Eleven

My village sat at the foot of the mountains, nestled into the rock like it was part of the formations themselves. Dozens of baked brick houses protected its inhabitants from the onslaught of the glacial wind, and an outcropping in the cliff shielded us from the worst of the valley storms.

My father's smith stood at the edge of these houses, proud against the mountainside, its white walls and stone gate calling to me. Normally a smith would be in the city, close to the emperor, outfitting his armies and assassins with deadly weaponry. But my father was no ordinary smith. He refused to move from the place he'd married my mother and his village community to seek greater prosperity in the city. And still it found him.

He had a knack for forging blades that were both beautiful and deadly, that seemed to fly from your hand with surprising accuracy and balance. Emperor Vahid even asked if my father had gotten a hold of djinn magic somehow, or if his forge was heated by the smokeless fire of the djinn realms.

Of course he hadn't. My father was an ordinary man, and I loved him for it.

Noor and I managed to steal a pack mule when we arrived at the first town near the sea.

We rode through the night. If anyone was coming after us, we needed to have a head start.

"Your village better have a very deep well, I feel as though I could drink forever." Noor draped dramatically over the front of the mule while I dismounted and grabbed its reins, leading it through the dawn-lit streets of my village.

"It has a well, otherwise people wouldn't live here."

"Take me to it immediately."

I let out a snort of laughter, even as thirst pounded through my own head. Our waterskins had run out hours ago and we'd managed to survive scooping snow from the sand dunes as we crossed the cold desert. My stomach growled, the last of the wild cherries and stolen dates running out that morning. "First we go to my father's house, and we can have all the food and drink we want there, I promise you."

"Good, because I cannot subsist on dates alone. The food was better in prison."

"You can't be serious about that ." I shuddered at the memory of the lentil slop sliding down my throat.

Noor lifted her head. "You're right. At least dates have a taste."

I hadn't minded the steady diet of apricots and almond-dusted flatbreads we'd swiped from the towns we'd passed through. Noor and I had raided what we could from the tiny settlements along the way and we had managed to pilfer two plain kurtas to replace our bloodied prison ones, as well as basic but serviceable woven shoes. If I felt a pang of remorse at the people I had stolen from, I reminded myself that I was seeing my father soon and could pay them back when I got home.

All that mattered was finding him again.

Then we could go anywhere we wanted.

"Just think, we could be eating mutton stew and rice. Spicy pickles. Pillowy bread covered in garlic and black onion seeds." Noor licked her lips.

"We'll have a feast at my father's." I couldn't disguise the urgency in my voice. My skin was buzzing with anticipation. We were so close I could feel the burn of tears behind my eyes.

"Come on."

I led Noor through the uneven cobblestones of my village, checking that the muted dupatta wound around my face hid my features. I didn't want anyone alerting Emperor Vahid—or Mazin—that I had returned. I didn't know if he had spies in my village, but I wasn't going to take that chance.

We got closer to my father's house, the mud brick painted a bright white, jutting out of the rock of the mountain. On the side of the building was his smith, the sign with crossed daggers etched into it still hanging above the door.

But the smith was dark, with no warm glow from the smelt peeking through the cracks in the windows.

I frowned, my hand curling around the reins so tight the leather pinched. Baba always worked at the smith early in the morning.

Dread sat in my stomach, growing like a sinkhole.

"The door is ajar." Noor pulled her cloak tighter.

I glanced at the house to confirm her whispered words. I had been too busy looking at the smith to notice the door was wide open.

My steps barely left a mark on the dusty walkway as I rushed inside. The house was cast in shadows, with no candle glow to signal life inside.

Where is he?

"Baba?" I called out, my heart in my throat, my eyes roving wildly about the empty room. The mango wood bench in the front room was overturned, and the desert scrub mat shredded. A bead of sweat ran down my temple even though the house was cold.

It was the kind of cold that felt uninhabited, stale. I rushed to the back of the house, until I made it to my father's bedroom.

Everything was destroyed.

His bed was torn apart, the pillows ripped open, and the date palm mattress split in half. All the daggers my father normally had displayed on the walls of his room were removed, with only the darkened outline of their presence imprinted on the walls to signify they were ever there. I walked over and placed my palm on the outline of the dagger that had a gold handle in the shape of a jackal's head, as if to convince myself that my memories were real, that my father had lived here.

That this house had been warm and alive the last time I had seen it.

I shouted again and again, calling his name, shouting for my cat, Jalebi, letting the words echo through the house, looking for any sign of life.

"Where are you?" I whispered into the broken room.

"Maybe he fled?" Noor's quiet voice came from behind me, tentative, as if she didn't want to startle a wild animal. It broke through the vacancy of the room and despite her careful words, anger rose inside me.

"Not like this," I snapped, combing the empty, ravaged space for any clue as to where he would have gone.

There was nothing, not even any sign of my cat. It was as if no one had lived here in a long time.

I turned to face Noor. "He would have tried to leave me a message."

He wouldn't have left like this, not with his house destroyed and no word about where he had gone.

"Perhaps he didn't have time to leave you one." I heard the doubt in her voice. It was the same doubt that had dread pulling me down to the floor with its weight.

"Do you think Emperor Vahid took him too?"

Her mouth flattened. "That's possible. Though it doesn't explain why his belongings are missing and everything is wrecked. Perhaps the house was raided?"

Raided .

At Noor's words, I bolted to the opposite end of the house, to my room.

The same white baked brick walls I had grown up with greeted me, the same sturdy bed frame and wide window allowing shafts of sunlight to illuminate the dust in the air. Except my room was in the same state of disarray as my father's—there were a few plain kurtas strewn about the floor, but all my other clothes were gone. The room was upended, as if multiple hands had hunted through everything and took whatever they wanted.

