Hannei rode as an equal with the First Warrior and a fist of seasoned warriors for the first time in her life. For years she had looked forward to her first sharib, to being honored and feasted along with the other Ja’Akari by the Ja’Sajani. Never had she imagined that her first sharib might come after a death—and that this death might be that of the First Mother was unthinkable. Unspeakable.
Khutlani.
The warm air caressed the oiled skin of her temples, and her new-braided hair pulled her face tight as the skin of a drum. Clad only in a warrior’s short trousers, she felt as bare and free under the sun as a woman could wish. As if there was not a place in the world for shadows to hide. Beside her rode Sareta, resplendent in her warrior’s garb. The black and green, gold and scarlet plumes of a lionsnake bull swept back from her head, and the long ceremonial belt of the pride’s foremost warrior draped to one side of her saddle, gleaming in the sun with thread-of-gold. Tiny brass bells attached to her vest matched those on her mare’s tack. The bells sang a merry tune with every step, and announced to the world that on this day the Ja’Akari rode in peace.
Beyond the walls of Aish Kalumm, on the shores of the river Dibris, stood the new First Mother with her hands spread wide in welcome. Akari Sun Dragon fanned his fiery wings and blessed the people, and the sharib spread before them spoke of hope, and life, and plenty. As the wind came down the river, the sands began their ululation, calling to her, welcoming her, singing Hannei home at last.
“Is it as good as your dreams?” asked the First Warrior as they unsaddled their mares and left them to graze under the watchful eyes of the younglings. Hannei nodded to a big-eyed girl, hardly as tall as her hip, who stared at them in mute worship.
“It is as I had dreamed,” she agreed. “Though it feels wrong…” Hannei let the wind carry her words away.
“Life goes on, young warrior,” Sareta answered. “No matter what.”
She bowed her head.
As they took their places among the Ja’Akari, Neptara daughter of Nurati caught sight of them. She waved both arms as if shooing birds away from a crop, and then hiked her long skirts up to her knees and hurried to join them, a broad grin blossoming upon her beautiful face. Truly, it hurt to look at a daughter of Nurati and think that such a woman might never walk among them again. A world bereft of Umm Nurati was as unthinkable as the Zeera without sun, or sand, or horses.
“Aue, Hannei, look at you!” Neptara clasped Hannei’s hands and kissed her cheeks. “You are so gorgeous! Our enemies will fall on their swords rather than fight you. And that mare of yours! Is she Uthraki? They never sell their good mares.” Her grin was infectious. Hannei saw that she wore her mother’s pearl-and-ebon torc at her throat. “You shine like a sword in the sunlight, ehuani. Yesterday we were running through the streets wearing nothing but mud, and stealing sweets from the kitchen. Look at us today! My mother would…” Her smile faltered, and tears filled her eyes. She dropped Hannei’s hands and made as if to turn away. “Forgive me, cousin. This is your first sharib as Ja’Akari, and I did not mean… I did not mean to…”
Hannei put her arm around the taller girl’s shoulders, and gave her a small squeeze. “Your mother was worth a river of tears, ehuani.” She felt a little uncomfortable, speaking of one so newly dead, but she and Neptara had been children running naked in the streets just yesterday, after all. “She smiles upon you with the sun.”
“Khutlani,” the First Warrior warned, but her face was soft. “It is too soon to speak of such things. Under the sun I see you, Umm Neptara.”
Neptara lowered her eyes. “Under the sun I see you, First Warrior.”
“Umm Neptara?” Hannei squeaked in a very un-warriorlike voice. “Umm Neptara? When did this happen?”
Neptara—Umm Neptara—dashed the tears from her face with the back of her hand. Now Hannei noticed the thin copper bracelets of a mother-in-waiting. “Some four moons ago,” she grinned. “I will not tell you exactly which night.”
“Are you still with Zeevi?”
“None for me but my Zeevi,” the other girl agreed with a blush.
“He is good to you, then?”
“He is. When I told him…” She glanced at the First Warrior and leaned in close to whisper, “He cried.”
