“Karim-sen! Why are you still working? It’s time to eat!”
The voice pulled Karim from his daydreaming. Young Aya stood beside the field in a long brown dress, her dark hair untamed.
“Oh! I must have lost track of time,” he said, lowering the blade.
“Sita sent me,” Aya went on. “She made bread and wants you to have some. It’s a bit burnt, but she seems very excited about it. She says if you don’t come soon, she’ll feed it to the dog, because ‘at least Behkai will appreciate it.’”
Karim smiled. “Did she now?”That woman is taking this ruse of being married quite seriously.“I shouldn’t keep her waiting then, hey?”
Together, they made their way from the field toward the houses. As they walked, Aya regaled Karim with stories about what colors her friends liked, how horrible it was the time she ate a rotten fig, and why snakes “aren’t actually so bad.” The girl had been spending more and more time with him and the princess since Sami’s miraculous recovery, helping around the house, playing with Behkai, and talking. She talked so much, in fact, Karim wondered if she ever stopped to take a breath. Hedidn’t mind, though. Aya reminded him of his sisters when they were little—though he tried not to think of them too often. The shame of not going back for them and his mother, of abandoning them after his fight with the other Jackals, was too painful to contemplate.
It was one more memory from his past that he almost wished he could forget.
“Zev still doesn’t like you, you know.”
Karim turned to Aya, who had become very serious. “No? I’m not surprised. Zev doesn’t seem to like much of anything.”
“He says you and Sita are pretending to like it here, and that one day you’ll run back home and tell on us.” She kicked a rock and watched it skitter down the path. “Are you really going to run away, Karim-sen?”
Karim tried to disguise his discomfort. That was, in fact, exactly what he and Sita were planning to do. Since the day they’d arrived, they’d been slowly collecting supplies, as well as using every free moment to explore the ruins. So far, other than a few choice artifacts that they’d found inside Setnakht’s palace, they hadn’t discovered anything useful about the ancient pharaoh. Karim knew that soon they’d need to cut their losses and make their way back to Khetara—but the thought of doing so became more difficult with each passing day. They’d made friends in the city, had lived and worked alongside their neighbors. Sita had saved a life. Strange as it seemed, Perset had begun to feel like a second home.
Instead of answering Aya’s question, Karim asked one of his own. “You know, you never told us whyyouran away. Why we found you alone in the middle of the desert.”
“I wanted to see,” Aya replied.
“See what?”
Aya threw up her hands. “Everything! I want to haveadventures! But Sabba says we mustn’t leave the valley because there are mean people who want to hurt us. He doesn’t even like it when I explore the city! All because I got bit by a scorpion one time. The day I ran away, I’d found something out by the palace. I tried to get someone to come look at it, but they were all too busy.”
Karim stopped short.
There it was. That familiar tug, like a rope around his chest pulling him toward secrets buried and forgotten.
Aya went on, bouncing on her heels beside him. “I was so mad that I got my bag and left. I wanted them to miss me and feel bad about ignoring me.” She bit her lip and peered up at Karim. “But after you and Sita found me and the storm came, I got scared. So I ran home while she was looking for you.”
“Aya,” Karim said slowly. “What did you find out by the palace?”
The little girl beamed. “Somethingwonderful.”
Karim swallowed, his instincts tingling. As surely as the sun rises, he knew that whatever Aya had found would bring an end to his life in Perset. Whatever it was would change everything.
Karim ought to have been thrilled. They’d been scouring the city for something, anything to aid them in the battle against Setnakht, and Aya may have found it.
And yet, all Karim felt was dread.
He thought of Sita waiting for him in the house they shared, delighted to have baked a loaf of bread with her own hands. The princess had changed so much since they’d arrived. She worked long shifts in the bakery, as if every bowl of flour she ground was atonement for her past. She’d begun to teach the other women basic techniques for treating wounds and other ailments, so they too could have the power to heal. Every day, Karim saw her light—hidden for so long—shine a little brighter.
He felt it too. Even now, knowing the answer to their prayersmight be buried nearby, he longed to go home to Sitamun. To finish his work in the fields, then return to luxuriate in the lie they’d built together. The lie that had become so comfortable that it felt almost like the truth.
Karim scolded himself for such selfish thoughts.Wake up, you fool. You have slept on your task long enough. You cannot escape who you are. Neither can the princess. What we have is fleeting. It blooms only here, only now, and never again.
“I’m sorry no one listened to you before,” he said to the little girl. “But I’m listening. Will you show me?”
Aya squealed in delight. “Yes!” She took his hand and tugged him toward the distant ruins.
“Right now? What about lunch?”
“Let her give it to the dog. Come on!”
