‘We will salvage this. In Arsduq, I will send a page to the Izuri warlord. By wedding him to you, we will have our alliance, enough for the Zahrs to maintain a stronghold in the north-east before we retake our capital—’
A cry sounds behind us, a voice I recognise.Uma.Hasn’t my purpose been for Uma, to pave a path to a new home? I thought power only mattered if our clan lived and I could be her shelter, her home.
But the emperor grips me, hard. For once, the chill that once sank into my bones cannot dampen my anger. I’m unable to think or feel. I cannot see anything.
Except that my mother was never protected.
‘What of Uma?’ I snap. ‘Dunya? Eliyas? Sajamistanis crawl with the warlords, so how many of our own will you sacrifice?’
‘I would sacrifice another if needed. This is simply your uma’s fate,’ he answers before releasing me, his eyes a glassy abyss. ‘We must go,now. Remember why I do this. For our home. A warrior is incomplete without his sword; you are my blade, Khamilla. I need you. To gain Izur’s support—’
‘Another warlord?’ I cannot control the redness that wells in my vision like an open wound. I wonder whose fate my fallen emperor would determine next.
Shaking all over, I turn around.
‘Where are you going?’ he demands, wrenching me back.
With my head pounding, I raise my pinky, a Heavenly bond from that finger opening into a thin gold line. The Heavenly bond shoots a hair-width of flashing white nur into the emperor’s side, forcing him back before I realise I am stumbling up the hill, away from him. The redness engulfs me entirely. I trip over a stone, but I cannot see in front of me. I only feel a blade against a neck. I see a smile of blood on a torn throat. I only see Eliyas’s dead body. I imagine who of my clan will be dead next, like him. My legs straighten.Keep moving, I chant to myself.
‘I refuse to abandon Uma,’ I whisper.
Desperate, I reach the top of the hill and start running across the field toward the courtyards, where Sajamistani soldiers clash against palace guards.
There, I see her. Uma. But the hope slithers out of me. Raising my palm to angle my nur across the grounds, I find it is no use. As always, I am an instant too late.
Uma is on the other side, in the trampled gardens. My range is not that far.
Everything slows. A sickness swells in me. Surrounded by Sajamistani soldiers, Uma fearlessly presses her khanjar against her throat before the soldiers realise what she is doing.
But I know, finally, Uma is finishing her own story. Rewriting it to its own fitting end, for what tale had Uma controlled in her miserable life before this moment?
She slits her own neck. The steel carves swiftly through her skin. Her body sways, her head wobbling as if wishing to caper off her frame. Her body collapses.
I sag against the ground behind a citrus tree.
‘By the devil Shaytaan,’ soldiers cry out, the wind carrying the curse.
My vision blurs, sharp grass stabbing into my legs as I kneel. Vomit fills my mouth, and I hurl into the dirt.
‘Uma,’ I gasp out, glancing back around the tree. Her body burns into the depths of my mind, and will curse me with its gory reminder until the end of my days. Even from here, the crimson is stark against the flora, remnants of henna-stained hair strewn against the ground. The skies open, as if the clouds rumble their outcries, as if Brother-Nature recognises the malice of the act and wishes to wash away the stain of sin.
‘A pity,’ a cold, familiar voice says. I glance over to see the masked Sajamistani soldier with dark hair kneel beside Uma’s corpse. The one I spied from the delegation. ‘It seems their kind might be more obsessed with death than our own.’
‘A pity indeed, my Alif warrior,’ a woman replies, coming beside him.
In disbelief, my hand curls around the trunk to steady my swaying feet. It’s her. The leader of the delegation – the Sepahbad-vizier, a general of generals in Sajamistan.
That is my uma they stand over. No. Thatwasmy uma. This is just as she’d promised.
A venomous taste lingers in the atmosphere. I cannot understand it. I cannot understand anything. After all we’d endured, Uma told me death was a better fate than to be captured by Sajamistan again. I thought we could beat this fate. I thought I’d beat it for her.
The air escapes my lungs and I curl into the tree to breathe but the smoke lingering in the wind makes it impossible.
‘The emperor has fallen,’ a cry goes out as a haggle of soldiers marches up the hill, dragging an indiscernible body. ‘He’s fallen!’
They throw a corpse down into the clearing. The eyes are dark and upturned, vanquish written across his bloodied features as if screamingthe unjustness of his predicament to the Heavens. The body is covered in severe wounds.
Warlord Akashun’s men are there, surrounding it. Seeing the corpse provokes a sudden incessant dizziness. I want to scream. I want to weep. But I can only stare.That cannot be. I stumble back.That cannot be him.
