Nazirah walks slowly across the dunes behind her home and kneels before two flat headstones. The wind whips her hair and the ocean air stings her burned skin. Nazirah cries salty tears, so it makes no difference.
“I miss you so much,” she says. “I’m sorry I didn’t make you proud. I’m sorry I couldn’t save you.” She touches the smooth stone, tears streaking the remaining ash that cakes her face. “I don’t know how to live, when you aren’t here to help me.”
She sinks down lower into the ground, sobbing. “Why did you have to leave me?” she screams bitterly, hoarsely, digging her hands into the sand before her and flinging it away. “Why didn’t you run, or fight?” She lies beside the graves, pounding on the stone. “Why were you so stupid and foolish with your lives? Why?”
Nazirah closes her eyes, remembers to breathe. She kisses each headstone before slowly returning to her knees. “I will avenge you,” she whispers. “I promise I will. I swear it to you.” She balls her fists. “I won’t fail you again.”
Nazirah begins to rise, wiping her red eyes. She’s distracted by a dark object protruding from the hole in the sand before her. Eyebrows knitting in confusion, she pulls it out slowly. It’s black and supple and all too familiar. A pair of fingerless gloves. Nazirah shakes, watching as something falls out from inside one of the gloves, small and delicate, glittering in the dying Eridian sun. Nazirah stares and stares and stares and still doesn’t understand.
It is Adamek’s amnesty pendant.
Chapter Eighteen
The train ride from Krush to Rubiyat drags on, hours wasting away. The night paints the landscape in murky black, stars hidden behind rolling, navy clouds. The allies share one cramped train compartment, bribed for at the last moment. Aldrik, new eye patch secured, snores loudly next to Adamek. Drool hangs from his chin in thin strings, pooling and puddling along his dirty collar.
Nazirah sits across from them, uneager to return. The overwhelming, suffocating crimson dust, the poverty and prison, the first time she met Adamek … none are memories she particularly cares to relive. The silver lining is that Nazirah may get to see Cato – but she has no idea where he’s stationed or how to contact him.
Nazirah guiltily thinks of Caria’s locket, now safely tucked inside her bag. Cato should have been the one to visit Rafu, not her. There is nothing for Nazirah there but bones and stale memories and bitter emptiness. Cato still has a living, breathing family. Like Cander said, Cato’s entire life revolves around Nazirah. And she takes him for granted.
What if she is holding him back?
“Staring won’t make me burst into flames,” Adamek says, startling Nazirah out of her thoughts. “Unfortunately for you.”
“I was thinking about everything that happened today.”
“You mean in the slums?” he asks pointedly.
“Of course.” Nazirah is thinking about the slums, how could she not? She still has the burns on her arms and the grit in her hair as reminders. But she is also thinking about afterwards. There was a promise made, a pendant surveyed.
“You’re a shit liar, Nation.”
He’s a liar too, only he’s better at it. Adamek said he forgot to put the pendant on this morning, but he hadn’t. At some point yesterday, he came into her home, into her room. He visited the graves of her parents, leaving the chain and gloves behind.
Why?
The pendant now hangs around Nazirah’s neck, out of sight, a lingering reminder. For reasons beyond her comprehension, Nazirah did not leave it in the sand with his gloves.
Why?
She has no answers for anything, anymore.
“I’m not lying,” she mumbles. “I just don’t want to talk about it.”
Adamek interlocks his hands casually behind his neck. Nazirah sees a brief flash of a small tattoo on his wrist, one she’s never noticed before. It is four digits, followed by a strange character. Nazirah doesn’t dare ask him what it means. She wonders why that number is so important to him, why it is the password he uses for everything.
“I bet if I were Caal sitting here,” he says, “You wouldn’t be so quiet.”
Nazirah shoots him an odd look. “But you’re not.”
“Do you see me complaining?”
“I don’t tell Cato everything,” she says.
“Clearly,” Adamek replies. “Otherwise, he’d have tried to kill me several times by now.”
The train slows as it nears the Rubiyat station, whistling shrilly somewhere ahead. Adamek lazily drums his fingers on the silver suitcase. Bribing the Eridian fishermen was apparently easy. Aldrik has said they will certainly need the Iluxor in order to convince the Red Lords, show them exactly how much the Medis keep from the territories.
“Morgen?”
“Nation.”
“What are you planning to do after the war?”
“Are you seriously asking me what I want to be when I grow up?”
“I guess so,” she says, shrugging.
“Ladies first.”
“You’re avoiding my question,” she says.
“I’m evading your question,” Adamek corrects. “There’s a difference.”
Nazirah crosses her arms. “Fine,” she huffs. “I don’t know what I want to do. You?”
“That’s not a real answer.”
“Yes it is!” she argues. “I don’t have a plan! Intermix have never had many options. Die from disease or die from starvation … or die from you. That’s about it.”
His eyes narrow. “But you will once the war’s over,” he points out.
“So they say.”
“You don’t think your brother wants intermix equality?”
“Of course he does!” she says. “But at what sacrifice?”
“Like I said today, there’s always a price.”
Nazirah shakes her head. “So many of those intermix we met today, regardless of if they join us or not, will die in this war … a war that we’re basically forcing upon them! It’s sad that they will have no future.”
“Why are you so afraid of being right?”
“Come again?” she asks.
“Everything you said to Cayus was true,” Adamek tells her. “And now you’re shying away from it. The ones that do survive … think of the future they will have.”
Nazirah does. She thinks of Cayu, of a world where he could grow up beyond the slum. A utopia where he would always have enough to eat, where he and Caria could be best friends, living together in toothless harmony, infamy. And no one would care except their mothers.
It seems like a dream.
The train rolls to a stop at the Rubiyat station and Adamek moves to shake Aldrik awake. Nazirah is entirely aware that Adamek has successfully evaded her question. “I’m tired of fighting,” she sighs.
“You can’t be tired already,” he replies quietly. “The fight hasn’t begun yet.”
#
Rubiyat comes to life at night, after the scorching sun has set. In the small hours of the morning, thick women in long, layered skirts walk through caked streets. They balance empty jugs on their heads and set off for the city wells, waiting in line for hours to receive their daily ration of water. Young boys and girls dance languidly on flat rooftops to the sound of drums and tambourines. The scents of sweat and perfume and sex pervade the air. Yet everything here plays second fiddle to the dust.
Aldrik steps off the train platform, unimpressed and sweating profusely. Thick, pearly white marbles roll down his face. “From what the Commander told me a few hours ago,” he says, “we should have a car waiting for us somewhere … even though we were forced to move our plans up last minute.”
Nazirah’s wide eyes wander over the fray, absorbing every sight. She spots a familiar face in the crowd, sporting a closely cropped haircut and several earrings dangling from each ear. “I’ve got it,” she tells the others, smiling. “Follow me.” Nazirah grabs her bag and finds Adamek has already lifted her remaining luggage. From the stiff look on his face, Nazirah can tell he recognizes the man as well.