The Rose and the Dagger (The Wrath and the Dawn) (3 page)

Her fingers shifted toward her dagger.

“Thank you, Tariq,” Irsa said, since Shahrzad had yet to offer a shred of gratitude.

“Of course,” he replied with an awkward nod.

Shahrzad chewed at the inside of her cheek. “I—”

“Don’t trouble yourself, Shazi. We’re beyond such things.” Tariq knocked the cowl of his
rida’
back and ducked through the entrance of the tent, sparing himself more of her company. The boy with the ice-cold eyes glowered at Shahrzad before following suit. Rahim paused beside her, his expression grim, as though he had expected better. Then he stepped closer to Irsa, his head tilted
in question. Her sister sent half a smile his way. Sighing softly, Rahim trudged past them into the tent, without a single word.

Irsa elbowed Shahrzad in the ribs. “What’s wrong with you?” she admonished in a whisper. “We’re guests here. You can’t behave in such a manner.”

Chastened, Shahrzad nodded curtly before striding through the cavernous hollow.

It took her eyes time to adjust to the sudden darkness. A series of brass lamps hung at lazy intervals from the wooden rafters above, their thready light pale after the desert sun. At the far end of the tent was a long, low table, crafted of roughhewn teakwood. Worn woolen cushions were thrown about in haphazard piles. Screaming children scurried past Shahrzad, blind to all but their single-minded quest for the most esteemed position at the breakfast table.

Seated at the very center of this teeth-rattling tumult was an old man with a keen pair of eyes and an unkempt beard. When he saw Shahrzad, he smiled at her with a surprising amount of warmth. To his left was a woman of similar age with a long braid of muted copper. At his right sat Shiva’s father, Reza bin-Latief. Shahrzad’s stomach tensed, her flash of guilt resurfacing. She’d seen him last night, but in the clamor of their arrival the exchange had been brief, and she was not yet certain she was ready to face Shiva’s father.

So soon after failing to exact revenge for the murder of his daughter.

So soon after falling in love with the very boy who had murdered her.

Deciding it was best to avoid unwanted attention, Shahrzad kept her head down and took the cushion beside Irsa, across from Tariq and Rahim.

She avoided the gazes of those around her, especially that of the boy with the ice-fire eyes, who took every opportunity to burn through her with the heat of his discomfiting stare. The desire to draw attention to his behavior was always at the forefront of her mind, but Irsa’s earlier admonition continued to ring true: she was a guest here.

And she could not behave in such a reckless manner.

Not with the welfare of her family at stake.

A leg of roasted lamb was placed at the center of the well-worn table. Its serving platter was an immense affair of hammered silver, dented on all sides from age and use. Thick slices of
barbari
bread, coated with butter and rolled in black sesame seeds, were left in baskets nearby, alongside chipped bowls of whole radishes and slabs of salted goat cheese. Squabbling children reached for the radishes and tore hearty chunks of
barbari
in half before grabbing at the meat with their bare hands. Their elders crushed stems of fresh mint before pouring dark streams of tea over the fragrant leaves.

When Shahrzad chanced to look up, she found the old man with the keen eyes studying her, another warm smile pooling across his lips. The gap between his two front teeth was pronounced, and, at first glance, it made him appear almost foolish.

Though Shahrzad was not the least bit fooled.

“So, my friend . . .
this
is Shahrzad,” the old man said.

To whom is he speaking?

“I was right—” The old man cackled. “She
is
very beautiful.”

Shahrzad’s eyes flitted down both sides of the table. They stopped on Tariq.

His broad shoulders were rigid; his chiseled jaw was tight. He exhaled through his nose and lifted his gaze to hers.

“She is,” Tariq agreed in a resigned voice.

The old man quirked his head at Shahrzad. “You’ve caused a lot of trouble, beautiful one.”

Despite the reassuring hand Irsa placed atop hers, Shahrzad’s ire rose like embers being stoked to flame.

Aware she lacked grace in that moment, Shahrzad chose to say nothing. She rolled her tongue in her mouth. Pinched her lower lip between her teeth.

