Blood Passage (Dark Caravan Cycle #2) (6 page)

HUNDREDS OF MILES FROM THE
RIAD
, RAIF WAS SCANNING the flat expanse of desert, empty but for a few flat-topped trees, a line of low, rocky hills, and the occasional tuft of desert grass. The portal to Arjinna was a few feet away, invisible to human eyes. It looked as though a piece of sky had been ripped from the air and placed just above the sand, a jagged oval shimmering like the surface of an opal. Raif knew that if he walked through that border, all he would see was suffering. And yet it called to him, a magnetic pull that almost hurt to ignore. It didn't matter how bad things were in Arjinna, it was home. Where he belonged.

“Jahal'alund, tavrai,”
a jinni said, placing a fisted hand over her heart. “It is an honor to finally meet you.”

Raif waved away the jinni's formal manner. “We're all in this
mess together. The honor's mine,
tavrai.
Now, let me see this
skag
.”

The jinni hesitated, then gave a curt nod, her body still in the rigid pose of a soldier before a commander. “As you wish.”

Raif followed the
tavrai
along something resembling a path. The desert winds made the improvised walkway hard to find, but the cairns all over the sand helped him navigate the desert floor. Each one of the small piles of white stones represented a jinni who had died on the crossing. It was a memorial of sorts. Nobody knew how it began, only that the cairns seemed to multiply every year. Some were slaves on the dark caravan who'd been so brutally abused and drugged before the portal crossing that they'd died as soon as they evanesced from the bottle—or never evanesced at all, the bottle nothing more than a coffin. Others were refugees who'd been injured during the crossing, either by an Ifrit guard or the treacherous passes in the Qaf Mountains.

This is why I fight,
he thought, gazing at the endless rows of cairns.

It was almost dawn and the Sahara was cloaked in early-morning quiet. A cool wind blew fine grains of sand around his scuffed boots, and the last stars were fading from the sky. Just twenty-four hours ago he'd been unbinding Nalia from the bottle and now here he was, overseeing an execution.

“So where is he?” Raif asked, when the jinni stopped.

She pointed to a small, black hole cut into the face of the nearby hills—a cave. “In there,
tavrai.
”

Raif took in the nervous soldier before him. Though she
wasn't much younger than Raif, she seemed a child. “Where'd you find him?”

“Hiding like the rat he is. We tracked him to Argentina—one of Earth's countries—and captured him before he could evanesce. It was a good thing you warned us about Jordif when you did; we were able to intercept a delivery of bottles for the dark caravan just last night.”

Raif nodded. “Excellent work.” That would make Nalia happy—or infinitely more sad.

The jinni gave a quick bow. “Thank you.”

Raif didn't bother to correct his soldier a second time. No matter how hard he tried to make everyone in the revolution equal, they still insisted on strict military protocol, complete with bows and “sirs” and the like.

“Bring him out.”

It made Raif sick that the jinni who'd once been his father's friend had become a central player in the dark caravan. Thanks to Jordif, the jinn slave trade had claimed thousands of lives. He imagined Nalia, drugged and afraid while Jordif helped sell her to Malek. “We'll hang him beside the portal so all who enter Earth will see what happens to jinn who help the Ifrit.”

Uncertainty flashed across the soldier's face, but one cool look from Raif and she placed her fist over her heart in a parting salute, then left for the cave in a cloud of Marid blue evanescence.

“Still got the magic touch, I see,” said a low female voice behind him.

He'd know that voice anywhere. Raif turned, grinning.

“Shirin!”

He'd been so preoccupied with Jordif that he hadn't felt her presence; that, and she was one of the stealthiest jinn he knew. The
tavrai
didn't call Shirin his wolf for nothing.

His second-in-command's face broke out in a smile and she threw her arms around his neck and pulled him into a crushing hug. Then she stepped back and punched him as hard as she could in the stomach.

Raif cursed, doubling over. “Fire and blood, what'd you do that for?”

Shirin looked down at him, nostrils flaring, hands on her hips. “I thought you were dead, you
skag
! Didn't you think it'd be a good idea to check in with your second every now and then?”

