“How did you escape from Ikh Zuree after Qusbegi? Are the Kalima hunting you? Do you hate the commander for torturing you?”
Inkar peppers me with questions every night after the children leave, and thanks to my preparation with Ghoa, I am able to answer smoothly. Painting a picture of how I loathe my sister and the Imperial Army. How horribly they’ve wronged me. And, most important, how I plan to exact my revenge when the timing is right.
“I’m here to avenge my family as well,” Inkar tells me out of the blue one night as we’re walking back to the grazing lands. “My siblings and I spent five years in Gazar, because our parents failed to contribute a sufficient amount to the Sky King’s newest temple. We were noble, of the house of Darkhan, and the king claimed our pitiful endowment was proof of our affinity for the First Gods. The truth was, our father had a staggering gambling debt and we didn’t have supper most nights.”
“The king imprisoned children? For your father’s crime?” I can’t keep the horrified shock from my voice. The dark, festering pits of Gazar are unfit for vermin, let alone children.
“‘If you want to cleanse a house of termites, you must burn it to the final board, lest it infect other buildings on the street,’” Inkar says in a low, patronizing voice. “The Sky King’s words at our sentencing.”
I swallow hard. I want to say that I don’t believe it. That Ican’tbelieve it. But I didn’t believe he would withhold the Sun Stokers from the grazing lands, either.
“How did you escape?”
“We didn’t. My twin brother and I served out our five-year sentence. And our younger sister, Taimar, didn’t make it.”
“I’m sorry,” I whisper. “How old was she?”
“Barely eight, and as quiet and as gentle as a dove. She loved reading and drawing and singing. Not the sort of child you toss into a prison mine. Everything about the pits terrified her, so she walked slowly and worked slowly. One day, the warden grew tired of waiting. He sent her to work down a particularly treacherous shaft with a faulty harness and she fell to her death. He made it look like an accident, and the Sky King made new ‘safety declarations’ after the fact. But neither of them truly cared. No one gives a piss about the prisoners in Gazar.”
I blink back the heat pulsing behind my eyes. “That’s terrible. For all of you.”
“Taimar was never given a chance.” Inkar’s usually cheerful voice is forged of steel. “That’s why I train the children. I refuse to see them discarded in the same manner. I won’t let the Sky King or his mindless minions send them to be slaughtered due to weakness or inconvenience.”
The king doesn’t send anyone to be slaughtered, but I decide now isn’t the time to correct Inkar. “It’s a wonderful thing you’re doing,” I say after a heavy silence. I’m surprised to find I truly mean it.
Inkar’s eyes turn to flint and her smile turns to daggers. “I’ll do whatever I can, whatever I must, to avenge her.”
Finally, after an entire week of training, Inkar slings an arm around my shoulders and presents me before the children. “Shall we invite our new friend to supper?”
A cheer goes up and Jepith and Mima, two of my favorite students, rush forward and take my hands. They lead me through the grazing lands and into Sagaan, past houses and shops that grow taller and finer. Here, in the jewel box of the city, you’d never believe shepherds were starving and rioting just outside the walls. The paved streets are perfectly swept and paper lanterns zigzag overhead, joining one fine alehouse to the next.
We turn down two more streets, then the children break into a run. They dash up a walkway to a tavern that looks no different than the other storefronts around it. The paint is fresh. The steps are swept. The lights are on and the door is propped open, spewing a steady stream of customers. I wouldn’t have picked it out from the other identical establishments around it, were it not for the sign creaking on brass rings above the door:
THERAM’SHEAD.
I suck in a breath and Inkar gives me a little wink.
“Your hideout is in a tavern?” I whisper, trying not to sound disappointed. Technically, there’s nothing wrong with this. Taverns are chaotic and crowded; with so much coming and going, it’s easy for faces to pass unnoticed. And there are so many alehouses in Sagaan, it’s hard to distinguish one from the next. But I had expected something grander from a group that has outsmarted Ghoa and the Kalima for so long.
I glance up at the sign again, swinging gently in the breeze. How did I miss this? How has Ghoa missed this?
“Sometimes we’re so focused on a greater goal, we miss the truth hidden in plain sight,” Inkar says, guessing my thoughts.
By the time we shove into the packed common room, the children are seated at a maze of long tables, gulping down bowls of soup. It looks thin and watery, but it smells of grilled onions and my stomach gurgles. Compared to barley cakes and stolen military rations, it looks like a feast.
I reach for a chair, but Inkar grabs my arm and leads me through a pair of double doors, down a long hallway, to an aged door with a cloudy glass knob. “We have a different sort ofofferingfor you, Enebish.”
The way she saysofferingmakes the hairs on my arms prickle. My toes itch to leap across the threshold as the door whines open.
The room is dark, without a single window. If I could access my Kalima power, I’d be able to grip the threads of blackness and see everything perfectly, but I edge forward, squinting into the oppressive shadows like a magic-barren warrior.
My uncertainty rises by the second. “What’s going on?” I ask.
In the center of the room there’s a small rope bed, a dressing table topped with a washbasin and an unlit oil lamp, and a simple chest of drawers. My boots scrape through a thick layer of dust and mouse droppings, and my nose crinkles at the stench of stale air.
This feels like a trick.
Or a trap.
