"Kill the horse, Djari," her father said, looking down at her with the eyes of a man more than ready to draw the blade at his waist. "Do it, or I'll have her put down by someone else."

The Kha'a of Visarya was a hard man with a reputation that preceded him, but there was a burning, permanent anger in him now that hadn't been there before. It had been different when her mother was alive. The Kha'ari had, everyone knew, been the only soul in the desert that could bend Za'in izr Husari.

Djari didn't have that kind of influence over her father, nor her mother's gift that had allowed her to move people with words. Her talent leaned more toward causing a fight or a fit of rage in powerful men, like her father.

"I will," she said. "When the time comes." Her horse might never run again, but there was still hope, wasn't there?

"Tonight, Djari." The command, this time, was spoken in the tone of a Kha'a to his subject, not of a father to his child. It was also given in a tent full of chiefs and White Warriors, and she was old enough to know the penalty of disrespecting a Kha'a in front of his men.

Still, she opened her mouth to speak, and immediately closed it at the small gesture of her brother's hand.

Nazir was their trueblood oracle, born with the correct characteristics of one with his amber eyes and silver hair. It meant that he was never wrong. She knew then, biting back her arguments and her tears at the Kha'a's dining table, that the fate of her horse had already been decided, and not quite by her father.

She left the table without finishing her dinner. Father would punish her for that later, she knew, and intended to accept the consequences of her actions. Wasting a meal would get her starved for a few days. For her display of defiance, he would take away more of her freedom. It wouldn't be the first time she had to endure it. At some point, one could get used to such things and find living with consequences better than living in fear.

Tonight, she needed time deal with the loss and the consequences was acceptable. Lady had been her mother's horse. For three years she had taken care of the mare, had washed her, fed her, and even helped her deliver a foal over the summer. How, Djari had asked herself a hundred times in the past three days, could she end such a life and live with herself afterward? So far, she didn't have the answer.

It would be the first time she had to take a life, and she had long wished it would be an enemy's or at least in self-defense. One could live with some justifications for causing death when it had to do with vengeance or self-preservation, and expect a measurement of forgiveness from oneself or others. But there was no justification for killing in the name of mercy, not to her. Living, no matter how painful, was the embodiment of hope, and hope was what they needed to end the war, to carry on traditions, to offer peace to the next generations. She would choose to live even with every joy and freedom taken from her. She was already living that life, had been from the moment she was born a Bharavi. Joy and freedom were for someone who didn't have to carry the lives of thousands, for someone who wasn't daughter to a Kha'a.

If she could live with that, why couldn't her mare?

The dagger in her hand gleamed like a newly polished silver. It felt heavier now than when she was holding it a few days before. 'A blade must be wielded with purpose, or it will become a burden,' her sword master had said. She could understand it a little better now, for how heavy it had become.

She opened her hand and closed it again around the hilt and realized her palm was now slick with sweat from having done so for the past hour.

"You don't have to do it yourself," a voice sounded from behind, gentle and comforting, the way her mother's had been. "No one will know."

When he'd come into her tent, she couldn't tell. Nazir always seemed to be able to appear out of thin air, like all the other impeccably trained White Warriors at camp. It was one of the first few lessons they were taught and tested on—to track and kill in silence. Things they would never teach her.

"I would know," she replied without looking up from the dagger.

Nazir sighed and seated himself at an arm's length away. She didn't have to look up to see the expression on his face to know those brows resembling her mother's would be knitted watching her then. He'd always found her difficult. They all did. She never understood why.

"It's only tradition, Djari," he paused, taking time to choose his words carefully, "not an expectation for everyone to follow through."

She looked up at him then, her chest filled to the brim with anger that had been accumulating for days. There might not be a written law that said she would have to kill her own horse, but for generations, it had been deemed the responsibility of every Shakshi to execute one's own prisoner and animal when the time came. How much of a coward did Nazir think she was, to believe she would hide behind such an excuse, to think that she could have lived with it? Even their father had expected it of her.

