There was blood on the ceiling. How it had gotten there, Djari had a feeling it was better she didn't know. The look on Saya's face as she waited for her first question tonight, however, told her not knowing wasn't an option. It never was for the ruling figures of a Kha'gan, and while she had been able to walk away from discussions she didn't want to hear as a child, that privilege had died with her father.

'There will come a time,' her mother had said, 'when you can no longer hide behind my gown. When that day comes, remember, Djari, that every Bharavi was a child once, before she decided to become something more.'

She hadn't had her mother's gown to hide behind for a long time, but she had had her father's zikh, and then Nazir's. When her father was gone, and Nazir's zikh too occupied by the Kha'gan he must protect, the sight of Hasheem's back, his strong, reliable shoulders had been the shade she utilized. Standing in that room, breathing the air still filled with the stench of death and decay, knowing her sworn sword had been a part of it, reminded her that place of refuge, too, was gone.

"What happened here?" Djari asked and hated how vulnerable it sounded. She had come all this way to learn about his past, and now that it was staring at her in the face, she found she wasn't ready for the answer.

Saya regarded her quietly from the other side of the room for some time, arms crossed over her fully formed breasts, her shapely hip pressed against the table, one long leg stretched out over the other. A beautiful woman. An adult who could fight. A grown up looking at a terrified child. Another presence in Hasheem's life she wasn't a part of.

"Three men came to see my father five days ago," Saya explained. She strode toward the big rug in the middle of the room and flipped it over to the side. "This is what's left of them. Their remains are buried behind the cottage."

Dark, crimson stain covered the wooden floor beneath the rug to the last inch. Djari winced at the image of dead bodies that sprang to mind and the smell of dried blood that had doubled in intensity. It took an effort to voice the question she thought she already knew the answer, but she needed to be sure. "He did this? He killed them?"

Saya snorted. "Killed? There was a kidney where you're standing, maybe a piece of intestine too. Whose, you wouldn't be able to tell even if you managed to put the pieces back together. No, your sworn sword didn't kill them, he butchered those men. What," Saya said, pausing to look at her with something between disgust and spite, "exactly did you send to my father, to Al-Sana?"

Djari tried to swallow and found the task difficult. She could say she had no awareness of his past, but it would sound like a lie or a child's excuse, if not also a shameless show of ignorance. He was her sworn sword, after all. It was her business to know. But what she couldn't swallow was the fact that he had done this. The Hasheem she knew wouldn't. He couldn't have.

"You had no idea, did you?" Saya said, shaking her head with annoyed disbelief, then turned to the prince who had been standing quietly by the door, observing everything from afar. "But you do."

Djari turned to the Prince and saw the same evidence in his expression. He drew a breath, chewed on it for a time, before releasing an audible sigh. "It's not the first time, as far as I know," he said. "But iza Zuri would not have been aware of those...incidents. This is not her doing, I assure you." He paused, as if he'd just remembered something. "I take it he knew those men?"

Saya stilled for a time before acknowledging him with a nod. "One of them seemed to have recognized him from somewhere, but we didn't hear the conversation that made him decide to tear them apart," she explained casually. "Why? What do you know?"

There was a knife in that question, one drawn with an intention to remove a facade. The Prince had, Djari realized, revealed something about himself to defend her without thinking just now, and in doing so put himself in a dangerous situation.

The Prince, to her surprise, simply shrugged. "Stories," he said. "We shared..." A smile played about his lips for a moment before it went away. "... an acquaintance here and there."

"I see." Saya dipped her head a little in acknowledgement and walked toward him, pausing at a distance close enough to see the lint on his tunic had there been any. "An acquaintance," she repeated, "of Amar izr Zaharran or the Silver Sparrow of Azalea?"

***

The room fell into a crowded silence, and Lasura had an inkling that the ghosts of men butchered by the Sparrow was grinning, waiting eagerly for him to join them. A short distance away, Djari stood in a tight-lipped silence of someone caught between declaring a fight and calling for help whose decision might not come anytime this century. He forgot sometimes that she was only sixteen––most people would have, including Djari—and that she might struggle with how to best handle the situation. Still, he caught himself wondering if she would have reacted differently had it been her sworn sword instead him being pushed again the wall.

Of course, she would, he chastised himself for the foolishness of that question. Deo would too. Deo had. Everyone treasured the Sparrow of Azalea. That understanding had always been there. The acceptance, judging from how often said knowledge could still cut, hadn't.

He ignored the wound and avoided answering the question. A tactic learned from the long experience of having to survive the Tower. "It doesn't take having a common acquaintance to know stories surrounding the Silver Sparrow, my lady." He met her eyes, made sure his were still. "He is a famous man, a legend, some would say. Word travels."

"And yet she doesn't know," Saya replied. Her hand, he noticed, was resting on the short sword at her hip.

"I like gossips," he said.

"Do you?" Saya smiled. "So, tell me, what gossips bring you to the White Desert, and how does a Rashai end up traveling with a Bharavi?"

