Farro

By Arreana

Khensa, a girl from the slums, is one of the last of a dying breed. Farro blood courses through her veins and for it she has suffered countless atrocities. Orphaned, kidnapped, imprisoned, and tortured, she endures without knowing if it shall ever end. For eleven months she endures...

Enter Bomani, her unintentional savior. Sent by his father to assassinate the high priest, he finds her, bloody, starved, and naked upon the floor. She is feral and half-crazed and yet still he takes her away. He introduces her to a whole new world – his own.

Together they navigate their way around a fragile society of kings, vendettas, and magic. Their story crosses deserts and mountains. It begins with fire and ends with water.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Arreana
• Release date: Jun 27, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301768431

Book preview

FARRO

Arreana

Copyright © 2013 Arreana Krueger.

All rights reserved.

Smashwords edition.

For Max and Rachel,

who encouraged me

when I needed it most.

Your Friend

Table of Contents

Title Page

The Purple Man

The Lord and His Estate

A Far-Fetched Fable

Amethyst Eyes

A Broken Nose

My Fabricated Father

Moving Mountains

A Dangerous Dinner

The Governess and the Harp

Beneath the Table

The Kidnapping of a Prince

A Debt to Repay

I, Silver Platter

The Lion's Den

Foreign Instruments

The Hunting Party

Overboard

Death's Visage

Second Wife, Second Son

Beyond the Bolted Door

Nightingale in Bloom

The Carriage Ride

Grasses of the Steppes

For the Life of Another

The Moth Room

Inner Palace

Queen Shalra Amon

Downhill

Into Junktown

Umayama's Tale

Mortality Returned

The Arrival of the Rains

Mbiki Swears His Life

Bomani's Last Secret

Of Things to Come

Preview: Sulfur

Also By Arreana

Acknowledgements

About Arreana

The Purple Man

I smell the smoke first, pungent and sweet. It seeps in beneath the door and creeps closer, slithering like a snake across the floor, encircling me in its coils. Promising me relief.

Death’s prelude.

How often have I dreamed of such release? How long have I disgraced myself with such selfish hopes? Mama would be ashamed if she knew how easily I’d turn myself over…

Then I remind myself, your mama’s dead.

There is no mother to encourage me on this cold, marble floor. Only smoke. It settles over me like a blanket. I lie here as I have for innumerable days, my body immobile and slumped in the hollow it has worn in the filthy rush mat. I have lived so long in this loneliness that death now seems a gentle reprieve.

Why, then, do I wish to stand?

A single light holds my gaze, a sliver of milky haze spilling in from beneath the door. I’ve always watched it, waiting for it to open, but never has it seemed so far away. Ten feet away—a daunting expanse.

I shift tenderly upon my sores and, with quivering fingers, brush aside the greasy hair hanging across my face. The tiny room comes into focus, the darkness so complete that I barely make out the outline of the table in the corner.

Memories: hands pinning my arm to the table, searing my flesh, sticking me with barbs and stingers, snapping my bones like dry twigs.

My stomach curdles. I fix my gaze back upon the smoke and the light.

I hear the faint treading of feet from beyond the locked door—I see it, in the flickering of the glow. They must not know—maybe they just don’t care—that I’m a prisoner in this tiny room, that I have been a prisoner here for months.

Eater be merciful, could it have already been a year?

I feel loss, distinct and nauseating, as I consider what that black, seamless passage of time has stolen from me. No, it hasn’t been a year; it just can’t have been.

I’m determined now. I want to get up. I will get up.

I slide my swollen knees up beneath me. My stiff ankles ache as I lean back upon my thighs. My head rests like a leaden weight on my chest. My back pops, vertebra by vertebra. Every muscle, from my fingers to my spastic toes, screams.

I will not relent to my agony; I rise like a corpse upon fine puppet strings.

I will face Death the Eater this night. When He comes to claim me, He shall find me waiting.

I’ve managed to push myself up into a crouch, and I pause. My good arm props me up on splayed fingers, my knees numb and knocking together.

The smoke is a low lying fog around my calves. The faint pattering of feet I’d heard before has dissipated into unsettling silence.

I’m wasting time. I need get up.

My left arm is broken, but my right cannot do it alone. I place both hands upon the stone and grind my teeth together. Squeezing my eyes shut against the excruciating pain, I push myself up.

