CHAPTER 36
YASSEN
There is no hard line between the servant and the sinner. There is only a soft blur, a delicate edge in which a man can lose himself.
—from the diaries of Priestess Nomu of the Fire Order
They slept during the day and walked at night. They applied wet skorrir leaves to their wounds, and ate what berries they could find. Yassen forgot his thirst. He forgot what hunger felt like, for it had become a constant pain, a relentless numbness. When they stopped to rest, he tried to work some feeling into his right arm. He could still move his fingers, still flex his elbow, but his entire hand was darkening to black.
Yassen thought of the pills and ointment resting on his bedside table, forgotten. He wasn’t sure if it was the lack of food or his own delusions, but he could feel the infection slowly spreading through his shoulder—like a sickness. Elena often glanced at his arm. They both knew, and they were both too afraid to say it.
He had to treat it, or he would have to cut it off.
A week since passing the Jantari army, they stopped at a shallow canyon in the eastern desert that had once held a river. The rock bed was dry, with skorrir bushes hugging the wash. The landscape had begun to change, the dunes shrinking and giving way to harsh canyons and low valleys. Stars pockmarked the sky, silent and cold. Yassen could no longer see the forest.
He wondered if Samson had burned too, and the memory of his friend, looking so proud and regal before the fire, made his vision blur.Oh, Sam.Yassen hugged his knees.I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry. I should have told you sooner.
He thought of Samson squeezing his shoulder with a smile, of Ferma nodding her approval as he took Elena to the Birdsong festivities. The trust in their eyes.
Oh, there are so many things I should have done.
Yassen hugged his knees, staring at the horizon until there were no more tears to give. His vision slowly cleared as the night sky began to lighten to grey. The mountain was behind him. Dead or alive, Samson would have wanted him to aid Elena, to protect her.
“The Jantari base is just north of here,” Elena said, awake. Wind tussled with her wild curls, and for a moment she resembled a Yumi, hair writhing, eyes steely, a face so angular and beautiful. “If we head farther into the desert, we can go up and around.”
Yassen squinted, studying the shadowed faces of the rocks. He had no idea where they were, but he trusted Elena’s judgment. She navigated through the desert without hesitation, following the curves in ways he never thought possible. When they had been on the cruiser, riding out the storm, he had attributed her aptitude to luck. But now he understood that Elena’s connection to the desert ran much deeper than he or the Arohassin had ever imagined.
The Arohassin.Yassen wondered if Akaros had already found the wounded assassins, if he recognized Yassen’s bullets and his treachery. Or perhaps the Eternal Fire had burned all the evidence.
Fresh pain coiled around his right arm, and Yassen grimaced. Maybe this was his way to redemption—a limb for all the destruction he had caused.
He watched Elena walk a few yards and climb a boulder. She reached the top and paused, her figure silhouetted in the grey smoke. She looked back, shouted. The distance ate up her words.
For the Arohassin, she was the vestige of a crumbling kingdom, an old order of fanatics and martyrs, but for him…
For him, she was the way forward.
Gritting his teeth, Yassen hobbled after her. Slowly, using his left arm and his body, he climbed up the rock face. Elena reached out to him and hauled him onto the summit.
“Thanks,” he said breathlessly, but she immediately shushed him.
She turned to the north. Without saying a word, she slipped her hand behind her back and pointed to the right and then down. Curled her fist once, twice. He recognized the Ravani guard code.
Danger, two miles to the north.
Yassen scanned the outcroppings beyond the canyon, but he saw nothing. He felt exposed.
She curled her fist again and then opened her hand.Wait.
She jumped down, scaling up the other edge of the canyon. Yassen hesitated only for a moment before following. He climbed onto a ledge that opened toward the northeast. Slowly, like a man shaking off the ghosts of a dream, he saw what Elena had seen. The trail of dust and sand rising from the north, toward them.
After a few moments, he saw the cruiser enter the far edge of the basin. It must not have spotted them as it drove through the riverbed, making its way east. Its way home.
Elena slunk down the ledge.
Moving closer, she motioned with her hand.
Yassen slipped out his pistol as she swung underneath the ledge, heading for the riverbed. He steadied the butt of the gun against the rocks and waited. If he timed it right, he could hit the scout right as he passed below.
