Authors: S.K. Valenzuela
“I brought you this.” He pulled a silver
chain crusted with amethysts out of his pocket. “All of the noble
ladies of our city wear one of these. Aliya wanted you to have this
one.”
Sahara stared at it, glittering in the palm
of Jared’s hand. “I don’t wear things like that,” she said
stiffly.
“Why not?” He knelt suddenly and fastened it
around her left ankle. “There,” he said, straightening up. “Now you
do.”
She looked at the anklet and shivered
suddenly, uncontrollably.
“What’s the matter?” he asked. “Don’t you
like it?”
“
Don’t you like it, daughter?” her father
asked, watching her with a smile as she toyed with the jeweled
silver chain around her ankle.
“
It’s beautiful, Papa,” she said, bouncing
up to kiss his cheek. “I’ll wear it forever.”
Forever…forever….
The silver anklet tinkled to the floor,
shattered by cruel pliers, replaced by a prisoner’s shackle…then
the walk down that corridor stinking of blood and death….
“Are you all right?” Jared asked, laying a
hand on her arm.
Sahara slapped his hand away and retreated to
the end of the balcony. “Take it off,” she gasped, kneeling and
clawing at the clasp. “I can’t wear this…I can’t…”
He was at her side in a moment, kneeling
beside her, undoing the chain. When it was off, she sat back
against the balustrade, panting.
“Why don’t you tell me what just happened,”
Jared said, very slowly and very quietly. “Because I don’t
understand.”
“Yeah, well, there’s a lot you don’t
understand.”
“No. I’m not going to take that for an answer
this time, Sahara. I’ll never understand if you don’t start
explaining.”
She turned on him, her eyes snapping fury. “I
don’t want to explain to you, Jared. It doesn’t matter,
anyway!”
“If it causes you to react like that to a
gift given out of kindness, then it surely does matter,” he said,
his voice still low. After a long pause, he added, “Those memories
will haunt you for your whole life if you don’t release them,
Sahara.”
She was crying now. “You don’t know anything
about my memories! You don’t know anything!”
“I do know something about memories, Sahara.
About my own.” He sat back against the railing and gazed at the
silver bangle in his hands. “I was forced to watch my own father’s
execution—my father’s and my two older brothers’. And my mother
died of grief…I saw that too.” His jaw suddenly tightened. “My only
sister was cut down in front of my eyes, fighting for the freedom
that my father had always wanted us to have.” He swallowed hard and
then stared Sahara straight in the eyes. “So I know a thing or two
about dealing with traumatic experiences.”
Sahara suddenly felt how selfish she had
been, as if the point had been driven into her on the tip of a
knife. “I…I’m sorry,” she said, wondering at the words as she said
them. “I didn’t know.”
“No, you didn’t. But now that you do know,
why don’t you try trusting me a bit? I have a strong sense that our
pasts are alike somehow, and an even stronger one that those
memories are destroying you inside.”
Sahara leaned her head back and stared up
into the bright blue of the sky. “I’m just not ready to talk,” she
said finally. “I need more time.”
Jared held out the anklet. “This is yours to
keep,” he said. “Wear it or not, as you please.”
She took it, the metal warm from his hands.
“I can’t wear this today,” she said. “But I will keep it.”
There was a noise in the courtyard, a faint
tinkling that grew steadily louder. Jared rose and held out his
hand. “Care to join me for breakfast?”
She hesitated. “Did you mean what you
said?”
“What?”
“That I look nice?”
His smile was like warm sunshine after rain.
“I don’t say things I don’t mean, Sahara.”
“Then I’d be happy to join you.”
She put her hand in his and they went inside
together.
When she entered the hall with Jared a few
minutes later, everyone stood and all conversation died away into a
profound silence. Sahara’s grip on Jared’s hand tightened
convulsively, and he gave her fingers a reassuring squeeze.
“A place for the stranger!” called someone at
the far end of the table. “Here, Jared! There are places for you
here.”
Sahara’s gaze snapped to the speaker—a young
man with tawny curls and a ready smile. He seemed friendly enough,
but there was something about him that made her feel uneasy.
