Mazen slumped against the cave wall. He missed that version of his father.
“Sabah al-khair.” He startled as Aisha stepped into the sunlight, looking amazingly well rested for someone who had been dead and resurrected the day before. “Since you’re up early, do you want to go hunting with me?”
Mazen cringed. Yesterday he had watched ghouls maul a hare to death. It had not been “hunting” so much as a distraction. He hadn’t realized until later that Aisha had wanted to draw him away from Qadir, whom she’d sensed coming. Maybe she had wanted to give the jinn and the merchant time to work out whatever rift had grown between them.
Mazen darted a glance over his shoulder. Loulie and Qadir lay on opposite sides of the cave, backs turned to each other. It seemed Aisha’s plan had failed.
“Come.” Aisha grabbed his wrist and pulled him outside.
Mazen groaned as he rubbed at his eyes. “I thought I had a choice?”
“No. I just thought I’d give you the option before I forced you into it.”
And so they “hunted” once more, taking two ghouls with them and venturing into the desert to look for prey. Mazen wrapped his arms around himself in a useless effort to fight the chill. It was warmer outside beneath the light of the rising sun, but only marginally so. He was envious of Aisha, who didn’t seem to feel the cold at all in her tattered cloak.
The two of them followed the ghouls until a familiar, unnatural silence fell upon the desert. Mazen halted in place. This same thing had happened last night when the ghouls spotted an animal. At first, he had been convinced he and Aisha were their target, that whatever strange magic Aisha had gained from the ifrit had finally turned against her. But then the ghouls had brought back a hare, and Mazen had nearly sobbed with relief.
He and Aisha watched the ghouls climb a distant rock formation until they disappeared. They stood together in tense silence, waiting. Yesterday, Mazen had feared a possessed Aisha would bring him out into the desert and murder him. But thus far the Queen of Dunes had responded to him with exasperation, not violence. Mazen hoped it stayed that way.
Unbidden, he found his eyes wandering to the scars on Aisha’s arms, nothing but a flash of gray beneath her cloak. She caught his gaze and raised a finger. “My face is up here, Prince.”
Mazen flushed. “Sorry, I was just looking at—”
“My scars, I know. You are always too curious for your own good.”
She crossed her arms and shifted her gaze to the Sandsea. Mazen took one look at the ocean of ever-shifting sand and turned away, perturbed by its calmness. So much had happened in those sinking ruins—events he knew would be branded into his memory for the rest of his life.
He could not forget, so he did the next best thing: he attempted to distract himself by asking a question. “How does it work? This deal between you and the Queen of Dunes?”
Aisha’s eyes snapped back to him. “That’s Resurrectionist—” She cut herself off to glare at her feet, jaw clenched. Gradually, the tension eased from her body. “We’re still working it out. The deal was that I offer her my body in exchange for my life.”
“So she occasionally controls your movements?”
“No. But her thoughts—those are more difficult to untangle from my own.”
There was another beat of silence. Mazen did not bring up the sharp smiles he had seen slip onto her face, or the uncharacteristic gestures he had noticed yesterday. Instead he said, “And what have you gained from this deal? Besides, ah, your life?”
“Other than an inner voice that never shuts up? The ability to command a bunch of undead brutes, apparently.” Every word was sharp, bitter.
Mazen wasn’t sure whether to offer an apology or a consolation. He mused quietly on his response until Aisha looked up, and—perhaps it was a trick of the light, but her expression seemed to soften. “I chose this fate for myself, Prince; I do not need your pity.”
His heart sank. Sympathy is not pity, he wanted to say.
Not for the first time, he wondered at the thief’s jaded infallibility. We all start as cowards, she had told him in the ruins. But it was hard to imagine she had ever been craven. The only time he had seen her falter, when she had been desperate for help—
It took a great deal of effort to shove aside the memory of the knife cutting through her throat and to quiet his reeling mind. Thankfully, the return of sound to the desert scattered his thoughts. He looked up as the ghouls returned, carrying… another hare.