THE BLUE EYE

Book Three of the Khorasan Archives

Ausma Zehanat Khan

Copyright

HarperVoyager

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

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London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2019

Copyright © Ausma Zehanat Khan 2019

Jacket design Micaela Alcaino © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2019

Jacket Illustration © Shutterstock.com

Ausma Zehanat Khan asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008171674

Ebook Edition © September 2019 ISBN: 9780008171698

Version: 2019-09-11

Dedication

For my darling Nozzie,

who would hide with me in the Cave of Thawr, leave it all behind to follow me on hijra, who would journey with me through Israa e Miraj … and be waiting on the other side.

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Map

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Acknowledgments

Cast of Characters

Glossary of the Khorasan Archives

About the Author

Also by Ausma Zehanat Khan

About the Publisher

Map

Prologue

THEY WOULDN’T KILL HIM AT THE COUNCIL. THE TALISMAN COMMANDERS were suspicious of Daniyar, but they held fast to the rules of the loya jirga, the consultation Daniyar had asked for with the leaders of the Talisman tribes. The Shin War, in particular, held themselves to a higher standard. Their commitment to their own honor was the reason Daniyar retained any hope of returning to the Black Khan’s city unharmed.

Once he returned to the safety of Ashfall, this temporary reprieve would end. Though Daniyar was one of the Shin War, as well as the Guardian of Candour—the city that was now the capital of the Talisman—he would be seen as an enemy. As such, he would be hunted with the same ferocity as the Black Khan himself, unless he could persuade the Talisman commanders that their war against the Khan was futile—that they should retreat for the sake of their own survival. For the sake of the boys who had known too much war, boys conscripted by force.

He’d passed many of those boys on his way to the Talisman’s central command. Their eyes were sunken in their haggard faces, their cheeks hollow with hunger. Though they hoisted Talisman standards and readied themselves for battle, their hopelessness haunted him.

He had walked in their midst without fear, meeting each one’s gaze, the Sacred Cloak flowing down his back as he passed, deliberately permitting it to brush their hands even though he knew the Talisman would consider his act a sacrilege. To take something holy that had been guarded for centuries and now allow the basest rabble to touch it was to dishonor the Cloak in their eyes. And as contemptible as that idea was to Daniyar—that some were more deserving of grace than others—he didn’t think of the Talisman’s legions as contemptible. As he met their eyes, eyes that were blue, green, amber-gold, or dark, midnight-flecked brown, he thought of them as his own. Shin War or not, these boys who fought the Talisman’s wars, and inflicted the Talisman’s cruelties, had once been his trust as Guardian of Candour.

He’d called for the loya jirga as much for them as for himself.

Somehow, they must have known it.

As he passed through their ranks unmolested, each boy bowed his head, unable to sustain the clarity of his brilliant silver gaze. Two Talisman pages leapt forward to raise the flaps of the tent as he entered. He memorized their faces and thanked them in a quiet voice.

Bewildered by this show of respect, they retreated without daring to speak. Daniyar sighed, the movement of his powerful shoulders shifting the Cloak to one side. They reminded him of Wafa, the Hazara boy under his care who distrusted any show of kindness.

Inside the tent, he was greeted by wary commanders, all of whom were armed. He searched out those who might recognize him as the defender of the First Oralist, sworn enemy to these men. The Talisman’s war was as much against the women mystics known as the Companions of Hira as it was against the Black Khan. Led by the One-Eyed Preacher, the Talisman sought to bring all of Khorasan under their ruthless law. None who defied that law were spared. Women faced a darker fate, sold in slave-chains to the north. Like the Black Khan, the Companions of Hira stood in the way of the Talisman advance. Daniyar had pledged himself to their cause, and to the cause of one woman in particular: Arian, the First Oralist.

The woman he loved.

He’d fought his kin for her; he’d killed for her without a second thought.

Now, as he searched the faces of the commanders, he wondered if any might recognize him not just as her defender, but also as the rider who had killed his own cousin at the frozen city of Firuzkoh. Or if any had witnessed his killing of the Talisman leader who had roused a mob against Arian in Candour, when Arian had taken the Sacred Cloak from its shrine. Or worse yet, if any might know him from the Sorrowsong, where he’d lied to his Shin War clan mates, to further Arian’s cause. The Lord of the Wandering Cloud Door had slaughtered the Shin War at the Sorrowsong, but there was always the possibility that one or more of the Shin War had escaped to sound the alarm.

But as he looked around the ring of hostile faces, no one accused him of being a traitor to the Shin War. Rather, he recognized two young men as boys he had taken into his care, now grown to manhood as soldiers capable of leadership. Though the others made no personal greeting, these two bowed their heads.

He stepped over the threshold, careful not to touch it with his boots, a sign of grave disrespect. The Talisman kept their hands on their swords. Daniyar lowered his to his sides, bowing his dark head in greeting.

The Talisman moved back, allowing him a view of the interior of the tent. Despite the exigency of the moment, the tent had been arranged for comfort, the walls lined with white felt, bright blue carpets scattered across the floor, and low cushions arranged around a steel stove for warmth, smoke from its long shaft escaping through a hole in the roof.

At the far side of the tent, a dozen women huddled together, their heads bowed, their soot-darkened faces streaked with tears. As Daniyar made his way closer to the stove, they glanced up at him quickly and just as quickly away. A closer look showed him that the women had been chained at the ankles, as were a pair of girls, although two of the women in the group had been left unrestrained to prepare food for the commanders. They performed the task ably despite their overriding fear. Rage flared behind his eyes, but Daniyar did nothing to betray it.

When tea was served in small metal cups, Daniyar was told to take a seat on the cushions. Judging from the Talisman’s grim expressions, he knew none of the men would move from their positions until he did so. The sound of the Black Khan’s army strengthening its defenses filled the night. Daniyar ignored it. Removing his sword and placing it away from his hand, he took his seat. The girl who served his tea glanced at him. He met her gaze frankly, not to convey disrespect, but on the chance that she might know who he was and take an instant’s comfort from his presence. Her hands trembled in response, spilling hot tea on his wrist. He jerked it away without a sound to betray her, but the Talisman commanders had seen. The man closest to her, an Immolan whose beard had been dyed dark red with henna, struck a blow to the girl’s back. She fell at Daniyar’s feet. The other women whimpered at the promise of violence to come. Daniyar placed his hands under the girl’s arms and gently raised her to her feet. This time when her eyes met his, they widened before she ducked her head. She had recognized him as the Silver Mage. The trembling of her body eased, but her dark eyes remained without hope.

“What is your name?” he asked her.

“Masoumeh,” she whispered, with a frightened glance over her shoulder. A pang of sorrow seized him. The girl’s name meant “innocence.” And from her accent and her finely formed features, he saw that she was a girl of West Khorasan, under the Black Khan’s protection, likely one of the refugees who had failed to find safe harbor at Ashfall.

The Immolan who’d struck her snarled at the girl to remove herself. Then he turned on Daniyar, the two men face-to-face, both powerful and dangerous, though Daniyar was seated with his sword set aside as an indication of his sincerity in seeking a truce. The Immolan’s gaze flicked to the Shin War crest that Daniyar wore at his throat.

His face marked by a thousand cruelties, the Immolan said, “As a member of the Shin War, a woman taken as a slave should be beneath your notice.” He jerked his head in the direction of Ashfall. “Or do you solicit the weak as your companions?”

The storm continued to gather in the depths of Daniyar’s eyes, though his voice was even when he answered, “In violence, I seek my equals.”

The insult was subtle yet unmistakable; the tension in the atmosphere deepened.

Then laughter rippled through the men.

The Immolan sliced a glare at the others, but the men fell silent only when a white-bearded elder raised his hand. He took a seat on one of the cushions. When he was settled, the other commanders copied him. The elder was in his eighth decade. He carried a staff instead of a sword, which he closed his hand around and kept near to him. His thin face was alert, eyes of charcoal gray betraying a steely intelligence as he made his assessment of Daniyar.

But it was to the Immolan he spoke.

“Have I not warned you against your misuse of the weak? The One entrusts them to our care, and this girl is nothing but a frightened child.” His disapproval was plain. “You bring dishonor to your name, Baseer.”

The insult was keen, Daniyar realized, for Baseer meant “one of great vision.”

Baseer was undaunted. He sat across from Daniyar, close enough to convey menace.

“She is one of the enemy. I give the enemy no quarter.”

To see what the Talisman elder would do, Daniyar ventured a response. “I thought you came here to test your strength against that of the Zhayedan army. Are your talents better suited to vanquishing an innocent girl?”

He laid a slight emphasis on the meaning of Masoumeh’s name. And he knew that by involving the girl in his scheme, he had no choice but to ensure her escape with his own. She had shrunk down beside the other women at the back, and though the women were frightened, they had come together to shield the girl from Baseer’s malevolent gaze.

Baseer spat at Daniyar’s feet. Close enough to insult him, but not enough to comprise a transgression of the loya jirga.

“Baseer!” The Talisman elder issued a rebuke that Baseer met with surly disrespect, when the elder went on to add, “We have a guest in our midst.”

“We have an enemy in our midst,” Baseer rejoined. “Remember it, Spinzhiray.”

The title referred to the elder’s white beard, yet also encompassed more: the elder’s courage, his wisdom, his skillful use of rhetoric. Though a loya jirga was a consultation of equals, the Spinzhiray held a position of seniority, one of status among the Talisman.

Daniyar observed the reaction of the men in the circle to Baseer’s disrespect. The two he knew kept their eyes on him, while several of the others were openly angry at Baseer. Now and again, a few of the commanders would let their gazes drift to the cloak on Daniyar’s shoulders, a touch of wonder in their eyes. Two other men shifted closer to the elder, who seemed to take Baseer’s arrogance in stride. His personal guard, perhaps, but others stood at Baseer’s back.

The Spinzhiray didn’t respond to Baseer, his focus on Daniyar. He advanced a small clay bowl into the center of their gathering. He took a ring that featured an eagle carved from a block of blue stone threaded with streaks of white from his finger.

“A gesture of trust.”

Daniyar understood. He removed the ring of the Silver Mage from his finger and placed it in the bowl. Its piercing light arrowed up through the hole in the tent’s roof.

Then, obeying the rites of consultation, he waited for the Spinzhiray to speak.

The older man captured his gaze with his own, his gray eyes shrewd and deep-set in his battle-scarred face.

“I’d hoped I would not pass from this earth without meeting the Silver Mage, the Guardian of Candour. Tell me—why do you stand with the Black Khan’s army?” He noted the torn crest at Daniyar’s throat, the stroke of black on a field of green.

Baseer interrupted before Daniyar could answer. “How do we know he is one of our own? Or that he holds to our code?”

Again Daniyar waited for the Spinzhiray to speak. But in this case, the elder tipped his staff at Daniyar, an indication for him to answer.

Looking from the Spinzhiray to Baseer, Daniyar offered, “The Shin War I know recognize melmastia, and I am a guest in your tent.” He acknowledged their hospitality by taking a sip of his tea. “Nanawatai—forgiveness. Turah—courage. Musaawat—equality. Wisa—trust. And ghayrat—self-honor.” He nodded at the elder. “I place the ring of the Silver Mage in your bowl, and the sword of the Silver Mage at my side, because I have no fear in your company. I rely upon your honor.”

Something in the men settled at those words. They sat back on their heels, their hands easing off their swords.

“You forgot badal. What is a member of the Shin War—of any of the Talisman tribes—without his commitment to revenge?”

Daniyar considered how best to answer Baseer. A tribal society that defended its lands from warfare found revenge necessary not only to uphold their honor, but for survival.

“What is meted out in self-defense, I see as a matter of justice, not of dishonor or revenge,” he said at last.

“You think to recalibrate the foundations on which the Shin War have stood?”

Daniyar shook his head, realizing that nothing he could say would win Baseer’s favor. Turning to the Spinzhiray, he said, “Honor is the foundation of everything we stand for.” Flicking a steely glance at Baseer, he added, “You point out my omissions, but what of yours? You chose not to mention naamus.”

Baseer made a show of grasping his sword.

“The honor of women?” He pretended to laugh. “Women have no honor.”

Unexpectedly, the Spinzhiray said, “They are garments for you, and you are garments for them.”

And having just had his involvement with the Black Khan questioned, Daniyar now wondered how a man who would recite this verse of the Claim could be in a position of leadership at this loya jirga. Encouraged, he nodded at the corner where the women in the tent had taken shelter.

“The Shin War code that I was taught defended the honor of women. Violence against those weaker than ourselves is outlawed by that code.”

A murmur in the tent. He sensed the tacit agreement of the orphans he had taken in.

“Are you the champion of the weak, then?” the Spinzhiray asked, with a look Daniyar couldn’t read.

His answer was straightforward. “Such was my trust as Guardian of Candour.”

“Yet you are not in Candour. And I think Baseer is right to ask why the Guardian of Candour makes his stand at the Black Khan’s walls.”

The mood in the tent tautened once more, the canvas like the lungs of a living being, inflating and deflating with each syllable. A curl of victory shaped Baseer’s lips. Yet when Daniyar made another slow sweep of the men gathered for the loya jirga, he observed a range of responses: admiration and respect from some, uncertainty and fear from others. If he was honest with them, if he spoke the truths of the Silver Mage, some might choose to ally with him. He could see from the way a few paid heed to the women at the back that the taking of slaves unsettled them. Perhaps they could still be persuaded to his point of view.

His voice rough, he said, “I am tired of war. I am tired of the desolation of our lands.” He motioned with a hand, something of his grief in the gesture. “What Candour was compared to what it has become—you must feel it as deeply as I do.” He turned his head to indicate the city of Ashfall. “It is not the way of Shin War, nor of any of our tribes, to wage war against those who do not act against us. The Black Khan seeks to hold his capital. His armies have not ventured into our lands; they haven’t sought to conquer.”

Baseer leaned forward so that his forearms were braced on his thighs, his face close to Daniyar’s. In its harsh lines and powerful certainty, Daniyar understood that this was a man who thrived on war. And to whom the Shin War code was a tool exploited for his own purposes or discarded when it failed to serve him.

“The Black Khan’s truce is a stratagem. You are a fool to believe otherwise.”

Daniyar’s gaze flicked to the Spinzhiray.

“Would you not hold your walls if there was an army at your gates? An army that takes your women captive?” Though it galled him to speak on the Black Khan’s behalf, he added, “The Khan has his own sense of naamus.”

He pointed to the young men he had tutored. They snapped to attention, their spines stiff with pride.

“Why waste their lives on this cause? Gather your men and take them home to engage in work with purpose. Allow them to build their future—restore the glory of Candour.”

He made no attempt to hide the depth of his longing for this outcome.

The men began to debate among themselves, but Daniyar watched the Spinzhiray. Despite the egalitarian structure of the council, its hierarchy would prevail.

“You think our war unjust?” he asked Daniyar, under the cover of the others’ voices.

Daniyar stared at the pulsing light that spiraled out from his ring. The silver light had wrapped itself around the lapis lazuli stone of the other man’s ring. The carved eagle appeared ready to take flight. He took a steadying breath: an honest answer would be seen as an insult, yet the Spinzhiray would see through a lie. With great care, he posed a question instead.

“How many of the Black Khan’s people have you killed or enslaved on your route to Ashfall?”

The Spinzhiray’s nobbled fingers stroked the soft wool of his beard. “To spread the message of the One across these lands is an act of justice.”

The Talisman commanders nodded one by one. In their renewed silence, Daniyar’s sharp ears picked up a sound that filled his thoughts with urgency. The actions of the Zhayedan were intensifying: they were preparing to attack.

He’d known better than to trust the Black Khan, but what other choice had there been? Arian was behind those walls. She was determined to take on the One-Eyed Preacher, even if she did so alone.

He sought a truce with the Talisman because he’d taken on her cause as his own. He had turned from her once, then promised himself he wouldn’t fail her again.

“The people of West Khorasan have long adhered to the message of the One. They named their western gate the Messenger Gate after the Messenger of the One.”

The Spinzhiray’s eyes sharpened … hardened … and Daniyar knew the battle was lost. There would be no truce with the Talisman this night. Or any of the nights that came after.

