The Last Namsara

by Kristen Ciccarelli

  “Jarek’s slave,” Safire explained.

  Asha remembered him. Eyes that pierced. Freckles like stars. Long fingers plucking the strings of a lute.

  Torwin.

  “I thought I could stop it.” Dax’s hands slid behind his neck, gripping hard. “You know how Jarek is. As soon as you show him you care . . .”

  “He hurts the thing you care about,” Asha finished.

  Dax’s arms fell to his sides. He stepped toward her.

  “I need you to help him.”

  Asha shook her head in disbelief. “You’re the heir to the throne, Dax. You don’t need to do anything for him. He’s a slave.”

  Safire looked at her.

  “What?” She met her cousin’s eyes. Here, with Dax, it was safe. “You’re not a slave, Saf.”

  If Dax had a weakness, this was it. Worse than his reckless fighting and flirting and gambling, Dax didn’t think like a king. He thought like . . . a hero. He was too kind. Too good. Too soft on the inside. It was going to get him hurt.

  “Asha.” Dax stepped toward her. “I’m begging you.”

  Kings don’t beg.

  “If I ask Jarek to spare Torwin’s life, he’ll kill him for sure. But if you ask . . .”

  “You’re seriously asking me to get a dangerous skral out of a punishment he deserves?” Asha studied her brother. Dax had spent the past month in the scrublands, eating and drinking with religious fanatics who refused to take slaves.

  What if instead of winning over the scrublanders, the scrublanders had won over her brother?

  “He’s not—” Dax shook his head, curling his hands into fists. Then uncurling them. He looked like he wanted to grab her by the shoulders and shake her. “He’s being punished because of you, Asha. Because he touched you in front of Jarek. In front of everyone.” Dax breathed in, nostrils flaring elegantly. “If he didn’t catch you, you would have been hurt.”

  “He did more than catch me,” she growled, thinking of the way he raised those steely eyes to hers. One dance, he’d demanded. In a place and time of my choosing.

  “He’ll go to the pit tomorrow and never come out,” Dax said. As if a slave dying in the pit was supposed to elicit her sympathy. Slaves died in the pit all the time.

  Asha shook her head in disbelief. “That is where criminal slaves belong.”

  But even as she said it, she thought of the beat of a heart, thrumming against her cheek. Thought of the way it felt to be cradled in strong arms.

  It had been eight years since she’d heard the beat of someone’s heart. Eight years since anyone held her with such gentleness and care.

  “It costs you nothing, Asha.”

  She hated the way Dax was looking at her. As if her very existence disappointed him. As if he was just realizing now that Asha was a horror.

  It reminded her of a story of two siblings: one formed out of sky and spirit, the other out of blood and moonlight.

  Where Namsara brought laughter and love, Asha thought, Iskari brought destruction and death.

  Safire stepped up to Dax’s side. “I agree with Dax.”

  Asha glared at her cousin, feeling betrayed.

  “Jarek is the commandant,” Asha reminded them. “He’s obligated to carry out the law, and that slave is his property.” She suddenly thought of the skral’s hands, carefully bandaging her burn. She quickly shook the memory away. “There’s nothing I can do.”

  “Horseshit,” said Dax. “You can try.”

  She scowled at him.

  “Please, Asha. How much more can I beg?”

  The last time she remembered her brother begging was when, as a child, she’d stolen Jarek’s favorite sword and dropped it in the sewer. Before Jarek could punish her, Dax took the blame. Jarek forced him to beg for mercy. As Jarek pinned Dax to the floor, hurting him, Asha watched with tears in her eyes, not brave enough to confess.

  Dax must have sensed he was getting to her, because he went on.

  “You’re his weakness, Asha. Use that. Charm him. Entice him. Do what . . . what every other girl does to get what she wants.”

  At those words, Safire stepped away, horrified.

  Asha’s lip curled. The thought of enticing Jarek made her stomach prickle.

  “Or . . . not,” Dax said when he noticed the looks on their faces.

  “I don’t have time for this,” Asha said, thinking of the waning red moon. She had a dragon to hunt down and only six more days to do it. She needed to get back to the Rift.

