The Theft of Sunlight

by Intisar Khanani

  I shake my head. It takes all my courage not to back away from him.

  “But how is it Red Hawk gave you his sign? He doesn’t share those easily.” He raises a brow. “Can’t imagine he cares for a girl like you.”

  Like me? What is that supposed to mean? “You may have abducted me, thrown me in a vile little cell, and have my life in your hands,” I snarl, “but you can keep your insults to yourself. You don’t know the first thing about me.”

  Bardok leans against the doorjamb and laughs, a great big belly laugh that rumbles through the room. “You’ve fire, at least. But you’re stupid, girl. Stupid to think you could poke your nose in where it doesn’t belong and not lose your head for it. Stupid to think that little pendant could protect you. Stupid”—he dips his head and smiles—“to think you were ever safe.”

  I wait. I’m not sure that his words require an answer, and in any case, I don’t have one. I’ve most certainly been stupid. There’s no argument I can make regarding that.

  “Wasn’t expecting you, though,” Bardok admits. “Thought you’d be some arrogant little chit I could ship off downriver without a thought. But this, now, this I can use.”

  “Use?” I echo, even as my mind repeats ship off downriver.

  “Mm-hmm. See, I don’t like sharing this city with other thieves. It’s uncomfortable. Never know when you’re going to rub elbows with another’s man. And here you are now, prettiest little present I’ve received in a while, even with that plain face of yours.”

  “How do you mean?” I ask, my voice not quite steady. He nods, that wide smile back on his face, and I’m terrified of what he might say next.

  “Red Hawk wants you alive, doesn’t he? That’s what that little pendant means. And we all know how the Black Scholar feels about you. So if I want to finish them both? Nothing easier! I send Red Hawk something of yours, make it look like it’s from the Scholar, and within a day I’m betting we’ll have a nice, bloody street war on our hands.”

  And then Bardok will no doubt sweep in and kill whoever he can, once they’re weakened.

  “He won’t,” I say. “Red Hawk’s not killing anyone over me. I’ve never even met him.”

  Bardok hesitates, brow furrowed, and then he grins. “Ah well, you would say that! But you carry his sign, and there’s a promise in that. I see no reason not to make the attempt. So, what shall we send him?”

  He steps forward again. I back up until I’m pressed against the wall. There’s nowhere else to go.

  “Thought you weren’t supposed to harm me,” I cry desperately.

  “Ah, orders. Who’s going to report back, tell me that?” Bardok shakes his head and takes another step forward, crowding me into the corner. He’s head and shoulders taller than me, and broad enough to fill the room. He grins, tilting his head, and catches one of my braids in a great meaty hand. I hold still, aware that I’m shaking, but there’s nothing I can do here, no way to fight him. At least I can hold on to my dignity.

  “Every girl in the city has black hair but the princess,” he says conversationally, “so there’s no use in taking a bit of hair.” He drops his gaze to my ears, pauses over my earrings, and then tugs hard on my braid, forcing me to turn as he inspects the rest of me. “Ah, but how about this ring? Would Red Hawk know it?”

  My stomach drops. My ruby ring. “N-no. I don’t think so.”

  “Ha! Yes, he would, or one of his men would. The ring it is! Though if we want blood, I think we’ll have to send it attached, don’t you?”

  “Attached?”

  He rumbles with laughter. Turning, he hauls me out of the cell to the hallway. There’s not much here: just a bench shoved back against the wall, but that’s what Bardok wants. He whips me around, sending me crashing to my knees beside the bench. I try to push myself back up, but he shoves me down. Desperately, I try to twist away. If I can only reach my knife, I can cut him, stop him—but Bardok knows what he is doing, one hand closing on the wrist of my wounded arm and yanking it forward, around him as he turns his shoulder into my back, pinning my arm to the bench. I flail with my other hand, trying to get past my skirts, get to my knife, but my fingers are stiff and I can’t see what I’m doing, and pain ricochets through me as he leans into my arm.