"I am a daughter to a Kha'a, a Bharavi of Visarya, and the future Kha'ari of a Kha'gan. It is expected of me." Djari drew herself up as tall as she could, hoping she looked a little like her mother then, wishing she remembered it right. "If we do not uphold tradition, no one will."

Those had been her mother's words. They had been the Kha'ari's explanation when Djari had asked why her hair had to be braided this way and that, or why she could only choose a Khumar or a Kha'a to marry. They were the ruling family of their Kha'gan. Whatever happened to the Visarya—good or ill—was their doing.

"You're only fifteen," Nazir said. She thought she heard pity in that voice, but he'd always been quick to hide such things. "There are plenty of time and opportunities for you to carry that weight on your shoulders. It doesn't have to begin now."

"I'm turning sixteen," she said. "In two years I'll marry into another kha'gan. You will not be there with me. If there's a weight I have to carry, I might as well begin to carry it now."

A shadow rolled over Nazir's face, as always when the issue of her marriage was brought up. She didn't like seeing it. Sympathy wasn't what she needed. She needed strength, cooperation, and maybe some appreciation for what she had to do. Marrying to strengthen the Kha'gan was her duty as a Bharavi. She had been raised to accept larger responsibilities than fulfilling her own desires, the same way Nazir had been raised, the same way everyone who was born into power should be raised to protect their people. There would be so much more than this she would have to sacrifice, so many more lives she would have to end if Nazir's vision about her had been right, and her brother had yet to be proven wrong. To assume that she would have a problem carrying such a weight, or would try to run from it was an insult.

Nazir sighed. "Being able to kill won't make things any easier, Djari."

"No," she said. "But it will make me harder." She would need to be harder, and stronger. "If I am going to ask people to kill for me in the future, I have to understand it."

The hurt that appeared in her brother's eyes had nothing to do with the issue of her horse, Djari knew. There were things he wouldn't tell her about her future, no matter how many times she'd pressed for it. Something about that vision scared him, which gave her all the more reasons to be prepared. "I'm sorry," was all Nazir said.

"You might have told me she wouldn't heal three days ago." She decided to confront him. There were always meanings in how Nazir chose to do things or not to, and that day was no exception. "Why didn't you?"

Nazir drew a long, unsteady breath and looked away, his gaze lingered somewhere far out toward the dark horizon. The wind blew in through the opening of her tent and tugged gently on his white robe. She saw him wince a little, and knew for certain that it hadn't been for the cold.

Nazir had been like that once, in the morning on the day their mother had left their camp and never returned. For hours, he'd stood in the same spot where he'd been watching the caravan disappear behind the valley. No one had understood why until the news of the attack arrived two days later. She'd never seen him so vulnerable as he had been then. Being the only son, Nazir had been born a Khumar, the future Kha'a of Visarya. It was a role he'd always filled to perfection in both duty and appearance. That morning he hadn't looked like one. He'd looked like a boy, a brother, a son, the same way he looked now.

"It wasn't the right time," he decided to reply, at length.

"The right time for what? What did you see?"

Nazir pressed his lips together and straightened. Djari knew then that it was the end of the conversation. A kind and doting brother he might be, but on this, and especially this, Nazir drew the line as crisp as the white of his zikh.

"There are certain privileges to not knowing that makes life worth living, Djari," he reminded her. "My vision is not for you or anyone to carry. It is my burden and mine alone."

It was a burden. Djari had known this for some time, having observed him more closely as she grew older. Nazir knew what the world required of him as an oracle, and what the price his rare, god-given gift of foresight would exact. It was his fate to bear witness to what was coming, to live with the premonition of blood to be shed and battles to be won and lost, to stand tall knowing the time and manner of his own death—and that of his loved ones. A burden he insisted on carrying alone.

She remembered asking him once what it felt like to have those visions, to know things before they happened.

'Like having lived your whole life by the age of ten,' Nazir had replied.

She'd stopped thinking of it as a privilege after that, and had always tried to forgive him afterward when he refused to share those visions with her. She knew her brother, however, and she had her intuition. There was a reason he'd decided to hold back Lady's fate until today, and guilt was why he had come.