by Natalie Mae
Maia snorts, and it sounds like a laugh.
“Mm, I guess I would be confident, too,” Sakira says with a small smile. “If I didn’t know what this was.”
I remember too late that Jet gave Sakira his sword. She whips the Illesa to the side, and light fires from it in a wide scythe, slamming into Maia’s shoulder and sending her spinning in the sand. I cry out, but Maia shoves to her feet in an instant, hissing, and Sakira slices the air again, sending two more blinding arcs toward the leopard. Maia dodges, leaving only air between the princess and me. Sakira lunges for me. I jerk away and Maia leaps; Sakira swings for her and the leopard darts away, snarling. The princess turns to me, eyes urgent.
“What are you doing?” she says. “You can’t want to stay with Kasta? Let’s go!”
“I . . . Kasta isn’t really a threat anymore,” I say.
“What?”
Her eyes widen with understanding as she turns—and dives out of the way of Maia, whose jaws click closed as she coils for another leap.
“Stop! Don’t hurt her!” I say, and I mean for Sakira not to hurt Maia, but it’s Maia who looks at me. Sakira fires another beam of light that slams into Maia’s head. The leopard grunts and teeters, then collapses in the sand.
“No,” I breathe, dread curdling my stomach as I rush to her. Why couldn’t I have let her handle it? Why do I keep trying to save people who are much better off without my help?
“Don’t touch her!” Sakira says, but I’ve already scooped Maia’s head into my lap and am searching frantically for a wound to cover, a cut to mend. Something I can do that would actually be useful.
“What did you do?” I say.
“What do you mean, what did I do? I just saved you from a cannibalistic demon. Why are you touching it?”
“She’s not an ‘it,’ she’s a girl named Maia, and what did you do to her?”
“She’s stunned.” Sakira sheathes her sword, watching me like I’m coddling a python. “Gods, relax. Is this some kind of Whisperer thing?”
“It’s some kind of caring thing. How long until it wears off?”
“Long enough.” She presses two fingers into her mouth and whistles, and Alette and Kita start back over, their horses tiny shadows against the vast landscape. Sakira pulls her scribing brush from her belt and twirls it in her fingers. “I’m sorry, Zahru. I wish it didn’t have to come to this.”
My stomach drops at the glint in her eyes. “Come to what?”
She lurches forward and slams my head onto Maia, holding it there as the ink of her brush licks my shoulder. I gasp and twist, but in seconds she’s done, smirking as she leaps back. I strain to see the mark she’s left on me. It looks eerily like the symbol for Obedience, a mark I only know because Fara has a cloth drawn with it beside the doors of the stable, but before I can smear the ink, it’s sunk into my skin.
“Now. Put this on her.”
She throws a twisting chain at my feet. I lift it, stomach sinking, and turn it in the moonlight. “What is it?”
“Something to wake her up.”
I don’t like the look on her face. But I can’t disobey her command, and my fingers move without my permission, looping the chain around Maia’s neck. The links glow red and stretch as they lock around her throat, the metal steaming against her fur.
Another necklace, another chain. I stroke her soft cheek, regretting for her sake, as much as mine, how close we’d come to freedom.
“Good girl,” Sakira says.
“I’ll find a way to get it off,” I say. “Your spell won’t last forever.”
“Ooh.” Sakira grins. “You have some new fight in you. I like it. Kasta’s influence, I assume?”
I bite the inside of my cheek. I’m most definitely not discussing either of her brothers with her—which brings me to the jolting realization that Jet must not be doing well if Sakira reached me first, and my heart twists anew. Gods, I hope he’s all right, and that the poison from Maia’s fangs hasn’t been putting him through some otherworldly torture. I wish I could help him. I wish I hadn’t—
I swallow and bury the thoughts. First I need to survive Sakira, then I can fret over what I should have done.
“You’re happy enough to use Jet’s sword,” I say, nodding to the Illesa. “But not to respect that he wants to free me?”
