Fifteen

We journeyed to the emperor's city, taking a winding route that meant we didn't go back through my village. We had ample gold, which meant that at the first mountain village we traded our mule for a horse and our sleeping mats in the dirt for a room at a caravanserai.

The caravanserai was a large white mud-brick building in the shape of a square, with painted blue doors and a relatively large stable for an obscure little village. It wasn't particularly populated, which was good because we didn't have to worry that someone was about to rob us. Nonetheless, I rented the biggest room for what we were about to do.

"You've done this before, right? Transfigured someone into another person entirely?"

The clay-packed walls of the caravanserai were painted white on the inside too, and our room even had a large mirror. I looked at my reflection, memorizing my face, tracing the lines of my stubborn mouth and wide dark eyes.

Soon, different eyes would be looking back at me.

"A few times," Noor said, picking out some zoraat seeds from the sack. "But it's really just about tweaking the blend and knowing what you want. You had an odd reaction to touching the seeds, so let's start small for now."

She had separated the colors of the zoraat into a few small piles—deep turquoise, bloodred, turmeric yellow. Then she placed the separate colors into small stone bowls she'd pilfered from the kitchen, with a heavy pestle to grind them. Noor began grinding each pile into a fine powder. She took a pinch from each of the different colored piles and prepared a brownish substance on a tin plate. She looked up at me with trepidation above the little pile of the zoraat powder.

I stared back at her.

"What am I supposed to do, exactly?"

She exhaled and lifted a small spoon to the powdered blend she made. "You don't need to do anything. Not yet."

I bit my bottom lip. "If you've never ingested this, how do you know what the right combination is to make it effective?"

She hesitated a second before lifting the spoon to my mouth. My nails bit the inside of my palms as I took in the reddish-brown powder.

Even though Noor had saved my life, trusting anyone was difficult after one of the closest people in my life had condemned me to die.

I chewed the inside of my cheek, tamping down the urge to throw the zoraat in her face and run out of the caravanserai.

But if I didn't trust her, if we didn't trust each other, we'd never get justice for what was done to them.

For what was done to us.

I inhaled and let the air flow through me, calming all the voices in my head telling me to stop.

It was too late for that.

"At the apothecary, Souma would have me try different blends, experimenting on the healers and spies the emperor had deemed privileged enough to consume the zoraat. The other assistants at the apothecary would cause unimaginable suffering. Their subjects would be in agony—their insides going black, their eyes melting, their skin peeling off."

"You are being so inspirational right now," I said as I gestured to the powder on her spoon. "I'm really excited to see what color my insides will turn."

She shook her head. "What I am trying to say is that I dreaded inflicting that kind of pain on anyone—and many of the subjects died from those experiments. But when I blended, it was as if there was something guiding me to choose the right amounts. I felt connected to the zoraat in a way the others didn't."

"Something?" I thought again of the voice in the cave, that whispered growl that seemed to come from the earth itself.

"A… feeling. A hand? I'm not sure."

"And you didn't kill anyone with your mixtures?"

"Better than that—whatever Vahid wanted them to do, I could make happen. It took apothecarists years to master the techniques and amounts properly, whereas I seemed to have an affinity for it." She shrugged. "Needless to say, I've done this before, and if your skin peels off, I'm really very sorry."

I arched a brow and looked down at the spoon again.

Words met my lips and I felt the gravity of them before I even spoke. "I trust you."

We hadn't come this far for me to lose faith in her now.

The zoraat powder coated my tongue and thickened like oil in my mouth.

"What—" My teeth were sticky, and talking was difficult. I tried to swallow and immediately retched.

"It takes some getting used to."

"You think?" I gasped out and doubled over, my knees cracking against the floor. I curled my toes under and braced myself. "You didn't tell me this would feel like hell."

"Only for a moment. Try not to panic." Noor's calm voice floated over me, and surprisingly quieted my thumping heart.

My limbs felt light and heavy at the same time. My legs became loose, and I didn't have enough strength to stand. There was still a trickling sensation as the oil-like liquid spread to the rest of my body.

"What am I supposed to do now?" I said to the floorboards, my hands flat to the ground as I tried not to cry out at the twisting sensation slithering through me. I didn't want to attract attention and screaming the place down wasn't exactly subtle.

