There were times, when Djari thought she knew the man who called himself Rhykal izr Zoren. She knew the sharp edges that slipped through Hasheem's voice on occasions, the quiet, simmering rage in his gray eyes when they turned almost white, and the cold, dark void he deliberately left between them whenever she crossed the line. In some ways, a part of her had always been aware of the other side of Hasheem that existed underneath the gentle mask he wore, locked up, lost, and screaming for release.

'There is a monster in that boy,' Deo di Amarra had said.

That monster was here, now, and for all that he should feel like a stranger, the familiarity she felt with this man called Rhykal bothered her. Had she always seen it in Hasheem and turned a blind eye? Or had she always known and decided it was all right? One made her a coward, the other made her a beast.

What am I?

She was, after all, a daughter of Za'in izr Husari, and he had burned people alive. And Nazir had only said that she would end the war, never how.

But Hasheem did believe in her, so did the Prince, so did everyone who knew that prophecy. That mattered, didn't it?

It didn't. Deep down, she knew it with the same certainty as knowing the man sitting before her was not her sworn sword. She had believed in Hasheem, too, and trusted him. She'd trusted herself, her judgement, and her willingness to sacrifice for her Kha'gan. But here they were, two monsters sitting by the fire––one di Amarra had warned her would come to life, the other someone who would let him live. She knew what she had done when she'd said what she'd said to Akai izr Imami. Her conscience had been clear, that was the problem.

'I will decide if he lives or dies,' she'd said.

A lie she knew for certain. A decision she wasn't prepared––or willing—to make. Not now anyway. Not for the future she could see. Maybe not ever.

No, it didn't matter what her or anyone believed. A festering wound would always burst open one day, one way or another, no matter how well it was concealed. Now that it had, she was staring at the mess she'd created, smelling the rotten flesh and the puss she'd left unattended for the sake of preserving her own heart, and trying to find a cure that might not exist.

Across the fire, the man who looked like Hasheem was concentrating on skinning the squirrel he'd caught earlier that night, ignoring the hostage he'd secured by the wrists with a rope tethered to his own. He hadn't spoken a word to her since they left izr Imami's home at the top of the mountain, hadn't answered a single question she'd asked. Instead, he'd dragged her along like a goat to be sacrificed, yanking the rope every time her steps had faltered, and grunting irritably when she'd failed to get up fast enough. They'd stopped halfway down Al-Sana late at night to camp and make fire, and by then she was bleeding from a dozen scrapes and scratches he'd decided was none of his concern. Whoever this man was, and however familiar he seemed to her, he was not Hasheem. Which meant that she had put herself––and therefore her entire Kha'gan––in danger again by sneaking out of camp and getting herself taken hostage once more, this time by someone Akai izr Imami had called a monster bigger than Za'in izr Husari. On top of everything that had happened, she'd also learned that her sworn sword had killed the Khumar of another Kha'gan. How she was going to fix this mess was beyond––

"Do you need to shit?" Rhykal said all of the sudden and without looking up from the squirrel.

"What?"

"You look like you need to shit."

Djari felt the heat on her cheeks and knew it didn't come from the fire. Still, she had a hard time figuring out if she was embarrassed, confused, or angry. She decided only the last was acceptable given the circumstance. "Four hours of silence and that's the first thing you say to me?" She ought to have been more careful of what she said to a cold-blooded murderer who was not Hasheem, but she was too tired, too stressed, and too hungry to care.

He shrugged. "I say what I think."

Djari gritted her teeth in an attempt to leash her anger. She really hated that attitude and how it altered the way he looked. The beautiful face that could stop a rider at full gallop  was gone, replaced by something harsh and cold that might as well have belonged to a carelessly made sculpture. Hasheem's eyes that could always make people feel like the only one in the room were now empty, vacant of all emotions except extreme bitterness and distrust. He would also never say these things, in that tone, with that voice. Her sworn sword was careful with people, polite, patient, and considerate. They looked exactly the same, but they were not. It was somewhat easy, however strange that was, to call him with a different name.

  "You know nothing about me." The Prince had mentioned Hasheem remembering nothing when he'd killed those people, and she had no reason to believe it wouldn't be the same for Rhykal. He had called her Bharavi, after all. Hasheem would never use that word to address her. He also would never put a blade to her throat. "Do you even know my name?"