“I told you, my obedience to the gods comes first. If you’re not meant to be the sacrifice, you’ll get free.”
“Has it ever occurred to you that you could help with that?”
Sakira twirls the sword and replaces it at her hip. “I could, if that’s what I believed the gods wanted. But we are far too close to victory for me to believe that now.”
I bristle against the reminder that she thinks the gods mean for me to die. “Has he written you, at least? When I left him, he wasn’t—” I swallow. “He wasn’t well.”
A pitying, crooked smile. “He’s fine. He had a little trouble with my fans at the first checkpoint, but I told them he was harmless, so they eventually let him go. Other than that, I don’t know. We’re not really sharing our locations anymore.”
I exhale in relief. Maia’s attack just slowed them, then. I consider that Sakira might have had her fans delay Jet on purpose, and am about to ask when Maia groans, stirring in my lap—then her head convulses backward, punching me in the stomach. I gasp and reach for her as she jerks away, but she screams her horrible half-human scream and twists her jaw toward the collar, but it’s around her neck, she can’t reach it, and then her spine lengthens and her legs twist; her fur lifts from her skin, the pelt peeling off her arms—
“You said it would wake her up!” I yell.
“Yes. As you can see, she’s awake.”
“What else does it do?”
Maia cries out again—a human sound this time—and when I turn she’s crouched on one knee, looking at her hands. The pelt drapes her head, trapped by the collar. Her yellow eyes flash at Sakira.
The collar must block her magic entirely, because I can’t hear what she’s thinking.
Her gaze shifts to me.
“I’m sorry,” I say hurriedly. “I didn’t have a choice—”
“Ah ah, no talking,” Sakira says. “Let’s go.”
I try to say the rest of that sentence—that Sakira marked me—but I can no more press words from my mouth than tell my arms to sprout feathers and fly. I hope she can see in my eyes that this is far from over. That we’ll try again, and we’ll both get free.
Maia only watches as I settle into the front of Sakira’s saddle, her fists tightening around the chain.
XXV
THE desert stretches before us in a blanket of darkness.
We pass fewer and fewer campfires until there are none at all, and even the chirp of crickets and the scattered thoughts of distant animals fade to silence. Sakira doesn’t seem bothered by the change of scenery. She questions me instead, asking how Jet stole me, how Kasta stole me again, and—to my horror—how I escaped. But maybe the Obedience spell isn’t all encompassing, because I’m able to admit I poisoned Kasta without mentioning why he carries poison or how I got close enough to do it. She doesn’t press the issue. At first I think it’s because I’ve cleverly avoided rousing her suspicions, but when her weight slumps against me and soft breathing replaces her words, I realize it’s because she’s literally too exhausted to care.
The team decides to camp for the night.
Maia is left outside the tent. She’s been following us at a distance, even though Sakira would’ve preferred to leave her where she was. But Sakira doesn’t want to soil her brush on Maia’s skin, nor does she trust her spells will work on a Shifter, so Maia has followed. Now I just need to figure out how to get her collar off. Sakira’s bound to drink again, and when she does, that’s when I’ll strike. I’ll get whatever spell or key I need to remove it. And when e
veryone passes out, I’ll use it on Maia and off we’ll go.
Rest tonight, I tell myself. There’s nothing more you can do right now.
Alette hangs her priest’s amulets over the tent’s arched entrance, so that coming near it would make Maia ill.
And before Sakira goes to sleep, she draws a new Obedience spell on my arm and tells me I can’t leave the tent unless she has.
* * *
I wake to a soft touch on my cheek.
We can’t have slept long enough. My legs are lead from another day of riding, my head pounds as badly as when I’d had too much wine, and the last time I woke to something I thought was soft and harmless, Hen had freed a coop of stolen chickens into my room. I pray it isn’t a scorpion or a tarantula and turn over, stuffing my cloak back under my head.
“Zahru,” a girl whispers.