I am a guest here. I cannot behave as I desire.

No matter how angry and alone I may feel.

The old man smiled again. Ever wider. Ever more gap-toothed.

Infuriating.

“Are you worth it?”

Shahrzad cleared her throat. “Pardon?” she said, keeping tight rein on her emotions.

The boy with the ice-fire eyes watched with the rapt attention of a hawk.

“Are you worth all this trouble, beautiful one?” the old man repeated in maddening singsong.

Irsa wrapped a pleading hand around Shahrzad’s fingers, cold sweat slicking her palm.

Shahrzad could not risk her sister’s safety. Not in a camp filled with unknowns. Unknowns who could just as soon as toss her
family into the desert for an errant word. Or slit their throats at a misread glance. No. Shahrzad could not put her father’s dubious health in jeopardy. Not for all the world.

She smiled slowly, taking time to subdue her fury. “I think beauty is rarely worth the trouble.” Shahrzad gripped Irsa’s hand tighter in sisterly solidarity. “But
I
am worth a great deal more than what you see.” Her tone was airy despite the veiled rebuke.

Without hesitation, the old man threw back his head and laughed. “To be sure!” His face shone with merriment. “Welcome to my home, Shahrzad al-Khayzuran. I am Omar al-Sadiq, and you are my guest. While within these borders, you will always be treated as such. But bear in mind: a calipha in silk or a beggar in the street makes no difference to me. Welcome.” He dipped his head and brushed his fingertips along his brow with a broad flourish.

Shahrzad released a pent-up breath. It escaped her in a rush of air, taking with it the tension from her shoulders and stomach. Her grin stretching farther, Shahrzad bowed in return, touching her right hand to her forehead.

Shiva’s father watched their exchange with a blank expression, his elbows folded against the table’s weathered edge. “Shazi-
jan
,” he began in a somber tone.

He caught her just as Shahrzad reached for a piece of
barbari
. “Yes, Uncle Reza?” She lifted her brows in question, her hand hovering above the breadbasket.

Reza’s features turned pensive. “I’m very glad you are here—that you are safe.”

“Thank you. I’m very grateful to everyone for keeping my family safe. And for taking such excellent care of Baba.”

He nodded, then leaned forward, steepling his hands beneath his chin. “Of course. Your family has always been my family. As mine has always been yours.”

“Yes,” Shahrzad said quietly. “It has.”

“So,” Reza said, lines of consternation bracketing his mouth, “it pains me greatly to ask you this—as I thought you might have been remiss when you arrived last night—but I have swallowed your insult for as long as I can endure it.”

Shahrzad’s entire body froze, her fingers still poised above the bread. The tension renewed its grip on her body, guilt coiling around her stomach with snakelike savagery.

“Shahrzad . . .” Reza bin-Latief’s voice had lost any hint of kindness; any warmth in the man she’d considered a second father was gone. “Why are you sitting at this table—breaking bread with me—wearing the ring of the boy who
murdered
my daughter?”

It was a cutting accusation.

It sliced through the crowd like a scythe through a sea of grain.

Shahrzad’s fingers pressed tight over the standard of the two crossed swords. Tight enough to cause pain.

She blinked once. Twice.

Tariq cleared his throat. The sound echoed through the sudden stillness. “Uncle—Uncle Reza—”

No. She could not let Tariq save her. Not again.

Never again.

“I’m . . . I’m sorry,” she said, her mouth dry.

But she wasn’t. Not for this. She was sorry for a hundred things. A thousand things.

An entire city of untendered apologies.

But she would never be sorry for this.

“Don’t be sorry, Shahrzad,” Reza continued in the same cold voice. The voice of a stranger. “Decide.”

Mumbling her regrets, Shahrzad pushed to her feet.

She didn’t stop to think. Clinging to the remains of her dignity, she stumbled away from the table and into the blazing desert sun. Her sandals caught in the hot sand, hefting it behind her, striking her calves with each step.

A large, calloused hand took hold of her shoulder, halting her.

