“Well, you’ll get your wish,” he assured me, leveling the point of his sword at my chest, though he was several feet too far away to thrust it home. “You can either surrender and die swiftly, or you can fight and die slowly. Your choice.”
He wasn’t wrong. I was going to die. I saw that now. This had been one desperate act too far. I had been too reckless. But I’d saved Lakshmi. Arjun would care for her like his own sister. Sikander would protect her. Hina would treat her like a little princess in a newly freed Zindh. They didn’t need me anymore. They would be okay.
“Your choice, Razia,” Karim growled, taking a small step forward, his men following his lead, cutting the distance just that little bit shorter. “Quick or slow, what’s it going to be?”
I considered that for a moment, and then I realized that there was one last chance. One last hope. I stepped back, pressing myself up against the window, making sure that I was well positioned for what I was about to do, and then I sheathed my katars, noting Karim’s triumphant grin. But before he could step forward to plunge his firangi through my heart, I said, “If I’m going to die today, Karim, then it’s going to be on my terms—not yours.” And I flung myself out the window.
CHAPTER 29
Sultana!” I shrieked at the top of my lungs as I tumbled backward out the window, snatching the rope and swinging along the side of the tower, kicking with my legs, running as far as I could before the rope went taut. I braced myself for what was coming.
“Sultana! Here, girl!” I cried as men began poking their heads out of the windows of the tower to see what was going on. The sun was just starting to peek above the horizon, and I saw the muzzles of rifles appear. I couldn’t stay here any longer. I had to let go. So I kicked off hard, and I swung.
The wind roared in my ears and pulled at my clothes as I raced in a sweeping arc beside the tower, holding the rope with both hands, my legs dangling free below me. I accelerated, faster and faster, until the rope pulled me skyward once more, and I let go, the momentum carrying me clear of the tower, hurling me out into empty space. I screamed Sultana’s name one last time out of sheer desperation, and then I spread my arms wide, bracing myself for the long plummet to the ground.
But the ground vanished, replaced by bright blue scales, and my arms went around a familiar neck, holding on for dear life as azure wings spread wide, catching the wind and pulling us higher and higher into the sky. I let loose a cry of sheer, panicked joy, heedless of the muskets shooting at us, knowing they didn’t have a prayer of hitting us, but then Sultana beat her wings and nearly jostled me off her back, and I realized that if I was going to survive, I was going to have to find some way of getting into my saddle. The trouble was, if I loosened my grip on her scales at all, I was sure I was going to fall. But even I didn’t have the grip strength to make it all the way to shore clinging to my zahhak’s neck scales.
I chanced a look behind me at the saddle, so tantalizingly close, and yet so impossibly far away. It was just a few feet. I thought I could get to it if I just eased myself back, but if I slipped off . . . I shuddered to think about what would happen if I did that. But my fingers were burning, and my muscles were aching. If I didn’t try it now, I’d never survive this.
I took one or two quick breaths to work up the courage, and then I relaxed my grip on Sultana’s scales, pushing myself back toward the saddle. I expected to slide smoothly and gracefully back to the base of the saddle, and then I’d be able to work my way into it and secure myself with the straps, but that wasn’t what happened at all. Instead, the wind shoved me right off the side of her neck, and into open air once more.
I waited for the rush of the wind, for the plummet earthward, but what I got was a sharp set of teeth snatching me out of the air. I cringed, stifling a scream, horrified and frightened and sure that I was going to be the only zahhak rider in history to be devoured by her own mount, but somehow none of Sultana’s teeth cut me. She kept such fine control over her jaw that aside from my whole midsection being covered in her slobber, I was none the worse for wear.
I couldn’t believe it. I was so thrilled to be alive and so shocked I wasn’t dead and so scared and so happy all at once that I just started crying as she carried me away in her mouth, flapping over the water without a care in the world. Of course, clutched in her jaws, I could see that jammed in between two of her teeth were the tattered bits of cloth and the shredded flesh of the Mahisagari guardsmen she’d bitten a few minutes earlier, and I felt both a little sickened at the sight, and profoundly grateful that I’d been so good to her when she was little.
“Razia?” Arjun exclaimed. “Are you all right?”
I glanced up, somewhat mortified to see Arjun, flying with Lakshmi in his rear gunner’s seat, atop Padmini’s back just a few feet off Sultana’s wing. Of course,
