‘I can never understand you,’ I blurt. ‘You have your family in Khor but you are in the pazktab. Why leave them behind at such a young age?’
‘Age?Age is irrelevant. I could have waited in Khor for more raids, helpless to them. But no, I will defend my familyhere, andthere, until my last breath.’
‘You fool,’ I say as she shivers, and I bunch my cloak around us.
She clenches the bone necklace at my collar, gifted by her, smiling up at it. ‘You are the stupid, illogical fool. Not me. I fear for your soul. Will you be like them? Someone who must kill?’
‘All warriors kill,’ I state carefully. ‘Though in the spiritual laws of war, soldiers consent to conflict, and so the gravity of death is not equivalent to cold murder.’
‘I mean taking pleasure in it,’ she rolls her eyes, ‘until the knife that accidentally strikes an innocent is not so damning anymore. Like the raids.’ Then her eyes stream with more tears. ‘It is so wrong.’
I speak unflinchingly. ‘You might be the same. You enlist in less than a year now.’
To my surprise, she shakes her head. ‘I decided, after you left, that next year I am returning to Khor. Not even to serve a clanhouse. With my pazktab education, I can be useful. I will teach at the Khorinite monasteries, train their novices even if they are not Eajiz. To help my village. We had great warriors, we can achieve it again.’
‘That is good,’ I say slowly but her tears keep rolling. ‘Why are you upset at this?’
‘Because of what you said! You are content to kill more and more!’
‘I’ve already killed,’ I speak flatly. ‘I come from a clan full of it. It should not matter to you.’
‘It does,’ she snaps before shoving me. ‘I care about you and your afterlife. All of it.’
An unexpected warmth billows in my chest, that someone even thinks of my afterlife. ‘Then pay alms-taxes for my grave.’
‘Dead and you will still be cheating me of money,’ she mutters.
This is all I needed, I marvel. If this is how I must depart, I can accept this fate. I decide then, I will lie for her.
‘You want the truth? This war is nothing for low-ranks. I will be stationed at the Kin Basin, the northernmost frontier, away from any invasion.’
Arezu pauses. ‘So I wasted my tears on you?’
‘You know what else?’ I kneel, wrapping my shawl tight around her flushed ears, tucking it into her collar. ‘When I return, we will buy lamb-stuffed non for Yahya, because that is all I can afford. Then we will go to Overseer Yabghu and borrow his generous stipend and lie about repaying the debt. And we will trade for dates with walnut paste. And we will bribe the pazktab students for favours.’
‘Really?’ Her eyes gleam wide, almost in relief.
‘By the Divine.’
She chuckles and I cannot tell if it’s from sorrow or joy. ‘Promise me, you will speak another story, around a fire.’
‘Yes,’ I vow, suppressing my trembling. ‘One day I will tell you every folktale, the ones of my Babshah Khatun. You will be the best folkteller in the Camel Road.’ I beam at her even as the memory of my girlhood is tight and crooked, like folding my arms into an old tunic whose sleeves no longer fit. ‘And your smile... it is like Older Brother. There was notone day he went without it. Even at death when a sword hung above him, he smiled. For he believed in a better world—’ I swallow hard. ‘Looking at you, the students – I believe him. I believe this world has some good left in it. But not from myself.’
‘You have an even prettier smile, master. I wish you smiled more so you can see yourself from my eyes.’
‘No one has seen my true smile nor called it pretty, but I think the Divine was saving the blessing to come from you.’
‘Then after this war you must smile more.’
I want to weep through the thin joy. ‘I will,’ I lie, because would I even live long enough to try?
Her eyes shut. ‘Thank you.’
Our heads tilt, foreheads together, and her thumbs cup my cheeks. I cradle her in my arms, pretending I can keep her forever. I memorise the sensation of her skin, and the last of her warmth that I cannot keep. The golden horn of the sun finishes its rise, the clouds like white teeth in the bloody mouth of dawn. I have never said farewell well in my entire life. Is a goodbye a simplepeace of death be unto you, an assurance of the next life? Or are goodbyes like the dawn, a blaze of light that seems to promise something wonderful, but in fact assures nothing at all?
Arezu opens her eyes. She feels like my dawn. Then she smirks through her tears. ‘Please get lost, master.’
The dream fades.