“Their court is corrupt, their practices a barbarity. The Black Khan’s scriptorium houses works of the profane.”

Daniyar fought not to show his outrage at this characterization of a place dedicated to the preservation of knowledge. “I have visited the scriptorium myself. Treatises on medicine and mathematics are anything but profane.” He debated the wisdom of mentioning the Bloodprint, then decided to keep his knowledge to himself. “The rest is for the One to judge.”

The elder’s grip tightened on his staff as Baseer rose to his feet.

“The One has judged. We have come to carry out the judgment.”

“Spinzhiray, I beg you to put the lives of your men before these notions of judgment.”

The elder shook his head in disapproval. “The dunya is of no value compared to the rewards of the Akhirah.”

A standard Talisman formula: the present world was only a means to gain the bounty of the afterlife. The Talisman used the formula to justify oppression. They would spend the lives of the boys in their army, boys he had once sheltered in Candour, without counting the cost.

“There will be no truce,” he continued. “No retreat.”

The Talisman commanders assisted the Spinzhiray to his feet. Daniyar collected his sword and sheathed it. Before he could bend to reclaim his ring, a roar shattered the night. The wind was in Daniyar’s eyes as a giant boulder tore through the roof of the tent, obliterating the stove, killing the commanders closest to it.

Screams filled the air. Orders were shouted across the tent, but what Daniyar’s keen hearing picked up was the cranking noise of the mechanism that raised the Zhayedan’s catapults. He called out a warning to the others to flee, his eyes on the women who crouched at the back of the tent. He wasn’t swift enough to act. A second boulder followed the first, its terrifying heft bringing the tent to utter silence. When the sound of the crash receded, Daniyar looked across to the back of the tent. The corner where the women had sheltered was ripped away. No one had survived, blood and bone strewn across the carpets.

He was seized from behind by two Talisman commanders who pushed him before the Spinzhiray. The elder’s white robes were flecked with blood and bits of flesh. But the Spinzhiray was used to death. His hands were steady on his staff, his charcoal eyes aflame with rage.

“The Guardian of Candour engaged in rank deception—you called for the loya jirga knowing the Zhayedan would strike!”

“No!” Daniyar protested, struggling to free himself, but the two men who held him were strong. They pinned his arms behind his back. “I could not wear the Sacred Cloak and lie—you know this!”

The Spinzhiray moved close enough that Daniyar felt his breath on his face. He ripped the Shin War crest from Daniyar’s throat, leaving it vulnerable and exposed.

“I know only this: you are a member of the Shin War without honor. Kill him, Baseer.”

Baseer, too, was covered in the blood of others, but his eyes gleamed with unholy satisfaction. He nodded at Daniyar’s captors, who forced him to his knees. He heard the sharp, metallic scrape of a well-honed sword pulled from its sheath.

He raised his head, finding the young men who had known him in Candour.

“It isn’t true,” he said. It mattered to him to convince them, even if he were to die here. “I came to you in good faith for the sake of our people. To barter for their lives and yours.”

Baseer poised his sword at the nape of Daniyar’s neck. “You have no people now. You are a traitor expelled from his clan. But that won’t matter to you soon.”

He raised his sword for the killing blow just as flaming arrows whistled into the tent. Fire licked up the felt walls, collapsing what remained as the Talisman tore them down. Screams scraped against the vastness of the sky. Baseer was taken by an arrow. The two men who held Daniyar released him, fleeing outside into the night.

Daniyar came to his feet in a powerful lunge.

“Run,” he said to the young soldiers he knew. “Find your way to Candour.”

Smoke thickened the air, slicked over his skin, and coiled up into his lungs. Flames devoured the tent, and all around him were the sounds of the Talisman regrouping for war.

One of the young soldiers looked him in the eye and spit out, “Khaeen.” Daniyar flinched from the viciousness of the word. But unable to hold the gaze of the Silver Mage after naming him a traitor, the soldier turned on his heel and fled.

Daniyar knew that his own would turn against him now. They would, as the young man had, consider him khaeen; they would erase him from the history of his people. The loneliness of being severed from his clan was a wound that throbbed in his chest, achingly familiar and dull.

My course was honorable, he told himself. No matter what they say about me, I did not betray who I am meant to be.

He focused on the other soldier, the one he might be able to persuade.

His name was Toryal, Daniyar remembered. Toryal pulled the scarf around his neck up to his mouth, trying to lessen the impact of the smoke.

“You were the Guardian of Candour—we believed in you. We trusted you.” He said the words in a tone so hopeless that it arrowed deep inside Daniyar. “For you to raise your hand against us—you taught us to choose the course of honor—now your honor lies in shreds.”

Toryal pulled his scarf higher, so that his neck was exposed. A telltale map of scars spread down from his throat into his armor. He had long been a conscript of the Talisman, one of the lost boys of Candour.

While the young man deliberated, Daniyar took in the fire that blazed a trail through the encampment. The commanders who had escaped were preparing for a counterattack, while the Zhayedan’s catapults continued to pound down destruction.

The devastating noise of battle was unlike anything Daniyar had ever heard. It crashed into his temples, battered his senses. Choking on the smoke, he said, “I promise you—I was not privy to this attack. But you know it for yourself, Toryal. This siege is not a course of honor. There is another way. Come with me instead.”

The younger man blinked, reaching for his sword. Daniyar left his sheathed.

In that strange, suspended moment, both men struggled to breathe, conscious of the rush of others toward them. Whatever else he was forced to do this night, he would not harm Toryal.

“If I go with you, I’ll have nothing. No clan or kin, no honor to call my own.”

Daniyar held Toryal’s gaze. “You’ll have me. I won’t leave you to stand on your own.”

Toryal rubbed one hand over the marks at his throat. Awkwardly, he began to cry. Daniyar stepped closer. When the younger man didn’t back away, he moved to take hold of him, wrapping the folds of the Sacred Cloak around them both. Let Toryal feel the strength that would protect him, even on a Talisman field.

As arrows burned the ground at their feet, he held Toryal until his sobs began to ease. The scent of wild honey filled the air, rising over the smoke, offering a hint of sweetness.

Toryal drew back, his blue-green eyes wet with tears.

“I would have saved the girl,” he said, refusing to look over at the bodies.

Daniyar assessed him. Made a judgment. “I know you would have tried.”

“How?” There was a tremor in Toryal’s voice. “How can you know I speak the truth?”

Daniyar placed one hand on Toryal’s shoulder, stroked the surface of the Cloak.

“You wear the Sacred Cloak. You cannot utter falsehoods under its mantle.” But what he’d said wasn’t enough. The boy needed more, something that didn’t depend on mysteries he couldn’t unravel, something beyond the sacred. “I remember you, Toryal. You wouldn’t have taken this path if you’d been given a choice.”

For a moment, a dazed sense of wonder appeared in Toryal’s eyes. He brought his hand up to the Cloak, stroking its unfathomable texture. Silky, yet heavy as wool. Enfolding him in warmth, yet soft and cool to the touch.

Remembering himself, he dropped his hand. He stepped away from Daniyar, remorse darkening his eyes. Mourning the things he knew he would never be able to have.

“I can’t follow you,” he said. “There’s nothing for me save this. Every man in Candour has been conscripted to the Talisman cause. There’s no way out of it, though many of us have tried.” His fingers ran over his scars. “Those who agree to fight are guaranteed the safety of their women. Those who refuse …” He dragged his tunic open, yanking at his armor.

At first Daniyar thought the pattern across his ribs were lash marks left by a whip. But the raised flesh was red and blistered, the texture of the flesh thick and waxy. Toryal’s body had been burned.

A swirling torrent of rage and grief rose inside him.

“You could still come with me. You could bring those like you to the gates, and the Black Khan would give you shelter. It isn’t too late for you to choose another course.”

But Toryal was shaking his head, desperate and unsure.

“Don’t offer me a future I know I’ll never see. All I have left is my hope that my sisters will not be sold.”

And, with his sword gripped in his hand, Toryal disappeared.

The strange lethargy, the almost-hope that had seized Daniyar and held the battle at bay now evaporated in a rush. He moved through the tent, stepping over bodies, searching for the bowl that held his ring. But its piercing light failed to penetrate the smoke.

Then there was no more time to search. The stench of death in his nostrils, the heat of fire at his back, he swung around to face the group of Talisman who advanced.

He drove forward into the fray, his sword flashing out into the night, the Cloak streaming from his back singed by trails of fire. The sight of the Cloak gave one of the Talisman pause; the rest rushed to meet his sword. Daniyar was heavy with muscle, but he moved with the grace of a predator, his skill in combat honed by the years he had stood against the Talisman. Bodies fell as others surged to take their place. The Talisman had no strategy beyond an inarticulate fury they intended to assuage. Daniyar took a slash to his arm, another to the opposite shoulder. It slowed him but didn’t bring him down.

The fury of the Zhayedan’s mangonels brought him a moment or two of rest, and then he was thrust upon his mettle again: more of the soldiers recognized him as the man who had promised a truce during the loya jirga.

Under the rage, he read their contempt for a man who could betray his own. He shrugged it aside, blocking a bold attempt at his throat, another under his armor. But in the end, he couldn’t stand against them all. His arms were tiring; there was nowhere to escape to. Sweat dampened his hair, seeped under his armor. Clouds of smoke stung his eyes. There was no sign of his ring, no other powers to call upon, when he needed his every breath to fight.

But then the Talisman fell back, bodies collapsing to the ground, arrows through their necks or rising from their backs. These weren’t fletched like Teerandaz arrows; they were black-tipped, lethal in their accuracy. He blinked to clear his bleary eyes. Two men were fighting at his side, raising their swords when his movements were too slow. They were sheathed in skintight leather, expressionless behind their masks.

They fought back the press of the attack, and when the Talisman’s attention turned elsewhere, one of them grabbed Daniyar’s arm.

“The field is lost,” he warned. “The only way out is with us.”

1

A NARROW CHAMBER LED OFF TO THE RIGHT OF THE QAYSARIEH PORTAL. A faint scent of dampness emanated from within, overlaid with traces of jasmine. When Arian peered inside, the sight she encountered brought her to a halt. A moment later, her escort became aware that she’d fallen behind. Khashayar, a captain of the Zhayedan army, signaled his men to wait. He strode back to join Arian at the entrance to the chamber.

“Does something delay you, First Oralist?”

He spoke to her with the respect her status as First Oralist demanded. More, his manner set an example for his men, who had balked at abandoning Ashfall while the capital was under attack. Yet the order to accompany the First Oralist on her mission had come directly from the Black Khan. The Zhayedan might find little merit in chasing a holy relic while their comrades fought a battle for survival, but they would obey their Khan, and through him Khashayar. The city would have to hold until they returned from their quest.

Arian raised her eyes to Khashayar’s face. He was black-haired, with dramatic dark eyes under an aristocratic brow. Though he was no relation, in appearance he resembled Rukh, the Black Khan. He was young to be charged with escorting her to Time-back, but his youth was a matter of years, not experience. He carried his command with poise: disciplined, experienced, yet adaptable enough to recognize why Arian’s mission mattered to the fate of his city.

“What is this chamber?” she asked him.

“A cistern. We use it to collect rainwater.”

“There’s a prayer nook in the wall.”

Khashayar nodded, but his head was inclined toward the sounds of combat beyond the city walls. When she still didn’t move, he said, “It was built at the request of the Begum Niyousha—the Black Khan’s mother. She observed her worship here. The Princess Darya followed her example.”

A shadow crossed Khashayar’s face. The Princess of Ashfall had been killed during a skirmish on the walls. She should have been safe in the Al Qasr with the rest of the Khan’s household, yet she’d raced to the western gate to prevent her half-brother, Darius, from striking against the Black Khan, her death as chaotic and impetuous as the way she’d lived her life.

“May I take a moment for prayer before we leave?”

Khashayar’s black gaze skipped over the First Oralist’s confederates—Sinnia, the Companion from the lands of the Negus, and Wafa, the blue-eyed Hazara boy under the Companions’ care.

When he hesitated, Arian tried to reassure him. “The blessing is important, otherwise I wouldn’t delay.” A graceful hand swept out from under her cloak, the gold circlet on her upper arm agleam in the muted light. She gestured back at the square they had passed through where the impact of the battle was felt. “I will pray for the deliverance of Ashfall, as much as for our journey ahead.”

Khashayar gave the order to his men to proceed. He settled himself at the entrance to the cistern, his arms crossed over his chest. “I’ll stand guard.”

“Don’t wait,” Arian said to Sinnia. “Go with the Zhayedan; I won’t be far behind.”

She waited until Sinnia had departed, tugging Wafa along with her. Hesitant now, she nodded at Khashayar. “I will require privacy.”

She flushed a little under the keenness of his gaze.

“I won’t intrude, sahabiya.”

Something in his expression told her she could trust him, though all had come to chaos in both her city and his. His integrity shone from his eyes, his dedication a bond that pulsed between them in the room.

Bowing her head, she slipped past him to make her way to the prayer nook. The vaulted ceiling of the cistern sloped down to a sandstone colonnade. Lanterns in rich blue turquoise were hung between columns of gold above an elongated pool. Between two of these columns, a single pillar, almost like a plinth, had been placed in the center of the pool. The glow of torchlight shone on amber walls, whose high periphery was lined with geometries of tiny blue tiles. At the northeastern corner, a mihrab was fashioned against cold stone like the plume of a peacock’s tail, feathered in emerald green, the exquisite tessellation sheened with light. Beneath it, the golden threads of a well-worn prayer rug reflected echoes of that light.

Arian knelt on the rug. She held words of prayer in her mouth until they bloomed into blessings. Benedictions sought, tumultuous griefs confided. Her fears confessed to the One.

What were they coming to?

What hope did she have of turning the tide of this war?

For years she had battled the tyranny of the Talisman and the greatest cruelty of their reign: their enslavement of the women of the east.

The Companions of Hira were all that stood between the Talisman and total devastation, fighting to preserve Khorasan’s plural heritage, a battle they waged without recourse to force of arms. Instead, they relied upon the scripture of the Claim, the sacred magic passed through oral transmission; its written counterpart had vanished over time, destroyed by the Talisman’s purges.

For a decade, Arian had used her gifts as First Oralist of Hira—First Oralist of the Claim—to disrupt the Talisman’s slave-chains. Then Ilea, the High Companion of her order, had assigned her a new task: to procure the Bloodprint, the sole surviving record of the Claim. Anchored by it, the Companions would have worked to overthrow the Talisman. Months ago, Arian had set out on the trail of the sacred text, but the Black Khan’s machinations had brought the Bloodprint to Ashfall instead.

Now the Talisman’s war had come to the west, to the empire of the Black Khan, and battle raged at his capital. Arian could hear their cries beyond the chamber where she prayed.

Her forehead touched the carpet in prostration. Tears welled up in her eyes, drifting up into her hairline. Her questions sounded like complaints, as if she’d had a crisis of faith. She believed devoutly in the Claim, but she needed to know why she’d struggled so long to lose the Bloodprint in the end. A devastating loss, mitigated only by a new mission: to find the Sana Codex, an ancient record of the Claim hidden away in Timeback, a city of the maghreb.

As a last desperate hope, she had set out with her escort to retrieve it.

I was learning the Bloodprint, she prayed in protest. Why let the One-Eyed Preacher take it? Though I seek the Codex as an answer to its power, is my quest likely to succeed? Do I possess the wisdom to unravel the secrets of the Claim? Will I be able to wield it against one who seems as invincible as the Preacher?

If I fail, who will count the cost?

The prayer rug was wet with her tears now. She had already measured some part of that cost. Her family lost to her in childhood. Her sister’s renunciation when they had chanced to reunite. The Black Khan’s theft of the Bloodprint at the Ark. The manuscript had been in her grasp—then gone. Now two further blows had been struck: she’d been severed from the Council of Hira and divided from the man she loved.

I have Sinnia, she reassured herself. I have Sinnia and Wafa. And this noble soldier of the Zhayedan to guide me, Khashayar, so proud and brave.

