The Last Namsara (Iskari #1)(21)

She hated the way Dax was looking at her. As if her very existence disappointed him. As if he was just realizing now that Asha was a horror.

It reminded her of a story of two siblings: one formed out of sky and spirit, the other out of blood and moonlight.

Where Namsara brought laughter and love, Asha thought, Iskari brought destruction and death.

Safire stepped up to Dax’s side. “I agree with Dax.”

Asha glared at her cousin, feeling betrayed.

“Jarek is the commandant,” Asha reminded them. “He’s obligated to carry out the law, and that slave is his property.” She suddenly thought of the skral’s hands, carefully bandaging her burn. She quickly shook the memory away. “There’s nothing I can do.”

“Horseshit,” said Dax. “You can try.”

She scowled at him.

“Please, Asha. How much more can I beg?”

The last time she remembered her brother begging was when, as a child, she’d stolen Jarek’s favorite sword and dropped it in the sewer. Before Jarek could punish her, Dax took the blame. Jarek forced him to beg for mercy. As Jarek pinned Dax to the floor, hurting him, Asha watched with tears in her eyes, not brave enough to confess.

Dax must have sensed he was getting to her, because he went on.

“You’re his weakness, Asha. Use that. Charm him. Entice him. Do what . . . what every other girl does to get what she wants.”

At those words, Safire stepped away, horrified.

Asha’s lip curled. The thought of enticing Jarek made her stomach prickle.

“Or . . . not,” Dax said when he noticed the looks on their faces.

“I don’t have time for this,” Asha said, thinking of the waning red moon. She had a dragon to hunt down and only six more days to do it. She needed to get back to the Rift.

Asha moved past her brother, heading for the door.

“Wait. . . .”

She didn’t.

“What if I gave you this.”

Asha stopped at Safire’s door. The wood, rotting. The brass handle tarnished with age. If someone wanted to hurt Safire, they could easily break down this door. It needed to be replaced.

“It belonged to our mother.”

She turned as Dax tugged something off his too-thin finger, then held it out to her. A ring carved out of bone lay on his palm. But it wasn’t the ring that caught her attention first. It was the calluses on his fingertips. They looked just like the calluses on the fingers of Jarek’s slave.

“Father made it for her.”

Jealousy dug its claws into Asha’s heart. Their mother’s possessions had been burned after her death. Why was this one missed? And why should Dax get to keep it?

“Father gave it to me just before I left for the scrublands.” Dax stepped toward her. “If you get Torwin out of this, I’ll give it to you.”

Asha thought of her mother, dying in bed. Poisoned by the old stories.

She didn’t have anything of her mother’s. Why had her father given their mother’s ring to Dax?

Because I don’t deserve it. Because if it weren’t for me, she never would have told the old stories aloud. If it weren’t for me, she’d still be alive.

Asha might not deserve her mother’s ring, but she wanted it.

And while she would never admit it, while she didn’t even understand it, she wanted something else. Wanted a certain heart to go on beating.

“Fine.”

Dax smiled one of his bright smiles. It didn’t make her feel better. Instead, it highlighted just how thin his face had become, how much weight he’d lost.

What happened out there? she wondered.

She shoved the question away and made for the door.

Safire went to follow her, but Asha threw a warning look. No way was she taking her cousin with her to barter for the life of an insubordinate slave. If Asha were going to interfere with a lawful sentence, she would do it with Safire far away. Asha would not remind Jarek of the most effective way to punish her for crossing him.

Just before Asha stepped into the dimly lit corridor, where torches threw eerie shadows across the walls, she heard Dax say, “What happened to her arm?”

“She won’t tell me,” Safire said.

Asha shut the door tight on them both.





Nine


Jarek’s front door opened on the first knock. A gray-haired slave knotted with age hunched in the archway, her dark cheeks glistening with tears.

The presence of a skral startled Asha. The law dictated that all slaves be in the furrow by sundown.

“I need to see the commandant,” she said, pushing the door open and entering a turquoise corridor smelling like rose water. Finely woven carpets cushioned her feet.

An angry shout echoed through the halls, followed by an unmistakable sound: the sharp smack of the shaxa—a piece of cord knotted with shards of bone. Asha heard it hit and tear, again and again, at the flesh of someone’s back.

The elderly slave whimpered. Asha made her way past elaborately carved cedarwood doors inlaid with ivory and brass. She passed room after room after room until she came to the small court at the heart of the commandant’s home, where the heady smell of moonflowers enveloped her.

And then she saw the slave.

He slumped in the shallow fountain pool. The lanterns hanging in the galleries cast him in shadow, but she could see his hands bound and tied to the fountainhead. Blood streamed down his back and into the water of the pool, turning it pink.