The wind howled as it rushed over them, adding yet another blood-curdling note to the rumbling hoofbeats and the sounds of slaughter down below.

Ogui, Zozi had called him. A Rashai word they used to call raid survivors that had no use in the slave quarters or the pleasure district. Those who became beggars or scavengers, wandering aimlessly in the desert with no real purpose in life. The scums. The garbage. The leeches of the society.

Better a fucking leech, Hasheem thought, than one of them.

"Take your pick, why don't you?" Hasheem hissed, his anger about to go through the roof. "I'll be sure to take mine when you come for it. What are you waiting for?"

Zozi swore and kicked his mount forward, closing the gap between them. Hasheem's hand gripped hard on the hilt of his sword in an instant, yanking half its length free from the scabbard.

"Clear that blade, and I will have that arm, right here, right now!" Nazir's warning speared through the air to address Hasheem, his words carried over to the rest of the men who suddenly stiffened on their mount. Then he whipped his head towards Zozi, stared him down, eyes blazing golden. "You. Stand down!"

A moment of stillness blanketed the area. Hasheem held on to the hilt of his blade, watching his opponent quietly and waited. The first reaction to that command, whatever it would be, wasn't going to come from him.

A few breaths later, Zozi sheathed his sword and pulled back a step, before inclining his head respectfully to the khumar. Hasheem snapped his back into the scabbard but kept his hand in place as he continued to assess the situation. 'It's never over until you're on your bed with a drink in one hand and a woman in the other,' Dee's words circled in his mind, 'and even then she may still cut your throat.' He'd learned that lesson a long time ago. Had survived heeding it. Not going to quit now.

"I will have no more bloodshed on my watch here today." Nazir turned his mount to face Hasheem. "You will have to pick a limb, or Djari will pick one. Do what you need to do to get your shit together. I expect you to be back at camp before Raviyani is over. Run, and Djari will pay for your treason. Do that, and I'll hunt you down like a dog and tie you to the gate of Sabha after I'm done working on you. Zozi." The man straightened abruptly at the tone, the small grin that had been drawn during the speech disappeared in an instant. "You will accompany me back to camp where you will be on guard duty tonight for having fired that last arrow after the horn. Try me again, and we will be discussing which limb of yours to remove."

And with that, Nazir turned his horse and left with the rest of the White Warriors, followed not so far behind by Zozi who looked like he'd just swallowed some horse dung by mistake.

Hasheem watched the party disappear from the slope, his stomach churning at the number of choices he had left to make. Losing a limb wasn't a problem—missing body parts had been a common enough sight where he'd lived or now resided—but staying meant he would have to live with these men who weren't any different from the Rashais they called their enemies. The truth was, everywhere he ran, he seemed to end up where he'd started.

'Run, and Djari will pay for your treason.'

Some choice, that, Hasheem thought with a grimace before shifting his gaze to a different direction.

The sun was low on the horizon, bleeding on the hunting ground below and painting the ivory rocks of the desert bright red. The hunt was starting to die down, and the warriors had already begun to clear the valley floor. Hasheem turned to the one figure left by the big rock, at whose feet laid the body of his brother. Khali was still there, staring at the arrow sticking out of Khodi's eye, his face a thin sheet of ice over a bottomless depth of some muddy water you didn't want to step in.

It might have been the need to justify the situation, or simply the way he'd chosen to distract himself that led to him climbing off Summer's back to approach Khali. It wasn't something he would usually do, not with someone he'd just met or known so little about.

He stopped a few steps behind the boy, giving him time to notice his presence. Khali tilted his head back just enough to identify him and turned back to his brother, or what was once his brother.

"You shouldn't be here," Khali said after some time, eyes still fixed on the corpse.

"You'll need help bringing him back." It was the least he could do seeing how nobody else seemed to be around for that. In a way, it felt as if they were all trying to keep their distance for some reason.

"Leave," Khali said firmly without turning around, "before Nazir finds it another offense."

He snorted at that. "I don't give a fuck how Nazir finds it." The words were out of his mouth before he realized it might, indeed, be considered another insult and yet he didn't find it in him to care. It would probably cost him just another limb. He'd lived with worse. Everyone who'd survived Sabha had lived with worse.

Khali shut his eyes and exhaled a long, harsh breath, as if annoyed by the need to respond. "You don't get it, do you?" He shook his head and turned to look at Hasheem, a grimace on his face, eyes filled with too many emotions to name. "My brother defied the khumar. That made him a traitor. That made me and everyone in my family a traitor. We all die tonight if the kha'a doesn't find that arrow a sufficient show of loyalty." He pointed at the arrow in his brother's eye, grinding his teeth as he spoke. "Until that decision has been made I am a possible traitor, my family a threat to the kha'gan and so does anyone who associates himself with me. You are Djari's sworn sword and blood. She's held accountable for all your actions. You need to leave and leave now before someone sees you're aiding me and make the wrong assumptions."

