Page 14

Which Ends Well

A s’ad whipped his head around to find the mysterious stranger who had led them to the orphans in the first place standing in the middle of the road.

Before he could say anything, the woman lifted her hand. “The dwarves who came this way will not trouble you.”

Rahma and Suha looked from the regal person blocking their way to As’ad and back.

He carefully set the cart down and released the pole. Positioning himself between the woman and the rest of his party, he asked, “Who are you and what do you want?”

She assessed him with her eyes, and he wondered what she saw. After a moment, she nodded deeply.

“You may call me Adva.” Her gaze moved to the exhausted children. “I can find safe havens for each of these younglings.”

As’ad shifted his weight. Her words hadn’t seemed overtly threatening, but he had no reason to trust the word of a stranger. A stranger who had initially led them to the children. Had she planned for As’ad and Rahma to steal the orphans for her? Or were her motives pure? Unconsciously, he reached for the pipe he had kept on his person.

Adva’s eyes followed his fingers. She took a single step forward. “Test me with iron,” she offered.

As’ad stiffened. He licked his lips, then walked to the back of the cart. The small cooking pot he wanted was, of course, under one of the sleepers. Rahma hurried over to take the child from him. When he had the pot, he strode toward the woman with caution but not fear.

He held out the pot, and she lightly wrapped her hand around the rim.

“See how it burns. You can trust my words.”

The sizzle horrified As’ad, and he hastily pulled the pot away from her. He looked into her eyes and knew. This was one of the beings he had read about while researching caves for Aladdin. The iron-burned ones could not lie or go back on their word.

Solemnly, he asked, “Do you promise to find the children good, safe homes where they will be loved and cared for, that they can leave when they are grown and choose to do so?”

“I swear to do everything in my power to place each child in a good and safe home where they will be cherished and provided for until such a time as they are grown and ready to leave,” Adva stated.

As’ad nodded. “Very well. What needs to happen now?”

“If you will follow me, please.” The otherworldly woman bowed to the group, then slowly began walking away. Rahma asked in a low voice why he was trusting Adva. He told her the woman couldn’t lie, then promised to explain later.

Adva’s pace was easily kept by the weary walkers, and they soon reached more populated areas that were better lit. She led them through the city gates, then east along the main road for longer than As’ad wanted to walk. She produced a faery light from somewhere and kept walking without turning to check that she was still being followed. Before As’ad reached his limit and acted on the impulse to take a nap where he stood, she directed them off the road and into a thick stand of trees.

Not long after they entered the grove, she stopped and turned to face them.

“Those who come with me cannot leave for a time. Decide now if you want to be safe in a home of my choosing or if you want to make your own way in this world.”

Suha stepped forward. She gestured to the two older boys who still carried a couple of the smaller children. “I can’t speak for Zawar or Wasi, but the rest of the children are orphans and have no one else. They will all go with you.”

Adva nodded.

Rahma pulled Suha to the side for a discussion that looked intense, though As’ad couldn’t make out the words.

Their guide reached into a pocket and retrieved a small item. She held it out, away from the group, and whispered something else As’ad couldn’t interpret. Not unlike when his illusions came into being, a dark, door-shaped hole appeared among the trees.

Suha hugged Rahma fiercely, then walked to the wagon and picked up one of the sleeping youngsters. She looked at Adva, who nodded; then she moved through the impossible doorway.

The oldest boys herded the other walkers in the same direction. One by one, they vanished until the only child left was the last sleeper in the cart. Adva delicately scooped the little one into her arms and stepped forward. She paused at the gateway.

“This is your final chance to join me.”

Tears stood in Rahma’s eyes as she pursed her lips and shook her head.

“No, thank you,” As’ad informed the woman as he grabbed Rahma’s hand.

Adva studied the pair for a moment, then departed without another word. The black rectangle disappeared seconds later.

Rahma turned into As’ad’s chest and sobbed, “You were right. Suha didn’t want to be rescued. She wanted a new adventure.”

He held her as she cried, running a soothing hand up and down her back. When her tears slowed, he said, “I’m sure you will see her again someday. And you were right first. She did want to be rescued from Hadia.”

“Ooh, that woman!” Rahma growled into his shoulder. Then she started shaking for a different reason.

Surprised at her laughter, As’ad gently pushed her back so he could see her face. “What’s so funny?”

“Hadia is going to be soooo mad when she finds out she has nowhere to sell stolen people anymore.”

The pair concluded that the patch of woods they found themselves in was as good a camp as any. The trees provided a nice windbreak, but the temperature had dropped beyond pleasant. Rahma used the cold to convince As’ad that they should sleep side-by-side and use the tent canvases as extra blankets because it would be warmer than setting them up. He was too fatigued to protest.

When the midday sun filtering through the trees finally woke As’ad, he lay next to the bundle of blankets that he was pretty sure still contained Rahma—though he couldn’t see any of her—and ruminated over the last few days. None of Pozik’s guards had seen him or Rahma; he trusted that they were safe from reprisal.

Then he thought about the last month or so. Then the months before that. His life had always had a clear before and after. He used to define his experiences as before the orphanage and after. Or before Aladdin and after. Now it was abundantly obvious that everything could be slotted into Before Rahma and After Rahma.