  Asha moved past her brother, heading for the door.

  “Wait. . . .”

  She didn’t.

  “What if I gave you this.”

  Asha stopped at Safire’s door. The wood, rotting. The brass handle tarnished with age. If someone wanted to hurt Safire, they could easily break down this door. It needed to be replaced.

  “It belonged to our mother.”

  She turned as Dax tugged something off his too-thin finger, then held it out to her. A ring carved out of bone lay on his palm. But it wasn’t the ring that caught her attention first. It was the calluses on his fingertips. They looked just like the calluses on the fingers of Jarek’s slave.

  “Father made it for her.”

  Jealousy dug its claws into Asha’s heart. Their mother’s possessions had been burned after her death. Why was this one missed? And why should Dax get to keep it?

  “Father gave it to me just before I left for the scrublands.” Dax stepped toward her. “If you get Torwin out of this, I’ll give it to you.”

  Asha thought of her mother, dying in bed. Poisoned by the old stories.

  She didn’t have anything of her mother’s. Why had her father given their mother’s ring to Dax?

  Because I don’t deserve it. Because if it weren’t for me, she never would have told the old stories aloud. If it weren’t for me, she’d still be alive.

  Asha might not deserve her mother’s ring, but she wanted it.

  And while she would never admit it, while she didn’t even understand it, she wanted something else. Wanted a certain heart to go on beating.

  “Fine.”

  Dax smiled one of his bright smiles. It didn’t make her feel better. Instead, it highlighted just how thin his face had become, how much weight he’d lost.

  What happened out there? she wondered.

  She shoved the question away and made for the door.

  Safire went to follow her, but Asha threw a warning look. No way was she taking her cousin with her to barter for the life of an insubordinate slave. If Asha were going to interfere with a lawful sentence, she would do it with Safire far away. Asha would not remind Jarek of the most effective way to punish her for crossing him.

  Just before Asha stepped into the dimly lit corridor, where torches threw eerie shadows across the walls, she heard Dax say, “What happened to her arm?”

  “She won’t tell me,” Safire said.

  Asha shut the door tight on them both.

  Nine

  Jarek’s front door opened on the first knock. A gray-haired slave knotted with age hunched in the archway, her dark cheeks glistening with tears.

  The presence of a skral startled Asha. The law dictated that all slaves be in the furrow by sundown.

  “I need to see the commandant,” she said, pushing the door open and entering a turquoise corridor smelling like rose water. Finely woven carpets cushioned her feet.

  An angry shout echoed through the halls, followed by an unmistakable sound: the sharp smack of the shaxa—a piece of cord knotted with shards of bone. Asha heard it hit and tear, again and again, at the flesh of someone’s back.

  The elderly slave whimpered. Asha made her way past elaborately carved cedarwood doors inlaid with ivory and brass. She passed room after room after room until she came to the small court at the heart of the commandant’s home, where the heady smell of moonflowers enveloped her.

  And then she saw the slave.

  He slumped in the shallow fountain pool. The lan
terns hanging in the galleries cast him in shadow, but she could see his hands bound and tied to the fountainhead. Blood streamed down his back and into the water of the pool, turning it pink.

  Jarek stepped into her line of sight, severing her view of the slave. He’d taken off his tunic. His back glistened with sweat and his muscles rippled as he rounded on his property.

  “Well, skral?” His words slurred together. “Was it worth it?”

  Asha retreated, pressing her back against the wall, heart pounding in her chest.

  She might be the Iskari. She might hunt dragons and bring back their heads, but Jarek held her father’s army in his fist. He had the loyalty of every soldat in the city. And for reasons she’d never been able to figure out, he’d never been afraid of her.

  She could turn and leave. She didn’t have to do this. It was the slave’s fault, after all. He shouldn’t have touched her.

  “Please, Iskari.” The words broke up her thoughts like an axe. Asha opened her eyes to find the elderly slave wringing her wrinkled, liver-spotted hands. Her hair was gray and bound in a thick braid. Her anguished, heart-shaped face beseeched Asha. “Please help him.”