She thought about those instances when the Claim had swept over her like a cyclone, overwhelming her conscious will. She whispered a prayer to the One.

Make me a servant of the Word. I have seen the darkness of the Claim. If I must use it to destroy, don’t let it twist who I am. I seek no arcane powers; I disavow the rites of blood.

“Sahabiya.” The soft reminder from Khashayar brought her to the end of her prayers.

Bless these lands, bless this city, bless the people of Khorasan. May the manifest blessings of the One descend upon those who journey at my side, those who wait for me at Hira, and those I leave behind in Ashfall.

Then she made a futile bargain, struck over the ashes of oaths she had already taken.

Keep Daniyar safe, and I’ll give myself to this cause.

She kissed the spot on the carpet that she’d touched with her forehead. When she rose to her feet again, she glimpsed her reflection in the pool. The turquoise waters of the cistern seemed to collect the light—it throbbed at the base of the pool, undulating in a wave that tumbled back into itself. Arian peered into the basin. What caused the light to reflect off the bottomless depths of the pool? Was the basin tiled in silver? She couldn’t tell, the sparks of light kept refracting until the mosaics split apart, an illusion that made the turquoise depths seem infinite.

A mystery she would willingly explore, but the pallor of her skin disturbed the surface of the pool, and her mind was distracted. Her face was lined with weariness, her eyes dull, her hair hanging in limp, damp trails. She’d been a queen at the Black Khan’s banquet—ornamented, perfumed, beguiling, young, and alluringly feminine, a woman who belonged at a court as graceful and dignified as Ashfall’s. How long ago that tranquility seemed now, how deceptive her brief transformation.

She firmed the line of her jaw to make herself appear steadfast, a trick that failed to suffice, her body and spirit bruised in too many ways to count. Now, the dullness was a thing within, the spark of her purpose extinguished. She’d exchanged one guise for another, one quest for another, her course meant to be unerring, but she couldn’t deceive herself. She didn’t want to leave Daniyar. She didn’t trust that she would find her way to Timeback or that she would find what she was searching for in the city. The journey would take time.

What would she return to?

The green eyes that gazed back at her from the pool were bleak with worry and fear. “We must go,” Khashayar said.

Must we? she asked herself.

2

“WE’VE FACED WORSE ODDS.”

Sinnia’s spyglass was trained on the open grasslands, a brief stretch between the hidden exit of Qaysarieh’s tunnels and the rearguard of the camped-out forces of the Rising Nineteen. She grinned, a white flash against glossy dark skin. “It’s usually just the two of us against our enemies, me with my whip, you with your sword and the Claim.” She stretched out the muscles of her shoulders, a luxurious movement in the cramped confines of the tunnel. “This time we have a boy”—she ran an affectionate hand over Wafa’s unruly curls—“and a ferocious host to accompany us.” Wafa didn’t smile at Sinnia, daunted by the sounds of the battle that raged behind them in the city, but he leaned into her touch.

The host consisted of ten well-armed members of the Khorasan Guard. The men looked harried by the sounds of the battle they had left, impatient to return to the defense of their city, though they knew the journey ahead was a long one. Their route would take them across the Empty Quarter to Axum, the capital of the Negus. A reasonable place to break the journey, as it would allow Sinnia to return to the home she hadn’t visited in a year. But Arian had her own reasons for stopping at Axum. If they were able to get through the Rising Nineteen and come out on the other side unharmed, Axum would be a place of refuge. Hunted by the One-Eyed Preacher, they would need that refuge.

Pausing their journey at Axum would also give her the chance to study its celebrated manuscripts. With its long history of exchange with the maghreb, there might be a clue to the whereabouts of the Sana Codex somewhere in Axum’s lore, or at least some reference to the Mage of the Blue Eye, who was reputed to be its keeper. Perhaps the Negus or his queen would be able to tell her more.

Another uncertainty she faced.

If they did find the elusive Blue Mage, she hoped to persuade him to trust her with the Codex—to convince him that her need for it was urgent. It was the only answer to the Preacher’s mastery of the Bloodprint, and she couldn’t stand against him without it, no matter her proficiency with the Claim. She needed knowledge to match his knowledge, or she would have stayed in Ashfall to fight. The necessity of her return was ever-present on her mind.

Khashayar felt it too. He lowered his spyglass to speak.

“There’s no cover, no means to take them by surprise. We’ll have to engage them, First Oralist.” His nod acknowledged Sinnia. “And despite the Companion’s optimism, this is not a battle we can win. The numbers are against us.”

Sinnia passed her spyglass to Arian so she could see for herself, aware that there was something different about Arian but unable to pinpoint what it was. Arian studied the open grasslands, noting the distance they’d have to clear. Passing the spyglass back to Sinnia, she turned to scan the men behind her, her gaze lighting on each for a moment, until each one lowered his gaze. All except Khashayar, who raised his chin and waited.

Arian pressed one hand against the gold circlet on her upper arm, the insignia worn by the Companions of Hira.

“They haven’t moved. They’re waiting for a signal from the One-Eyed Preacher.”

Khashayar unscrewed a silver flask and took a sip of water. The flask was nothing like the plain leather waterskins Arian and Sinnia carried. It was engraved with ornate calligraphy in the pattern of a lush floral wreath. When he saw that the calligraphy had captured Arian’s attention, he offered the flask to her. Arian read the list of blessings and offered them aloud. She returned Khashayar’s flask to him without drinking from it, though his offer had been generous. She knew Khashayar would understand that as a matter of etiquette, she would not place her lips against the opening his lips had touched. He tucked away his flask without comment.

“What is your counsel, First Oralist?”

“I will provide cover.” She showed him a small hillock of grass-threaded sand in the near distance. “We need to reach that hill without giving ourselves away.”

Khashayar checked the spot with a frown. “Even if you could provide cover, it leaves us too close to their soldiers. Our circle around them should be wider.” He showed her what he meant with a sweep of his hand, inadvertently brushing her arm. Her golden circlet pulsed. He was taken aback by the energy that leapt from her body to his. She shifted to allow it to pass.

“Forgive me, I meant no offense.”

“You gave none.” Her soft words stroked over him, and for a moment he had the sense he was being gentled as one would coax a stallion to the touch of a warrior’s hand. Her answer echoed his thoughts. “We must risk it, Khashayar.” She turned back to the opening again, squeezed against Sinnia and Wafa. “They have horses I intend to take.”

Khashayar rubbed his jaw. He widened his stance, planting his feet.

“Horses will not survive the crossing of the Rub Al Khali. The risk is a foolish one, First Oralist.”

His men murmured behind him. The noise of catapults crashing into Ashfall’s courtyard sounded at their backs. The time for ambivalence was over. Either he convinced the Companions to return, or he accepted their direction.

He’d already learned that the First Oralist shared little of her thoughts or her plans. She was used to traveling without a company of soldiers at her back, unwilling to justify her actions, but something about her certainty spoke to Khashayar. Convinced him to heed her counsel.

“We must go,” she said now. “The Claim will cover us all. The risk is worth it.”

With no further argument, he signaled to the men behind him. They moved into position. He squeezed past Wafa, gestured at the Companions.

“I’ll go first with two of my men. Follow us once we are clear.”

The sound of the Claim filled the tunnel, washing the dankness from it, wrapping around their senses, its notes as close and familiar as if the men were voicing it themselves. When Khashayar and his soldiers had eased out of the tunnel, Arian and Sinnia followed with Wafa, the rest of their escort at their back. The Claim rose around them, strong and sweet, yet oddly hollow, a breeze blowing over plains of fertile scrubland. Their party moved across the grass, cocooned inside the Claim, the soft words blowing across the group of soldiers who kept watch at the rear of the Nineteen’s army. Military men, professional and well-trained, alert to sounds and movement around them, their camp orderly and silent.

Khashayar tallied numbers, noted the count and caliber of weaponry, made sharp-eyed assessments of the men waiting to attack Ashfall from the west. The rearguard consisted of two hundred men. In each small group was a runner, positioned to receive messages from the soldiers yet to arrive. The entire vanguard consisted of no more than a thousand men. When spread out in a line against the plains, they had seemed ten times that number. Or perhaps the One-Eyed Preacher had used his sorcery to demoralize the defenders of Ashfall.

He counted the brushfires along their encampment. They lit the faces of small groups, though most of the men had covered the lower half of their faces with their neck scarves, in the custom of their people. He noted the looseness of their robes as a weakness—not what he would have chosen to wear as armor into battle. His own men wore leather armor that closely conformed to their bodies, their weapons at their waists, shields slung over their backs. The Nineteen may have been well-fortified, but Khashayar perceived disadvantages the Zhayedan could exploit.

As they crept ahead with utmost stealth, he considered sending a message by hawk to convey his discoveries to Arsalan, the commander of the Black Khan’s army. But too many of the tribal herders who made up the Rising Nineteen had cast their glances at the sky, waiting for such a signal to give away the enemy’s position. As he scanned the perimeter for a possible ambush, he noticed when two soldiers in each group raised their torches, the signal he had been waiting for.

He held up his hand to silence all movement. The Companions came to a halt, the First Oralist at his side, the Claim a near-silent murmur from her mouth. They were no more than fifty feet from the rearguard of the Nineteen. Two of the soldiers glanced in their direction.

The breeze that brushed the grasslands whipped against their faces, forcing them to turn away.

Khashayar’s smile was grim. He knew his duty was to escort the Companions to Timeback, but his mind was racing with other possibilities. With the First Oralist’s use of the Claim, perhaps they could strike against the rearguard and strike hard—hard enough to gain Ashfall another night’s reprieve.

Before the First Oralist could answer the question in his eyes—or before he could act on his own—a chant began in the Nineteen’s camp. The soldiers beat against the ground with their torches in an accompanying rhythm. The chant was meant to terrorize the citizens of Ashfall, but Khashayar was mystified by the meaning of the words they spoke. They offered it in the High Tongue. As an elite commander, he was literate enough to understand.

“Over this are Nineteen.”

Over what? What did their name signify? He lowered his arm in a signal and began to move again, letting the words sweep over the night. The First Oralist’s continuous murmur of the Claim dimmed any fear he might have felt at the chant.

Over this are Nineteen.

He glanced back at his men to ensure that their course was steady. They moved with precision, a line of warriors determined to protect the Companions and the boy, weapons in hand, eyes focused on the soldiers who should have seen their movements in the open but whose heads remained turned away.

Though the temptation to strike was great, Khashayar bided his time. He would get the Companions to safety, and then he would persuade the First Oralist of the merits of his plan.

They stole across the grass, their movements sleek and their footing sure. None looked away from the Nineteen, waiting for the silence to break, prepared at any moment for discovery.

But under the steady flow of the First Oralist’s words, they made their way to the hillock and dipped down the other side. Now they were positioned on a twenty-foot dune that loomed above the Nineteen. Khashayar made a rapid calculation and was convinced: if the First Oralist used the Claim to shield them, he and his men could eliminate the rearguard.

She would caution him, he knew. Ten against two hundred. But he’d seen the power of the Claim.

Still, he had to consider the step that would come after a surprise attack. News of the First Oralist’s routing of the One-Eyed Preacher at the Messenger Gate had spread rapidly through the ranks of the Zhayedan. She was a weapon they could wield. If she remained on their side. Angering her for a limited victory could mean losing her assistance entirely.

Too, the First Oralist had made calculations of her own. She wanted the horses the soldiers closest to them had grouped at the rear of their camp—horses whose finely shaped heads were the mark of the region’s thoroughbreds. The horses could take them some distance farther west, though they lacked the stamina for the journey through the heart of the Rub Al Khali desert. At some point, the Companions would need to trade the thoroughbreds for camels.

But surely he could use that to his advantage. He would give the First Oralist her horses, if she agreed to his strike. If she helped him destroy the Nineteen’s entire vanguard. He glanced over at her, expecting to find her attention focused on the horses. Instead, her gaze had followed his, and now she watched him closely, as if she could read his thoughts. Could she? He frowned at the thought.

“First Oralist—”

She spoke to him kindly, her cloak thrown back, the breeze taking the long strands of her hair, so that it whipped at his skin, soft as Marakand silk. “I don’t have the power you seek.”

“You defeated the One-Eyed Preacher at the walls.”

“A momentary respite.”

Something in the air shifted. The chanting slowed. Deepened. Soldiers in the camp began to move. Spyglasses scanned the dunes.

Arian and Khashayar ducked down. The murmur of the Claim began again, this time augmented by Sinnia, while the boy, Wafa, crouched at their sides, his blue eyes wide with fear.

Arian shifted closer to the horses. His courtesy set aside, Khashayar’s hand shot out to clamp down on her wrist.

She turned back to him, pinned him with eyes that seemed to see everything, things he didn’t want her to know.

But it was the boy who wrenched Khashayar’s grip from her wrist. A hard smile touched Khashayar’s lips. The Hazara boy freed by the Companions had a blind devotion to them now. Nothing could rout him from their sides, or from their self-appointed Audacy.

He watched as the First Oralist took the boy’s hand and pressed a kiss to his curls.

The Talisman’s prejudice spilled over into his thoughts. How could the First Oralist of Hira kiss a child of the Hazara, a people too weak to defend themselves, instead of aligning herself with much worthier allies?

She answered his unspoken question. “We are all equals. We all belong to the One.” Then, moving out of his reach, she skirted closer, lower down the ridge to where the horses were pastured. “If I could help you, I would, Khashayar. You’ll have to learn to trust me.” She nodded at the city in the distance, a glimmer of lights beyond the army’s encampment. The sounds of battle were fainter far from the walls, yet still audible. The clash of steel, the destruction sowed by catapults that creaked under the weight of their projectiles, the clean whistle of arrows slicing through bursts of noise. Brilliant dots of fire flickered along the walls.

“I would understand if you and your men chose to return to make your stand at Ashfall. Just as Sinnia and I must fulfill our purpose.”

She held his gaze, her own astonishingly clear.

Go with her, the Black Khan had said. Do not leave her side. Whoever stands against you, whoever you must destroy, your foremost duty is to bring the Sana Codex to Ashfall. No matter what the First Oralist may tell you. No matter where she tries to take it. Do otherwise, and you will be party to the destruction of this empire.

Khashayar’s fingers curled into his palm. He moved to give the First Oralist cover, signaling to his men. Crawling crabwise across the hill in their descent, he felt the verses of the Claim attain an urgency. A harshness to stand against words that had no meaning for him, despite their pounding pulse.

Over this are Nineteen.

His armor was brushed by spiky tufts of grass that pricked at the skin of his throat. The breeze summoned by the Claim blew the smoke from the Nineteen’s fires away from their small party back into the camp, where soldiers could be heard coughing. He gripped his sword, sliding sideways. His men remained in position at the crest. Two of his monitored their progress. The First Oralist had also motioned to the boy to wait for her return.

Now Khashayar and the Companions inched their way closer to the camp with the horses, each increment of movement scrutinized in advance.

Thirty feet. Twenty. Ten. So close now that the horses’ ears pricked forward, hearing their subtle movements beneath the Claim. Sinnia’s use of the Claim broke off.

“If the Silver Mage was with us, he could calm the horses for us.”

She picked up her use of the Claim before Arian could answer, though Arian’s shoulders tightened at the words. She changed her intonation. The Claim became more secret. When Khashayar looked up to measure their progress, his head was within kicking distance of the enemy’s boots.

He rolled away. The soldier didn’t stir, his gaze fixed on the stars.

Then, like a wraith trailing clouds of mist, the First Oralist flowed to her feet, her graceful movements matched by Sinnia’s. She stroked the mane of one of the sequestered mares, murmuring the Claim in its ear. The horse shifted to nuzzle her shoulder, and Khashayar saw that the mares were linked together, held by a single lead. He motioned to the Companions to retreat, wrapping the lead around his wrist. His powerful body nudged the lead mare up the slope, his sharp eyes trained on the soldiers guarding the horses.

Still no movement, no awareness.

But the pace up the dune was perilously slow, the horses kicking up sand with the fussy placement of their hooves. He swore to himself, sweat breaking out on his forehead. His side was exposed to the Rising Nineteen, and he’d been forced to sheathe his sword. The horses were moving too slowly, but a signal from the First Oralist warned him against careless haste.