  He pulls his dagger from his belt, and with his other hand flattens my fingers against the bench.

  “Wait,” I cry, trying to pull back, my free hand grasping wads of my skirt. “No—please!”

  “Only take a moment,” he says kindly. “I suggest you don’t move, or you might lose more than you have to.”

  His dagger slices down through my flesh. I scream, scream as blood spurts from my hand, scream as Bardok scrapes the dagger hard, cutting through the remaining muscle and tendon. Pain shrieks through me, flying up my arm, my voice separate from me now, a sound without control. Bardok releases me and turns. I stare as he lifts my little finger, the ruby ring gleaming wetly in the lamplight, a bit of bone protruding above it.

  “That’ll do nicely,” he says in the ragged space between my screams. “Do be quiet, girl. It’s not that bad.” He raises a brow. “Nothing I haven’t lived through.”

  He pulls me up by my elbow, shoves me back into the cell, and goes upstairs still holding my finger.

  In the dark, I think of Mama. I hear her voice, calm and soothing, discussing the treatment of injuries and wounds. Keep open wounds elevated above the heart. Bind them to slow the blood flow. A calm patient will bleed less, so try to help them regulate their breathing.

  I do what I can, tearing off a strip from my skirt and pressing it against my wound. I’m shaking continuously now, but what does that matter? Hold it up, I tell myself, as if I didn’t mean a part of my own body. Breathe slowly, make sure it clots over. There’s no way to know if the wound is clean or if I’m rubbing dirt into it, so I try not to think about it. Try not to think about the fact that I’ve lost a finger now. That I could lose my hand, my arm, my life to infection. Or to the slavers who own me now.

  Try not to think.

  A pair of men come for me some hours later. They shove a sack over my head and tell me if I make a sound, they will kill me. They hold my arms, and I am grateful beyond words that they do not bind my hands together again. My left hand throbs, the pain of my severed finger the only thing I can focus on, far greater than the old, familiar pain of my knife cut.

  I go numbly where the men take me, down a hall and then through a door to the outside, where I can hear the faint splash of water. I stumble down a set of stairs with them, and then I’m shoved roughly into what must be a boat. It rocks crazily and I give a little gasping cry and then clamp down on my lips, pressing my hands to my breast as if I could protect myself from the men.

  “Shut up,” one of the men says tiredly.

  I sit silently, waiting as they row us across the river and on to our destination: a ship, I would guess, judging from the slap of water against its sides and the rope ladder shoved into my hands to climb aboard. They send me up, calling once to the men at the top who answer them. I go slowly, feeling for each rung with my good hand, hooking my wounded hand around the ropes, terrified that I will start bleeding again, that I will fall. With the sack over my head, each step is an exercise of trust in a fractured world.

  Then a hand closes on my arm, yanking me up and over a railing. I huddle there, listening as one of my escorts finishes climbing up behind me. My wounded hand is wet again.

  “She’s bleeding,” a man says, his voice just above my head. “He cut her up. You might need to stitch it or the like.”

  “We don’t keep healers on board for this sort,” a second voice answers, a few feet away. “What do you think we are? Agents of mercy?”

  “Well, cauterize it then. Orders are she’s to be sold alive and unharmed.”

  “Unharmed, and you all cut off her finger?”

  “I don’t give the orders,” the first man snaps. “Just keep her alive.”

  “We’ll get her below for now.
The captain can decide what he wants to do about it later.”

  My teeth are chattering again, and I want desperately to see where I am, but I don’t dare pull off the sack. The second man grabs my left wrist, jarring my wounded hand and sending shafts of pain up my arm. He swears as I choke on a scream, trying desperately to swallow it down. Don’t let them hurt me more. Please. He transfers his grip to my right arm, his hand wet and slick against my skin, no doubt with my own blood.

  Somehow, I make it down to the hold, stumbling forward to be shoved against a wall.