She glanced up, shielding her eyes from the blinding light.

The soldier. The lifelong aggressor.

“Get out of my way,” she whispered, fighting to leash her wrath. “Now.”

His lips curved upward with a leisurely kind of malice. He refused to move.

Shahrzad grabbed his wrist to shove it aside.

The rough-spun linen of his
rida’
rolled up to his elbow, revealing a brand seared into his inner forearm.

The mark of the scarab.

The mark of the Fida’i assassins who had stolen into her chamber in Rey and tried to kill her.

With a gasp, Shahrzad ran. Clumsily, mindlessly, her only thought, of escape.

Somewhere in the distance, she heard Irsa’s voice calling for her.

Still, she refused to stop.

She ran into their tiny tent, throwing the door fold shut with a resounding slap.

Her shallow breaths rebounded across the three walls. Shahrzad raised her right hand into a shaft of light filtering through a tent seam. She watched it catch on the muted gold of her ring.

I don’t belong here. A guest in a prison of sand and sun.

But I need to keep my family safe; I need to find a way to break the curse.

And return home to Khalid.

Alas, she did not know whom she could trust. Until Shahrzad knew who this Sheikh Omar al-Sadiq was and why a Fida’i assassin lurked in his camp, she must remain careful. For it was clear she did not have an ally in Reza bin-Latief as she once had had. And Shahrzad refused to put her burdens on Tariq. It was not his place to keep her or her family safe. No. That duty remained with her, and her alone.

Her eyes flashed around before fixing on the pool of water in the copper basin.

Exist beneath the water.

Move slowly. Tell stories.

Lie.

Without a thought for sentimentality, Shahrzad yanked the ring from her finger.

Breathe.

She closed her eyes and listened to the silent cry of her heart.

“Here.” Irsa dropped the tent flap and moved to Shahrzad’s side. She needed no direction. Nor did she offer any kind of reproach. In a trice, she’d unraveled the length of twine binding Shahrzad’s braid. The sisters locked eyes as Irsa took the ring from Shahrzad’s hand and fashioned a necklace from the twine.

Wordlessly, Irsa secured the necklace behind Shahrzad’s throat and tucked the ring beneath her
qamis
. “No more secrets.”

“Some secrets are safer behind lock and key.”

Shahrzad nodded to her sister, Khalid’s words a low whisper in her ear. Not in warning. But in reminder.

She would do whatever needed to be done to keep her family safe.

Even lie to her own sister.

“What do you want to know?”

H
E WAS ALONE.

And he should take advantage of the time, before the demands of the day stole these moments of solitude from him.

Khalid stepped through the sands of the training courtyard.

As soon as he reached for his
shamshir
, he knew his hands would bleed.

No matter. It was of little consequence.

Moments spent in idleness were moments left to thought.

Moments left to memory.

The sword separated from its sheath with the soft
hiss
of metal on metal. His palms burned; his fingers ached. Still, he gripped the hilt tighter.

When he turned toward the sun, the light struck his eyes, searing his vision. Khalid cursed under his breath.

His growing sensitivity to light was a recurring problem of late. An unfortunate effect of continued sleeplessness. Soon, those around him would become all too aware of this issue. He was too comfortable in the dark—a hollow-eyed creature that
slithered and slunk through the broken hallways of a once-majestic palace.

As the
faqir
had cautioned him, this behavior would be construed as madness.

The mad boy-king of Khorasan. The monster. The murderer.

Khalid squeezed his burning eyes shut. Against his better judgment, he let his mind drift to memory.

He recalled being a boy of seven, standing in the shadows, watching his brother, Hassan, learn the art of swordplay. When his father had finally permitted Khalid to learn alongside Hassan, Khalid had been surprised; his father had often disregarded such requests in the past.

“You might as well learn something of value. I suppose even a bastard should know how to fight.” His father’s scorn for Khalid seemed endless.

Strangely, the one and only time his father had ever shown pride in him had been the day, several years later, when Khalid had bested Hassan with a sword.

