If he was alive, there must be more who had fled the battlefield, wounded. Ahead of me a branch snaps. Bracing my blade, I creep into the clearing until I make out two Azadnians, hidden behind the shrubs, army sashes discarded, bloodied.
My mouth opens to call for my squadron, but they whirl at my presence, raising their hands.
‘Please!’ one girl begs. ‘We were leaving, we defected!’
I ignore the plea, turning to—
Her eyes drop to my quartered sleeves and I realise too late she can see the gold-threading. She drops to her knees. ‘I said we defected!’
‘I don’t care.’
Her body trembles as a feverish cry spills from her lips. ‘Have you no mercy? Are we not the same?’ She clutches her wounded shoulder.
‘The same?’
‘The lands of the Camel Road! We were forced into these uniformsand yet, your superiors delight in torturing us,’ she hisses. ‘Look at the colours you wear.’
My anger rises. ‘You defend Mitra—’
‘We had no choice!’
‘You did have a choice,’ I reply scathingly.
‘My people do not. My brothers were conscripted from the Dawjad pastures, and more are—’
‘Dawjad.’ I pause, my blade quivering in my fingers.
‘– snatched from our tribes if we refuse!’
My head shakes. These soldiers defended an outpost filled with the sacrifices of our own people. She is lying. She is an enemy. No-Name’s voice resounds in my mind.See them as a bug, a thing to squash.
I stride forward, but her words tumble out now, no longer so desperate, but instead enraged. ‘I assumed you would understand.’ She scrambles back as blood gushes out of her wound, likely infected. She will not last. ‘I kneel before you begging and you think nothing of it!’ Her eyes shine wildly while her injured comrade crawls toward her. My head pounds and a disoriented feeling washes over me, like I am far above, gazing below.
I recall Older Brother and me in the bazaar, watching poets recite odes about the Faceless Dawjad warriors. The reminder of it is cruel.
I cannot. I cannot betray these two to an empire that I do not believe in.
To their surprise, I step back.
‘I will not take you,’ I start in a low voice, ‘but you cannot escape. My squadron has the perimeter secured; they will capture you for torture. Make your choice on how to leave.’
A determination burns in the girl’s eyes. She stands, and the other staggers up, graceless in blood, unsheathing their blades. I understand with horrifying clarity what they are to do. And I watch on, helpless, but not opposed to it.
Her eyes study my arms, then my raven mask. ‘I have a prayer for those death-worshippers. May we die as free men rather than slaves to humanity. If you live past this, let us meet you in a state of martyrdom.’
It is a curse. A red shame bleeds through me.
‘You sound like my uma.’
She smiles, embittered. ‘And mine too.’ She raises her blade to her neck. ‘All hail the Faceless Dawjad clans.’
I know moral disobedience has no place in the Za’skar battalion.But when I meet that girl’s eyes, I see – fundamentally – my nomadic brethren.
I let them puncture their own necks with those blades, slitting wide like a red smile, up into their jaw. But in that split second before, I think I see the look of a person who hasfinallywon.
My knees sink to the ground; I finally understand the reasoning behind my uma taking her own life. My thoughts shiver and waver, the disturbed surface of a firelotus pond.
If this is true freedom, then freedom must be death. If this is revolution, then revolution, too, is death. Or possibly they were throwing away their one true chance at peace, choosing to spill blood – for that is all they know of freedom. Is this my fate? To die like the rest of them, as nothing, a dead warrior’s clan upon my tongue, who also did nothing?
