I waved away the bright threads of my magic still hanging in the air and they dissipated like a cloud of shimmering fog. Hopefully they didn’t illuminate the little house for long and Bair didn’t catch any evidence.
Then I curled my hands back to my sides and rolled my shoulders back, feeling a little light-headed as I usually did after using my magic.
“Bair,” I called out, trying to shake off the sensation of calling on my power. “I’ve picked the lock.”
Bair came trudging around the corner of the house, his relieved face coming into view in the doorway. “Thank the River. The window I found was too small for either of us to crawl through. There’s a back door but it’s destroyed and I couldn’t get in.”
Bair stepped through the open door.
“By the River,” said Bair, taking in the chaos, his eyes wide.
“Who do you think did this?” I asked, following his gaze.
He shook his head. “Looters?”
“Doesn’t look like there’d be anything to loot.”
“Well, it certainly wasn’t the Citadel patrols. If it was, they wouldn’t have left the body.”
I nodded, though not entirely convinced. No one in our village would steal from the dead.
That was a trait distinct to the Citadel and the Empire they worked for.
Bair stood next to me, a thin sheen of sweat on his forehead after climbing around the back of the house.
On our walk over I had begun to worry that Bair wasn’t strong enough to lift a body onto the stretcher he and Safiyya had fashioned. His shoulders were too thin, and his legs looked as if they didn’t support his own weight, let alone the weight of another. But as we moved closer to Ghassan’s body, I needn’t have been concerned.
It was too small.
Too small to be the Ghassan I knew. Moonlight spilled over his frail body, clothed in trousers too loose and a ragged tunic. Bile rose in my throat, my stomach recoiling, and cold sweat prickled my skin. I began to shake, pressing my arms to my waist as I did so, a weak attempt at holding myself together. Images flashed through my mind—seeing my father’s body fall to the dirt after being shot, my mother holding me, preventing me from running to him. Then every time I imagined her dead after she’d left me, her body destroyed, floating down the River with no one to claim her. My fingers wrapped around my right wrist, feeling for the shadow of her bangles that weren’t there. Not for the first time I’d wished I could wear them publicly, if only to be reminded of her.
It might have also helped when I felt like tossing the contents of my stomach onto the ravaged floor of Ghassan’s house, too. Whatever treason I did in the darkness of night, digging up relics, raiding ancient fae tombs, it was not the same as coming face to face with the dead.
Bair laid a sheet to cover Ghassan quickly, glancing at me with concern.
It was as if he knew I was about to break down.
One ankle poked out from under the sheet, his thin, dark skin stretched unnaturally over bone and my eyes focused there, unable to look away.
“How long has he been here?” I managed to find my voice, forcing the words out to steady myself.
“A few days, but this was the first night we could come without Citadel patrols.” Bair looked behind us into the dark street beyond. “They might be back tomorrow; their shifts have been erratic lately.”
In other words, we had to do it now.
Bair had begun to set up the stretcher, attaching the poles together with bits of cloth and wrapping a small sheet around it. When he was finished, it formed a narrow bed, and he placed it alongside the body in the corner.
I hung back, twisting my fingers in my skirt.
He glanced up at me. “Are you okay?”
“I’ve never done this before,” I whispered, knowing soon my hands would have to lift the body and carry it back to the woods, and that this is what I wished I could have done for those who starved on the city streets, trodden on by Citadel boots.
And still, something like fear gripped me. That once I touched his body, I would fall apart.
I had never been able to go to Baba when he’d been killed, nor bury my Amma after she’d left and likely died. How many of our people had died because of the Empire? And how many more if I couldn’t stop them?
Bair watched me for a moment, eyes darting to my shaking hands and then my face.
