The next strike of the whip cut deep into her flesh, driving Izoldia’s body into the date palm. Her forehead smacked against the knobbly trunk. She gasped and shuddered as her back burned.
Sand hissed as Ashewar’s orange-slippered feet came into view. She stepped from the shade into the blazing sun, her rings glinting. The prophetess’ cool voice rang out, “Not only the tip, Thut. Let her have the full brunt of the lash.”
The next stinging lash made Izoldia’s knees falter and her body sag. The impact nearly wrenched her shoulders from their sockets, the ropes on her bound arms the only thing holding her in place. The lash bit into her back again and again, agonizing blows that shredded her back, blood splattering the tree trunk and streaming down her legs.
On the twelfth lash, her jaw unlocked and a cry ripped from her throat, shattering the silence between the whip cracks.
“You,” Ashewar’s voice hissed. “Rub salt into her wounds. It’s not becoming for my strongest warrior to cry out in pain.” Ashewar turned and strode back under the date palms to their underground lair, her rustling robes nearly kissing Izoldia’s face as she passed.
Drida—their oldest assassin, a silver-haired woman who could strike a man dead with one well-aimed kick—paced to Izoldia and untied a pouch of salt from her belt. Not a lick of sympathy showed in the harsh lines of her ancient wrinkled face as her eyes flicked over Izoldia. She rubbed salt into Izoldia’s wounds. Roughly. The scrape and grind of the grit made Izoldia scream. Tears of pain ran down her face in rivulets, wetting her orange robes.
And then the assassins left her out under the heat of the beating sun.
A Test of Endurance
Bala was relentless, insisting that Ithsar keep dancing long after thirty cycles were done. After forty. And fifty. Until Ithsar lost count. Until time was measured by the slap of her feet, the whirl of her body and the blood pumping in her ears. Every time she slowed, Ithsar received another smack with the flat of Bala’s saber—on her arms, cheeks, or legs. But Ithsar accepted it. It was less pain than what she’d caused Izoldia.
The others filed off for their evening meal. Bala left, and Thut replaced her to watch Ithsar. Still, Ithsar danced, her limbs slow and sluggish. Thut picked at her nails with her blade, leaning against the wall, occasionally gesturing that Ithsar should speed up. At last, the assassins joined her for the late evening dance.
Ithsar swiped a hand at her dry, pounding temples—she’d stopped sweating long ago. There was little fluid left in her. Giant dark spots swam before her eyes, obscuring the assassins to her left. Not sathir. Exhaustion.
Her breath rasped, dry and hot in her throat. She leaped and stumbled, then flung her arm weakly. She jumped and thrust out her foot to land. Ithsar’s knee buckled and she slammed into the sandstone. Her body flew across the floor, gashing her cheek. A warm gush of blood pooled under her face. Although she tried to push up with her hands, her elbows collapsed and she lay amid the dancers, slumped on the cool stone. At least, here, she could rest.
Thut barked at her, threatened her, but she couldn’t respond. So Thut motioned at the other women to keep dancing and ignore her.
Ithsar’s head spun as the slap and scrape of feet thrummed through the sandstone against her aching, bloody cheek. Then darkness claimed her.
§
Ithsar woke, cold and shivering, to something scraping her cheek.
No, not scraping, but licking. “Thika?”
The lizard squirmed under her face, trying to rouse her. Ithsar’s breath shuddered out of her. Everything ached, her head spun, and the blood on her cheek had congealed. She tried to swallow but her mouth and throat were as dry as the desert sand. Thika wriggled again. How had he squeezed under her face?
The scuff of feet carried along a passage. More than one pair of feet. Were Bala and Thut coming to gloat over her? Gods, what had happened to Izoldia?
Heart pounding, Ithsar froze on the stone, the last nearly-dead torch sputtering. It must be the deep of night. Thika wormed his way under her neck, hiding.
A shadow fell over her body as someone bent over her. Ithsar braced herself for a kick or jab.
“Thank the dracha gods you’re still with us,” Roshni breathed so softly, Ithsar wondered if she’d imagined it. Roshni knelt beside her and lifted her aching head, gazing at her with those piercing blue eyes. “Look,” she rasped faintly, her voice croaky from disuse, “your lizard tried to protect you. He slunk under your cheek to stop you from swallowing your blood.”