  “Head down,” the man says, his hand pushing on the top of my head. I thump to my knees, shuffle forward as he half shoves, half guides me through a low doorway.

  “This one’s special, you hear that, brats?” he says from behind me, his voice no higher than my own head. He must be bending down, speaking through the doorway. “Touch her, and the captain will have your skins.”

  A faint rustle from straight ahead, and that is all.

  “Good,” the sailor says, and the door creaks shut.

  I reach up and take off the sack, but with the door closed, the darkness is absolute. I sway where I crouch, then sit down hard. “Who’s there?” My voice comes out rough and low, hoarse from screaming.

  No one answers.

  I wait until it’s clear no one will. Then I pull myself to the side, moving slowly, until I reach a wall. There’s no one here, though the faint rustles suggest someone shifted out of my way. I can’t find the energy to think about it through the pain. Instead, I lean against the wall and let the darkness take me.

  Sometimes, when you think things are finished, they are only just beginning.

  I sit with my hands cradled in my lap: one still relatively whole, the other with a half-healed cut curved around my arm and my little finger shorn away.

  I can hear a child whimpering, somewhere near me in the darkness, but I do not know how to reach for them without crying out in pain. I do not know that they want to be held. So I sit, listening to the rhythmic splash of oars cutting through the water, propelling the boat downriver, and feel all that I have done wrong bear down on me.

  I am well and truly caught. And Red Hawk will be delivered my ring, and Bren will see it, and believe it from the Scholar, and I cannot tell him otherwise. Will there be more deaths because of me? A street war? I can’t imagine it, can’t see a thief lord I’ve never met deciding to launch a killing spree because of a bloodied ring. Even if I had met him, there’s no reason. Red Hawk is strategic, that much I know. But he likely also has his honor, and if the pendant I bear means that much . . .

  I shudder and hunch in on myself. There is nothing I can do, not about Red Hawk, not about Bardok or Garrin, not about the snatchers, not even really about myself. Stupid of me to think—

  My thoughts jolt to a halt. I stare into the dark, and all I can think is no. I am not stupid. I’ve made mistakes, but I’ve been up against men whose utter lack of morals is almost inconceivable. They abducted me, hammered me into a crate and transported me like so much fabric, cut away pieces of me, took from me my safety and dignity and body.

  My breath feels like fire in my lungs. I am suddenly and deeply furious, enraged that my body should have been violated so. I have never loved it enough; I realize that now, in the face of having it so abused. My plain features and strong build are mine, just as my turned foot is, born with me and part of who I am. And only now, as I cradle my mangled hand in my lap, do I understand this.

  Damn Bardok for his laughter, and his blades, and his easy violence and uncaring selfishness, chopping off my finger as if he had the right to take what he wished and could throw away the rest. As if such violence was nothing, was only to be expected, because I am a woman and his captive, and there is no law here, not in the prison of his home nor in the underbelly of this ship.

  But I will not go willingly into this nightmare of his making. I will not accept the darkness and violence of the thieves and sailors, the slavers who surround me. I will learn every aspect of what they do, and then I will undo them, destroy them, whether the law aids me or not.

  This I promise myself, in the darkness of the hold.

  I feel a grin touch my lips. It is like no smile I have ever worn before, violent and dangerous and hopeful, as sharp as the knife I carry with me. Just as I still wear Niya’s sash. I am not alone, even here, and I will not be broken, cut to pieces, and sold to the highest bidder.

  Something rustles close beside me. I turn toward the sound. No, I am not alone at all.

  “Who is here?” I ask.

  I hear the faint sound of children shifting, listening.

  “My name is Rae, and I intend to escape.” It is a promise as dark and deep as the river we travel, and as unstoppable. “Tell me who you are.”

