Girl, Serpent, Thorn(52)

“Aeshma,” the Shahmar said to him as they approached. “Is all as it should be?”

Aeshma turned at the sound of his voice and quickly bowed his head. “Yes, shahryar,” Aeshma said in a voice like a rattle. He gestured to the fight below. “Please, watch the battle below and see if your soldiers are as fierce as you wish them to be.”

“Thank you, Aeshma. Leave us now.”

Aeshma bowed again and retreated to the other side of the bridge.

“Shall we watch?” the Shahmar said, positioning Soraya in front of him for her to see the fight below. “These are my training grounds, and the kastars are my soldiers,” he said with pride.

“Kastars?” Soraya echoed, remembering the word from before—something Parvaneh had said about different kinds of divs.

“Kastars are large and brutish divs, their methods of destruction more obvious, as you can see below. The div you just saw—Aeshma—is a druj. I use the drujes as my generals. They’re smaller in build, but their minds are sharper and more strategic. Before I united them, the divs rarely worked together, their powers limited, which is why they were never able to accomplish more than petty violence and short-sighted raids. But joined under one vision, they can conquer kingdoms. As you’ve seen.”

“What about the pariks?” Soraya snapped, irritated by that last remark.

His hands tightened around her arms. “The pariks are spies, and cannot be trusted.”

With this new knowledge, Soraya surveyed the cavern once more, noticing that the divs practicing the drills were all larger than the divs who barked orders. Her gaze went back to the pit where the two divs were fighting—both of them kastars, large and menacing, showing no restraint.

Soraya had never seen a female soldier before. She had read stories of women who had donned armor and fought in armies, but she had never seen any herself, and so her eyes kept returning to the horned div and the pure, relentless fury of her movements. Soraya felt the impact of each blow that the horned div struck somewhere deep in her chest, as if the battle below were an extension of herself, the sound of metal against metal the scream that she had been holding inside her lungs for her entire life.

“Do you want to know why I brought you here, why I can’t bring myself to kill you?” the Shahmar said from behind her, his voice low and soft. “Because I know this is where you belong. I knew it the night we went to the dakhmeh. Before then, I thought you would merely be useful to me. But when I heard my story from your lips, when I saw you unleash all your fury on the yatu, I knew you deserved more than what your family had given you—as I once did.”

“I’m not like you,” Soraya said. She stared straight ahead, wishing she could tear her eyes away from the violence below and prove him wrong. “I won’t be like you.”

“That’s not what you told me that night, on the way to the dakhmeh.” He placed his hands on her shoulders, the tips of his claws brushing against her collarbone. “And do you remember what I told you? I said you were extraordinary—and I meant it. You came alive that night.”

Of course she remembered—he had stood behind her then, too, just like this, his hands on her shoulders, and she had wanted nothing more than to sink back against him.

Soraya twisted to face him, and his claws raked against her skin, leaving thin red scratches. “Then what good am I to you now?” she said in a rasp. “I’m not deadly anymore.”

He shook his head. “It isn’t the poison that makes you deadly, Soraya. It’s you. The poison was only a tool, a weapon like any other. But your will, your fury—that was what I saw in you. And I knew then that you were capable of anything. You proved that to me at the fire temple.”

At the mention of the temple, Soraya’s face went hot from shame. He kept using her words and actions against her, and she had no power to deny them. But before she could even try, a loud cry went up from below, and she spun to see the cause.

At first, she only saw the blood staining the dirt in the sparring pit below, and then she found its source: The gray div had buried his ax into the horned div’s arm. The horned div was bellowing in pain as blood spurted out of her like a gruesome fountain, while all around, the other divs cheered. The gray div removed his ax, and turned his back on the horned div, holding the ax above his head to the delight of the crowd. The horned div’s arm dangled uselessly from its socket, hanging on only by a few threads of muscle and skin, and her ax clattered down to the ground. Then the horned div ripped off the remains of her arm with a sickening tearing sound, threw it aside, and charged forward with a yell. Still boasting his triumph, the gray div didn’t notice the horned div’s attack until those horns went clean through his torso, impaling him.

Soraya put a hand over her mouth, afraid she would be ill, and turned away from the spectacle. Her hands were shaking, her eyes trying to blink away what she had seen, but along with the disgust and the nausea was a flood of relief that she was horrified at all—that she took no delight in the carnage, the way the other divs did. He’s wrong, her twisting stomach assured her. You don’t belong here.

The Shahmar silently led her away, back to the hallway. When they were in her room again, he told her he was returning to Golvahar, and so would not see her until the following night. Soraya heard his words in a daze, still trying to erase what she had seen.