She remembered the smell of burnt human flesh, how different it was from goat or lamb. Or perhaps it was all in her imagination—a poor conclusion derived from seeing dead bodies that could be yours or someone you knew. Why would it be any different from animals? Were they not made from flesh and blood and bones just the same?

Zahara had seen those bodies before, in one of the villages on the outskirt of Sabha Za'in izr Husari had burned. Muradi had brought her along to witness the damage, of course (he would never have missed such an opportunity to prove his point.) The memory she'd managed to tuck away for years came back to her that day while they were lighting the pyre.

She remembered thinking then, that he had taken her there to demonstrate how right he had been, that he would find satisfaction in proving her people to be as big a monster as he was. She also remembered how Muradi had stood in the middle of the rubble, in a field burnt to ashes littered with corpses you could no longer recognize, staring down at a charred figure of a mother holding her child as though it had been someone he knew, and had seemed to forget she was there entirely. He'd issued the necessary commands, retreated into the privacy of his own room at Sabha, and stayed in complete solitude for two days. When he'd reappeared, the room had been destroyed to the last piece of furniture, and he had wanted war. It had taken his advisors half a day to convince him to delay that war, but since then no expense had been spared to prepare for it.

One could say that Za'in izr Husari had created an even bigger monster with how he'd chosen to respond to his wife's passing. One could also say, that a woman might have changed the fate of the White Desert forever if Za'in were to win this war for them.

History and future had always been made and changed by one life, one decision, hadn't they? Some people had that power to alter the lives of generations, while others were born to follow, to live with the consequences. Zahara couldn't help but wonder then, if she also had such a power, if her death would mean anything, do anything to him?

'You could have been an exception. You and Lasura,' his words resurfaced in her mind, as if in answer to her question. 'I would have given you the world, the freedom you wanted, even put your son on the throne and given him control of the Salasar.' An opportunity had been given then, one so large she had decided to crush without hesitation.

Was I a fool? She asked herself then. Should she have taken that hand? Should she have bent to him, given him what he wanted and in doing so achieve what she couldn't do as his enemy? Could things have ended differently had she not dedicated her entire life to vengeance?

Would you have really done those things, for my heart in return?

She would never know that now. There was no point in thinking what could have or should have been. In the end, she had to accept the fact that she had achieved nothing for her people, besides being made into an example of what might happen if the White Desert were to fall.

Let it not come to that, Zahara thought as she watched the smoke rise from her feet and up toward the sky, creating a curtain of white clouds around her, filling up her lungs and beginning to blind her vision. Let me be the last, not the first to burn at Sangi.

It must have been the smoke that gave her the wrong impression, Zahara told herself, but she thought she saw him in the crowd, fighting his way toward her.

She wondered then if Zuri iza Sa'an also had a vision of her husband coming to save her before she died.

***

She had a brass ring on her finger, plain with a few carvings and no stones set in it. Her hand had wrapped across the child's face—boy or girl he could no longer tell—as if to shield him or her from having to see what was happening. His mother had done that once or twice when he was young and terrified of thunders. Mothers, Muradi remembered thinking then, feeling safe all wrapped up and protected in her arms, could be so fearless, so strong.

They could also die being strong.

And it had been all he saw then, standing in the village Za'in izr Husari had burned, over the blackened body of a mother who'd failed to protect her child, how useless strength could be if you weren't the strongest or the toughest. He knew then, that it had been his weakness that allowed it to happen. Their deaths had been his failure, his sin to carry. He could have seen it coming, should have seen it coming had he paid more attention, taken more precautions, had he been a wiser, more capable man, a more competent ruler with enough power to prevent such things.

It never changed, no matter how much time had passed. He had felt just as powerless then as he had been at ten when he couldn't save anyone.

And he was about to fail again that day.

The sight of that smoke rising to the sky had pulled him back to the village, brought back the image of the mother and child, this time with the silver of Zahara's hair among the ashes. The cold, cold rage that had been with him then returned with it, bursting like an overfilled damn cracked apart in the middle to feed his body from limb to limb with a craving for blood and violence, tore his control to shreds all at once.

He didn't know how many people he'd killed to get through to the square, didn't count how many times he'd brought those blades down on somebody. The crowd rushed by him in a blur as he rode through the screams of men and women, the sound of their suffering muffled into near silence by the persistent pounding of his heart that grew louder by the minute. Somewhere in the numbness of his senses, even an awareness of death he had come to know so well seemed foreign to him.

The swords felt slick in his hands; from what, he couldn't tell. Perhaps blood. Perhaps sweat. Maybe both—he didn't have time to look. Behind him, his men were shouting words he couldn't comprehend, couldn't even tell if it had been Imran or Ghaul or someone else making that noise. He was too busy trying to clear the way, driven near madness by something worse than rage that had taken roots in his core, worse than the impulse to kill at Vilarhiti.