Jared led Sahara around the table to the
empty seats. The young man pulled out the chair beside him and
motioned for Sahara to sit. The others in the hall resumed their
seats as well, and talk once more swirled through the room.
“I’m Kirin,” the young man said as soon as
she was seated.
Sahara managed to smile at him, and found
herself studying his—the irises a bright silver, the pupils wide
and dark. They would slowly fade to obsidian at nightfall,
following the track of the sun.
When Kirin’s smile widened, she realized that
she was staring at him, so she dropped her gaze to her plate. Then
she peeked sidelong at Jared from under her lashes. He was eating
calmly, pulling pieces of bread apart with his fingers and popping
them one by one into his mouth. His cool, quiet confidence was
marked next to Kirin’s eagerness. Sahara frowned slightly,
shuddering away from her sudden appreciation of her rescuer.
“What’s your name?” Kirin was asking her.
“Would you like some water? Some of this juice? It’s delicious—made
from a native fruit. Do you have enough bread to satisfy you?”
Jared leaned across her and said, “Why don’t
you let her eat what’s already in front of her before you start
pushing seconds?”
So he
is
listening
, Sahara
thought with the tiniest thrill of triumph.
She ignored Kirin’s questions and tasted some
of the bread. It was delicate and slightly sweet, filled with dried
fruits and nuts. There was cold water in her mug, and she drank
gratefully. A small pot of something squatted beside her plate, its
tiny spoon next to it.
“What’s this?” she asked, turning to
Jared.
“It’s honey,” Kirin answered quickly.
He leaned over and put the spoon in the pot,
twirling some of the golden liquid around the bowl and then lifting
it out again. The honey slid back into the pot in a thick, slow
stream.
Sahara looked at him blankly. “Honey? What’s
that?”
Kirin gaped at her. “You’ve never had honey
before? How remarkably strange! You mean —”
“It’s not nearly as strange as answering
questions meant for someone else,” she retorted.
Kirin’s face flushed, then paled, and then he
grinned. “Would you like to taste this?”
Sahara frowned at him and tried to turn her
head away, but he moved too quickly. He shoved the spoon laden with
the golden liquid between her lips.
Something snapped inside her.
Before she even recognized what she was
doing, Sahara had him out of his chair and against the wall, a
dagger at his throat. There were gasps and the noise of chairs
clattering to the floor as the men jumped to their feet and drew
their weapons. Jared was beside her in a moment, his hand locked
around the wrist of her knife-hand.
“Let him go,” he murmured in her ear.
Sahara hesitated. A drop of sweat trembled on
the end of Kirin’s nose, his eyes half-shut with fear. His fear
roused her to loathing. He was weak and stupid. She gave him
another shove and his head knocked against the wall.
“Touch me again and you die,” she gritted
through clenched teeth. “Understand?”
“Sahara.” Jared’s voice was in her ear, his
grip on her wrist tightening ever so slightly.
Sahara released Kirin like a piece of dung,
jerked her hand out of Jared’s grasp, and slid the knife back into
its sheath at the small of her back. Jared propelled her back to
her seat as Kirin stalked out of the hall, viciously kicking a
chair that lay across his path.
Gradually, but with murmurs of discontent,
the men set their chairs upright and took their seats again.
Everyone was watching her warily now, and talk was tense.
Jared laid his arm across the back of her
chair and leaned in to whisper in her ear, “That probably wasn’t
the wisest thing you could have done, but I guess he deserved it.”
He paused, and then added, “Where did you find that knife?”
“In the drawer,” she whispered back. She
hazarded a glance around the table, meeting frowns and furrowed
brows everywhere.
“Perhaps the stranger would like to introduce
herself and offer this hall some explanation for her extraordinary
conduct,” a clear voice rang out from the head of the table.
“Now.”
Jared’s arm slid off the back of her chair
and Sahara stood, feeling suddenly alone. All her anxieties and
fears about this moment returned, but then she felt an upsurge of
resentment toward Jared for bringing her into this situation in the
first place. She’d tried to tell him this was a bad idea. He just
hadn’t listened to her.
Anger made her bold, freezing out fear and
every other emotion.