“Good, then I will not have to kill him. I am happy for you, ehuani. And so soon!” For the other girl had only taken her hayatani last year.
“Have you taken your hayatani yet?”
“Not yet. But the day is young!” The girls shared a laugh under the sun. It felt good.
First warrior was right—life does go on.
Sareta harrumphed, but her eyes were merry.
“Za fik, you two. Next you will start discussing the attributes of this stallion or that, and I am long past the days of rump-patting. I will see you at the feast this evening, Hannei Ja’Akari?”
Hannei bowed deeply, and her face felt sunburned from the inside. “You honor me, First Warrior.”
“Yes, I do.” The older woman winked. “Ah! Weaver Munwal! A moment of your time…” She was off in a swirl of white silk and bright feathers.
Neptara sighed after her. “When I was a little girl, I wanted nothing but to be First Warrior. To ride across the sands on my good war-trained mare, keep the prides safe, and grind our enemies beneath my heel.”
“And now?” Hannei could not quite fathom giving up that dream. It was all she had ever wanted, as well.
The other girl shrugged easily. “Now I hope for a quieter life. I have been painting with Master Louwana and she says I have a fine hand for illustrating. I love it. I have the pride within me—” she touched her belly in that odd manner peculiar to expectant mothers “—and you, my friend, will be First Warrior and keep her safe.”
Hannei shook her head at Neptara’s serene expression. “You will paint pretty pictures and bear children, when you could be riding with the wind?”
“You would rather ride into danger than kiss your daughter’s cheek?” Neptara laughed. “Every color has its place in the painting, ehuani. Peace, cousin. Who knows what tomorrow may bring? Perhaps I will ride into the face of death, and you will bear a half-dozen cubs.”
“Ai yeh, Atu forbid! But I am happy for you, if this is your wish.”
“We are both happy.” A cheeky grin. “Let us go find Tammas Ja’Sajani, and see if we can increase your happiness! It is not mete that such a pretty girl as you is still a virgin.” She clucked her tongue disapprovingly. “You will get your headdress tonight, and it is well time for you to claim your due as a warrior. You look so beautiful today, he can hardly refuse you.”
Indeed, Hannei felt beautiful. Her oiled braids swayed and stroked at the skin of her back, and her breasts were bared to the sun as was proper for a newmade warrior. Istaza Ani had once laughed that for the first year of a warrior’s adult life, no man would ever make eye contact with her, and she had been right. Uncomfortable as she found the heavy beaded girdle, she felt her heart swell with pride beneath all the admiring stares. One or two glances she might have been tempted to return—the Ja’Sajani always looked so handsome in their sky-blue touar—but Hannei had specific prey in mind.
The life of a Ja’Akari had only been half of her childhood dream, after all. The other half…
The crowd parted before her as if at the thought, and she saw the other half of her dream in all of his muscle-bound, dimpled glory.
“I was wondering how long it would take my brother to appear, once you arrived,” Neptara teased. “You must have him, Hannei, the two of you would make beautiful children.”
Indeed we would, Hannei thought. Tammas had his mother’s fine bone structure, but in his face the features were strong rather than delicate. His eyes glowed with their own warm humor, and that curly hair, ai yeh. Those shoulders.
“This is my first sharib, after all. It is only fair…”
Tammas looked up just at that moment, and his eyes locked with hers. Hannei felt something warm and wild uncoiling in the pit of her belly, like Sajani Earth Dragon waking after her long sleep. There were fires lit within her, flames that both fed her desire and fed upon it, and she gasped as she saw, for the first time, an answering flame kindle deep within a man.
Tammas closed the distance between them in a few long strides.
He moves, she thought, as if he owns the world.
“Hannei Ja’Akari.” His voice was like his eyes, warm and sweet and intoxicating. She had never expected to drown in the desert. “Hannei. Under the sun I see you and wish you a good sharib. As Ja’Sajani, I am honored to serve you today… if you wish.”