It grew in intensity the closer he was to her. With every step came a fist clenching around his chest, squeezing it tighter, faster. The pulsing pressure that had been building in his stomach was rising and rising toward his lungs, his throat, choking him harder every time he breathed. In the back of his mind, an awareness of an outcome too terrifying, too painful to fully acknowledge was stalking him somewhere, creeping up on him like a beast hiding in the dark, waiting for the right time to pounce. His heart, he realized, felt like something foreign and treacherous that had been put there to kill him at that moment.

The soldier next to him fell off his horse, struck by something he later realized to have been an arrow. A whicker of air graced his throat as he turned toward the sound of someone calling him from behind, saw the arrow shaft from the corner of his eye as it went over him to take out another guard on the other side. Someone grabbed him by the arm and yanked him off his horse, took them both to the ground before he realized what was happening. The next thing he knew, he was staring at Ghaul crouching protectively above him, an arrow embedded in the shield he had strapped to his left arm.

***

Luck. Omar thought, grinding his teeth as he ran along the roof toward the square. Sheer luck, at least for the second arrow. The aim had been right, the arrow had flown true, and the salar would have been dead instantaneously had he not turned at that precise moment. The first felled guard had taken that arrow for him, which couldn't be helped, and the third—the third he had to congratulate the salar's giant bodyguard's sharp eye and quick reflex for having pulled him off his horse in time.

Not an easy man to take down, Omar thought, grimacing at the situation. The soldiers were loyal to a fault, and the gods seemed to be on his side today. Still, he had three arrows left in his quiver.

Imran's guards were firing at him—four of their very best archers running alongside the roof on the ground to hunt him down. Omar, however, had been among the best apprentices of Deo di Amarra, and being on higher ground with a clear view of the archers allowed him to anticipate, time, and dodge those shots without breaking a sweat. He went from roof to roof and left them behind with the mob in minutes, clearing the arrow range as he continued to follow the salar.

Having to deal with the guards had taken his attention off Muradi for a few minutes, and for a moment he thought he had lost his target in the crowd. The problem fixed itself in no time, however. After all, this was Salar Muradi of Rasharwi, if the gold-trimmed, luxurious black tunic and those twin obsidian blades didn't make him stand out among the commoners of the city, his giant bodyguard would.

They were moving fast through the crowd, Omar saw, with Muradi snarling like something spat out of hell cutting down everything and everyone in his path. The giant Samarran was running protectively by his side (the left side where Omar had been aiming from) axe high and ready to hack anyone who came within three paces of the salar into pieces. Omar swore inwardly as he considered the situation. Even without the shield, the man was too big for him to find an opening to shoot. With one, the task had become impossible.

And so he kept on running, following them to the square. There, it would be open ground. There, he could get off the roof, disappear, take his pick on the new angle.

He happened to know exactly where that angle would be.

***

The salar was crossing the square without an army, not one that she could see. It was just him and Ghaul, pushing through the gathering, cutting down those in their way and clearing a path through to her. The crowd started screaming and running as they made their way to the platform like two dangerous beasts let loose in the city, only the square had been too packed for them to move very far. It became a stampede of sorts, and as she choked on the thick smoke that was filling her lungs, Zahara could hear the sounds of children crying, of women screaming, and people falling down and being crushed under someone's foot.

By then she could no longer see—the soot had gotten into her eyes, stung them until she had to squeeze them shut. Down below, the flame lick at her feet, catching on to the hem of her dress. And then—a gush of wind, a weight of something large and soft falling and wrapping around her legs—the fire directly in front of her was put out and the heat subsided.

Someone put his arms around her, reaching behind her back to cut her loose, caught her as she fell. She knew who it was, knew it in her bones, under her skin, without having to pry her eyes opened to see.

Why are you here? Why save me? Why do this, here, now?

And he was holding her, touching her, searching for wounds, for cuts, for any damage done. "Zahara!" He pressed his thumbs on either side of her face, wiping the tears away, shaking her for a response. "Look at me! Can you see?"

"My lord!" Ghaul was yelling from somewhere near, panting, rushing. "We have to go!"

"Zahara!!"

She squeezed her eyes shut, blinked twice, three times, before she opened them to look. She had to be able to see to run.

Through the billowing smoke, through tears that were still running from the soot, through the sound of people screaming and dying around them, he was there—her mortal enemy, her nightmare from long ago, the demon that had haunted her for eighteen years, the one man who shouldn't be here was there, covered entirely in blood like the first time they'd met, looking at her from a familiar height, through those hard, familiar blue eyes now filled with vulnerability, with relief—

—with terror as he grabbed her arm and yanked her off to the side, throwing her to the ground.

At noon, on the event that would later be called the Great Riot of Rasharwi, during the seventeenth year of his reign, Salar Muradi, Conqueror of the Vilarhiti, Founding Father of the Madira, Supreme Ruler of the Salasar and its five provinces, took two arrows in the chest, one in his left arm, and fell on the sacrificial platform of Sangi.

***