“I suppose I should have expected as much.” The girl looks pointedly at my leg and her lips curl with disgust. She’s several years younger than I am, so I couldn’t have served with her, but once again my reputation precedes me.
Serik sets his jaw and returns her glare. I try to mimic him, but the girl just snickers. She flips her long yellow braid over her shoulder, snatches the mule’s rope from Serik, and, without a word to either of us, spurs her horse down the hill to Sagaan. The eagle cart kicks up clouds of dust that make me cough.
The capital is far more than a smudge now. Hundreds of houses and shops edge the Amereti River like hand-sewn lace, following its curve as it snakes through the city. On the northern embankment, beyond the quaint gardens and residential streets, lies the Grand Courtyard of the Sky Palace. It teems with festivalgoers clad in their finest satins and silks: from here they look like azure, garnet, and blush-colored beetles. Beyond the royal complex, there’s a wrestling pit and a field roped off for horse races, and dozens of targets arranged for archery competitions.
The warrior girl grows smaller and smaller and the rattle of the eagle cart fades. Our duty is complete. We should return to Ikh Zuree. But I can’t tear my eyes away from the beauty of Sagaan. I used to lie beneath those maple trees and ice-fish on that stretch of the Amereti and gallop my horse through the streets with Ghoa and the other warriors, whooping and hollering, filthy from battle and drunk on victory.
Serik points across the valley to the cluster of colorful estates. “Can you see our old house?”
I cup my good hand over my eyes and squint until I spot the lavender mansion with its square towers and pewter roof, surrounded by groves of olive trees. The sight fills my heart with longing. I would give anything to return to those gleaming halls and sprawling fields. Where Serik and I ran as free and wild as foxes before conscription and Kalima powers and the New Order stamped our boundless futures to dust.
“Monk!” A blast of winter air blows my hair back. The warrior girl has reached the bottom of the hill and she stands in her stirrups, leaning around the eagle cart to yell at us. “You know the orders. Get your monster back to her cage before she loses control and murders the innocent festivalgoers.”
Serik lunges in front of me as if he can shield me from her words, but they spin around me like a whirlwind of daggers. I melt into my shoulders, slump into my boots, and dissolve into a muddy puddle on the pathway. The old Enebish—Enebish the Warrior—would have charged down the hill with her saber drawn. But I’m no longer a warrior.
“She’s right,” I whisper. “We should get back to Ikh Zuree. We must follow Ghoa’s orders exactly if we ever want such an opportunity again. And it would be foolish to press my luck,” I murmur under my breath.
The girl raises her fist in a mocking salute. Serik sputters and makes a vulgar gesture at her back as she continues down the hill. He truly is the worst monk.
I place a hand on his heaving shoulder. “Let it go. It doesn’t matter.”
“It does matter.” He shrugs me off. “She can’t talk to you like that.”
“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but everyone talks to me like that. I’m used to it.”
“You shouldn’t be.” He picks up a rock and heaves it down the path, even though the girl and the cart are well out of reach. “We walked all this way. We should get to enjoy Qusbegi.”
“No.” I limp back a step. “That’s a bad idea.”
“You thought the vorkhi was a bad idea too and look how much fun we had.”
“That was different.”
“How?”
“We were alone on an empty road. But it was still a bad idea,” I add, not liking the determined look on Serik’s face.
With a sly grin, he draws the embroidered hood of his cloak over his head. “We’ll keep to the shadows, far from the crowds and noise. I just want to see reallifefor a change. Don’t you?”
Yes.Longing kneads my stomach like hunger pains. My limbs buzz like they did on the temple rooftop. The feather bracelet jangles around my wrist.
Fly, fly, fly, Enebish.
No.The risk is too great. Ghoa and hundreds of warriors are down there. Not to mention scores of monks from Ikh Zuree, sniffing out infractions. And the king himself. I clutch my arm to my chest and shake my head. “Our life is back at Ikh Zuree. That, down there, is a dream.”
“So sleep for a moment. Dream with me, Enebish.”
“It will take more than a dream forthis”—I point to my traitor’s mark—“to disappear. The people will recognize me. There will be pandemonium.”
Serik’s eyes soften and he reaches into his satchel, extracting a faded scarf like the one I tied to the sacred mound. I raise my eyebrows at it as he wraps it over my hair and around my face like a veil. “The crowd is so thick. No one will notice you, let alone recognize you. And we’ll only stay for a few minutes. Just long enough to taste the winterberry pies, watch a horse race, and see your eagles fly. Don’t you want to watch Orbai compete?”
Yes.I want it all so badly. I squeeze my eyes tight, fighting the temptation coursing through my limbs like poison. I finger Ghoa’s bracelet and imagine every bad scenario, all the thousands of ways this could go wrong, but all I can see are Orbai’s brilliant brown feathers winging across the cerulean sky.
“Okay,” I whisper, adjusting the scarf to hide my scars.
Serik tilts his head back and whoops. “You won’t regret this, En. Even if we’re trapped for the rest of our lives, we’ll always have today.”
He crinkles his eyes, takes my hand, and we steal down the road to Sagaan.
