Page 54 of Heart of the Desert

“I’m sorry we had to meet again under such unfortunate circumstances. I planned to challenge you to a friendly spar when next we met, but it would appear both of us have been relieved of our weapons.” She smiled ruefully and memories surfaced of a friendly clasp of forearms and a newborn foal.

“Badha?”

She nodded, a quirk of a smile at the edge of her lips, although it did not reach her eyes.

“Where am I? And what are you doing here?” I asked, mind whirling.

“Clan Katal’s encampment, where I’m a prisoner of sorts too. I guess we get to share a jail,” Badha said, gesturing around us at the tent. It wasn’t as sparse as I might have expected for a prison. A sleeping mat and a blanket lay in one corner along with several luxurious pillows, and I noticed a water skin and empty plate on the ground near the entrance.

My stomach clenched in hunger even as curiosity washed over me at the relative comfort of my jail.

“But the ocean…” I glanced around, half expecting the beach to materialize around me. How had I reached a clan encampment when I had fallen unconscious to the distant sound of waves?

“It was a long journey for the better part of four and a half clans to make, but Izumi was adamant.” Badha grimaced as she crawled toward me and helped me sit up. She was not as tightly bound as I, just one of her wrists attached to a tent pole with a length of rope that gave her a surprising amount of slack.

My stomach flipped both from the change of position as I sat up and the implication of Badha’s words. I thought I might heave from the dizziness that overcame me once more. Now that I listened closely, I could just hear the faint crashing of waves against the beach and smell the salty tang that lingered on the air.

“She led the clans to the ocean? But why?” I asked. Before the words were out of my mouth, the answer struck me, my brain not quite keeping up as I awoke from my haze.

“She made a deal.” Badha’s already grim expression grew even heavier. “She’s obsessed with destroying Kelvadan, and she was convinced she had to do anything possible to get the army she needed to destroy it.”

“General Warrick,” I breathed. Fear for Kelvadan—and the desert—reached beneath my ribs and clutched my heart. He may have supplied the antidote that saved me from Calix’s poison, but it was out of hatred for Viltov. Not out of any love for me or my home. He would do what it took to destroy Calix and his family, even if Kelvadan was crushed in the process.

Warrick had been there the day Izumi refused to surrender in the courtyard. He would have seen the fire and fury in her eyes, and he was more cunning than the simple warrior’s façade he wore let on.

“It turns out now that Kelvadan has fallen into the hands of outsiders, others have a vested interest in seeing it destroyed as well,” Badha sighed.

Even as my fears were confirmed, that Warrick would decimate the desert to wound Viltov, I frowned at her. “This is an awful lot of information for a prisoner to have.”

“The clans don’t usually keep prisoners,” she pointed out. “It seems my situation is unique.”

Erix told me Badha had betrayed Izumi to let them escape with Kelvar’s journal. She had refused to escape with Dhara and Erix though, insisting that Izumi needed her. It seemed she paid the price for that betrayal. Although Badha seemed clean and well fed, especially considering the murderous fury that had sparked in Izumi’s eyes at Erix’s surrender. I would have guessed death would be the punishment for disloyalty.

“I’m surprised she didn’t kill you.”

Badha’s lips quirked. “You shouldn’t be. Izumi isn’t a cruel person. Just… driven.”

I narrowed my eyes at her. Izumi had fed me by hand when I was to be sacrificed to the desert. Erix had always painted her as a cutthroat leader, blind to all but her purpose.

Then again, that had been Erix when I first met him—a blade hell-bent on destroying anything that stood between him and restoring the Heart is ancestor stole.

“She tells me that she will reinstate me as her warlord if I agree to help her command the riders against Kelvadan,” Badha continued. “But I refuse unless she agrees not to destroy the city after driving out the occupation. Still, when Lord Nathaira demanded I be made a sacrifice for my insubordination, Izumi nearly took off her head.”

I stiffened at the mention of my former lord but tried not to show it. I needed Badha to tell me everything she knew if we were to escape.

“And Izumi can’t bring herself to truly treat me as a prisoner. She comes and talks to me—even takes my advice from time to time. And I can’t say she’s let me be uncomfortable either,” Badha shrugged.

“Why?” I had an inkling from the way Erix told the tale of her betrayal. I wanted to hear it from Badha’s own lips.

She looked away, as if she couldn’t bear to meet my eyes as she spoke.

“Is it wrong to love your jailer? She feels so deeply, and I feel like it has been used to set her down the wrong path, even though it may be a strength.”

My heart twisted with the pain I had felt not so long ago. “I jailed the man I loved once, and he still stood by me. Eventually, though, he had to make the decision to turn off the path he was on, before it destroyed him.”

Badha swallowed thickly. “She’s a good leader.”

“She’s made a lot of mistakes.” The words felt far too harsh coming from my own lips, for I had made far too many blunders as a leader as well, costing many their lives.