Chapter 22 #2
“I have never hunted innocents,” I defended.
“I have done . . . a great many things of which I’m ashamed, but I come from those fishing villages, from a family whose only home was often the sea, who went to bed with bellies yawning.
I would never prey upon such; it was always the wealthy who were my marks, who offered the most lucrative prizes.
” Her eyes blazed in disbelief, and I brought my hands together in a beseeching motion.
“I have angered you, lied to you, and understand that you are upset. So, I ask plainly, Resplendency: How can I make it up?”
Queen Lab bristled. “Am I to barter with someone I don’t trust? Besides, there is still something you are not being truthful about, an aspect far deeper.”
My heart skipped. Surely, she could not mean the spindle: I had not breathed a word about it to anyone save my closest companions. “I don’t know of what you speak.”
“Then perhaps I should be blunter. If I believed you only a pirate, al-Sirafi, you would already be executed. I do not suffer aggressors, those with the blood of innocents on their grasping hands, in my city.” She stepped closer, forcing me to the cliff’s edge.
“But that is not all you are, is it? My people say that you are often seen whispering to the shadows, looking into the distance as though you see a world none of us do. And while you attempt to be discreet, your strength, your speed? Both are beyond the realm of human possibility.”
Ah. That truth. The queen took another step forward, and my feet skittered on the stony ground. I raised my hands in a gesture of peace. “I am simply blessed with strength due to my size.” My skull had begun to pound, in beat with my thudding heart. “I swear.”
“You and your false oaths,” Lab said, shaking her head.
“You are making it extraordinarily difficult to justify keeping you alive, Captain. Which is a shame. Because you are unique—at least, I suspect you are under that liar’s facade.
And in Khatti Ugal, we do not so easily discard that which is useful.
” She inclined her head to regard me, a hawk studying its prey.
“But I would need to see something . . . spectacular.”
She withdrew her hunting knife.
If Lab thought to attack me, she would indeed see a pirate with blood on her hands—perhaps even a spectacular amount.
But instead the queen drew back her arm and hurled the knife over the edge of the cliff.
It sailed in a wide arc, cutting a path through the sky before vanishing into the scrubby undergrowth beyond a scattering of enormous boulders.
“Retrieve my knife,” she commanded. “Return it to my hand by sunset, for that is when I intend to make my judgment on your crew’s fate. I would suggest you be there to argue on their behalf.”
“And will they be there?” I asked sharply. It didn’t seem wise to let Lab learn the depths to which I’d discovered the cage that Dalila and I had found ourselves in, but I could not help but add, “I’ve been having a remarkably difficult time trying to see them.”
“I suppose you best hurry and find out.” She nodded to the cliff. “Off you go.”
I glanced down at the cliff. There were handholds aplenty; it could be descended, but this was obviously a trick. The hinterland was a mess of stones and shrubs, but it was scarcely a jungle. Lab had not thrown her knife that far. It was a brutal threat for such a seemingly simple quest.
“Your knife?” I clarified. “That is all you desire?”
The smile that curled across her face was crueler than a tempest. “That is all. I would stay and observe, but there is still your doctor to question.”
“She’s innocent,” I said quickly, a bold and likely futile lie.
No doubt the prisoners had told the queen as many ghastly tales of the Mistress of Poisons as they had of me.
Dalila was an excellent liar, but she was human, entirely so.
If Lab put her to a challenge designed for the likes of myself .
. . “And useful! You’ve seen her skills in the apothecary. ”
“I can make such a determination myself,” the queen said coolly. “Now go.”
Get this done and return for them all. A number of rash responses rose to my lips, but I simply nodded and I turned my back on the queen, crunching away.
The cliff was too steep to hike so I descended carefully, lowering myself down the craggy rock face hand over foot.
If I had a rope, it would have made things easier.
If Dalila were here, she would have a length of rope.
A length of rope and a lecture on being underprepared.
I dropped to the sandy ground, taking refuge in a shady glen.
Before me was a short stretch of forest leading to the boulders beyond which the queen’s knife had sailed.
