Of Dreams and Rust (15 page)

“Too many things between us are unsaid,” he says to my back. “I want them to be said.”

It is a very Noor thing to want. “What needs to be said?” I murmur, my heart thrumming with fear, but also with something startlingly close to hope.

“I will begin with this: I have thought about you every day. No matter where I was, no matter what I saw or did in all these months, I did not forget you. And you did not forget me. That is not nothing.”

“But it isn't everything, either.” My palms press flat to the wood. Not everything, but still, so much.

“Wen, I never expected to find you like that. I always pictured something different.”

I laugh. I can't help it. “So did I, Melik. It never involved that many guns.”

“My fantasies never involved any guns at all,” he says, low and rough.

“You said you wished you'd never met me.” And I remember the look on his face, the anger.

“Because I realized how much it was going to hurt when we were parted again.” His hand closes over my shoulder. “Wen, why won't you look at me? Do I repulse you so much?” His voice is hushed. Vulnerable.

“No.” I shift onto my back. “But parts of you terrify me,” I say, more honest than I should be.

He is propped on his elbow. The dark shadow of his face hovers close. “And the other parts?”

“They make it impossible to let go.”

He smooths my hair off my forehead. “I know exactly what you mean.”

I pull his hand away from me. “I don't know how to think about what you did. I am trying to hate you.”

“Is it working?”

“I might have to try harder.”

He is so close that the ends of his hair tickle my cheeks. “We've been through this before.”

When I believed he'd gone to a whore, he means. “This is far more serious.”

He groans. “It is. So let's go over what happened, yes? Think back to that first night, when the soldiers escaped.” His fingers capture mine and intertwine, locking our hands together. “When I gave Bajram the heavy drink from my canteen, did you not consider that I did that on purpose?”

I blink up at the outline of his features, lit only by speckles of early daylight filtering in through tiny holes in the blanket. I cannot read his expression, but I can hear the frustration in his voice, the release of secrets held close for too long.

“And when I slipped my own rations into the bag of food I gave the prisoners,” he continues, “you did not notice. You did not wonder.”

My heart skips a beat. “I did not look closely. I was too busy working against you. Or so I thought.”

“When I spoke loudly and told all my stories, you did not think that perhaps I was keeping their attention to give you time to free the soldiers? Which I knew you would do.” His voice is tight and bitter. “And when I gave you my coat and hat to keep you warm on your journey east . . .”

“Melik,” I whisper, my fingers bunching in his tunic.

“I did everything I could, Wen. Everything. And still you believed the worst of me.”

My fear is melting. My resistance is melting. But . . . “You hunted those boys down.”

He lets out a hard bark of laughter. “Absolutely I did. With every bit of cunning and skill and speed that I have. Commander Kudret threatened to drag you behind a horse if the prisoners were not retrieved. He wanted to make you suffer.” His breath fans over my face, and I am suddenly very aware of his body against mine. “But ask me what really happened. Now I can tell you.”

I touch his face, the long whiskers of his beard coiling coarse over my fingertips. Why did I not consider anything apart from my greatest fears? He did not bring back a single body. And he did not bring back heads. Or hands. Or feet. He brought back pinkie fingers. “You did not kill them.”

He shakes his head. “But I did demand a price in exchange for this mercy. One they were all willing to pay if it meant the girl who saved them might live even one more day.”

“Baris supported your story to the commander.”

“Baris loves me like a brother. And he knows what I feel for you.”

“But you couldn't tell me that you had left them alive?”

“If you'd known, you might have given it away. Your true despair was enough to convince the commander that I had completed my mission.” He places a scratchy kiss on my forehead. “I hoped that once you knew that your anguish had made you and them safer, you might decide it had been worth it.”

I duck my head against his shoulder. “It was. Of course it was. Will you forgive me for not having faith in you?” Again. Again. “You must think I am so stupid and ungrateful.”

