Chapter 9 #2
Weaving through crates, she circled the cistern until she hid between two large ones a few paces behind the guard. When Samira did not answer his question, he dug the top of his sword into her chest. Ripping the fabric, and breaking skin.
“Answer me, sand rat!”
Make him bleed everywhere.
Make him beg.
Aicha’s body acted on instinct, lightning shooting up her spine and forcing her forward as her fury roared from her chest. That familiar tendril of rage now felt jagged, sharp and like broken glass.
It lashed at her ribcage, screaming at her to be freed and to be unleashed on the guard that stood between Samira and her safety.
Let me show you how!
It ripped her open from inside, and her vision darkened; she had lost control and had given herself to the fury that resided deep inside her.
A fury eager to draw blood. If she had watched the moment unfold, she would have only noticed the change in her eyes, the torch illuminating deep, hungry pits of onyx eclipsing her brown eyes.
Aicha was no longer aware of where she began and her rage ended.
Woven together like fine stitching, eternally bound.
With her dagger raised, she leapt forward and wrapped her free arm around the guard’s shoulders, forcing his chin upwards and exposing his neck as her dagger slid across it with a ruthless swiftness.
He fought only for a moment, and Aicha felt oblivious to his thrashing as she held on to him with a grip so tight her nails broke the skin. She stabbed at his clavicle, his chest, anywhere that she could reach.
More!
Over and over and over.
When she let go, she stumbled back, vision clearing slowly as she shook her head to rid herself of the darkness that had edged into the corners.
The guard fell to his knees, and a childlike fascination settled over Aicha as she tilted her head, watching his sword crash against the stone as he gripped at his throat, gasping for air, fingers turning white.
His blood is so pretty.
The cut was deep, splitting open the skin and revealing the pink flesh around his Adam’s apple as blood poured from the wound. He choked on it, voice garbled by the wet sound as his shirt collar absorbed the red liquid.
When he fell forward, he did not still, instead he crawled towards Samira’s boots, fingertips tracing the dark leather of her toe as if she would grant him life.
“Hel- he-lp m—”
Aicha watched in silence until the shaking of his fingers eventually stilled.
That was her first kill.
It had been easy, too easy. For so long, worry and trepidation had plagued her consciousness at the thought of taking a life.
She had spent years internalising her baba’s words of concern that she was too soft, that she would freeze when the moment finally came.
Only she hadn’t, not even a slight hesitance or fear had crossed her mind. She had been eager for it.
In that moment, seeing his delight at capturing Samira and his sword digging into her chest, she had only felt rage.
A deep, insatiable hunger to see him suffer.
A malevolent need for justice that hadn’t felt as if it belonged to Aicha, but yet had come from within her.
A rage that had brushed fingers with her in the past. She could hear it now, as clear as her own voice, rejoicing.
At the thought of Samira being hurt, a feral, hungry hand had shaken her. Pushing her into action.
You saved your sister.
She found remorse and shock missing from her chest. No unsettling shake of dread and anxiety tumbling in the pit of her stomach, no nausea at the splatter of blood across her clothes and on the floor.
Not even the slightest flicker of empathy to wonder if it had been painful.
No horror at herself for what she had done; no thought for when she prayed dhurh later in the day, she would ask for forgiveness.
But she should have, should she not? So why didn’t she?
As she stood there in silence, Samira took a tentative step towards her with a hand reaching out.
“Aicha, you’re hurt.”
Aicha’s eyes snapped away from the unnamed soldier, her head whipping upwards to focus on her sister. “Did you see that? Did you see how quickly I killed him!”
Samira blinked at her, as if confused at the sudden surge of excitement that belatedly erupted from her throat.
Aicha noted that Samira finally registered the gleam in her eyes, a gleam that didn’t seem to be horror at what she had done, but instead excitement.
Samira stared and stared, as if unsure of what to make of her reaction, but what could her elder sister do?
Chastise her for saving her life? And doing so quickly and without hesitation like their baba had insisted she might not be capable of. This was a good thing, Aicha reasoned.
A good thing.
“Aicha, you are hurt.” Samira moved towards her, suddenly switching into a mode that Aicha could only describe as protective elder sister; a jarring switch in roles after what she had just done. “Do not move.”
As she watched Samira pull up her right arm at the wrist, she realised there was a gaping slash across the sleeve of her cloak. Blood seeped into the fabric and dripped onto the floor.
“Oh. I can’t feel it,” she stated dumbly, and it elicited a huff from Samira.
“Please, Aicha. Focus!”
She watched as Samira used her dagger to rip off her own sleeve, rolling up Aicha’s cloak to inspect the gash that ran from her upper arm down to her forearm.
The soldier had been thrashing his sword everywhere as she held on to him, but she had also been stabbing anywhere she could, which included where her arm had been.
It could have been her own doing, or he must have made a slashing motion across her arm.
It was captivating, watching blood leak from a wound she could not feel.