When the Companions reached the crest, the tension in his muscles lessened. The First Oralist took the lead rein from his hands. He fell back, counting the mares. They wouldn’t need them all. A dozen would be enough; the rest could be repastured. He waited until twelve of the horses had been led down the far side of the hill before he moved to sever the lead.

But when he slid between two of the horses, he made the mistake of choosing a fierce young stallion. The freed horse reared up. When its forelegs crashed down again, they narrowly missed his head. He rolled out from under the stallion’s hooves, but his unexpected movement incited panic.

The stallion wheeled, nipping the haunches of the mare he was tied to. The mares on the upslope screamed, the piercing noise cutting through the sharp-edged notes of the Claim. The mirage of emptiness faded. The soldiers closest to the hillock sprang to their feet, swords ripped from their scabbards.

Khashayar whirled to face them, even as his archers began to cut down his pursuers.

“Run!” he shouted to the Companions. “Leave the field to us!”

He made his stand at the top of the hill, sword in one hand, dagger in the other, archers at either side. Without the protection of the Claim, his men couldn’t hold against so many. They were cut down on the sands where they stood. Khashayar’s quick glance down at the Companions found them encircled, the horses they had stolen recaptured by the Nineteen.

“Hold!”

A powerful voice shouted the command. The Rising Nineteen went still on both sides of the hill. Taking advantage of the distraction, Khashayar plunged down the slope. When none of the soldiers attacked, he pushed the Companions behind him, his sword poised in one hand.

A member of the Nineteen stepped forward, his dark eyes gleaming under the hood of a dusty blue burnoose. He threw back his hood to show his face. An older man with rich brown skin, the hair at his temples streaked with gray that matched his beard, his posture one of a man used to having his orders obeyed. When he loosened his cloak to show them his armor, Khashayar caught his breath.

Then he counted the number of soldiers who stood behind the man.

3

THE ZHAYEDAN GATE STOOD FIRM THROUGH THE NIGHT. THE TEERANDAZ archers of Ashfall held it, knowing that the Cataphracts, the army’s shock troops, were needed at the Emissary Gate. Cassandane, the Captain of the Teerandaz, had used her archers sparingly. She was waiting to target the sappers, who gathered at the southern wall to chip away at the foundations that fortified the Zhayedan Gate. When a line of sappers advanced, Cassandane moved archers to either side of her position.

A line to meet a line, a tactic Arsalan had taught her. She glanced down at the courtyard. The Commander of the Zhayedan was with his soldiers, cutting through the chaos with instructions to fortify defenses at all three of the city’s gates. He knew his soldiers to a man. He knew the range of weapons stored in the capital’s armory. Best of all, he knew when and where to disperse them. As he moved among the Cataphracts, his presence imparted calm. Without a commander like Arsalan, the city would have been lost.

A jarring noise. The gate shuddered so heavily that the ground under Cassandane’s feet trembled. A Zhayedan catapult had destroyed the first battering ram; now the Talisman had brought another. The men who urged it forward were giants, heavy with muscle and just as brutally armored. The Talisman had been warned against the skill of Cassandane’s archers. There were no obvious openings for her archers to target.

We will find them, she thought. First the sappers, then the brutes behind the ram.

She raised a hand, and the archers fired two swift strikes, their movements so rapid they blurred. The first was aimed at the soldiers who gave the sappers cover. They needed to be unseated, to open up the real targets. The second aimed at the sappers; this was the killing strike.

A return volley was aimed at the archers above the gate. But the Teerandaz were shielded by a defensive line of their own: Zhayedan soldiers whose lives were committed to them. With the first break in fire, the soldiers knelt and the Teerandaz fired again, this time with silver-tipped arrows aimed at the men who approached the gate at a run, their battering ram held aloft.

The arrows were aimed at their unprotected heads. If the soldiers survived the blows, they would try to shield their heads with their hands. The poison at the tips of the arrows would spread no matter how they tried to protect themselves, and the ram would tumble to the ground.

And so it proved.

The next rain of Teerandaz arrows carried fire. The giant wooden ram sparked and blazed to life as it burned. The assault on the gate had failed. Cassandane held up a hand. The archers waited, poised, as their captain chose another target.

Several hours later, Cassandane made a quick detour to the Black Khan’s war room to meet with the army’s commanders. Arsalan gave her a welcoming nod and signaled to the others to report. When it was her turn, she was quick and concise. Her actions should have earned her praise. But the tension in the room erupted into low-voiced murmuring, even as Arsalan commended her strategy.

“Well done, Captain Cassandane. How many archers did you lose?”

“None, Commander.”

The murmurs of displeasure intensified. She caught the assessing glance that Maysam, Captain of the Cataphracts, shot at her. He’d wanted her to support his maneuvers to defend the Emissary Gate. She’d refused, considering the attempt on the Zhayedan Gate the greater threat. No doubt that decision had cost her Maysam’s favor.

“It won’t last,” she went on, ignoring the mutinous whispers. “The Talisman have numbers on their side. We’ll need more than archers to hold.”

Maysam shifted into her line of sight. He was six and a half feet tall, his body heavy with muscle, though for a man of such bulk, he moved with deceptive swiftness, his mind agile, his calculations complex. He was a commander of fierce ability, given to weighing the odds. Beyond these talents, he was skilled with weaponry—the sword, the axe, the fire-lance, the mace—which made him the right man to lead shock troops into battle. But more than a decade older than Cassandane, he viewed her rank as an insult to his soldiers, some nearly as skilled as her own.

Nearly. That was the critical difference.

“You have two dozen Zhayedan defending your women. No others can be spared.”

Women, not archers. An unsubtle insult that elicited a soft chuckle from the Zhayedan’s commanders. She ignored it, keeping her gaze fixed on Arsalan. She could handle the politics of command without his help, but she wondered at the toll the battle might be taking on him. He’d moved between the walls and the courtyard throughout the night, neither still nor rushed, his face still streaked with smoke from his encounter with the One-Eyed Preacher. In the time that she’d been at the gate, he’d overseen the evacuation of the palace and fortified the inner defenses.

And then at a critical moment, Arsalan had been absent, summoned to the Black Khan’s chambers. When he’d returned, he’d been distracted. But when the One-Eyed Preacher had spread his terror at the wall, Arsalan’s attention had refocused: The Black Khan’s half-brother, Darius, had delivered the Bloodprint to the Preacher. And, in the struggle to reclaim it, the Princess of Ashfall had been killed.

The murder of the Princess had hardened Arsalan’s determination to vanquish the enemy.

Still, Cassandane wondered now if all they were doing was holding off inevitable defeat. To the east and south, the siege had set in. And from the west, another army approached.

The Companions had given them hope against these odds, but they had since abandoned the city. Of the allies that remained, Cassandane wasn’t sure she trusted them: a stranger known as the Assassin, and two of the Mages of Khorasan. But what she truly feared was the use of a power she couldn’t comprehend, like the thunder that had cracked the city walls.

Were they fighting today only to die tomorrow?

Arsalan met her gaze, perhaps guessing at her thoughts. His dark hair was matted with sweat, yet his physical presence was imposing. He was not as strongly built as Maysam, but Cassandane was in no doubt of which man she wanted at her back.

Now he stood at the center of the war room, radiating a strength of will that calmed her in a room full of men she had learned to think of as adversaries.

“You’ve done well, Captain.” His attention shifted to Maysam, whose giant hands were braced on the table as he studied the battle plan drawn up by the Black Khan’s cartographer. “How long can we hold the Emissary Gate?”

“With defensive maneuvers, at least another day. The Silver Mage’s ruse is what gave us that day. But if we don’t take action, we’ll lose the eastern gate. What of your plan to ride out?”

Cassandane waited to see if Arsalan would correct Maysam about the reason for the Silver Mage’s actions. He’d called the loya jirga in good faith—the Black Khan had betrayed him. The Khan had ordered Cassandane to fire on the loya jirga, despite the First Oralist’s pleas to allow time to achieve a truce. But Cassandane had known, just as Arsalan had known, that there would be no better chance to take out the Talisman leadership. And as the Silver Mage had made his safe return, Cassandane had nothing to regret. She would make the same choice again, dishonorable as it had been.

She saw the pained acknowledgment of that truth in Arsalan’s velvet-black eyes. Her gaze lingered for a moment before she forced herself to look away.

The noise of battle was heavy in the air. Boulders landing in the inner courtyard, shouts of men under attack, masonry crumbling to dust. Smoke curled over the battlements. And she knew the men were wondering at the absence of their Khan, a matter none dared comment on to Arsalan. Not even Maysam was so bold.

“What action would you take?” Arsalan now asked the leader of the Cataphracts. “An offensive sortie?” It was something Arsalan had planned on himself, once he’d completed his check of the defenses. But from the subtle shift of his stance, Cassandane thought the Commander had reconsidered.

Any such sortie would require the Zhayedan to open the Emissary Gate or to disclose the existence of the Zhayedan’s secret sally ports—a series of gates they used to ambush their enemies when their numbers were evenly matched. To pursue either course now would be to yield to the Talisman the very advantage they’d been seeking. But it could be that now was the moment to expose those advantages, before time ran out to exploit them.

“Yes.” Maysam pointed to a valley east of the Talisman’s position. “We position archers on the high ground to either side of this valley, then draw them into an ambush.”

Cassandane stepped closer to Arsalan, not stopping to weigh her words. “Such a course would be disastrous. The Talisman would overrun the gate to pick us off one by one, or they would discover the vulnerability of our inner defenses. If we were able to seal the Emissary Gate before they penetrated through, our numbers would be too small to break through to the valley. Our archers would be killed before they could gain cover. Even if we succeeded, we would only draw in the smallest portion of their army. We’d run out of ammunition before we made any gains. We have to hold our defenses.”

“You sound frightened, Cassandane.”

As he did so often to diminish her command, Maysam omitted her rank.

“Not frightened. Pragmatic.” She straightened her shoulders, glanced at Arsalan again. “Without our archers at the gates, Ashfall is doomed against the Talisman.”

An angry rush of protest in response to Cassandane’s assertion that the city could be held only by a contingent of female archers. The Black Khan’s Nizam had nurtured a quiet revolt against the presence of women in the army, though the Khan himself maintained that the Teerandaz formed a vital arm of their defense. She wondered now, in his absence, if that quiet revolt was gaining strength and would make itself known. Cassandane knew she’d been unwise to challenge these commanders, to make them seem incapable, no matter her private thoughts. But with the evidence right before them, would they risk the future of Ashfall to prove themselves superior to the women who fought at their side?

“You think well of yourself,” Maysam said. “But the Zhayedan have been fighting Ashfall’s wars since long before you were born. We are not in the habit of hiding behind women. Not even those who wear Teerandaz armor.”

His sneering assessment of Cassandane’s uniform was familiar too: the Nizam had viewed it with the same contempt.

“Enough.” Arsalan moved to the windows beyond the war room, tracking the Talisman’s progress. “Their army is in a state of confusion after the attack on their commanders. If there was a time to strike out, it would be now. The Black Khan—the Dark Mage—is in conference with the other Mages. If they can give us cover, we could send Cataphracts out into the open.” He pressed Maysam’s shoulder with one hand. “And only Cataphracts. You have your own corps of archers. You’ve no need of the Teerandaz.”

“I still think the risk is too great,” Cassandane insisted.

She was getting ready to elaborate when Arsalan offered mildly, “Do you, Captain? I was speaking to Maysam.”

There was no mistaking the reproof. Cassandane flushed to the roots of her hair, her smooth dark skin aglow. This was the first time Arsalan had rebuked her in the presence of the other commanders. Maysam was quick to take advantage.

“We stand a better chance with archers from the Teerandaz,” he argued.

But Arsalan overrode Maysam’s objection.

“Nonnegotiable. Captain Cassandane is correct. The Teerandaz must hold the gates. But that doesn’t mean we can’t do a little damage. Instead of the ambush you suggest, consider this.” He pointed to a spot farther south, closer to the Zhayedan Gate. The Talisman had set up camp close to their walls for an ugly and sinister purpose. “You could achieve this, Maysam. With the Teerandaz’s help.”

It took Cassandane the briefest glance at the map to grasp Arsalan’s suggestion. The tightness in her chest loosened. She had deserved his rebuke. She should have known better than to think the Commander of the Zhayedan wouldn’t have planned for every possible contingency before he summoned his council.

“You would mount a rescue of refugees? To what end?” Maysam rolled up the map and tossed it to one side, dismissing the idea. Unfazed by this show of disrespect, Arsalan smoothed it out again, pointing to the area where the Talisman had taken prisoners to use as shields.

Only then did he let his anger show, a cloud darkening his brow. He leaned forward, his face within inches of Maysam’s.

“To this end. We do not abandon the people the Black Khan claims as his own.”

When the council had disbanded in resentful silence, Arsalan called Cassandane back. She turned to face him, her hands clenched on her helmet, steeling herself for a thorough dressing-down. Her shoulders squared, she stared at the Commander’s insignia: a small onyx rook mounted on silver at his neck.

“Forgive me, Commander,” she said quietly. “I know I spoke out of turn.”

His strong hand tilted up her chin, the hint of a smile in his eyes.

“It was a tactic, Cassandane. To pacify Maysam’s pride.”

He dropped his hand, giving her a moment to puzzle his actions through. Startled, she made the connection.

“You aren’t certain of the extent of the Nizam’s influence. But do you suspect traitors within the ranks of the Cataphracts?”

“Especially within the Cataphracts. If we are betrayed, it will be at their hands.”

“Do you also suspect the Teerandaz?” She was an experienced soldier, but Arsalan’s air of authority coupled with his physical presence made her second-guess herself. She couldn’t help the note of diffidence in her voice or her desire for reassurance.

She drew a silent breath when he brushed his hand against her cheek, a gesture of comradeship, just as he had pressed Maysam’s shoulder in affection.

“Of course not,” he said. “I’ve known you far too long.” His words were grimly pragmatic as he added, “The Nizam held you in disfavor.”

She gave a grim smile of her own. “He thought the Teerandaz should be disbanded. Until he spoke so harshly of our competence, the Zhayedan were wont to treat us with respect.” Then, not wanting to sound as if she pitied herself, when she’d been fortunate enough to have been given Arsalan’s attention, she went on briskly, “Were you serious about the rescue?”

“It stands a greater chance of success than the sortie Maysam had in mind. It will also end any doubt as to where his loyalties lie.”

Cassandane worked through this. “Because he’ll choose his own men, and if he wishes, they’ll be free to defect. We won’t be able to stop him from joining forces with the Talisman.”

Though his eyes were gentle on her face, Arsalan’s response was pure steel.

“I have faith in your aim, Captain, so do not let me down.”

4

ARIAN SHOOK BACK HER CLOAK TO SHOW THEIR CAPTORS HER CIRCLETS. At once, Sinnia mirrored the gesture. Both women wondered if it would matter, and if there was any hope for Khashayar, their sole remaining escort.

The man in the burnoose paused, his eyes skirting the golden bands. He called another man to stand beside him, his voice rough with command. There were eighteen others gathered on the sand, nineteen including the one who’d spoken. They were dressed in sand-colored cloaks worn over long white thobes, their heads wrapped in red-and-white headcloths. Dark-eyed to a man, their skin was a golden-brown deepened by desert sun, weathered from exposure to its relentless heat. They stood at their ease, their eyes as clear as a desert falcon’s. Nothing in their appearance suggested they were men to fear … save for the whipcord readiness with which they had struck down Khashayar’s men.

“Traders,” Sinnia murmured in Arian’s ear.

The man in the burnoose heard her, his eyes wandering over Sinnia’s face, over the clustered curls that had begun to grow out from her head in tiny spirals. To Sinnia’s surprise, his eyes warmed, as he gave her a slow nod.

“Najashi,” he said with respect, to a murmur from the men behind him. “Companion from the land of the Negus. I do not know the other.”

Arian gave her name. After a pause, she added, “First Oralist of Hira.”

Another murmur, different in tenor than the first. It held a tinge of fear in it.

