deal with me anymore. Wasn’t prepared for this kind of fight. Hadn’t expected me to be able to hurt him. Hadn’t dreamed I’d be able to withstand his weapon.
I pressed my advantage, slashing at every vulnerable point I could reach with the dagger as he blocked my sword swings. Within seconds his chest and good arm were covered in red, while the blood he’d lost from his left shoulder trailed down his back like a wet cape.
“You’re going down,” I whispered triumphantly.
He kicked at me and I jumped back, giving him the distance he needed to bring his whip back into play. For a fleeting moment I saw him consider it. Realized he meant to go for my face. Blind me if possible. It was a good strategy. I moved in, hoping to ward it off by being too close for the strike to hit me clean when it finally came. Then the Magistrate surprised me.
He wheeled around and ran back the way he’d come, his injured arm flopping against his side until he finally grabbed his wrist to keep it from moving.
“Oh no you don’t!” I sprinted after him, tasting the win like dark chocolate on my tongue.
“Jasmine!”
What the hell?
Still running, I glanced over my shoulder. It was Asha, standing on the sideline, waving his arms like he wanted me to call time-out. I looked back at the Magistrate. He’d almost made it off the field. If I let him out of this plane, I figured he’d go back to hell. And I didn’t have anything left I was willing to sacrifice to follow him there. “I’m busy!” I yelled.
“Please! The need is dire. I wouldn’t have come otherwise. Thousands of lives balance on our swift actions.”
The Magistrate was gone. Too fast for me, even with all the wounds I’d inflicted, he’d split the battlefield and run home to nurse his wounds. Get better. Raise an army. Come back and flatten my ass.
I strode over to Asha, getting more and more steamed with every step. “
Now
you decide to interfere?
NOW?
When I’m on the verge of saving my brother’s life? I should do the world a favor. Split you in half this instant! Why didn’t I get mahghul guts all over the inside of your car when I had the chance?”
“I have no idea,” said Asha as he grabbed my elbow, hustled me to the portal, which, from this side, looked like a gigantic metal door. The kind you expect to see on the loading dock of an aircraft carrier.
“Could you, for once, quit sounding so kind? I’m deeply pissed at you!”
“Rightfully so. And I promise, if there is anything I can do to make it up to you, I will. But right now, we have an emergency situation.”
“No,” I said, as the metal sort of fizzled and we walked through the resulting hole into the streets of Tehran. “
You
have a situation that, once again, you are unwilling to handle all by yourself. It’s a character flaw, Asha. I’d think you’d want to work on that. Build up your backbone, so to speak.”
“I am,” Asha insisted. “Which is why I came to get you. If this country loses Zarsa, nothing I do will make any difference for the next five hundred years. But why should she listen to me? All I have done is stand around and let her get herself deeper and deeper into the mess in which she currently finds herself.”
“What mess?” I demanded as we walked toward Anvari’s. Actually it was more like a two-legged race. I was dressed so unacceptably that I could easily be arrested in the time it took for us to cross the few blocks from the portal to Zarsa’s door. So Asha had yanked off his turban, wound it around me the best he could and then held me close, hiding the rest of me with the proximity of his body. As I struggled to match his long stride I said, “We straightened it all out last night. The deal’s off. Vayl’s not going to turn her. Soheil doesn’t think she’s having an affair. End of story.”
“Not quite,” murmured Asha as we reached the back entrance to the store. He opened the door and let me in. The smell of kerosene made me gag. Instantly I knew Zarsa had not accepted our solution to her terrible dilemma and had instead come up with her own fiery plan.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
A
sha and I rushed into Zarsa’s little back room, where she stood against the wall, a burning candle in her hand, her hair and clothes wet, limp with the fuel she’d poured over herself. I expected to find Soheil on his knees on the worn red and gold carpet that covered the floor, begging her to blow the candle out. But he and the children were conspicuously absent.
A letter sat on the round table that dominated the room, which Zarsa had used for her readings. The shop was in the front of the building. It was closed, which told me she’d been minding the business alone. The family lived upstairs. And though I knew Zarsa had never experienced such despair, I couldn’t believe she meant to burn down her family’s home and sole means of support. So she must be psyching herself up to take to the street. Make that final dramatic statement with a self-inflicted funeral pyre.
“Asha, you are a complete idiot,” I whispered out the corner of my mouth. “You have brought an assassin to talk a woman out of suicide. You couldn’t have made a worse choice if you’d gone back in time, plucked Cleopatra, Sylvia Plath, and Marilyn Monroe off their deathbeds and brought them here with orders to cheer Zarsa up.”
“Please,” he begged. “You have immense powers. I can feel them flowing over you like waterfalls. Must they all pertain to destruction? Surely one of them can be directed toward
saving
a life?”