I’m standing. I feel the sweat pouring down my face, but I’m standing.

Good, you’re already up.

I had been too absorbed in my exertions to hear the door. Cautiously for the sake of my wobbling knees, I pivot myself to look into the glare of the bright doorway.

The Purple Man stands there in silhouette. The light spills in around him, cloaking his face in shadow, but I need not see his face to know it. I have, after all, had months to memorize it. I already know its every wrinkle, scar, and liver spot. It is a face that stalks me through my restless nights.

The light might have blinded me, but my memory fills in the blanks with exacting detail.

Strip, he says.

I look down at what had once been a green linen robe, reduced now to brown rags. I do as he tells me, for he no longer needs the stick to invoke my obeisance. I pull the decaying dress up and over my shoulders, quaking with the effort. Then the dress is gone, and I see for the first time the festering lesions it had concealed. Lamp light from the hall streams through the smoky film and bathes me in its luminance. My skin, my hands, my swollen knuckles… I’m hardly human.

The Purple Man stands before me, the light now striking his face. He’s panicked; I see it in the thin purse of his lips and the glimmering sheen upon his brow.

A man stumbles by the open doorway, and, starting, the Purple Man whirls to watch the straggler pass.

Alone again, he turns back and hands me the woolen blanket he carries. Put this on.

I drape it across my shoulders, hiding my nakedness. He’s given me a blanket, could he mean to take me with him? To where?

The Great Abyss?

No, I won’t allow it, not when I have cause to hope. Only minutes ago I had been lying on the floor with nothing but a smoky halo swirling over my head, and now the door stands open, my putrid rags are gone, and—by the Eater!—I’m standing.

If I cannot hope now, then when can I? I had thought myself long ago broken, but deep within my empty belly my stubbornness reawakens.

We’re leaving.

Is there a…fire? They are my first words in what’s surely been weeks. They claw their way up my dry throat and come out as a fragile rasp.

Be quiet.

My body moves slowly, but my mind spins. I try to estimate how far I’ll be able to walk before I will inevitably collapse.

My first step is easier than anticipated, but, despite the adrenaline pumping through me, I’m still not fast enough. The Purple Man wraps his large, sweaty fingers around the nape of my neck and forces me forward.

Together we leave my cell, staggering out into the hall. The smoke chokes my senses: stings my eyes, clouds my nose, and dries my mouth. I hold a corner of the blanket to my face to block out the worst of it, and next to me the Purple Man hacks.

A young man in white robes sprints towards us. In his hurry he knocks shoulders with the Purple Man. We stumble away, and I catch only a fleeting glimpse of the man’s face in the fog of smoke. Tears stream from his closed eyes, carving rivulets down his ashen cheeks. He sprints away from us, back the way we’ve come.

If the Purple Man means to save us from the fire, then we are going the wrong way.

Could this be my end after all?

He shoves me onward and I fabricate wild scenarios: the Great Abyss bubbles up through the floor, churning with the cold, dead souls it’s already claimed. It spreads out across the marble tiles, alighting all it touches with its ferocious heat. The Purple Man pushes me to the edge of its gaping maw and tips me into the chasm. I fall and fall and fall until Death the Eater finally catches me and I am devoured.

No! He shall not lead me passively to Death!

I drop the blanket and surge ahead. His surprise allows me to tear myself from his grasp. I lurch forward, my arms wheeling as I fight to reclaim my balance.

I’m free!

His hands lash out for me but capture only smoke. The blanket lies discarded at his feet; he kicks it out of his way with a howl of frustration.

I have only seconds before he’ll find me again. I cannot hesitate. Wild with desperation, I turn on him, propelling myself face first into his purple-clothed chest. I latch onto his collarbone with my teeth, clamping down on him through the thin robes.

He bellows and strikes my shoulder, but I am like a starving leech and his blows cannot dislodge me. With my right hand I reach up and tear at the first thing I touch, his left ear. I dig my nails into his flesh until my fingers are coated in the sticky warmth of his blood. I grind my teeth into bone and the man screams and screams.

He strikes me again, but to no avail. He cannot—

A new, torturous sensation paralyzes me.

