"There're fifty guards stationed at the gate. I don't think we can force or sneak our way in." Saya drew a line and marked two other spots on the sand. "It's possible to climb these two lower parts of the mountain to get into the city, but he would have to be left here." She gestured at Rhykal. "Or he would have to come along untied to make the climb, and we can't do either."

The man would throw them off the mountain at the earliest opportunity, Lasura agreed, while he would have to take Djari to see Deo and she would never leave her sworn sword alone with Saya. The fastest way to locate Deo was to enter Samarra and find some information on his whereabouts, or to try and send him a message through one of his networks in the city. While the gate was open to merchants and travelers as the largest trading city in the Salasar, and sneaking in was usually not that great a task, he and the Sparrow happened to be fugitives with a prize on their heads large enough to feed an entire village, not to mention, as a Bharavi, Djari could be sold for twice that if captured. The risk was too high, any failure they might encounter would be fatal, and the possibility of success was minuscule if existed in the first place.

It was the dumbest, most dangerous thing to do given the circumstances, not to mention the fact that Deo might not be able to fix anything to begin with. But when Djari had that look on her face, his only two choices were to let her do this dumb, dangerous thing alone or to do it with her and pray that at least one of them would come out alive by some kind of divine intervention. It just so happened that surviving dumb, dangerous decisions had become his expertise, and he'd long decided that since life insisted on dealing him only shit, misfortunes, and tragedies, he might as well get some fun out of all three by calling it a thrilling adventure.

And so for the sake of fun and thrilling adventures, he'd asked Saya to check the border for a way in. To his surprise, she seemed equally eager to join this suicidal mission. Whether she was hoping that Amar izr Zaharran might return (women did like to fix things, after all), or to have her own adventure outside of Al-Sana, he wasn't sure. They did, however, need her for the task. Saya looked like a common blood, and therefore was the only one among them who could pass as someone not from the White Desert if she were to try and cross the border.

"Fifty is twice the usual number," he said. He knew Samarra and its borders from having accompanied his father there before and while he'd gone off doing his own things. "My guess is something big happened, and if that's true, there'd be guards all over the city watching for intruders everywhere, not just at the gates. The chances of climbing over without being discovered is low, and by Samarran law, anyone can kill you without trial if you're caught trying to enter that way. Sneaking our way in with a disguise might be safer."

"It can't be done." Saya shook her head. "They check every caravan. Word is they've been doing that since the change of Salar to tax merchants more thoroughly before entry now, not once inside like before. You can dye her hair." She glanced at Djari's silver braids. "But her eyes will draw attention. Both yours and hers."

She had a point. Yellow eyes did exist outside of the White Desert, but were considered rare. They might be able to get away with it in a large city where no one paid anybody that much attention until they started conversing at close range, but at the gates, the guards would look at every face, closely. It would take a secret way in, a bribe, or a connection of some kind, all of which they had no way to obtain.

He sighed and turned to Djari. "It's your call."

She kept her eyes on the drawing on the sand, thought about it for some time, then turned to Rhykal who had been tied up out of earshot. "Give me a moment to decide," she said.

Lasura nodded, ignoring the bad feeling he suddenly had about the way she'd said it, and the way she walked toward Rhykal after.

She looked like that that when she took off her fingers, when when she stabbed her own sworn sword, when she told them all she was going to see Deo.

***

'Take me to Deo di Amarra.'

Djari winced, remembering the words she'd spoken without thinking. She neither regretted it, nor was she intending to change her mind. She just hadn't realized it would be as complicated a task.

It did sound like a suicidal mission, and one she didn't expect Saya to have agreed to help. The prince, so far, had never said no to any of her requests, and she'd come to expect that of him. But from Saya, who had been nothing but hostile toward her and Rhykal, there must have been a personal agenda involved for her to agree to it. She didn't like that, or the woman (she'd decided from the first time they met). But you had to learn to work with people and things you didn't like if you considered yourself mature enough to lead, Nazir had told her that some time ago.

She didn't like what she was about to do either, she thought as she stood above Rhykal izr Zoren, who was still bleeding from her blade.

"Let me guess," said Rhykal, looking up at her. "You can't find a way into Samarra."

She nodded. The man seemed to be able to read her like a scroll, and had always made her uncomfortable. "And you know how." He had told her they were heading for Samarra and had planned to escape that way, she remembered.

"Perhaps." Rhykal smiled. "But what's in it for me?" he asked, casually. "You must have had an offer in mind before you came."

"It's a chance to escape," she said. "It's also where you wanted to go from the beginning."

A laugh, this time. "You grow more and more like your brother everyday. That's promising."

She took that as a compliment. "I will drag you along and risk it if I must." She would do that. Go in with a disguise if there were no alternatives. "Or you can take us in the safer way."

"For a chance to escape?"

She nodded. They could prevent that from happening, if they were careful enough. Saya probably could, and she'd agreed to come along.

He looked at her quietly for some time, considering something, holding it to the light. And then, with the same voice, the same drag over the syllables, he said. "Do you know," he traced the words, holding the same pause, the same smile––Hasheem's smile––"I could take that knife strapped to the inside of your arm and hold you hostage. But I wouldn't live past tomorrow with this wound on the run. Believe me, I'm not stupid enough to try"

She sucked in a breath, finding it suddenly difficult to breathe. "Don't..."

"What will you do?" He went on, watching her with Hasheem's eyes, speaking Hasheem's words, from Hasheem's memories, like he was trying it on for size. "Add my tongue to the list of things to remove?"

She curled her hands into fists, shaking from the need to cry. She mustn't do that, not in front of this man who was obviously taking pleasure from it.