  Acknowledgments

  I have been trying to write this book for almost ten years. I know this because, when my eldest daughter was six months old and we traveled to Morocco to visit my brother, I began my first draft in a composition book. I wrote while pumping milk in a dark room beside her crib while she napped. It was NaNoWriMo, and if I couldn’t handwrite fifty thousand words, at least I could make a strong effort. My daughter’s now ten, and Rae’s story has stayed with me over the years as I’ve drafted it and set it aside and then drafted it again. I am so grateful to be able to share it with you now, dear reader, even if it has morphed into a duology and forced me to do the one thing I promised myself I would never do: write a cliffhanger. Sorry about that! ;)

  Many thanks to my agent, Emmanuelle Morgen, for continuing to champion me and my stories, for helping me to take a breath and not worry about what’s beyond me, and for always, always having my back. You are wonderful, and I am so grateful to be working with you and have your friendship.

  I am deeply grateful to my wonderful editor at HarperTeen, Alice Jerman, for your ongoing awesomeness, for fighting for those extra days to edit when I most need them, for your keen eye and exceptional insight. This story would not be what it is without you. I am so thankful to be working with you! Thanks also to the HarperTeen team for all your work to polish and promote this story, including Jessica Berg, Clare Vaughn, Gillian Wise, and my publicist Lauren Levite. Many thanks to my wonderful UK editor, Fliss Alexander, as well as Maurice Lyon for all your help through Fliss’s absence, and the entire marketing team at Hot Key Books, especially Isobel Taylor and Molly Holt. You are all so much appreciated! And of course, to Jenny Zemanek, graphic designer extraordinaire: I cannot imagine a more perfect cover. Thank you.

  I owe a debt of gratitude to my many, many beta readers who waded through drafts in various stages of disrepair. My thanks to Shy Eager, W. R. Gingell, Nam Heui Kim, Tia Michaud, and Charlotte Michel for reading that relatively early draft that I didn’t know what to do with. Thanks to Anela Deen, Anne Hillman, A. C. Spahn, and Janelle White for working through a subsequent still-somewhat-disastrous draft, and to my husband, Anas, Shy Eager (again!), Eli Hinze, A. C. Spahn (also again!), and Stacy Crawford, for providing detailed feedback at the eleventh hour. Many thanks to Laurel Garver for her incredible eye to detail to help give this story an additional shine.

  At its heart, this story is both about Rae and about slavery. Rather than depicting historic experiences of slavery, I’ve modeled the slavery you see in this book around modern-day human trafficking. I am grateful to the Underground Railroad Freedom Center’s Modern-Day Slavery exhibit for opening my eyes to what this looks like. The examples of slavery you’ve read here were all taken from cases of modern-day slavery still happening in the world now. For more information on human trafficking, you can visit the Polaris Project online.

  My family has, of course, continued to be my most important support crew. Thanks to my parents, my husband, my two wonderful girls, and my brother and sister-in-law, for their kindness, support, and provision of hot meals when I don’t manage to make them myself. You are the best.

  In mentioning support crews, I would be remiss if I d
idn’t acknowledge the amazing supporters of Thorn, The Sunbolt Chronicles, and now The Theft of Sunlight. Readers, reviewers, bloggers, bookstagrammers, and more—thank you all. I am so grateful to you for helping to share my stories with your circles, and giving them wings to fly. You rock.

  As those who follow me may know, I am extremely challenged by naming characters, and often resort to asking for help on my Facebook author page. Many thanks to Anela Deen for naming Seri, and Marisa Stroud for Siyela, as well as all the brainstorming that helped me to get to Ramella’s name. I’m frankly rather shocked I didn’t need more help, but that’s possibly because most of my characters were taken care of in Thorn. Phew.

  And finally, I am grateful to God, for all that He has given me, in my writing and in my life.

  About the Author

  Photo credit Carolyn Miller

  INTISAR KHANANI grew up a nomad and world traveler. Prior to publishing her novels, she worked as a public health consultant on projects relating to infant mortality and minority health. Intisar is also the author of Thorn and the Sunbolt Chronicles.

  To find out what Intisar is working on next and connect with her online, join her monthly newsletter at www.booksbyintisar.com.

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  The Theft of Sunlight

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