The intensity of the pain is both icy cold and flaming hot. My body begins to slacken…

My hold is failing. No! Don’t let go! This will be your only chance! But no amount of urging will make my body obey. I’m emptying of my strength like a burlap sack of its grain. Soon I’ll be on the floor, useless.

The Purple Man brings his fist down upon my shoulder a final time, and I cannot withstand it. My teeth lose their hold and I crumble at his feet. My left arm falls across my face, and I see it: the gory tip of an arrowhead protruding from my left bicep. My new attacker comes from behind, from the smoke, armed with a bow.

Dumbstruck upon the floor, I watch as the Purple Man turns to flee. Not from me, I know, but from the owner of the brown-fletched arrow embedded in my arm.

The smoke conceals the newcomer, but his bow twangs as he lets loose a second arrow. Fast and true, the projectile buries itself in the Purple Man’s back.

The man tumbles. He lands flat upon his round face.

I cry, Not—!

I do not know what I had wanted to say, but I yank myself onto my knees as though possessed. Naked, bloodied, and thoroughly muddleheaded, I crawl to my kidnapper’s pierced body…

…to find that the arrow has struck him dead.

No!

I bash the corpse with my bony hands, forcing the last of the air from his lungs in an agonized moan. I beat him again and again, I, the butcher and he, the haunch.

With a brusque voice, a man at my back demands, Hands where I can see them.

But I ignore the order, feeling deliriously invincible. For weeks, months even, I had been waiting for Death, thinking that He should visit me through His avatar, the Purple Man. Now that man is dead, and with him dies my mortality. I’m emboldened with this belief of invulnerability. I am a poison to which even Death the Eater knows no antidote.

Hands!

I see it from the corner of my eye: a sandaled foot swinging in at my ribs. I twist, catching it just in time. With my good arm, I force the foot up, thrusting it high above my head.

The man—sandals, bow, and all—spills backwards across the floor.

I’ve knocked the air clean out of him. He sputters, but he’s rallying quicker than I had hoped. He’s left me with only a small window in which to act. I won’t squander it.

I draw back my chapped lips and sink my teeth into his sooty, naked calf. I puncture flesh, and my mouth floods with the familiar, metallic taste of blood.

He acts quickly, sitting up with a hiss and slapping me across the face with a broad palm. His blow, though anticipated, knocks me away as though I were nothing more than a mosquito.

This stranger is far stronger than the Purple Man, far stronger than anyone I have ever met.

My stinging cheek reconciles me with the truth of my situation: hardly immortal, I’m more vulnerable than ever.

My eyes burn with tears and I cannot shake the heavy daze holding me powerless. I watch the man through the fog. He’s on his feet, shuffling about in the smoke for the bow lost in the fall. He sees me watching him and stops, drawing a bronze sickle-sword from his waist. The khepesh is larger than any I’ve ever seen, a handbreadth wide and nearly four feet in length.

He lifts the sword’s point to my constricted throat.

I blink away the tears, and I drag my eyes up to meet his.

His features are coarse and sharp: a tall nose, a square jaw, and deep, dark eyes. It is the face of a nobleman, clean and hairless. He scowls and his nose wrinkles like the muzzle of a rabid dog. His thick eyebrows hang low beneath a forehead creased in fury.

He carries himself differently than the Purple Man, tense, towering, intimidating. Nor does he wear the usual purple or white robes I’ve come to associate with my prison’s wardens. His knee-length trousers are black, and the gray, sleeveless tappa he wears only half covers a scarred chest. If I didn’t still taste his blood on my lips, I would have thought him made of smoke.

I barely form my words for the adrenaline coursing through my veins. Kill him…!

The man edges closer. Do you work for him? The tip of his khepesh hangs inches away.

I’m shamed by the tears that spill hot and angry upon my cheeks. I stare at the Purple Man’s battered body.

My voice floods back upon a tide of rage and remorse. "I was supposed to kill him!"

Another question: What are you to him?

By now I’m crumbling into sobs. What a wretched, wretched creature I’ve become. I’m monstrous! I will never be able to kill the Purple Man. Why does this realization devastate me? Why do I regret that someone else has completed the gruesome task? Maybe it had been the Purple Man’s plan all along—take a naive girl and, through the careful administration of terror and pain, twist her into a murderess.