Arian observed the thick leather belts that cinched the cloaks these men wore. Each belt was inscribed with the words Over this are Nineteen.

She pondered the significance of the nineteen men who surrounded them; perhaps they were the commanders of the army at their back. If the man in the burnoose was the leader of the Nineteen, then the man at his side must be his lieutenant. His stance was poised, his hand holding an iron glaive, a staff with a blade that curved up at shoulder height, just above a spike that pointed outward. The lower half of the glaive was overlaid with damasquinado, a pattern of gold incised on black steel, in contrast to the naked shaft.

The man who held it glanced at Arian’s circlets, then looked up to meet her eyes.

She suppressed a shiver. Though the temperature had fallen, it wasn’t the night that chilled her. It was the man’s gaze—amber eyes with stiletto-sharp flecks of blue and green. He held himself like a weapon, lethally honed and muscled, with an air of quiet command. His leather belt carried a complement of knives, each with a jeweled haft, as if he specialized in killing, and each of the blades he’d chosen was dedicated to a task. Beneath his cloak, he wore a fitted uniform in a color that echoed the sienna of the desert. He watched Arian with a focus that warned her he wasn’t an ordinary soldier.

He was a killer who looked at her like prey.

The man in the burnoose held one hand high to dismiss the soldiers on the dune.

“Gather the horses; return to camp.”

The men who remained fanned out around what was left of Arian’s group to the sound of horses’ hooves behind them. To distract them from her attempted theft, Arian said, “I would welcome the courtesy of your titles.”

The older man spoke first. “Shaykh Al Marra.” He indicated the man with the glaive. “This is Sayyid Najran, my second.”

Arian considered their style of dress. Their headcloths were native to the tribes of the Empty Quarter who made their home in the boundless sands of the Rub Al Khali.

“You are far from your homes, then. What brings you here?”

“What brings you here, sayyidina? You have traveled far from Hira at some risk to yourself.” It was a reasonable question, but it was also a dismissal of Khashayar’s escort, the Shaykh’s shrewd black eyes measuring the impact of his words.

Arian looked over her shoulder to the vanguard of the Nineteen. “And you have brought an army from the Rub Al Khali to the capital of the Black Khan.”

The sayyid planted his glaive in the sand, startling her.

“Is the Black Khan your ally, sayyidina? A pity then, to send his men home to him without their heads.”

His voice rasped like sand over stone, and she tried not to wince at the words. With the party of Zhayedan she’d had as her escort, she could hardly refute his claim. But she could try to temper it.

“The Black Khan is not my enemy, at least.” She made an effort to soften her voice, using a dialect familiar to their ears, rather than the Common Tongue. “Neither are the people of the Rub Al Khali.”

A nod of appreciation from the Shaykh. “Yet it is not a friend who comes like a thief in the night after the Marra’s horses.”

She understood that he referred to the people of his tribe, and not solely to himself. She was on dangerous ground: she couldn’t justify the theft without giving some hint of her journey. So she used a well-known proverb to pay tribute: “The horses of Al Marra are as numerous as the sheep of Awazim.”

Najran’s riposte was knife-edged, a dagger shearing silk. “That doesn’t give you the right to take them.” He took a step forward, then in a gesture of unthinkable familiarity, he covered her circlet with his palm, his fingers tracing its script. “The First Oralist of Hira should know the penalty for theft.”

Khashayar struggled against the men who held him.

“Kill him,” Najran said.

“No!” Arian cried. “Wait! Tell me the penalty you speak of.”

Najran’s cool fingers trailed down Arian’s arm to her wrist. The contact left her shaken; the Claim she harbored in her deepest self recognized that the danger he represented was something new, the aura of death around him so pervasive that she felt it sink into her bones. And yet his touch was an affront—to both the First Oralist and the woman, awakening her anger.

“Your hand, sayyidina.” His hand closed over her wrist, as he fingered the emerald dagger. He moved close enough for her to count the flecks in his eyes. The green flecks had spread … they were glowing … just as his emerald dagger began to throb with light. She could feel the heat of the dagger, stark coldness from the man himself.

Wafa let out a whimper, but Arian held her ground.

“What law commands the loss of my hand, sayyid?”

His headcloth brushed her ear. “Shall I show you the verse of the Claim?”

She shifted the tiniest fraction closer to Sinnia, touching Sinnia’s circlet with her own.

“Could you?”

She was well aware that he couldn’t. No one could, save for the One-Eyed Preacher, who now possessed the Bloodprint. When the flecks of green in his eyes faded, the light from his dagger dulled, and she knew her guess had been correct.

But it likely didn’t matter—she recognized the echoes of the One-Eyed Preacher’s law, a code proclaimed by the Talisman. It seemed it was now the code of the Rising Nineteen as well.

She faced the Shaykh, buoyed by her bond with Sinnia.

“A boon that is granted to Hira will be remembered. My need for transport was urgent, and I feared my escort would not meet with your approval.” Then, to Najran: “The law of the people of Marra does not sanction aggression. Yet here is your army, ready to begin hostilities. What should be the penalty for that, I wonder?”

The words seethed with scorn at the hypocrisy of the sayyid’s application of the law. She caught sight of Wafa’s frightened face. She could sense his confusion, made all the more apparent when he whispered to her in the dialect of Candour, “Make them sleep. Let’s take the horses and go.”

She couldn’t take that risk. She knew more about the Nineteen’s facility with the Claim than Wafa did. It might turn out to be disastrous to test her skills against the Nineteen’s commanders at once.

The Shaykh jerked Wafa close, ignoring his panicked yelp. Holding him by the chin, he examined Wafa’s face.

“Najashi I know. Talisman I know. First Oralist I know. This I do not know.”

“Hazara,” Arian answered. “A noble tribe of Candour.”

The Shaykh’s eyes flicked to Khashayar. His rugged features hardened.

“The Zhayedan’s man stands no chance. But grant us the boy and I will gift two of my horses to the Negus. If that is where your journey takes you.”

An unexpected opportunity presented itself, an advantage she had to seize. Arian stilled Wafa’s struggles by raising her hand. “Yes. The Companion Sinnia returns to pay her respects to the Negus.” She spread her hands. “But I cannot give you the boy. He is my ward. He is under Hira’s protection.”

She didn’t mention Khashayar. She would have to try to save him by stealth.

The Shaykh held on to Wafa. “What would you give, then? For safe passage across the Rub Al Khali?”

Pain struck her heart at this echo of her journey through the Cloud Door. Daniyar had offered the book of the Guardian of Candour to the Lord of the Wandering Cloud Door in exchange for safe passage through the Ice Kill.

In the end, however, she had spurned Daniyar on the slightest of excuses, leaving him to the Conference of the Mages, while she charted her course on her own. She had made him believe no sacrifice he made would ever be enough, when in truth her certainties about her course seemed far less certain now.

Sinnia sensed her emotion through the bond of their circlets. She squeezed Arian’s shoulder. Then she altered her voice so that she spoke in the accents of a woman from the Sea of Reeds. “We can make a suitable bargain, Shaykh. But we will need our escort’s assistance to cross the Rub Al Khali.”

“No.” A flat denial from Najran. “There will be no bargain. Your man is an enemy combatant; he will be treated as such.” He shifted the glaive so that the spike was aimed straight at Khashayar’s heart. “No doubt there is much he can tell us about the Zhayedan’s defenses.”

Khashayar spit at Najran’s feet. A single thrust drove the sharp-edged spike through the surface of his armor. A grimace that passed for a smile settled on Najran’s lips.

“No one has failed to speak under the persuasion of the glaive.”

And Arian knew in that moment that no matter what else happened during their confrontation, she would not permit the torture of a man who acted in her service. She marked Najran for death.

“Will you not at least hear the bargain, captains of the Nineteen? If you will permit me, Shaykh.” Sinnia’s voice was sunny and confident, such that the Shaykh released his hold on Wafa, who clung to Arian’s side.

“What will you give me, Najashi? What might a woman, unencumbered with goods, offer in exchange for a man, a boy, and two of the finest horses bred in the Rub Al Khali?”

Sinnia’s bright eyes touched each man in the circle, lingering on the belts at their waists.

“‘Over this are Nineteen,’” she quoted. “What if I give you Nineteen?”

5

THEY WERE TAKEN TO A DESERT TENT, SIMPLE BUT EFFECTIVE IN ITS CONSTRUCTION, a guard assigned to each member of their party, only Khashayar bound. As they had been pushed forward along the sand in the shadow of the dune, Arian had brushed Khashayar’s hands with hers, a message of comfort, encouraging him not to despair.

But Khashayar was a captain of the Zhayedan, brutally honed in battle. There was no fear in his eyes, nor any need for reassurance. He simply remained watchful and alert, waiting for his moment to act.

“Wait,” Arian said quietly. “Wait until I give you a signal.”

Whispering to Sinnia, she switched to the language of the Citadel. “What did you mean? What are you offering to trade?”

Sinnia shook her head, her smile bold and confident. Arian was taken aback. The threat was all around them, the danger to Ashfall ever-present, yet Sinnia showed no hesitation. What had persuaded her she could bargain her way out of this? Arian was still mulling over the Shaykh’s decision to offer hospitality instead of death. But then such were the customs of the people of Al Marra: honor before everything, hospitality before all, even when those who broke bread together were otherwise mortal enemies.

They were taken to a pump to wash their hands, then invited to sit in a circle in the center of the tent. Wafa and Khashayar were pushed into place on either side of Arian and Sinnia, the other men keeping some distance. In a large black cauldron, pieces of camel meat bubbled in water and salt. The pot was tended by a herder not much older than Wafa. The boy served the meat onto heavy platters, his thin arms hardly seeming capable of the task, as he stole admiring glances at the Companions of Hira.

A platter was nudged in front of Arian and Sinnia, two large pieces of meat set aside in the middle. The Shaykh pointed to the chunks of boiled meat.

“Qalb for the First Oralist. Sanam for the Najashi.” An honored gesture to guests—Arian granted a piece of the heart, Sinnia a cut from the camel’s hump. Arian gave a blessing that sharpened the interest of the men. She began to eat, but when she saw that Khashayar couldn’t eat with his hands bound, she urged Wafa to his side with instructions to feed him. Khashayar would need his strength for the battles that lay ahead. But she’d forgotten how much hunger her Hazara companion had suffered; his blue eyes shone with distress.

She kissed Wafa’s forehead. “Fine. One bite for you, one for him.”

The kiss drew Najran’s attention—a sudden spark in deadly amber eyes that rekindled Arian’s fear. She tried to ignore him, speaking to Wafa, who tackled his assignment with gusto, careful not to reach for the piece offered to Arian. He was learning to read nuances, so he knew his greed would be an insult. She was proud of how quickly he’d adapted.

No one spoke until the meal was finished. They had eaten with their hands, and a moment at the end of the meal was taken for further ablutions. When they were ready for it, tea was proffered in little copper cups, and now camel milk was aboil in a pot covered in a layer of milky froth. The milk was poured into cups, followed by a stream of tea splashed over it like a glaze. When Khashayar refused the tea, Arian realized that even though they had shared the same food, the soldier was suspicious of poison in his drink. But she knew the Shaykh would not poison a guest he had invited to his tent. It would be an insult to his honor.

So she drank to lessen any risk of offense, then asked for another cup.

The commanders of the Nineteen watched the Companions with a fascination that spoke to legends that had been spread to their lands. With the meal concluded, Shaykh Al Marra dismissed all his men save Najran, who, though he sat poised on his heels, kept his glaive within easy reach of his hand.

Both men unwound their headcloths to reveal hair looped in braids around their skull, a custom of the people of Marra. But where the Shaykh’s braids were woolly with age, Najran’s were precise, evenly webbed around his skull. And Arian realized with a start that this deadly lieutenant possessed a certain attraction.

The herder cleared the platters away, leaving the tent in silence.

The Shaykh nodded to Sinnia. “Tell me of your Nineteen.”

Arian intervened, pressing Sinnia’s hand. “A question, if you will permit me.”

He fingered the rough growth of beard at his jaw. “As you wish, sayyidina.”

“Why has your army come to Ashfall? Are you governed by the One-Eyed Preacher?”

The questions were meant to remind the Shaykh of the fierce independence of the tribes of the Rub Al Khali.

He sat back on his heels, his legs folded beneath him. “The people of Marra govern themselves. The First Oralist should know this.”

She made her tone conciliatory. “I did not think the Marra would serve a foreign master. But I cannot account for the presence of your army outside the gates of Ashfall.”

“The Shaykh owes you no explanation.”

The Shaykh waved Najran’s warning aside. “We come to honor our own convictions. It may be that these are convictions the One-Eyed Preacher shares, so for the moment, our purposes align.”

The herder who’d cleared the tent now brought the Shaykh the apparatus of a shisha. The Shaykh leaned back on his elbows to inhale from the pipe. He passed it to Najran, who refused it with a word of thanks. No offer was made to Arian or Sinnia, and none expected.

“The Nineteen assert they are guided by the Claim. How do they reconcile their beliefs with the Preacher’s commands?” A careful question from Arian.

Najran leaned forward, resting his elbows on his thighs. “The Preacher is guided by the Claim.”

Arian let her power echo in her voice. “Yet none know the Claim as well as the Companions of Hira. None know it as I do. And my knowledge of it does not sanction your war upon these lands.”

Najran made a dismissive gesture. “A woman has no authority over the Claim.”

Wafa spat out his tea. Arian patted his back.

“Do you deny the authority of the Council? Do you refute the Companions of Hira?”

Najran fought back. “Do you refute the supremacy of the Rising Nineteen?”

A dialogue of opposites. A contest of conviction played out for the benefit of an audience of one: the Shaykh, who smoked his shisha, quietly biding his time.

“Can you recite the Claim?” Arian asked Najran with genuine curiosity.

“No.”

“Then how can you assert the supremacy of the Nineteen?”

Najran’s hand slipped to one of his daggers, this one adorned with sapphires. He glanced at her throat; Arian recognized the threat. Horror struck deep and hard, reminding her of the collar that had stolen her voice in Black Aura.

“You speak in riddles.” A growl from Khashayar deflected Najran’s attention. “What supremacy can any man claim compared to the First Oralist of Hira?”

The look in Najran’s eyes promised Khashayar death. “The Nineteen comprehend the perfection of the Claim. Its verses, the mysteries of its arrangement—they give us the miracle of Nineteen.”

“What miracle?” A contemptuous dig from Khashayar. “The First Oralist is the only miracle in these lands.”

Najran barked at the herder. “Tell the guard to chain him outside.”

Khashayar scrambled to his feet. Najran did the same, removing the opal-edged dagger from his belt. A white line bisected his pupils. The little herder shrank back, hurrying to carry out his orders.

Rising, Arian looked to the Shaykh. “Enemy or not, you received my escort as a guest.”

Two men entered the tent and grabbed hold of Khashayar. The Shaykh waved his pipe. “Hold him. Do not harm him.” Then, to Najran: “Sit. I would hear the end of this debate.”

As Khashayar was led outside, Najran sheathed his dagger, the white line fading from his eyes. He had shed his robe. Under his uniform, his lean frame was honed to an edge.

“Your soft heart will not save him,” he said to Arian.

“Your dark arts do not matter. You have no power against me.”

He smiled suddenly, a stern slash across his face. “Shall we see, sayyidina?”

He waited for her to sit before taking his seat again, wearing his menace like a shroud.

Speaking to the Shaykh, Sinnia echoed Khashayar’s words. “I do not understand either. We know of no miracle of Nineteen in the lands of the Negus.”

The Shaykh set down his pipe. He pointed at Sinnia’s arms.

“The inscription on your circlets are the opening words of the Claim.”

Sinnia nodded, still puzzled.

“Nineteen letters. The opening verse occurs nineteen times throughout the Claim, the opening word—one hundred and fourteen times, a factor of nineteen. The opening word is absent in only a single chapter of the Claim. Nineteen chapters occur between the place where it is missing, and the place where it reappears twice. The number of the Claim’s verses are a factor of nineteen. The number of the Claim’s chapters, a factor of nineteen. The first revelation … nineteen words. The last revelation … nineteen words. Should I go on?”

