“Thank Zaal it was your right arm, not your left. Of course, even the skin of an armored leopard won’t save you from an atashban or a well-placed jambiya in the ribs.”
“If you would tell me what to do, then maybe I could try to do it!” An unsurprising shock goes through my shackles, but I shake it off and go on talking. “You keep giving me instructions that are mostly useless—”
Another shock, this one so sharp it makes my tongue burn. Amira’s eyes glitter with anger. “So far you have only produced a shield with some consistency—and with intent. Your other magic has been unstable, has relied on emotions you have no control over. If you don’t learn to control your emotions, I have no hope of teaching you anything useful.”
She begins to walk out of the room in clear dismissal when I stop her, intending to demand she give me more pointers. Instead, what comes out is: “Why do you hate me so much?”
The flicker of surprise in her dark eyes disappears so quickly that, for a moment, I think I imagined it. She shakes off my hand on her arm. “You’re pathetic, little princess. Not everyone in the world has to like you. Least of all me.”
She leaves me standing there, openmouthed, simmering with anger, and is already gone by the time I produce a burst of magic: a faint glow of green in my dagger before it flickers out.
“You’re in a temper.” Kali’s voice stops me in my tracks on the way back from the armory. “Did you forget about our meeting?”
“Of course not.” I am grateful it’s dark, so she can’t detect the lie directly from my face. A pair of fingers lightly pinch my cheek.
“A liar who smells like dung.” A fanas emerges from the darkness, its flames illuminating Kali’s grin.
“Do you even need me to tell you why?” I ask, exasperated.
“Shhhh. You’ll wake Juhi.” Kali places the lantern on the ledge of the balcony overlooking the courtyard. “She’s having one of her headaches.”
“What happened to her? To you?” I point to her injury. “You’ll tell me, right? You swore you would!”
“That’s why we’re meeting here, aren’t we?” Kali pauses for a moment. “Juhi saw something while scrying her shells. She insisted she had to find someone in the Desert of Dreams. I wouldn’t let her go alone, of course. It was probably a good idea I did go with her, because we ended up finding a pack of dustwolves instead.”
“Goddess!” I wince. Rabid and ferocious, dustwolves are known to tear fully armed Sky Warriors apart. Juhi and Kali are lucky to have escaped alive. “Who in Svapnalok were you looking for?”
Kali shakes her head. “I’ve said too much already. Listen, Gul. I know Amira is hard to take, but she’s brilliant at death magic—the only one of us apart from Juhi who’s capable of wielding an atashban. That’s why Juhi picked her to train you over me.”
“But she’s so difficult to work with! She doesn’t want to train me. She hates me!”
“Amira doesn’t hate you. Not really.” Kali shrugs. “There might be a bit of jealousy involved. Before you came along, Amira was the star of Juhi’s eyes, the girl who might have been the One.”
The One. The prophesied Star Warrior who is meant to take down the king. Had it been anyone other than Amira, I might have sympathized with her. “I don’t know why she’s so worried. I can whisper to animals, yes, but I can barely do any death magic—apart from a shield spell. Or two.”
“Don’t belittle yourself. You can do magic,” Kali says. “If you didn’t get blocked by what happened with that novice, you would’ve had more control over it sooner.”
“That novice nearly died!”
“Death is a risk every trainee faces during magical combat,” Kali says firmly. “In any case, I think Amira may be good for you. Her bark has always been worse than her bite—even though her bite is pretty bad. According to her, you haven’t suffered enough.”
The words take a while to sink in. “Suffered enough? What does that mean?”
Kali gives me a wary look. “Amira and I went through a lot at the labor camp. More than losing our families. We didn’t have any saviors until Juhi came along, and by then it was too late for us in some ways. Certain sufferings harden you more than others.”
Rape. Torture. I heard the stories through other Sisters when they thought I wasn’t listening.
“Amira went through even more than I did,” Kali continues. “She resents you for it—which is her problem entirely, not yours. But you need to also start toughening up. Stop taking every little thing to heart.”
“I don’t take every little thing to heart!”
Kali raises an eyebrow.
“All right, so maybe I could be better about it,” I admit. “But she imparts nothing except criticism and taunts. I never know what she wants me to do, how she expects me to figure things out for myself. What kind of teaching is that?”
“The sort that life gives you. The world you are going into is not going to care for your feelings.”
Maybe not, I think. But there are differences in Kali’s reprimands and Amira’s. Amira’s hardness comes from a place of contempt. I may fear Amira, even pity her for her sufferings, but I do not respect her.
“I will try,” I say out loud. How, I don’t know.
There’s a pause before Kali replies. “How did you produce your shield?”
I blink, surprised by the change in subject. “I guess I concentrated on the word protect. And … I remembered a time my magic had emerged without my knowing, protecting me from harm.” I tell Kali about how my mother caught me when I jumped from that tree, how I floated above the ground. “I felt calm