I felt an awful, sick feeling—like I had been arrested all over again, taken from everything I loved and given a vacant cell in return. And that ever-present fear weighing on me since arriving, nearly taking me to my knees.

I pulled the bed away from the wall and worked a loose brick by the bedpost. It was stuck, and I felt a flicker of relief. I tugged and twisted until it broke free, crumbling in my hands and revealing a small compartment, a secret space only I knew about.

There. A small dark bag sat undisturbed in the corner of the hole.

Air whooshed out of me, my shoulders sagging as I pulled it out.

I loosened the indigo sack hiding my few items—a pouch of money, a braided piece of my amma's dark hair, along with her looping gold earrings, a pocket-sized folding knife made by my father, and the final piece—a necklace with a miniature dagger pendant, given to me by Mazin. I held it up in the light, watching the glow of the blade in the dawn sun. It was a real dagger, albeit small, but the blade as sharp as any of my father's. Its hilt was the head of a halmasti, the large, wolf-like creature in folklore tales of the north. It was a re-creation of a bigger dagger my father made, my favorite knife. I curled my fingers around it, the prick of the blade stinging my palm, the memory of when Mazin gave it to me fresh in my mind.

You'll wear it, won't you?

I'll never take it off.

But I had forgotten it that day, which kept it safe when they arrested me. Only for Maz to stab me in the back with a different knife.

"Whatever you've come for, there's nothing left. They've taken everything already. Don't you have any shame?"

That ragged, piercing voice tore through me and pulled me out of my memories.

I would have known it anywhere.

I whirled around. "Nanu?"

My grandmother stood in the doorway, a dusty dupatta pulled about her shoulders. She looked smaller than before, shrunken, as if the scarf she clung to had begun to swallow her up. Shock rippled through me at the change in her. Where she had once looked so much like my mother—glossy black hair, skin a vibrant warm brown as if the sun always shone on it—she had now aged significantly. More significantly than anyone should have in a year. I would have barely recognized her if it wasn't for that voice, like the rusty snap of a flame from the smith. Now her hair was a faded and streaky gray, her skin carved with deep grooves that looked like scars.

She blinked at me, her pale eyes glimmering in the dawn-drenched room. "Dania?"

It was a faint whisper, but I heard the disbelief there.

I raced to her, my eyes burning, and threw my arms around her, careful not to crush her now frail body. "Nanu, it's me, Dania. I'm back."

Holding her felt foreign, and I couldn't recall the last time we'd ever embraced. My grandmother and I had never been close, and my father had blamed that on my mother's death. Since my mother was killed, something in my grandmother had changed, like the grief of losing her only child had twisted inside her, and she couldn't stomach the rest of the world.

Especially me.

She kept her distance, and we only really saw each other at holidays and village celebrations. But that distance melted away now that she was here in front of me, and my father was not.

Her shoulders were stiff, and she didn't embrace me in return. "I thought you had died, girl." She shook her head, her eyes wide. "I thought…"

Her voice was still uncertain, as if she didn't believe I was real.

"Nanu." I took her by the arms and shook her. "Where is Baba?" My voice was urgent and low. "What happened?"

Her mouth dropped open, and a sound whistled out, though not discernible words. Her already blanched skin looked whiter still. Unease settled over me like a fog I couldn't quite see through.

But she didn't answer my question. Instead she looked behind me and stiffened. "Who are you?"

I looked back at Noor, who stood awkwardly in the doorway of my room, uncertainty flickering across her face.

"Nanu, relax, she's with me. She's my friend."

Nanu blinked and look back at me, chewing on the edge of her lip. "I can't believe you are here, Dania. Standing in front of me."

I exhaled, clasping her hands in mine. "I'm real, Nanu."

"They released you?" She frowned, those heavy lines on her face deepening.

I shook my head, a firm no.

Realization dawned on her face and her voice dropped to a low whisper, almost not daring her next words. "You escaped?"

Escaped.

I thought of all the guards I had killed to get out of there, of the torture I had suffered under Thohfsa. Of Noor unconscious, lying in a pool of her own blood on the floor of her dirty cell.

Escape was such a small word for what we had done. We carved a path to freedom despite what had been stolen from us.

"Yes, I escaped. And I've come to get Baba—and you, if you want to join us. I want to leave our village and run to a place where Vahid won't have power over us anymore. Where we can live in peace. Maybe we'll go north to your people there."

I wasn't sure if Nanu would join us, but I extended the offer any way. Memories of her flitted through my mind, the way she held herself so carefully apart from me. The shadow of herself she became after my mother died.

Nanu's mouth twisted, like a poisoned snake. "Dania, I have to tell you about your father."

That dark pit in my stomach returned, but something inside me refused to acknowledge it.

"Where is he?" I looked around as if I could conjure him, my voice seeping with desperation. "We need to leave as soon as possible, Vahid might be looking for us." My words were rushed, and I refused to look at my grandmother's hollow eyes. There was something there I didn't want to see.

"Dania." Noor's cool voice cut through my frantic words and she laid a hand on my shoulder. I stilled, my blood pounding in my ears. "I think your grandmother is trying to tell you something."

An ache formed in my chest, a black gaping wound that felt as if it were going to swallow me whole. I knew the words before she said them, before she even turned her pale eyes to mine, before Noor caught me as I fell. I knew what my grandmother had been trying to tell me, and I didn't want to hear it.

Because if it was true, then I had nothing left.

"Dania, your baba is dead."