When Khawla clears her throat, Shay realizes everyone is looking at her and waiting for her to do something. Shakily, she stands and lifts the garments in her hands. They're even more beautiful up close. The leather holds a rich tapestry of browns within its sheen, and is as luxurious to the touch as a rare emollient.
“Let me help you.” Khawla jumps up and buckles the vest over Shay's sleeping clothes while she laces the gauntlets.
Once fitted in the garments, Shay glances around to find everyone still staring at her, but now with expressions of approval. Even Marjan smiles appreciatively.
“Do you have a mirror, Widad?” the Morchidat asks Khawla's mother, who immediately races off in search of one.
“This is strong leather,” Khawla gushes as she strokes her hand down Shay's back. “Strong enough to repel musket fire.”
If the Morchidat finds this statement odd, she doesn't show any outward reaction. Though Marjan furrows her brow, as though pondering in what situation a girl like Shay would need to think about such protection.
Khawla is right, though. Shay feels it in the weight of the garment as she shifts her body side to side. And unlike metal armor, the vest allows for ample mobility. It covers her most vital organs, but there are still plenty of places she could be shot. Something she really should have considered before now.
Which only underlines the fact that she has no real plan. Did she think she would go knock on the prayer house door and question the Moulays who live there? Or write a letter of inquiry to the mukhtars to be delivered to the kasbah?
Khalti Widad comes back holding a long mirror. Shay keeps her eyes closed as she turns to behold herself. When she opens them, she expects to confront the image of a girl playing dress-up, but even in her sleeping gown, the garments afford her the fierceness of a warrior. They are sleek and practical, and they give edges to her softness, put a gleam into her eye. In them, she looks like someone who would know what to do with one of those weapons the Morchidat laid out before her like bridal gifts for an assassin. Like someone who could save another person.
Someone who could save her mother.
“What do you think?” the Morchidat asks, and in the reflection behind her, Shay sees the small smile teasing the woman's lips.
Shay nods. “They're perfect.”
“Let's call it a fair trade, shall we?” the Morchidat asks, gathering her knives and replacing them in their various sheaths. “And you can let me know, after your affairs are settled, how you feel about joining the Sisterhood.”
Shay notices that the hjabat has already been tucked away along with the weapons. She meets eyes with the Morchidat as she rises and grabs her cloak. “Agreed.”
“The way before will be once more!“ the Morchidat boisterously declares.
To which the others in the room chorus back, “The way before will be once more!“
The next twenty beakers pass in a cycle of goodbyes and well-wishes, at the end of which the Morchidat pauses and appraises Shay. She leaves her with these parting words: “I don't presume to know who it is you're trying to save, but remember that she is no less and no more than all the other women of our realm. The other mothers and sisters, the bakers and healers. Al-Mukhtar is a threat to all of us.”
23
[this essay has been deemed a threat to the security of our realm and is no longer permitted to appear in print in full or in part]
—from “Prayer Houses and Other Places Where We Used to Exchange Ideas,” an essay by an unnamed scholar later hanged for engaging in activities that support rebel entities
Khawla packs a handful of jinn sticks, some preserved meat and twice-baked biscuits, and a few other supplies, and later that morning, they plunge once more into the cool of the forest. As bright as the sun was outside, it makes a faint impression through the crooked umbrella shade of cedars. Their path is steeped with shadows, but a curious calm comes over Shay. The forest, for all its wither and decay, teems with life.
Shay can sense it now, like a multitude of flickering embers desperate to stay alight, organisms buried and trapped beneath suffocating moss and creatures rotting from within while somehow clinging to the bright kernel of what they were. Twisted, broken, and fused together wrong. Decomposing and regenerating and sucking the marrow of depleted earth. But alive.
Shay can't help but admire the persistence.
Khawla puts out a quick hand to stop her from stepping on a rogue tater sponge. “I know that was all a lot of excitement this morning. But how are you holding up?”
Shay considers her answer as they make their way around the dangerous pod. She appreciates that Khawla seems to understand that grief doesn't happen all at once. It has layers, and some of these are more hellish than others. On some level, she knows that this mission is partly a means of distracting herself from her woe, but that is not necessarily a bad thing.
“I just want to warn you,” she says, deciding she doesn't really need to answer the question. It's enough that Khawla asked. “My mother is not anything like yours.”
Khawla laughs. “Well, if the bone-eaters lied about the posters, at least that means she didn't falsely accuse you of stealing the ring.” She cracks a jinn stick as they duck into one of the cave passages, swallowed up in a sea of darkness. “Though that by no means absolves her of abandoning you.”
“I just can't imagine why she did it. I keep thinking about it over and over.” Saying it reawakens all of Shay's loss and confusion. No matter what angle she turns it, it's like a shirt sewn without a neck: It makes no sense. “I know Snow makes people behave in strange ways, but even by the faultiest logic, I can only conclude she hates me.”
“You deserved—and still deserve—better.” A group of bats flutters over their heads, and Khawla waits for the chattering creatures to pass before she goes on. “You can ask her yourself, once we get her safely away from Al-Mukhtar. Just know, whatever her answer, it won't change that fact.”
They emerge from the black womb of the cave into a liminal light, alternating in bands of bleak sage and cool jade, and walk in silence for a time.
