Qadir raised a brow. “You have qualms about a killer murdering other killers?”
“I have qualms about murder, period.” Murder. The single word made her think back to the killer in black she had been discussing with the tribesman.
It was as if Qadir could read her mind. “Good. If you detest murder so much, then I assume you won’t seek vengeance on some killer you may or may not know.”
“Of course not.” She knew even before gauging Qadir’s reaction that she had spoken too fast. She always did when she was lying. She stood abruptly. “I’m going to walk around the campsite before I go back to sleep.”
Qadir silently handed her a lantern flashing with his fire.
“You worry worse than my mother did.” She grabbed the lantern from him.
Qadir sighed. “You have self-destructive tendencies; I have to worry.”
Loulie rolled her eyes and walked away. She was glad Qadir could not see her face, because she was certain the battle waging in her heart would manifest in her expression. Loulie did not know what she would do—but she would do something.
It wasn’t in her nature to let bygones be bygones.
37
MAZEN
“Wake up, Prince.” Aisha’s voice was feather soft, and yet in the extreme silence of the tent, it startled him awake. Mazen slowly sat up, rubbing sleep from his eyes as his foggy mind pieced together where and when he was: the middle of the desert, many miles out from the Bedouin campsite they’d left three days ago, on their way to the city of Ghiban.
He glanced blearily around their tent, which was swathed in the golden shadows of dawn. Their belongings were untouched, their surroundings unchanged. But the silence—that was new.
Aisha was crouched down beside him, a severe dent between her brows. She raised a finger to her lips and mouthed a single word.
Ghouls.
Mazen rose shakily to his feet. He said nothing as Aisha whispered commands, instructing him to pack the tent and secure the supplies.
The unnatural silence was so heavy it made every exhale too loud, every step a too-sharp crunch. The quiet suffocated even the sigh of the wind. It was as if the world itself were holding its breath. Was this the work of the ghouls they had avoided days ago?
It took a great effort to tamp down his fear as he and Aisha collapsed the tent and met the merchant and her bodyguard outside. They looked miserable, bundled in layers to fight off the frigid morning cold. Loulie had even donned her Midnight Merchant vestments atop her plain attire, though she still shuddered beneath them. Mazen sympathized; his brother’s cloak felt inadequate.
Loulie and Qadir acknowledged them with terse nods, then mounted their horses in silence.
It was a tacit rule that no one speak.
Mazen had not realized how loud the desert was until it went completely silent. He had been unnerved the last time they skirted this eerie quiet, but this silence was worse—far worse. Gone was the whisper of the sand and the sigh of the breeze. He had never paid much attention to the noise his horse’s hooves made on the ground, but now he could not stop thinking about how loud every crunch was.
Traveling through the desert was an already exhausting endeavor, but to do it while attempting to suffocate all sound made the journey doubly tiring. It suddenly seemed as if every motion was dangerous: the rustling of his equipment as he shifted on his saddle, the click of the stirrups every time he urged his horse in a different direction, and even the hiss of the sand as it gathered and slid off his clothing in undisturbed streams.
Mazen rubbed his hands together in an effort to warm them and tried not to think about how parched his throat was and how he was too nervous to reach for the waterskin tucked deep into his saddlebags. The others seemed to be existing in a similar state of uncertainty. They wore their misery plainly, etched into their faces as frowns and slumped onto their shoulders like an invisible weight. Aisha may as well have been a statue, her gaze trained ahead, her fingers so stiff on the reins it hardly looked like she was gripping them at all.
Hours went by. Mazen spent his time fretting and watching. Mostly, he watched the merchant, who, when she wasn’t observing her compass, watched him back. It was incredibly stress inducing. With every look she shot in his direction, Mazen became more convinced she had somehow seen through his disguise. At some point, his combined paranoia and exhaustion became so great it blurred his sight, and the merchant became a vaguely hostile-looking smudge amidst the hills of red-gold sand. He turned away from her, perturbed.
Mazen overthought every motion and look and noise until, miraculously, sound returned to the world. The sun had dipped below the horizon by then, and shadows carved the ripples in the sand into sculpted waves. A distant hawk broke the silence, and then—the wind whistled past them and threw sand in their faces. Qadir let out a long, deep sigh.