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The kiss drew Najran’s attention—a sudden spark in deadly amber eyes that rekindled Arian’s fear. She tried to ignore him, speaking to Wafa, who tackled his assignment with gusto, careful not to reach for the piece offered to Arian. He was learning to read nuances, so he knew his greed would be an insult. She was proud of how quickly he’d adapted.
No one spoke until the meal was finished. They had eaten with their hands, and a moment at the end of the meal was taken for further ablutions. When they were ready for it, tea was proffered in little copper cups, and now camel milk was aboil in a pot covered in a layer of milky froth. The milk was poured into cups, followed by a stream of tea splashed over it like a glaze. When Khashayar refused the tea, Arian realized that even though they had shared the same food, the soldier was suspicious of poison in his drink. But she knew the Shaykh would not poison a guest he had invited to his tent. It would be an insult to his honor.
So she drank to lessen any risk of offense, then asked for another cup.
The commanders of the Nineteen watched the Companions with a fascination that spoke to legends that had been spread to their lands. With the meal concluded, Shaykh Al Marra dismissed all his men save Najran, who, though he sat poised on his heels, kept his glaive within easy reach of his hand.
Both men unwound their headcloths to reveal hair looped in braids around their skull, a custom of the people of Marra. But where the Shaykh’s braids were woolly with age, Najran’s were precise, evenly webbed around his skull. And Arian realized with a start that this deadly lieutenant possessed a certain attraction.
The herder cleared the platters away, leaving the tent in silence.
The Shaykh nodded to Sinnia. “Tell me of your Nineteen.”
Arian intervened, pressing Sinnia’s hand. “A question, if you will permit me.”
He fingered the rough growth of beard at his jaw. “As you wish, sayyidina.”
“Why has your army come to Ashfall? Are you governed by the One-Eyed Preacher?”
The questions were meant to remind the Shaykh of the fierce independence of the tribes of the Rub Al Khali.
He sat back on his heels, his legs folded beneath him. “The people of Marra govern themselves. The First Oralist should know this.”
She made her tone conciliatory. “I did not think the Marra would serve a foreign master. But I cannot account for the presence of your army outside the gates of Ashfall.”
“The Shaykh owes you no explanation.”
The Shaykh waved Najran’s warning aside. “We come to honor our own convictions. It may be that these are convictions the One-Eyed Preacher shares, so for the moment, our purposes align.”
The herder who’d cleared the tent now brought the Shaykh the apparatus of a shisha. The Shaykh leaned back on his elbows to inhale from the pipe. He passed it to Najran, who refused it with a word of thanks. No offer was made to Arian or Sinnia, and none expected.
“The Nineteen assert they are guided by the Claim. How do they reconcile their beliefs with the Preacher’s commands?” A careful question from Arian.
Najran leaned forward, resting his elbows on his thighs. “The Preacher is guided by the Claim.”
Arian let her power echo in her voice. “Yet none know the Claim as well as the Companions of Hira. None know it as I do. And my knowledge of it does not sanction your war upon these lands.”
Najran made a dismissive gesture. “A woman has no authority over the Claim.”
Wafa spat out his tea. Arian patted his back.
“Do you deny the authority of the Council? Do you refute the Companions of Hira?”
Najran fought back. “Do you refute the supremacy of the Rising Nineteen?”
A dialogue of opposites. A contest of conviction played out for the benefit of an audience of one: the Shaykh, who smoked his shisha, quietly biding his time.
“Can you recite the Claim?” Arian asked Najran with genuine curiosity.
“No.”
“Then how can you assert the supremacy of the Nineteen?”
Najran’s hand slipped to one of his daggers, this one adorned with sapphires. He glanced at her throat; Arian recognized the threat. Horror struck deep and hard, reminding her of the collar that had stolen her voice in Black Aura.
“You speak in riddles.” A growl from Khashayar deflected Najran’s attention. “What supremacy can any man claim compared to the First Oralist of Hira?”
The look in Najran’s eyes promised Khashayar death. “The Nineteen comprehend the perfection of the Claim. Its verses, the mysteries of its arrangement—they give us the miracle of Nineteen.”
“What miracle?” A contemptuous dig from Khashayar. “The First Oralist is the only miracle in these lands.”
Najran barked at the herder. “Tell the guard to chain him outside.”
Khashayar scrambled to his feet. Najran did the same, removing the opal-edged dagger from his belt. A white line bisected his pupils. The little herder shrank back, hurrying to carry out his orders.
Rising, Arian looked to the Shaykh. “Enemy or not, you received my escort as a guest.”
