Chapter 22 #2
Khawla blinks, alert again. “The bloodsuckers are already on the verge of revolt. They're increasingly discontent with a food source they consider subpar. Many of them supply the rebellion with information in the hopes we'll eventually overthrow Al-Mukhtar, saving them the effort.”
Shay gulps. She sits up, pushing down the blankets that suddenly feel too hot and suffocating. “But what about the truce? Would its dissolution give the bloodsuckers free rein to cross into our realm and prey on humans?”
“These are questions with no easy answers, Shay.” Khawla rubs at a worried pinch on her forehead that refuses to be smoothed.
“But at least if we have magic, we will not be defenseless. I prefer to seek an equitable solution between our kinds—to fight for it, if it comes to that—over the type of corruption that deems the blood of women a tolerable price for peace.”
Shay agrees, in theory, but it sounds like a process that will take more time to work out than what Hind has left.
In her mind she sees the touched ones Tarik fed upon, bound and shackled.
Only, in this rendition, it's her mother's face superimposed over theirs, gaunt and fearful.
Her haunted eyes reflecting her own death.
“Tell me more about them,” she says, desperate to replace the image with something—anything—more pleasant. “The Lallat.”
“Certainly,” Khawla says, a smile curling through her drowsy voice.
“On the cycle a girl turned three and ten, she would visit them, and they would perform a ceremony to reveal the girl's Shawafa. Those who chose to do so were then trained to develop their skills, since natural magic is not as potent as that induced by Snow.”
Shay lies back down and draws her blankets over her.
Her breaths soon fall into cadence with Khawla's, lulling her toward sleep.
Maybe it's the simple warmth of this home, or the way Khawla's parents welcomed Shay with open arms, but something in her lets go.
She allows herself, for just a moment, to release the terrible weight she's been carrying.
She'll pick it up again tomorrow, but for now, she rests.
She dreams of four women.
She recognizes them, not from the waking world, not by name, but in spirit.
One is dressed in red and dances through a curtain of flames.
Another, dressed in silver, floats on clouds as though they were travel carts.
Another wears blue and rides waves like she's trained the sea to carry her.
And the last wears green. Her face is smudged with dirt, her dark hair speckled with tiny white flowers.
Her hands are crisscrossed with cuts the way Shay's used to be.
She's beautiful. They all are. They whisper to Shay of the way the world was before men stole women's magic. And they whisper, It can be that way again.
Shay's first thought when she awakens is that Ghita is gone. Her chest feels both heavy and hollow. She hangs, like a dust mote trapped in moonlight, in a strange space where nothing is real and she feels everything.
By the pale twilight of dawn, Shay offers her prayers and supplications, reminded of Shadi's words about how worship is a conversation.
Afterward, she's compelled to take the hjabat out of her pocket and cradle it in her palm.
After much debate over the safest place to leave it, she decided to bring it with her.
As much as she feared the talisman before, Khawla and Shadi's reactions to it have changed her feelings somehow—if only slightly.
She still has no desire to put it on, but something about holding the ring seems to ground her as she listens in the early quiet, seeking answers in solitude.
She has yet to find any when the hearty punch of mint reaches her, carried on the air from other regions of the house where tea is being prepared. Instead of her thirst, Shay thinks of all the times she drank tea with Ghita. The fact that they will never be together again.
She cannot allow the same sadness that held her in its belly for the duration of resting season to swallow her again. Based on Ghita's final thoughts, she had a complicated history with Hind. But, surely, she would want Shay to help her—or at least the child she carries.
She hears muffled talking, a sound that strikes her as odd at this hour.
There are at least three distinct voices: Khawla's mother, her father, and …
a visitor? At the approach of footsteps, she quickly folds her prayer rug and pockets the hjabat.
Softly, as though to avoid disturbing Khawla, who is still sleeping, the door creeps open and the silhouette of Khawla's mother appears.
“Shay,” she says gently, stepping inside. “There is someone here who would be very pleased to meet you.”
Shay nods, although the gesture is hidden by the dark, her throat suddenly incapable of producing sound.
She's not sure at first why a dull dread drips over her, why her hand goes straight to her pocket, clutching the hjabat through the fabric.
Then she knows with a sudden strike of certainty who the visitor is, and her dread sharpens to a cold knife's edge.
The Morchidat is every bit as formidable as Shay would expect the leader of the Sisterhood to be.
