by Natalie Mae
“What else can I get for you?” Kita asks, intercepting me as I approach the bag again. I don’t know how she even noticed. She was offering water to one of the geldings.
“I’m just a little hot. I was going to—”
“Here, I’ll get your drinking skin and a fresh ice shawl. One moment.”
“Are you doing this to make up for reporting me?” I ask, confused. “Because it’s going to take way more than this.”
“What? Oh.” She turns, a sapphire shawl in one hand and shame written so strongly on her face that she looks like she’s in pain. “That’s not why I’m doing this. You’re the sacrifice. The gods’ holy Chosen. Anything you need, we’re here to serve you.”
I look between the three girls, and even Sakira nods in agreement.
“But . . .” Heat crawls up my neck that has nothing to do with the desert. I know it’s ridiculous to be opposed to being doted on, but accepting their help feels like accepting this as my fate, and that sends needles of panic under my skin. But here’s the perfect opportunity to tell them what happened. Please, gods, let them be normal people and believe me.
“You really don’t need to. It wasn’t the gods who chose me.”
“What, did you lose at straws?” Sakira asks.
“No, your brother cut my wrist open.”
Kita gasps. Sakira and Alette share a look like neither of them is surprised.
“That’s why you aren’t Forsaken,” Sakira says, frowning. “Oh. I’m so sorry.”
“By ‘so sorry’ you mean you’re going to drop me off at the nearest town, right?”
Sakira gives me a pitying smile and saunters to my side. She wraps a casual arm around my shoulders and guides me toward her teammates. “Tell us everything.”
* * *
I recount every event of the last day (a little too thoroughly—I’m told at least once that yes, they know about the pool in the foyer, and they don’t need a borderline-disturbing description of the chocolate), skipping the part where I almost killed a prince and instead claiming Jet knocked Kasta out with the hilt of his sword. Sakira remains distinctly unfazed throughout. She nods and frowns at the right moments, but more like someone impatient for me to finish, as though this is a story she’s already heard.
“Is this a story you’ve already heard?” I ask when a sigh is the only reaction I get for explaining Kasta is the entire reason I’m here.
“No,” she says. “And yes. I guess it just sounds like exactly what they’d do. Kasta’s obsessed with outshining Jet, Jet tries to be the hero, Father’s disappointed in everyone. And I’m nowhere to be seen. That’s my entire life.”
“You’re not surprised your brother is committing sacrilege to enact revenge on people?”
Sakira smiles. “Darling. I may look like a pretty face, but I know exactly what determined men are capable of. I’m not surprised he marked you, no.”
I’m so relieved she believes me, I nearly hug her. “Then we can go back now, right? You can tell the Mestrah what happened. He’ll call off the contest. Kasta will be exiled, Jet will confirm he doesn’t want to rule, and you’ll be named!”
Sakira laughs. A small, amused thing at first that tapers into something bitter.
“Sweet Zahru,” she says, nodding to her teammates to mount up. She guides me toward the buckskin, and I get the uncomfortable feeling she’s not going to say anything supportive or understanding. “I wish I could. I really do. But proving your story will be next to impossible. Jet’s already shown he has no interest in helping you, and my word will make no difference. My father will think I’m only looking for the easy way out and disqualify me for lying. Don’t you see?”
I hold back a frustrated sob. “No. Is this really how easy it is to kill someone below you?”
Her brow softens, but my shoulders sink at the steadiness in her eyes. She’s already made up her mind. Sakira’s not going to be my ally, and my first plan for escape has already failed. Now I have to figure out another way to get out of this, which means just me against the desert, alone, without the slightest sense of where I’m going.
And every day I’m away, Fara will struggle more and more to keep up with his work, until one of the travelers figures out his magic is gone and his only child isn’t returning. He’ll lose the stable. He’ll lose our home.
“Oh, love.” Sakira squeezes my shoulders. “Don’t look so sad. I’ll be quick about it. You’ll barely feel a thing.”
I glare at her. “Meaning, you’re still going to kill me even though you know I’m not supposed to be here.”
She shakes her head. “I’m sorry you’re mixed up in this. But regardless of how it happened, you are the sacrifice.” Alette approaches with the buckskin’s reins, and Sakira takes them, looking over at me as she checks the saddlebags. “And I have to consider Orkena’s future over yours. Kasta would be a disastrous king. He’s impulsive. He’s angry. He’ll start wars just to prove he can win them, because that’s what he thinks ruling is about: power.” She tilts her head. “Think about it. If this is what Kasta will do to get his way before he’s crowned, what do you think he’ll do with armies at his command? Orkena will bleed for his insecurities. He can’t win. And I can’t risk losing on a technicality.”
“But there has to be another way to beat him.”
Sakira’s skirt flashes red as she mounts up, the fabric dripping around her leg as she settles in. “Maybe, if we weren’t so far into this already. We don’t have the luxury of time anymore.”
She reaches for me, but I don’t move.
“What do you even have to do to prove you killed me? Can’t you just dip the knife in sheep’s blood or something?”