“I think nothing of the kind. Despite your belief that I was a cold-blooded killer, you delivered the news about the war machines,” he says, merely a trickle of sound in my ear. “You were willing to help me save my village and my people, not because of your feelings for me, but because . . . well, I don't know why you did it.”

“You don't doubt? Your general made a very good case. It makes more sense for me to be a spy than to think I traveled all this way by myself, through the territory of the enemy, to deliver information that would make me a traitor to my people, that guarantees I have no future at all.” My voice breaks as those thoughts spill from my mouth.

He cups my cheek with his palm and tilts my face to his. “I have faith in you.” His chest trembles with silent laughter. “Even though you are still the most confusing girl I have ever met.” I count the beats of his heart, feeling the silent acceleration before he speaks again. “And I do not blame you, really, for not feeling the same,” he whispers. “I have done bad things. I want you, of all people, to believe that I am good, but I am . . . not. These past few months—”

My fingertips slide over his mouth. “Not one of us is good all the time.” I think of Bo, and how I care for him despite knowing that he has killed over and over again. I understand that he has taken lives, and that he is not always sorry. I am always aware of his nature. But, still, I do not hate him. There are pieces of him I would protect with my life. And Melik . . . he deserves at least as much from me.

He deserves for me to see him as a man, not as the perfect hero who has inhabited my dreams. “Melik, why were you willing to risk so much? Why free prisoners you wanted to kill?” I saw it, that look in his eyes. That was not an act. “Those soldiers may be in the Ring right now, telling their commanders about the rebel force.”

Melik's arm tightens over my back, pressing me against his warm, hard lines. “This war has a big appetite. It devours everything. But I will not let it eat my soul.” He tilts my face to his and touches the tip of his nose to mine. “It had sunk its teeth into my heart, but when you appeared, you reminded me that there are parts of me I am not willing to surrender.”

I smile, my eyes stinging. “So I saved you from a monster?”

“Not for the first time.” He lays his forehead on mine.

“And now you have returned the favor,” I say, breathless, unable to stop my fingers from slipping down the warm skin of his throat, from burrowing under the collar of his tunic. My thumb traces the silver scar beneath his collarbone, and he shivers.

His lips flutter against mine as he speaks, filling me with the most powerful kind of craving. “No, I haven't,” he whispers. “The things I owe you can never be repaid.”

His lips press to mine, soft and searching, and I close my eyes and welcome him. My heart is beating so fast that I can barely breathe, and all of me is tingling. His tongue traces a delicate path along my bottom lip, and I wrap my hand around the back of his neck and pull him closer. He may have been a perfect hero in my dreams, but that perfect hero did not taste like this. He was not warm and trembling like this. He had no weight, no force. But this Melik, the one made of flesh and faults, has all of that, and my body recognizes the difference. It revels in that difference.

He deepens our kiss, his whiskers scratching at my face, one hand sliding down my back to my waist, the other cradling my head above the hard rumbles of the carriage. Parts of me are soft and hot, but others are taut and frantic. I am a jumble of mismatched pieces, but somehow all of them have the same goal. Bring him closer.

I remove my hand from the neck of his tunic to slide it over the bumps of his ribs and curves of his muscles. Such liberties, so bold, but I can think of nothing more necessary than this. Melik moans, a low, desperate sound, and turns so his body is half on top of mine. He crushes me to the floor and I feel the vibrations of the wheels and the hum of the engine against my spine. Suddenly I understand why people slide into this kind of temptation, how the power of a moment conquers years of caution. My hand slips under the hem of his tunic. My palm meets the smooth skin of his waist. And when it does, he breaks our kiss to taste more of me, the soft skin under my chin, and oh, just above the neckline of my dress. His hand is fisted in the folds of my skirt, pressed against my hip. I want to arch into him and see if he'll pull, if he'll touch my legs, if he'll—

The carriage bounces as it hits a divot in the road, and the engine roars. Melik is tossed away from me, against the back of the man next to him, but he catches the edges of the blanket and holds it close around us. His breath is heavy and hot in my ear as he says, “I'm sorry.”