Her face bears Hazmaggi tattoos. They're smaller in number than Hind's, and bolder, drawn in thicker, darker strokes.
She wears a plain but elegant ruby-red robe, her hair wrapped in a high scarf of matching color.
Her features are petite but strong, soft eyes offsetting a stern dusky-brown face.
She sits on one side of an L-shaped seddari, flanked by two young women. One of them smiles at Shay reassuringly, while the other either doesn't register her presence or willfully ignores her. Khawla's mother quickly joins her husband on the other side of the seddari.
“Sayeda.” Shay bows her head, putting a hand to her chest.
“No need for that.” The Morchidat waits for Shay to raise her eyes and then gestures toward the empty spot at the couch's corner. “Please, sit. I've heard so much about you.”
“Tea?” Khawla's mother asks once Shay is seated, and Shay nods, grateful for something to soothe her dry throat.
“You must try one of the cookies we brought,” the Morchidat says. “My daughter Yara baked them herself.”
Yara, the smiling girl, hands Shay a kaab el ghazal—a thin pastry stuffed with almond and cinnamon and shaped in the curving crescent of a gazelle's horn—on a napkin.
The girls, no more than a few cycles her junior, appear as if they could be twins, sharing the same creamy skin, dark eyes, and silky hair.
They must be Shadi's sisters. Although they look more robust and healthier than Shay would have expected, given what their brother told her about their need for moon pepper. She files this observation away to ask Shadi about later.
“Aren't you going to introduce yourself, Marjan?” Yara prompts her sister.
The other girl finally turns her attention to Shay, then grouses, “Are you going to eat that or just hold it like a piece of kaka?”
With horror, Shay realizes she's been staring at the scars on the Morchidat's arms, mapping their jagged path around her neck and collarbone to where they disappear beneath her robe. Her cheeks zing with heat.
“Don't be embarrassed,” the Morchidat insists, briefly scowling toward Marjan before taking a cookie for herself. She winks at Shay. “You should have seen my opponent.”
A squeal sounds from the salon entryway, and Khawla stumbles in with bleary eyes and unbrushed hair. “Khalti! Yar-yar! Marj-oon!” The surprise in her voice indicates she didn't know the Morchidat was coming, which gives Shay a sense of relief she can't quite explain.
Khawla bounces over and kisses first the Morchidat's cheeks and then her daughters’ before turning to Shay. “Was she telling you about the ghoul clans?”
“I …” Shay stammers, and nibbles the cookie, which is remarkably good, out of nerves. “I think so?”
“It was a condition for members of the Sisterhood to be granted safe haven in Ard Al-Ghul,” Khawla explains, squeezing in between her parents. “The Morchidat had to defeat the top fighter from each of the three ghoul clans.”
Shay realizes she's absently added a few too many sugar cubes to her tea, but she stirs her spoon around the glass anyway. She gapes at the Morchidat. “Is Khawla saying you've fought a bone-eater? And a bloodsucker?”
The Morchidat nods, the gesture somehow equally humble and proud. “And a rather vicious night hag.”
Shay shudders, then sips her tea, which is sweet enough to make her left eye twitch. “I should very much like to hear that story.”
“Perhaps another time.” The Morchidat sips her own tea. “Today, I'm here to personally thank you, Shuika Fulan. I hear you have obtained a most valuable object for us.”
“Sayeda,” Shay says, her throat going dry again. What exactly did Shadi tell his mother? “I believe there may be some misunderstanding.”
The Morchidat arches an elegant eyebrow. “About?”
Shay flounders, but Khawla intervenes: “Khalti, Shay has merely agreed to show you the hjabat.”
“Oh.” Any warmth—and there had been little to begin with—leaves the Morchidat's face. She methodically sets her tea and cookies down on the low table. “So, you don't wish to join the Sisterhood?”
“No, I …” Shay finds herself unable to go on as she watches the Morchidat pull a rather large and sharp-looking knife from the belt at her waist and lay it on the table as well.
“Are you in opposition to our cause?”
“It's not that at all,” Khawla says lightly, sipping tea and chomping cookies as if the tension in the room isn't growing palpable. “I told her you were the best person to ask about what the ring actually does. That's all.”
“I think she can speak for herself.” The Morchidat turns to Shay while pulling another, somehow larger and sharper knife from a thigh strap hidden beneath her robe and setting it next to the first.