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  replied Eofar, his distress coming across like a splash of muddy ochre.

 

 

  The sooner the better, Jachad thought to himself. At least, he hoped it was to himself.

  said Eofar, but his emotions were so murky that Jachad felt this subject was even less to his liking than the last.

  Jachad asked briskly. With a suitably dramatic flourish, he produced the little bottle and held it up between his thumb and forefinger.

  Eofar’s eyes shone more brightly as he examined the merchandise. he said, but his attempt to feign disappointment was laughable; his desire was reaching out like a pair of grasping hands.

 

 

  Jachad shook his head apologetically. He felt Eofar’s dismay and pressed his advantage.

  The words dropped like iron ingots, dark and hard. He reached beneath his cloak and pulled out a fat little purse. His words tailed off.

  Jachad scratched his head and desperately tried to conceal the fact that he had been prepared to take twenty-five. Finally he said,

  Eofar’s surge of relief nearly knocked Jachad backward. He wrapped the little bottle back up in the scrap of cloth and held it out with a smile. Instinctively Eofar reached for it. His hand came close enough for Jachad to feel the chill radiating from his skin before they both remembered themselves and pulled back.

  said Jachad. He deposited the little package carefully in the sand between them. Eofar picked up the bottle and left the purse lying in the same spot for Jachad to retrieve.

 

  He flipped opened the purse and tossed a coin to Eofar, who caught it neatly in his pale hand.

  Eofar ruminated as he undid the clasps of his cloak and carefully tucked the bottle into the pocket of his shirt.

  said Jachad.

 

 

 

  Jachad answered, trying to mask his impatience with extra good cheer. They’d had this conversation before, and his answer was always the same. The bargaining had gone as well as could be expected up to this point, and now he wanted Eofar to leave so he could catch up with his companion. He certainly did not want to waste his time defending his people’s customs to a Norlander yet again. It was bad enough that once he reached the city he would have to contend with the open hostility of the Shadari, who even after twenty-odd years still blamed the Nomas for failing to come to their aid against the Norlanders.

  He began walking casually toward Eofar’s triffon, hoping Eofar would follow. he continued.

  said Eofar, following Jachad to his mount. She lifted her massive head from between her front paws and sat up as they approached. Jachad patted her coarse fur, examining the small, round ears protruding from tufts of longer fur, the deep eye-ridges and long snout. With the ashas’ secret passage in and out of the temple lost to history, the triffons were the only way to come and go, and Jachad was forced to ride on one of the creatures each time he came to negotiate with the governor for the garrison’s supplies and sell trinkets to the soldiers. He had grown accustomed to it over the years; the last few times, he had even opened his eyes.

  Eofar said as she bent her short legs slightly to make it easier for him to mount. He buckled himself into the harness and took up the reins, then stopped suddenly.

  Jachad turned and pretended to look where he was pointing. There was no sense in denying that they were together: Eofar’s sharp Norlander eyes could easily spot her smeary footprints leading away, even in the tricky half-light. Jachad reminded himself that the best lie was simply an edited version of the truth.

 

  said Jachad.

  Eofar answered. <“Let all so afflicted…”> He trailed off.

 

  Eofar stared thoughtfully across the sands at the dwindling figure.

  Jachad said, clamping down on the anger this unexpected disclosure elicited.

  Eofar answered without looking away from Jachad’s associate.

  Jachad tapped his fingers together to disguise the little sparks sizzling between them and stepped back, out of the way of Aeda’s enormous wings.

  Eofar whistled to his mount and she crouched low, then sprang into the air. A moment later the Norlander and the triffon were winging their way back to the temple. Jachad watched until their shadowy figures blended into the temple’s stark façade.

  Then he scooped up his pack and ran after his companion.

  He tracked her easily, though her footprints had shifted away from their original easterly direction. He began
to see gaps here and there, as if she were stumbling, then the trail veered even further from due east and Jachad, looking round, saw the reason why. She was heading toward a low circle of sand-smoothed boulders a little to the north. He stopped and watched as she stumbled and fell to her knees a dozen paces from the stones. Reflexively he started toward her, but before he had gone very far she was on her feet again and a moment later, she had disappeared behind the rocks.

