Page 11

Basira pulled Zara inside the inn, slamming the door and locking it behind them.

Zara was shaken. She and Basira had been unarmed, fleeing, and the Varai had tried to kill them anyway.

Those black-fletched arrows were vivid in her mind’s eye. Kashava had carried those same arrows in her quiver. Zara had never looked twice at them. Now, suddenly, they struck fear in her.

“The cellar,” Basira said. “In the kitchen. Gods willing, they won’t find us there.”

“What about Tahir and Farhana?”

“Already inside with the others. Go.” She ushered her toward the back of the inn.

“Has this happened before?”

“Never. There have been sporadic attacks on the roads for months, but I hoped they’d never…”

There was a thump on the floor above them. Both of them went silent. A few moments later, there was another creak of a floorboard above.

“They’re already inside,” Basira whispered, clasping Zara’s hand tightly. Her eyes widened. “They must have come in through the attic.”

The stairs creaked. Someone was approaching rapidly.

Hands shaking, Basira shoved open the nearest door and darted inside, pulling Zara behind her. It was not the kitchen, but Tahir and Basira’s bedroom. It was wide and dim, insulated with ra’Hezirati rugs on the walls and floor and lit with a single colorful lantern hanging from the ceiling.

Basira crawled beneath the bed, then beckoned Zara to follow, but Zara hesitated. They’d have nowhere to run if they were found under the bed, and she didn’t like the idea of being caught lying down.

She pressed herself to the wall in the shadow of a tall wardrobe and went still, despite Basira’s concerned glance. The hurried footsteps outside had stopped. The inn had gone silent. Basira slid backward beneath the bed until she disappeared from sight.

For long minutes, neither of them moved. Zara hardly breathed.

She had almost begun to hope that the intruder had left, and then she heard the door’s hinges squeak. Soft light from the hallway brightened the room, then disappeared as the door shut.

Zara held a hand over her mouth to muffle her ragged breaths, peering around the corner of the wardrobe. A shadow stood in front of the door, barely visible, and she could just make out the shape of a body, of a cloak and a hood and a sword strapped to a hip. The height of the figure and the breadth of its shoulders made her guess it was a man.

She watched the outline of his head slowly shift as he scanned the room.

He would search the room for valuables and then leave. That was their mission. Varai didn’t travel to faraway lands just to murder humans in their homes.

At least, most of them didn’t.

The shadow slowly moved to the center of the room, his steps absolutely silent. Had she not been watching him, she wouldn’t have known he’d moved.

She watched him peer into corners on the opposite side of the room, then turn and move in her direction. To her relief, he walked past her without looking in the direction of the wardrobe. Her relief quickly turned to fear when he started to bend to look beneath the bed. He was going to find Basira.

Zara leapt from her hiding place. She knocked into him from behind, sending him flying to the floor. She put her knee in his back and found his arm, trying to force it away from his sword hilt, but he got his knees beneath him and flipped her off him. She rolled sideways, but kicked out at his legs before he could get up again, giving her time to jump to her feet and put a few steps of distance between them. He grunted in annoyance.

Her eyes struggled to make out his shape while he was faded. When she saw him lunge toward her, she side-stepped, knocking away the hand that had been reaching for her and grabbing the side of his cloak to try to drag him to the ground. But in the dim light, she lost track of his limbs, and suddenly she found herself being spun around.

Her back hit the floor, and then he was on top of her, his weight pinning her down, his hands viselike around her wrists. They paused, both of them breathing hard, neither of them moving. He was still faded. She stared into the fuzzy, dark outlines of his face. Even shrouded in shadow, he looked angry. Her insides went quivery. He would kill her, she was certain.

But he didn’t reach for a weapon. For some reason, he hesitated.

After a stretch of silence, she found her tongue.“I don’t want to fight you,”she said in Varai, the words pouring out of her at a rapid clip.“Please take what you want but leave us alone.”

His head tilted slightly.

“The Goddess blesses those who are merciful to the weak,”she reminded him.

Finally he made a sound. A quiet laugh.“You are clearly not weak.”