“Sylvia, you cannot think you have the strength to break this man’s back.” Marek crossed his arms over his chest. “I have seen you struggle to lift a crate of apples.”
I choked on a bark of laughter. Oh, but there was not any sport in winning a game the other side wasn’t playing. “You saw what I wanted you to see. Sefa, please find as many small, jagged stones as you can fit in the cloak’s pockets.”
“Let me do this part,” Marek argued.
I took a fortifying breath, releasing it through my nose. He was trying to help, I reminded myself. “I can handle it. Alone.”
Flipping the body facedown on the ground, I grabbed the arms and hoisted the body back. Sefa turned green. I couldn’t blame her. The body was on its knees, pulled back by its arms, its mutilated and mud-stained torso pointed in her direction. A macabre sight, to be sure.
“At least we do not plan on eating him,” I grumbled to myself. Marek shot me a bewildered glance.
Keeping a firm grip on the body’s elbows, I planted my boot at the base of his back. Sefa scurried into the trees, covering her ears. Marek watched with a skeptical frown.
A sinister voice bloomed in my mind. In a matter of hours, you may have destroyed the identity you spent years building. You cannot even protect your own pathetic, pointless life, Hanim whispered in my ear. My darkest thoughts always spoke in her voice. Years had passed since I last heard my former captor. That I heard her now could not signify anything good.
I heaved the body’s arms toward myself. Breaking a grown man’s back at this angle required a significant amount of force. Hanim had compared it to pretending I was trying to shove my foot through the person and toward the ground just ahead of them. The arms needed to be pulled back far and held fast. Otherwise, the shoulders would pop loose, and the back would remain undamaged.
I slammed my boot downward against his back. The thunderous crack sent Marek’s brows disappearing into his hair. Satisfied, I dropped the body onto its broken bones and pointed at the gash on the soldier’s belly. “This cut is too clean. I need you to make it seem as though he sustained the damage from the boulders in Hirun.”
Marek accepted my dagger with a slow smile. “I can’t break a grown man’s back, but I can certainly whittle a messier wound.”
I left him crouched beside the soldier and went to find Sefa. I stumbled on her apologizing to a colony of ants for stealing the rocks they were hiding behind. “I am almost finished,” she said.
Suspicion thickened into a brick in my chest. Aside from her spat of superstitious paranoia, she seemed utterly nonchalant. So did Marek. I had dragged them out of the village in the middle of the night to help me mangle a soldier’s corpse and carry it to the river. I’d seen them react with more horror to the discovery that I routinely forgot to water my fig plant.
I slid into a crouch, grimacing at the sight of my cloak dragging against the ground. It swallowed Sefa’s small frame. “Speak plainly. Why are you doing this for me?”
Undeterred by my harsh tone, she blew gently on the rocks in her palm, flaking away the loose debris. “Despite your strong resistance to the concept, we are friends.”
“Friendship has its limits.”
“Perhaps.”
“I wouldn’t do this for you or Marek.”
The corner of her mouth lifted like I had said something amusing. “I know.”
“If I’m caught, I will be executed. You would be thrown to the mercy of a Nizahlan tribunal for helping me.”
“If you are hoping to light a fire of fear in me, you are too late. It was lit long ago.” Sefa tucked the rocks in her pockets. “Be at ease, Sylvia. Before it ever came to a tribunal, I would promptly follow you into death.”
Sefa and I stood at the same time. Only a Jasadi would have need for such a disturbing vow, but Marek and Sefa did not have a trace of magic. Living as closely as we did, I would have seen it. What cause did they have to fear Nizahl?
I evaluated Sefa as though seeing her anew. “What aren’t you telling me?”
“Now, Sylvia. You may have my loyalty without cost.” The rest of the rocks tumbled into her pocket. “But you must earn my secrets.” She smiled, whites of her teeth bright against her skin.
I caught my breath as an earth-shattering possibility shook through me. A possibility winding into everything I thought I knew about Sefa and Marek. Marek, who leaned on his a’s and l’s when he spoke in anger. Who complained about the weather in Mahair as though it were any different in the rest of Omal.