Page 37 of Blood of the Sands

I awoke with a gasp, sitting bolt upright as my hands flew to face, tracing my bare features. My mask lay on the ground beside me, but I was alone in my tent. It had just been a dream.

I grabbed it now, shoving it on as if that might protect me from the memory of the dream. While I thought of Keera more often than I should, it had always been mere curiosity at where she may have gone or conjecture about the lightning storm that had allowed her escape. Sometimes, it was bouts of frustration that I hadn’t been able to snuff out the life of the only person to see my face in so many years.

The dream left me unbalanced. Usually, my only nighttime visions were of being crushed beneath an avalanche of stone or the desert dissolving into the ocean, falling to pieces as I failed to hold it together with my bare hands. This, though—this had been peaceful.

With a groan, I pushed to my feet, grabbing my sword, and pushing out into the pale gray that came before full dawn, painting the world in tones of black and white. There would be no more sleep for me tonight.

I headed to the horses’ enclosure, hoping a few quiet moments with Alza might quiet my nerves. A few whispered words with her followed by several hours with my saber in hand would hopefully be enough to free my mind from the odd path it had decided to tread.

I paused as I entered the enclosure, hearing whispered voices. The only one who ever rose as early as me was Izumi, and she normally departed on her run without a word.

I ducked behind a nearby mare that dozed standing up, head hanging partway down. Peeking out from behind her flank, I spied Izumi standing near her own piebald, head bent with another, taller figure.

Inching out a little further, I recognized the man from Clan Ratan with the close-cropped beard. He had been with the warlord who questioned me.

“—protection would the queen offer?”

My hackles rose at the mention of the queen, and I bared my teeth. Still, I quelled my anger enough to bite my tongue and listen closely.

“She is loyal to those who help her. You’d have a place in Kelvadan.” A male voice drifted across the enclosure.

I would have had to suppress a laugh of derision if not for the icy feeling in the pit of my stomach. Of all the threats I had envisioned toward the clans, Izumi hadn’t been counted among them.

“Meet me outside Lord Alasdar’s tent at noon. I will help you get the information you seek,” Izumi promised.

Before I could sneak away, Izumi and the man broke apart, and she walked toward the entrance to the enclosure. She would pass my makeshift hiding spot. Quickly, I stepped out from behind the mare, walking purposefully as if I had just entered and not been lurking in the shadows eavesdropping.

As she spotted me, she didn’t even narrow her eyes at me in suspicion or seem surprised, only offering the small nod that passed as a greeting between us. I returned the gesture, not wanting to let her know I had heard her plot.

Exiting the enclosure, she set off for her run as she had on every other morning since I had known her. By the time I reached the far edge of the enclosure where Alza waited, the man had disappeared, probably jumping the fence and heading off around the line of tents on the other side.

I debated turning back and heading straight for Lord Alasdar’s tent, but I didn’t want to tip off Izumi or the rider by acting out of the ordinary. If they knew they had been discovered, they might flee to Kelvadan with valuable information.

Alza, whom I idly patted while I thought, tossed her head in a mirror of frustration, always sensitive to my changing moods. While the Viper did not make friends with the riders of the combined clans, Izumi at least had my trust as a capable warrior. My stomach soured at the thought of her betrayal.

She’s betrayed before.

My mind offered me the thought unbidden, and I gritted my teeth. The day Lord Alasdar took control of Clan Katal had been a bloody one, in no small part due to Izumi leading the riders who would lead the former lord into a trap where I could ambush them.

Lord Alasdar, warlord as he was at the time, had been calculated in revealing the plan for grabbing power to Izumi. As she grumbled quietly about the former lord not taking action to save the desert, even after her family had been swallowed by a patch of sinking sand that appeared in the middle of the night, Lord Alasdar was as a sympathetic ear. He knew her anger would drive her to do whatever it took to right the wrong that had stolen her twin sister from her.

Perhaps that anger drove her toward another betrayal as he continually pushed Izumi to the side of his plans.

I ran my fingers through Alza’s silky forelock, considering. If I could catch Izumi and the rider red handed, I could rob them of any chance to escape. Perhaps a spy of Kelvadan could even be leveraged as a source of information, or a way to feed false intelligence to the queen. After all, I had heard their plans. I would wait until noon and catch them in the act.

I left the morning of training covered in a sheen of sweat, stomping off in the direction of my own tent as I usually did. When I got there though, I lifted the back of the canvas and ducked out again circling back to the center of camp where Lord Alasdar’s tent would be.

As I walked, I tugged on whispers of power running through the camp, making gazes of clansmen and riders slide over me. Anybody particularly favored by the desert wouldn’t be affected by such a small deflection, but I knew that Izumi harbored no such magic. If she happened to look my direction, her gaze should skate over me as just another person going about their day.

I reached the edge of the ring of tents marking the center clearing of the encampment just in time to watch Izumi usher a familiar rider through the door of Lord Alasdar’s tent. I internally scolded her for her foolishness even as I grit my teeth in anger at her betrayal. She may be high enough ranking that she wasn’t questioned entering the lord’s tent, but if information were to go missing, she would have been seen coming and going.

Quickly, I skirted around the side of the structure, knowing that they would likely be watching the front flap as they searched. If I were to take them by surprise, I needed an alternate entrance. I didn’t want to risk going in without the element of surprise, as Izumi was the fighter who had come closest to besting me since—in a long time, and they would outnumber me.

As I approached the back corner of the tent, voices drifted through the canvas from within, but I couldn’t make them out. Without waiting a moment, I slashed my saber through the fabric and jumped inside. Magic flared at the base of my skull in anticipation of a fight and fizzled in frustration when I froze at the sight before me.

Lord Alasdar sat at his table, fingers steepled as he rested his chin on them with an expression of mild interest. Izumi stood over the rider where he knelt on the rug, a bruise blooming across one side of his face. All three looked up at me as I crashed through the tent wall.

“Viper,” was Lord Alasdar’s only response, somehow a statement and a question, all woven together with threads of disapproval.