Girl, Serpent, Thorn (17 page)

His hands tightened around her arms. “The pariks are spies, and cannot be trusted.”

With this new knowledge, Soraya surveyed the cavern once more, noticing that the divs practicing the drills were all larger than the divs who barked orders. Her gaze went back to the pit
where the two divs were fighting—both of them kastars, large and menacing, showing no restraint.

Soraya had never seen a female soldier before. She had read stories of women who had donned armor and fought in armies, but she had never seen any herself, and so her eyes kept returning to the horned div and the pure, relentless fury of her movements. Soraya felt the impact of each blow that the horned div struck somewhere deep in her chest, as if the battle below were an extension of herself, the sound of metal against metal the scream that she had been holding inside her lungs for her entire life.

“Do you want to know why I brought you here, why I can't bring myself to kill you?” the Shahmar said from behind her, his voice low and soft. “Because I know
this
is where you belong. I knew it the night we went to the dakhmeh. Before then, I thought you would merely be useful to me. But when I heard my story from your lips, when I saw you unleash all your fury on the yatu, I knew you deserved more than what your family had given you—as I once did.”

“I'm not like you,” Soraya said. She stared straight ahead, wishing she could tear her eyes away from the violence below and prove him wrong. “I won't be like you.”

“That's not what you told me that night, on the way to the dakhmeh.” He placed his hands on her shoulders, the tips of his claws brushing against her collarbone. “And do you remember what
I
told you? I said you were extraordinary—and I meant it. You came alive that night.”

Of course she remembered—he had stood behind her then, too, just like this, his hands on her shoulders, and she had wanted nothing more than to sink back against him.

Soraya twisted to face him, and his claws raked against her skin, leaving thin red scratches. “Then what good am I to you now?” she said in a rasp. “I'm not deadly anymore.”

He shook his head. “It isn't the poison that makes you deadly,
Soraya. It's
you.
The poison was only a tool, a weapon like any other. But your will, your fury—that was what I saw in you. And I knew then that you were capable of anything. You proved that to me at the fire temple.”

At the mention of the temple, Soraya's face went hot from shame. He kept using her words and actions against her, and she had no power to deny them. But before she could even try, a loud cry went up from below, and she spun to see the cause.

At first, she only saw the blood staining the dirt in the sparring pit below, and then she found its source: The gray div had buried his ax into the horned div's arm. The horned div was bellowing in pain as blood spurted out of her like a gruesome fountain, while all around, the other divs cheered. The gray div removed his ax, and turned his back on the horned div, holding the ax above his head to the delight of the crowd. The horned div's arm dangled uselessly from its socket, hanging on only by a few threads of muscle and skin, and her ax clattered down to the ground. Then the horned div ripped off the remains of her arm with a sickening tearing sound, threw it aside, and charged forward with a yell. Still boasting his triumph, the gray div didn't notice the horned div's attack until those horns went clean through his torso, impaling him.

Soraya put a hand over her mouth, afraid she would be ill, and turned away from the spectacle. Her hands were shaking, her eyes trying to blink away what she had seen, but along with the disgust and the nausea was a flood of relief that she was horrified at all—that she took no delight in the carnage, the way the other divs did.
He's wrong,
her twisting stomach assured her.
You don't belong here
.

The Shahmar silently led her away, back to the hallway. When they were in her room again, he told her he was returning to Golvahar, and so would not see her until the following night. Soraya heard his words in a daze, still trying to erase what she had seen.

“I would suggest you remain here until I return for you,” the Shahmar said, and he didn't need to explain why.

He started to turn for the door, but Soraya gathered enough of her wits to call out, “Wait!” He stopped and looked at her expectantly. “What are you going to do to my brother?” she said.

“Why do you still care about any of them?” he asked, genuine curiosity in his voice. “Why are you still fighting me at all? Don't you have everything you wanted? You wanted revenge against your family. You wanted to lift your curse. You wanted to be far away from Golvahar—with
me
.”

She shook her head. He wasn't right. He couldn't be right. As long as she fed the spark of hatred for him and let it spread through her, there would be no room for him to be right.

“I don't want you,” she snapped. “I never did.”

