“That's good,” the elder bone-eater says. Then he hesitates, as though he's about to say one thing but decides upon another. “Thank you. For that delicious meal you prepared. And sorry you didn't get to enjoy it.”
“It was the least I could do.” Shay shakes her head humbly, though she does appreciate the acknowledgment.
“Did you notice she also tidied up?” chimes in Beni—the youngest, or the Baby. “I never even knew our floor tiles are such a lovely shade of aqua blue. And I can see myself in these drinking glasses! It's like they're brand-new!”
“Is that supposed to be a good thing?” Bono snickers, the crescent-shaped horns on his forehead jiggling. “Be careful. Or you'll crack them.”
Shay is surprised they noticed, although she hoped they would. Their gratitude may make them more amiable to the favor she must now request. “So, the antidote seems to have worked, and I wondered if I might convince one of you to be my escort back through the forest.”
Aidi stiffens and gives a startled cough. “Who told you it would be safe to go back?”
“Well, Deebi …” Shay sputters. Deebi the Downcast, becauseDisappointmentseems too cruel of an epithet even if unspoken.
Kabeer clucks his tongue. His face is half covered by the hood of his cape, which he also never removes, hence his designation as Kabeer the Cape-Wearer. “Deebi, Deebi, Deebi.”
All the brothers turn expectantly toward Aidi. The elder bone-eater rubs the smooth cap of his skull cane, avoiding Shay's eyes. “I bear unfortunate tidings.”
Dread pools in her stomach. “What do you mean?”
“You cannot return to Nezjar, I'm afraid.”
“I thought the antidote was supposed to be enough.” Shay looks frantically around at the bone-eaters, but none of them meets her gaze. “What's changed?”
“We saw something while passing through your medina.” Aidi removes his hat and carefully places it on the center table, baring the receding hairline that explains his attachment to it. “Posters. Plastered everywhere. With information about a girl fitting your description, Lalla. Saying she's wantedfor the crime of stealing and that any sighting of her should be reported to Al-Mukhtar.”
Shay gasps, her dread turning to dismay. She flounders. “That makes no sense. I haven't stolen anything!”
“Are you sure?” Aidi plunks his hat back on, as if his momentary sympathy has run its course. He continues to rhythmically rub the skull. “They say a priceless magical talisman went missing around the same time you did.”
Thinking of the hjabat, Shay quickly checks her waist satchel and finds it empty. Her stomach drops. She narrows her eyes, looking around the room from one brother to another. “Where is it? Did one of you take it?”
The tallest bone-eater, with antlers like lightning bolts zagging straight up from his head, timidly lifts his hand.
“Hammu?” Shay frowns. And to think she nicknamed him Hammu the Hushed. It's always the quiet ones. “How could you?”
“Sorry.” He digs the ring from the chest pocket of his baggy, moth-eaten gandoura and hands it to Shay. “You forgot it by the washing basin. I found it there and thought it would make a pretty addition to my collection.”
Shay shudders to think what other jewelry he might have in his collection and, more to the point, where he collected it from.
Aidi sighs and taps his cane against the floor. “The question is, how did the talisman come to be in your possession?”
“It's not what you think.” Shay lowers her head and rubs the silver crystal, her action not unlike Aidi's stroking of the cane ornament. She was so eager and willing to go along with Hind, never questioning how she'd obtained the ring to begin with. More concerned with proving she could be of help, that she was worth choosing. That her love was better than some miserable drug. “I was tricked by someone I thought I could trust. Wanted to believe I could trust. Someone who was supposed to care about me.”
Shay's chest tightens. All her foolish hopes bunch up inside her. She doesn't know what to think about the posters. How could Al-Mukhtar know about the hjabat unless Hind told them? Beyond the crime of stealing, she could besent to the dungeon for possessing a magical talisman. And that's if they don't choose to make an example of her.
Somewhere in the back of her mind, she wonders exactly who the authorities think she could have stolen the ringfrom, but this detail gets lost in the tide of her despair. It's hard enough to reconcile that her mother never truly wanted her around, but does Hind hate her so much she wishes her dead?
“Wasn't there also something about a reward?” Bono asks, his too-casual tone not quite hiding something eager.
“What?” Shay's head shoots up. Every muscle in her body coils. “I didn't do anything. You have to believe me.”
“Of course we believe you,” Deebi says earnestly.
Aidi gives her a rotten-lipped smile. Shay tries to concentrate on the compassion swelling in his lambent eyes rather than the sharp serration of his teeth. “You're sensitive, Shay, even for a human. Your heart is pure, and I say this as someone with intimate knowledge of human hearts.”
Shay shivers, quite sure this time that the knowledge in question wasnotgained from books. The bone-eaters have been gracious since her appearance, perhaps because they perceived her to be an innocent victim. Would they now hand her over to be dealt with by her own kind? “What will you do with me?”
“I think we should take a vote,” Kabeer says, earning severe looks from some brothers and nods from others. “To be fair.”
