The hunting ground was an hour ride north from the main camp. An hour of flat-out continuous gallop on the toughest horses in the peninsula. It wouldn't have been possible without these mounts, not where they were and not at such a pace. Having adapted to the desert for generations, the Shakshi's horses could endure a ride at bone-breaking speed without rest or water over a ridiculously long distance. The best were those bred in the Vilarhiti mountain range in the north. Vilarians were the fastest and the toughest horses in the peninsula, and the best ones were said to be worth their weight in gold. Springer was one of those and it was no surprise why they all found it so difficult to keep up with Nazir.

There used to be more of them around before the salar had taken over the Vilarhiti, Djari had told him. 'The Rashais have our best horses now. Thousands of them,' she'd said angrily, rubbing down Springer one morning as if it had been her horses they'd taken. Then again, losing the Vilarhiti and those horses was a catastrophe for the Shakshis. The right horses could win you a war. They could shift the balance of power if one knew how to use them, and they had fallen into the hands of a man who knew exactly how to use them.

The salar had been breeding them for over a decade—quite successfully so—in the royal stable. A number of these horses had also been given as gifts to the important figures in the Tower since the taking of the Vilarhiti. He wondered what Djari would say if she knew how common they had become among the elites of Rasharwi. Dee, too, had ten of these horses—the original ones taken from the valleys of Vilarhiti no less. Hasheem could still remember him strolling through the stable, admiring them and saying out loud how clever such a move had been for the young prince who was now the Salar of Rasharwi to have won him over with these mounts. "It's remarkable, isn't it?" Dee had said. "How just ten horses could change the fate of the entire peninsula given to the right person?"

Ten Vilarian horses had, indeed, made sure the right people conveniently died in an untimely manner (or timely, depending on whose perspective it was) to open up a path to the throne.

He could use one of those horses right now, Hasheem thought bitterly. They were made for this, not holed up in some fancy stables in the city. In fact, he might have been riding one now had the Vilarhiti not fallen.

The hunting party, led by the khumar and his fifteen escorts, was joined by the young men waiting along the route. They were mostly Grays with a few White Warriors in the mix, and in the end they amounted to a little over a hundred riders. From his understanding, only twenty hunters were painstakingly tried and selected from each of the five camps to attend the hunt, not including the ones that had been handpicked by the ruling family themselves to participate. According to Djari, it was a great honor to be at the hunt on Raviyani, and one's entire family's status would be elevated in the kha'gan when a son was selected. Now that Hasheem was in the middle of it, he could understand why.

The ride was brutal and made even more so when one had to keep up with Nazir who happened to be a superb rider riding on the back of a Vilarian horse. They were running on hard ground with enough rocks and stones along the path to trip any horse with a careless rider. The trail, narrow and flanked by steep cliffs on both sides, was covered by a layer of sand that created a manmade sandstorm as hundred horses at full gallop passed through it. Around him, the sound of hoofbeats roared like a continuous, never ending thunder, making the ride as deafening as it was blinding. Together, they drowned out most of the senses one might need to succeed in what could only be called an act of suicide.

It was an act of suicide, Hasheem thought, especially for those who didn't have enough skills or experience on horseback, or the trust of one's horse. Pulling the scarf Djari had insisted he wore over his face and securing it with both hands, he guided Summer quickly away from a small rock that suddenly appeared in front of him with his knees. The colt jumped to the right, and almost collided with another horse when a different rider, having just been forced to execute a small leap to evade another obstacle in his way, landed in front of him. Hasheem swore under his breath, leaned back his weight and tugged hard on the rein to back up. Startled by the unexpected interruption, Summer rose abruptly on his hindquarters, neighing loudly as he did and threw him backwards. Hasheem grabbed onto the mane, catching himself just in time as he slid down Simmer's back to narrowly escape being unhorsed from the commotion.

The small pause had, however, cost him a sizable distance between him and Nazir, and Hasheem found himself being caught in the worst part of the party. Space tightened threefold around the middle of the stampede, where a larger number of riders in the back tried to push forward, merging into those nearer to the front and trying to stay in it. Hasheem scanned the surroundings quickly and realized the safer place to be was either the far back or at the very front close to Nazir where there was more room to ride. It would be easier to fall all the way back and he'd thought of doing just that to avoid being unhorsed and trampled to death on his first Raviyani—before his first Raviyani. Then the rider next to him fell, and Hasheem watched in horror at how quickly the man had disappeared into the storm of sand and the thundering hooves coming from behind. The fall went on to disrupt a number of horses behind him, causing havoc at the rear end of the party which resulted in two more riders falling off their horse from the commotion.

The back wasn't an option, not unless one was content in being embarrassingly far behind, which would reflect badly on Djari. The safest place to be was around Nazir, where fewer horses were able to catch up with him and those who could were riding carefully around their khumar. Djari knew this, had warned him of it before they rode out of the stable, and had even given him the horse to do just that.

Looking down at Summer and the riders in front of him, Hasheem made the one decision necessary to survive. He shortened the reins, leaned forward, and kicked Djari's horse into a full gallop despite the lack of room and the number of riders he had to pass. Confident, sure-footed, and quick as a cat, Summer made his way through the crowd at mind-numbing speed, turning cleanly and swiftly left and right around the other riders at the slightest pressure from his knees.