"Try and visualize what you want," Noor said, her voice louder this time, and I realized she was down on the floor with me, her knees close to my head. "Remember, I blend the seeds, but the power is in your hands once you consume it. I give you the specific dose that you need and after that the world is yours."

The world is yours.

Revenge is mine.

I curled my fingers into the floor and pushed myself up, looking into the mirror before me. My bloodshot eyes looked wild and my skin dirty from the dust of the road. But as soon as I concentrated on the power flooding inside my body, I felt it answer.

"I want to change the way I look," I said to Noor, who nodded.

"Transfiguration. One of the more difficult powers of the zoraat, but possible with the right blending. Think through how you want to change the way you look. Focus on a feature. The magic will manipulate your body as if a djinn fire could melt the skin like water softening clay."

I closed my eyes and listened to Noor, thinking about my nose, elongating it and making it slightly wider. Then I opened my eyes.

My breath died in my chest.

Noor smiled. "You look different already." Then her face took on a serious cast.

"Change as much as you like, but there is a limit if you want to keep who you are. There needs to be one thing you keep wholly the same, one physical aspect of yourself that you can't alter."

"My hands," I said without a second thought. My hands knew the balance of a blade, knew how to maneuver the hilt of a dagger to send it flying through the air before I even thought about hitting a target. If there was anything I would keep, it would be them.

"Then focus on a different feature of yourself and work on that. Don't do too much—tweaking just a small part of yourself works to make you different enough."

I worked on my eyes, drawing them out, making them narrower, sharper. I kept my skin the same shade but made the undertones warmer, giving my cheeks a rosy flush. Then I stretched my cheekbones, the bones crunching as they moved, pain splintering through my body as my face took on the life of someone else.

Until finally I was done.

The girl who stared back at me wasn't the one who had just fought off prison guards or found out her father was murdered.

This girl was soft, pretty, pampered. Someone who hadn't known hardship.

Noor whistled. "Mazin won't know who you are at all."

"Good," I whispered, thinking of all I would do to him with this face. "That's what I want."

"Who will you be instead of Dania?"

I reached my fingers up and traced my lips, the edges of my eyes.

"Sanaya," I said finally. "Sanaya Khara. Daughter of a wealthy northern chief." I knew the northern tribes well from my mother and grandmother. It was a lie rooted in the truth and something I could convincingly embody. But I couldn't stop staring at the new face looking back at me through different eyes. "This is remarkable."

"Yes, but it doesn't last, so we must be careful."

I faced her, my new eyes wide. "What do you mean?"

"This is temporary. Once the zoraat leaves your system, you'll start turning back to yourself. You must keep consuming zoraat in order to maintain the facade. And you shouldn't consume too much of this blend for long, even if we had an unlimited supply of seeds. I've seen some assassins turn… dark from having too much."

"How long?" I still stared at myself, barely hearing her words. "How long can I wear this face for?"

Noor shook her head. "I'm not certain. Three weeks, maybe. A month?"

"A month is fine." I would use whatever time I had to my advantage. But I needed more than just a new face.

I needed the power to take down an emperor.

An army.

A lover.

"We can use the seeds for other things?"

"Yes, I can give you different zoraat combinations for other djinn powers."

"Good." I turned from the mirror and faced her. "Are you going to disguise yourself?"

Noor shook her head. "Souma made me vow never to take it. Not after what he'd seen happen. But that's not a risk here. And no one knows what I look like because no one ever met me outside of Souma's storeroom. I won't need to use the zoraat and then we will have more for you. As long as we still plan on taking down Vahid, I don't need anything else."

She watched me, her eyes absorbing my face as if she didn't really know who I was anymore, even though she was aware it was all a mask.

"Are you sure you want to do this?" She asked the question again, but this time it had a different emphasis. She wasn't asking anymore if I was sure I wanted to consume the seeds, but rather if I wanted to do any of this at all. If I even wanted to go down this path.

Because if we started, there was no going back.

A cool calm washed over me. Baba was murdered by the emperor's soldiers. His smith stripped of his precious blades by his best friend. I had lost everything this past year and gained only pain. But Mazin still had everything, despite all he had taken. I thought of his face, that smooth impenetrable veneer right before the guards had taken me.

"Yes," I said, my voice a deep growl. "That's the only thing I want."