“Tammas Ja’Sajani,” she answered, and blushed at the sound of her own voice. “I would like that very much.”
His laugh shivered across her bare skin, though his eyes never strayed from hers.
“If you want anything on this day, you need but ask,” he purred. “You never can tell… I might just say no.” Then he leaned forward and kissed her on the mouth.
Her heart stopped. Akari Sun Dragon stopped his long flight across the sky and his bright golden scales dimmed toward latesun. The music stopped, the laughter, the smells and sounds of sharib, everything in the world stopped as Tammas kissed Hannei for the first time. Her hand rose of its own volition and curled into a fist in his hair as she pressed herself into him, heedless of anything but the taste and touch, the smell and the warmth.
She could feel the sweat at the back of his neck beneath her fingertips. She could feel the muscles in his jaw flex as he opened his mouth and devoured hers. The ground beneath her feet shuddered as deeply as her own flesh as Sajani stirred in her sleep, roused from her dreams by their passion.
Eventually he pulled back, just a little, and the Dragon fell once more into dreaming. A hawk screamed overhead, and the sound of sharib broke upon them like sand in a storm. Someone laughed nearby, the sound as harsh and unwelcome as a carrion crow’s mocking voice.
“…need to get a tent.”
“Ssst!” Neptara hissed. “It is Ayyam Binat, and her right.”
“Hannei Ja’Akari. Have you chosen this man as your hayatani?”
At the sound of the First Warrior’s voice, Hannei was able to find her breath. She took a small step back from Tammas. He did the same… but she could still feel the heat of him.
“Yes,” she said, and blushed again. “If he agrees.”
“Ohhhh, yes.” Tammas’s voice was so deep and husky she could not help but sway close to him again.
“Here I thought this sharib was going to be dull.” The First Warrior’s voice was dry and crackled with good humor. “Well, it is a good match, in any case. Ah, ah! Not before dinner, children.” Hands were on them, between them, pushing the two of them farther apart. “Hannei Ja’Akari, I think you had best stay with me until after the ceremonies. It would not do for you to miss your first sharib, now would it? Feast before dessert, girl.”
This time the laughter was good-natured. Hannei sighed as a crowd of blue touar surrounded Tammas and led him away. His bonded vash’ai, magnificent Dairuz, padded over and regarded her with his yellow-and-green eyes. He pulled his lips back from his tusks and opened his mouth at her, curling his pink tongue as he tasted her scent, and then shook his head with a satisfied grunt.
You will do, he said to her directly. A fine queen, a strong huntress for him. I approve.
“Sire.” She bowed her head. He stared at her a moment longer and then, catlike, turned away with no further word.
The First Warrior watched her closely. Her face gave nothing away, but Hannei thought she did not approve.
“First Warrior. I know I am supposed to ask his mother’s permission first, but…”
“I can tell you that Nurati would have given her permission, Hannei Ja’Akari. She had you in mind for Tammas all along. Ehuani, it is too late now for regret.”
Hannei regretted nothing.
Were Akari himself to forbid me this man, she thought, I would disobey.
Neptara poked her arm and grinned. “I thought the two of you were going to—”
“Here, girl.” An older woman, short and sturdy and wearing bright robes of yellow and green, pressed a wineskin into Hannei’s hand. “This will help. I went through the same thing, when I was your age. One day I could not stand the sight of my Hadid, and the next it was as if I had been struck by lightning.”
Hannei lifted the wineskin to her lips, in part to block the image of middle-aged persons kissing one another, and shot a thin stream of jiinberry wine into her mouth. It was crisp, and sweet, and tasted of summer days on the river.
“My thanks, Craftmistress.” She tried to hand the wineskin back, but the other woman stepped back, both hands high, a grin creasing her round features.
“Oh, you keep it, girl.” She chuckled. “You are going to need all the help you can get. Well do I remember Ayyam Binat.”
Hannei laughed and took another mouthful of wine. It was better, with Tammas away, but she could feel him pulling at her spirit as if he were a lodestone and she a handful of iron dust.