I know I need to pull myself together. I need to put a stop to these thoughts. Where is my rationality when I need it? I’m not an idiot; I entertain no illusions of receiving mercy from this strange, aristocratic man, not after seeing how unhesitatingly he had struck down my kidnapper.

To my horror, I find that my voice has fled me once more. I try to explain, Kidnapped…me…

He shakes his khepesh to hurry me. Kidnapped why?

Fear forces my answer out in a jumbled mess, I-I don’t know… A weapon? Something to do with a weapon. Something about me finding it, or… Please, I don’t know!

The man goes stiff, distrust twisting his already fearsome features. But how could anyone be suspicious of me? I’m a weeping girl lying on the floor. To me, he is a mountainous obstacle, and I, little more than an ant to be crushed.

He doesn’t ask me to elaborate, but I see from his glowering expression that he expects me to.

He wanted to kill men…but I can’t remember. Strange names…

Remember. Your life depends on it.

I rack my memories, hoping to find at least one name I can provide. Surely there had been one memorable enough to stick.

I struggle, La…Lafeek…?

Lateef, the man corrects me. I had not thought it possible, but he looks even angrier than he had before.

I nod. He pronounces it the way I remember hearing it all those days ago.

For a long while, the gray man says nothing. The smoke billows in around us and in the distance I hear something that might be screaming. How does he ignore it?

Are you armed? he asks at last.

Armed? The man sees all that I possess—absolutely nothing. I want to laugh, but I can manage only a scoff.

Some assassin you’d make, he sneers.

I’m not an assassin! I snap with a flare of outrage. A muscle in my left bicep spasms around the arrow still lodged there, and the pain drives me to new levels of hysteria. I was taken from my home and imprisoned here. I don’t know why! Ask him! I point at the dead man.

Yet still the stranger won’t trust me.

Below the hem of his trousers is the bite mark I’ve left on his shin. I hope it infects.

What did Chike tell you?

Chi…ke?

Is he referring to the Purple Man? I had convinced myself that such a monster couldn’t possess a mother-given name. Now that I know it—

Answer me!

I’m crying again, gingerly touching the bloodied arrowhead. I-I don’t… He jabbered occasionally, but never… Please! Can’t you see the prison’s on fire?

Surprise penetrates through the man’s scowl. Prison? You think this is a prison?

How do I respond? In truth, I have nothing but my assumptions to rely upon. I arrived here blindfolded and have never been permitted out of that single room.

Convinced at last of my ignorance, he drops the khepesh’s point. My confusion proves answer enough. Do you have clothes?

I’m too overwhelmed to speak. I shake my head.

He hooks the corner of the abandoned blanket with the tip of his sword, dragging it within reach.

I retrieve it hastily, suddenly ashamed by my nakedness. What do you want from me?

You’re coming with me.

No I’m not.

A glint of fiery bronze and then the curve of the khepesh is pressing against my chin. With a strangled cry, I shrink against the wall.

Do you really think—the man’s lips curl into a snarl—that I would just let you go after learning you’re Lateef’s intended assassin?

I know nothing! Just let me go!

Go? he repeats, with a sickening leer. Go where? The compound is sealed. The doors are barred from the outside. If you don’t burn in here, then you’ll be killed out there.

I gape at him. What is this place? What’s going on?

Get up. I don’t have time for this.

I’m without argument. I’m so completely lost, so completely removed from my home, that there is no hope of escape. Inch by inch I pull myself to my feet, but I’ve lost my earlier determination. I’m no freer than I had—

The man strikes without warning.

If his blow had landed where he had intended I would be unconscious, but his fist misses its mark and strikes my cheekbone instead. The back of my head slaps against the limestone wall and I bite my tongue.

I am weak, but I retaliate immediately. I pull back my right fist and throw a jab of my own. My aim is awful, and he is extremely tall. I punch his throat.

He stumbles back, massaging his bruised windpipe. Wheezing a curse, he throws a second punch.

This time, I’m out cold.

The Lord and His Estate

The pounding in my head renders me almost senseless. Half-conscious, I try to collect my thoughts from a thick fog of confusion. My bicep feels swollen. The skin feels stretched tight over the muscles, fighting to contain the pulsating agony within. The pain helps to rouse me.

I’m outside.