The Shaykh’s fervor was that of a true believer, of a man who, though illiterate in the Claim, could inspire others with his passion.

Arian responded with a scrupulous observation.

“The total number of verses are only a factor of nineteen if you choose to disregard two verses of the Claim.”

“Irrelevant,” he snapped, no longer lounging on his cushions. “The verses you speak of are heretical. They stand apart from the Claim.”

“Do they?” Arian asked, certain in her knowledge as First Oralist. “Or have you declared them heretical in order to preserve your miracle? There is no metaphysical truth to ‘nineteen,’ aside from the meaning you assign it.”

“Sacrilege,” he whispered through dry lips. But even though the Shaykh wanted to deny her—to dismiss her without measuring her erudition—he couldn’t denounce the First Oralist’s claim to knowledge. He looked to his sayyid for confirmation of his beliefs, receiving a nod of reassurance in return. A sly smile curved Najran’s lips, as he took heed of Sinnia.

A prickle of awareness crept along Arian’s spine. Najran wasn’t an ideologue or an impassioned believer. He was a paid assassin. With all an assassin’s tricks.

Speaking to Sinnia, he said, “You claimed to have proof of Nineteen.”

Sinnia didn’t hesitate. Linking her hand with Arian’s, she began to recite, her low, throaty voice rich in its offering of beauty.

“Mention in the Book, the story of the Adhraa when she withdrew in seclusion from her family to a place in the east. She placed a screen to screen herself, then We sent her Our Ruh, and he appeared before her in the form of a man.”

The Shaykh paused, letting the words sink in. Then he motioned for Sinnia to continue.

“She said: ‘I seek refuge with the One from you, if you fear the One.’”

She looked to Arian, who added, “The spirit of the Ruh announced to the Adhraa the gift of a righteous son.”

Though her eyes were bright with tears, Sinnia finished the verse: “She said, ‘How can I have a son, when no man has touched me, nor am I unchaste?’”

Najran cut across the spell woven by Sinnia’s words, speaking solely to the Shaykh. “She comes from the land of the Negus. Small wonder she spins these fables that honor the Esayin. The Najashi are Esayin—they learn fables from birth that hold no meaning for us.”

Arian rose to her feet, bringing Sinnia and Wafa up with her.

“The Najashi may have their own scriptures, but they are also people of the Claim. Sinnia gave you the nineteenth chapter of the Claim, which is the story of the Adhraa.”

Now the Al Marra had proof of their knowledge of the Claim. And in all his veneration of the miracle of Nineteen, the Shaykh could not discount the honor bestowed upon a woman by the nineteenth chapter of the Claim. It stood not only for the Adhraa herself, but as a lesson as to how women were meant to be treated by the people of the Claim.

Her hand was bound to Sinnia’s, memory flaring of their journey to the Golden Finger, the minaret where two rivers met. The minaret had been inscribed with turquoise bands of calligraphy, and circling the tower, Arian and Sinnia had found verses that told the story of the Adhraa’s utmost esteem in the Claim.

Najran helped his Shaykh to his feet.

“As I said, the mother of the Esayin.” Those strange eyes flicked over her face. “The Claim grants women no such honor.”

Her time was running out. Najran’s influence over his shaykh was too powerful, his menace all-consuming. She would have to call upon the Claim as something other than recitation.

“Then why is it women who were chosen as its guardians?”

Najran’s fingers moved over the daggers at his waist. “Because we took the Council of Hira at its word.” He gripped one of his daggers and drew it from his belt, the hilt concealed in his hand. “But now our truths are ascendant: ‘Over this are Nineteen.’”

Arian had no answer. The verse was an obscure one. She had puzzled over it for months; she was still no closer to deciphering it.

The one thing she knew with certainty was that it could not have reduced the grandeur of the Claim to a numerological miracle. Not if it had to deny other verses of the Claim to do so.

If she could show them the Bloodprint, she could shred the Nineteen’s heresies with irrefutable proof. The fact that she couldn’t was a weakness Najran was prepared to exploit.

“The Bloodprint confirms it. Over this are Nineteen. What does the Council of Hira have to offer in response?”

His arrogance assailed her, confirming her suspicions. The Nineteen and the Preacher were inseparably linked if the Preacher had given them word of his theft of the Bloodprint. She shuddered at the thought of the manuscript left to the Preacher’s care. Of the use he would make of it in his overarching design. Was it possible Najran had seen it?

“The One-Eyed Preacher confirms it, you mean. Because if you had read the Bloodprint, you would know it says no such thing,” she told Najran.

“Do you offer a written proof?” An insult. A subtle repudiation of her word.

She turned it back on him. “Is the sayyid able to read?”

A rough laugh, the scrape of silk and sand. The hilt of his dagger flashed blue. He’d chosen the blade for her throat, which meant she had run out of time.

Releasing Sinnia’s hand, she called down the Verse of the Throne. This time she shaped it differently, spacing the words to give each one the power of a hammer pounding at quartz. But she did it almost soundlessly. A violation of their hospitality served in response to the murder they had been invited to, which was cause enough.

The words drove both men to their knees and held them there, frozen. Sinnia searched the tent, returning with a length of the rope they used for tethering their livestock. She bound their feet, and then she tied their arms to their torsos while Wafa kept an eye out for intruders.

The little herder who had served them stumbled into the tent, his eyes wide at the scene before him. He had an instant to decide—to sound the alarm, to slip past Wafa. Or to allow the Companions to pass from the tent in peace. Even as Najran’s daggered gaze threatened him, the boy sank to his knees before Arian. One small hand reached out to seize the hem of her cloak. He buried his face in its cloth. “Sayyidina. Please say a blessing for my soul.”

Najran would kill him, she thought. But she could save the boy from that fate by killing Najran herself.

She knelt and kissed his cheeks. “May the One keep you and all of your people safe.” She nudged him from the tent. “Disappear inside the encampment. Look for a place to hide.”

He didn’t listen, darting around her to stand before Najran, whose face was mottled with rage, his lips sealed shut by the Claim. The boy’s hands unlatched the belt with the daggers. With the same dexterity he’d shown serving up their meal, he wound the belt around his waist.

A word broke free of Najran’s throat.

“Traitor.”

Traces of blood leaked from the corners of his mouth. The colored flecks in his eyes mutated to crimson. She thought of the Authoritan. She thought of the Claim in his mouth, darkened and degraded.

Arian shivered. They had to move quickly to free Khashayar without alerting the soldiers gathered outside.

The little herder rolled up a flap of the tent at the rear. He cast a glance at the iron glaive, then wisely decided against it.

The sound of gravel in his throat, Najran forced out a threat. “When I find you, boy, I will take my daggers back, flay your skin from your bones, then cut out your heart with my glaive.”

Losing the little of his color that remained, the boy ducked out of the tent.

“Kill him,” Sinnia said to Arian. “He’ll hunt us to the ends of the earth.”

Arian had reached the same conclusion. “Take Wafa. Assess our chances of escape.”

When they slipped out of the tent, she turned to the men on their knees.

She couldn’t murder the leader of the tribes of the Rub Al Khali—he may have been misguided in his aims, but he wasn’t an evil man. So, without occulting it, she used a word she had learned from Lania to stun the Shaykh into unconsciousness. He slumped to his side, his body held by the ropes.

Najran struggled against the ropes that bound him, an unforgiving predator, his eyes crimson and amber, the color of dancing flames with a white-hot tinge of blue at the center. She could have used her knives against him, but she kept up the thrum of the Claim.

He faced her with savage defiance, gritting out a response. “Over this are Nineteen.”

Taken by surprise, she stumbled back a step.

He shouldn’t have been able to speak.

She used the verse she had used against the High Companion, giving it a sharper edge.

He answered her again, his voice a thing of blood and ice.

“Over this are Nineteen.”

Stunned by the power that flared from his words, the crimson thrust bold and bright against her face, she fell to her knees before him. She tried to grasp one of her weapons, but her hands were frozen at her sides.

His answering smile was lethal; he knew that she feared him now.

She couldn’t risk a merciful response. She slashed at him with the Claim, cold, clean fire, spun from an inner conviction; his eyes rolled back in his head. Just as his breath escaped from his body in a long, stuttering exhale that signified his death, Khashayar threw back a flap of the tent. He made a soldier’s instant assessment.

“You killed them? Good.”

She didn’t correct his mistake about the Shaykh for fear that he might finish him off.

“Come, sahabiya, we have to move quickly now.”

She gestured at the glaive, a question in her eyes.

“Leave it.” The firm line of his lips pursed in distaste. “I have no use for the enemy’s dishonorable weapon.”

He reached for Arian’s hand and pulled her from the tent.

6

DANIYAR ENTERED THE ANTECHAMBER THROUGH A PAIR OF DOORS carved with maghrebi stars, the Black Khan leading the way down a short flight of marble stairs. The room was twice the size of the war room, one wall lined with wooden shutters that opened to the eastern plains. These were carved with star-centered lattices in patterns that throbbed with distant light.

The room itself was thick with the musk of scattered petals. Candelabra gleamed on the floor, their light picked up by the crystal loops of a glittering chandelier. But with the doors and windows closed, the chamber was dim—preserving an aura of mystery. Pages hurried to do the Black Khan’s bidding: arranging small tables at intervals, setting a tall mirror edged in gold against one wall. A towering torchiere, dripping with crystal loops, was placed beside it, throwing light upon an alcove in the room, screened by panels of amethyst silk. Several more mirrors and candles were placed around the room to foster an aura of intimacy.

In the center of the room, a space enclosed by four towering columns, two of the stronger pages set a heavy copper pan upon a black-lacquered table. The curled lip of the pan was engraved with Khorasani script, crimson petals strewn across the water in its depths, the fragrance subtle and rose-edged.

Watching these preparations, Daniyar said, “The Conference of the Mages requires nothing other than our presence.”

The Black Khan ignored him, motioning to his pages. They placed four stools cushioned in silk around the table.

When their preparations were complete, he answered, “Perhaps you are used to simplicity, but grandeur is Ashfall’s great art.” A subtle glance at the Silver Mage’s tattered uniform, at the absence of a crest at his throat, turned his claim into an insult.

Daniyar examined Rukh in turn. He was dressed in Zhayedan armor, embellished with silver epaulettes that stretched over broad shoulders, still perfectly groomed, his hair pomaded and sleek. At his neck was his imperial symbol, though its jeweled ropes had been replaced by brooches that betokened martial honors. On his right hand he wore his onyx ring. On his left, an assortment of sapphires and pearls. The attention he paid to his appearance should have made him seem as much a pleasure-seeking dilettante as any of his lesser courtiers. Instead, furious, concentrated power burned in his midnight eyes.

Easy enough for the Khan to dismiss Daniyar’s appearance when he hadn’t been trapped in the midst of Talisman fighters with boulders crashing from the sky.

Charismatic and clever, he could enjoy his presumed superiority for the moment. This did not move Daniyar to trust him, nor would he underestimate the Black Khan’s duplicity again. It was time the Khan learned as much.

“What I am used to is integrity. When I give my word, I keep it.”

“You would have done the same in my shoes.”

“Violate a promised truce by disrupting the loya jirga? Would I have?” He glanced at the pages scurrying to set the stage for what the Black Khan imagined a Conference of the Mages entailed. The pages were young and inexperienced, their fear of battle evident. They reminded Daniyar strongly of the boys in the Talisman camp at the moment when the truce had been broken. Their blood may not have been on his own hands, but the stain on his honor was unlikely to wash away. “I agreed to act as your emissary because of those on both sides of your walls.”

A page knocked over a brass lamp on the floor. Rukh banished him with a scowl, then said to Daniyar, “There are only enemies on the other side of the wall.”

Daniyar moved closer to Rukh, a swirling storm in his eyes, his pain transformed into anger at what the Black Khan had cost him. “They are not my enemies. I took you at your word. You repaid me by calling my honor into question.”

Rukh snorted. “Your claim to honor was forfeit the day you made your stand with Arian.”

The use of Arian’s name was a provocation too far. Daniyar’s hand shot out, gripped the Black Khan’s throat, and pressed the weight of the onyx rook back into it. Rage flared along his nerve endings, the furious temptation of violence, the satisfaction of finally having the means to avenge Arian’s suffering at the Ark. And his own deep sense of loss, dishonored in the eyes of his tribe. The Black Khan may have been a Mage of Khorasan, but he wasn’t an ally or friend. Daniyar squeezed harder, feeling the rook cut deep into his palm.

The pages leapt back in alarm. Two of the Khorasan Guard raced from their post at the door. The sibilant slash of steel brought their swords to Daniyar’s throat.

Rukh watched Daniyar, saw the brutal warning in his face. He waved his guards aside, making no defensive moves.

“She renounced you.” Though Rukh’s breath was faint, satisfaction glistened in his eyes. “Do you still claim her as your own? When you returned from the battle, you were holding the High Companion’s hand.” A hint of curiosity, a soft insinuation of disloyalty.

Daniyar’s grip tightened. Hard enough to bruise. Not hard enough to crush, as he wanted. For the injuries Rukh had inflicted, a price would have to be paid.

“When this is over, you and I will have things to settle.”

He released his grip on Rukh’s throat. The Black Khan sank down on a stool unperturbed, a small smile playing on his lips.

“The badal of your forebears? Your primitive instincts amuse me.”

The Black Khan considered the graces of his court and the richness of its traditions superior to those of the rest of the lands of Khorasan. His scriptorium surpassed the Library of Candour, even at the pinnacle of its accomplishments. But one thing Daniyar knew with certainty: the tribes that answered the Talisman call held fast to their code of honor. When their word was given, they kept it.

“What you call revenge, they see as a matter of justice.” He moved away from the table to lean against a column. He flexed the hand he had used to grip Rukh’s throat, the gesture a promise to himself. “As do I.”

Cold rage echoed off the walls in the Black Khan’s response. “Where is the justice in their war against my capital or in their murder of my sister?”

Daniyar straightened. Concern sharpened his voice. “Has something happened to Darya?”

“The Princess of Ashfall is dead. She was murdered by the One-Eyed Preacher, whose teachings inform your kin.”

Daniyar murmured a prayer, his anger swiftly curbed.

“This city needs more than your prayers.” A contemptuous dismissal from Rukh.

“Then let’s begin. Where is the Golden Mage?”

“I do not know.”

Daniyar shifted out of the path of a page who set a candelabra at his feet. In the spaces between gold ornaments, pages scattered armfuls of petals across the floor.

“This is theater,” Daniyar warned Rukh. “It serves no purpose in the Conference.”

The Black Khan slammed his hand down on the table. Water spilled from the copper bowl, from the table onto the floor.

“Go!” he said, dismissing the pages who were listening to every word. Then, to Daniyar: “It serves this purpose: those who prepared it, those who observed it, will spread the word to others. Whispers will soon become fact. Magic will be unleashed by this Conference. Because of it, Ashfall will survive. You and I may know otherwise”—a savage smile—“but my people need to believe that their city will not fall. Theater merely entertains. This is politics, so do not presume to instruct me in what would serve my people best.”

Daniyar snorted, his eyes narrowing, but said nothing.

The maghrebi doors pushed open. The Golden Mage had arrived.

She had changed from her battle armor into a gown that echoed the colors of the room: an outer robe of amethyst studded with dozens of tiny crystals, an inner gown in crimson that clung to her delicate frame. The outer robe was layered in tiers that ended in an amethyst train, its high neck embroidered, its sleeves flaring out at the wrists. Her thick gold hair was bound in a series of intricate coils, on which rested the diadem with the single sapphire at its center.

Another role enacted in the Black Khan’s theater, Daniyar thought, beginning to understand the nature of it. She looked imposing, her spine a steel-forged line. Rukh rose from the table to guide her to her seat. She flicked a glance at Daniyar, one golden brow aloft.

He came to the table and took his seat. He had things to say to the Golden Mage when time and circumstance permitted. He could no more count her as an ally than he could trust to the word of the Khan. Yet he would not turn away from the Conference.

When they were seated around the table, the three Mages linked hands. Rukh’s sleek palm against Daniyar’s much rougher one, both men gripping hard in a show of strength until Ilea said, “This posturing is tiresome. Need you bolster your egos at the expense of this war?”

