Chapter 3 #2
She sat on her knees on the kitchen floor and sobbed, clutching at the cold tiles.
Seeing her like that, when she’d always been so calm, had unlocked something in me.
Golden threads had burst through my fingers, pouring out of my hands and flooding our little house on the edge of Ginshal village.
They culminated around a crack in the wall, beside the divan.
My mother had stopped crying and sat back, stunned, as we watched tendrils of power coil from my fingers and surround us.
Something tugged at me to follow them, leading me to where my father’s letter lay in the hidden space next to the threadbare divan.
It was that day that Amma had forbidden me from using my power around anyone else.
Don’t ever let them use your magic.
The soft voice of Mahira Nazir rose in my memories like one of the songs she collected. She knew what the Citadel would do with a power like that. I would be their puppet, finding fae relics for them until there were no more to be had.
After that day my mother and I experimented with my magic—finding out that I could unlock simple locks and reveal the answers to puzzles.
It had limits—complex safes or heavy-duty locks wouldn’t budge.
And I had to be in close proximity to something to find it.
But after Amma left, I no longer practiced my magic in my dark bedroom.
Instead, I used it to find the relics the Citadel were so desperate to ship back to the Empire.
And now I would use my power to find the dead.
Bair was rustling around the house, looking for a way in. If we weren’t careful, we’d catch the notice of the patrols soon.
I hesitated for another second before making my decision and placing my palms flat to the wood door.
Power gathered to the surface, threading through my skin like the current of a river, golden threads feeding into the fabric of the metal lock until a small clink echoed in the night. And just like that, the lock clicked open, the door releasing with a giant sigh beneath my hands.
But once I had called on my magic, it wasn’t easy to pull it back.
It kept running, like a bath tap left on, overflowing past the rim of the tub.
It flooded through the gap in the open door, fine gold threads pushing out of me like a gilded web, and I staggered forward with a gasp.
It had been too long since I’d last used it, and it was brimming to the surface, eager to be released.
With no choice but to follow, I nudged the door to Ghassan’s crumbling stone house open.
Something brushed at my hair and I jerked back with shock, my eyes darting above me to see a bundle of dried jimson weed and Malabar nut leaves hanging above the entrance.
They were often used by the villagers of Ginshal to ward off witches and ghouls, preventing evil fae from entering. Luckily for me, I was human.
My feet pulled me through the doorway and into the main living area of the house.
The air was cold, and it smelled of trodden dirt.
Not the fresh, earthy scent of new growth; this was the dirt that sat at the bottom of unused cellars and decrepit barns.
And underneath that, the sweetness of decay had already begun to set in.
The smell that promised something far worse than neglect.
The house was in disarray, with books dumped onto the floor and papers scattered everywhere. Clothes were shredded and dishes smashed.
I remembered Ghassan as a neat and quiet man. It didn’t fit him that his house would be like this, and I doubt he had done it himself. It looked like someone had been searching for something. Food perhaps? From the state of his house, it didn’t appear the sort to have any valuables.
The golden strands of my magic still threaded through the air, spiraling throughout the room and curving over something on the floor in the corner.
A body.
No, not just a body, but Ghassan. A man I had spoken with in the archives, shared lunch together, waved to at the end of a workday.
My stomach twisted with dark horror and bile rose to my throat.
I had known this man, and now I would have to bury him.
I waved away the bright threads of my magic still hanging in the air and they dissipated like a cloud of shimmering fog. Hopefully they didn’t illuminate the little house for long and Bair didn’t catch any evidence.
Then I curled my hands back to my sides and rolled my shoulders back, feeling a little light-headed as I usually did after using my magic.
“Bair,” I called out, trying to shake off the sensation of calling on my power. “I’ve picked the lock.”
Bair came trudging around the corner of the house, his relieved face coming into view in the doorway. “Thank the River. The window I found was too small for either of us to crawl through. There’s a back door but it’s destroyed and I couldn’t get in.”
Bair stepped through the open door.
“By the River,” said Bair, taking in the chaos, his eyes wide.