Something in her eyes glints; a mask slipping out of and back into place. “Let me tell you a story.” She beckons me forward, and because the alternative is trying to outrun horses on foot, I sigh and take her hand. The mare tosses her head as I pull up. “Once upon a time there was a king with three children.” She urges the buckskin forward. “The first two were sons, but the last was a daughter, and he loved her the most. He saw she was given everything she wanted, and often reminded her how she was his little girl, how she was gentle and sweet and soft. Even when she grew. Even when she trained and sweated and bled, and especially when she begged him to teach her about war, he only shook his head and said, ‘Little star, you are too young to worry about such things.’ And when the question of the crown arose, and the Crossing was to take place, he told her she wouldn’t go.”
“What?” I say, turning. “But why?”
“Because I’ll always be his little girl.” She smiles; a humorless, crooked thing. “I’m a painter. An artist. My magic is beautiful and refined; it creates and protects. Gods forbid I be curious about how to draw curses or set cities on fire. Or worse—break bones with my own hands. How could a sweet thing like me even think of that? I’m safest when I’m at home, throwing parties and winning hearts, because it’s not right I should have to make the sacrifices hardened men make. Even if I want to. Even if I have.” Her eyes burn with memories, and she grits her teeth. “You know, I don’t think I even have the heart to harm a sheep, the poor, soft little dear.”
Great. I’ve traded the prince who’d kill for his father’s affection for the princess who’d kill to escape it. I imagine that’s why she causes the trouble she has, too—to prove she isn’t the demure little girl the Mestrah wants her to be. And here I am again, the tool to prove her efforts.
“Being compassionate doesn’t make you weak,” I grumble.
“I’m sorry,” Sakira says. “But in the court, yes, it does.”
She raises the compass and adjusts our route, and pushes the buckskin into a jog.
“Besides,” she says. “Even if I dared oppose the gods, I can’t afford to throw away the magic that comes with the sacrifice. The world sees trielle the same as my fathe
r. If I want our allies to take me seriously, I have to have that power.”
I hate that I understand that part of her argument. I don’t think the world’s view of me as a useless Whisperer would change regardless of the position I held.
“So is that how you convinced the Mestrah to let you come?” I ask, feeling more than a little bitter with my new situation. “You stabbed someone in front of him?”
She laughs and rests her chin on my shoulder. “Oh, no. I snuck into the archives and charmed the Crossing scrolls to add a rule: all heirs of fifteen years and older are required to participate.”
I twist around. “You rewrote the word of the gods?” No wonder she wasn’t shocked about what Kasta had done.
“Now, now,” she says, smirking. “The Mestrah’s little star would never use her powers in such a way.”
* * *
I’m quiet the rest of the day. Not only because I doubt anything I say will convince Sakira to free me, but because I can’t get one of the things she said out of my head: Regardless of how it happened, you are the sacrifice. I don’t want to believe it’s true. I mean, yes, I’m here and everyone thinks I was chosen by the gods, but that doesn’t make me a real sacrifice. I was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time, and the real person who’s meant to be here got luckier than they’ll ever know. But Sakira makes it sound like the gods have and are allowing me to remain in this position. That maybe, despite Kasta’s spitefulness, I was meant for nothing more than this after all.
But I think of Fara, waiting for me at home, and Hen, who might very well be mounting a rescue party of her own. I shake the thought from my mind. I won’t believe I’m meant to die. And I’m going to prove it right now by coming up with a plan even Fara would be proud of.
First things first: timing. The farther Sakira and her team ride, the harder it will be to find my way home. If I’m going to make my move, it has to be tonight.
Second: strategy. I know . . . absolutely nothing about surviving on my own. I don’t know how to hunt. I don’t know how to find water that doesn’t come out of a river. I could take a horse after everyone’s gone to sleep and run for one of the town-shaped silhouettes on the horizon, but I’ve seen more than one of those vanish after just a few steps, and I’m not sure what I’ll do if the one I pick turns out to be a mirage. Being stranded alone in the desert is hardly an improvement from my current situation. So maybe all I’ve learned from thinking through this is that I need to think it through more.
I’ll come back to that one.
Third: backup plan. I realize I don’t technically have a first plan, but being ripped away from my home and everyone I love has inspired me to be thorough. I’ve hidden my mother’s gem under the pearled belt of my gown, where it presses into the soft flesh above my stomach. The rune carved into it is powerless now, but most towns have a designated Runemaster, and I could get it recharged at one of the checkpoints. I’d just have to steal something valuable from Sakira to pay for the enchantment. And sneak away long enough to make the deal before anyone noticed. And hope no other life-threatening events trigger the rune’s magic before we get to the caves.
It’s the start of a plan. If I can figure out how to increase my chances of surviving on my own, it could work.
“Something to drink?” Sakira asks, passing me the waterskin.
I nod and take it, the water frigid when I swallow. This is the third time we’ve slowed our pace. Trielle spells can’t last more than a few hours, and though Sakira’s repainted the Ice spell on the horses’ shoulders more than once, her magic can only keep them from overheating, not tiring. She also uses this pause to write something on a scroll she keeps holstered to her thigh, and to look for Kasta.