  The dawn breeze whisked across the desert and rustled through Jachad’s brilliant silk robes, offering him a greeting, a whispered welcome to the new day. The sand at his feet swirled and shifted, and the sun’s first rays glowed behind the smudgy mountains. Jachad Nisharan, king of the Nomas, dropped his pack into the sand and knelt down to pray to his father, the sun god, Shof.

  Absolute privacy, every day, at dawn and dusk, without fail: that was the condition she had imposed on him, the same condition she set for anyone who desired her services, and in the two weeks she and Jachad had been traveling together he had scrupulously honored his promise.

  The wind began to gather strength, blowing westward from the sea.

  He looked at the rocks and wet his lips. Dire warnings echoed in his mind. He had been putting off this moment, but they would reach the Shadar before sunset and he might never have another opportunity. He had to see for himself; if he let this chance slip by, he might as well have stayed with his tribe on the other side of the desert.

  He stood up, and as he edged toward the rocks, the wind died down and the sand hissed back to the desert floor. Jachad dropped his pack and silently slid through a narrow space between two of the boulders.

  He saw her immediately. She was laying face-up, her eyes closed, half-buried in the sand. The long fingers of her right hand were extended, scratching deep grooves into the dirt. He watched as a tremendous convulsion ripped through her and then left her lying flat on her back again, but now completely motionless. He dropped to his knees and crept forward.

  Her soot-black hair, roughly tied back with a rag, spilled out from beneath her hood, contrasting ghoulishly with the gray glimmer of her skin. His eyes traced each scar on her face: the straight white seam on her broad forehead, the crescent-shaped mark on her hollow cheek, the jagged line that distorted the delicate shape of her thin, blue-tinged lips and pulled them up into a perpetual smirk. The cord of the eye-patch over her right eye split her features into separate sections, making her face look like something that had been broken, then clumsily repaired. But beneath the scars and the eye-patch, Jachad could still see the face of his former playfellow, the fourteen-year-old girl she had been nearly eight years ago.

  “Meiran?” he whispered, reaching out his freckled hand to stroke the strands of black hair away from her damp forehead. He could feel a faint coolness rising up from her pearly gray skin. But the instant he touched her she bolted upright and her hand shot out and grabbed him by the throat.

  “Who’s there? Who are you!” she cried, one hand choking him while the other groped blindly at the air.

  “It’s me!” he gasped, trying to pull away from her, but her grip was too strong. Then he felt her fingers scrambling near his abdomen and suddenly she had his knife. Panicking, Jachad struck his hands together and orange flames licked over his palms. “Meiran,” he shouted hoarsely, “it’s me, Jachad!”

  She released his neck but lunged at him, and her knee caught him squarely in the chest, knocking him flat. As the point of his own knife came screaming toward his face, he threw up his arms and a sheet of flame burst to life in front of him.

  She recoiled from the crackling heat, falling backward between his scrabbling legs, and the knife went flying from her hand. It landed in the sand, out of reach.

  “Meiran,” he shouted again, crawling backward away from her, “Meiran, remember where we are—it’s me—”

  She drew back, panting heavily as she fell onto the sand, and Jachad, still reeling, watched as she drew in an unsteady breath, then snaked her finger beneath the black eye-patch and slid it over the silver-green left eye. It was the dark brown right eye, rounder and slightly larger than the one on the left, which focused on Jachad briefly before sliding away.

  He exhaled in a long, relieved sigh and flopped down onto the sand in front of her. She sat across from him, staring at nothing, her scarred face expressionless. The desert silence pressed down on them.

  “It’s a lot worse than it used to be, isn’t it?” he asked finally, but Meiran spoke at exactly the same moment, saying, “You broke your promise.” And then: “That was a long time ago.”

  “I know,” he admitted in response to both of her statements. She didn’t look particularly angry; that was something. “Seven years. You can’t blame me for wanting to know if you’re all right. Seven years without a word—for the first three, we didn’t even know if you were dead or alive. Then when word got around about this new mercenary…” He trailed off, watching her face. “More than once I thought about trying to find you.”

