The Last Namsara (Iskari #1)(89)

“And I want you to rule,” said Asha.

He pulled away from them both. Asha let him go. Let him get to his feet.

“This is what good leaders do,” he said, not daring to look either of them in the eye. He seemed every bit a hero in his dirty scrublander clothes and his tearstained cheeks. “They make sacrifices for their people.”

Asha thought of the day she burned the scrolls, when Dax told her the Old One hadn’t abandoned them. He was just waiting for the right moment. The right person.

He’s waiting for the next Namsara to make things right.

Asha thought Dax a fool that day. Now, though, as her brother turned and left the tent, she thought something very different.

There. There is our Namsara.

Safire stayed behind, continuing to sharpen her throwing knives while she waited for the signal.

“You have to stop him,” said Asha the moment Dax left the tent.

Without looking up from her work, Safire said, “I’m planning on it.”

Asha leaned her head back against the wood post, listening to the drawn-out hiss of steel on the whetstone.

Safire stopped suddenly, lowering the sharpened knife in her lap. “Whatever happens, I want you to know I love you.”

Asha looked into her cousin’s eyes. “What?”

“As much as I want you at my side in there”—she nodded toward the tent entrance, toward the city—“I can’t bear the thought of what Jarek will do to you if this all goes completely wrong.”

Asha stared at her cousin, horrified. “What he’ll do to me? Think of what he’s already done to you, Saf.”

Her cousin held up the knife edge, examining it. “All I need is one clear shot.”

Asha didn’t like this thought. She looked away, angry. They should be going in together. But as the tent darkened around her and Safire’s departure crept closer, Asha let her head fall against her cousin’s shoulder.

They sat in silence for a long time, both of them thinking of what would happen if it did all go wrong. They were still sitting there, with Asha’s head on Safire’s shoulder and Safire’s knife lowered in her lap, when footsteps crunched on the hard, dry earth.

“Safire?” Jas entered the tent. “It’s time.”

Just before she rose, Safire leaned in close. “Don’t you dare do anything reckless.”

Asha stared as her cousin pushed herself to her feet, tucking the sharpened knife into her belt.

“Don’t you do anything reckless,” Asha countered as Safire walked past Jas, who held up the tent flaps for her to step through. When she did, Jas turned to Asha, solemnly fisted his hand over his heart, then dropped the tent flaps, cutting them both off from view.

Reaching for the whetstone her cousin left behind, Asha drew the axe at her hip. She’d taken it from the weapons caravan almost as soon as it arrived in New Haven. Made of acacia wood, the unadorned handle was worn and smooth.

Slowly, carefully, Asha started to sharpen it.





Forty-Six


Asha couldn’t tell how much time had passed. Only that it grew dark shortly after Safire left with Jas, and it was still dark.

Too dark.

And too quiet.

Footsteps rose up, crunching the dry pine needles littering the ground outside the tent. Asha rose from the dirt floor and tucked her axe into her belt.

This is it. They’ve secured the gate.

The tent flaps whispered open. Roa stood in the entrance, alone, with a torch in her hand. The tent flaps fell shut behind her, sealing them in together.

“Something’s wrong.” Her dark gaze sliced into Asha. “Essie’s returned, but the gates are shut tight.”

“What?”

“I think they’ve been captured.”

Fear spiked in Asha. Everyone she loved was in the city. They couldn’t be captured. Because that meant everyone she loved was in the hands of the two people who wouldn’t think twice about hurting them—in order to hurt her.

“Maybe there are too many soldats guarding the gate,” Asha said, wishing she was still leaning against the tent pole. Wishing she had something to bear her up. “Maybe they’re regrouping.”

“They’ve had all night to return and collect more soldiers. It’s almost dawn.” Roa lifted the tent flap, waiting for Asha. “We’re going in.”

They couldn’t go in on dragonback—not with the commandant in possession of so many hostages. Roa feared the sight of dragons would push Jarek to start taking lives, beginning with the least important.

Asha didn’t like to think about who the least important would be.

“The tunnel, then?”

Roa nodded, her eyes glittering in the torchlight.

A familiar craving curled like smoke in Asha’s belly. She wanted to hunt. Not a dragon, though. Never again would she hunt a dragon. Tonight she would hunt her own husband.

Roa whistled, holding up the torch. Out of the darkness two young women materialized. Asha recognized both of them from the night of Dax and Roa’s binding.

“This is Lirabel,” said Roa, touching the shoulder of Jas’s friend and then the girl beside her. “And Saba.”

Lirabel wore her gleaming black curls bound in a thick braid over her shoulder; Saba wore her hair in two plaits running down each side of her head. Judging by their belt quivers and the bows slung over their shoulders, they were archers.