She looked the same as always: hair pulled back in one long braid, a face with the deep tan of a laborer. Her revolutionary uniform was faded and dusty: black shirt and pants with a white armband to symbolize an Arjinna free of castes, where the color of your eyes and smoke didn't determine the course of your life. Her hands and arms were covered in bruises and scabs and she had dark circles under her eyes. Raif was pretty sure the bloodstain on her pants wasn't hers.

He groaned as he straightened up. “I've been a little busy.”

At first, his time on Earth had been about trying to force Nalia to agree to a trade: he'd free her from Malek if she took him to the location of Solomon's sigil. But there were a few things he hadn't counted on, the largest one being Nalia herself. Falling for her had been like his first battle with the Ifrit, when he'd rushed headlong into the fray, praying to the gods he wouldn't die, so scared he thought he'd shit his pants, so happy he never wanted
the battle to end. Helping Nalia kill a ghoul, trying to keep her alive, and unbinding her from the bottle paled in comparison to the sheer terror of loving her—and losing her. But he couldn't tell Shirin any of this, and not just because she'd recently made no secret of her feelings for him. She had enough on her plate right now, and Raif falling for the enemy was something he still wasn't sure how to explain.

Shirin crossed her arms, her dark green eyes flashing. “
Too busy
? You couldn't have taken a second to get a message to me? Maybe let me know the humans hadn't killed you in some barbaric way, with their metal wagons—”

“Cars.”

She narrowed her eyes. “Whatever.”

“They're actually quite civilized,” he said. “The humans, that is.” She glared. “I mean, civilized compared to the Ifrit.”

Raif was stalling, he knew that. But things had been . . . complicated between them ever since she'd kissed him. He hadn't done anything about it. Though it had happened just days before he came to Earth in search of Nalia, it felt like centuries ago that Shirin had pressed her lips against his. He'd only had a handful of lovers in his life—male or female
tavrai
who'd helped him forget the war for a night or two. He'd never felt anything more than passing desire. It had been the same when Shirin kissed him. Nalia was different. In just a few days of knowing her, she'd become—for better or worse—his second element. As essential as the earth he needed for his
chiaan.

Shirin gave him a long look, frowning. “Something's up. You're acting weird. Are you high?”

Raif rolled his eyes. “Yes, Shirin, I came to Earth so I could vacation in a cloud of
gaujuri.
” The potent drug was a cross between a hallucinogenic and a tall glass of
savri
, Arjinna's spiced wine. A look of hurt passed across Shirin's face and he lightly punched her in the arm. “Hey. I know I left you at a crappy time. I swear to the gods I have to be here doing what I'm doing.”

“On this super-secret mission you don't trust me enough to tell me about?”

“Shirin, if the Ifrit capture you—”

She pursed her lips and gave one curt nod. She was family to him, this girl, and he felt terrible about keeping her out of the loop. But it was safer this way. No one else could know about the ring. No one.

“So what brought you out here?” he asked. “Need a change of scenery?”

Traveling through the portal was dangerous in the best of times. It was heavily guarded by the Ifrit on the Arjinnan side and crawling with their spies on Earth's side. It had taken over two hours for his soldiers to secure this section and several of his fighters were holding back the Ifrit on the Arjinnan side, buying Raif the time he needed.

“I got word you were holding a meet at the portal,” Shirin said. “I was killing Ifrit just down the mountain, so I thought I'd stop by.”

He snorted. “What's your tally this week?”

“Eleven and counting.”

“Nice.”

“You?”

“Just one.” He shrugged. “Actually, I can't claim the kill—I assisted. But you'll never guess who it was.”

“I wish you'd say it was Calar.”

“If I'd killed the Ifrit empress, do you think I'd be wasting my time with the execution of one of her puppets?”

“Fair enough. Who, then?”

“Haran.”

“No.”

His lips turned up at the shock on Shirin's face. “Yes. By the way, he's a ghoul and it was a Ghan Aisouri who killed him.”

“Are you sure you're not high?”

“Shirin.”

“Okay, brother, you're gonna need to start from the beginning.”

