Angels and Djinn, Book 3: Zariel's Doom (21 page)

“A little.”

He grimaced.

She stopped in three more houses and her bag of supplies grew a little fuller each time.

“Do you know this area?” he asked.

“I lived here,” she said, never once looking back at him as she led the way over the mounds of debris. “My house was two streets over from here.”

“Oh. Sorry.”

She walked on.

“What will you do after I’m gone?” he asked. “Veneka, and Kiya, and the seers… everyone’s going to be angry about this.”

“Probably.”

“What’ll happen to you?”

“That depends on them,” Lamia said. “In all the madness tonight, no one seemed to care too much about me. They were all focused on you. And since my superiors never told me I couldn’t help you leave, there’s nothing they can charge me with. Technically.”

“And you think that technicality will protect you?”

“Not really. But I don’t care. This is the right thing to do. We’re holy clerics, not politicians, and not jailers.” She glanced back at him. “If the Arrahim, or the Negus, or anyone else has a problem with that, then I want to know now, so I can do something about it. Me and a few hundred of my brothers and sisters.”

He nodded and they walked on. The dark line of the wall emerged from the gloom ahead of them and they angled west toward the V-shaped gap where the djinn had broken into the city.

“Can I ask you something?” the cleric said.

“Anything.”

“Do you love her? The healer?”

“Veneka?” He paused, giving himself a moment to summon up an honest answer, and then realized that what used to be an instinctual response now actually required a moment’s consideration. “I don’t think so, no. Not really. Not anymore.”

“So it’s easy to do this? To just walk away?”

“Easy?” He blinked. “Hell no. Not easy. Nothing easy about it.” He thought again of the long night on the beach, all those hours in the dark, alone with his thoughts and his pain, wrestling with the idea that his love had died, had drowned, had disappeared into a cold, black sea and would never return. “It’s not easy. But it is simple. Stay or go.”

“So you go.”

“Yeah.” He paused. “You know, it’s funny, after everything we’ve been through, all I can think about right now, right this second, is the last time we made love.”

“Oh? Was it good?”

“That’s the thing.” He frowned up at the moon. “I can’t remember it. I can’t remember it at all. Funny. I wonder what I would have felt if I had known then that it was the last time.”

“You think too much.”

“Yeah, maybe.”

When they reached the wall, they saw a dozen dark figures standing guard around the gap. Zerai braced himself for more waiting, or hiding, or running, but Lamia led him out into the open and greeted the guards, most of whom were her fellow Sophirim. And with a few words, they stood aside and let Zerai climb over the broken stones and step out onto the soft green grass growing in thin tufts along the edge of the desert. He stood there for a moment, gazing out at the vast, lifeless landscape before him.

“All right. Well, thank you.” He waved at the clerics and then he turned and started walking, following the wall east and north.

A moment later he heard a soft shuffle behind him and he paused to see Lamia following a few paces behind him. “What are you doing?”

“Making sure you actually get away this time.”

He waited but she didn’t say anymore, so he turned back and they walked on together.

Chapter 17

After an hour of walking through the soft, shifting sand outside the walls of Shivala, Zerai sat down on a cold stone to rest. Lamia sat on the ground beside him. His shoulders and back burned and ached, even though he had been adjusting the sling every few minutes. It felt as though Nadira had been growing heavier with every step, until he finally admitted that he needed to stop for a few minutes.

“How are you doing?” the cleric asked.

“Fine.” He sighed and moved Nadira to lie across his lap, her soft arms flung over her head in a dramatic pose as she whistled and drooled and dreamed.

“I can carry her, if you want.”

“I said I’m fine.”

“You do know that she won’t weigh anything if I carry her, right?”

He nodded. “Yeah, but if we run into trouble, I’d rather you have your hands free.”

She smirked. “Oh really? You expect me to protect you?”

He glanced at her. “Are you saying you came all this way just to stand by and watch me get caught?”

“I don’t know. I’ve already saved you twice. Seems like you owe me.”

Zerai nodded. “Yeah. I do. Thank you. For all of this.”