“That's a lie,” he said at once, and she hated that she couldn't deny it. “And…” He took a hesitant step toward her, and in a voice she almost recognized, said, “And there's no reason you shouldn't want me still. My name truly was Azad, once, before it became lost to time and legend.” He held out his arms and looked down at his hands. “The face you knew was what I looked like before … before I became this.” His eyes met hers, and they were hopeful, almost human despite their color. “The gulf is not as wide as you think,” he said quietly, like he was telling her a secret.

I know,
she almost replied, but to admit that was to admit that she had looked hard enough to see those remnants underneath.

“All that means,” she said, “is that I never should have trusted you in the first place. Now tell me what you've done with my brother.”

At once, his eyes went hard, and his hands clenched into fists. “I have plans for your brother, but you're not ready to hear them yet.”

“If you harm him,” Soraya began, not even sure what she could threaten him with, “if you harm anyone in my family—”

“Don't be naive. You know I can't allow him to live for much longer.”

“If you expect me to ever speak to you again, you'll allow it.”

A low growl escaped him. “I'll return tomorrow night,” he said before he turned and left, nearly breaking the door in the process.

 

And now she was alone, with only her treacherous thoughts for company. Different walls, different furnishings, but in a way, she was exactly where she had always been.

She hadn't wanted to take anything that the Shahmar offered, but her stomach demanded otherwise, so she ate the fruit on the table and wondered how she was supposed to pass the time until he returned. Perhaps that was the point—to leave her here long enough that she would be pleased to see him when he returned for her, hungry for any company. The thought made her shudder, because she knew that plan would work in the end. She had been lonely enough at Golvahar to be susceptible to his charms, and now her isolation was even worse.

Without windows, there was no sense of how much time had passed since he'd left her here. Soraya looked at her bowl of fruit, now missing one pear and several grapes. She had eaten without
thinking, but now she realized she would need to ration herself more carefully. She had no idea if she would be fed again before Azad's return. She would have to preserve her water, too. At least at Golvahar, she had never had to worry about food or drink—she had lived in comfort, lacking nothing except company. Soraya buried her head in her hands, guilt and regret turning the taste of the fruit sour in her mouth.

Her mother's voice came to her, gentler than she deserved:
He started this, not you. But you
are
the only one who can end this.

Soraya lifted her head. She had promised her mother she would make up for what she had done, and to do that, she still had to find the owl-winged parik. But she would never be able to keep that promise if she stayed here, day after day, at Azad's mercy.

It took several tries to pry open the tightly wedged door, but as soon as she did, some of her worries faded. She was comfortable with tunnels, after all—they had practically raised her. If she kept heading down, she'd eventually reach the mountain's base, where maybe she would find a way out. She just had to evade the divs, as she had done in the palace.

Soraya moved silently down the tunnel, waiting until the large hallway beyond was empty before daring to take another step. This time she noticed that the ground was built on a slight incline. Soraya went in the direction inclining downward, which was the opposite of where Azad had taken her, staying close to the walls and moving from shadow to shadow. Along the hall were smaller openings that led to side passages, and she paused before crossing them, making sure nothing was going to jump out at her. She noticed, too, that the hall was rounded, and she hoped that this one tunnel wound itself all the way up the mountain in a large spiral. If it did, she could follow it down until she reached the mountain base.

And perhaps she could have, if the hall had remained empty.

She felt the vibration of heavy steps under her feet before she
saw the divs themselves, giving her enough time to duck down one of the side tunnels before three large divs came into view. She waited a little longer to make sure no other divs would pass, but she waited too long, and soon another passed in the opposite direction.

She kept waiting, and the longer she did, the more divs she saw moving in both directions—and the more she realized how futile and foolish this decision was. Every time one of them passed her hiding place, Soraya held her breath and shrank back, knowing that eventually one of them would turn this way. She couldn't stay here, but she couldn't continue on the main path. She was fortunate that she had managed to make it even this far. Conceding defeat, she followed the tunnel she was already in.

Soon, she found a stairway, and she went down, knowing she would be trapped if she met anyone or anything in this narrow space. She found herself in another, smaller tunnel, but there were no torches here, nothing to light her way as she stumbled along in the darkness, one hand on the wall. She was breathing so heavily that she worried someone would hear her, and so she put her other hand over her mouth to silence the frightened wheeze her lungs were making.