This time he looked up from the carcass, caught her gaze with Hasheem's sharp, gray eyes that had turned––and stayed––almost white. "It's Djari," he said and pointed the tip of his knife at the area between his brows. "People make that face when they want to shit."

Djari grimaced. "What face?"

"That one." He jerked his chin in her direction. "The one you're always making."

She caught herself with her mouth open and closed it, wondering if it was true and if Hasheem had noticed and simply had never mentioned it. "You're really not him, are you?"

His gray eyes turned colder, sharper in an instant, as if she'd pricked him with something sharp enough to bleed. "He is not me," hissed Rhykal. "There's a difference."

The bitterness was there, in every word, every vowel. It seemed to happen every time Hasheem was mentioned. She thought about it for a time, knew she might be crossing a line with the question, and decided to ask in any case, "Who, then?" she said. "Who is Hasheem?"

The fire crackled loudly in the silence that settled between them, sending sparks of red floating in the air. She held the question with her eyes, waiting for him to decide if he would toss it into the flame or pick up the conversation. She was half expecting him to chastise her with silence as Hasheem always had, or perhaps change the subject to avoid it, and then he said, "They give prisoners new names at Sabha."

Her heart, she realized, was beating very fast. "Why?"

Rhykhal shrugged again. He could do that even when speaking of Sabha. "Makes it easier to forget who you are. Less resistance. Better slaves."

Is that what happened? He's forgotten who he was, who you were? She stopped herself just in time before giving voice to that question. She didn't want to force him into a corner, not too soon anyway. Hasheem always ended the conversation when she did that.

"You can say it," he said.

"Say what?"

"Whatever you were about to say."

She blinked, twice. "How did you know I was about to say something?"

"We were taught to read people, to listen, to fuck," he explained, as a matter-of-factly. "It's not difficult. And yes," he added, "he knew."

"Knew what?"

"Your need to ask," said Rhykal. "What you wanted to know."

Djari drew a long breath at the knifing pain behind her ribs. Those words were meant to pry open a wound that hadn't healed, and it did as intended. How many times had Hasheem pretended he didn't hear it––her unspoken questions, sentences she'd ended halfway, words she'd swallowed time and time again that suffocated her as she did?

How many times had she pretended she didn't know he had done just that because he'd never trusted her enough with his past? It hurt. And it had been hurting for a while. Did you know that too and decided to ignore it in any case?

"I am no coward," Rhykal said, looking at her with the directness of a child who hadn't been taught it was bad manners to stare. "He is not me. Ask your question, Bharavi."

"I have a name," she said pointedly. He'd attacked both her and Hasheem with those statements, deliberately. It made her angry. He seemed to be an expert at making her angry.

"Doesn't matter," he told her and went back skinning their supper. "With luck we will not suffer each other for long."

He intends to leave me when he reaches his destination, the realization came to her late and delivered with poison. He would leave and take Hasheem with him––a reality she wasn't ready to live with. "You said we, just now, about being taught to read people." Something about that gave her hope, made her curious. "You were present...at the same time?"

Rhykal finished the squirrel and put it on the fire, his face a blank sheet of paper even in the light. "I was," he replied, then added, "in a way."

Her breath caught at the revelation. "You were always there." After all this time?

Rhykal stared blankly into the fire as if he'd missed the question. The reply, when it came, was cold, quiet, and steady, "Yes."

Something came alive in her stomach, something both dreadful and comforting at the same time. She drew a breath and braced herself for her own question. "Is he there?" Listening to our conversations, seeing you with me... "Right now?"

He looked up at her with surprise on his face, like he'd suddenly remembered something that had slipped his mind. Behind the fire that cast a hard shadow on his face, Rhykal izr Zoren tilted his head to the side and scrutinized her with the calm of a skilled hunter trying to choose a method of killing. His eyes turned colder, sharper, more animal-like the longer he watched her in calculating silence. She had only been told of what he had done, but for the first time since they'd met that evening, she saw what he could do.

It was the same expression she had seen somewhere else, on someone else, and the memory of it gripped her like the hand around her throat that night, like fear that had crippled all her limbs, like panic when she knew what was coming. Change the subject, she told herself hurriedly, repeatedly. Say something. Anything. "Where are we going?"