They rested a while, watching the stars drift across the night sky and listening to the voices of the archers standing watch on the wall high above them. Lamia assured him that the guards couldn’t see them as long as they stayed close to the wall, and she seemed to be correct. They drank a little water, and then stood and carried on.

After another hour of slow hiking over the uneven terrain, they finally sighted the bright sparkling line of the canal in the distance. When they finally reached the place where the wall ended and the canal began, they stopped to rest again. Zerai could see the rocky path around the end of the canal that would lead them away from the city and north toward the coast and safety, but the path was utterly exposed, bathed in moonlight without a single stone or even a shriveled tree to hide someone on it.

He stared at the path. “Maybe if we wait until the moon sets?”

“No. We go now.”

“And when they see us?”

“We laugh.”

“What?”

“Seriously.” She looked at him. “Laugh as loud as you can. They’ll think we’re just a couple sneaking out for a little time alone, and no one will come after us.”

“Are you sure?”

“It’s a desert, Zerai. No one laughs as they run into the desert, unless they’re about to have sex.”

He smiled and shook his head. “All right. I’m trusting you.”

“You should.” She leaned out to look up at the wall. “I count two archers up there, so make that five, just to be safe. Ready?”

He took a breath. “Ready.”

She grabbed his hand and yanked him away from the wall and into the bright star light. They dashed across the sand, their feet growing lighter with every step and the falconer struggled to compensate for his change in weight, which made his legs feel ten times stronger than they really were.

As soon as they were in the open, Lamia let out a peal of girlish laughter that took Zerai completely by surprise, but a moment later he mustered up a laugh of his own as he twisted around to look back at the wall. He glimpsed at least three dark figures up there, all holding long slender bows, but he didn’t hear anyone shout at him to stop, and he didn’t hear the twang of a string or the shriek of an arrow.

Nadira jostled along against his chest. He checked to make sure she was still secure and asleep, and his heart fell a bit when he saw her dark eyes staring up at him as if to ask why on earth he was shaking her so much in the middle of the night.

Shhh, don’t worry, it’s only for a few seconds. Just stay quiet, not a sound now…

The little girl’s eyes narrowed, her lip pouted, and she shrieked a long, howling, wordless noise, and then began babbling at the top of her lungs, “Da-gaya, mo-mo, de-daya…”

Zerai stared at the child’s face and her gaping mouth as though he might make her be quiet with the power of his desperate thoughts, but she didn’t stop, and he just kept staring at her as he ran, blindly, up the rocky path.

“Hey!”

The archers on the wall shouted, calling them to stop, to come back. Zerai wanted to look back, but he couldn’t stop running and he couldn’t stop looking at Nadira because he knew that if he looked away, something terrible might happen to her.

“You idiots!”

He looked up at Lamia out of the corner of his eye, but a moment later he realized that it wasn’t her who had called him an idiot.

A silver arrow shrieked down into the sand near his feet, transforming the ground into a plate of lumpy ice that shone brightly in the star light. He scrambled across the slick ground as a second arrow whisked over his head, and then something clinked right behind him. Zerai tore his eyes away from Nadira to look back because the sound had come from directly behind him, from the empty space he had passed through a moment ago, except now it wasn’t empty.

Now there was a wall of stone behind him, perfectly rectangular, like a door without a doorframe, alone in the dark sandy wastes.

“What the…?”

“Faster, you clay-foots!”

It was the strange voice again, though this time it sounded more familiar, but he didn’t have time to place it because a hand grabbed his arm, the same arm that Lamia was already holding onto, and he felt himself being yanked forward, propelled into the deep shadows of the dunes and the rocky outcroppings. The ground and sky became one dark blur and the wind screamed in his face, and Nadira shrieked merrily as she arched her little back, threatening to tumble out of his arms.

Zerai plunged his head down to hold the child still, trapping her between his one arm and shoulder and chest and chin while his other arm was still being pulled forward by two powerful hands. The world shuddered in streaks of darkness and slivers of light, and the wind howled, and his feet fumbled to hold him up…

And then it all stopped.