But even with her mouth covered, she could still hear the sound of breathing behind her—and it wasn't her own.

Soraya ran, all hope of escaping the mountain abandoned in favor of merely finding a safe place to hide. As soon as her hand no longer felt solid rock, she bolted in that direction, moving down another hall that took her deeper into the mountain. The torches began to reappear, though they were few and far between, as Soraya threw herself into the labyrinth of tunnels, trying to outrun approaching shadows and the echoes of footsteps. She didn't know where to find safety or when to catch her breath. Her heart was racing, the way it had when people kept brushing against her on Nog Roz, never giving her time to recover. Except now she was the only one in danger.

She should have listened to him. She should have stayed in her room. It was only a matter of time before she was too slow or took a wrong step.

Down,
she told herself.
Just keep going down
. It was too late, and she was too lost, to retrace her steps to her room. The only hope she had was to keep heading downward until she eventually reached the base of the mountain.

She kept moving until she found another set of stairs and hurried down them, but instead of leading her into another tunnel, they brought her to a cavernous room—empty, thankfully, except for a fire in the center of it. And beside the fire was something that smelled delicious.

After catching her breath, Soraya went toward the fire. The smell was coming from a piece of meat spitted on a stick—some kind of bird, from the look of it. Thinking of the finite supply of fruit in her room, Soraya took the stick and sank her teeth into the wing of the cooked bird. She gave an involuntary sigh as she swallowed and took another bite.

But before she could swallow again, she heard footsteps coming from the stairs behind her. Soraya dropped the stick at once and looked around for another exit, but the stairs were the only way in or out of this cavern. She should have already known that. She should have turned back at once as soon as she saw this was a dead end, but the smell of the food had been too tempting to resist. She had allowed herself to be caught in a trap.

As the steps grew louder, Soraya moved away from the fire, into the shadows. She pressed herself flat against the wall right beside the opening to the stairwell, hoping she could repeat her trick from the palace and sneak past the div.

The steps slowed, then stopped, and Soraya waited for the div to appear.

And then a large fist slammed into the wall above her head.

Soraya ducked as the div lunged out from the stairway, bits of
rock raining down onto the top of her head. He had only missed her because he had struck without looking, and she knew he wouldn't miss again. She ran for the stairs, but it was a last, hopeless attempt at escape, and she wasn't surprised when the div clutched the back of her dress and pulled her back into the cavern, throwing her to the ground.

“I heard you breathing, little thief,” the div said in a rumbling voice. He had the torso of a man, his skin deathly white, but the legs and head of a wildcat. “I can smell my dinner on your breath. But that's no matter—I'll just eat you, instead.”

“I'm the Shahmar's guest!” Soraya cried, reaching out an arm as if that could somehow stop him from killing her.
It would have, before,
she thought with a strange pang. Once, she could have killed him easily, with only a touch. She would have been deadlier than he was. And she wouldn't have to use the name of her captor as a shield. “He would be displeased if you harmed me.”

The div chuckled. “I don't know what you're doing here, human, but it doesn't matter to—”

He never finished, because two hands appeared on either side of his head and viciously snapped his neck to the side with inhuman strength.

Before the div fell dead to the ground, Soraya's rescuer jumped lightly off his back and stood with her hands on her hips.

“
There
you are,” Parvaneh said.

Soraya remained frozen on the ground at first, her mouth hanging open. “I thought you left me,” she said as she rose. “You disappeared.”

Parvaneh shook her head. “I transformed. Pariks all have one other form they can take.” To prove her point, she suddenly vanished—or so Soraya thought until she noticed a dark gray moth hovering where Parvaneh had been standing. In another moment, the moth was gone, and Parvaneh reappeared. “I followed you all the way here.”

“You've been here the entire time,” Soraya said, more to herself than to Parvaneh.

“I lost track of you for a while, and by the time I found you again, you were sneaking through the tunnels—which was very foolish, by the way.” She gestured to the dead div on the ground. “If I hadn't heard you, he'd have eaten you by now.”

Soraya looked from Parvaneh's disapproving stare to the div. And then, to her own surprise, she began to laugh. She didn't know why she was laughing, exactly—because she'd almost been eaten, or because she was being lectured by a demon, or because she still had an ally and wasn't trapped alone in this mountain with only Azad for company after all. She was laughing so hard that she couldn't breathe, and tears began to stream down her cheeks, and now she wasn't sure if she was laughing or sobbing.

