Noor bit the edge of her lip and looked back at the prison, now a dark dot on the brightening horizon.
“Dania, you’ve already done enough for me. You went back for me and you didn’t have to.” Her smile was sad. “It’s okay. If I had family, I’d want to be with them too.”
My heart splintered, knowing that she had no one left, that she was alone now, and I still had people who loved me.
I clasped her hands in the boat, and it rocked with the force of my movement. “You’re my family now too.”
Eleven
My village sat at the foot of the mountains, nestled into the rock like it was part of the formations themselves. Dozens of baked brick houses protected its inhabitants from the onslaught of the glacial wind, and an outcropping in the cliff shielded us from the worst of the valley storms.
My father’s smith stood at the edge of these houses, proud against the mountainside, its white walls and stone gate calling to me. Normally a smith would be in the city, close to the emperor, outfitting his armies and assassins with deadly weaponry. But my father was no ordinary smith. He refused to move from the place he’d married my mother and his village community to seek greater prosperity in the city. And still it found him.
He had a knack for forging blades that were both beautiful and deadly, that seemed to fly from your hand with surprising accuracy and balance. Emperor Vahid even asked if my father had gotten a hold of djinn magic somehow, or if his forge was heated by the smokeless fire of the djinn realms.
Of course he hadn’t. My father was an ordinary man, and I loved him for it.
Noor and I managed to steal a pack mule when we arrived at the first town near the sea.
We rode through the night. If anyone was coming after us, we needed to have a head start.
“Your village better have a very deep well, I feel as though I could drink forever.” Noor draped dramatically over the front of the mule while I dismounted and grabbed its reins, leading it through the dawn-lit streets of my village.
“It has a well, otherwise people wouldn’t live here.”
“Take me to it immediately.”
I let out a snort of laughter, even as thirst pounded through my own head. Our waterskins had run out hours ago and we’d managed to survive scooping snow from the sand dunes as we crossed the cold desert. My stomach growled, the last of the wild cherries and stolen dates running out that morning. “First we go to my father’s house, and we can have all the food and drink we want there, I promise you.”
“Good, because I cannot subsist on dates alone. The food was better in prison.”
“You can’t be serious aboutthat.” I shuddered at the memory of the lentil slop sliding down my throat.
Noor lifted her head. “You’re right. At least dates have a taste.”
I hadn’t minded the steady diet of apricots and almond-dusted flatbreads we’d swiped from the towns we’d passed through. Noor and I had raided what we could from the tiny settlements along the way and we had managed to pilfer two plain kurtas to replace our bloodied prison ones, as well as basic but serviceable woven shoes. If I felt a pang of remorse at the people I had stolen from, I reminded myself that I was seeing my father soon and could pay them back when I got home.
All that mattered was finding him again.
Then we could go anywhere we wanted.
“Just think, we could be eating mutton stew and rice. Spicy pickles.Pillowy bread covered in garlic and black onion seeds.” Noor licked her lips.
“We’ll have a feast at my father’s.” I couldn’t disguise the urgency in my voice. My skin was buzzing with anticipation. We were so close I could feel the burn of tears behind my eyes.
“Come on.”
I led Noor through the uneven cobblestones of my village, checking that the muted dupatta wound around my face hid my features. I didn’t want anyone alerting Emperor Vahid—or Mazin—that I had returned. I didn’t know if he had spies in my village, but I wasn’t going to take that chance.
We got closer to my father’s house, the mud brick painted a bright white, jutting out of the rock of the mountain. On the side of the building was his smith, the sign with crossed daggers etched into it still hanging above the door.
But the smith was dark, with no warm glow from the smelt peeking through the cracks in the windows.
I frowned, my hand curling around the reins so tight the leather pinched. Baba always worked at the smith early in the morning.
Dread sat in my stomach, growing like a sinkhole.
“The door is ajar.” Noor pulled her cloak tighter.
