“No.” The word held a crackle that made him drop the ropes and turn to her.
Her dark eyes caught the crimson hint of dawn and threw it back at him. A wisp of flame played over the skin of her wounded arm and was gone. Amalya held her good hand before her, brown fingers clawed; she spoke one hot syllable, and fire woke on the dune. A white flame leaped up between them, higher than a man. Eyul stumbled back, the heat beating at him like a fist, and his already burned hand roared a protest.
“Amalya!” he shouted over the camels’ terror, reaching out for one as it broke past him, and missing.
The flame made no sound save for a faint but angry roar, higher pitched than the wind. It neither wavered nor flickered but stood like a white lance against the sky from which all trace of dawn had been driven. Eyul could smell his headscarf smouldering and he stumbled backwards.
“Amalya!”
She stood before the flame, one hand extended as if she were pouring out her fever into its hungry brilliance. The desert sun at its zenith in a steelblue sky would shed a kinder light than that which now lit the dune. Under its illumination all color fled. Amalya stood robed in utter white, her flesh cut from pieces of night.
For a moment the flame flared brighter still. Eyul raised one hand to his eyes, but his vision had already left him. An echo of Amalya against a white-lit sky lay in every direction.
She gave a short cry, and the fire fell cold and silent. Amalya’s after-image died with the flames, leaving Eyul in a world of black.
“Amalya!”
She didn’t answer.
Eyul groped a blind man’s path to where he’d last seen her. For the longest time he thought himself lost beyond redemption-his hands could find neither Amalya, nor any sign of their camp. Questing fingers caught only sand, sand, and more sand. He called out, softly at first, and then more stridently, but only the wind answered, filling his mouth with grit. He crawled in an ever-widening circle, though his leg and hand smarted and his back protested. He ignored them. He would find her.
At last there was a soft whisper to his left. “Here…’
When at last he caught a handful of cloth he sighed with relief and reached out again, this time finding firm flesh within the robes. He’d had no plan beyond finding Amalya, and so he gathered the woman to him and sat with her cradled in his lap. He could feel that the fever had left her, expelled with the heat of the flame. She was limp, unstrung, but breathing smoothly.
“You lost control of your fire,” he told her, “but I suppose it’s better this way. You can’t feel it now.”
Eyul sensed the dawn, felt the fingers of its warmth pushing back the chill of night. He turned his face to the sun and stroked her hair as a mother would her child’s. A tear rolled down his cheek. He checked the Knife at his hip. The hilt felt warm beneath his sore fingertips, reassuring. There might be little call for a blind assassin, but the emperor’s Knife would make his end a quick one. And hers.
I send souls to paradise.
The heat built quickly, and with it came flies. Eyul covered Amalya’s arm as best he could with his cloak. She stirred once in his lap, muttering something incomprehensible, and he ran his fingers across her lips. “Shhh.”
An hour passed, or maybe four. The sun parched Eyul, and his tongue felt like old leather when he spoke. “Perhaps it is time.” Before she wakes. She won’t feel it. He reached for his Knife, faltered. He didn’t want it to be time.
“Nice knife.” A stranger’s voice sounded at his shoulder. Eyul pulled the blade clear.
“They say a blind man’s other senses get sharp.” The stranger spoke with mild amusement. Somewhere on the dune, others whispered.
Eyul knew the accent; only one people spoke the true-tongue with such reckless disregard for vowels.
“But it can’t be true. I watched you cuddle that pretty slave girl for so long that Jarquil had time to find your camels.”
Eyul set the emperor’s Knife to Amalya’s throat.
“Hey now!” The nomad’s surprise set a grim smile on Eyul’s lips.
“Wh- What?” The touch of metal to skin brought Amalya from whatever dark seas she floated on.
Eyul flinched, finding his own surprise.
“Who?” Amalya asked the question in a croak.
“Nomads,” Eyul said. “You should let me cut your throat. I’d be doing you a favor.”
Chapter Fourteen
"Hey now,” the nomad said again, softer this time, “the sun rises. Time for you to come with us, blind man.”
Amalya’s fingers curled around Eyul’s wrist. With a sigh he drew the Knife away from her throat. He bent his head over hers, seeking the hollow of her ear. “Can you see them?”
She stirred and spoke into his chest. “No weapons in their hands.”
“What do you want?” Eyul asked the nomad, raising his head as if he could see. He heard the soft bray of a horse.
“Me? Nothing. The old man is expecting you. Come, now.”
“It’s all right,” Amalya said.
Eyul sheathed his Knife. He kept still as someone, a nomad, from the smell, wound fabric about his eyes.
“Jarquil brings water.” Done with Eyul’s bandage, the nomad tapped his shoulder, then tapped it again until Eyul raised his knife-hand to accept a clammy water-bag, cool against his burned palm. He held it to Amalya’s mouth first.
Afterwards, the nomad took the skin from his hand. “Come, now. The pretty girl, too.”
Eyul drew his right arm in front of her. “She stays with me.”
This drew a hoot of amusement. “If you think you can hold onto her, blind man.”
He did. She was not as helpless getting onto the camel as he expected, but he wrapped one arm around her anyway, holding her firmly in place. With his good hand he grabbed the pommel.
The nomads led them on, and they travelled in silence under the hot sun. Amalya rested her arms on Eyul’s, and nestled her head under his chin. He supposed she was drifting. Her hair was hot from the sun, wafting a fragrance he remembered from the palace courtyard: the yellow flowers that sparkled on their bushes like the stars at night. He had never learned the names of the different flowers, not even for the making of poisons, for he did not work in secret, or with cowardly tools. If a man died by the emperor’s Knife, he and everyone else would know it. And so he didn’t know the name of the yellow flower. He regretted that, among many other things, today.
Eyul had never questioned any of the decisions and beliefs that had brought him to this moment. Every step felt pre-ordained, difficult but necessary for his service to the gods. At the same time he knew that any different choice might have brought him a different life-one where he would be quietly fishing along the river, perhaps, or collecting ink roots in the desert. Maybe he’d have sons instead of dead princes to dream about.
He felt Amalya’s fingers close around his elbow and surprise drove away the last of his wistful thoughts: she was alert.
That small touch of fellowship encouraged him. Without sight, the hours left to him promised to be small in number and low in comfort. Sweat and sand chafed his skin; pain held his back in a scorpion grip. The nomads’ high-pitched calls roiled in his ears. Even so, the gods might have chosen a worse ending, for he was not alone.
“How are you feeling?” A stupid question. Soon she would ask him to free her, to give her up, and he would do it.
She turned until he could feel her breath against his throat.
“I think we’re going to be all right.”
She lies for me. “Yes,” he said, “maybe so.”
Tuvaini passed through the Low Room where the fountain made soft lapping sounds and patterned sunlight fell through the latticed stone above. Two of the Old Wives sat upon the fountain’s rim, washing their arms in the cool water. One met his eye and whispered in the other’s ear, and they both giggled. Despite their grey hair and sagging breasts, he was no doubt too old for their taste.