A low moan threatened to escape Ithsar, but she held it in. No need to set the chamber echoing—that would only bring people running.
Roshni held a waterskin to her lips. The cavern dipped and swayed as Ithsar sipped. The cool, refreshing nectar of life slid down her throat.
In the shadows at the edge of the cavern, someone moved. An assassin materialized from the gloom, her silver hair glinting in the torchlight—Drida, holding a blanket.
Drida motioned that they must leave, and Roshni nodded and scooped Ithsar into her arms. Drida tucked the blanket around Ithsar and picked up Thika, depositing him on Ithsar’s belly. Then she pulled a bandage from her robes and pressed it to Ithsar’s cheek. Her eyes flitted around the cavern and she made the hand gesture for leaving swiftly.
When they were deep in the passage, halfway to Ithsar’s sleeping alcove, Drida murmured, her voice as soft as a moth’s wing, “I was on duty in the healing cavern tending Izoldia, but all I could think of was you, lying there, broken and wounded.”
Ithsar’s only reply was a violent shiver.
“You’re cold.” Drida took her hand. Her brows shot up. Eyes wide, she stared at Ithsar’s hand.
Roshni stopped walking, staring too. “Your fingers…”
Although it made her head pound, Ithsar managed a weak nod and wriggled her healthy fingers.
Roshni said nothing more, slipping through the tunnels, Drida nipping ahead to make sure the way was clear. When they reached her sleeping alcove, Drida lifted the curtain without drawing it, so the rings wouldn’t scrape along the brass rail. Roshni ducked inside, carrying her, and Drida followed, letting the heavy curtain fall.
Roshni deposited Ithsar gently on her bed, but instead of the two women leaving, Drida took a tiny lantern from her belt and lit it, and the two assassins sat beside Ithsar on her mattress, Drida at her head and Roshni by her belly. Thika crawled straight back into her robes to rest against Ithsar’s stomach. Warm, familiar, comforting—despite the raging aches rippling through her muscles.
Roshni held Ithsar’s fingers, examining them, wonder in her eyes.
Ithsar didn’t dare tell Roshni how she’d been healed. Two of Ashewar’s most trusted guards, these women could’ve been sent by the chief prophetess to wheedle out her secrets.
Drida drew a needle and twine from her robe and stitched Ithsar’s cheek, her smile warm and her fingers nimble.
Roshni pulled some flatbread and dates from one of the many pockets in her robe and passed them to Ithsar. “Eat and gain strength, for I’m sure the dawn shall bring new trials.” Her blue eyes were concerned—such a strange color for a southerner, vividly bright against her dark skin.
Ithsar took a piece of flatbread and chewed it, nearly gagging.
“Here, more water,” whispered Drida, eyes darting to Ithsar’s curtain. The water helped ease the passage of the flatbread down her dry throat. As Ithsar chewed the sweet, succulent dates, Drida continued, “You know, you should leave. Ashewar hates you and will find another way to hurt you.”
“And if she doesn’t, Izoldia will,” Roshni whispered.
Drida leaned in so close, Ithsar could barely hear, her breath tickling Ithsar’s ear. “We can prepare a camel for you on the far side of the oasis and wake you in two hours so you can leave.”
Their sathir didn’t show the dark shadows of betrayal, just a calm yellow tinge around Roshni and an orange glow around Drida, but where would Ithsar go? What would she do? She’d only ever l
ived in the lair beneath the oasis. For a heartbeat, Ithsar hesitated. Leaving didn’t feel right, despite her maltreatment at her mother and Izoldia’s hands. “I can’t,” murmured Ithsar. “This is my home.”
“But what good is a home where you must hide who you truly are?” Drida whispered urgently. “You danced an entire day without food or water. You have great strength and talent, yet you’ve masked it. And now, Ashewar knows. She will not make life easy for you.” Drida tilted her head, her voice a faint breath. “Are you sure you don’t want to run away?”
Ithsar nodded.
The women stood and slipped out her curtain.
They’d seemed to be genuine. Their sathir had even appeared so, but Ithsar couldn’t help a dark foreboding that Drida and Roshni were working against her. That they were scheming for Ashewar, trying to catch her out so they could hurt her.
