the white walls of the temple stretched toward a blue sky. Asha was halfway to it when a woman stepped in front of her and fell to her knees, blocking her way. The tang of iron hung around her, and from the way soot gathered in the creases of her skin and the edges of her fingernails, Asha guessed she was a blacksmith.

  “I-Iskari.” Her head bowed low. Thick, blackened hands trembled as they clutched a long bundle of dyed cloth to her chest. “Th-these are for you.”

  Slaves running errands for their masters slowed all around her. Asha felt their watching eyes. The blacksmith kneeling in the middle of the street drew too much attention.

  “Get up.”

  The blacksmith shook her head and raised her hands higher.

  “Please take them.”

  Asha glanced from the top of the blacksmith’s head to the shape of the long bundle wrapped in soot-smudged linen and secured with rope. A familiar shape. The hair on the back of her neck rose.

  Asha took the bundle, burned hand and all. The moment the weight of it sank into her palms, she knew exactly what lay within.

  “I worked through the night and finished at dawn,” the blacksmith said. “The Old One himself told me how to fashion them.”

  Asha went rigid. She looked to the doorways and second-story terraces on the walls around them. When her gaze fell on any watchers, they withdrew behind teal or yellow curtains or wooden lattices.

  Asha pulled the bundle close to her chest. “Did anyone hear you forge them?”

  The blacksmith kept her eyes on the cobbles. “I often work through the night, Iskari. If they heard, it would not seem unusual.”
/>   “Don’t speak of this to anyone.”

  Without raising her eyes, the blacksmith nodded. Stepping around her, Asha left the woman kneeling behind her and clutched the bundle tight all the way to the gates.

  The soldats at the gate didn’t give her trouble, but Asha heard their grumbled words as they unlocked the heavy iron door.

  Where were her slaves? they wondered. And hadn’t she just returned from a hunt?

  The Iskari always hunted with an entourage of slaves. Today, though, she was alone and heavily armored, with her hunting axe at her hip. Going into the Rift on her own, merely a day after her return, sparked suspicion.

  They may have wondered where she was going, but the soldats didn’t stop her. Because Asha was the Iskari.

  That wouldn’t keep the news from reaching Jarek, though.

  Let it. Asha hardened against the thought of him as she moved deeper into the trees, following the hunting paths. When I return with Kozu’s head, Jarek will no longer be my concern.

  Still, she moved quickly. In case anyone meant to follow her.

  Asha hurried through the rattling esparto grass. The cedars croaked and hushed around her. If she was going to call a dragon—if she was going to call the most dangerous dragon—she needed to put as much space as possible between her and the city. She needed to right the wrongs she’d committed, not repeat them.

  In the late afternoon, she climbed the sun-bleached cliffs of the lower Rift, looking back the way she’d come, ensuring the walls of the city were far and small in the distance. She laid the blacksmith’s bundle on the rock before her, untying the cords and pushing back the fabric.

  Twin blades greeted her: black as night, elegant as slivered moons. Their hilts were made of bone inlaid with iron and gold. And there was a second bundle. Asha unwrapped it to find a shoulder belt and scabbards. She strapped on the belt and sheathed each slayer, one after the other, so they crisscrossed against her back.

  Now for the treacherous part. She had only six days to track and kill Kozu. Asha couldn’t afford to waste time. Kozu had been seen in the Rift. If she told an old story here, it might draw him to her.

  But which one would the oldest and wickedest of dragons want to hear? One about himself? One about Elorma, the First Namsara?

  Asha broke away from the hunting paths, heading into the pines and hacking at clinging vines that blocked her way. As she pressed on, Asha drew a story up from her depths. Like a bucket hoisted from a well full of poison instead of water.

  Asha opened her mouth to tell it when she stumbled out of the trees and onto a rocky outcropping.

  A lean beige dragon lay curled around itself, blending into the shale as it soaked up the heat of the sun. Beyond it, the Rift dipped into a valley of lush green growth around the river snaking through it.

  Asha froze as the dragon swung its head to look at her. The smoky stench of it hit her in the face. Its horns had barely come in, making it an adolescent. Judging by its muted coloring, it was female.

  This dragon clicked dangerously as it curled its body around to face her. Younger dragons were more prone to aggression. More prone to fighting than fleeing. This dragon was no exception.

  It spread its wings wide, like a fowl displaying its plumage to appear bigger and more frightening in the face of an enemy. Its wings cast a shadow over Asha. The sunlight sifted through the translucent membranes, revealing interlocking bones that worked to keep its huge body in flight.

  The dragon hissed.

  Asha’s fingers wrapped around the handle of her axe. On any other day, stumbling across a dragon would have thrilled her.

  Asha gritted her teeth. The sooner I slay it, the sooner I can summon Kozu.

  Slamming her helmet down over her head, Asha gripped her axe, then changed her mind.

  Using her unburned hand, she tucked her axe back into her belt and drew one of the slayers from the scabbards at her back. The moment her palm connected with the hilt, her blood hummed.

  These slayers can only be used to make wrongs right, a warning clanged inside her.

  I am righting a wrong, she thought.