He filled her in on Haran's gruesome trek through Earth as he searched for Nalia, a cannibalistic killing spree that had ended with Nalia's jade Ghan Aisouri dagger in his heart.

“Are you telling me there's really a Ghan Aisouri hiding out on Earth?”

He nodded. “The rumors are true, yes.”

“Why aren't we hanging her
salfit
ass alongside this traitor Marid? Plenty of room for another noose.”

Raif winced. He knew it would be like this with the
tavrai—
they didn't know Nalia like he did. All they would see at first were her purple eyes and the proud tilt to her chin. They'd assume she was like the rest of her now extinct race—a bloodthirsty tyrant who believed in the slavery of the Djan and Marid castes.

“It's not like that, Shirin. She's good.
Really
good. She killed
Haran, she's trying to help the revolution—”

“Raif, are you hearing yourself at all?” Shirin stepped closer, jabbing her finger at him for emphasis. “The best thing we could do is execute her
as soon as possible
. Better yet, let's bring her through the portal and do it somewhere public, so everyone can see who the real leader of Arjinna is.”

Raif cocked his head to the side. “And who's that?”

“
You
,
idiot.”

“No.
The people
—”

“The people need a leader. And as long as this Ghan Aisouri's alive, she's the heir to the throne, right? The empress by default because she's a ‘daughter of the gods' and the Ifrit killed her whole race during the coup so she's the last royal blah blah blah.”

“She doesn't want to be empress,” Raif said. “She just wants to go home.” He left out the part about Nalia wanting to save her brother from a work camp in Ithkar—it would only endanger Bashil.

Shirin stepped closer to him. “Did she tell you that?”

“Yes.”

“Of course she did. She doesn't want you to kill her, right? Mark my words,
tavrai
,
if that bitch gets into Arjinna alive—”

“Shirin. Stop. Just stop, okay?” His voice was too loud, gods, he was shaking with anger.

She stared at him, and when her eyes dimmed, he knew Shirin had seen beyond his flimsy attempts to hide what he felt for Nalia. “No.
No
. Please tell me you haven't—”

Raif could feel his face reddening, and Shirin's hands flew to her mouth, her expression horrified. “Oh, fire and blood, are you
serious
? You
fell for a Ghan Aisouri
?”

The air filled with green and blue smoke, and before Raif could say anything, Jordif Mahar was standing a few feet away, flanked by two revolutionary guards. Raif sent a silent prayer of thanks up to the gods—he had no idea what he would have said to Shirin. He strode across the sand in Jordif's direction, doing what he always did when things were too much: he took the conversation with Shirin and put it away, where he wouldn't have to deal with it until he had time. This was how he'd dealt with the pressure of leading an army since his father died, since Kir had disappeared into the palace's dungeon. Box it up, put it away.

“For your involvement in the dark caravan and for crimes against the people of Arjinna, you've been sentenced to death,” Raif said. He'd always dispensed with small talk, the flattery of the court. His was a blood, sweat, and tears war; he had no time for pleasantry.

“On whose authority?” Jordif snapped. His once jaunty handlebar mustache had fallen to a pathetic droop and his usually immaculate clothing was dirty and stained. He looked nothing like the magnanimous jinni who'd hosted Raif and Zanari when they first came to Earth a little over a week ago.

“Mine,” Raif said.

Jordif raised his eyebrows as Raif walked into his line of sight. “Thought you were all bark and no bite, a pup trying to take his papa's place. I guess I had you pegged wrong.”

“Clearly.” Raif gestured to the gallows a few feet away and Jordif's breath caught.

“A traitor's death, I assume?” Jordif said.

Raif wouldn't be able to undo the three years Nalia had endured on the dark caravan, but killing Jordif was a start. This was the jinni who'd made it possible for Nalia's slave trader to smuggle her through the portal. Maybe he'd even stood by as the trader went through, clutching the tiny bottle Nalia had been trapped inside.

“Yes. A traitor's death.”

Jordif's hands would be cut off before he was hung, to prevent him from using his
chiaan
to make an escape. They'd leave the body hanging, foregoing the ritual burning of the dead. Soon, Jordif would be nothing more than a snack for the vultures, his spirit forever barred from the godlands.