Sukharam looked up and stared into Nasim’s eyes. A bit of courage seemed to spark within him at those words. “I am.”
“Then come”-he offered Sukharam his hand-“for there is much to do.”
After the barest moment’s hesitation, Sukharam stood and took it.
With Sukharam at his side, Nasim walked the cold streets of Trevitze, heading toward the city square and the hovel he’d rented beyond it. As he neared the rise that would give him a clear view of the square below, he saw a girl waving from the shadows of an alley.
“Quickly,” Rabiah said.
Nasim could hear people talking on the street. They were still hidden behind the rise, but they were coming closer. He moved quickly and quietly, pulling Sukharam by the wrist. Sukharam, thankfully, heard the urgency in Rabiah’s voice and remained silent.
They made it to the alley and hunkered down, using a fat rain barrel to hide behind. Dusk had fallen on Trevitze, but there was still enough light to see down the alley if one’s eyes were sharp.
The voices approached, and soon several men and a robed woman walked by. One of the men wore a white turban of the style that many of Yrstanla’s ruling class wore; it was large and curved, like an olive on a thumb.
It was not he that made Nasim’s heart jump. It was the woman. Her name was Ushai Kissath al Shahda, and she had been following Nasim for months. He remembered hearing her name during his short time in Iramanshah. He had heard it again several times during his stay in the floating village of Mirashadal, so when he heard it once more in the slums of Aleke s ir, he had known that Fahroz had sent others to find him, to return him to her care. Nasim and Rabiah had fled the capital the very same day, and from then on, from village to village and city to city, every time Nasim thought he had lost her, Ushai would turn up again, though thankfully he or Rabiah-who had become very adept at sensing the signs of pursuit-found her, and they had fled once more.
Ushai stopped suddenly. She continued speaking with the portly man, who was very likely the khedive of the city, but she cocked her head to one side as she did, turning ever so slightly toward the alley until Nasim could see the softly glowing stone of alabaster in the circlet upon her brow. The wind was low this evening, but it kicked up, tossing Ushai’s long, dark hair around her shoulders.
Nasim’s fingers went cold. Through Rabiah, he touched Adhiya for a bare moment, but then stopped and cursed himself for a fool. Fahroz had not been unkind to him, but he knew that he could not allow her to keep him from his path. He would do what must be done, but still, he could not harm Ushai-the Aramahn did not do such things. If the fates saw fit for her to find him, he would embrace it and find another way to continue his journey.
The moment passed. Ushai and the man moved on. Their voices faded, and soon, there was little sound but the baying of a pack of dogs somewhere in the hills to the west of Trevitze.
Nasim looked to Rabiah and Sukharam. Both of them looked as nervous as he felt. They left without speaking another word.
CHAPTER TWO
Khamal walks along the edge of the water as the surf rolls up against his feet. The frothing water is cold against his feet and ankles. The sound of breaking waves is all that he hears.
Ahead of him, two creatures walk. They hunch as they shuffle along the sand. The skin of their eyes has grown over. The features of their faces have shriveled, but their mouths are wide and hinged strangely, making them look like ashen things of clay, not creatures of flesh and blood. The two of them walk side by side, but they do not acknowledge one another. For all Khamal knows, they don’t even know the other is there.
They are akhoz, creatures forged on this very island centuries ago to stop the spread of the rifts. The girl-the taller of the two-releases a call that sounds like the bleating of a goat. It is insistent and desperate.
And familiar.
Which saddens Khamal to his very core.
To Khamal’s right lies a massive rock, dark gray against the white beach and the blue-green waters of the bay. The two akhoz stop near it, waiting obediently as Khamal approaches.
“Go,” Khamal says to one of them, the girl.
She turns, her eyeless face looking up at him, her mouth pulled back in a feral grin.
“Go!”
She scuffles along the beach away from him. A wave surges up and sizzles as it rolls across her feet. She bounds away from the water, looks back one last time, and then gallops toward Alayazhar.
Khamal turns to the other akhoz-a boy whose limbs are so frail his joints look diseased-and motions him toward the rock.
As the boy begins to climb toward the flattened top of it, Khamal touches the handle of the khanjar at his belt, as if to assure himself that it is still there. “Nasim, wake.”
Nasim opened his eyes to find Rabiah kneeling over him. His clothes were drenched, and his breath came rapidly.
He swallowed, trying to clear away the feeling of cotton in his mouth, but Rabiah already had a clay mug in one hand. She held it out for him. He accepted it, feeling-as he always did upon waking from one of these episodes- like the Nasim of old, the Nasim who could control nothing, who could not differentiate the material world of Erahm from the spirit world of Adhiya. He was better now-Fahroz and the mahtar had seen to that-but he had never found a way to free himself from the shadow of Khamal. These were not dreams. They were memories. Khamal’s memories, playing as if they were his own. Some were simple, benign, but many were filled with pain and yearning and shame and a thousand other emotions that Nasim felt but did not understand. Not without more of Khamal’s memories to work with.
He knew that these were the legacy of Khamal. He had no doubt thought to pass them to Nasim, to give him the clues he would need to return to Ghayavand to heal the rifts there, but Muqallad and Sariya had ruined his plans and cursed Nasim in the same moment, just as Khamal had been passing beyond his life and toward the next.
Nasim drank from the mug, felt the cool water fill his mouth and slip down his throat to his stomach. It felt good, and he was grateful for Rabiah’s help, but he could not help but feel weak at times like this. He could not help but feel broken.
“He and I need to speak,” he said, handing the mug back to Rabiah.
By the light of the crescent moon coming in through their lone window, he saw Rabiah nod, but he also saw the look of hurt in her eyes.
“We’ll be back as soon as we’re able,” was all he could think to say.
He tapped Sukharam on the shoulder. The boy jerked his head up and looked around the room wildly. He focused on Nasim, and then looked away. This was a boy that had trouble facing his fears. It was a habit Nasim was going to have to break him of.
Assuming he came.
“Come,” Nasim said. “We have things to discuss.”
Sukharam stood without a word. He looked at Rabiah, who watched this exchange before lying down on her pallet and turning her back to them.
If Sukharam was confused by this, he said nothing of it. He followed Nasim out from their hovel, a room in the slums of Trevitze for which they had promised thrice the price for a bit of discretion. The air was chill. Their footsteps crunched softly over the frost-rimed grass. Around them were ramshackle homes, all of them dark, leaving Nasim feeling alone in the world with only Sukharam as his companion. In many ways, this was very much the way of things.
“You should know that you are free to leave. You owe me nothing.”
When Sukharam responded, his voice was tentative. Weak. “I owe you my life.”
“Your life is your own, to do with as you will.”
Sukharam did not respond, so Nasim gave him time to consider this. They turned to the east and took a narrow alley that led to a wider road. As they took this toward a bare, rocky hill, the bulk of Trevitze fell behind them, and as they rose higher along the hill, they could see more and more of the city described by the moonlight