But the following afternoon, his father had forbidden Khalid from studying alongside Hassan any further.

He’d sent Hassan to study with the best. And left Khalid to fend for himself.

That night, an angry eleven-year-old prince of Khorasan had pledged to become the best swordsman in the kingdom. Once he had, then perhaps his father would realize the past did not give him the right to deny his son a future.

No. That would take a great deal more.

And the day he held a sword to his father’s throat, his father would know it.

Khalid smiled to himself as the memory brought back with it the bittersweet taste of childish fury.

Yet another promise he’d failed to keep.

Yet another failed revenge.

He did not know why he was remembering these things on this particular morning. Perhaps it was because of that boy and his sister from yesterday.

Kamyar and Shiva.

Whatever it was that drew Khalid to their door had also bade him to stay and help. It was not the first occasion on which he had done such a thing. Since the storm, there had been several times Khalid had ventured into sections of his city, cloaked in the anonymity of silence and shadow.

The first day, he had wandered into a beleaguered quarter of Rey, not far from the souk. While there, he had given food to the wounded. Two days past, he’d helped repair a well. His hands—unaccustomed to the harshness of physical labor—had bled and blistered from the strain.

Yesterday was the first time he had spent in the company of children.

At first, Kamyar had reminded Khalid of Shahrzad. So much so that, even now, it brought the beginnings of another smile to Khalid’s face. The tiny boy was bold and insolent. Unafraid. The best and the worst of Shahrzad.

Then, as the hours had passed, it was the girl who’d brought to mind Shazi’s spirit the most.

Because she hadn’t trusted him. Not in the slightest.

She’d watched Khalid out of the corner of her eye. She’d waited for him to betray her—to shed his snakeskin and strike. Like a wounded animal, she’d warily taken food and drink, never dropping her guard, not even for a moment.

She was smart, and she loved her brother with a fierceness Khalid almost envied.

He’d appreciated her quiet honesty the most. And he’d wanted to do more for their family. So much more than clear their tiny home of destruction and leave behind a pittance in a leather pouch. But he’d known nothing would ever be enough.

Because nothing could ever replace what they’d lost.

Khalid opened his eyes.

With his back to the sun, he began his drill.

The
shamshir
cut through the sky in swooping arcs. In flashes of silver and streaks of white light. It whistled around him as he tried to quiet the clamor of his thoughts.

But it wasn’t enough.

He put both hands on the hilt and twisted it in two.

The blades were forged of damascene steel, tempered in the Bluefires of Warharan. He’d commissioned them himself. None were their equal.

A sword in either hand, Khalid continued moving across the sand.

Now, the sound of dully shrieking metal rasped about his head with the fury of a desert sirocco.

Still, it wasn’t enough.

A trickle of blood slid down his arm.

He felt nothing. He only saw it.

Because nothing hurt like missing her.

He suspected nothing ever would.

“Has it come to this?”

Khalid did not turn around.

“Have Khorasan’s coffers been so depleted?” Jalal continued to jest, though his tone sounded oddly forced.

His back to his cousin, Khalid wiped his bloodied palms on the ends of his crimson
tikka
sash.

“Please tell me the Caliph of Khorasan—the King of Kings—can still afford to procure a set of gauntlets or, at the very least, a single glove.” Jalal sauntered into view, a dark eyebrow crooked high into his forehead.

Khalid returned his
shamshir
to its sheath and glanced at the captain of his Royal Guard. “If you need a glove, I can procure one for you. But only one. I am not made of gold, Captain al-Khoury.”

Laughing, Jalal propped his hands on the hilt of his scimitar, his grip tight. “Procure one for yourself,
sayyidi
. It appears you are sorely in need of it. What happened?” He nodded at Khalid’s bloodstained palms.

Khalid tugged his linen
qamis
back over his head.

“Does it have anything to do with you disappearing yet again yesterday?” Jalal pressed, his agitation becoming all the more evident.

When Khalid failed to respond a second time, Jalal stepped before him.

