Obsidian: Retribution (Book 2)

Seven: A New Horse to Break

There were times when people came to find their place in the world and their purpose in life, when a door opened and everything they hoped for fell into place, arranged neatly on the other side. This was not one of those times for Lasura.

This was sitting on Azram's torturous saddle for something that didn't make sense, to ride somewhere dangerous toward a destination he didn't pick and possibly for someone else's benefit that might end up with him dying very badly, having his innards picked by a bunch of starving vultures to top it off. And he had decided to come along on the ride, anyway, simply because ... well, what the fuck else was he supposed to do with his life now that he had become homeless, parentless, broke, and on top of it possibly wanted dead by everyone alive for existing except for this girl who had been deranged enough to have invited him to join her khagan so she could utilize him at will to win the war against his homeland with nothing in it for him whatsoever?

She also hated his guts, that much he had figured when they first met, and they hadn't been able to share the same space no matter how large without causing something to crash down from the sky or generating a fight to rival his mother on the verge of her monthly bleeding in intensity. And he was supposed to live here, among people who wanted his father dead and his bloodline gone extinct, hanging on her mercy and her ability to convince everyone not to kill him when he hadn't the slightest clue how that could possibly be accomplished.

Which one of you two made me this fucked up shit? he wondered, thinking about both his parents who were probably not dead and too busy trying to fuck up each other's life to care about where their son was. Of course, that's the only certainty in my life I can always count upon, Lasura thought and resorted to doing exactly what he had been doing in the past seventeen years, which was to sigh and try to make the most out of the situation he was stuck in to survive another day. Considering where he was right now and what Djari had just revealed to her brother, the chance of success was thin.

The kha'a's personal tent was more luxurious than Lasura had expected. Soft, Cakoran wool carpet lined the entire floor of the tent that could comfortably fit twenty people. An array of Makena silk pillows and cushions surrounded a low table intricately carved and inlaid with the finest mother-of-pearl from Samarra, making the otherwise basic accommodation fit for a king. It wasn't much compared to what he was used to in the Tower, but out here in the desert, it spoke of exactly how powerful and wealthy the Visarya was as a khagan. Not surprising, once you recall how they controlled eight smaller khagans, thanks to the late Za'in izr Husari.

At one end of the table seated Nazir izr Za'in, Djari's brother, kha'a and oracle of Visarya. In other words, the man who now controlled it all. The new kha'a couldn't be more than a few years older than he was, and Lasura caught himself wondering if he could have held himself with such authority in the same position. The idea of succeeding his father––of being salar in his case––was unthinkable, terrifying even. How does one decide to carry such a weight? And why? Isn't life already hard as it is to survive that one should want to be responsible for an entire khagan or the Salasar?

A useless thought for another time, that. For now, he had to survive this.

Across the table, Nazir Kha'a sipped his wine, staring at him quietly, openly. He decided to stare back––a habit he'd taken from his mother that was surely going to get him killed one day. It wasn't easy, given who he was having a staring contest with. They had met briefly when he arrived, and back then he was still seen as a son of Sarasef of the Rishi. Now that his true identity was out in the open, thanks to Djari iza Zuri, he was walking on a thin line between being welcomed and being skinned alive to make up for every death his father had caused, however many that was.