There was a hush in the room, made by the living or the dead, he wasn't sure. By sheer instinct, Lasura shifted his weight to gain a better footing, to fight or to flee, he hadn't decided. This was, after all, a woman who could beat the Silver Sparrow in a fight. If she wanted to bury a Rashai tonight, he would likely join the ghosts before dawn even if he ran, but standing here to be the forth man butchered wasn't a pleasant thought either. He wondered what had given it away; his black hair was still bound out of sight, his eyes were the yellow of trueblood Shakshis. But most of all he wondered how to answer that question without getting killed by Saya or Djari––the latter looking as prepared as the former to gut him alive if he were to reveal his identity here.

"He's no Rashai. Not exactly." Akai izr Imami stepped into the room and closed the door behind him. He walked toward Lasura with the careful steps of someone trying not to desecrate a tomb he'd discovered. An accurate metaphor really. In many ways, that room had housed three dead bodies.

"I have been told of your presence here a few days ago by a messenger carrying word from Nazir Kha'a in Citara. You may remove the scarf from your hair and speak freely. The accent gives it away in any case," said Akai izr Imami.

The accent, of course. Lasura cursed himself the hundredth time for having neglected his mother's tongue, not that it mattered in any case, since Nazir had decided to tell Akai izr Imami nonetheless. He wondered if Nazir had sent the message knowing he and Djari were here, or if he had other plans involving Aki izr Imami they hadn't been briefed. And if he had known they would come to Al-Sana, had Nazir allowed it to happen, and for what reason?

In any case, there was no point to hiding his identity any longer, and he figured what happened hereafter was Djari's shit to clean up, not his. He also figured if he was truly some kind of chosen one crucial to whatever plan Fate was weaving, and according to some two dozens fantasies he'd read of chosen ones, whatever happened after this shouldn't be too bad, should it? He might even get a dragon or two if he was lucky, and end up saving the world by twenty with no consequences whatsoever for the people he murdered along the way. Lasura made a decision with those thoughts in mind and removed the scarf from his hair.

"Saya," Akai izr Imami said to his daughter who was staring at her father with the vindictiveness of a woman who'd just caught her man cheating, "this is Prince Lasura izr Muradi, son of the former Salar of Rasharwi and Zahara iza Narareesha, the last living Bharavi born in the Vilarhiti."

Son of the former Salar of Rasharwi and Zahara iza Narareesha...

It struck him like walking into a brick wall, like being knocked out of breath by a force he had no idea from where it came, and the crack it made left him open, unprotected, and helplessly undone. Lasura found himself staring at Akai izr Imami with his throat constricted, with words coming to a screeching stop behind its newly formed wall that felt both foreign and familiar to him, and the pooling pressure of what was being held back found its release in the wetness that stung his eyes, blinding him for a moment.

Narareesha. No one called his mother by that name in the Tower, the same way no one had ever called him by his father's name, Shakshi or Rashai, as if not doing so would somehow erase where both him and his mother had come from. He hadn't expected it here, and from a stranger he'd just met. Had even stopped wishing someone would a long time ago.

Akai izr Imami blinked in confusion. "If I have offended in some ways..."

Lasura held up his hand, the other wiping away the tears, still surprised at his own reaction and vulnerability to a few simple words spoken. "There is no offense, izr Imami, none whatsoever." He bowed again, to Akai izr Imami, this time with more genuine respect than the first time they'd been introduced. "You are the first person to ever call me by my father's name and the name of my grandmother, one I have almost forgotten. For that, you have my sincerest gratitude."

Izr Imami smiled. Lasura thought he saw a glimpse of sadness in those eyes as he did, perhaps also guilt. "I have met both your mother and iza Narareesha before she died. And though I have not taught him to fight, your father was here on Al-Sana long before you were born with an old apprentice of mine whom I believe has been your mentor for many years. He is an honorable man, if influenced by his own grief, and using a different name then."

A strange feeling flooded over him, filled his chest with something close to awe, to pride. "You knew my father?" But more than that... "Deo was your apprentice?"

Akai izr Imami dipped his head. He looked old and frail, all of the sudden, like someone trying to deal with a limp that wouldn't heal. "Another monster I've created. Another story for another time," he said and seated himself on a chair, inviting the rest of them to do the same. "Now we must deal with the monster at hand. Tell me what you know about the Silver Sparrow, and why I should not kill him while he sleeps."

And so Lasura told him and the two women everything he knew. From the exaggerated stories everyone in Rasharwi talked about, to the ones Deo had revealed to him over wine, to what he had witnessed with his own eyes. He told them about the tune Deo had mentioned once or twice, and the consequential mess that required his mentor to clean up then complain about several times. "The last victim I knew of was the husband of a woman who meant something to him," Lasura said, recalling the details his mentor had grumbled about for days afterward. "Every butchered corpse before him had something to do with his past. His first client from the pleasure district, a soldier who'd been at the raid, a guard at Sabha..." Another Shakshi slave from the same Kha'gan he'd run into. Lasura decided not to mention that one. "Perhaps its retribution, or maybe it's more complicated, but every time it happened he remembered nothing, or so he said."