Two men entered the tent and grabbed hold of Khashayar. The Shaykh waved his pipe. “Hold him. Do not harm him.” Then, to Najran: “Sit. I would hear the end of this debate.”
As Khashayar was led outside, Najran sheathed his dagger, the white line fading from his eyes. He had shed his robe. Under his uniform, his lean frame was honed to an edge.
“Your soft heart will not save him,” he said to Arian.
“Your dark arts do not matter. You have no power against me.”
He smiled suddenly, a stern slash across his face. “Shall we see, sayyidina?”
He waited for her to sit before taking his seat again, wearing his menace like a shroud.
Speaking to the Shaykh, Sinnia echoed Khashayar’s words. “I do not understand either. We know of no miracle of Nineteen in the lands of the Negus.”
The Shaykh set down his pipe. He pointed at Sinnia’s arms.
“The inscription on your circlets are the opening words of the Claim.”
Sinnia nodded, still puzzled.
“Nineteen letters. The opening verse occurs nineteen times throughout the Claim, the opening word—one hundred and fourteen times, a factor of nineteen. The opening word is absent in only a single chapter of the Claim. Nineteen chapters occur between the place where it is missing, and the place where it reappears twice. The number of the Claim’s verses are a factor of nineteen. The number of the Claim’s chapters, a factor of nineteen. The first revelation … nineteen words. The last revelation … nineteen words. Should I go on?”
The Shaykh’s fervor was that of a true believer, of a man who, though illiterate in the Claim, could inspire others with his passion.
Arian responded with a scrupulous observation.
“The total number of verses are only a factor of nineteen if you choose to disregard two verses of the Claim.”
“Irrelevant,” he snapped, no longer lounging on his cushions. “The verses you speak of are heretical. They stand apart from the Claim.”
“Do they?” Arian asked, certain in her knowledge as First Oralist. “Or have you declared them heretical in order to preserve your miracle? There is no metaphysical truth to ‘nineteen,’ aside from the meaning you assign it.”
“Sacrilege,” he whispered through dry lips. But even though the Shaykh wanted to deny her—to dismiss her without measuring her erudition—he couldn’t denounce the First Oralist’s claim to knowledge. He looked to his sayyid for confirmation of his beliefs, receiving a nod of reassurance in return. A sly smile curved Najran’s lips, as he took heed of Sinnia.
A prickle of awareness crept along Arian’s spine. Najran wasn’t an ideologue or an impassioned believer. He was a paid assassin. With all an assassin’s tricks.
Speaking to Sinnia, he said, “You claimed to have proof of Nineteen.”
Sinnia didn’t hesitate. Linking her hand with Arian’s, she began to recite, her low, throaty voice rich in its offering of beauty.
“Mention in the Book, the story of the Adhraa when she withdrew in seclusion from her family to a place in the east. She placed a screen to screen herself, then We sent her Our Ruh, and he appeared before her in the form of a man.”
The Shaykh paused, letting the words sink in. Then he motioned for Sinnia to continue.
“She said: ‘I seek refuge with the One from you, if you fear the One.’”
She looked to Arian, who added, “The spirit of the Ruh announced to the Adhraa the gift of a righteous son.”
Though her eyes were bright with tears, Sinnia finished the verse: “She said, ‘How can I have a son, when no man has touched me, nor am I unchaste?’”
Najran cut across the spell woven by Sinnia’s words, speaking solely to the Shaykh. “She comes from the land of the Negus. Small wonder she spins these fables that honor the Esayin. The Najashi are Esayin—they learn fables from birth that hold no meaning for us.”
Arian rose to her feet, bringing Sinnia and Wafa up with her.
“The Najashi may have their own scriptures, but they are also people of the Claim. Sinnia gave you the nineteenth chapter of the Claim, which is the story of the Adhraa.”
Now the Al Marra had proof of their knowledge of the Claim. And in all his veneration of the miracle of Nineteen, the Shaykh could not discount the honor bestowed upon a woman by the nineteenth chapter of the Claim. It stood not only for the Adhraa herself, but as a lesson as to how women were meant to be treated by the people of the Claim.
Her hand was bound to Sinnia’s, memory flaring of their journey to the Golden Finger, the minaret where two rivers met. The minaret had been inscribed with turquoise bands of calligraphy, and circling the tower, Arian and Sinnia had found verses that told the story of the Adhraa’s utmost esteem in the Claim.
Najran helped his Shaykh to his feet.
“As I said, the mother of the Esayin.” Those strange eyes flicked over her face. “The Claim grants women no such honor.”