She raised her head and searched out the man
who had spoken. He was the one who had been standing with Aliya and
Jared in the courtyard last night. Arnauld. That was his name. This
was his hall, then—these his subjects. And she had just made him an
enemy.
So be it.
“No,” she said. “I wouldn’t.”
A gasp rippled around the table, and everyone
turned to see what Arnauld would do. His face was a blank mask, but
his eyes widened.
“Did you just say no?”
“I said no.”
Arnauld chuckled, but there was no gentle
indulgence in it. “You mistake my meaning, I think, stranger. It’s
not really a question. It’s an order.”
“Order all you like. I owe you no allegiance.
And I will not speak.”
Jared made a warning noise in his throat, but
Sahara ignored him.
“You are a guest in my house,” the man
continued, the heat rising in his voice. “And without our
hospitality, dare I remind you, you would be dead. It is on that
debt that I charge you to speak your name and explain why you have
abused one of my men and disrupted our meal.”
“I never asked for your hospitality. You gave
it to me freely. I owe you nothing.”
Another noise from Jared, but Sahara was
thoroughly angry now.
“Do not provoke us to compel your answer,
stranger.”
Sahara’s knife flashed in her hand, and then
suddenly became two knives. The blades caught the light as she
twirled them in her hands, finding the grip.
“I’d like to see you, or anyone else in this
hall, try to compel anything from me.”
Before she could react, someone seized her
around the waist from behind, pinioning both her arms to her sides.
Her captor placed a blade against her throat, forcing her head back
onto his shoulder. She glanced up.
“Jared!” she gasped.
“My lord Arnauld,” said Jared, “perhaps
she’ll show a bit more courtesy now.” Sahara struggled, but she
couldn’t wrestle herself out of his grasp. Jared murmured in her
ear, “Stop fighting me. I’m just trying to teach you some
manners.”
“Since Jared can be persuasive when he needs
to be,” Arnauld said, “perhaps now you’d like to tell us who you
are and how you came to be among us. And why you treated Kirin with
such disrespect.”
“As for that boy who ran off to nurse his
wounded pride,” Sahara fired back, “why don’t you teach it in your
hall that men shouldn’t force themselves on women? If that’s what I
should expect from your hospitality—” she struggled against Jared’s
arm again, her breast heaving—“then please take me back into the
desert and leave me there to rot.”
Arnauld inclined his head slightly, his eyes
never leaving her face. “I grant you that, stranger. He was out of
line. It won’t happen again. But that doesn’t excuse the violence
of your response.”
“We’ll have to agree to disagree on that
point.” She bucked suddenly, hoping to take Jared by surprise. His
grip around her only tightened.
“Calm down,” Jared murmured. “I’m not going
to hurt you, you know. Your heart is racing as if you were afraid
I’d actually slit your throat!”
She glared up at him wordlessly.
Just you
wait until we’re out of here!
she thought.
Jared’s eyes suddenly widened, and his grip
around her waist slackened for an instant. His mouth opened as if
he had something to say, but Arnauld spoke first.
“Who are you, and why are you here?”
Sahara lifted her chin and pressed her lips
together. She had no intention of telling this man anything.
Jared’s hold on her tightened.
“Tell him,” Jared whispered. “I don’t want to
have to hurt you. But if he gives the order, I will.”
Sahara’s gut seethed with the hot coils of
helpless anger. “My name is Sahara. Sahara Acwellan. As for why I’m
here, why don’t you ask him? He’s the one who found me and dragged
me here.”
“What you were doing out that far in the
desert? None of our people ever venture beyond the dunes, and it’s
been many months since we’ve seen anyone from the southern
settlements.”
“My ship crashed,” she answered.
Bodies all around her…the smell of blood and
burned flesh…the flames…
She struggled against Jared, feeling panic
begin to pool in her stomach. “Please,” she whispered to him,
“please, I can’t breathe…I can’t breathe…”
His arm relaxed a little, but he kept the
dagger at her throat.
“What ship?” demanded Arnauld.
“The prison ship.”
Impact…the cage was coming down…it would
crush her….
“What prison ship, if you please?”
She barely heard him. Her breathing was
ragged, her mouth parched.