Rhykal stared at her, unmoving, save for his fingers that had been playing with the knife in his hand as if holding it for the first time. She watched him flip it over and back, over and back, testing its weight and balance like someone trying to decide if the weapon was right for the job. Then, when he seemed satisfied with an answer, turned back toward the fire and said, "Samarra."

She resisted the urge to sigh in relief, knowing the release of tension was short-lived and it was too early to say the danger had passed. Whatever it was he was thinking, the thought had only ceased temporarily without being acted upon for the time being. She had to keep talking and find out what she could to do something about it. She was on her own now, with no one for her to rely on like the last time she had been captured. A mistake, that, and one she would not make twice. Think, Djari. He said Samarra. Samarra made sense. It was the shortest way out of the White Desert, if what he wanted was to escape whoever came after her. But it might not be his final destination. "And then? Where will you go?"

He went back to the task at hand, as if nothing had happened. "Wherever I want to go." 

And I will lose him, forever. She looked down at her hands, saw them trembling, and clasped them together. It didn't help much. "Then you will release me?"

"If you still live," he said, "when the time comes."

"Because you will cut me if they follow?" Someone would. She was a Bharavi, and sister to a Kha'a. They would search the entire desert for her.

He turned to her again with the same vacant expression he used to skin the squirrel just now. "Because I will cut you," he said, casually, "and because people die in the desert. It happens."

It wasn't a threat, she knew. It was what couldn't be avoided if someone came after her or between him and his freedom. He would have to do it to achieve his goal, the same way he had to skin the squirrel before it could be eaten. It was fact, logic, and common sense. She knew something about men now, about people, how it all came down to what was important to them, and how no amount of pleading or crying would change anything when what was most important to them was not kindness, righteousness, or compassion. She had, for the same logic and reason, allowed a monster to live and go unpunished hadn't she? Her priority was Hasheem. To the man who'd raped her, it was pleasure and satisfaction. To Rhykal, it was freedom. Everyone was capable of doing these things for the sake of priorities, and it was both naive and ignorant to believe everyone's priority was the same, or what you wished it would be.

'The world will not change in your favor,' Father had said to Nazir once. 'Thinking about what should or could have been will make you a cripple. Praying for a better future will kill you on your knees. If you want to live, you must learn to survive things as they are, then and only then can you bring change.'

She understood those words a lot better now, and she was no longer naive or ignorant as she once was. There was no longer room for those things, not after that night, not anymore. "I am an archer," she said. "It's the only way I know how to fight." She looked at him in the eyes, and held them the same way she did when she needed to communicate with her horses. "If you will let me live, leave me the ability to draw my bow. That is all I ask."

He considered her for a time. Her, not what she'd requested. His priority was not doing what she wanted, not yet anyway. "You're not afraid?" he asked.

It brought back another memory, a pleasant one this time––a conversation in the middle of the night, a meeting of two strangers brought together by Fate, an arrow, shot in the dark that changed everything and didn't miss. It seemed to her an event that had happened a lifetime ago, and still she remembered the words, the way her heart was beating as they carried the conversation, how heavy it grew when he'd lashed out at her for counting his dead, and later, how it became light as a feather as he took her hand and said what he'd said...

'We do it together, you and I. Don't do this alone.'

He'd said those words, once more, in the Prayer Room of Eli, when the news of her father's death had arrived. He was there with her, when the man had taken pleasure from her screams. After everything they had been through, Hasheem had kept his promise. She had to believe those words, that he was still there, somewhere, listening.

'You're not afraid?' Rhykal had said. The same question she'd asked him that night. A coincidence perhaps, or something that had taken roots deeper than what either of them could see. She wiped her tears with the back of her hand, trying to recall the answer she'd been given. Listen and remember, Hasheem. Remember me. "I am done," she said, and found her tears falling again, "being afraid."

For a moment, Rhykal looked as if he was struggling to breathe. His hands curled into fists that sent a rigidity she could see up his arms, his shoulders. She saw him fight it, his teeth gritting hard enough to hurt, before it faded, eventually, and he could breathe again.

He turned back to the squirrel, tore a piece, and tossed it to her as if nothing had happened. "Eat. Sleep," he said. "We leave early in the morning. Don't slow me down."

She took the meat and did what he said, making notes in her mind how Hasheem was good at pretending, and Rhykal was not.

***