“Mmph,” I say.
“We need to get going.”
Kita. She sits above me, her pale fingers brushing my bangs from my brow, a soft smile on her face. I wonder if this is how she wakes her children. I have the sudden urge to hug her, if only to comfort myself with the closeness of a parent, but I settle for returning her smile.
“I feel terrible,” I say.
“Do you want me to help?”
I shake my head. “No. I’ll manage.” I sit up with a yawn. “I swear we just went to sleep.”
“A few hours ago, yes. But I know what you mean.”
Alette and Sakira are outside, their morning shadows passing over the tent as they ready the horses. Neither holds a flask—yet—but I’m sure Sakira will want to celebrate getting me back. Especially if I encourage her to do so. I comfort myself that I’ll only be with them a few hours more as I shake my cloak free of sand.
And thus begins day five. I swallow a spike of worry for Fara and sling the cold cloak around my shoulders.
“Breakfast,” Kita says, offering me a quarter loaf of bread and an entire dried apple. It’s as much as Fara and I would share for a morning meal. I take it slowly, noting the food bag is definitely something I need to find before Maia and I go.
“Is everything all right?” Kita asks.
“Oh. Yes. Sorry.” I take a few apple slices and break the bread in two, but Kita shakes her head.
“Take all of it. Sakira wants us at our strongest, and the next checkpoint isn’t far. We’ll restock there.”
I nod in thanks and try to be civil about eating it, but it tastes like cake and honey after not eating with Kasta at all, and I devour each bite faster and faster. Kita watches me over her own apple, though her nibbles are hesitant and far between.
“Zahru?” she says.
“Mm?”
“Your companion is gone.”
I stop with a slice of apple halfway to my mouth. “What?”
“The Shifter. Sakira said the collar was starting to break, so she marked her with Obedience and sent her away.”
I drop my breakfast and stand. “Into the desert? Without water or magic?”
She reaches for me. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know you’d be upset. Zahru, wait!”
But I’ve already stormed out the front of the tent, the cold morning air swirling around me like water. Dawn smears the horizon like a broken yolk. Sakira is reading an unfurled map and looking as clean and collected as if she’s just left the care of six handmaidens and not sent someone out into the sand to die. A fresh haircut shows off her pale neck; a blue skirt flashes at her hips instead of red. Powdered pearl glitters over eyelids that rise when she looks up, her mouth curving into a smile.
“Zahru. You look rested.”
“How could you do that to Maia?” I say.
Her smile fades. She turns back to the map. “Without the runes that control her, she’s a danger to us all. You should be thanking me. It was only a matter of time before you became her next snack.”
“It wasn’t like that. She helped me escape. Without her, I wouldn’t have known how—”
“To free her?” Sakira gives me a pitying look and rolls the map. “She was using you. You can’t honestly believe you’d befriended that thing.”
I close my mouth and push back the heat climbing my throat. It’s not even worth arguing that point right now. “You sent her to die.”
“She’s a monster.”
“So is someone who sends a person out to starve.”
Sakira purses her lips. “A person? You do know what she eats, right?”
“Yes! But she wouldn’t have eaten me, she would’ve—” I’ve never considered what she would’ve done. But the sad reality is that the only way to end that sentence is with eaten someone else, and that hardly helps my argument. “I could have asked her what she was planning to do.”
Sakira tips her head, her eyes softening. She presses the scroll back into the saddlebag and latches it. “I know what this is about.”
“Basic human decency?”
“You were hoping she’d help you escape again.”
I turn back to the tent, both for how very wrong she is, and so she can’t see me acknowledge she’s also very right.
“Zahru, when the time comes, I promise I’ll make it as painless as possible. Kita will slow your mind until you fall asleep. You won’t even know it’s happened.”
And that’s the last straw. I’m tired of being disposable; tired of people talking about my death like it’s just another item on a busy list.
