The Rose and the Dagger (The Wrath and the Dawn) (2 page)

I
T WAS ONLY A RING.

Yet it signified so much to her.

Much to lose. Much to fight for.

Shahrzad lifted her hand into a stream of light. The ring of muted gold flashed twice, as if to remind her of its mate, far across the Sea of Sand.

Khalid.

Her thoughts drifted to the marble palace in Rey. To Khalid. She hoped he was with Jalal or with his uncle, the
shahrban
.

She hoped he was not alone. Adrift. Wondering . . .

Why am I not with him?

Her lips pressed tight.

Because the last time I was in Rey, thousands of innocent people perished.

And Shahrzad could not return until she’d found a way to protect her people. Her love. A way to end Khalid’s terrible curse.

Outside her tent, a goat began to bleat with merry abandon.

Her temper mounting, Shahrzad flung off her makeshift blanket and reached for the dagger beside her bedroll. An empty
threat, but she knew she should at least fight for a semblance of control.

As if to mock her, the shrill sounds beyond her tent grew more incessant.

Is that a . . . bell?

The little beast outside had a bell around its neck! And now the clanging and the bleating all but ensured the impossibility of sleep.

Shahrzad sat up, gripping the jeweled hilt of her dagger—

Then, with an exasperated cry, she fell back against the itchy wool of her bedroll.

It’s not as though I’m managing to sleep as it is.

Not when she was so far from home. So far from where her heart longed to be.

She swallowed the sudden lump that formed in her throat. Her thumb brushed against the ring with two crossed swords—the ring Khalid had placed on her right hand a mere fortnight ago.

Enough. Nothing will be accomplished from such nonsense.

Again she sat up, her eyes scanning her new surroundings.

Irsa’s bedroll was neatly stashed to one side of the small tent. Her younger sister had likely been awake for hours, baking bread, making tea, and braiding the contemptible goat’s chin hair.

Shahrzad almost smiled, despite everything.

Her wariness taking shape in the gloom, she tucked the dagger into her waistband, then stretched to her feet. Every muscle in her body ached from days of hard travel and nights of poor sleep.

Three nights of worry. Three nights spent fleeing a city set
to flame. An endless fount of questions without answers. Those three long nights of worry for her father, whose battered body had yet to recover from whatever damage it had incurred on the hilltops outside Rey.

Shahrzad took a deep breath.

The air here was strange. Drier. Crisp. Soft bars of light slanted through the tent seams. A thin layer of fine silt clung to everything. It made her tiny world appear as though it were fashioned of diamond-dusted darkness.

On one side of the tent was a small table with a porcelain pitcher and a copper basin. Shahrzad’s meager belongings were perched beside it, wrapped in the threadbare carpet given to her by Musa Zaragoza several months ago. She knelt before the table and filled the basin with water for washing.

The water was tepid, but clean. Her reflection looked strangely calm as it stared back at her.

Calm yet distorted.

The face of a girl who had lost everything and nothing in the stretch of a single night.

She slipped both hands into the water. Her skin looked pale and creamy below its surface. Not its usual warm bronze color. She fixed her gaze on the place where the water met the air, on the strange bend that made it seem as though her hands were in a different world beneath the water—

A world that moved more slowly and told stories.

The water lies.

She splashed some water onto her face and dragged her damp fingers through her hair. Then she lifted the lid from the small
wooden container nearby and used a pinch of the ground mint, white pepper, and crushed rock salt stored within to cleanse her mouth of sleep.

“You’re awake. After you arrived so late last night, I didn’t think you would rise so early.”

Shahrzad turned to see Irsa standing beneath the open tent flap. A triangle of desert light silhouetted her sister’s slender frame.

Irsa smiled, her gamine features coming into focus. “You never used to wake for breakfast before.” She ducked into the tent, securing the tent flap closed behind her.

“Who can sleep with that damnable goat shrieking outside?” Shahrzad flicked water at Irsa to divert her inevitable onslaught of questions.

“You mean Farbod?”

“You’ve named the little beast?” Shahrzad grinned as she began plaiting the tangled waves of her hair into a braid.

“He’s quite sweet.” Irsa frowned. “You should give him a chance.”

“Please tell Farbod that—should he persist in his early morning recitals—my favorite meal is stewed goat, served in a sauce of pomegranates and crushed walnuts.”

“Ha!” Irsa took a long stretch of twine from the pocket of her wrinkled
sirwal
trowsers. “I suppose we shouldn’t forget we’re now in the presence of royalty.” She bound the length of twine around the end of Shahrzad’s braid. “I’ll warn Farbod not to further offend Khorasan’s illustrious calipha.”

Shahrzad glanced over her shoulder into Irsa’s pale eyes.

“You’ve gotten so tall,” she said quietly. “When did you get so tall?”

Irsa wrapped both arms around her sister’s waist. “I’ve missed you.” Her fingertips grazed the hilt of the dagger, and she pulled back in alarm. “Why are you carrying—”

“Is Baba awake yet?” Shahrzad smiled overbrightly. “Can you take me to see him?”

The night of the storm, Shahrzad had ridden with Tariq and Rahim to a hilltop outside Rey, in search of her father.

She’d been unprepared for what they’d found.

Jahandar al-Khayzuran had been curled in a puddle around an old, leather-bound book.

His bare feet and hands were burned. Red and raw and abraded. His hair was falling out in clumps. The rain had gathered them in the mud, smashing the strands against wet stone, like so many discarded things.