  He saw her lips part, but then they closed again, biting down on whatever she had been about to say. Jachad’s skin prickled: he had come very close to getting her to say something she hadn’t wanted to reveal.

  “But I figured you knew how to find me if you wanted me,” he continued, as if he hadn’t noticed her reaction, “as evidenced by the fact that you’re here. I’m only trying to understand you. You turn up at my caravan after all these years—just when the Shadari have put out the word they want to hire you, and with a bottle of elixir, just when that’s needed—without any explanations.” He got up and went to retrieve his knife, watching her from the corner of his eye as he slid it back into its sheath. Her breathing had slowed and her arms hung heavily at her sides; for the first time, she looked weary. But she was listening. He wandered back and sat down. “So, have you ever tried to find a cure?”

  Her eye stayed fixed on the sand. “I have better things to do.”

  “What things? Things like going to the Shadar?” Jachad asked, allowing himself a hint of sarcasm.

  “I’m being paid to go—and you’re being paid to bring me, remember?”

  He laughed. “You can’t possibly need whatever money the Shadari slaves have managed to scrape together for their uprising—after all, you’re supposed to be the greatest mercenary anyone’s ever seen. In all of these years you’ve never lost a fight. You’ve done everything from commanding whole armies to besting champions in single combat. You took the tower at Treborn with a dozen men in a single day, after King Grayson had laid siege to it for almost a year. To this day, no one has figured out how you got the Chastian army out of the Kabor Pass.” He smiled proudly. “Our Meiran.”

  She looked up at him. “That’s not my name.”

  “Well, neither is ‘the Mongrel,’ and I’m certainly not going to call you that. Meiran is a good Nomas name—and you never minded it before.” He ran a hand through his fiery hair.

  She grunted noncommittally.

  “Would you like to hear a funny story?” he asked, conscious of holding her attention at last. “It’s about your pact with demons. They say that at dawn and dusk you sneak off and sacrifice a baby. You cut out its heart and eat it before the heart stops beating. Of course, babies aren’t generally easy things to come by on a battlefield, but apparently”—he paused for effect—“you travel with your own supply.” He grinned, and finally a dry, scratching sound that might have been a laugh escaped her. Jachad felt his freckled cheeks flush and he snapped up a few spits of flame and playfully flicked them at the ground.

  Then Meiran stood up, brushed the sand from her robes, and replaced her cowl. She led the way out between the rocks and he recovered his pack and slung it over his shoulder. They struck out again for the mountains, Jachad trying to match his shorter strides to hers, until he stopped suddenly.

  She walked on without him for a few paces, but then looked back.

  Trying to ignore the cold knot in his stomach, he forced himself to voice th
e question he’d been too cowardly to ask before now. “Why go back, Meiran? Tell me, why now, after all this time?”

  The sun was just beginning to crest the mountains, painting the tops of their low bluffs in molten shades of gold and copper. With her back to the sun, he could see nothing of her except her stark silhouette.

  “There’s a story I’ve been waiting a long time to hear,” she said after a moment. “I want to hear it now.”

  He went to her as she turned back to the mountains. “And then what?” he asked, standing in front of her. Peering beneath her cowl, he saw her brown eye sweep over the landscape before her, taking in the low mountains that were hiding the little white houses of the city; the temple, carved by ancient hands or even more ancient magic out of a single mass of living rock; and beyond them all, the shining ribbon of the sea.

  “I’m going to end it.”

  Chapter Two

  Rho sat on the edge of his cot in the airless barracks room and watched with mild distaste as Daem took yet another candied fruit from the jar, peeled off the leaf, and popped it into his mouth. A drop of purple juice slid down the Eotan crest on his tabard and plopped onto the dusty stone floor.

  Daem quipped, stretching out on his rumpled bed.

  said Rho, pulling himself up from his own cot and ambling over to the room’s one table, taking his boots with him. He lowered himself into what he was convinced was the world’s least comfortable chair, with the possible exception of the three others beside it, and poured himself a cup of wine.

  The syrupy scent of the fruit drifted across the square, low-ceilinged room as he chewed, mixing with the smells of lamp oil and rock dust and sweat.