Another gust of wind rushed through the valley, and Hasheem felt his entire body going numb at those words. How had he not seen it? Khodi had been the eldest son of their chief, a man who ruled one-fifth of the kha'gan's population. An act of defiance from him was treason that extended to the entire family. They could never be trusted now, not until they could prove it, somehow, that the incident had been an isolated one, that this had been a case of a son going rogue and not a conspiracy against the ruling family. And they were going to have to prove it in a way that left no one with the slightest amount of threat to remain alive.

If the kha'a doesn't find that arrow a sufficient show of loyalty.

It had to be Khali. Nazir knew this and had made sure of it to at least save the boy's life. The execution had to be done swiftly and without hesitation to prove his loyalty to Nazir. Khali had to loose that arrow without pause, without betraying the slightest hint of bitterness as he did or afterward, to show them how far he was willing to go to fulfill a khumar's command. Still, his family remained at risk tonight, and him being here, offering a hand, could kill them all.

He was, after all, Djari's sworn sword and blood. His wrong doings were also hers. She would be punished along with him if he were to be considered a traitor by the kha'gan. Nazir or the kha'a would surely end that possibility before it became a reality, even if it meant putting an entire family to the sword before word got out that he might be taking Khali's side in this.

"I didn't ... know," he said breathlessly, his skin crawling at the ignorance he'd shown. This was both dangerous and stupid. He had defied Nazir, put an entire family at risk, and Djari along with it.

Khali shook his head, his expression somewhere between pity and disgust. "No," he said, "How could you have known? You walk among us like a ghost, leeching on our food and water when Nazir had stood up for you, made you Djari's sworn sword, and brought you into his family. The kha'a's family! You've been here a month and all you've done was lurking in the shadows, excluding yourself from everything as if we're not good enough for you. Make a decision, ogui, or your ignorance will bring down this kha'gan and everyone in it. Are you one of us or are you not?"

In front of him, Khali stood with his chest heaving, burning green eyes pinned him down like a spear to the throat. And all Hasheem could do was to stand there, looking back, searching for the right words to respond to what he knew, deep down, had been nothing but the truth.

He had been living like a ghost in the kha'gan, without use or purpose, passing each day watching everything from afar. He held no position because he didn't want one, had even turned down the possibility when Nazir offered it to him. The emptiness of his quiver was the result of it, so was the fact that he was standing here when he should have understood the risk and followed Nazir back to camp. His existence was a liability to Djari, to Nazir, to the kha'a's family. It would ruin them, unless he committed himself to the kha'gan and earned his place in it.

He never gave Khali that answer. He'd left him there and rode back alone to camp, lost in his own thoughts and exhausted by everything that had happened that day. The thrill of the hunt still lingered under his skin, the pounding of his heart that had made him feel so alive could still be felt in his chest. He had found a part of himself that had been lost long ago in the desert. He'd found Djari, the shining beacon that had given his life direction, purpose, and hope that he hadn't known still existed within him. And he'd found Nazir, who wanted to give him a place, a position, the power to change things he'd never had. He could stay and embrace it all. Become a real part of the kha'gan. Get his life back. Start over. Live, and love again.

Is it ever that simple?

Hasheem sneered at his own thoughts. Starting over had never been a problem. It was living and loving knowing the cost of it that scared him to death.

Everyone he'd ever loved died, everything he'd ever cared about had been burned to the ground, destroyed by something, someone. He'd been through all that, only this time he wouldn't survive it. He didn't think he could.

Perhaps it was why he hadn't interfered when Mara was married, knowing what he knew. Why he hadn't gone to see her when she'd sent the letter. Being involved was to tie himself to yet another thing that could be lost, and he'd lost Mara anyway only it was less painful a loss, because he'd never really allowed himself to love her, or lifted a finger to do anything about it. Guilt was always easier to live with than failure, just as it was always easier to turn a blind eye to things and blame someone else.

But there was no room for that pathetic, cowardly way out of life now, was there?

'...your ignorance will bring down this kha'gan and everyone in it. Are you one of us or are you not?'

Khali was right. He would have to make that choice now with Djari. Stay and be a real part of the kha'gan, or leave and Djari would pay for his treason, and he had only until that Raviyani was over to make that decision.

He looked down at the scars on his wrists made by years of being shackled at Sabha, sneering at the thought that suddenly came to his mind. In a way, life was so much easier when your choices were made for you, and he was beginning to miss being rid of freedom. What was it that Dee had said when he'd bought his freedom from the House of Azalea, walking him out of the pleasure district?

"Welcome to deepest level of hell, where real torture begins and never ends.