“Khalid.” All pretense at lightheartedness was gone. “The palace is in shambles. The city is a disaster. You cannot continue disappearing for hours on end, especially without a detachment of bodyguards. Father cannot continue lying to everyone about where you are, and I . . . cannot continue lying to him.” Jalal ran his fingers through his wavy mop of hair, further setting it into disarray.

Khalid paused to study his cousin.

And was alarmed by what he saw.

Jalal’s usual veneer of smug self-satisfaction was absent. A scraggly beard shadowed his jawline. His ordinarily pristine cloak was wrinkled and smudged, and his hands seemed on an unending quest for something to grasp—a sword hilt, a sash knot, a collar loop . . . anything.

In all his eighteen years, Khalid had never known Jalal to fidget.

“What’s the matter with you?”

Jalal guffawed loudly. Too loudly. It rang so patently false that it only succeeded in disturbing Khalid further.

“Are you in earnest or in jest?” Jalal crossed his arms.

“In earnest.” Khalid took a cautious breath. “For now.”

“You want me to confide in you? I must confess, I’m galled by the irony.”

“I don’t want you to confide in me. I want you to tell me what’s wrong and stop wasting my time. If you need someone to hold your hand, seek out one of the many young women who pine outside your chamber door.”

“Ah, there it is.” A bleak expression settled on Jalal’s face. “Even you.”

At that, Khalid’s irritation reached a breaking point. “Take a bath, Jalal. A long one.” He began striding away.

“I’m going to be a father, Khalid-
jan
.”

Khalid stopped short. He turned in place, his heel forming a deep divot in the sand.

Jalal shrugged. A rueful smile tugged at one corner of his lips.

“You . . . unconscionable imbecile,” Khalid said.

“That’s kind.”

“Are you seeking permission to marry her?”

“She won’t have me.” He tugged his fingers through his hair again. “It appears you aren’t the only one to have noticed the harem of women outside my chamber door.”

“I like her already. At the very least, she’s wont to learn from her mistakes.” Khalid leaned into the shadows against the stone wall and shot a daggered glance at his cousin.

“That’s also kind.”

“Kindness is not among my celebrated virtues.”

“No.” Jalal laughed drily. “It’s not. Especially not of late.” His laughter gave way to a sobering pause. “Khalid-
jan
, you do believe me when I say my only thought was to keep Shazi safe when I told that boy—”

“I believe you.” Khalid’s voice was soft yet sharp. “As I said before, there is no need to discuss it further.”

The two young men stood in awkward silence for a time, staring into the sand.

“Tell your father.” Khalid pushed off the wall to take his leave. “He’ll make certain she and the child are provided for. Should
you need anything else, you have only to ask.” He began walking away.

“I love her. I think I want to marry her.”

Again, Khalid stopped short. This time, he did not turn around.

The words stung—the ease with which they fell from his cousin’s lips. The realization of Khalid’s many shortcomings when it came to Shahrzad. The reminder of all the lost possibilities.

His chest tight, Khalid let Jalal’s words settle on the breeze . . .

Waiting to hear if they had the tenor of truth to them.

“You think?” Khalid said finally. “Or you know.”

The slightest hesitation. “I think I know.”

“Don’t equivocate, Jalal. It’s insulting. To me and to her.”

“It’s not meant to be insulting. It’s my attempt at honesty—a trait I know you hold in high esteem,” Jalal retorted. “At present—with no knowledge of her true feelings on the matter—it’s the most I can manage. I love her. I think I want to be with her.”

“Be careful, Captain al-Khoury. Those words mean different things to different people. Make sure they mean the right things to you.”

“Don’t be an ass. I mean them.”

“When did you mean them?”

“I mean them now. Isn’t that what matters?”

A muscle worked in Khalid’s jaw. “Now is easy. It’s easy to say what you want in a passing moment. That’s why a harem waits outside your door and the mother of your child won’t have you.” He strode back toward the palace.

“Then what
is
the right answer,
sayyidi
? What should I have said?” Jalal called out to the sky in exasperation.

“Always.”

“Always?”

“And don’t speak to me of this again until it is!”