There was no way he could return to his original plan of moving the con to Bavenpier and forgetting about Rahma. Nor could he ask her to join him in his criminal lifestyle. She expected honesty and would hold him to it. Her ideas about using the pipe for entertainment purposes had merit, but he couldn’t do that anywhere in Sharamil; the whole country would figure out what he had done. And he couldn’t ask her to leave her family to make a new life with him.

Glumly, As’ad extricated himself from his bedroll and the tent canvases. Determined to let Rahma sleep as long as she needed, he quietly apologized to the rats that woke when he began digging around the handcart for breakfast supplies. They accepted his delayed offering of food and soon resettled in their nests.

Starting a cook fire a little ways from the trees, As’ad chuckled to himself at the memory of their second real conversation. He didn’t count the words they had exchanged in Nahr, since that was mostly an interrogation on her part. The first conversation, having been comprised of accusations and more questions, probably didn’t count, either. So the encounter at the tree she had unwittingly turned into a bonfire was likely the real first conversation.

Too bad there would be no conversations soon.

Before he could work himself into a full snit of crankiness, Rahma appeared looking adorably rumpled, though she had evidently taken the time to tame her hair. She accepted the food he handed her and polished it off as if she hadn’t eaten in days. Given the chaos of their time in Jabal, mealtime had fallen a bit to the wayside.

The beauty sitting next to him set her empty dish to the side, clasped her hands in her lap, and turned to look at him with an inquisitive air. “What’s bothering you this morning?”

As’ad didn’t feel up to the task of dodging her pleasant persistence, but he tried anyway. “Nothing,” he lied with a shrug.

She leaned closer. “Are you feeling let down after yesterday’s excitement? That’s common, I hear.”

He wanted to know where she had heard that, or from whom. “I’m relieved it’s over. Who told—?”

Rahma narrowed her eyes and talked through his question. “Is it that you are facing a crisis about what direction your life should take now?”

His jaw dropped. “What? How—?”

Pleased to have hit her mark, she settled back. “It’s obvious. You never like scamming people to begin with, and now you’ve run out of places in Sharamil to use the rat con. You have learned how to use the pipe for other things, but you can’t do any of them here because word will get out and you’ll find yourself in prison.”

Listening to her voice the conclusions he had come to earlier that day was surreal. And she kept going.

“I’m also pretty certain that you have become fond of me.”

Heat burned As’ad’s ears and worked its way across his face and down his neck.

She set a hand on his arm and smiled sweetly. “I am very fond of you myself. Which means I know that you want a different life than what you have now, but I bet you’re feeling like you can’t ask me to give up my family and Sharamil to follow you somewhere else. And you know that I won’t stick around if you continue to scam people.”

He numbly shook his head. Everything she said was true. Wielding her honestly like a weapon yet again, this time it was poised to cut out his heart.

Rahma returned her hand to her lap, and he felt the absence of her touch as the warmth seemed to leach out of his arm. She raised her eyebrows. “So. What are you going to do about it?”

His mouth opened, but nothing came out. Nothing helpful, nothing harmful. Flat out nothing at all.

She rolled her lips between her teeth to keep from smiling outright. “First things first,” she said, taking up the reins of the conversation again. “Do you have feelings for me? Positive ones,” she clarified in a teasing warning.

As’ad finally found his voice, but his tangled emotions jumbled his words. “Yes! You’re the— And I . . . Mmmm!” He clenched his teeth and gave a wordless growl as he tried to spit out everything he was feeling all at once.

“Wow.” The smile Rahma had been holding back grew. “Where’s that silver tongue of yours, Mr. Con Artist?”

His thoughts finally clunked into place, and the perfect answer came to him. “Apparently, it fails in the face of real love.”

“Nice save!” She beamed at him. “Now forget words and just kiss me already.”

“Yes, ma’am!”

Sometime later, after more kisses and several confessions of love and recitations of the wonderful attributes each person had come to value in the other, Rahma tilted her head against his shoulder and announced, “We should get married today.”

As’ad snorted. “Wouldn’t your parents like to meet me first?”

They had been sitting by the dying fire and looking at the pretty picture Jabal made from their copse of trees, but something in her manner caused him to sit up and look at her directly.

“They have! And while they can have no objections to me marrying the savior of Sharamil, they might be less thrilled to find out how long we’ve been traveling together with out being married.” A wicked gleam shone in her eye, and As’ad knew she had won.

Finding a priest in Jabal to marry them was ridiculously easy compared to their most recent adventures, even with the complication of finding one who would allow rats to witness the ceremony. As’ad did put his foot down in one regard. He had his new wife write to her parents immediately after the wedding. Since they were heading back to visit after a brief stay in the mountain city, he wanted his in-laws to have time to work through their shock before the newlyweds arrived.

Rahma’s parents welcomed their son-in-law (and his rats) with open arms. To his shock, but not Rahma’s, arrangements had been made with her uncle to outfit the young couple with accommodations and an apprenticeship by the sea. Her father’s brother owned a couple of trading ships and was hoping to expand in the coming years. If As’ad and Rahma wanted to learn the business and someday captain one of his ships, they were more than welcome. As’ad’s dream of living by the ocean, which had been so hidden he hadn’t recognized it himself, came true, and the couple was close enough to visit Nahr on a regular basis.

Life couldn’t be more perfect.

Thanks for reading!