Days of Blood & Starlight(52)

“Very well,” Thiago said. His expression was so arranged. Karou imagined she could see the strings holding it in place, this benign Thiago-mask, and it made her furious. It was like beating her fists against a wall talking to him. “Go on, then,” he urged.

And she went, trying to have some dignity and not stomp like a powerless child. She went out the gate, and the breeze was stronger here: rot rot, wrong wrong. Bodies putrefying in a pit, and if she didn’t help them, the hikers would end up there, too, and any other humans who had the misfortune to wander too near this godforsaken place. What had she done, leading the rebels into this world?

But then she thought of Eretz, and what the rebels’ prospects would have been if she hadn’t—and the prospects for all chimaera—and she didn’t know what was right anymore. She’d wanted to believe that they could be trusted to have some humanity. They were soldiers, not brute killers, and not wild animals, either, whose appetites functioned beyond the reach of reason. She knew Amzallag wouldn’t harm anyone without justification, and neither would Balieros, or Ziri, or most of the others. But she had only to think of Razor—and his sack—to know that all bets were off.

She had to remind herself to keep her feet on the ground as she left the kasbah; it was her first impulse now to fly, so unaccustomed had she become to human society, and it wasn’t easy walking on the shifting scree.

She realized that her hair was uncovered. What if the hikers recognized her? They really could be a danger. But what was she supposed to do?

It didn’t take long for them to spot her. Coming down the slope from the fortress, she would be the only moving thing in sight. They were still too far off for her to see clearly, but she heard the cry that came at her, and she stopped walking like she’d hit a barrier. It came rolling over the rocks and scrub, full-throated but dissolving at the edges into weakness.

The voice.

It just wasn’t possible. But the cry was “Karou!” and the voice was Zuzana’s, and Karou had certainly learned that “possible” and “impossible” were rough categories at best. Oh god, no, she thought, staring at the figures and seeing what she had never expected to see: Zuzana and Mik, here.

Not them, not here.

How? How?

Did it matter? They were here, and they were in danger—of heatstroke, of chimaera—and Karou’s heart pounded and swelled within her—with panic, with… gladness… and more panic, and more gladness, and a surge of anger—what were they thinking?—then tenderness, astonishment, and her eyes were wet when her feet left the earth and she flew down the slope and caught them and crushed them in a hug that threatened to finish what the heat had begun.

It was really them. She drew back to look at them. Zuzana had sagged down with exhausted relief. Tear tracks stood out against the red of her cheeks, and she was laugh-crying, crushing Karou’s hands with a vise-tight grip—a squeeze right on the bruised web of her hand that made her gasp.

“Jesus, Karou,” Zuzana rasped, her voice spent in crying out. “The freaking desert? It couldn’t have been Paris or something?”

And Karou was laugh-crying, too, but Mik wasn’t laughing or crying. He had a careful hand at Zuzana’s back, and his face was tense with concern. “We could have died,” he said, and the girls fell silent. “I should never have agreed to this.”

After a beat, Karou agreed. “No, you shouldn’t.” She took in the desert panorama with new eyes, imagining coming across it on foot. “What on earth were you thinking?”

“What?” Mik stared at her, looked to Zuzana then back to Karou. “Didn’t you want us to come?”

Karou was taken aback. “Of course not. I would never… God. How did you even find me?”

“How?” Mik was helpless with frustration. “Zuze figured out your riddle, that’s how.”

Riddle? “What riddle?”

“The riddle,” Zuzana said. “Priestess of a sandcastle, in a land of dust and starlight.”

Karou blinked at her. She remembered writing that e-mail; she had just brought the chimaera through the portal to the kasbah, and had been in Ouarzazate scrounging supplies for Aegir. “That’s how you found me? Oh, Zuze. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean for you to come here. I never thought…”

“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me.” Mik raised his hands to his head and turned his back. “We’ve come to the godforsaken navel of nowhere and you don’t even want us here.”

Zuzana looked crestfallen. Karou felt horrible. “It’s not that I don’t want you!” She dragged her friend into another crushing hug. “I do. So much. So much. It’s just… I would never have brought you into… this.” She gestured to the kasbah.

“What is this?” Zuzana asked. “Karou, what are you doing out here?”

Karou opened her mouth and closed it again, twice, like a fish. Finally, she said, “It’s a long story.”

“Then it can wait,” Mik said firmly. Karou had never seen anger on his face before, but he was flushed with it now, his eyes narrow with accusation. “Can we please get her out of the sun?”

“Of course.” Karou took a deep breath. “Come on.”

She shouldered one of their packs and dragged the other. Mik helped Zuzana up the slope, and Karou didn’t take them the long way around to the granary, but the more direct route to the main gate, where they froze on the threshold and stared.