“Who do you think did this?” I asked, following his gaze.
He shook his head. “Looters?”
“Doesn’t look like there’d be anything to loot.”
“Well, it certainly wasn’t the Citadel patrols. If it was, they wouldn’t have left the body.”
I nodded, though not entirely convinced. No one in our village would steal from the dead.
That was a trait distinct to the Citadel and the Empire they worked for.
Bair stood next to me, a thin sheen of sweat on his forehead after climbing around the back of the house.
On our walk over I had begun to worry that Bair wasn’t strong enough to lift a body onto the stretcher he and Safiyya had fashioned.
His shoulders were too thin, and his legs looked as if they didn’t support his own weight, let alone the weight of another.
But as we moved closer to Ghassan’s body, I needn’t have been concerned.
It was too small.
Too small to be the Ghassan I knew. Moonlight spilled over his frail body, clothed in trousers too loose and a ragged tunic.
Bile rose in my throat, my stomach recoiling, and cold sweat prickled my skin.
I began to shake, pressing my arms to my waist as I did so, a weak attempt at holding myself together.
Images flashed through my mind—seeing my father’s body fall to the dirt after being shot, my mother holding me, preventing me from running to him.
Then every time I imagined her dead after she’d left me, her body destroyed, floating down the River with no one to claim her.
My fingers wrapped around my right wrist, feeling for the shadow of her bangles that weren’t there.
Not for the first time I’d wished I could wear them publicly, if only to be reminded of her.
It might have also helped when I felt like tossing the contents of my stomach onto the ravaged floor of Ghassan’s house, too. Whatever treason I did in the darkness of night, digging up relics, raiding ancient fae tombs, it was not the same as coming face to face with the dead.
Bair laid a sheet to cover Ghassan quickly, glancing at me with concern.
It was as if he knew I was about to break down.
One ankle poked out from under the sheet, his thin, dark skin stretched unnaturally over bone and my eyes focused there, unable to look away.
“How long has he been here?” I managed to find my voice, forcing the words out to steady myself.
“A few days, but this was the first night we could come without Citadel patrols.” Bair looked behind us into the dark street beyond. “They might be back tomorrow; their shifts have been erratic lately.”
In other words, we had to do it now.
Bair had begun to set up the stretcher, attaching the poles together with bits of cloth and wrapping a small sheet around it. When he was finished, it formed a narrow bed, and he placed it alongside the body in the corner.
I hung back, twisting my fingers in my skirt.
He glanced up at me. “Are you okay?”
“I’ve never done this before,” I whispered, knowing soon my hands would have to lift the body and carry it back to the woods, and that this is what I wished I could have done for those who starved on the city streets, trodden on by Citadel boots.
And still, something like fear gripped me. That once I touched his body, I would fall apart.
I had never been able to go to Baba when he’d been killed, nor bury my Amma after she’d left and likely died. How many of our people had died because of the Empire? And how many more if I couldn’t stop them?
Bair watched me for a moment, eyes darting to my shaking hands and then my face.
“I do this so often with Safiyya, that I forget others aren’t as hardened to it. Especially you. You always seem so in control working for the Citadel, but you don’t often see our villagers like this, do you? Not while you are with the others, high up in their tower.”
His words weren’t judgmental, they felt observational. Which made them sting much more—like the truth of them was undeniable. I worked for the Citadel, while he buried the bodies of those they killed.
But he didn’t know the risks I took at night, while he buried the dead.
He didn’t know what I dug up.
Bair moved toward Ghassan, motioning me to join him. “Grab by the legs first. Not the ankle, because it might snap. The thicker part. Once you’ve lifted the heft of the torso onto the stretcher, then it’s safe to grab the upper part.”
I swallowed the thick lump in my throat and concentrated on his factual recitation of what we were about to do. His voice was measured, nearly dull. Like the head scholar relating instructional research techniques he’d relayed a thousand times.
But a word stood out in my mind.
“Safe?” I walked around the body and crouched down, my stomach finally settling once I focused on the practicalities of what we were about to do.