“What about what I want?” Safire demanded. “What about what Asha wants?”
Dax wiped his eyes with the hem of his sleeve.
“I want you to live,” said Safire, a little angrily.
“And I want you to rule,” said Asha.
He pulled away from them both. Asha let him go. Let him get to his feet.
“This is what good leaders do,” he said, not daring to look either of them in the eye. He seemed every bit a hero in his dirty scrublander clothes and his tearstained cheeks. “They make sacrifices for their people.”
Asha thought of the day she burned the scrolls, when Dax told her the Old One hadn’t abandoned them. He was just waiting for the right moment. The right person.
He’s waiting for the next Namsara to make things right.
Asha thought Dax a fool that day. Now, though, as her brother turned and left the tent, she thought something very different.
There. There is our Namsara.
Safire stayed behind, continuing to sharpen her throwing knives while she waited for the signal.
“You have to stop him,” said Asha the moment Dax left the tent.
Without looking up from her work, Safire said, “I’m planning on it.”
Asha leaned her head back against the wood post, listening to the drawn-outhissof steel on the whetstone.
Safire stopped suddenly, lowering the sharpened knife in her lap. “Whatever happens, I want you to know I love you.”
Asha looked into her cousin’s eyes. “What?”
“As much as I want you at my side in there”—she nodded toward the tent entrance, toward the city—“I can’t bear the thought of what Jarek will do to you if this all goes completely wrong.”
Asha stared at her cousin, horrified. “What he’ll do tome? Think of what he’s already done toyou, Saf.”
Her cousin held up the knife edge, examining it. “All I need is one clear shot.”
Asha didn’t like this thought. She looked away, angry. They should be going in together. But as the tent darkened around her and Safire’s departure crept closer, Asha let her head fall against her cousin’s shoulder.
They sat in silence for a long time, both of them thinking of what would happen if itdidall go wrong. They were still sitting there, with Asha’s head on Safire’s shoulder and Safire’s knife lowered in her lap, when footsteps crunched on the hard, dry earth.
“Safire?” Jas entered the tent. “It’s time.”
Just before she rose, Safire leaned in close. “Don’t you dare do anything reckless.”
Asha stared as her cousin pushed herself to her feet, tucking the sharpened knife into her belt.
“Don’tyoudo anything reckless,” Asha countered as Safire walked past Jas, who held up the tent flaps for her to step through. When she did, Jas turned to Asha, solemnly fisted his hand over his heart, then dropped the tent flaps, cutting them both off from view.
Reaching for the whetstone her cousin left behind, Asha drew the axe at her hip. She’d taken it from the weapons caravan almost as soon as it arrived in New Haven. Made of acacia wood, the unadorned handle was worn and smooth.
Slowly, carefully, Asha started to sharpen it.
Forty-Six
Asha couldn’t tell how much time had passed. Only that it grew dark shortly after Safire left with Jas, and it was still dark.
Too dark.