My senses are overwhelmed by all that assault them. I’m lying on my right side upon the earth, a small rock digging into my ribcage. Somewhere nearby a horse snorts and paws the ground. Then, of course, there’s the night breeze. I can’t recall when I had last felt its caress, and with each ragged breath I take it in by the mouthful.

It’s cold, soothing my battered flesh and rushing in to extinguish the smoky fire burning in my lungs. My throat itches.

I’m on the brink of coughing someone overhead begins to speak. I do not wish to alert anyone to my consciousness… At least not before I’ve figured out what’s going on. I lie as still and quiet as the dead.

How did you escape? asks a man.

Through the grate at the back of the pond. I recognize the second speaker as my newest kidnapper, the young aristocrat and the Purple Man’s murderer.

Who is she?

One of Chike’s.

A servant?

Guess again.

Silence now, almost palpable. Does some form of non-verbal communication now pass between the two men?

The unidentified man’s voice is low and gravelly when at last he speaks: I’m listening.

It seems Chike’s been training her up as a weapon. That’s a gross lie. I never said anything of the sort.

A weapon? To his credit, the first man sounds unconvinced.

My kidnapper elaborates, To murder you.

Then he is Lateef?

Someone steps closer, and the hem of his long talla robes sweeps across my arm. My breath catches as the man stoops and places a hand upon my forehead.

She’s injured. Lateef might be examining a sick dog. By the fletching, I’m guessing that the arrow is your doing?

I couldn’t see her in the smoke. It had been intended for Chike.

It won’t do any permanent damage. His hand moves from my forehead and down my mutilated arm. My skin prickles, his touch igniting a none-too-distant memory. I’m more worried about these other lesions. It looks as though her arm’s been broken.

"That’s not my doing," asserts the aristocrat with a practiced defiance.

She’s extremely malnourished. Lateef’s hand jumps to the old, festering wound on my right arm. The contact stings.

A pause, his touch is like hot metal upon my skin. At last he speaks, Look at this welt, it’s as though… He doesn’t finish the thought, opting instead to twist my arm so as to better inspect it.

I hold as still as I can during his examination, but as the seconds threaten to stretch into minutes it becomes impossible to bear. I slide my arm from his grasp and tuck it tight against my belly.

I croak, It’s venom. Please—Don’t touch it!

My right hand grazes the fabric. I’ve been clothed in something soft and supple and wet. It is not the blanket the Purple Man had given me. Whatever became of it? Of the burning prison?

Lateef leans away, perhaps intending to give me space. Steady on, girl. I meant you no harm.

My head is still throbbing from that punch, but with eyes squeezed shut I try to omit the haze. Where is the fire, the smoke? How long have I been out?

Where am I?

Lateef says, My estate.

And you’re Lateef.

I had meant it more as a statement than a question, but he answers anyways, Yes, I am Lord Lateef Lizi.

When I manage at last to open my eyes, I find the stars above muted by lamplight. The light is dim, but it is more than I’ve had in months. I’ve been in the dark so long. I twist around to face the men and raise my eyes to meet the lord’s.

I guess Lateef to be in his early forties, but he is so weatherworn as to appear years older. A long, white scar stretches from his right earlobe to his cheek, and his nose is crooked from having once been broken. His mouth is small and lopsided and the longer we stare at one another the more pursed it becomes.

I’ve been holding my breath, fear choking it in my throat.

There is, after all, much to inspire fear: the dark, these men, the strange novelty of the night air upon my skin, and the other-worldly glow of the firelight. Above all else I fear Lateef’s eyes, for they are dark and unblinking. They bore into me with the steadfastness of a stalking predator’s.

He holds my gaze a little longer before breaking it and turning to his younger companion. Get her into the house. Then he addresses someone I cannot see. Cook, lock the gate. No one is to come or go without my say-so.

The younger man makes a hissing noise, attracting my attention. He stands close, his trousers dripping water upon the earth. He’s been wearing a gray tappa, but it’s gone now. He’s wet, his black hair hangs limp around his face. Has he been swimming?

My skin, too, is damp. The fabric covering me is soaked through. Why? What’s happened?

The young man bares his teeth in the orange light. He opens his mouth to protest and Lateef shoots him a curdling look, silencing him. Do it.

The young, half-dressed aristocrat steps forward, bending down and reaching for me.

Wait! What’s going—?

