Karim grew excited. “Maybe, or maybe not. Do you think you could find it on this map?”
Sita studied the other marked locations. Ignoring the ones she already knew, she went through the unfamiliar names one by one. Most were too close to the Iteru to have been overlooked, and others seemed to simply be old names for new towns. There were a few burial sites marked as well. However, one outlier caught her eye, located midway between High and Low Khetara, deep in the eastern desert. The symbols written beside the star were an open square—the symbol for house—and the Set animal. Sita pointed to the name. “Perset, The House of Set.”
Karim gazed up at her, his eyes wide. “That’s got to be it, princess. Perset. That’s where we have to go next!”
Sita pushed the map away, her momentary fascination with the story of Setnakht soured by the certainty in Karim’s voice.
“No, no, no. There is no ‘we.’ If you want to head into the desert to find this ruin, be my guest—but I’m not going with you.”
“But the oracle, sena!” Karim protested. “If it’s true, then we were meant to face this together.”
“And if it’s not true?” Sita argued. “I could waste weeks chasing ghosts while my brother tightens his grip on the kingdom. If he kills more innocent people in his quest for power”—her voice broke—“more people that I love, then I could never forgive myself for being diverted by some tribesman from the marketplace.”
Karim’s face fell.
Sita felt a tug in her heart but didn’t allow it to take hold. She’d just met Karim, and despite how easy it was to talk to him, and how so much of what he said rang true—she couldn’t allow herself to fully trust him. She wasn’t sure she could trust anyoneever again.
“This ‘oracle’ of yours makes it seem like every encounter has a greater purpose, is part of a larger plan,” she went on, her voice harsh. “But real life isn’t like that, all right? We each make our own decisions. Real life isn’t a story, Karim.”
She stood, her whole body trembling. “I believed in stories once. I won’t make that mistake again. We’ll stay together for the night, but when morning comes, we part. I’ll find my way to Bubas alone.”
Karim stood too. “As you wish, sena.”
He went to gather up his things, and she tried to overlook the disappointment on his face. Even the dog seemed subdued.
As they left the canal, Behkai trotted beside her with his tail between his legs. They walked in silence for a few minutes before Karim spoke again.
“For what it’s worth, before today I would have agreed with you. My life before all of this was arduous and sometimes feltdevoid of meaning. This oracle has brought terrible things into my life, but it also brought experiences I never would have had without it. I took a journey down the river. I ate a pomegranate. I inherited Behkai.” The dog cocked his head at the sound of his name.
Karim gave her a sidelong glance. “I found you.”
Sita could not meet his eyes.
“These past few days, I’ve started to wonder if my life would be different if I stopped running away from things, and started running toward them. Do you know what I mean?” When Sita didn’t respond, Karim cleared his throat. “All I’m trying to say, sena, is that even if we never meet again—to me, none of this has been meaningless. And for what it’s worth, I hope your story gets a happy ending.”
His words touched her—Sita couldn’t deny that. And regardless of how outrageous it all sounded, she couldn’t deny that something in his story of the oracle seemed genuine. But Sita knew better than to let herself be carried away by some fantasy, by a romantic notion that she was singled out, with the others, to save the kingdom from destruction. The most she could hope for was to somehow repair the damage she herself had done, and even that seemed insurmountable. Still, she had to try.
Though she knew she must, she didn’t look forward to parting ways with her new companions, the hound and the jackal. They were so strange, and yet so familiar—two pawns moving across the landscape, hoping to reach journey’s end in one piece.
Sita hoped that, for once, she was seeing the board clearly. That she wasn’t making another mistake.
They walked the rest of the way in silence.
31
Rae
Rae floated through the next few hours in a blur of activity. After leaving the brewery, Omari, Menk, and Baki ushered her to the shepherd’s farm, careful to stick to the narrow darkened streets until they got out of the city. She argued at first, telling them that her presence put Baki’s family at risk, but the shepherd wouldn’t hear of it.
“I owe you a debt, Raetawy. The least you can do is allow me to repay it.”
After that, she let them pull her along without further protest. Everything seemed to move too slowly, as if she were underwater. Even the voices of her companions were oddly muted to her ears.
When they reached the farm, Baki steered her into the stable, promising to remain on watch outside, while Omari and Menk went back into town on reconnaissance.
“There will be consequences for what happened tonight,” Menk told her before they left. “Better for us to know what they are before they arrive on our doorstep.”
And then, she was alone with her thoughts.