  A crash resounded, followed by a low grunt. Asha dared another look around the corner. One of Jarek’s low-lying sofas lay broken, its leg snapped off beside the purple daturas, whose petals opened in the moonlight. Charm him, Dax suggested. Entice him. But Asha didn’t know how to do those things. She was a hunter. She knew all about killing things and nothing about seduction.

  Asha thought of the way the slave touched her in the sickroom. The way he caught her in her father’s courtyard, holding her carefully against him. As if he wasn’t afraid.

  It shamed her. If he wasn’t afraid—of Asha, of the law, of his own master whipping him up to Death’s gate—how could she be afraid? She was the Iskari.

  Jarek spat. His back was still to her. He reined in the shaxa, getting ready for another round of lashes. The longer Asha waited, the more of the slave’s life trickled away.

  The shaxa lashed the air, ripping at flesh. The heartwrenching sound echoed around the courtyard and through Asha. She squeezed her eyes shut. With her left arm strapped uselessly to her torso, she drew one of her slayers with her burned but padded hand. It shook with the pain. She gritted her teeth and held on.

  The next time Jarek reared the shaxa back, Asha stepped into the courtyard, catching the whip across her blade. When Jarek went to lash again, the shaxa snagged. Asha held on tight, despite the pain.

  Jarek stumbled. He spun, squinting through his drunken haze. His face contorted with anger and shone with sweat.

  “Who’s there?”

  The fountain pool was filling with blood. The sound of the gently cascading water seemed out of place.

  “That’s enough,” she said with more courage than she felt. “I’m cutting him down.”

  Jarek’s face darkened. “I’m well within my rights.” He tugged on the shaxa, willing it back to him. But it didn’t budge.

  “You’re killing him.”

  At the tremble in her voice, a tremble Asha couldn’t control, Jarek’s features settled into an icy calm. “Since when do you take an interest in the health of my slaves, Asha?” He looked from her to the skral and back, his mouth twisting. “You think I forget that it runs in your family?”

  It took three slow heartbeats for her to realize what he meant.

  Rayan. Her uncle. The draksor who fell in love with a skral.

  “Should I expect this when we’re married?” He stumbled a little, then steadied himself against the trunk of the lemon tree. “My wife carrying on with my slaves, in my own home?”

  She tried to sound calm. “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard you say.”

  He looked to the half-slain slave. “It’s disgusting.” He dropped the shaxa, drew a double-edged dagger, and started toward the fountain. “I won’t tolerate it.”

  Panic sparked inside her. Asha threw down the slayer wound with the shaxa and drew her other one, making her burned hand sting anew. She clung to it and moved for the fountain. Sobriety and swiftness got her there first.

  Asha spun to face Jarek and raised her slayer, keeping herself between him and his slave.

  Jarek may have been drunk, but he was much bigger and stronger than she was. And she had only one barely usable arm.

  So when he lunged with no weapon but his hands, Asha did the only thing she could think of. As he smashed into her, she rammed the butt of her slayer as hard as she could into his temple.

  Asha hit the floor with such force, the breath went out of her. Jarek, knocked out from her blow, pinned her to the ground. He was all muscle and weight. Like a boulder pressing down on her.

  Asha lay beneath him, one side of her face pressed to the cold tiles, the other against the hot, sweaty skin of his chest. When the room came back into focus, she tried to breathe but couldn’t.

  He’s suffocating me. . . .

  She kicked and bucked, trying to shove him off. Her slayer rested only a few steps away, yet entirely out of her reach.

  Her lungs burned. Her vision blurred. Gasping for air and getting none, Asha struggled harder, pushing with her legs and hips in one last burst of strength. Before the room darkened around her, hands reached down. Hands spotted and knotted with age. They tried pulling her out, and when that didn’t work, they rolled Jarek off Asha with a startling strength. Air rushed into Asha’s lungs. She gasped, gulping it in like water, letting it fill her up.