But before I finish my question I’m plucked from the earth. I hang limp and helpless in the huge man’s arms and realize, when I see the gray fabric rustling across my torso, that I’m wearing his missing tappa. When had that happened?

The broadness of the young man’s chest blocks Lateef from view, but I hear him saying, Take her to the Moth Room. I’m going to go have Onion boil us some water.

I’m not your slave, Lateef. He jostles me as though I’m a carpet rather than a living, breathing, bleeding human.

How it hurts!

Spare me your temper tonight, Bomani. Just take her up.

Bomani. The name lingers in my mind for its familiarity. It’s a name I had heard even before my kidnapping, and yet I can’t recall its significance… Had it belonged to a general? A famous hunter? Either occupation fits this man’s ferocious nature, but then this Bomani is young, no more than three or four years my senior.

No matter, he need not be a famous hunter to scare me.

He transports me in stony silence across the courtyard and carries me through the lit doorway with reckless haste. My ankles bang against the door frame and my head bounces against the papered walls. He takes me up a flight of stairs and my knees bash into mahogany frames and disturb the hand-woven tapestries. My head knocks against a polished banister…

All of these fineries prove it: this is the home of a true lord. It’s a far cry from my one room apartment in Junktown.

I whisper, I-I want to go home.

Be quiet.

We reach the second floor landing just as Bomani’s arms begin shaking. Is he tiring? I cannot be heavy in my current emaciated state, and I know better now than to doubt his strength. Yet he stumbles to a halt. He stands on that landing as though glued there; the steady shaking in his arms escalating until his whole body is quaking.

I watch with equal parts fright and mystification as his narrow, gray eyes dart up and down the hall. It’s obvious that he’s anxious, but I see nothing in the plain hallway to warrant such caution.

He spins full circle and my head hits the railing with an audible thud. I hiss and blink back the white stars that erupt behind my eyelids.

When I open my eyes again it’s to find him staring back down at me. I see for the first time the tiny insignia inked into the flesh just below his right ear. A tiny bird, wings spread.

There’s no time to decipher the mark’s meaning. By now Bomani’s shivering has seized him completely. The transformation of his countenance is immediate; his face floods with fury.

He drops me.

I hit the floor and the arrow’s shaft snaps. The resultant pain shoots up my arm, stunning me. My mouth falls open to scream but the sound is lodged in my throat.

Bomani bellows, You thought you could bewitch me, did you?

From the corner of my eye I see his leg winding back. I know what to expect, but I cannot move away in time. His foot snaps forward and catches me square in the ribs.

Witch!

The cry for help does not come. One—if not more—of my ribs is broken. A bolt of pain dances up and down my spine. He yells, and I curl myself into a ball. I’m weeping from the agony. I wish desperately for the ability to say anything.

"You dare try and bewitch me?"

He spits like a cobra and it spatters upon my arm.

The words come at last, but in a hiccupping sob. I-I didn’t do anything! Please! I didn’t do anything!

You lying sack of—!

Bomani!

A fist comes swinging in from behind him, catching the livid man in the cheek. The punch sends Bomani staggering into the paneled wall, stunned.

Lord Lateef has intercepted. He charges his young friend and pins the man up against the wall. You’ve crossed the line!

Let me go! Bomani bats Lateef away, proving that even the lord is no match for his monstrous strength. She’s black magic!

No! I cry, still crumbled over from the pain. I stare up at Lateef, appealing to him with watery eyes, Please believe me! I don’t know what’s going on!

Footsteps upon the stairs announce the arrival of another stranger, this time an elderly woman. Her hair is long and streaked through with gray; it frames her face in utter disarray, lending her a wild look.

What’s all the—? She stops on the top step as she surveys the situation. By the Eater! She spots me and falls to my side, cupping my wet face in her soft, fleshy hands. My head thunders and blood pulsates from my ripped wound, but I’m less concerned with these problems than I am with the dispute still raging above me.

Lateef yells at Bomani, Go to my office!

This is lunacy! I’ll have no part—!

Well, you’re not leaving! You’ll go to my office and you’ll wait for me there!

The elderly woman has been speaking to me, but I’m too distracted by the men to pay her much heed.

Ignore them, sweet, she coos. They’re just silly men. Shh…there’s no need to cry, my lord will have you better in no time.