He was one hell of a horse, Hasheem thought breathlessly, realizing for the first time the true extent of the privilege he'd been given. He'd ridden Dee's Valerians on occasions, but never at such speed, or under such a circumstance that would have brought out the best of their abilities, and yet he highly doubted they could be much better than this. Summer was brilliant in both soundness and skills, and Hasheem found himself admiring Djari endlessly in his mind for having shaped and trained such a magnificent horse. All the family mounts were trained by Djari, and she'd disciplined them to the point of obeying her like the most impeccably loyal soldiers. It was for this, and the fact that Summer was her most frequently trained horse, that Hasheem thought was the single reason why he'd survived the hunt that day.

In just moments, he found himself back at the front where Nazir and the rest of the leading party had been once again. A few paces in front of him was Zozi and Khali, following closely behind their khumar to the right. They turned to look at him in surprise. Khali flashed him a quick, amused smile, while Zozi, as expected, looked half surprised, half disappointed he hadn't died already.

The truth was, he was surprised himself he hadn't, and perhaps also a little disappointed at having survived considering the fact that he might have to do this all over again every Raviyani if it pleased the khumar.

The thought suddenly made him understand something that hadn't occurred to him before. Something that changed a lot of things for Hasheem.

They do this every Raviyani, he reminded himself. Every month, the new generation of Gray Warriors put their lives on the line for what was considered a ceremonial ride, a game, to test and sharpen their skills. There were riders as young as ten among them (six was how early some started training), and he counted at least eight riderless horses along the way. There would be more accidents before the hunt was over, and not all of them were going to make it, not in that kind of stampede. The riders hadn't slowed down or even glanced at those who'd fallen. They were used to this, to dying and being killed, to riding out from families and lovers on a day they were supposed to be celebrating knowing they might not return.

It dawned on him that day, in the middle of the race to the hunting ground, that he was now living among the hardest people in the peninsula, and that he was being forged by this, willingly or not, into something equally hard and might actually be seen as one of them from the eyes of an outsider.

But he was one of them, Hasheem corrected himself, feeling something growing in his chest, filling it until it was difficult to breathe. They were his people, had been from the very beginning despite all the years that had kept him away from the desert, or how they still saw him as a stranger. He could feel it here, now, the way his heart was pounding to the rhythm of the hoofbeats as they thundered through the valley. The excitement in the air that filled his lungs to the point of bursting as he rode high and weightless on the back of a horse. The rushing and pumping of blood in his veins that made him feel so alive in the midst of all this madness. It was in his flesh and blood, something built into his very instinct, this yearning to embrace the constant challenge of death and danger, of facing and conquering his worst fears as a part of everyday life. This was who he was, who he had always been and where he was supposed to be all along.

It was also why he'd survived in Rasharwi, Hasheem realized. He was a Shakshi. Hardships and warfare were his people's occupation, so were the ability to endure them and prevail that had been passed down for generations to every Shakshi man, woman, and child. This was the reason the Salasar had never conquered the White Desert. You couldn't break people who lived to defy death everyday while hiding behind the safety of a wall. Not without wounding yourself gravely in the process.

He remembered asking Dee about that—how Salar Muradi had done it, how the Vilarhiti had been taken. "With half the Salasar's army," Dee had said. "Dead," he'd added. Half of almost all the Salasar's soldiers never returned from that valley. The loss had been so great that it had taken them a decade to rebuild and replenish the supplies that had been lost in the massacre. They had the Vilarhiti but lacked the resources to go on with the campaign. With a damaged army, the other acquired provinces had also taken the opportunity to rise up and rebel for a chance to break free from the Salasar, resulting in another decade-long internal conflict Muradi had been forced to deal with. Even though he'd eventually succeeded without losing a single territory after a long, hard battle against three provinces at the same time, it had kept the Salasar's main army from marching into the White Desert again for eighteen years.

To most people, conquering the Vilarhiti was seen as the biggest achievement in the history of the Salasar. Those who had been directly involved in it, however, might be caught saying behind closed doors and amongst most trusted companions, that it was the biggest mistake Salar Muradi had ever made, victoriously or not.

But he had long since learned from that mistake, and could be expected to not make it again. "The next time he decides to strike, it would be a war to end all wars," Dee had said. And he would strike, eventually. Everyone knew this. The massacre at the Vilarhiti had left a scar too deep for a conqueror like Salar Muradi to not seek retribution. It was why he'd kept a bharavi by his bed—the same reason Za'in izr Husari kept his wife's setting at the dining table every night until now.

To Hasheem, there was pride in all this, in knowing he was a part of something that could inflict a wound to those he considered his enemies, and that despite everything they'd taken from him his people was still standing. No, not just standing, Hasheem corrected himself as he looked around him once more, but riding hard on a land that was still free, keeping tradition, holding pride, and smiling as they were doing now in the face of danger and the possibility of death. You could see it on all their faces, sense it in the air you breathe—the sweet, uplifting, dangerously addictive taste of what it felt like to be truly alive—something one would never fully understand without having defied death or faced the possibility of it.

Djari was right. He was enjoying this. Would have enjoyed it more had she been with them. He could imagine her smiling too, now, with those intense yellow eyes glowing in excitement, and that odd, near-silver hair tangling in the wind as she raced across the valley. He smiled briefly at that image, then realized that he might never see it. She would be married in two years into another kha'gan, where she would likely be kept safe and inside only to breed more oracles. If there had been anger building in his chest about Djari's lack of freedom, there was twice more of it now.

A horn sounded from up ahead and he shook himself from that thought. They must have been close to the valley. This stampede was only a ride to the main event. The real hunt, Hasheem thought, feeling a cold running down his spine, is about to begin.