Or more accurately, iron lust.
The rest of the day trickled by like sand through an hourglass, every minute of it spent soaked in awareness of his presence.
The Ja’Sajani hosted this sharib, as the Ja’Akari would host one in autumn, the wardens would feast and gift the warriors profusely, placing the women in their debt until the harvest time. In this small way the people sought to maintain the balance of sa and ka.
The first order of business was the granting and passing on of honors and titles. Although Hannei usually dozed through this part—something she and Sulema had both learned to do with their eyes open—this year was different. This year, instead of Umm Nurati presenting them all with her newest babe, a new First Mother was presented to the people. Nurati, the Mother of Mothers, would never again bless them with her beauty and grace.
Hannei could scarce remember Nurati’s predecessor, a dusky woman with white hair who had favored garlands of red and yellow flowers. She had certainly never expected to watch as Nurati’s replacement stood to have the white sand-eagle headdress placed upon her brow, or the silver-and-lapis torc fastened about her neck. This new woman seemed an impostor, even to the child she held in her arms, the fussing, squalling infant daughter of Nurati.
Hannei craned her neck to see Tammas. Tears shone on his face, and she wished she were standing at his side.
After the naming of a new First Mother came the results of the Ja’Sajani census counts—live births, stillbirths, debts incurred and paid, and deaths. More had died this past year than had been born, as had been the norm since before Hannei’s time, but this had been an especially bad year. Only two people—one of them Ismai—had been chosen Zeeravashani, and Paraja had elected to return to the wild vash’ai following the death of her kithren. A sore blow to the people.
She listened with only half a heart as the stallion rights for the year were announced. The beads she and Sulema had tied into the manes of those young Uthraki stallions had gone unnoticed, and they now had the right to breed their mares to Zeitan fleet-foot and Ruhho the brave-hearted black. Sulema should be with her on this day of all days—this was to have been their victory together, not hers alone. But at the next thought she smothered a grin.
When Sulema found out about Tammas, she was going to kill her.
Hannei wondered whether her sword-sister had found any of the outlander men suitable as hayatani, but thought not.
Several of the Ja’Sajani danced for them, a man’s dance of high jumps and shouts and suggestive spear-thrusting. It was an exciting dance, meant to rouse the blood and catch the eyes of young women on the prowl. And it was quite effective. Hannei drank the last of the jiinberry wine and was glad Tammas had not been chosen for this year’s dance. A warrior could only be expected resist so much, after all.
As if he heard her thought, Tammas turned his head just enough to catch her eye, and his dimples deepened in a way that made her think of him…
“Hannei Ja’Akari.”
At the sound of the familiar voice, her head whipped forward with an audible snap. Neptara winced in sympathy. Sareta rose and made her way to the table where the other important women were seated. Ismai stood there, dressed all in Ja’Sajani blue and looking more like his older brother than ever. He held a large silk-draped bundle in his hands and a grin on his face. At his side stood his young vash’ai queen with the laughing eyes.
“Hannei!” he called again, though he looked straight at her. “Hannei Ja’Akari!”
Hannei stepped forward, pushing her way through a crowd that mostly outranked her, murmuring a thousand and one apologies as she did so. She stopped as she came before her younger cousin and bowed, and then started a little when she straightened and had to look up at his face. When had Ismai grown so tall? When had his shoulders grown so broad?
“I cannot reach your head from there.”
“Ja’Sajani?” She stepped forward.
Ismai whisked the silk cover away with a flourish, and the crowd gasped its admiration. In his hands, he held a lionsnake headdress nearly the equal of Sareta’s own. His grin widened and he held it high for all to see.
“Feather and flesh and bone of an enemy,” he said, looking down at her with pride in his eyes. “Slain by your sword-sister’s hand, to be worn by you with honor.” He set the headdress upon Hannei’s brow, and fastened it into her hair.
Fashioned from the bright blue and green, indigo and violet and black plumes of the old she-bitch Sulema had killed, the headdress swept back from her temples and brushed the tops of her shoulders. Tiny silver bells and a teardrop of lapis lazuli as large as her thumb depended from a network of delicate silver chains draped across her forehead.
