So Edene ate, because food was strength, and she had every intention of someday leaving this place, whether her captors willed it or no. When she had eaten, Saadet touched her arm and tugged her veil up to cover her hair and mouth. Edene would have hooked her fingers behind the cloth and pulled it back down again, but Saadet touched Edene’s wrist and shook her head.
With a sigh, Edene nodded.
Leaving the tray lying on the table, Saadet led Edene to the door and knocked. To Edene’s surprise and amazement—even a little fear—the door swung open. There were two large men beyond, both wearing scimitars, but they averted their eyes as Saadet and Edene moved past. Edene tried to copy Saadet’s way of moving—almost a scurry, with quick short footsteps and head ducked down, watching the corridor before her. Edene would have strode tall, turning her head to take in the architecture and peer out windows, but if this was the way they did things here, Edene did not wish to attract attention. She wasn’t sure if this was an escape or something else—but whatever it was, it was better than sitting in her small room five stories above the clifftop, watching shadows trail across the inhospitable desert below.
Saadet led her through pillared halls and across a wide courtyard to a wall that even Edene could tell must be the exterior curtain of this mountain fastness. They climbed steps then, and guards did not stop them. An acrid, unidentifiable scent reached Edene on the sweltering wind. Evening encroached, the harsh direct light of the sun cut by the walls, and the plaza below began to fill with men wielding swords and staves, ready to practice battle.
They attained the battlements, and that moderately unpleasant scent grew eye-watering, ammoniac. Edene pressed her veil across her mouth and nose, grateful suddenly for its faint scent of sandalwood and cedar.
Below her, on a ledge beside the castle, was an enormous nest–trees bigger than the span of her arms piled like twigs, woven together with enormous feathers and scraps of cloth.
Edene recognized the great bird crouched within. It had carried her here, or one like it had. Another, she thought, for this one’s great, brassy wings were clipped. She could see the bright ends of its primaries where they were cut short. She wondered what hand could complete such a task. Smaller birds surrounded it, similar in coloring and outline but no larger than the great eagles of the steppe. Some flew in groups from the cliff, circling like flocks of vultures on the rising heat of the desert below.
The large bird had a long neck—longer than an eagle’s, in proportion—and its savagely hooked beak projected below a snow-white crest as red at the tips as if it had been steeped in blood.
Any one of those crest feathers, Edene thought, was as tall as she.
When it saw her and Saadet on the wall above, it made a piercing noise, sweet and sharp as a falcon’s cry and strong enough to shiver dust in the joins between the stones Edene stood upon. It could have snapped her up in a bite, but instead it stood, unsteadily, and Edene saw the waist-thick chain that ran from its ankle to an enormous bolt in the stone.
“Poor thing,” she said aloud, and was surprised almost to tumbling from the wall by the deep chuckle of someone beside her. She spun, but there was no one there.
And then just as suddenly there was. Her eyes widened as al-Sepehr seemed to appear not an ayl away, his form revealed as if cloaking dust fell from it to pool at his feet, then was swept away by a gust of wind.
“Sorcerer!”
“Just a simple priest,” he said, and inclined his head. Today, his veils were pushed back, and she could see the neat gray-streaked beard he wore shaved at both sides, as if he were vain about his strong jawline—and perhaps hiding a weak chin. Once upon a time, she judged, it had been black as ink. His hands were clasped together as if he hid something behind the right one. As he drew them apart, she saw something flash between his fingers. Green-gold, like the most ancient of Messaline coins, then gone.
A ring, she thought, as he slipped the right hand into his pocket and drew it out again, empty. A ring that had hidden him from her view.
A ring that he kept in his pocket.
She swallowed and pretended she had seen nothing of the kind. “Your god grants you great abilities, then.”
“She provides,” he agreed with a pleasant nod. He put his hand into his pocket again, as if casually, and pursed his lips in a sweet, birdy whistle. Once, twice, piping softly. Something appeared among the stones, then—a scorpion, scuttling on many legs, glossy brown in the brilliant sun. Edene stepped back cautiously.
Al-Sepehr thrust out his left hand, resting a crooked finger on the wall, and whistled again. The scorpion crawled to him and ran up his finger, its heavy barb swaying over its back like ripe fruit on the vine.