She’s not worried about Jet at all. Which makes me anxious for silly reasons, because clearly I’d wanted to believe more of the things Jet told me last night than I thought. Especially the one about caring to spare my life. But maybe I need to accept the reason I’m in this mess is because I look gullible or desperate or both, and Kasta was right all along. All Jet cares about is making his brother miserable, and I was never more than a playing piece in their game.
“What are you writing?” I ask. If I keep thinking about Jet I’ll get angry, and the angrier I get the less time I have to figure out how I’m going to fix this.
“Just checking our course,” Sakira says, moving a small quill over the parchment. It’s only then I notice how small the scroll is, and that it’s attached to the wooden rolling bar at the top. I can’t read the words, but whatever she’s writing will nearly fill the page.
“How many of those did you bring?” She can’t plan to fill one out every time we stop. She’d need dozens.
“Hmm?” Sakira looks up, sunlight shimmering over her blue eyeshadow. “Oh. No, it’s a listening scroll. See?”
She turns it on her leg—like that will help me read it—but in moments, I understand what she means. The ink on the top is fading with the seconds, sinking into the parchment like it’s leaking through. The ink on the bottom follows as it dries, and soon it’s blank again.
“Every listening scroll has a partner,” Sakira explains. “It lets me share my thoughts with someone like they’re here.”
“Oh,” I say as new writing bleeds up into the scroll. The scrawl is sharper than hers; messier. “Who’s on the other side?”
Sakira is quiet as she reads, then she laughs and marks the paper with a diagonal line, signaling the text to disappear. She rolls it into a handsome redwood case and shoves it into the leg holster next to her scribing brush.
“Someone who would be an absolute killjoy if he were here,” she says, winking at Alette, but her grin soon fades. “Though I really will miss him trying to talk me out of things. I told him he could lose on purpose and stay on as my advisor, but he says he’d rather live with jackals than in the court.”
“Jet?” I say in disbelief. “What is he saying?”
I curse the hope unfurling in my chest. A minute ago I was ready to paint him as villainous as his brother, and now at the first mention of his name, I’m imagining him charging up the dunes on a white horse, an army at his back as he rushes to save me. Well, I suppose it wouldn’t be that dramatic, but some form of that would be preferred. But I bite back on the image, scolding myself for even considering it. All the hope in the world never changed Gallus’s mind about me, and I can’t expect it to work here.
Sakira’s brow wrinkles in pity. “Nothing about you, dear. Though I’m sure he regrets what happened. Even when he and Kasta were at their worst, he was never the type to bring other people into it.” She motions for me to turn, and I comply as she urges the mare into a walk. “He’s just reminding me about the bandit camp we’re passing tomorrow, and plotting where I can build my shrine near the Old Temples. He says they could definitely do with some updating.”
The Old Temples, where the first Mestrahs are buried . . . directly east of the palace and not at all in the southern direction we’re headed. If he’s deserting the race, as he told Kasta he would, that’s a direct route to Nadessa. I assure myself that of course he’d tell Sakira the wrong thing if he was planning a rescue mission, but the logical side of me burns with resentment. Imagining him starting a new life while mine comes to a close seems the most unfair of all.
“And Kasta?” I ask, not sure I want to know.
“What about him?”
“Has he written to you yet?”
Not that I remember seeing a second scroll, but maybe she keeps his in her saddlebag.
This time even Kita laughs with Sakira.
“Are you serious?” Sakira says. “You’ve met him. Do you think being his sister makes any difference when it comes to him winning this?”
I shrug.
“He would have cut me to be the sacrifice, if it weren’t too suspicious. Well, probably Jet first, but then me.” She shakes
her head. “No. There is no lifetime in which I’d share anything with Kasta on a listening scroll.”
That resentment burns brighter in my chest. I should have known. Jet and Sakira are obviously close, and of course he’d choose her future over mine. That’s what I would do for Hen, even if I can’t imagine Hen killing anyone, ever, no matter what tradition or point she was supposed to be making.
“So Jet’s helping you because he’s already gone,” I say, reminding myself it doesn’t matter. I don’t need Jet to be able to steal a horse and run. “Is that how you won the advantage, too? With his help?”
“Mm,” Sakira says, the bitterness back in her tone. “I shouldn’t have needed his help, because I do have the best team, not that Father would ever admit it. But technically yes, he helped by being an absolute cod with Kasta.”
Alette snickers.
“That fight last night?” Sakira says. “Father was furious. I wasn’t even in the room when he awarded me the advantage. My handmaiden came to tell me.”
“But officially,” Alette says, “it’s because I’m the greatest power Sakira could have on her side. The very gods will hear my cries. We’re protected implicitly.”
“Not the first time they’ve heard her cries,” Sakira mutters.
“Oh, hush,” Alette says, though her smile is shameless. “She’s only just joined us. Ease her into the waters, at least.”
“Just as you eased that Imanian duke into the baths?”
“I did not know he was engaged,” Alette says, pointing a defiant finger. “And I like to think I saved his fiancée from what would have been a terrible marriage. Besides, I wasn’t the only one locking lips that night with someone I shouldn’t have.”
“He told me he was from Greka! How was I supposed to know he was a waiter? He wasn’t dressed like one.”
“This happened at the Choosing?” I say.