It was light as a breath, and lifted her heart for all to see. It was heavier than a mountain, weighted down as it was with her duty to the pride.
Next Ismai shook out a vest elaborately beaded with snake’s teeth, lapis and bone. He reached around Hannei and fastened the clasps, blushing furiously as he did so. He took great care never to touch her skin, and she resisted the urge to tease him as if they were still children.
Hannei thought she must look like a daughter of Zula Din preparing to ride into battle. For the first time, she felt like a warrior. The magnificence of the moment swelled in her chest until it threatened to spill from her eyes.
“Ja’Akari,” whispered Ismai, playmate of her youth, now in the blue touar of a man grown. “Aue, Hannei, truly you are Ja’Akari.” Then he winked. “I told you so.”
The First Warrior stood, stern-faced and proud as the Zeera herself, and thrust both fists high into the air in an age-old sign of defiance. “Ja’Akari!”
“Ja’Akari!” The crowd roared its approval. “Ja’Akari!”
Tammas raised his eyes to hers, and brushed his lips with his fingertips, and she could feel his kiss on her soul.
Hannei was not the only Ja’Akari honored by the Ja’Sajani that night. Many a new warrior found herself gifted with blade or bow or blooded mare, and more than one young woman looked upon the gift-giver with hungry eyes. When one has fasted on stale water and pemmican, Istaza Ani would have said, every dish makes your mouth water.
Still, Hannei felt herself set above her peers. Her beloved Sulema had honored her with lionsnake plumes, and the Zeera had honored her with the gift of a virtuous man. She half expected one of her elders to snatch it all away from her at any moment, with cries of “Khutlani! Khutlani!” and a walking-stick rapped smartly on the top of her head.
Her dreams had been made flesh.
* * *
The moons were drunk on starlight by the time the last gifts had been given, exclaimed over, and tucked away into the heads of the elders as a debt to be paid off at harvest-time when the Ja’Akari would play host to their brothers. Then came the dancing, the feast, the usca and the mead, and then, of course, more dancing.
Hannei was seated between the First Warrior and Tammas, and she was so completely overwhelmed that she forgot to be hungry. She sampled the dishes set before her—to do otherwise would have been unthinkable—though her stomach ached just to see the sheer quantity of food laid out before them. Paya-root bread and guava mash, salted fish on a bed of bitter herbs, and bowls piled high with roast meats and eggs. This sharib was meant to coax the year to plenty, and, ehuani, the tables groaned under the weight of it.
Tammas was the most tempting dish of all.
He sat by her side in his sky-blue touar. His hair curling out from beneath the cloth in a way that made her long to reach up and brush it back. A sapphire winked at her from his earlobe every time he moved, and the scent of him drew her like a bee to honey. She watched as he held a roast egg between his long, strong fingers, cracked its delicate shell, and brought the tender flesh to his mouth…
Yeh Atu, this man would be the death of her. All he had to do was eat an egg, and she was a puddle of lust shivering at his feet.
His eyes met hers, and his mouth parted, and he licked his lips.
“Stop that,” she hissed. “No fair.”
He laughed, and she wanted to tear his clothes off. His hand touched hers as they both reached for the mead, and another wave of heat hit her with such force she felt drunk before the first sip.
“I cannot take this a moment longer.” The First Warrior set her horn cup down with an irritated thunk. “I understand that you two cannot help it, but by Atu I am going to knock your heads together if I have to spend another moment in your presence.”
Hannei felt her cheeks flush. “First Warrior…”
“No! Go! Gaaah, I do not want to hear it. I certainly do not want to see it.” She waved them away with both hands. “The two of you are not going to make it through the men’s dance, in any case, and I have no desire to watch a pair of cubs mating in the sand. Go. Go! Go find a tent, or a clump of grass, or something. Just go.” She reached for the mead as if she would wash a sour taste from her mouth.
