Ausma Khan - The Blue Eye

“How can you claim to honor it, when your actions serve only yourself?”

“Oh? And what of you, Daniyar? When I sent Arian to Candour more than a decade ago, your duty was to teach her of the manuscripts of Candour. Not to train her in war. Nor to take her as your own. It was you who betrayed my trust, before I raised a hand against you.”

A contemptuous glance from eyes silvered over with frost. “My commitment to Arian was never a threat to Hira.”

“Your seduction of Arian was meant to sever her from the Council—you knew our traditions; you swore to defend her honor. Instead, you took her, claimed her, kept her.”

“No man keeps the First Oralist. She followed your dictates to the end. She gave me up to do so.”

There was a primal beauty to his rage, to the dark brows that slashed down over eyes of arctic fire. And Ilea was not insensible to it. So she marshaled her words against him.

“You only think you know her.” Her head tilted toward the sound of the Black Khan’s voice beyond the door. She was gathering information, another tool to exploit. Despite the warmth that pulsed through their linked hands, she felt the chill of his response in her bones. “You think you know a history even Arian doesn’t know. But as I warned you when you asked for dispensation, Arian is First Oralist. I will not cede her powers to your base desires.”

She made sure he heard the truth in her words. A rawer form of her magic raced along her arms, rippling through her veins to flare around the center of her power, vibrating with fire. But she knew he was too arrogant, too certain of his claim to be deflected.

“Your insults cannot diminish the loyalty that binds Arian to me.” His shrug was careless. “Besides which, you no longer have the power to command her. You dismissed her from the Council.”

She gave a crystal-edged laugh.

“What future are you imagining, Daniyar? That the two of you will leave this war and flee to a place of safety, so you might finally have the chance to prove to her your devotion?” A mocking reproof. “Are you no longer Guardian of Candour? Have you no other obligations beyond your undisciplined desires?”

His thoughts flashed to the Damson Vale.

When it was done … when he had passed on the trust of the Guardian of Candour, he would take Arian to his secret valley in the mountains.

She caught the thought from his mind with a hissed incantation of the Claim.

“So the limit of your ambition is the vale you deem an earthly paradise?” She laced the words with contempt, her nails digging into his palms. “What a parochial fate you would choose.”

“Only for someone who doesn’t know how to love.”

He felt her stillness in his own bones, knew the words had found their mark. The doors to the chamber opened, the Black Khan stepping inside. He perceived the tension between them without a word being said.

Ilea released one of Daniyar’s hands to raise a palm in invitation. Rukh moved to take it.

“Did I miss something?” he asked.

She made her voice low and inviting as Rukh pulled his stool to the table, leaning over the fragrant copper bowl. “How fortunate that you differ so greatly from the Silver Mage.”

“Oh?”

A sensual smile on her lips as she scored her nails against his palm.

“His pledge keeps him here at your side, when in truth he is longing to chase through the night after his beloved.” Her gaze moved between the two men, measuring one against the other, confident that in her ambition, she was greater than both. “But there is no place for honor in war, a truth you illustrate so well.”

Rukh dropped her hand. There was no merit to him in such a comparison, but angry at himself for allowing Ilea to provoke him, he picked up her hand again and kissed it.

“No doubt, I am to the Silver Mage what you are to the First Oralist.”

An unexpected glance of appreciation from Daniyar, even as Ilea turned her fury at the comparison on the Silver Mage.

“She’s not coming back to you.” The hit cold and precise.

Daniyar reached for Rukh’s other hand, completing the necessary circle. But it was also a gesture of fellowship.

“She doesn’t need to.”

“Oh?” The disdainful arch of a fine gold brow. “And why is that?”

“Because nothing that happens in Ashfall could keep me from her side.”

So confident, Ilea thought. So certain of his powers of attraction. So certain of the bond between Arian and himself. When she returned to Hira, her actions would sever that bond with the cold finality of truth.

She felt her power rise, augmented by his.

And savored the strike to come.

KHASHAYAR HAD WASTED NO TIME. HE’D FREED HIMSELF AND SLIT THE throats of the two men left to guard him. Quiet prevailed over the Shaykh’s tent as they stole out into the night to cross a wide ridge of sand, disturbing only the rest of cape hares burrowed deep in the grass, under a night of no moon, with stars flung up against the stony darkness.

“Horses?” Arian whispered to Khashayar.

He forged the path ahead, his footsteps sinking into sand, setting a harsh pace.

“It’s too risky to head back. We could be intercepted.” Arian kept pace beside him, though Sinnia was the more sure-footed over sand. Her steady hand propelled Wafa along, the boy stumbling more than once, as he kept glancing back to the camp.

“We’ll be discovered,” Sinnia warned. “We can’t outrun them.”

Khashayar herded them over another rib of sand, moving them farther west.

“I did some scouting earlier. They’ve set up a supply depot just south of us. There are camel herders there. If we can reach it in time …” He shot a grim glance at Arian and Sinnia. “Let me carry the boy.”

Without waiting for permission, he scooped up Wafa and settled him on his back.

“Hold on.” Then, to the Companions: “Now run.”

Wafa’s arms fastened around Khashayar’s neck in a death grip that he adjusted with a grimace. He set the grueling pace of a soldier trained from birth to overcome physical discomfort. His strength was enormous, his pace unflagging as he found a depression between two ridges of grass-feathered sand, its surface nearly flat.

Arian stumbled on the downslope of the ridge, falling to her hands and knees. Khashayar grabbed her under the arm and set her on her feet without breaking his rhythm. Sinnia flew beside him. When Arian brushed off her knees, she found herself staring at a startled caracal, whose tawny coat had camouflaged its hiding place in the sand.

She kept moving, hearing sounds of discovery break out in the camp behind them.

Not enough moon to trace their footprints in the sand, but all it would require to track them was a torch. The army of the Nineteen had men enough to spare to follow several different trails at once. Or they could save themselves the bother and ride the Companions to ground. A simpler method still: they could loose their hunting falcons on the night. It was what she would have done in their place.

All these thoughts raced through her mind as the wind whipped her hair against her face. She was the slowest of their party, Khashayar moving with deadly grace and Sinnia as though born to these sands.

Arian made her way across the depression, picking her steps with care over the swaying grass. She couldn’t see the depot ahead and was trusting to Khashayar’s instincts. She’d had a moment when she wanted to tell him to cut his losses and run—to return to Ashfall, to lend his strength to his Khan. But she needed him. She wouldn’t be able to cross the desert without him.

He cut south across the sand, Wafa clinging to his back. As the ridge dipped southward, the roof of stars cast a sharp orange flare against the sand. Her heart in her mouth, Arian feared they had fallen on a desert-dweller’s campfire. But the light dimmed with the curve of sand, and she realized what she’d seen was a field of orange poppies.