"Or so Deo said," corrected Akai izr Imami. "The Red Mamba always know more than he leads you to believe. If he's kept the Sparrow this long under his care, knowing the risk, he must have a reason. Whatever that reason is," he said, turning to Djari, "it means I can't let him leave this mountain alive, iza Zuri, do you understand?"

Djari, who had been listening in complete silence, looked up from her clenched fists on the table to meet izr Imami's eyes. "Perhaps Deo di Amarra knows how to keep it under control. Maybe––"

"I cannot risk it," izr Imami said with the calm of a priest whose decision to burn a sacrifice had been made and could not be swayed. "I will not."

If those last words felt like something carved in stone, Djari's expression carved her own in steel. There was, Lasura thought, nothing indecisive about her at the moment, no trace of the troubled young woman he'd seen before. "With all due respect, izr Imami, he is my sworn sword, my responsibility. Whether he lives or dies, that is my decision to make."

"You will have to make it soon, and it will be the same outcome." Akai izr Imami nailed it down with the hammer in his voice. "The man he's killed was the Khumar of Shendai. His companions, also dead by the hands of the Sparrow, were men of rank. They will want to know what happened. Retributions will be demanded, or the two Kha'gans will go to war. It is best that he dies here. One life, in exchange for hundreds, perhaps thousands. You, as someone in whose hands lay the fate of our people, should be able to make that decision." He paused, pulled out the dagger of words he'd stabbed her with to drive it in again, this time, in the heart. "That sacrifice."

It was one hell of a wound to deliver, especially to someone like Djari, and he could see the knife he'd deliberately left there as a souvenir. But the situation did call for it, Lasura could see that clear enough, and for multiple reasons. They could pretend those men had never made it to Al-Sana, but for how long and how far could they stretch that lie? And taking into account that Deo might have had a plan to utilize the Sparrow in his grand design, it would be best for the Shakshis to remove this pawn sooner than later. Not to mention deliberately keeping his identity hidden was already putting the Visarya at risk of being punished by Citara. By logic, the only reason why the Sparrow should continue to live was that he meant something to Djari––a Bharavi who was expected to put her people before all else. Who had been raised to put her people before all else.

Djari, for how hard her jaw clenched to match her trembling fists on the table, had no intention to make that sacrifice. You could see it on that face, in those eyes, and as he did, Lasura saw her looking straight at him before turning back to the sword master.

"If I am truly the fate of our people, izr Imami," she said firmly, finally, "then every life in the desert depends on my judgement, my decision, and it must not be influenced by anyone, not you, not my brother or the Kha'a of another Kha'gan, not even Citara, or I am no more fit to lead us to victory than a tool for ambitious men or a mare they keep to breed more oracles. I will decide if he lives or dies. You do not have my permission to touch him while I live."

'If you truly are the fate of the desert, iza Zuri, then don't forget for a second that every life on this peninsula depends on your judgement. You must take the lead, as someone born to end this war, or else you are no more than a tool for ambitious men and a mare they keep to breed more oracles.'

Lasura swore in his mind as the words he'd spoken on a whim with no thought of consequences came back to him. That she had remembered them was both flattering and terrifying at the same time. Have I created a monster, a leader who will not be advised?

Izr Imami stilled, and something in the room turned cold, sharp, and hostile all of the sudden. For the first time since they'd met, Lasura saw the killer in the old man he'd taken to be kind and of mild temperament. He said, soft as the warning tap of a blade on the shoulder, final as the death it promised. "You are a guest in my home, iza Zuri. This is my mountain. Do not forget."

Djari listened, acknowledged the threat, and made her decision, quickly. "Then we will leave this mountain."

"I can't let that happen." The statement, once again, were final.

Within a breath after izr Imami finished that sentence, Djari rose from the chair with every intention to see something crash landed from high, and slammed it down on the table. "Then kill me, kill both of us, then you can lead our people to war in my place and try to save this peninsula."

She left them those words and strode to the door. It flung open just before she reached it with a clang that startled Saya and her father off their seats, blades jumping into their grips. A hand shot through the opening, grabbed Djari by the neck, and spun her around to face them. On her throat, taped to her skin, a dagger flashed white.

"I take it you won't mind coming with me, then," said the Sparrow, smiling. He gestured at Saya and izr Imami and rasped a command, "Put down your weapons. I will not ask again."

Father and daughter froze for a moment before the knives came down unwillingly. Lasura gritted his teeth at the sense of danger crawling down his spine, seeping into his gut. Something wasn't right about those gray eyes, that smile, that expression. "The fuck do you think you're doing? Are you out of your fucking mind?"

"Hashee––" Djari croaked, was stopped before she finished the word when the knife bit through the first layer of skin.

"Call me that again and I will slit you from throat to gut," said the Sparrow. "My name, and you will remember it, is Rhykal izr Zoren, son of Zoren izr Rasul, a White Warrior of Tahlia. I will leave this mountain with the Bharavi. Come after me and I will cut her, piece by piece, until you learn to keep your distance. Do I make myself clear?"