“I do not think she is joking,” Tammas whispered. His eyes were as bright as the moons. “My tent is down by the river, just past the horses…”
Heat flushed through Hannei’s body in a way that was entirely new to her, and frightening. “It is early.”
“I am supposed to dance with the wardens this year.”
“But…”
“Naked.”
Hannei looked at Tammas, helpless and lost in a storm of her own making. When he stood and held his hands out to her, she let herself be led from the firelight, and out into the soft embrace of a Zeerani night. The moons had never hung so low, nor the stars shone so bright as they did then, and never had the sands sung so sweetly. Tammas held her hand, his touch warm and gentle and so filled with promise she did not know whether she wanted to run away with him, or run away from him, only that her legs begged her to hurry, hurry, hurry.
When they came to his dark blue tent, she froze like a doe before the vash’ai. Indeed, Dairuz brushed against her legs as he disappeared into the night, and she felt his touch against her mind.
Welcome, Little Sister.
A cool breeze picked up on the Dibris, born of rain and longing and the quickening of a world reborn. It caressed the bare skin of her temples, and teased through the feathers of her headdress, and set the small silver bells to singing as she shivered from a sudden fever. Tammas turned to her, and reached to take her other hand.
He opened his mouth, and she knew that he was going to tell her do not be afraid and I will not hurt you and you are lovely and all of those other silly things a man tells a woman when what he really means is you are mine. But Hannei found that she was not afraid, and that she wanted him even if there was to be pain, and she did not need his empty words half so much as she needed his touch upon her body. So she reached up, and unfastened the clasps of her vest, and let it fall away.
They never made it into the tent.
The moons and the stars bore witness as they came together under the desert sky, as they found delight in one another, as sa met ka and flesh met flesh and the desert sang them a song so sweet and so powerful they would have wept, had they been able to hear it over the cries and sighs and soft, soft sounds of their loving. Not till the moons were on the far side of the sky, and small Didi had begun to grow pale and weary, did they finally find their ease in a heavy and satisfied tangle.
Hannei felt the sweat of her lover drying upon her aching skin, and she could taste her own scent upon Tammas as she pressed her lips sleepily against his throat, and she wrapped her arms about her man and fell into the deepest, most heedless slumber of her life.
* * *
The sky in the east had just begun to pale in anticipation of Akari Sun Dragon’s first kiss when Tammas stirred, and stretched, and kissed the top of her head. Hannei tightened her arms around his waist and smiled, not yet ready to open her eyes or wonder where her clothing had got to or worry whether anyone might see them. She felt his laugh more than heard it—he purred like a great cat—and pushed away, leaving half of her chilled and bereft. She frowned, and opened her eyes, and stretched… oh. Oh. That stung a little.
“Shhh.” He leaned over and kissed her on the mouth, and his moons-shadow passed over her as he stood. “I have something for you.”
As loath as she was to have him leave, Hannei had to admit that even in the near-dark it was a pleasure to watch him walk away. And duck into his tent. And reemerge, carrying a wide goblet carefully in both hands.
“Nothing looks good on you,” she told him.
He looked startled. “What?”
She grinned, and rolled over to sit cross-legged in the sand. “Nothing looks very good on you.”
“Ah.” He laughed, and knelt before her. She rose on her knees to meet him, and her fingers twined with his around the loving cup. “Sassy girl.”
She felt shy, she felt brazen, and soft. Her legs still had not decided whether they wanted to run with him or to him, but they trembled so that she would probably do well to crawl into his tent and fall back asleep… eventually.
“Your girl,” she whispered, and her eyes felt full of the moons.
“My girl,” he agreed, and touched the cup to her lips.
Her body had begun to ache, a deep, satisfying ache that sang in her belly and in her limbs and down in her womb. The cup was cool, and his fingers were strong and warm. Hannei drank deep of the sweet, sweet water, and smiled at him over the rim of the cup. She could see her forever in his eyes. “My man,” she told him. “Mine.”
