“That’s the worst idea.”
“Trust me.” He slipped the relic back into his robes. “I know in your stories she is a malevolent entity, but in ours, the ifrit are morally ambiguous. Let me try speaking to her.”
“Speak to a killer?” Loulie scowled. “Do what you want, but I will not forgive her for what she did to Ahmed.”
Qadir raised a brow. “You have qualms about a killer murdering other killers?”
“I have qualms about murder, period.” Murder. The single word made her think back to the killer in black she had been discussing with the tribesman.
It was as if Qadir could read her mind. “Good. If you detest murder so much, then I assume you won’t seek vengeance on some killer you may or may not know.”
“Of course not.” She knew even before gauging Qadir’s reaction that she had spoken too fast. She always did when she was lying. She stood abruptly. “I’m going to walk around the campsite before I go back to sleep.”
Qadir silently handed her a lantern flashing with his fire.
“You worry worse than my mother did.” She grabbed the lantern from him.
Qadir sighed. “You have self-destructive tendencies; I have to worry.”
Loulie rolled her eyes and walked away. She was glad Qadir could not see her face, because she was certain the battle waging in her heart would manifest in her expression. Loulie did not know what she would do—but she would do something.
It wasn’t in her nature to let bygones be bygones.
37
MAZEN
“Wake up, Prince.” Aisha’s voice was feather soft, and yet in the extreme silence of the tent, it startled him awake. Mazen slowly sat up, rubbing sleep from his eyes as his foggy mind pieced together where and when he was: the middle of the desert, many miles out from the Bedouin campsite they’d left three days ago, on their way to the city of Ghiban.
He glanced blearily around their tent, which was swathed in the golden shadows of dawn. Their belongings were untouched, their surroundings unchanged. But the silence—that was new.
Aisha was crouched down beside him, a severe dent between her brows. She raised a finger to her lips and mouthed a single word.
Ghouls.
Mazen rose shakily to his feet. He said nothing as Aisha whispered commands, instructing him to pack the tent and secure the supplies.
The unnatural silence was so heavy it made every exhale too loud, every step a too-sharp crunch. The quiet suffocated even the sigh of the wind. It was as if the world itself were holding its breath. Was this the work of the ghouls they had avoided days ago?
It took a great effort to tamp down his fear as he and Aisha collapsed the tent and met the merchant and her bodyguard outside. They looked miserable, bundled in layers to fight off the frigid morning cold. Loulie had even donned her Midnight Merchant vestments atop her plain attire, though she still shuddered beneath them. Mazen sympathized; his brother’s cloak felt inadequate.
Loulie and Qadir acknowledged them with terse nods, then mounted their horses in silence.
It was a tacit rule that no one speak.
Mazen had not realized how loud the desert was until it went completely silent. He had been unnerved the last time they skirted this eerie quiet, but this silence was worse—far worse. Gone was the whisper of the sand and the sigh of the breeze. He had never paid much attention to the noise his horse’s hooves made on the ground, but now he could not stop thinking about how loud every crunch was.
Traveling through the desert was an already exhausting endeavor, but to do it while attempting to suffocate all sound made the journey doubly tiring. It suddenly seemed as if every motion was dangerous: the rustling of his equipment as he shifted on his saddle, the click of the stirrups every time he urged his horse in a different direction, and even the hiss of the sand as it gathered and slid off his clothing in undisturbed streams.
Mazen rubbed his hands together in an effort to warm them and tried not to think about how parched his throat was and how he was too nervous to reach for the waterskin tucked deep into his saddlebags. The others seemed to be existing in a similar state of uncertainty. They wore their misery plainly, etched into their faces as frowns and slumped onto their shoulders like an invisible weight. Aisha may as well have been a statue, her gaze trained ahead, her fingers so stiff on the reins it hardly looked like she was gripping them at all.
Hours went by. Mazen spent his time fretting and watching. Mostly, he watched the merchant, who, when she wasn’t observing her compass, watched him back. It was incredibly stress inducing. With every look she shot in his direction, Mazen became more convinced she had somehow seen through his disguise. At some point, his combined paranoia and exhaustion became so great it blurred his sight, and the merchant became a vaguely hostile-looking smudge amidst the hills of red-gold sand. He turned away from her, perturbed.
Mazen overthought every motion and look and noise until, miraculously, sound returned to the world. The sun had dipped below the horizon by then, and shadows carved the ripples in the sand into sculpted waves. A distant hawk broke the silence, and then—the wind whistled past them and threw sand in their faces. Qadir let out a long, deep sigh.
Aisha groaned. “The danger’s passed.” Her voice was hoarse with disuse.
Mazen snapped into action, immediately reaching into his saddlebag for their waterskin. The liquid was tasteless, and yet it seemed the sweetest thing he’d ever had in his life. He had to force himself to take sips and to hand the waterskin over to Aisha afterward.
Loulie glanced warily over her shoulder. “You think those are the same ghouls we evaded before?”
Qadir frowned. “Most likely. Though their tenacity is… unusual.”
The merchant groaned. “Is it too much to ask for one day of uneventful travel?” She flexed her fingers in Qadir’s direction. He handed her their waterskin. Mazen didn’t realize he was staring at her until she lowered the waterskin and frowned at him. “Something on my face?”
His thoughts were so formless and scattered that he was at a loss for how to respond. He was just so glad to see that her visage had resolved into a definitive shape again.
Thankfully, Aisha filled the awkward silence. “It’s a good thing ghouls are slow,” she said. “Otherwise, from the sound, we’d have to deal with an army.”
Mazen tucked the information away. He had gathered that ghouls deadened noise where they wandered, but it was helpful to know one could estimate the size of a group by the quiet it provoked. Useful and extremely disquieting.
Loulie scowled. “They probably smell the death on the two of you.”
Aisha snorted. “Don’t act so virtuous, relic seller. If they’re tracking any of us, it’s you. You have a bag of relics. You’re practically walking ghoul bait.”
A memory snapped into place at her words; Mazen remembered the story his mother had once told him about the ghouls. One he could still recall the beginning of…
“In the desert there exists a group of undead jinn who have one foot in death and another in life. What they lack in strength, they make up for with their sharpened senses. Though they are mostly blind, they can smell magic from miles and miles away.”
There was a lull in the narrative as he tried to remember the rest.
“Sayyidi.” Aisha’s voice was a hiss.
Mazen looked up and saw the merchant staring at him. She looked perplexed.
“Oh.” It dawned on him he’d said the words aloud. “Sorry, I was… remembering a story.”
The merchant looked at him intently, eyes narrowed as if she were trying to read him. Mazen’s heart hitched. No, it was as if she were looking through him—
He saw a flash out of the corner of his eye.
A hiss of wind in his ear. A thud as something pierced the dirt.
Mazen followed the group’s startled gazes to an arrow shaft protruding from the sand. He pressed a hand to his cheek, but there was no cut, no blood. Just a phantom pain chased by a current of fear.