She’s gentle and soothing but I ungraciously wish her gone. All she does is lend further disorder to the situation, aggravate my already considerable confusion.

A door shuts somewhere out of view and when I look up again I see that Bomani has gone.

Lateef crouches close. Find me a blanket, Onion. We’ll carry her to the Moth Room.

The woman leaves to do his bidding.

What’s your name, girl?

I stare up at him through a screen of tears.

He must realize that I won’t be answering him because he says, I know you can’t trust me now, but I hope that will come with time.

What’s going on?

I don’t rightly know, but I’ll tell you everything I know later. Now is hardly the time.

In my own defense, I say, I didn’t do anything to that man. I don’t know why—

You’ve done nothing intentional. His assurance is irritatingly vague. He turns away to watch the elderly woman hurrying back up the steps. Here comes the blanket. We’ll take you to your room and clean off all that sewage.

Your room—the words stick unpleasantly. I try to soothe myself by thinking that surely it had only been a slip of the tongue. Surely he had only meant it in the common, polite way. Surely he didn’t mean for me to live here…

It takes the combined efforts of both the old woman and Lateef to lift and carry me through one of the many doors lining either side of the hall. The room within is lit only by the moonlight streaming in through the curtained window. I see only that it is large, that there’s a bed at one end and a dresser at the other before I’m carried through an adjoining door.

This room, the bathroom, is steamy and hot. Clanking pipes as thick as my thigh run between floor and ceiling, shining red in the dark. A copper tub occupies the center of the room and I’m laid by its clawed feet. The tile is cold, and the woman’s hand upon mine, sweaty.

I hear Lateef shuffling behind me. A lamp is lit. There’s the squeaking sound of a knob being turned—the sound of water rumbling through the pipes, gushing into the tub.

Lateef steps back into view, he glances at the small stack of white linens on the shelf in the corner. Onion, we’ll need that boiling water and more towels.

Shall I have Cook start some stew?

Not right now. I don’t think she’d be able to keep it down. When’s Ghari expected back?

Any moment now.

Good. When he arrives, send him to calm Bomani down.

Very well, sir.

She leaves and we’re alone, but the gentleman asks no more questions. He removes the dark brown talla he wears and drapes it across the back of the chair in the corner. Underneath it he wears the garb of a courtier: a hip-length, linen tunic with mother-of-pearl buttons and a pair of billowing cotton trousers. The tunic is a rich forest green, embroidered with gold thread. When he bends low over me, I find myself staring at the intricate patterns stitched upon his sleeve.

Are you listening?

I feel the cold of the floor. I smell bath oils—sandalwood, rosemary, rose. My eyes roam from one object to the next: a white bowl with blue peacocks stenciled onto the clay, painted grape vines winding their way up a trestle, tickling the deep blue ceiling.

Lateef snaps his fingers inches from my face, but the sound is dull, as though I’m hearing it through water. Are you still with me?

Yes…?

In movements too quick to follow, he pins back his sleeves and I see that the hairs upon his arms are both long and dark. His fingers return to my flesh, and they are as dry and as scratchy as sand.

Let’s get you into the bath.

He strips away Bomani’s huge, dirty tappa without my help. I’m naked, dirty, smelling foul, but somehow I don’t care. I’m limp as I’m lifted and lowered into the tub.

Cold! The water is cold! But only for a moment, then I feel it, the wonderful weightlessness. I allow myself to sink deep until nothing but my head sticks up above the water’s surface.

Lateef peels back my eyelids. I had not realized that I had shut them, but now I ache to close them again. The water is a cool sheet upon my fever. It numbs the pain. My fractured rib no longer screams. The arrow in my arm is but a pinch upon my consciousness, and my broken arm, a dull throb.

The old woman is back. She carries with her a clay bowl balanced upon a stack of towels. I lift my right hand from the water, but it feels as heavy as a lead weight.

He…llo…

My hand drops back into the water with a noisy splash.

The man speaks but I hear only fragments: Sh…fad…g.

He lifts my eyelids back up, but I shut them again. Stop it now, I want to say to him. My fingers find the hem of his sleeve and its gold embroidery. I pick at it.

…remove… arrow…

There’s a splash, a violent jerk, and a sharp pulse of heat.

My brain clears