Her sister’s dappled horse was long-since dead. Its throat had been slashed. The blood had drained in rivulets from a vicious wound at its neck. Veins of mud and drifting ash had melded with the crimson to form a sinister tracery across the hillside.

Shahrzad would never forget the image of her father’s huddled body against the red-and-grey slope.

When she’d tried to pry Jahandar’s fingers away from the book, he’d cried out in a language she’d never heard him speak before. His eyes had rolled back into his head, and his lashes had fluttered closed, never to open again, not once in the four days since.

And until they did, Shahrzad refused to leave him.

She had to know her father was safe. She had to know what he had done.

No matter what—or whom—she’d left behind in Rey.

“Baba?” Shahrzad said softly, as she knelt beside him in his small tent.

He shuddered in his sleep, his fingers wrapping tighter around the ancient tome clutched in his arms. Even in his delirium, Jahandar had refused to relinquish the book. Not a soul had been permitted to touch it.

Irsa sighed. She stooped next to Shahrzad and handed her a tumbler of water.

Shahrzad held the cup to her father’s cracked lips. She waited until she felt him swallow. He muttered to himself, then turned back on his side, tucking the book farther beneath his blankets.

“What did you put in this?” Shahrzad asked Irsa. “It smells nice.”

“Just some fresh mint and honey. Also a few tea herbs and a bit of milk. You said he hasn’t eaten anything in a few days. I thought it might help.” Irsa shrugged.

“It’s a good idea. I should have thought of it.”

“Don’t scold yourself. It doesn’t suit you. And . . . you’ve done more than enough.” Irsa spoke with a wisdom beyond her fourteen years. “Baba will wake soon. I—know it.” She bit her lip, her tone lacking conviction. “Calm is needed to heal his wounds. And time.”

Shahrzad said nothing as she studied her father’s hands. The burns there had blistered alongside bruised purples and garish reds.

What did he
do
on the night of the storm?

What have we done?

“You should eat. You barely ate anything when you arrived last night,” Irsa interrupted Shahrzad’s thoughts.

Before she could protest, Irsa removed the tumbler from Shahrzad’s hand, hauling her to her feet and dragging her into the dunes beyond their father’s tent. The scent of roasting meat hung heavy in the desert air, the smoke above them an aimless cloud. Silken grains of sand sifted between Shahrzad’s toes, just near too hot to bear. Harsh rays of sunlight blurred everything they touched.

As they walked, Shahrzad glanced around the Badawi camp through slitted eyes, studying the hustle and bustle of mostly smiling faces; people carrying bushels of grain and bundles of goods from one corner to the next. The children seemed happy enough, though it was impossible to ignore the gleaming assortment of weaponry—the swords and axes and arrows—lying in the shadow of curing animal skins. Impossible to ignore them or their unassailable meaning . . .

Preparations for the coming war.

“And I shall take from you these lives, a thousandfold.”

Shahrzad stiffened, then drew back her shoulders, refusing to burden her sister with these troubles. Such troubles were meant for those with unique abilities.

Those like Musa Zaragoza, the magus from the Fire Temple.

Though it took effort, Shahrzad shrugged off the curse’s interminable weight. She walked with Irsa through the enclave of tents toward the largest, at center. It was an impressive structure,
patchworked though it was: a hodgepodge of sun-worn colors, with a faded pennant at its apex, gamboling about in the breeze. A hooded sentry cloaked in roughspun stood at the tent’s entrance.

“No weapons.” The soldier’s hand clamped down on Shahrzad’s shoulder with the force of a lifelong aggressor. The sort who enjoyed his role far more than he should.

Despite her wiser inclinations, Shahrzad’s response was immediate and automatic. She shoved his hand away, her scowl set.

I am in no mood for boorish men. Or their warmongering.

“Weapons are not permitted in the sheikh’s tent.” The soldier reached for her dagger, his eyes glittering with an unspoken threat.

“Touch me again, and I’ll—”

“Shazi!” Irsa moved to placate the soldier. “Please excuse my—”

The soldier pushed Irsa back. Without a moment’s thought, Shahrzad slammed both fists into his chest. He staggered to one side, his nostrils flaring. Behind her, she heard men begin to shout.

“What are you doing, Shahrzad!” Irsa cried, her shock at her sister’s recklessness etched across her face.

Enraged, the soldier took hold of Shahrzad’s forearm. She braced herself for the coming fight, her toes curled and her knuckles clenched.

“Let go of her immediately!” A tall shadow loomed upon the soldier.

Perfect.

Shahrzad winced, a flash of guilt warring with her fury.

“I don’t need your help, Tariq,” she said through gritted teeth.

“I’m not helping you.” He strode closer, aiming a brief but quelling stare in her direction. His unconcealed pain was raw enough to rob her of mettle.

Will he never forgive me?

The soldier turned to Tariq with a deference that would, under normal circumstances, irritate Shahrzad immensely. “Apologies,
sahib
, but she refused to—”

“Release her at once. I didn’t ask for excuses. Follow orders or be met with the consequences, soldier.”

The soldier released her with reluctance. Shahrzad shoved off his grasp. Steeling herself with a breath, she faced those nearby. Rahim stood at Tariq’s shoulder; several young men were at his opposing flank. One was a reed-thin boy sporting the guise of a much older man. His beard was growing in patches over a long, lean face, and his comically stern eyebrows were cut over ice-cold eyes.

Eyes that watched her with abject hatred.