The clearest answer arrives. This girl, raised by death and scarred by memories, at sixteen years, understood a concept I have spent my life running in circles to grasp: family is not the blood running through your clan or the gnarled roots twisting from beneath a tree in archaic tradition, a cage to be rebuilt generation after generation. It’s the people worth every breath, every labour and every act of love to create a home.
My chest tightens. Her home was never limited to a dead clan. Her home was the land left behind.
The Sepahbad rakes a hand through his hair before gazing at the mounds of dead bodies. ‘In the days after, through her grief, she thought I was her brother. She followed me... everywhere. A survival instinct. Orphaned children were taken to the monastery. I forced her there, but in the years I visited Khor’s outposts, she recognised me. She had learned about the art of Eajizi from the monks. She demanded I patron her into Za’skar’s pazktab.’
‘What did you answer?’
‘I said Za’skar is not for children.’
I cradle Arezu tighter. ‘And what was her answer?’
His eyes meet mine. ‘She said she was no longer a child.’
My eyes water. ‘She did?’
He nods and reaches out, his thumb catching my tear.
‘Thank you,’ I whisper.
We’ve arrived at the grave site. I pull back the cloth to reveal Arezu’s marred features. I touch my bone necklace. There is no peace in this farewell, only deep regrets. I despise them all: myself, emperors, warriors, generals like him for making children think they are heroes.
‘They must bury her, to avoid a jinn’s curse.’ What he does not say: there can be nothing more to remember my pupil by.
‘Of course,’ I say bitterly. He doesn’t respond.
It seems cruel to abandon this child again, to sink her in the cold, barren dirt for eternity, one amongst thousands in graves. She had been alone her entire life, but it seems impossible to let her go now, when she is finally in my arms. The brutality numbs me. I want to protect her. To love her. To pretend she’s alive.
But I cannot. Wordlessly, the Sepahbad holds his hands out.
I pass Arezu to his outstretched arms. For a heartbeat, she is pressed between us, a bridge across a chasm. He looks at her for a long moment. My skin itches and I scratch as he deposits her body on top of the other veiled corpses: a tower of cruelty, as soldiers amass to pray for the dead.
When the Sepahbad turns back to me, my words tumble out in confession. ‘The power I taught Arezu made her haughty. It encouraged her desertion.’
The Sepahbad nods. ‘It’s the dilemma any master must face. At some point, no master can control their pupil. You give them the weapons and let them walk on their own.’
At this, I unclasp the bone necklace Arezu gifted me. I press it into his hands. For a second, as he stares at it, something strange flits in his gaze – sorrow, then slow confusion.
He studies me. ‘The first loss of any underling is the hardest. But eventually, all of it blurs together.’
I do not want to lose another. If I do, will I become like him, almost immune to it all? ‘I never imagined Azadniabad would be capable of this,’ I say quietly.
Using the bone necklace, the Sepahbad gestures to the smear of bodies across the township. ‘These enemies are not evil, but drunk on the illusion of free will. They think Akashun is freeing their lives, which ironically chains them more to him. Still, I don’t blame them. Sometimes pain is easier to swallow when you fool yourself into thinking the other side deserves it more.’
He looks surprisingly human when he meets my eyes.
‘Then the world doesn’t deserve that freedom,’ I answer. ‘If they had something to fear, they wouldn’t act out of line at all.’
He picks a fleck of dried blood off my cheek and steps away. He holds it against the backdrop of the graves in the rain. ‘Well, they fight for it anyway. So, here is that revolution you spoke of. Is it not beautiful?’
39
I defect that night as the rain falls harder. In the aftermath of Khor, my superiors will be turning to recovery operations before the next battle. With Khor’s proximity to the Black Mountain buffer, this is the closest I am going to get to the Azadnian wartime capital. My plan to escape is to use the shadows I summoned with No-Name at the intelligence chambers.
I grab my pack containing khanjars, dried rations and thick wool cloaks for the rain. But I leave behind the Sepahbad’s blade.
‘I have to piss,’ I tell Katayoun, who nods without caring.
I cross the fortification lines. My gait is assured, as if I’m simply patrolling, until I’m past the streams pouring from the Tezmi’a delta.
