The Black Khan. Ausma Khan Zehanat
you for good.”
A cell door slammed behind him. No member of the Crimson Watch moved, held in thrall as a dark arm snaked around the Technologist’s neck. The Technologist lurched forward a step, but was yanked back by the arm.
A beautiful, throaty voice answered. “No, you monstrosity, it’s mine.”
Elena found she was free, the guard who’d held her captive sinking to his knees behind her. She whirled around, scooped up her knife, and stabbed the back of his head. The movements of those who tried to fight her were sluggish and disjointed. Her blade found their unprotected necks, one powerful thrust after another. The two men who’d hurt Larisa, Elena stabbed through the heart.
Larisa grabbed her sword from the floor. The prisoner in the cell behind Illarion took hold of him by the arm. He didn’t struggle in the prisoner’s hold, standing firm and strong.
“Where … is … the … talisman?” he choked.
The Technologist watched the sisters’ actions, a sneer frozen on his lips.
The wild man in the cell spoke up. He whispered to Illarion, and the Ahdath captain went still.
Sinnia’s grip tightened around the Technologist’s throat. “Does this one matter to you? Because I’m planning to snap his neck.”
“No!” Larisa and Elena shouted together.
The horns on the wall sounded again, summoning reinforcements.
Larisa raced into Sinnia’s cell. She came back with the Malleus gripped in her hand, her young face hard with rage. Elena reached for the Malleus—Larisa held it out of reach. The sisters stared at each other for a lethal, weighted moment; then slowly Elena nodded.
“No!” Illarion shouted. “Ask him where he keeps the talisman!”
Without pausing to answer him, Larisa drove the Malleus into the Technologist’s brain. He slipped feebly out of Sinnia’s hold, his body sagging to the ground.
Elena kicked at his robes. “It’s not enough,” she said. “It will never be enough.”
Elena yanked out her broadsword and severed his head with a stroke. Then she advanced on Illarion, tossing her words over her shoulder.
“The Technologist was yours, Larisa, but this one belongs to me.”
Illarion met her eyes, a bewildering despair in his own. “Mudjadid, please tell them.”
The hands gripping his throat slid back into the cell.
Elena’s sword flashed up. Illarion blocked it with his arm. She reared back and lunged again, and this time Illarion grabbed both of her arms and forced the sword from her hand. Then he pulled her close as she struggled, seeking out Larisa over Elena’s shoulder.
“How dare you use that name?” Elena spat at him, as Larisa asked more calmly, “Where did you learn that name? Who do you call Mudjadid?”
The prisoner in the cell came to the window. The minzar swept across the ward, throwing his features into sharp relief. His blazing eyes and craggy face were obscured by the tangled growth of his beard. A moment later the light from the minzar was gone, and neither Larisa nor Elena could be certain of what they’d seen.
A mirage, a ghost of the past, a specter of a man they’d known and loved.
The oddly familiar sound thrummed through the ward again. Sinnia stepped over the Technologist’s body, a transparent mist emanating from her mouth. It echoed the sound coming from the wild man in the cell. Was it a memory, or was it real? And if it was a memory, how could the Companion of Hira know it?
Elena fought her way free of Illarion’s hold. “Break this door. Do it now.” She was half-sobbing, half-pleading.
Letting go of her, Illarion smashed the lock with a thrust of his sword. If he’d been hobbled like the Crimson Watch, his strength was unfettered now.
The door to the cell unlocked, the prisoner within staggered out into the ward. A soft chant rose from behind the doors of the cells that lined both sides of the ward.
“Mudjadid. Mudjadid. Mudjadid Salikh.”
The wild man stared at Elena and Larisa, tears sliding into his beard, the Claim abating in his throat. It had done its work. It had called them here, and it had unshackled the gifts of the Companion of Hira, allowing her to acknowledge him as a teacher of the Claim and to accept his direction of its use. He’d subverted the workings of the needle to Sinnia’s great advantage. An advantage he’d whispered ceaselessly in her mind, expanding her knowledge of the Claim.
Illarion sank to one knee, his fair hair falling around his face. A palsy gripped the wild man’s hand. It shook as he raised it to Illarion’s hair. Illarion grasped it in his own and kissed the jade ring the man still wore on his finger.
Larisa gasped. “Who are you?” she asked in a strangled voice.
Sinnia stared at the sisters in disbelief. “Don’t you recognize your father?”
She reached for the old man, fastening her arms around his neck, ignoring the soldier at his feet. “Thank you, Mudjadid. Thank you for saving me.”
His thin frame trembled in her grasp, but he raised his head to meet Sinnia’s radiant eyes. “You freed yourself, sahabiya, with your mastery over the Claim.”
LARISA TOOK HER FATHER IN HER ARMS, UNABLE TO COME TO TERMS with his rebirth. For so long she and Elena had believed that their father had met his death at the Authoritan’s hands. Searching his haggard face, she knew that his survival had been purchased at an inordinate cost. The far-seeing eyes were the same—kind and inspirited with belief—but something vital was missing. Perhaps that same element that had hardened inside Larisa after her detention at Jaslyk. Perhaps her father was looking at his daughters and telling himself the same thing.
I don’t know who they are anymore.
“You’ve come,” he choked out. “I told Captain Illarion I would see you again one day.”
Larisa’s face had lost all color. Her limbs trembled with disbelief and her voice was hoarse as she spoke. She looked like a woman who dared not believe her eyes, who dared not cling to hope.
Elena stayed quiet, the personal toll of discovery too wrenching for her to fathom. Her father was a ghost. He was nothing but a memory, a dream of what Marakand might be.
And who was this Ahdath who called her father Mudjadid? He had betrayed them—he might still betray them—or had she been wrong to doubt his loyalty all along? She was swept up in an excess of emotion, unable to separate her feelings.
Had she finally met a member of the Ahdath who’d earned something other than her hate?
She brushed a shaking hand across her eyes, unwilling to face Illarion—to witness his compassion at how deeply she’d been harmed by the knowledge of his treachery. His blue eyes were alight with concern, but she turned her face away.
“I was in the Plague Wing,” her father said. “The Technologist kept you away from me—I would never have let you suffer had I known. After you escaped, he transferred me back to this ward. He took pleasure in describing all that my daughters had endured.”
Her hatred so great that it engulfed her like a living skin, Elena drove the heel of her boot into the Technologist’s severed head. She heard the grinding of his bones with a savage satisfaction.
Illarion flashed her a glance but didn’t interfere. He crouched down on his knees to search the Technologist’s body, coming away with a small object that he tucked into his belt.
“I heard you,” Larisa murmured, disbelieving. “I heard the song of the