So far, everyone but her father and Thika had.
Ithsar sipped the water they’d left and chewed the remaining flatbread and dates, cradling Thika against her belly as a lone tear slipped down her cheek.
Agony
With a start, Izoldia awoke, lying on her stomach in the same bed that stinking Naobian had lain in when he’d been healing from his slit gut. The bed he’d been in the night he’d escaped. The night she’d been watching him. Had that only been yesterday?
By those slimy reptilian dracha gods, what had happened?
Irritation flashed through Izoldia at the constant dribble of water—the underground stream flowing through the edge of the healing cavern. Despite it being the deep of night, that cursed water made it hard to drift off again. She shifted, her head still foggy—and now throbbing from the long hours under the desert sun. Her back burned. By the cursed sun gods, she could barely move.
With such terrible gut wounds, how had that Naobian managed to run and evade everyone hunting him through the cavern tunnels? Ashewar had reported that he’d flown off on his giant blue dracha with that woman of the golden hair, but managing to climb on a dracha with such shocking wounds was about as likely as rain in the Robandi desert.
She tried to push up on her hands, but her back screamed in agony, so she slumped down again.
Robes rustled and a cool hand was laid upon her brow. Those same hands held a reed straw to her lips.
Curse it, so much pain that she couldn’t even sit up. Glowering, Izoldia tugged water through the straw, then laid her head down again. The healer’s footfalls padded away.
Izoldia’s eyelids fluttered. They’d put healing tonic in her water to make her doze so her body could recover. She fought the tonic, battling to stay awake as a memory niggled at the edge of her mind.
In a flash, Izoldia remembered Ithsar requesting to take over her post guarding the Naobian, suggesting that Izoldia should fight. With a lurch in her gut, Izoldia knew that despicable worm had betrayed them. That sniveling good-for-nothing hangdog with the broken fingers, that softhearted piece of camel dung, had fooled them. She must have planted the ropes in Izoldia’s pockets after helping that foreign scum escape. Izoldia hadn’t betrayed Ashewar at all. Ithsar had.
Ithsar had cheated Izoldia of her fun with that man. Cheated her of forcing him to breed and create daughters. Cheated her of the chance to slay any male offspring he would’ve sired.
And it was Ithsar’s fault Izoldia had been lashed. Ithsar’s fault that Izoldia’s back was a mess of fleshy, bloody tatters and searing pain. Due to Ithsar’s cunning, Izoldia had fallen out of Ashewar’s favor.
Izoldia’s burning back was nothing compared to the hatred that burned through her gut as she contemplated her revenge. Then the tonic claimed Izoldia and, try as she might, she could no longer battle her drooping eyelids, so she drifted into a restless sleep.
Stealth
Izoldia screamed in pain, begging Ithsar not to whip her. But Ithsar gave a grim smile and flicked the whip again, scoring deep into Izoldia’s bloody, tattered back.
“Enough! Please!” Izoldia begged.
Ithsar struck her again and again.
“Please, Ithsar, be true,” her father pleaded. “You are my precious daughter, strong beyond words.”
“Thank you, Father.” Ithsar smiled, whipping her enemy’s back until she collapsed dead on the sand. Still, Ithsar lashed her, again and again.
Until Izoldia’s body disintegrated into tiny blood-red sand grains, carried away by the wind.
Ithsar’s chest heaved as she stared down at herself. Her robes were splattered in Izoldia’s blood, her whip slick in her hand, and her arms stained red to the elbows.
She turned to her father, but his eyes were dead, soulless black holes that sucked her toward him, step by step. His body grew, towering over her, wreathed in black shadows. A whip appeared in his hands. “Now it’s my turn, princess,” he crooned, his words as soft as gossamer as he raised the whip to beat her.
Ithsar jolted up in bed, sweat beading her brow, gasping.
Thika crawled out of her robes and clambered up her torso to perch on her shoulder. He nuzzled her neck.
“It’s all right, Thika. It’s only a dream.” She stroked the lizard’s soft scales, trying to steady her breath, but it still shuddered out of her. “Gods, Thika, it’s my fault. I have to do something.” She plucked Thika from her shoulder and put him back on her bed.
