Chapter 13
I’ve started to collect them, the cursed ones, the zulmi.
Though I don’t know what to do with them.
Reza laughs and refers to the zulmi as my charity work.
But they can no longer speak, can no longer interact with their loved ones or work.
They are like ghouls, haunting villages and riverbanks and roads with their white hair, nonsense tongue and backward feet.
They need to be fed, and clothed and housed.
Even though they can’t remember their names or history.
They need us. But soon we will be outnumbered—and when I can’t tell my story, who will be left to remember me?
—Letter from Kiyan to his family, unsent
Kiyan
I tracked the halmasti as it made its way along the river edge, the huge wolf trampling down every shrub and tree in its path.
At times I thought it had scented me; it even turned its head in my direction.
But it kept moving doggedly forward like a snow leopard tracking a kill.
What could it be hunting to venture so far from the Salt Court.
I’d never known a halmasti this far outside Salt.
The wolf crouched down, looking like it was preparing to spring forward and attack. I looked beyond the beast, to an outcropping of trees along the riverbank.
A dark-haired girl wearing odd clothes and an old woman stood together.
The older woman was clearly a victim of Reza’s curse—one of the zulmi.
Her feet were twisted, her hair white and skin shriveled from what Reza had done.
But when the beast reared back and growled, the younger girl whirled around.
I expected her to scream, or run away when she saw the halmasti.
But instead, she tried to pull the older woman into the woods, egging the beast on to follow her when the woman refused.
Surprise flickered in me at her attempt to save the zulmi woman, and I followed the girl, keeping low, weaving through the woods, not letting her out of my sight as she got closer to the River Palace.
Not only did I not want a halmasti heading to the palace and massacring the River Court peris there, but I certainly didn’t want my absence after today’s attack noticed.
When the girl foolishly climbed one of the taller trees, I wanted to laugh.
Halmasti were known to wait for their prey for days. This one wouldn’t eat or sleep or move. The girl would never be able to climb down, and she would die before being able to escape.
As I sidled behind the tree she had climbed, I saw she was trying to jump to the large boulder next to it.
She was brave, I would give her that. The jump to the rock wasn’t easy, and she’d made the climb up the tall mango tree without trepidation.
She even had something over her eyes she appeared to look through, but I couldn’t see how they didn’t hinder her.
Once she reached the top of the tree, she made a rather impressive leap over to the rock and began to climb down.
I’d never seen someone climb so fast before, and certainly not in such odd clothes—a brown skirt flowing around her ankles and a dark buttoned vest with the white voluminous sleeves of a blouse underneath.
Finally, the girl reached the bottom of the boulder and pressed her back to it.
She’d escaped for now, but the halmasti would find her soon enough. Their sense of smell was legendary, which was why Salt used them to hunt and kill their enemies as well as any assassin.
The scene played out in front of me, and I knew how it would end if I left her. The girl was out of breath, panting against the rock, and didn’t look like she could fight a river pixie, let alone a beast five times her size.
She wouldn’t live for much longer.
I studied her before deciding what to do—she didn’t look like she was from River—not with her strange clothes and wild hair.
As far as I could tell she wasn’t a hag—the khapisis generally wandering the River looking for peris and wayward souls to test their bargains on.
Her scent was unfamiliar and difficult to place, but I didn’t think she was from the River Court.
Go back to the palace, said a voice in my head. You got what you came for.
The gold key was cold against my chest, alongside my sister’s ring, reminding me of what I needed to focus on.
But something about the way the girl had lured the beast away from the zulmi woman stopped me from leaving her. I’d spent too long killing and torturing peris for the Viceroy.
Seeing someone save a life felt novel.
Perhaps helping an incredibly idiotic girl in the woods escape a halmasti would balance some of my sins.
Besides, my hands itched to fight the beast. It had been a long time since I’d been engaged in a fight where I didn’t have one hand tied behind my back or wasn’t enacting the orders of the Court of Salt.
I took a step forward as the girl pushed away from the boulder, at last realizing that the halmasti might realize she wasn’t in the tree anymore.
She began walking backward, edging away from the tree she’d climbed, keeping her eye on the direction of the beast. It was a good plan, but she still wouldn’t escape.
She was a few feet from me, not realizing that I was behind her, standing in the shadows of the forest.
I waited until she pressed herself against me, feeling the shock flood through her body as I wrapped my arm around her stomach to prevent her from bolting and my hand over her mouth to stifle her scream.
She struggled against me, but if she alerted the halmasti to our location now, it would be much more difficult.
She smelled . . . different.
Like mangoes, and dusty parchment, and spilled ink. There was something decidedly un-peri about her. I lifted my hand from her stomach to pull back her hair. I sucked in a breath at the sight of her rounded ear.
Human.
How could that be? A human this far east and outside of the Salt Court?
The girl didn’t seem to be enthralled, but it was sometimes difficult to tell.
She’d stiffened when I’d pulled back her hair and made another muffled scream into my hand.
Irritation rose up in my chest. She was going to get us both killed.
“Don’t. Make. A. Sound,” I said, my voice a low rumble as I glanced over at the halmasti by the tree. “Do you understand?”
She nodded against my hand, and I released her, drawing the dagger at my waist in case the halmasti heard us. At the very least, I wanted to be prepared. The girl turned to face me, and I blinked.
I hadn’t seen many humans—the few we had in River had been brought from Salt from before the time of the wall, enthralled by high peris who were amused by how malleable they were. They were usually frail, their skin drained of color, hair flat and oily, eyes glazed over.
But this female’s hair was dark and enormous, a riot of curls the color of deep tree bark, a heavy storm cloud behind her.
Her eyes were just as big, and on her nose sat that gold contraption, which she kept nervously pushing up as she looked at me.
It suited her, even if it was impractical to be wearing something over your eyes while running through the forest away from a halmasti.
She looked . . . alive.
Vibrant. Warm. Like a golden flower in the middle of a desolate wasteland.
“Who the fuck are you?” the girl demanded, her hands planting on her hips, the anger in her voice causing my own temper to flare up.
It seemed the flower had thorns.
I smiled at her, knowing it was not a reassuring one. I didn’t have to be here; I could let her get torn to shreds by a beast five times her size and not bother myself with any of this.
“I’m the one who’s going to save your fucking life.”