He settles next to me, preserving even the tiny distance between us, the one I want to erase. I frown. “Why?”

He strokes my cheek. “Because this should not happen in the back of a crowded carriage under a blanket that smells like horse.”

I lay my head on his shoulder. “Where should it happen, then?” I whisper, my cheeks heating as I realize how brazen I sound.

He holds my head against his body and wraps his arm around my back again. My hand rests over his heart. “Should it happen at all?” he murmurs. “Is that what you want?”

I bite my lip as my thoughts whirl. What am I asking for? I have only the haziest idea, one that involves a good deal more than the ways our bodies could entwine. It seems so foolish, given that we are caught in the middle of a war, that Melik is marked for death—possibly by both sides in this conflict—and that I am without home or family or means or future. And I don't know what he is thinking at all. Perhaps his thoughts are purely about kissing, about touching, about tasting. Because he is Noor, he might tell me if I asked him, but because I am Itanyai, it seems shamefully prying to do so.

He does not demand an answer. Apparently, there are some things he allows to go unsaid. He merely kisses the top of my head, and we lie quiet together, locked in our own minds. Lulled by the rock of the carriage on the road, soothed by the warmth of Melik's hands and body, dragged down by the terror of the night and the weight of my exhaustion, I drift back into sleep. It is black and mercifully free of dreams.

I surface from the murk as Melik shifts beneath me. “We are close to Dagchocuk.”

“How do you know?”

He chuckles. “I can smell it.” He inches over and peers out through a crack in the wooden boards. “Yes. We're here,” he says as the carriage shudders and coughs, then stops.

The men around us are already leaping from the carriage as I sit up and pull the blanket off. We are still on the Line, pulled over to the side of the wide dirt road. A few yards from us is a stone arch, and beyond it lies a sea of stone cottages with thatched roofs. The air is filled with the scent of woodsmoke, the tang of manure, and something slightly sweet and musky—sage on the fire. To our left, towering high above us like a tidal wave of stone is the jutting western face of the hills, and directly behind the village it looks as if a giant has ripped the rock down the middle. The canyon's mouth gapes wide; a walk from one side to the other would probably take several minutes. To the right are endless plowed fields of dirt that stretch, sunbaked and fallow, for miles.

Cries and shouts pierce the morning as the inhabitants of Dagchocuk realize their men have come home. The men run to their families, some disappearing into cottages from which come shrieks of happiness a moment later. All around us people embrace and cry and laugh and kiss, so openly, as if everything they feel inside is much too big to stay there. As I watch, women and old men come rushing out of their cottages carrying strips of embroidered cloth, each one unique, and they wrap them over the shoulders of some of the men, the older ones, mostly.

Melik vaults from the carriage just in time for a tall young man to slam into him. They wrap their arms around each other, muscles shaking with the need to hold tight, talking fast in voices clogged with tears. As they pull away from each other, the young man looks at me, and I gasp. It's Sinan, wearing smudged beige trousers and a brown tunic with a torn collar. He is even taller than he was the last time I saw him, and his shoulders are a bit broader, but his cheeks are hollowed as if all this growing has come at a price, probably because there has not been enough to eat. His rust-colored hair, like Melik's, has grown long, but he has pulled it back with a bit of colored yarn high on the back of his head. His dark blue eyes widen with surprise when he sees me.

“I have a story to tell you,” Melik says to him in Itanyai.

“Must be very entertaining,” says Sinan, still staring at me. “Hello, Wen. You look really terrible.”

Melik squeezes his eyes shut and then rubs his hand over his face.
“Bazan sissilie iyud,”
he groans.

“Why would I be silent?” Sinan retorts. “You wanted me to practice my Itanyai.”

I smile at the impudent boy, for that is surely what he is, but I don't mind. It is nice to see his bright, fierce grin. “Hello, Sinan. I'm sure you'll get plenty of practice, because my Noor is no better than it was,” I say as Melik grasps my waist and lifts me from the carriage. I hold on to his arms as my legs buckle beneath me.