  The commandant lay on the floor in a bedraggled heap. Blood matted the hair around his temple, but his heart still beat. She could see the pulse of it at the base of his throat. She had no idea how bad the injury was or how long he would be out, so she stood, grabbed her slayers, and sheathed them. Snatching up Jarek’s dagger from the floor, she went quickly to where the slave still slumped in the pool.

  Sloshing through the bloody water, Asha sawed his hands free of the binding cord. When the cord snapped, the slave collapsed into the water.

  Asha threw down the dagger, which plopped into the water and sank. She crouched to help him, trying to take hold of his arm to throw it over her shoulder, but with only one hand, it was too difficult.

  “I need you to help me.”

  His gaze lifted to her face, but he didn’t answer. His eyes closed slowly. As if he were slipping toward unconsciousness.

  “No. Stay with me.”

  His eyes opened but wouldn’t focus. “Iskari?” His lips were dry and cracked. “Am I dreaming?”

  “Put your arm around my shoulder.”

  He did.

  “Now hold on tight and stand up.”

  She didn’t wait for a response, just wrapped her good arm around him, helping him rise. He wobbled as they waded through the bloody pool; and when Asha tried to get him down from its edge, he nearly fell. She caught him hard around the waist, her burned hand screaming in pain.

  “Listen to me,” she said through gritted teeth. “If you’re going to get out of here alive, you need to walk.”

  He nodded. Air rushed across his lips as he breathed in, gathering up his strength. He leaned on her heavily and stiffened with every step, a sharp intake of breath between his teeth.

  They needed to get out of here before Jarek regained consciousness. And more than that, dawn was coming. Once the sun was up, Asha couldn’t walk through the streets of the city carrying her betrothed’s half-slain slave. People would see. And they would talk.

  She needed to move faster.

  The elderly slave appeared with one of Jarek’s hooded mantles. A crimson one. She threw it over her fellow slave’s head and shoulders, tying the hood’s tassels around his throat.

  “Where will you take him, Iskari?”

  Asha didn’t know. She couldn’t hide him in the palace. Nor could she take him to the furrow, which was locked now and swarming with soldats. As they moved carefully down the corridor, toward the front door, Asha tried to think of someplace safe
. Someplace no one would think to look for him.

  She thought of her own secrets. Of the places that hid them.

  There was the Rift, but that was too far. And Asha had no intention of adding freeing a slave to her list of crimes.

  “The temple,” murmured the slave.

  Asha stared at him.

  The temple had been antagonistic toward the dragon king for years now. But Asha doubted the guardians would go so far as to harbor a fugitive slave.

  “Iskari,” he whispered between shallow breaths. “Trust me.”

  She had no reason to trust him—except for the fact that he wanted to live more than she wanted him to. So Asha did as he suggested.

  She hauled him out into the silent street. The salty smell of his sweat mingled with the sharp tang of his blood. The sooner she got him to safety, the sooner she could tell her brother she’d done as he asked, collect their mother’s ring, and get back to hunting Kozu.

  She focused on that thought as she half carried the slave toward the pearl-white temple rising out of the gloom.

  The temple was once the highest structure in the city, built into the sheer face of the mountain. The palace had long surpassed it. What had once been the center of power in Firgaard was reduced to an empty shell. An obsolete relic.

  On the way there, it started to rain. If Asha believed in prayers, she might have sent one skyward. The rain washed away the trail of blood in their wake.

  And then, her paralyzed arm began to tingle. As if someone had stuck hundreds of needles in it. By the time they arrived at the temple, Asha swore she could wiggle her fingers just a little.

  She thought of her slayers strapped to her back.

  They can only be used to make wrongs right.

  Asha studied the slave clinging to her. Beneath the mantle’s hood, his jaw clenched and his forehead crumpled in a severe frown. His eyes clouded over with pain.

  Watching him struggle to stay upright, to keep walking, Asha thought that maybe her own argument didn’t make sense. Yes, he’d broken the law. Yes, he’d touched the daughter of the dragon king. But he’d done it to stop her from getting hurt. Had he done nothing, would he not have been punished just as harshly? Wasn’t it better that he caught her?