Rukh gave her a lazy smile. “Perhaps we do it in your honor.”

“Spare me your tribute then. Call the Conference to order.”

The Black Khan hesitated. When he didn’t speak, it became clear that he didn’t know how to proceed. Daniyar stepped in, raising their linked hands.

“In the name of the One, the Beneficent, the Merciful, guide us in our efforts. Infuse the spirit of the One in the risen Mage …” He nodded at Rukh to fulfill his portion of the rite.

“Rukh, the Dark Mage and the Black Khan, Prince of West Khorasan.”

Daniyar looked next at Ilea.

“Ilea, the Golden Mage and High Companion of Hira.” The honeyed voice of the Golden Mage wound around the senses of both men.

“Daniyar, the Silver Mage and Guardian of Candour.”

With the ritual complete, Daniyar closed his eyes. The others followed his lead. There was an interval of silence. Then he began to feel the flicker of his power. A line of silver fire arrowed up his spine. It spiraled down his arms, a tingling in his fingers that made the hands of the others jerk, although they didn’t let go. Then the ring of the Silver Mage—recovered by the Assassin from the ruins of the loya jirga—became a band of white fire around his finger. Lightning flooded his veins, an incendiary flare that pulsed in an echo of the light from his ring. It spread outward from his jugular vein, thrusting up through his skull, sparking a web inside his mind. His power raged incandescent, until he forced it under control.

His thoughts shone with new clarity. The warmth that pulsed from his hands to the hands of the other Mages was answered by the Golden Mage. He knew her signature, recognized the golden surge underlined with steely power. It twined with the tendrils of light from his ring, reflecting his power twofold, as lethally honed as a blade, as boundless as the warmth of the sun. But from the Black Khan there was no pulse of energy beyond the strength of his grip. The magic that leapt from Daniyar’s hand to Ilea’s couldn’t complete its circuit. Their power was mutually reinforced, but there was nothing else beyond it.

He opened his eyes to study the Black Khan, to find Ilea frowning at Rukh.

The Black Khan’s eyes were fixed on the petals floating in the copper bowl. His hands were tightly clenched on theirs, his jaw a harsh line, his brows lowered in furious concentration, as if by simply willing it, the power of the Dark Mage would rise.

A litany fell from his lips.

“In the name of the One, the Beneficent, the Merciful.”

His gaze moved from the copper bowl to the light that pulsed from Daniyar’s ring. Then to Ilea’s diadem now ablaze in sheets of gold. He pulled his hand from Daniyar’s, studying the ring on his own finger—an onyx-carved rook on silver to mirror the emblem at his throat.

“Perhaps this is the wrong token. There is no such thing as dark light.”

The others dropped their hands. A hush fell over the room painted in flickers of candlelight.

Ilea’s response was unsparing. “Those who attempt the dark rites should expect their powers to be tainted.”

A black scowl from Rukh in response. “How did you hear of the attempt? Neither Arsalan nor Arian would have told you.”

“Do you still not understand how the power works?” A haughty tilt of her head. “I felt the ripples of it through the continuity of our magic. Just as the Silver Mage would have.”

Daniyar shook his head, dark hair brushing his nape. “I was fighting for my life. When I was brought back to the walls by the Assassin’s men, the One-Eyed Preacher’s thunder served to uproot my magic.”

Something moved behind Rukh’s eyes. Not uncertainty. Perhaps the regret that his attempt to use Arian’s blood in the blood-rites had stripped him of his abilities.

“You reclaimed your power,” he said to Daniyar. “I felt its pulse in my veins. Why can I not feel my own?”

Daniyar edged back from the table. “This is your first attempt. Give yourself more time.”

Rukh swore to himself. “What time do you think I have? They’re battering the Zhayedan Gate. Soon the Talisman will move east. If we lose the gates, we lose the city.” He made a swift calculation. “How far does your power extend—the Golden Mage and Silver Mage in concert?”

But Daniyar was shaking his head. “Not far enough to hold the city.”

Rukh turned to Ilea. “What of the Bloodprint, then? You read from it. You copied a verse you said would serve to defend the Citadel. Use it here, first.”

There was no softness in the golden eyes that dwelt upon Rukh’s face, nor any of the indulgence of a former lover. Her gaze was mesmerizing … predatory. The skin over Rukh’s cheekbones tightened in response. But she ignored his request, speaking to the Silver Mage.

“The only thing that will aid you is the dawn rite. You know it as well as I do. Arian taught you the verse.” It was a signal to Rukh, as well.

Rukh threw back his chair, striding across the room to throw open a pair of windows. A thousand watchfires rose against the darkness, showing them the depth of the Talisman’s forces.

“You think a single verse will hold the Emissary Gate.”

Daniyar came to stand beside him, his gaze picking out the bloodstained flags dotted about the camp.

“Five verses. Each backed by the power of this Conference.”

Rukh’s hands balled into fists. “I cannot summon it.”

And he wondered then if the Conference of the Mages had failed because each of the Mages was an enemy to the others.

“You have yet to try.” Daniyar motioned to Ilea. “High Companion.”

She moved to join them, her eyes on the Talisman advance. “They will devour everything in their path, if you do not stop them here. You should have forced the First Oralist to stay. The Codex—if it exists—will not deliver you in time.”

Rukh left aside the fact that the only person in the room with the power to command the First Oralist had chosen to disavow her, expelling her from the sisterhood of the Council of Hira.

“What. Of. The Bloodprint.” He ground out the words through his teeth. “You studied it. Your knowledge could deliver us!”

Ilea held up both hands, the ends of her sleeves belling out. With a cutting smile at Rukh, she said, “Your search for easy answers will not avail you, but I will give you what you seek. If only to show you a truth the Council of Hira has long known.”

Eagerly, the Black Khan stepped forward.

“Tell me your truths after you have offered your benediction to my city.”

“Very well.” She turned away from him, calling out an incantation.

“When the sky is shrouded in darkness … when the stars lose their light … when the mountains are made to vanish … when the seas boil over, and when all beings are linked to their deeds …”

Hot white light inside the chamber, the coils of Ilea’s hair catching fire.

“… And when the girl-child that was buried alive is able to ask for what crime she was slain … when the scrolls of your deeds are unfolded … when heaven is laid bare … when the blazing fire is kindled bright, and when paradise is brought into view; on that Day, every human being will come to know what they have prepared for themselves.”

Though chilling in their meaning, the words were curiously devoid of impact.

Then Ilea’s arms jerked forward, forming a V. Her trailing sleeves caught fire, and the fire lanced straight from her arms to cut through Talisman lines. A pale gold tinged with crimson, the fire burned two lines through the camp, searing all in its path. It blazed brightly for an instant—a gilt-edged sword shearing through the final hours of the night. When it vanished, it left two blackened tracks on the ground. She had killed perhaps twenty men all told, but the Talisman rapidly regrouped.

Rukh glared at her. “Is that all?”

Sly acceptance. “That is all.”

He grabbed her shoulders, shaking her.

“Then do it again. Again and again, unto a world without end.”

Daniyar wrested Ilea free of Rukh’s bruising grip. “Even if she did, you would still be facing an army of thousands at your gates.” Rukh paused. Deliberated. Turned his back to them both, a gesture considered offensive at his court. But it was still his court. He may have failed as Dark Mage, but he was still the Prince of Khorasan.

He looked out over the path of Ilea’s deliberate destruction. She had recited verses of the Claim—more in number than Arian and Sinnia combined. Deadly and more threatening than anything he had heard fall from the First Oralist’s lips. Because the Verse of the Throne was an assertion, not a source of annihilation.

Why, then, had Ilea’s recitation had so little impact on his enemy? If Arsalan had been with him in this room, he might have known the answer. Arsalan’s calling to the Claim was sincere, richer and deeper than Rukh’s.

At that, a door opened in Rukh’s mind. He entered a room filled with light. He raised his face into the light—it pushed at him, moved through him, penetrated through to his cells, blinding and calming in the same calamitous instant. Throbbing like the answer to a question he’d forgotten to ask. The light expanded outward into his mind, pricked at his fears, made nonsense of his certainties, mocked him for his stubborn refusal to see it for what it was. Part of him. All of him. That was when he understood.

Ilea’s warning … the taste of Daniyar’s fear … the significance of Arian’s absence. All trace of pretense fell away.

He turned back to Ilea, ignoring the Silver Mage. He raised a hand to untangle the golden coils of her hair, a gesture she allowed. When they’d fallen free of their intricate arrangement, he brushed back a lock from her forehead. Then he pressed his lips to her diadem and whispered, “It isn’t just the words, is it? It’s the qari who recites them—the gift given to the First Oralist.”

She blinked, and he finished softly, “A gift you do not share.”

Bitter acknowledgment in her golden eyes.

“Tell me your truth now, Ilea.”

He had already guessed at the answer. The High Companion could recite verses from the Bloodprint, but without the depths of Arian’s conviction, without the gift for language that had seen Arian rise to the rank of First Oralist, she would never be able to harness the power of the Claim as Arian had done. She couldn’t bend it to her will.

She wound her hands around his wrists, removing them from her hair.

“My gifts are aligned to Hira. Ashfall must rely on the strength of the Dark Mage.”

She told these half-truths to the Black Khan without compunction. Why? Daniyar’s thoughts moved swiftly. Because of Hira. The Black Khan had delayed her return to the Citadel. And with Arian and the High Companion both absent, Hira was at risk. Ilea would know as well as he did that the Black Khan would not relinquish any advantage to his city. Whatever the extent of the Golden Mage’s powers, Rukh would try to keep her at his side.

What Ilea had shown him—what she had done with the Claim—was designed to prove to Rukh that her talents would serve him no further. She couldn’t do what Arian had done.

A misdirection the Black Khan would accept, knowing that of all the Companions of Hira, only Arian’s gifts existed to serve more than her allegiance to the Council. Arian had shown him as much with her defense of the people of Ashfall. Though her Audacy was directed by the High Companion, she had chosen her own means of fulfilling it. And even after Ilea had stripped her of rank, she hadn’t given up the fight. Daniyar felt a fierce throb of pride at Arian’s defiance of Ilea. Her service on behalf of the Council wasn’t that of blind adherence. Her calling was to the Claim—and the ethics that underlined it.

No ritual without purpose, she had whispered to him in another life, the whisper tinged with love.

And he had understood. Without a commitment to the values they espoused, rituals meant little to Arian, a position that often placed her at odds with the Council. Even the story of the Night Journey, a sacred visitation to the heavens, Arian viewed as an allegory, and not as a physical voyage, as so many of her sisters did.

No form without substance. No sacred duty more hallowed than the worth of a single life.

The words had meant more to him after the fall of Candour. They defined them both in opposition to the Talisman.

In whose name was our heritage set to the fire? Daniyar had demanded.

And the Talisman’s acolytes had answered, In the name of the One.

He pushed down the familiar ache caused by Arian’s absence. It was a weakness Ilea would exploit, at the moment he needed to turn her to his purpose. Which was to keep her in Ashfall, until Rukh could learn to harness his abilities as the Dark Mage.

He’d felt something stir at the way Rukh watched him, a prickling of his nerves along the tendrils of his magic. An awakening that the Conference of the Mages would fulfill. He recalled the Conference he’d been summoned to in Timeback, where he’d visited the scriptorium and sifted through its manuscripts, including one where the arguments of theologians had gone around in circles, perhaps like this Conference now. The memory passed from his thoughts as suddenly as it had come.

“Let us return,” he said, holding out Ilea’s chair. She pressed her lips together in refusal.

“Why try again?” Rukh asked. “The High Companion’s powers—”

Daniyar cut him off. “The High Companion lacks the First Oralist’s ability with the Claim, but she is still the Golden Mage. She can awaken your gifts. As she said, Ashfall must rely on itself. It needs the power of its Mage.” And now he made use of the Black Khan’s persistence to further his own resolve. “Your power is merely dormant. I felt it stir, as you must have felt mine.” They could and would hold the Emissary Gate. “The Golden Mage can help to bring your powers to life. As can I.”

A narrowing of Rukh’s eyes. A hand at Ilea’s elbow, as he urged her back to the table.

“You used the Claim to open the Conference,” he pointed out.

Daniyar nodded. “A ritual.” No ritual without purpose. “Just as the dawn rite is a ritual.”

“Wherein lies its power?”

A question that cut to the heart of things. One for which he had the answer.

“In the strength you have to wield it. In the use you would make of it.” His silver eyes shone, his words deadly as a blade. “Can you think of a suitable use?”

Eyes of midnight glittered in response.

7

A KNOCK ON THE DOOR TO THE CHAMBER. THIS TIME ONE OF THE Zhayedan’s runners came to bring news of the Talisman’s maneuvers and of Arsalan’s response.

The Black Khan excused himself—no closer to retrieving his power—leaving Daniyar and Ilea alone in the room. The closing of the maghrebi doors cut off the cries of battle as suddenly as a blade thrown at an unprotected throat.

The High Companion reached for Daniyar’s hands. Silent and watchful, he let her hold them. The act reinforced their mutual power; otherwise he wouldn’t have permitted her touch.

“You still don’t trust me.” His hands clenched on hers, a betraying gesture. He eased the pressure of his grip, but not before they both felt the rise of their magic. In a few more hours, it would be dawn, and the dawn rite would be possible. That was all that was holding him in Ashfall. Were it not for his commitment to the Conference, he would have been on Arian’s trail.

That didn’t mean he needed to respond to the High Companion with anything other than the truth. “Why would I trust you, Ilea? You’ve stood between me and Arian from the first.”

She looked into eyes like frozen silver lakes, eyes that had gazed into the void. But what was the void to Daniyar? The Talisman’s desolation of his city? Or the loss of the woman he wanted for his own? Her fingers stroked his callused palms, the touch deliberately careful to contrast with pitiless words.

“One man’s desires cannot undo centuries of tradition. There is no place for a man at the side of a Companion of Hira.”

“Liar.” Her hands jerked at the accusation. “How long after you arrived at the Citadel did you take the Black Khan as your lover?”

“He is a tool I use to further the Citadel’s aims; he means nothing to me beyond that. What you seek from Arian is something else entirely.”

She studied the flawless arrangement of his bones, wondering how to unsettle a man as dangerous as he was beautiful. One who had every reason to oppose her.

He proved that with his response. “You seem to have forgotten my gift.”

Ilea had forgotten. For the Silver Mage possessed the ability to discern the lies she told from the truth, a gift given to those who held the title of Authenticate.

“You tore her from me,” he said now. “With no thought to her needs when she’d already suffered such loss. Your duty as High Companion is to serve the Companions of Hira.”

“You need not teach me a duty I have never failed to honor.”

“How can you claim to honor it, when your actions serve only yourself?”

“Oh? And what of you, Daniyar? When I sent Arian to Candour more than a decade ago, your duty was to teach her of the manuscripts of Candour. Not to train her in war. Nor to take her as your own. It was you who betrayed my trust, before I raised a hand against you.”

A contemptuous glance from eyes silvered over with frost. “My commitment to Arian was never a threat to Hira.”

“Your seduction of Arian was meant to sever her from the Council—you knew our traditions; you swore to defend her honor. Instead, you took her, claimed her, kept her.”

“No man keeps the First Oralist. She followed your dictates to the end. She gave me up to do so.”

There was a primal beauty to his rage, to the dark brows that slashed down over eyes of arctic fire. And Ilea was not insensible to it. So she marshaled her words against him.

“You only think you know her.” Her head tilted toward the sound of the Black Khan’s voice beyond the door. She was gathering information, another tool to exploit. Despite the warmth that pulsed through their linked hands, she felt the chill of his response in her bones. “You think you know a history even Arian doesn’t know. But as I warned you when you asked for dispensation, Arian is First Oralist. I will not cede her powers to your base desires.”

She made sure he heard the truth in her words. A rawer form of her magic raced along her arms, rippling through her veins to flare around the center of her power, vibrating with fire. But she knew he was too arrogant, too certain of his claim to be deflected.