“Yours,” he agreed, and the moons cast a shadow over his face
—she remembered that, vividly, afterward. The moons cast a shadow over his face—
Together, they brought the cup to his mouth, and his lips parted, and the moons cast a shadow over his face.
The night spilled from his mouth to stain the water black.
He looked at her, and his eyes widened with puzzlement, and his mouth moved as if he would ask her a question
—and the moons cast a shadow over his face—
Blood spilled from his mouth to stain the water black.
He was still looking at her, his eyes full of the question she could never, would never, could never answer
—and the moons cast a shadow over his face—
His fingers went slack, and the cup spilled from his hands to stain the desert with his blood, and his hands rose slowly up to his chest, as if he would tell her, again, what was in his heart.
A blade jutted from his chest, a hand’s length of ugly metal gleamed red-black with his blood in the light of the grieving moons, and then it disappeared back into his torn flesh and blood spilled from his mouth, so much blood, his mouth formed a question and his eyes held all of the questions forever but blood was the only answer. He fell to the sand, and the shadows received him into their cold arms, as she had held him only moments before.
Hannei could not move.
A part of her—some cold, cold, wicked part of her—remarked that it was as if she had been turned to stone, to bone, to a pillar of sand, when the blade of the First Warrior pierced her lover’s heart. That tall, spare woman she had loved as a mother, respected as a teacher, looked at her with eyes full of the cold night sky so full of sorrow and pain there was no room left for remorse.
“I am sorry, child,” Her voice was low, and slow, as if it had traveled from beyond the stars to reach them.
The strength bled from Hannei, and she toppled sideways into the sand. She saw the dull gleam of Tammas’s shamsi lying just beyond him and her hand twitched, but she could not… could not…
“I am sorry, child.” Sareta insisted, and her voice was soft and warm and lifeless. “But the line of Zula Din has grown soft and wicked, and so must be ended. Best to cut the taint out now, than let it continue to poison the prides until there is nothing left of the people but old stories and bones in the sand.”
Poison. Hannei trembled, and then shook, as pain wracked her body. She burned, she burned, a fire had been set into her flesh that nothing could soothe. Water, and blood, and poison… Sareta kicked the loving cup away almost casually.
On the far side of the moons, vash’ai raised their voices in a song of fire and fury.
We come, little sister. We come.
The First Warrior knelt beside her, face full of cold starlight and colder sorrow.
“You are Ja’Akari,” she insisted, “you must understand. The pride comes first. That woman would have sold us to the Dragon King, would have trapped us in cities of stone and mud until our hearts grew soft and rotten. The line of Zula Din would have been the death of the people.”
Hannei saw the flash of a blade and would have flinched away, or cried out, but her own body was no longer hers to command. Something burned into the palm of her hand. A knife, a fell thing, and her flesh cried out in horror at the touch.
We come…
But nobody was coming to save them, it was all in her head. When the First Warrior pressed the heavy torc of ebon and pearls into Hannei’s other hand, she knew—she knew—that it was too late for any of them. The line of Zula Din was ended. Nurati, and Tammas, and Neptara… and the children? Had they killed Ismai as well, and the little children?
Hannei had strength enough for a single tear. It spilled from her eye, and across her face, and down her newly shorn temple, before it was finally swallowed by the desert. So many tears, so many tears to make a desert. So many tears.
Screams, screams in the dark, and the smell of smoke.
The First Warrior stood and turned away, looking out across the desert toward the tents, and the rising flames.
“Thus perishes the line of Zula Din,” she said, more to herself than to the slain enemies at her feet. “In the end, she was right— love kills more swiftly than the sword.”
She left them there without so much as a single backward glance.
Hannei blinked—she could do that, only just—blinked away that last tear, and the sand, and the salt of her lover’s sweat, and perhaps his blood as well. She watched as his chest rose, and fell.
Rose, and fell. His eyes stared through her as his chest rose…
And fell. Rose, and fell.
Rose…
The moons roared. We come, little sister.
And fell. Rose…
And fell.
And fell.
And fell.