Her time was running out. Najran’s influence over his shaykh was too powerful, his menace all-consuming. She would have to call upon the Claim as something other than recitation.
“Then why is it women who were chosen as its guardians?”
Najran’s fingers moved over the daggers at his waist. “Because we took the Council of Hira at its word.” He gripped one of his daggers and drew it from his belt, the hilt concealed in his hand. “But now our truths are ascendant: ‘Over this are Nineteen.’”
Arian had no answer. The verse was an obscure one. She had puzzled over it for months; she was still no closer to deciphering it.
The one thing she knew with certainty was that it could not have reduced the grandeur of the Claim to a numerological miracle. Not if it had to deny other verses of the Claim to do so.
If she could show them the Bloodprint, she could shred the Nineteen’s heresies with irrefutable proof. The fact that she couldn’t was a weakness Najran was prepared to exploit.
“The Bloodprint confirms it. Over this are Nineteen. What does the Council of Hira have to offer in response?”
His arrogance assailed her, confirming her suspicions. The Nineteen and the Preacher were inseparably linked if the Preacher had given them word of his theft of the Bloodprint. She shuddered at the thought of the manuscript left to the Preacher’s care. Of the use he would make of it in his overarching design. Was it possible Najran had seen it?
“The One-Eyed Preacher confirms it, you mean. Because if you had read the Bloodprint, you would know it says no such thing,” she told Najran.
“Do you offer a written proof?” An insult. A subtle repudiation of her word.
She turned it back on him. “Is the sayyid able to read?”
A rough laugh, the scrape of silk and sand. The hilt of his dagger flashed blue. He’d chosen the blade for her throat, which meant she had run out of time.
Releasing Sinnia’s hand, she called down the Verse of the Throne. This time she shaped it differently, spacing the words to give each one the power of a hammer pounding at quartz. But she did it almost soundlessly. A violation of their hospitality served in response to the murder they had been invited to, which was cause enough.
The words drove both men to their knees and held them there, frozen. Sinnia searched the tent, returning with a length of the rope they used for tethering their livestock. She bound their feet, and then she tied their arms to their torsos while Wafa kept an eye out for intruders.
The little herder who had served them stumbled into the tent, his eyes wide at the scene before him. He had an instant to decide—to sound the alarm, to slip past Wafa. Or to allow the Companions to pass from the tent in peace. Even as Najran’s daggered gaze threatened him, the boy sank to his knees before Arian. One small hand reached out to seize the hem of her cloak. He buried his face in its cloth. “Sayyidina. Please say a blessing for my soul.”
Najran would kill him, she thought. But she could save the boy from that fate by killing Najran herself.
She knelt and kissed his cheeks. “May the One keep you and all of your people safe.” She nudged him from the tent. “Disappear inside the encampment. Look for a place to hide.”
He didn’t listen, darting around her to stand before Najran, whose face was mottled with rage, his lips sealed shut by the Claim. The boy’s hands unlatched the belt with the daggers. With the same dexterity he’d shown serving up their meal, he wound the belt around his waist.
A word broke free of Najran’s throat.
“Traitor.”
Traces of blood leaked from the corners of his mouth. The colored flecks in his eyes mutated to crimson. She thought of the Authoritan. She thought of the Claim in his mouth, darkened and degraded.
Arian shivered. They had to move quickly to free Khashayar without alerting the soldiers gathered outside.
The little herder rolled up a flap of the tent at the rear. He cast a glance at the iron glaive, then wisely decided against it.
The sound of gravel in his throat, Najran forced out a threat. “When I find you, boy, I will take my daggers back, flay your skin from your bones, then cut out your heart with my glaive.”
Losing the little of his color that remained, the boy ducked out of the tent.
“Kill him,” Sinnia said to Arian. “He’ll hunt us to the ends of the earth.”
Arian had reached the same conclusion. “Take Wafa. Assess our chances of escape.”
When they slipped out of the tent, she turned to the men on their knees.
She couldn’t murder the leader of the tribes of the Rub Al Khali—he may have been misguided in his aims, but he wasn’t an evil man. So, without occulting it, she used a word she had learned from Lania to stun the Shaykh into unconsciousness. He slumped to his side, his body held by the ropes.
Najran struggled against the ropes that bound him, an unforgiving predator, his eyes crimson and amber, the color of dancing flames with a white-hot tinge of blue at the center. She could have used her knives against him, but she kept up the thrum of the Claim.
He faced her with savage defiance, gritting out a response. “Over this are Nineteen.”
Taken by surprise, she stumbled back a step.
He shouldn’t have been able to speak.
She used the verse she had used against the High Companion, giving it a sharper edge.