“Your insults cannot diminish the loyalty that binds Arian to me.” His shrug was careless. “Besides which, you no longer have the power to command her. You dismissed her from the Council.”

She gave a crystal-edged laugh.

“What future are you imagining, Daniyar? That the two of you will leave this war and flee to a place of safety, so you might finally have the chance to prove to her your devotion?” A mocking reproof. “Are you no longer Guardian of Candour? Have you no other obligations beyond your undisciplined desires?”

His thoughts flashed to the Damson Vale.

When it was done … when he had passed on the trust of the Guardian of Candour, he would take Arian to his secret valley in the mountains.

She caught the thought from his mind with a hissed incantation of the Claim.

“So the limit of your ambition is the vale you deem an earthly paradise?” She laced the words with contempt, her nails digging into his palms. “What a parochial fate you would choose.”

“Only for someone who doesn’t know how to love.”

He felt her stillness in his own bones, knew the words had found their mark. The doors to the chamber opened, the Black Khan stepping inside. He perceived the tension between them without a word being said.

Ilea released one of Daniyar’s hands to raise a palm in invitation. Rukh moved to take it.

“Did I miss something?” he asked.

She made her voice low and inviting as Rukh pulled his stool to the table, leaning over the fragrant copper bowl. “How fortunate that you differ so greatly from the Silver Mage.”

“Oh?”

A sensual smile on her lips as she scored her nails against his palm.

“His pledge keeps him here at your side, when in truth he is longing to chase through the night after his beloved.” Her gaze moved between the two men, measuring one against the other, confident that in her ambition, she was greater than both. “But there is no place for honor in war, a truth you illustrate so well.”

Rukh dropped her hand. There was no merit to him in such a comparison, but angry at himself for allowing Ilea to provoke him, he picked up her hand again and kissed it.

“No doubt, I am to the Silver Mage what you are to the First Oralist.”

An unexpected glance of appreciation from Daniyar, even as Ilea turned her fury at the comparison on the Silver Mage.

“She’s not coming back to you.” The hit cold and precise.

Daniyar reached for Rukh’s other hand, completing the necessary circle. But it was also a gesture of fellowship.

“She doesn’t need to.”

“Oh?” The disdainful arch of a fine gold brow. “And why is that?”

“Because nothing that happens in Ashfall could keep me from her side.”

So confident, Ilea thought. So certain of his powers of attraction. So certain of the bond between Arian and himself. When she returned to Hira, her actions would sever that bond with the cold finality of truth.

She felt her power rise, augmented by his.

And savored the strike to come.

8

KHASHAYAR HAD WASTED NO TIME. HE’D FREED HIMSELF AND SLIT THE throats of the two men left to guard him. Quiet prevailed over the Shaykh’s tent as they stole out into the night to cross a wide ridge of sand, disturbing only the rest of cape hares burrowed deep in the grass, under a night of no moon, with stars flung up against the stony darkness.

“Horses?” Arian whispered to Khashayar.

He forged the path ahead, his footsteps sinking into sand, setting a harsh pace.

“It’s too risky to head back. We could be intercepted.” Arian kept pace beside him, though Sinnia was the more sure-footed over sand. Her steady hand propelled Wafa along, the boy stumbling more than once, as he kept glancing back to the camp.

“We’ll be discovered,” Sinnia warned. “We can’t outrun them.”

Khashayar herded them over another rib of sand, moving them farther west.

“I did some scouting earlier. They’ve set up a supply depot just south of us. There are camel herders there. If we can reach it in time …” He shot a grim glance at Arian and Sinnia. “Let me carry the boy.”

Without waiting for permission, he scooped up Wafa and settled him on his back.

“Hold on.” Then, to the Companions: “Now run.”

Wafa’s arms fastened around Khashayar’s neck in a death grip that he adjusted with a grimace. He set the grueling pace of a soldier trained from birth to overcome physical discomfort. His strength was enormous, his pace unflagging as he found a depression between two ridges of grass-feathered sand, its surface nearly flat.

Arian stumbled on the downslope of the ridge, falling to her hands and knees. Khashayar grabbed her under the arm and set her on her feet without breaking his rhythm. Sinnia flew beside him. When Arian brushed off her knees, she found herself staring at a startled caracal, whose tawny coat had camouflaged its hiding place in the sand.

She kept moving, hearing sounds of discovery break out in the camp behind them.

Not enough moon to trace their footprints in the sand, but all it would require to track them was a torch. The army of the Nineteen had men enough to spare to follow several different trails at once. Or they could save themselves the bother and ride the Companions to ground. A simpler method still: they could loose their hunting falcons on the night. It was what she would have done in their place.

All these thoughts raced through her mind as the wind whipped her hair against her face. She was the slowest of their party, Khashayar moving with deadly grace and Sinnia as though born to these sands.

Arian made her way across the depression, picking her steps with care over the swaying grass. She couldn’t see the depot ahead and was trusting to Khashayar’s instincts. She’d had a moment when she wanted to tell him to cut his losses and run—to return to Ashfall, to lend his strength to his Khan. But she needed him. She wouldn’t be able to cross the desert without him.

He cut south across the sand, Wafa clinging to his back. As the ridge dipped southward, the roof of stars cast a sharp orange flare against the sand. Her heart in her mouth, Arian feared they had fallen on a desert-dweller’s campfire. But the light dimmed with the curve of sand, and she realized what she’d seen was a field of orange poppies.

Her relief was short-lived. Angry voices carried across the sand, followed by the thunder of hooves. Desert horses trained for speed and agility. And guided, as Arian had feared, by the telltale cry of a hawk.

The Nineteen had found their trail.

His voice gravel-edged and deep, Khashayar urged them to hurry. “We have to reach the supply depot before the guards hear the alarm.”

They sank into another valley, but Arian knew it for a losing battle. They couldn’t outrun the Nineteen’s horses. And the pursuit was too close to give her time to conjure a mirage. Wind snapped her hair against her face again, and she caught the glimmer of an answer.

“Go,” she said to the others. “I’ll meet you at the depot.”

“No, sahabiya. My orders are to stay at your side.” Khashayar grabbed hold of her arm.

Arian shook herself free. “I’m not helpless, Khashayar. Trust to my use of the Claim.”

He didn’t argue further, her self-assurance persuasive.

When Sinnia hesitated, Arian urged her on. “Khashayar will need your help. If I need you, I’ll call you back.” She pressed her circlets; Sinnia did the same.

They split up without further discussion, though Arian heard Wafa’s broken cry of protest.

She moved through a maze of gullies, seeking the valley of sand’s center. A band of caracals followed her high along one ridge, their golden eyes aglow in the dark. She used them to pinpoint her progress, the sound of hooves at her back. A red fox froze as she crossed his path, its black eyes sharp and curious. It darted away again at the earsplitting cry of a hawk.

She was almost at the center of the valley, bringing the riders with her, leaving Khashayar’s way clear ahead.

She moved along curled eddies of grass deep into the valley of sand. The riders approached, a party of six astride the mares that were bred in the heart of the desert, their arrow-straight manes tossing in the wind, their heads thrown up high and proud.

Five commanders of the Nineteen hooted at her in triumph. One man remained silent, dried blood at the edges of his lips, the glaive in his hand starkly poised. Their eyes met, and she knew his strike would be fatal. But the thrill of fear she felt wasn’t because of the glaive. It was at the realization that she’d failed to kill him with the Claim, as she’d thought she’d done in the tent of the Al Marra. She must have faltered in her resolution or in the way she’d shaped the verse—but how could that be when she had seen the breath whisper from his body?

Or had she?

How had Najran been able to resist the verse she had used to strike at him? What powers did he possess?

Then she noticed something else. His hips were girded with his belt of jeweled daggers, the tip of his glaive spiked with blood.

“You killed the child?” she cried in protest.

His eyes hooded, he answered her, “I put a traitor to death.”

His voice was the scrape of a blade, metal crunched against bone.

The group of riders circled her, drawing closer, the hooves of their horses stirring up clouds of sand. The caracals crept closer on the ridge, predators who now assumed a hunting crouch. She met the eyes of one and motioned it away with a wave. The black tufts of hair at the tips of its ears quivered before it bounded down the far side of the ridge, its packmates following behind.

Arian kept moving, one slow step at a time, her eyes on the man with the glaive. His eyes struck sapphire sparks as the riders tightened their circle.

“Fall back,” she warned them, the promise of the Claim beneath her words.

Najran raised his glaive, his head cocked to one side, listening.

Her tone gentle, Arian called up the Claim. “Would any of you wish to have a garden with date palms and vines, rivers flowing underneath, and all kinds of fruits?”

A soothing whisper chased at the edges of the dunes. The riders nodded to one another in answer, loosening the reins of their mares.

Arian motioned at them, just as she had motioned at the caracal. The horses drew away, giving her space to maneuver.

And still Najran watched her with those sapphire-studded eyes, his fingers loose and relaxed around the glaive.

The whisper in the valley rose into the air, gathering traces of sand, the silver pathways of the stars dimming above their heads.

“But you would be stricken with age, your children too weak to tend it, your garden struck by a whirlwind, lashed with fire until burnt.”

Najran raised the glaive high above his head.

But it was too late now for him to undo the power of Arian’s spell. The crests of the dunes that surrounded them exploded in a tornado. The distance between Arian and the riders increased as the vortex rose around them, pierced by ribbons of flame. Hot winds from the north mixed with cold winds from the south: the aesar of the desert put to the test of the Claim.

They were smothered by sand, while fire roared in their ears until it had swallowed their cries, burning the riders to ash, their horses scattered to the winds.

In the eye of the storm, Arian waited until the whirling sand subsided, a shimmering waterfall of fire that circled her until it ebbed into a single line—a wall between the encampment she had escaped from and the uncharted distance ahead.

Flames spun orange-gold patterns on the sand—it was over; it was done.

But when she looked up, one man remained on his horse, his weapon poised in his hand as he watched her across the veil of fire. He lowered the glaive, his gleaming eyes fixed on hers.

She finished what she’d come to say.

“So does the One offer clear signs so that you may reflect.”

The sapphire glint in his eyes dimmed to amber, as he acknowledged the words. He wheeled his horse around, searching for a way through the whirlwind her voice had summoned from the sands. When he realized there was no path that would allow him to cross, he spit out a lengthy curse. Then he bowed at her in respect.

“Until we meet again, First Oralist.”

She nodded and left him on the sands.

9

ARIAN FOUND THE OTHERS ON A RIDGE ABOVE THE SUPPLY DEPOT, where most of the camp was asleep. A handful of guards were near a small armory, another one asleep at the foot of a trio of camels. The Nineteen had grown confident to leave so few here, but it was more likely that they had dozens of similar depots dotted about the desert.

“Wait here,” Khashayar told them. He disappeared down the ridge.

“How did you know to call the aesar?” Sinnia asked.

She hugged Sinnia close to her, the warmth of the contact easing the chill of her encounter with Najran. “From those stories you told me of your childhood. Those tales of warriors who crossed the Sea of Reeds to summon up the firewinds.”

“Those were fables,” Sinnia muttered, aghast. “That was quite a risk.”

“Surprising, I know,” Arian teased. “Given our adherence to only proofs we can see.”

A pause. Then Sinnia’s bold grin. She squeezed Arian harder.

“Wretch.”

Arian smiled too. “I’m sorry, I couldn’t resist.”

She noticed Wafa staring at the pair of them, mildly indignant that the Companions had found anything to laugh at in their near escape.

She stroked a hand through his curls, kissing the top of his head.

“Don’t be frightened,” she reassured him. “Have faith in Khashayar.”

Wafa snorted in disgust, which she apprehended as his general disgust at men of every stripe, save for the Silver Mage. At the thought of Daniyar, her spark of amusement subsided. The depth of her longing for him remained acutely painful.

She took a sip of water from her waterskin, then offered it to Wafa, meeting Sinnia’s eyes. Using the language of the Citadel, she told Sinnia what had happened in the valley.

“Twice now, I’ve been unable to kill Najran.”

Sinnia’s eyes swept the supply camp for signs of renewed activity. There was no sign of Khashayar, a black blade against the night.

“Najran is the Shaykh’s sayyid. He wouldn’t have risen as high as he has if he wasn’t uniquely gifted.”

Arian’s exhalation was a sigh. “Perhaps. But I failed to kill him with the Claim. I split the Registan with my voice and killed dozens of Ahdath at the Clay Minar. And together, we held off the One-Eyed Preacher. How could Najran have resisted the compulsion of the Claim?”

“There is no compulsion in faith,” Sinnia reminded her.

Sinnia was right, but it was beside the point. The real question was whether Arian had now encountered someone more powerful than the One-Eyed Preacher. Like the Nizam of Ashfall, Najran was a whisperer who had the ear of power. How far did that power extend? Could there be something to the Nineteen’s numerology—a hidden message contained within the arithmetic of the Claim? If there was, why had Najran then denied the power of the Nineteenth revelation? Why had he dismissed the story of the Adhraa as a story of the Esayin?

She had a more practical concern, as well. How long would the veil of fire hold before Najran tracked them again?

“Let’s go.” Khashayar’s gravel-edged voice. He’d crept up to them without a trace of noise.

Sinnia hissed in surprise. “You’ll be the death of me, Khorasan. Next time give us a warning.”

A corner of his mouth jerked up. “That warning would come with blood that I’d prefer not to spill.”

The words might have softened his image as a member of the Zhayedan, but when Sinnia scanned the supply camp again, she saw that the guards lay dead upon the ground.

“What of the others in the tent?”

“Don’t ask.” He pulled both of the Companions to their feet, easier now with physical contact. A camaraderie was building between them; neither woman rebuked him. Keeping his voice low, he added, “I’ve damaged their armory and spoiled their food supplies, though I set some aside for our journey. The camels are ready. I can add your packs to their load.”

Arian and Sinnia helped him load their supplies, careful to divide their waterskins evenly between their three mounts. Unlike Sinnia, Arian hadn’t ridden a camel before. Their strong smell and snorting breath came as a surprise, as did their long, thick lashes. Camel spiders scurried around their hooves. Arian suppressed a shudder. Wafa shrank back from their dun-colored mounts, his expression frightened and forlorn.

“Do you want to ride with me, boy?” Khashayar offered. Wafa shook his head with a scowl that bordered on rudeness. He clung to Sinnia’s hand, making his preference clear.

“So this is your thanks for the way I carried you across the desert. Ruffian.”

Khashayar’s grin flashed against the darkness. He boosted Arian up onto her camel, swinging into his seat with easy masculine strength. Arian kept pace with him, Sinnia and Wafa at his other side. It took them some time to adjust to the swinging gait of their mounts, but Khashayar rode without difficulty.

“You’ve done this before,” Arian observed.

“Training,” he answered briefly. He wouldn’t tell her more. The Zhayedan protected the secrets of their army.

“We should make for the Gulf of Khorasan. If we cut through the gulf, we’ll be at the court of the Negus much sooner than we planned.”

A sharp shake of his head. “I overheard the guards.” Faint contempt in the words. The Zhayedan wouldn’t be so careless discussing their plan of battle. “The Nineteen hold the Gulf. They’ve set the ports ablaze, which means there’s no safe place for us to cross. We’ll cut southeast, travel overland, skirt the far edge of the Rub Al Khali. Then we can cross the Sea of Reeds. If we journey south on the water, we’ll be able to make up some time.”

Arian considered his plan, conscious of what he’d chosen not to say.

“If we take the longer road, by the time we reach Timeback, Ashfall may have fallen.”

A grim twist of Khashayar’s lips. “Not as long as there are Zhayedan left to fight. I have my orders from the Khan. I won’t allow myself to fail them.”

Too tired to argue with his Zhayedan stubbornness, Arian subsided in her seat.

He glanced over at her, his gaze skirting the shadows under her eyes, dropping lower to the pale curves of her mouth.

“You should rest, First Oralist. I can lead the camels while you sleep. We’ll be easier to spot come daylight.” He reached for Sinnia’s lead too. “You as well, Companion. Neither of you have rested since your arrival at Ashfall. Nor long before, I suspect.”

Sinnia snatched back her lead with a sinuous twist of her shoulders. “I can manage.”

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