The angel corrects me and I hear a smile in its words.I warned you of the cost. You wished to save the Camel Road from Azadniabad and Sajamistan, but the price was the pastures of your homeland. That is the price of the Gates — an exchange that takes what the warrior values most. For who is Azadnian? Who is Sajamistani? The ones in Tezmi’a call themselves Azadnian, even you yourself. You admit that not one fits a neat definition. Are you a nomad or the daughter of an empire? Where do humanity’s borders fall and end? They are from humans. You requested the bird and the power obliged, ungrateful child of Adam’s tribe. You were not specific about what you wished to protect. That was the cost of using such a creature. Your true home could not be saved.
My eyes squeeze shut and my body throbs like the quaking Heavens. ‘You wanted this,’ No-Name says, sat behind me. ‘I thank you for it.’ And she disappears.
The Simorgh was summoned but she did not heal. The dawn of the firebird only destroyed.
40
era of the simorgh, year 1
Black Mountains, the Camel Road
Dawn breaks and the nur peters out, spreading and receding around newly formed lakes as the rain slows on the torn continent. The Simorgh drops me at a crumbled mountain village in the central Camel Road and flies up to the top, curling into mist. My legs buckle and I am giggling, and then I am a sobbing, snotty mess on the ground, unable to understand what I have done. If I think – about the flood, about anything – I will cease to exist.
Not long after, my cries quiet into my belly. No-Name tries to help me stand. As she grabs my arm, a strange feeling stirs between us. I glance up. Something has irrevocably changed.
Her pale hair grazes her chest; thick crimson scars run along her chest and slither to her knuckles as if she’s made of broken pieces fused together. Her black eyes, possessing a universe of sorrow, flicker to hope. And her features appear... startlingly similar to mine, more so than ever before.
‘No-Name,’ I say and her face twists at the title.
‘So cruel,’ she answers. A fear gnaws at my liver, because I sense it: apulsein her hand. Somehow,she has a soul.
I grasp my chest, and it is silent. I feel empty.
‘What happened to you?’
She frowns. ‘You brought me back to the human realm.’
‘Am I imagining this?’ I am not sure what is real anymore, not with the flood, not with this war. She leans and punctures her nails into me. ‘What are you doing?’
‘Watch. The wound will not heal. And you will see that I am indeed real.’ There is satisfaction in her gaze.
A terror stampedes over my instincts. I watch the slice of skin, but the wound does not close. ‘How is this possible?’ My eyes track the cracks in the green cliffs around us, searching for a way out. ‘You do not exist—’
‘I told you. The heart of your soul was sacrificed,’ says No-Name quietly.
‘My soul is in me,’ I hiss back.
But she steps away and the distance between us makes my body ache, as if we are connected. ‘Not entirely. Not until...’ Her voice trails off.
Unwillingly, the pieces stitch together like a patchwork quilt.Until Warlord Akashun’s death.
Memories flip like the pages of a text: No-Name encouraging my training, encouraging my access to the gates, encouraging me to kill Akashun. She had grown so frightening, so large, as if my isolation heightened her strength.
Perhaps I am unwell. I summoned the gates. I do not remember yesterday from today. But – but...
‘You have been lying.’ My knees buckle.
Akashun had said we are bonded. And in the battle he controlled... the same Veils that are the shadows surrounding No-Name. As if.
Words uttered long ago by Farzaneh fly back to me:To gain the knowledge of Mitra from an ancient jinn master, the wielder must sacrifice the heart of a soul. A nameless soul. They must sacrifice the heart of the soul of their heir.She explained, when souls were sold to the Unseen, the bodies became soulless.
A horrible realisation sinks into me.
‘Who are you?’ I say thickly.
Her voice is low. ‘I am no one. I am you. In truth, I was a soul, like you, eons ago, before my heart was sacrificed during the Jazatah tribes era to access black magick. But in the world of souls, you drift in nothingness, scavenged by jinn, unable to do anything but watch humanity rise and fall with the mind of a babe. And in that realm, I have no body. And what remained of my soul, without its heart, was diminishing. I was starved... starved for the heart of a drifting soul...’
I stumble back. ‘My soul. You took the heart from my soul.’