“Wouldn’t that make you seem too weak?” I say, whirling. “Gods, what if someone finds out you were trying to be half decent? You should probably make it take as long as possible so you can tell your father how horrible you really are, and how that makes you the perfect queen.”
“Whoa, where is—”
“Because that’s all that’s important, isn’t it? How cold and heartless you can be. How far you’ll go to rule a country you hardly care about, so long as you can keep partying and prove your father wrong. If you cared about me, you wouldn’t be looking for ways to make it painless, you’d be looking for ways to not stab me. Gods, what is wrong with your family?”
“I—” A flicker of something real breaks her composure, before that infuriating pity takes over again. “I care about this country. That’s not the point of the sacrifice.”
“Isn’t it? Because even your brother, the one who cut this into my wrist, said there might be a way to finish the race without taking my life. So what is it you’re really after?”
Sakira watches me, and finally the pity falls from her face—but the cold that replaces it reminds me so much of Kasta, I step back. She storms to the buckskin and pulls a soft, sapphire-blue pouch from the saddlebag.
“You want to know what I’m really after?” she says, shoving the pouch at me. “Here.”
I take it, my nerves already prickling. Whatever’s inside feels loose, like rocks, and smells strongly of smoke. I ease back the drawstrings, half expecting something to leap out—and my heart flips as I take in the charred remains of a wooden puppet.
“Maybe my warm and welcoming demeanor,” Sakira growls, “has you fooled into thinking I’m not paying attention to anything else. But I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt. You weren’t raised in the court, so there are many things you don’t see.” She returns to the buckskin and pulls out the rolled map. “That’s how it should be. I want my people to feel safe in their homes, knowing I can keep them that way.”
A stone rolls in my stomach as I turn the toy. The child who owned this must have loved it very much. Its carved face is worn even where it isn’t burned.
“But there is one thing magic can’t fix.”
Sakira opens the map. The jagged outline of our country shines back at me: the Amian plains and the Pe mountains bordering the west, Nadessa and the ocean to the east. Greka crowns the north, its many lakes feeding the rivers that flow south
through Orkena before ending at the island kingdoms of Wyrim and Eiom. A crimson line traces Sakira’s route south from the palace to the caves. But west of our route, beyond the skull that marks an inhospitable stretch of desert called the Barren, five dark X’s form a jagged smirk. All of them line the border between Orkena and the southern mountains—the closest to Wyrim’s islands.
“This is a small hunting village,” Sakira says, pointing to the first X. “This is a prestigious school for the upper magics.” She moves to the next X. “This is a town that refines lumber, this one was once a thriving trading post, and this”—her voice thickens as she moves to the biggest X—“was Quadra. It used to be a mining town.”
My throat tightens. “Used to be?”
“All of these are supposed to be our allies.” She points to each country, excluding Wyrim. “Even Wyrim is supposed to be neutral toward us, but that’s quickly changing. Each of these X’s has seen an increase in trade hostility in the past decade. Not just from Wyri traders, but Eiomites and the Pe, too. Fights have broken out over prices. People have gone missing. My father’s soldiers now guard these towns day and night.” She taps the biggest X. “Except for here.”
Her gaze flicks to the puppet in my hands, and my heart twists.
“Quadra was made up of Mineralists, Zahru. Mineralists and their families, who harvested sandfire for our buildings. But they were close to the Pe border, and too small to be included on maps, so Wyrim started rumors that we were mining some new, deadly kind of rock. Mercenaries, Pe and Amian, took it on themselves to handle it. They didn’t even question the rumors. They bombed the entire settlement in the middle of the night.” She grits her teeth. “That’s all that’s left.”
My eyes heat as I look down at the broken puppet. Mineralists can locate precious stones and minerals even through layers of rock, though they have no power to affect them like Earthmovers, and therefore aren’t any higher in status than Whisperers. This could have been my toy. Quadra could have been a place I grew up, dreaming about boats and chasing travelers for stories, until it all came to an end in a flash of pain and terror.