"Brings back memories, doesn't it?" said Rhykal, now with his own voice, his own words. "You hurt him then, just like this. You tied him up, you healed his wounds, you were going to kill him with your own hands. That brought you together, didn't it? Tell me," he said, "when did it form? That bond between you? When did you feel it?"

She gave him no reply. What was between her and Hasheem was none of his business. He could take Hasheem's memories, but not hers, never hers.

"It was when the arrow struck, you know? For him," he said easily, words and truths she'd wanted to hear. Hasheem's truths to tell. "It left something there that hasn't healed. Something like parasites, hiding under his skin, eating him alive slowly from the inside out. I always feel it. This pain, every time he looks at you. Here's another woman he can't have. Another person he can't save. A mistake he doesn't want to make again. That's what you are. Did you believe it," said Rhykal, turning the last knife before sliding it between her ribs, "when he told you it wasn't for Mara? That you are not an attempt to right a wrong?"

Something like parasites, hiding under his skin...

'Because you failed to protect her,' she had asked, back in the Prayer Room of Eli.

'Because I loved her," he had replied.

'And you still do.'

'And I still do.'

They had been interrupted then, by Deo di Amarra, who had also said she was a a mistake, waiting to happen. Did she believe it? Rhykal had asked. If she had, then why was she here? Why had she gone to Al-Sana?

"This bond you think you have," said Rhykal, "this man you're trying to save, has never been yours to begin with. You're binding him with the memory of another woman, and you will drag us all to hell with it. This peninsula included. That's what you're doing."

"Why," she said, gritting her teeth as she forced herself to stand there and listen, "are you saying this? What does that have anything to do with you?"

"There's a tunnel," he said. "An old passage that takes you into Samarra. I can take you in. I'll help you find Deo di Amarra. Under one condition, and I will take your word for it."

"What condition?"

"You think you can get rid of me this way, and get your Sparrow back, so let's make that bet, shall we? I'll take you wherever you want to go, I'll do whatever you want me to do, and if Di Amarra can't get rid of me, if you can't get him back, you release us from that oath. You let me live. You let me go. What do you say?"

***

"I don't trust him," said the prince. They were sitting around a fire, him, her, and Saya. She'd told them about the proposal. They had gone quiet for some time. They already knew her answer. Or she had a feeling they did.

"It would at least get us into the city," she said. "He needs to get to Samarra to escape."

"And you will let him go." It was Saya, this time. "If di Amarra can't fix him? You'd do that?"

It would mean abandoning Hasheem, leaving him trapped in that body, for life. "He is still there. I know it." He was. He'd saved her life. "I have to try."

"It means something else too, doesn't it, Djari?" said the prince, almost bitterly. "You will have to get rid of Rhykal, for good, for life."

"Why would that be a problem?" Saya asked.

"It's his body," said Prince Lasura, with a frustration he didn't care to hide, or one he had not succeeded in hiding. "For all I know, we're trying to steal someone's identity for the sake of a made up one."

"Hasheem is real," she countered, without thinking.

"Maybe he is," said prince Lasura, in a tone he hadn't used with her often. "Maybe your sworn sword does exist, but so does Rhykal. To keep one you have to the kill the other. Who decides which one gets to live? Do you have the right to make that call, Djari? Do we? Does anyone?"

He was angry, and understandably so. No matter how much he hated what Rhykal had done, who else but the outcast son of a Salar of Rasharwi and a Bharavi of the White Desert could see it more clearly? He was always like that––someone who could see it from both sides and remind her of the monster she could become. And he was right. She was trying to make a choice she didn't have the right to make.

"Maybe," she said, closing her fists around the torn fabric of her tunic, "there's a way for them to coexist. To share."

A chuckle from Saya this time, an insulting one. "I knew you were spoiled and naive, but I don't think you know how much of an entitled bitch you are."

She looked up at the other woman, who had slept with her sworn sword. "You're being vile and offensive."

The condescending smile deepened, seemed sharper around the edges. "Am I?" she said. "Do you even know what you're asking for? What it would take for that to happen? For them to coexist? To share?"

"A compromise." It would take simply that––the willingness to make room for the other to exist, did it not?

Saya laughed out loud, this time. "No, Bharavi," she said, crisply. "It means they will have to share the same goal, the same determination to fight, the same reason to live or die." She rose to her feet. It was done on purpose, to look down at her and make her feel small. "For them to share, you'd have to make Rhykal swear that same oath to fight, to die for you. He will have to love you, and you will have to love them both. That's what it's going to take and that's never going to happen, is it?"

She opened her mouth to speak but couldn't find the words. Saya saw it, and went on with her set of knives.

"A compromise, you say? When have you made room for a compromise? You are the reason why it will never happen. You will always choose your sworn sword, over Rhykal, over the prince who has saved your life more times than you're worth saving, over the safety of everyone, over the cause for which you said you were born to fight. Your love for him will always be the problem. It will destroy the White Desert, if not burn down this entire peninsula."

'You are binding him with the memory of another woman, and you will drag us all to hell with it. This peninsula included.'

There was pain in her head, in her chest, from the wounds on her hand. They hadn't stopped bleeding, those stubs where her missing fingers had been. She suddenly needed more air to breathe, something to relieve these pains. A hand to squeeze. A shoulder. A pair of arms that would have wound around her at this moment had they been present.

Someone to say those words she needed. The only one who could. Someone who had promised her something one night, and many times thereafter.

'Don't do this alone.'

"Saya," the prince began to protest, and was cut short by the woman who simply wasn't done with what she had to say.

"You want to go to Samarra, then go," said Saya. "But don't think for a second that you'll get to keep them both. There will be blood on your hands, one way or another, and you'll have to live with it. If we die for this, it's your sin to carry. You keep that in mind, Bharavi, while you make your decision."