  Asha swung the sacred blade, throwing sunlight into the dragon’s eyes, and then lunged. The dragon slithered out of her way, circling back around her. Its scales whispered against the rock. Asha barely had time to duck and roll before it could slam its spiked tail into her back. This was a hunting lesson Asha learned early: always know exactly where a dragon’s tail is.

  Before Asha could climb to her feet, the dragon lunged, its venom fangs out and ready to bite. Asha rolled again just as it struck, missing her by a fingerbreadth. She rolled again, right beneath it, her back to the cracked rock, her face to an underbelly as pale as an egg.

  Asha thrust her slayer up into soft flesh.

  Two things happened. First, the dragon shrieked, flapping its thin wings, trying to scramble away. Second, pain like no other raced up Asha’s arm and her screams joined the dragon’s.

  She let go of the hilt. The dragon broke free, dragging itself toward the cliff edge.

  Asha sat up. Her arm hung limp at her side. Her breathing came sharp and fast. The pain had vanished, replaced by a horrible numbness.

  She couldn’t feel her arm. Couldn’t flex the fingers of her hand. It was as if the limb didn’t exist.

  These slayers can only be used to make wrongs right.

  Again, she tried to move her arm. Again, it didn’t respond.

  Elorma had deceived her.

  Enraged, Asha screamed her hate at the Old One. “Deceiver!” The word echoed all across the cliffs until the wind whisked the sound of it away.

  Asha looked to the cliff edge, where the young dragon lay silent and still. Maybe it wasn’t dead. Maybe she’d just injured it.

  Maybe she could fix this.

  “Please be alive,” Asha whispered, moving toward it. But when she grabbed the hilt with her scorched hand and pulled the weapon out, blood pooled around her boots.

  Asha sank to her knees before the dead dragon’s head, resting on the rock, its eyes closed.

  Her left arm was useless, her right hand burned. How was she supposed to hunt Kozu now?

  The bloodied black blade lay across her knees. Asha wanted to throw it off the cliff.

  If the Old One thought he could stop her through trickery, then the Old One had underestimated her. It was Asha who, at the age of ten, summoned the most wicked of dragons and nearly destroyed an entire city. It was Asha who had more kills to her name than any other hunter.

  Asha was dangerous. She was not to be trifled with. Because, maimed or not, she was hunting Kozu down and bringing her father his head. She was putting an end to the old ways forever—if it was the last thing she did.

  Eight

  “Would you hold still?”

  Asha leaned her head back against the cool plaster of the alcove wall, obeying her cousin. Her knees were drawn up and her limp arm hung in a sling wrapped tight to her body. She’d come straight to Safire’s room upon her return from the Rift, where Safire—clothed in a brand-new mantle—proceeded to growl at her.

  Despite being in the women’s wing of the royal quarters, the room was cramped and dreary. The plaster walls were cracked and yellowed; there was no terrace; and despite the glassless windows, very little light reached in. Before the revolts, the dragon queen’s slaves lived and slept here. Now they were confined to the furrow each night, under lock and guard.

  “I wish you would tell me how this happened.” Safire’s eyebrows crept together as she frowned over Asha’s limp arm. She was trying to pad her burned hand with extra linen to see if Asha could use it—at least a little. Asha watched her cousin fold the linen, then tie it around and around her hand. She thought of long-lost days when they would hide in the garden under the honeysuckle plants, watching Asha’s nursemaid frantically call her name, their hips and elbows touching as they held in their giggles. She thought of late nights lying side by side on the roof, putting names to all the st
ars.

  That was before Asha’s mother died. Her mother had been more lax about the laws governing those with skral blood.

  “There,” said Safire, tying off the linen. “How’s that?”

  Asha’s hand was a bulge of white, completely swallowed by the bandage. She reached for the axe lying on the floor of the alcove. Her skin protested as she picked it up, but she could bear it. She wouldn’t be able to hold it long, or even well, but it was better than nothing.

  Asha was about to thank her cousin when a loud banging at the door interrupted.

  “Saf!”

  At the sound of Dax’s panicked voice, Safire and Asha looked up.

  Safire leaped to her feet and crossed the room.

  When the door opened, Dax stumbled inside, looking haggard and ill. Sweat dampened the curls around his temples and made his skin gleam. Blood stained the front of his pale gold tunic.

  And that was all it took: Asha suddenly knew who he reminded her of.

  Mother.

  In those last days before she died, her mother’s bones jutted out and her eyes were dark hollows. Asha remembered the sound of her coughing through the night. Remembered all the blood she coughed up at the end. . . .

  Whole cups of blood.

  Asha got to her feet—a difficult task with a badly burned hand and a useless arm in a sling.

  “What’s wrong?” Safire demanded. “Are you hurt?”

  “I’ve made a terrible mistake.” His eyes were hollow. Haunted.

  Seeing the look on Asha’s face, he glanced down at the blood on his shirt. “It’s not mine.” And then he caught sight of her sling, her bandaged hand.

  Before he could ask about them, Safire interrupted. “What’s happened?”

  He met Asha’s gaze. “I need your help.”

  Had the scrublanders done something? Had they hurt him?

  Asha rose to her full height, ready to take down whoever had done it.

  “It’s Torwin.”

  Asha didn’t know that name. “Who?”