She only stopped when she felt Parvaneh's cold hands on either side of her face, shocking her into silence. Would she ever become used to something as simple as the feel of someone's hands on her skin? It seemed impossible.

Soraya focused on those eyes like glowing embers, even more vivid now in the light of the fire, until the rise and fall of her chest slowed to normal.

“I'm glad you're here,” she managed to say.

“We had a deal.”

“Yes, but divs aren't known for being true to their word.”

Parvaneh lifted an eyebrow. “I must be fond of you, then.”

Soraya smiled to herself as Parvaneh returned to the div's corpse and searched it. She pulled off the tattered, voluminous cloak he'd been wearing, her lip curling with distaste. “Here,” she said, tossing the cloak to Soraya. “You can hide in this the next time you want to wander through the tunnels.”

“I wasn't wandering,” Soraya said. “I was looking for a way out of the mountain. I still need to find the parik with owl's wings. You said you would take me to her.”

Parvaneh nodded, but she was still staring down at the dead div, avoiding Soraya's eye.

“Az—the Shahmar said he would return tomorrow night,” Soraya continued. “Can you take me to her before then? Can we go now?”

Parvaneh lifted her head. “That depends,” she said. “Did you bring the simorgh's feather with you?”

Soraya's hands went to her sash, but then she remembered that Azad had taken the feather from her before bringing her here. Parvaneh must not have seen it happen when she was following in her moth form. Still, she hesitated before telling this to Parvaneh. Why did Parvaneh need the feather in order to take her to the other pariks? If she knew Soraya didn't have it, would she refuse? Soraya wanted to trust her—Parvaneh had become, in a strange way, her confidante as well as her ally—but she was still living the consequences of the last time she had been too eager to trust someone.

“Yes,” she said, her hand pressed down over her sash. “I have it. But I'll give it to you
after
we find the parik.”

Parvaneh started to argue, but then she nodded, a wry smile on her lips. “Fair enough,” she said. “I won't need it till then anyway.”

“Why do you still need it at all?”

Parvaneh hesitated, and Soraya supposed she was also deciding how much they could trust each other. “We can't defeat the Shahmar without the feather,” she said.

Soraya couldn't help scoffing. “How is a single feather going to stop him?” But Parvaneh's expression remained grave, and Soraya felt a twinge of worry as she again remembered the feather in Azad's fist.

“That feather,” Parvaneh said, “is the only thing that can make him human.”

Soraya shook her head. “He can change form at will—I've seen him do it.”

Parvaneh again hesitated, as if trying to determine how much
to say. “I mean permanently,” she said. “The feather will make him human, as he once was, before he became a div—just as it removed your curse. And only then can we kill him.”

In the silence that followed, Soraya wondered for the first time how Azad had become a div. The stories made his transformation sound like some kind of divine punishment—he acted monstrously and became a monster.
Stories lie,
he had told her. She wondered, too, if he knew that the feather could restore his humanity. If he did, why hadn't he used it? He must have already known what Soraya hadn't understood—that the price of humanity was vulnerability.

Soraya's fingers curled over her waist. “Is there no way to defeat him while he's still a div?”

“It would be difficult to strike any blow—his scales are like armor,” Parvaneh answered. “But even then … there's something you don't know about divs. It would be easier to show you.”

Parvaneh took the tattered cloak from her, looking from its length to Soraya with an appraising eye. “We can both hide under this,” she said. She stood beside Soraya and threw the cloak over Soraya's shoulders, drawing it forward over both their heads to create a makeshift hood. “Hold it tight,” she said.

Soraya drew the edge of the cloak in toward herself, and she and Parvaneh huddled close under the fabric. It was long enough to hide their feet, and thin enough that they could see where they were going.

“Something's wrong,” Parvaneh said. “Can you not breathe?”

Soraya's breathing
was
quickening, but not because of lack of air. “I'm not used to this,” she managed to say. Parvaneh's shoulder was flush against hers, and every time their hands brushed against each other in the close proximity under the cloak, Soraya felt an instinctive jolt of panic.