Obsidian: Retribution (Book 2)

Seventeen: The Wind of Change

Qasim's lips peeled back into a sneer, only the resulting expression appeared caught between that of someone who'd missed a joke and of utter disbelief. "You'd let me live and give me the Rishi? Are you insane or have I beaten you so hard your fucking brain don't work no more, your royal piece of overprivileged shit?" He spat onto the ground to his left, raised his head back snarling. "Just kill me and get on with it, why don't you?"

Ghaul, of course, stepped in immediate to facilitate the request and was stopped short by a raised hand from his former salar.

"It's a fair question. Let's see." Muradi took one sword from his lap and anchored it on the floor, leaning his weight on it, his hand caressing the black tourmaline on the pommel as if to remind himself it was there. He said, "I killed my mother when I was thirteen. Got sent to Sabha for two years before they took me out. I had all my brothers slaughtered by the time I was twenty, killed my father for the throne at twenty-three. In the past two years I had two sons executed for treason. I killed the mother too, to set an example." He paused, stopped fiddling with the sword and looked straight into Qasim's eyes. "Do you want to ask me again if I'm sane, Qasim, or does that answer your question for you?"

It drained the blood from Qasim's face, sealed his mouth shut as he listened.  She knew the answer to that question, and so, apparently, did Qasim. It did change the game at hand, gave the man a lot to think about. You could maybe negotiate with an enemy of sound mind and hope to come out alive with some logic in play. Dealing with a man whose sanity hadn't been intact since he was thirteen years old was a different story, especially when he had a blade to your throat. Muradi was a man driven by something else, something beyond logic, beyond reason, beyond what sane people were equipped with to imagine or anticipate, and it had just been made known to all of them that morning.

"Now, let's get to the other question,"Muradi continued when Qasim made no reply, his fingers around the sword hilt moved again. "Why am I letting you live? Here's the thing. Sane or not, I consider myself a fair and practical man. You have cause to want retribution for how I have wronged you, and that's fair. Now that the debt has been paid, I'm willing to consider us even. And here is where practicality comes in."

He paused, swept his eyes over the remaining bandits and back to Qasim. "You and your men will work for me. You will do as I say, when I say, and exactly as I say, and I will make you the new Grand Chief of the Black Desert. When that happens, the Rishi will operate under my command with you at its helm. You get what you want, and I get what I want. Fair?"

Qasim shook his head, his expression showed confusion, disbelief, and a few more conflicting emotions she couldn't name. "How will you get the Rishi?"

"We go to Samarra. We take out Saracen."

"With six men?"

"Seven," Muradi corrected, "and an army I will give you when we get to Samarra."

It had to be a bluff, Zahara thought. Samarra was ruled by the former salahari's father, if there were alliances to be formed, it couldn't have come from there. But however impossible that may seem to her, it was enough to get Qasim thinking. The rest of the men, too, seemed convinced, judging from the way they stared at him now that was not too different from the way his loyal soldiers had looked at him back in Rasharwi.

"And Sarasef?" asked Qasim. "What about him?"

"Sarasef will come with an army once he knows we have Saracen. He's not going to let someone else kill his own blood. We'll take care of both brothers, and make you the new grand chief."

A hush rippled through the campground, carried by the wind that rushed in through the trees, shaking the leaves off its branches. It felt like the change of seasons, like the coming of a storm.

"Why me?" Qasim asked, obviously trying to catch a breath.

Muradi shrugged, tugged a corner of his lips up into an amused smile. "Could be Left Ear here for all I care. But someone who knows how to command would be a better choice."

"And if I refuse?"

"Simple." The reply came swiftly. "You die here and Left Ear will be the new Grand Chief of the Rishi."

It earned him a few chuckles from the men. They like him already, Zahara thought with an uneasy feeling in her stomach.

"And you," Qasim asked, catching his eyes. "What will you do?"

All eyes were on him now, all of them holding their breaths, waiting for the words they already knew to be spoken.

Muradi looked at them all one by one, worked his way back at Ghaul who was smiling, and then to the sack at his feet that tightened the muscles along his jawline.

"What will I do?" he repeated, the conviction in that voice sent a chill down her spine, twisted her stomach as he spoke. "I'll take Samarra, raise an army to invade Rasharwi, kill me another son, and take back my motherfucking throne."

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