CHAPTER 32
I crawled out of the saddle, tears in my eyes from the pain in my heart, and in my body too. I could hardly walk. Something was wrong with my legs, or my back, it was hard to know. I struggled to hold myself upright in the surf, but my every thought was bent on Sultana. I stroked the scales on her face, praying she would open her eyes like she always did in the stables when I did that. I looked for some sign that her nostrils were moving, that she was smelling for me, but there were no signs of life at all.
“Sultana, no!” I dropped to my knees in spite of the pain, and I clung to her, pressing my face against hers, willing her not to be dead. “Wake up,” I pleaded. “You have to wake up, sweetheart.”
“Razia!”
I looked up to see Karim staggering through the surf toward me, his firangi held tightly in his hand. Behind him, up on the shore, Amira lay in a twisted heap of broken feathers and shattered limbs. He’d hurled her at us, intent on killing us both out of spite. And poor Sultana, she’d given her life for me at the last moment.
“I’m not going to let him get away with this, girl,” I promised her, kissing a sleek cobalt scale, still warm, almost like she was still alive. But I knew those scales would be cold soon enough. She was gone, and I was going to make damned sure that I didn’t live in a world without her that still had Karim Shah in it.
I jerked my katars free of their scabbards and struggled to my feet, my legs not wanting to work. My back was alive with pain. It was lancing through my ribs and darting along my hips, shooting down my thighs. There was something wrong with me, something serious.
Karim saw it. His eyes lit up. He was hurt too. He was limping, but he didn’t look the way I did, stooped over, hardly able to put one leg in front of the other from the pain.
“I’m going to enjoy taking everything from you,” Karim growled. “My only regret is that you won’t be alive to see what I do to your little sister.”
“You’ll never touch her,” I replied, my grip on my katars tightening. “She’s safe now, with half a dozen nobles willing to protect her with their lives. And you have nothing. Your father is dead. Your mother is dead. And you’ll die today too, whether by my hand or Arjun’s or Hina’s. It doesn’t matter. You’re finished. Mahisagar is finished. You lost.”
“So did you,” he replied, smirking at Sultana’s corpse behind me. “And now you’ll die by my hand.”
“We’ll see,” I replied, because the pain in my lower body and in my heart didn’t leave much room for clever retorts. I just gritted my teeth, gripped my katars, and lurched forward through the surf, one plodding step at a time.
Karim splashed forward, his silk dhoti clinging to his knees and thighs. He lunged at me, thrusting the point of his firangi at my heart, but I beat it aside with my left katar and punched with the right.
If we’d been on dry ground, if I’d been healthy instead of hurt, I’d have driven it right through his black heart, but with my back alive with pain, with the water slowing me down, the point of my dagger never got within six inches of him. He jerked his firangi back and thrust again and again at me, using his superior reach to force me to parry frantically just to keep the sharp steel from piercing my flesh. Every instinct told me to retreat, to fall back, but that was the wrong move. I had to keep moving forward. I had to close the distance, but it was hard to make my legs answer me. Something about that fall had left my hips feeling strangely numb.
Karim grinned. He saw that I wasn’t moving my legs, and he suddenly stepped forward, thrusting for my face, forcing me to batter his blade aside, but it wasn’t there. I swung my katar wide with everything I had, expecting it to clash against his sword, but when it didn’t make impact, my back twisted and I screamed.
I landed on my hips in the surf, my body trembling from the pain. I could barely feel my legs. Was I paralyzed? Was this what that felt like?
Karim lunged at me, his firangi darting for my throat. I managed to batter it aside, pushing off the sand with my feet, the water taking some of the pressure off my body, as it was deep enough to float atop. I propelled myself back with two kicks, but it was a feeble effort, and Karim was laughing at me.
“This is too perfect,” he sneered. “You were so full of yourself. You thought you were so smart, and so strong.” He speared my right arm with his firangi, and this time there was no blocking it. I heard the point hit my bone, and blood flowed hot and fast down my arm as he jerked his blade free. But it didn’t hurt. It was just hot and numb. I knew it would hurt later—if there was a later.
He thrust again for my chest, but I did catch this one with my left katar, beating it aside to stay alive another second more. But without any way of hitting back, I knew it was hopeless. I couldn’t carry on like this. He drew back to stab me again, and I kicked water into his face, the salt stinging his eyes. I pushed myself back through the surf until I hit something firm and unyielding. Sultana’s body.
I nestled