Zerai blinked and looked around. He was standing on a high rocky point with a cool breeze blowing from his left side. Storm clouds rolled and growled over the soft roaring of the sea. To his right he could see the pale dunes of the desert undulating away to the horizon, far below him. And there, behind him, he saw the tiny sparkling lights of Shivala, nothing more than a vague, dark shape punctuated by stars or fireflies in the distance.

“Are you all right?”

The falconer turned and stared at the woman standing next to Lamia. “Samira?”

The djinn cleric narrowed her eyes. “Is Nadira all right?”

“She’s fine.” He looked down to make sure that she actually was, and saw the little girl pouting up at him. “She’s fine. Where did you… what just…?”

“She saved us,” Lamia said. “She pulled us out of range of the archers.”

“But… you’re dead.” Zerai knew it was a stupid thing to say, but the exhilaration and confusion of their escape was preventing him from saying anything coherent about the fact that this woman had somehow survived the wreck of the ice ship all those days ago and then had miraculously appeared exactly when he needed her. But he did manage to piece together one intelligent observation. “And djinn aren’t strong enough to carry humans when they run.”

“You’re right.” There was a coldness in Samira’s voice, just as there was a dark void in her eyes. “Luckily your friend here was making you both very light at just the right moment.”

“Speaking of luck and moments, how did you find us?” Zerai asked.

“I’ve been following you ever since the moment you set foot outside the wall tonight,” the cleric said softly. “I’ve been waiting there for days.”

“For me?”

Samira glared at him with contempt. “For the woman who attacked the city. In case she returned.”

“Oh.” Zerai glanced at Lamia and saw the discomfort in her eyes and the way she stood, angling away from the djinn woman. “Lamia, this is Samira. She’s a Tevadim from Odashena. She helped me a few years ago in Maqari, and she came with us across the sea a few days ago, only… she didn’t make it.”

“Okay.” Lamia did not appear any more at ease.

“We should go.” Samira turned and started walking north, away from the city lights.

“Go where?” Zerai followed her.

“The nearest town isn’t near at all. It will take some time to carry Nadira to safety,” she said.

“Is that where Talia is? The town?”

Samira paused. “Talia’s gone.”

“Oh.” Zerai looked down at Nadira and was ashamed at the sense of relief in his heart at that moment. “What happened that night?”

Samira stood with her back to him. “I crawled ashore alone. Barely alive. My people don’t do well in the water. I heard a voice, and I saw Talia still far out in the sea. Drowning. I don’t know if she was strong enough to survive that storm, those waves, the cold. But inside, she was still Bashir, and he was like me. He was afraid of the water.” She took a breath. “I went back out into the sea, swimming as hard as I could, and I grabbed hold of her, but the weight of her pulled me down. I fought back to the surface with her in my arms. I saw her face once. And she spoke to me, and I lost my grip on her, and she sank out of sight. I tried to grab her again, but she was gone. I didn’t have the strength to swim back to shore again, so did my best to stay afloat until the current carried me to the beach and left me there. I must have slept there for at least a day or two. I’m not sure.”

“I’m so sorry.” Zerai wanted to touch the woman’s shoulder, he wanted to look into her eyes, he wanted to connect with her in some way in that moment, not really for her sake but for Talia, but Samira did not look back at him, and she took a few steps farther away. He asked, “What did Talia say to you?”

“She said…” Samira swallowed. “She said, ‘I lost Nadira.’”

The falconer felt his mouth twist down as his stomach churned and his eyes burned.

Her last thought was of her baby, sinking into that water, dying, lost. Just like I felt that night on the beach. And it killed her. The thought of it killed her.

He hugged Nadira tighter to his chest.

And it wasn’t even true.

“I’m sorry,” he said again.

Samira shook her head. “Did the others survive?”

“Veneka. Adina. Kiya. A few others. But we lost the rest.”

The djinn woman nodded.

“And you’ve been waiting outside the city, at the edge of the desert, all this time?” Lamia asked. “Why didn’t you come to find the others?”

“I didn’t think a djinn would be very welcome right now,” Samira said softly. “And I wanted to be alone.”

Zerai reached out toward her, but his hand fell back to his side. “Well, thank you, for tonight.”

“We should go.” Samira started walking again.