The boulders were even vaster from the ground, easily towering over my head.
And there was far less cover out there, save a few stunted trees and gnarled thornbushes.
Danger awaited me, that much was obvious, though I knew not what kind.
Was it royal assassins, hiding in the trees?
The disemboweling griffins that so terrified the Khatti Ugalans?
Or was it something else, more creatures the queen was said to have transformed: bloodthirsty giants or fanged chimera?
Unwillingly, I recalled the prison of monsters in the cave back on Socotra. There were so many pleasant options.
And I was left weaponless. And frankly, exhausted. Dalila’s new tonic had done me well—this morning. Before I’d journeyed back and forth across the city and climbed more accursed hills. My knee jostled unsteadily, my head aching.
One challenge at a time. I whispered a prayer and set to arming myself with the best of my limited options, turning the sturdiest branch I could find into a makeshift club with my shawl and a handful of rocks, binding them as tightly as possible.
But I still hadn’t ventured beyond the foot of the cliff.
The sun seemed so bright, my position in the valley leaving me like a mouse without protection. What had Lab set me against?
I closed my eyes, trying to sense anything that resonated in the al-Ghayb, the Unseen Realm, but I had no luck.
Whatever world we were in did not act like that which I knew.
I had not sensed the supernatural since we arrived, save the jolt of my bond with Raksh, fallen away before I’d even left the palace.
Sunset. That was all the time I had and the sun was already past its highest point, arcing toward the horizon in its relentless fall.
There was no waiting for the safe cover of dusk.
So, club in hand, I slowly crept beneath the pines, taking care to keep my steps silent.
Birds sang merrily in the canopy, a squirrel darting across my path.
They weren’t acting as though a great predator was watching and yet I felt it, the back of my neck prickling, every instinct on high alert.
Too soon I was at the tree line. I glanced at the sky above, finding it empty and then darted to the protection of the first boulder, pressing against the stone to take advantage of the narrow band of shade it offered.
The sickly sweet smell of rot lay thick in the air here, old blood and decay.
I swallowed hard, gripping my makeshift club as I forced myself to imagine my men being set upon, Majed and Tinbu screaming my name.
All that would prevent such a grisly fate was me advancing.
Hedging forward step by cautious step, I forced myself to pass the next boulder.
I froze. The half-devoured carcass of a sheep lay spilled on the ground. Blood painted the torn remnants of woolly skin, maggots writhing between the cracked ribs.
God preserve me. Ticking off a prayer on my knuckles, I fought for calm and kept walking, crossing the remains of other kills.
Most had been reduced to bones and not all were animals.
Shreds of the alabaster tunics the Khatti Ugalans wore were scattered here and there, rotting where their owners had been slain and consumed.
Hugging the boulders, I finally stopped.
The arrangement of the enormous stones had not been an incident of fate.
Instead, they formed a crude ring around a circular mass of tree branches, torn sails, and bloodied clothing: a nest. The nest’s size baffled the mind, as large as the bathing pool back in my quarters that could fit a half-dozen men.
Four large eggs—as gold as the polished gem of a sultana—were nestled inside.
And wedged between a pair of them was Queen Lab’s knife.
I wanted to laugh. I wanted to cry. This was madness: a test akin to Rostam’s labors and the wildest of sailors’ tales. The nest appeared untended, but I didn’t believe my eyes. The parents—whatever man-eating creatures they were—were likely not far.
Sunset, I reminded myself again. That gave me little time to be clever, to invent a trick, and I suspected it was intentional.
Lab wanted to prove that I wasn’t mortal, that I was hiding some sort of magical talent.
But if she hoped I would conjure up a double as a distraction or turn myself invisible, she had devised the wrong sort of trial.
I searched the sky and the surrounding boulders as best I could but saw nothing.
After waiting for some time, my heart beating in my ears, I tried tossing a stone at the nest. There was no reaction.
Not even when the object grew larger: a branch, a femur.
There was no hush in the air, no disturbance of vast wings. Could I truly be alone with the eggs?