When Al Anqa’a finished its next circuit, I pushed off the building. Not far ahead, the trees reverted to their natural clusters as Dar al Mansi ended and Essam Woods began. From there, it would be a fifteen-minute hike to where the masses waited to greet the returning Champions.
I weaved through a flower garden, the bottom of my boot collecting mud and moldering petals. By the time I reached the border, I hadn’t encountered another creature. The prospect of doubling back for the zulal and looking into Mehti’s sallow face appalled my common sense. There had to be another creature this close to the border, right?
A rustle from the right spun me around. I lifted the dagger, flexing my arm in preparation. One clean strike, and I would be done with the second trial forever. A man stumbled from over the tree line, disheveled and limping. My fingers tensed on the handle. Another dulhath?
The man lifted his chin, giving our surroundings a glazed glance.
I didn’t recognize him at first.
The years hadn’t treated him gently. The strong brown arms that swung me out of trees and lifted me onto his shoulders were withered. Lines burrowed in his proud forehead, and it seemed to take everything at his disposal to raise his head.
I stumbled back when his weary gaze met mine.
Dawoud, head of Niyar’s staff, the man who would sneak me cakes from the kitchen, who spent his rare free moments listening to me babble about my day, who taught me the best way to climb a fig tree, stood in Dar al Mansi.
Tears filled his eyes. He recognized me, too.
If they had spilled me into a ravine of filth, burned the sins of fifty lifetimes into my skin, I could not have felt dirtier than I did right then.
“Are you real?” I demanded. My grip on the dagger shook.
“Essiya,” he whispered, and the sound that left my mouth was not human.
Dawoud rushed to me, the instinct to comfort defeating his physical deterioration. I wilted away from him.
“How are you here?” I choked out. “How are you alive?” The most terrible of notions occurred to me, and bile burned in my throat. “Tell me you are not with them, Dawoud. Tell me the Mufsids or Urabi have not sent you.”
“Of course not!” An echo of his former self rang in his affronted tone. “I have not crossed paths with either group in a year.”
“Then how?”
Dawoud sighed. “I was captured in Orban three months ago by a group of Nizahl soldiers. Rawain’s High Counselor knew the role I held in Jasad, and he found innovative methods to pull information from me.”
The realization swept over me like ice rain. I clapped my hand over my mouth, whirling away from Dawoud as my stomach heaved. He was Supreme Rawain’s prisoner. They released him into Essam Woods, toward Dar al Mansi, despite knowing he was a Jasadi.
I was right all along. Vaun planted the seeds of doubt in Supreme Rawain’s head. I let the guards persuade me that Rawain would not trust another over his son. And in most matters, Rawain wouldn’t.
But Jasadis were not most matters.
Dawoud’s brow pinched, resurrecting the ghost of a once-brilliant analyst. “If you don’t kill me, the Supreme will think you are a Jasadi,” Dawoud said. “I wonder how he knew to send me. I’m not the only prisoner.”
When I stood there dumbly, Dawoud’s voice gentled. “I thought of you every night. When I heard what had happened, what they’d done, I couldn’t think of anything but you. The argument we’d had over your dress; would that be our last? You were so angry with me, stomping your little feet and hiding in your tree.”
“I didn’t like the gold ruffles.” I couldn’t breathe.
“I thought, not Essiya. Not her, too. Anyone else.”
Grief burned in my chest. “I’m sorry, Dawoud. I’m so sorry.”
He was never meant to see me like this.
“They called you Sylvia,” he said. “The guards. They said you are the Nizahl Champion.”
The shame blistering through me burned hotter than Vaida’s seal, searing more than a hand thrust into crackling flames. He said it plainly, not a hint of judgment in his voice, but the words whipped me to tatters.
Sylvia. Nizahl’s Champion, Hanim murmured. That was your choice.
“I had to. It was the reasonable—it was the logical choice,” I babbled, fully aware of the concern gathering on Dawoud’s face. What must I look like, mumbling to myself, covered in dust and gore, bearing trophies from monsters? Niphran’s daughter besieged with a new madness. “I couldn’t help them! I cannot. I have nothing to offer. Look around us. How could I have stopped this? I didn’t know you were alive—how could I have known?”