Ithsar reached under her bed. Dislodging a stone that leaned against the far wall, she pulled out a slim vial of pale-green juice. She tucked it in her pocket and slipped out of her sleeping alcove, striding quickly on bare feet, ever watchful. She had to be fast.
Footsteps sounded around a corner. Ithsar nipped into a crevice, pressing her body flat against the wall as two assassins passed, returning from night patrol. Then she slipped out and continued winding her way through the tunnels to the healing cavern. She hid in the curtained alcove of supplies just outside the door and waited.
When the night healer slipped out for a latrine break, Ithsar stole into the room, Ezaara’s vial of precious green juice clutched in her hand.
Izoldia was asleep, face down on a bed. Two other patients were fast asleep. The sight of Izoldia’s swollen back wrapped in bloodied bandages made Ithsar’s stomach churn. By the dracha gods, she’d been so callous, letting Izoldia take the lash for her own crimes.
But she’d had to rescue Ezaara and Roberto from the clutches of these evil women. Women who were her only family—even though they maltreated her. As she neared the bandaged carnage that was Izoldia’s back, Ithsar’s belly heaved. She battled, clenching her stomach muscles. After not eating yesterday, she couldn’t afford to lose the meager flatbread and dates she’d had only a few hours ago.
Swollen, angry flesh tugged at the sides of the bandages. The lash marks must be deep, then. Whoever had welded the lash would’ve been one of Izoldia’s friends. Ashewar constantly played the assassins against one another, ruling with iron claws of fear that dug deep into the gut of every assassin, teaching them they could never trust, never give in to any emotion—except the terror of being punished by the chief prophetess or their peers. Izoldia may have been different if Ashewar had let her. All of them could have been different if Ashewar had drilled them with love instead of hate.
Ashewar could punish her, but Ithsar wouldn’t have Izoldia’s lash marks on her conscience. She quickly loosened the bandages, biting her lip at the deep tracks cut into Izoldia’s flesh. Too many to count. So many to heal.
One at a time, then.
She let a drop of the piaua juice fall onto Izoldia’s skin and rubbed it along a wound. The muscles and flesh knitted over beneath her fingers, weaving the fibers together until there was nothing but a rough red scar. Ezaara had used a second drop of juice on her fingers to rid Ithsar of scar tissue, but Izoldia had so many wounds and she had so little juice, that was a luxury she couldn’t afford. Ithsar selected another gash and dribbled another drop, rubbed it in as Izoldia moaned in her sleep. Yes, the healing juice had burned through her flesh as Ezaara had straig
htened her finger bones and healed her twisted flesh, but the Robandi healers drugged their patients into a deep sleep, so hopefully Izoldia wouldn’t wake. Ithsar worked quickly, aware the night healer could return any moment.
When the worst of Izoldia’s cuts were healed and only a few small nicks remained, Ithsar shoved the empty vial into her pocket. Izoldia groaned and tossed.
Heart pounding, Ithsar raced to the door. Perhaps she should find Drida, and be rid of this awful place, after all. It was the only home she’d ever had, but there must be a better life out there.
As she eased the door shut, footsteps approached. She ducked back into the supply alcove, huddled under the shelves, and tugged a linen bedspread down to cover her.
The footsteps stopped right outside her hiding place. Someone drew the curtain, the scrape of the brass rings impossibly loud. Through the bedspread, a light shone. Ithsar tensed, ready to run. A shadowy figure leaned in. There was a rattle on the shelves above. A scrape as the curtain was pulled half shut. Then the door to the healing cavern opened and shut.
Ithsar inhaled. Thank the—
A loud gasp came from behind the healing cavern door, then a muttered curse.
Ithsar clambered out, thrust the bedspread back on the shelf, then raced down the tunnel, every nerve in her body taut. Gods, her sathir was brilliant yellow—screaming fear.
Near her alcove, she slowed, letting her eyelids droop as if she’d just returned from a sleepy walk to the latrine. She mentally rolled her eyes—as if she’d need the latrine after not drinking all day yesterday. A sound came from her sleeping alcove. Ithsar ducked back around a corner, just in time to see Bala exit her alcove and slide the curtain shut.
Gods, Thika!
Bala disappeared down the hall toward the larger, more spacious sleeping caverns reserved for Ashewar’s personal guards.
Pulse hammering at her throat, Ithsar slipped into her quarters.
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