Fouad would tell her it was just excitement, but she wondered if that would have worn off by the time Samira started wrapping it.
It didn’t matter, she reasoned, there was work to be done.
In any other setting Aicha would have found Rachid’s alarm, and immediate need to check her wellbeing, sweet. But they didn’t have time for such things.
“What happened?” he said, reaching for Aicha after she helped Said carry the first barrel towards him and Mounir.
Blood dripped down her hand, despite Samira’s attempt to wrap it up with the torn sleeve of her cloak.
It was a dull ache now, easy to ignore considering the circumstances, but Aicha knew it probably looked horrific to the others.
She should have felt it more, she knew that.
But instead she felt charged, as if lightning soared through her veins and propelled her onward.
Was this how Samira and Rachid felt on their smuggling trips?
Aicha envied it, despite the fact that their lives were in danger with every journey.
“There was an extra guard,” she explained, shrugging Rachid off and taking a step away from him. “I’m fine. We need to hurry, there’s more flour than we anticipated.”
“Perhaps we should have organised a bigger party for this,” Said grunted, and it made Aicha’s annoyance spike.
A smaller group was her call, to lessen the chances of being caught. And deaths. Yet now it seemed silly, as if she had made the incorrect call, as if her decisions were juvenile. Like she was playing the part of a rebel, not actually being one.
“A bigger party comes with bigger risks,” Rachid said.
When Aicha looked up at him, his vision cleared. Gone was the worried edge to his eyes, and the frown of concern between his thick brows. His mind had refocused on the matter at hand. He moved towards the barrel. “We’ll load the cart.”
“Keep any torches far from the barrels,” Aicha said. “It’s all gunpowder.”
Perhaps it was stating the obvious, but she’d rather that than an explosion wake the entire citadel before escaping.
Said followed behind her as they returned to the storage inside, and as Aicha walked towards her sister, noting how she lifted a crate with ease, she remembered how many times Samira had done something like this.
How many times she must have been weighed down by heavy packs of weaponry as she traipsed back and forth, for jobs their baba assigned her.
This must have seemed like a child’s errand to her.
“Some of the fruit has rotted,” Samira stated, passing the crate to Said. “They’ve just left it here to turn bad, rather than distribute it among the sick and hungry.”
“It’s almost predictable,” Aicha replied. “Do you think they’ve been keeping it from their own people, too?”
“Who knows?” Samira shrugged, wiping away sweat that beaded from her forehead. She looked to Aicha’s arm, her gaze silent but calculating. As if wondering whether Aicha would find it irritating if she asked—again—how she was feeling.
“It doesn’t hurt,” Aicha reassured, softening her tone and concealing her frustration at feeling babied. “I promise. It looks worse than it is.”
Satisfied, Samira nodded. “Let’s get to it, then.”
And so it went, crate after crate, barrel after barrel.
Mounir made two separate trips, assisted by Zayn as his spotter to avoid any close-by patrols.
Fouad and Sidi Mohammed greeted him at the end, quickly unloading it all to hide within the compartment beneath their home.
The tunnels were still flooded, and it would ruin the gunpowder and flour.
Disappointment ebbed into Aicha’s stomach.
There was far more food than they could take, and the rest would have to burn.
Aicha stuffed as many of the sacks of flour as she could in her own bag; the idea of wasting any of it made her stomach curl.
Letting it blaze in the fire with the rest of the gunpowder seemed so…
ridiculous. But sunrise was approaching, and if they didn’t want to be caught and hung at the gallows, Aicha had to leave it behind.
“That’s as much as we can take,” Samira huffed out. She seemed winded.
“It just feels so wasteful,” Aicha mused. “Like burning it all makes us as silly as them.”
“We will take care of our own with what we have,” Samira reasoned, her voice resolute. “If they have fewer supplies, many of them may even be inclined to leave earlier. Besides, a physically weaker regiment is easier to kill.”
Aicha couldn’t argue with that.
When Said and Mounir left with the cart, taking a final supply with them, Samira and Aicha got to work scattering the gunpowder around the room.
Aicha poured out a sufficient amount on the pile of bodies she and Samira had stacked together by the entrance to the cistern.
Rachid remained outside, on watch and awaiting them.
Adrenalin continued to bite at her ribs and chest, and it only spiked when Samira handed her the torch. The faintest of smirks on her small lips. “You do the honours.”
Aicha wished they could have stayed a little longer as she dropped the torch onto the bodies, their clothing catching alight and the flame quickly burning through the line of gunpowder that would inevitably lead to the supplies and barrels stacked on the far end.
She wished she could have seen it explode up close, watch as the pillars that kept the cistern intact collapsed and left a great, gaping hole in the ground.
She wished she could see Duarte’s face when he arrived, watching the flames burn everything he had tried to hoard while her people starved, watching the smoke ascend high until it kissed the weeping skies.
Instead, she ran. Feeling satisfaction and vindication light inside her until it was an inferno.