The crowded room screamed of her absence. The voices around him were the wrong voice. Everything, from the one empty chair, the unclaimed spaces in the corners, the edge of the bed where he had hoped to find her seemed to underline the fact that Djari wasn't there. She hadn't been since yesterday afternoon when he'd awakened, or later that night, or now.
It felt like waking up to a world without her in it, and somehow, he had a feeling that world was going to last.
He looked around the room as they changed his bandage and realized how familiar everything was. Sarasef and Dee were discussing something at the far corner with Bashir standing close by, waiting for a command. The healer and his helper were talking about his wounds, checking his pulse. The bedroom was the one he'd stayed in during his time here before he had been bought by Dee. Everyone and everything, from the carpet to the chandelier on the ceiling, and the mahogany bedside table had been a part of the memories of the Silver Sparrow.
I am back where I've started, Hasheem thought, feeling the memories of his time in the White Desert fading like a dream that had ended too soon. He realized then, how much he missed it; those aching sunrises and sunsets over the smooth, powdery dunes, the silence and stillness outside his tent during the cold, cold nights, the smell of dried branches and sage in the wind that caressed his skin in the morning. That peaceful feeling in the stable, watching Djari with her horses. All of it seemed to have been gone, lost as they slipped through his fingers like grains of sand.
Since when has the White Desert become so much a part of me?
The wound throbbed as the healer wrapped the new bandage. His throat burned from the taste of the medicine and the fever he was still having. On top of it all, the pain in his head felt like someone had taken a hammer to it just two days ago. He was hungry, thirsty, tired, and now cranky from the presence of everyone in the room. Or of the one that was missing.
Where is Djari? He had wanted to ask several times from the moment he'd opened his eyes, had given himself explanations instead as to why she might not have been able to come—explanations he was running out of as time passed and Djari remained absent. Now there seemed to be only one explanation left, one he didn't want to face just yet. Couldn't.
"So?" Sarasef said after the wrapping was done, looking down at him from the edge of the bed with a small frown. "Can he keep that arm?"
"I believe so, yes." The healer nodded. "Both wounds are healing nicely. He should be able to lift his arm freely in a week or two, but it would be a long while before he can fight."
Sarasef nodded, excused the healer and his help and as soon as they were out the door, turned to Hasheem. "How are you feeling?"
He pushed back the hair that fell around his face, squeezed the bridge of his nose to counter the headache and grimaced when it didn't help. "Like shit."
"You should be glad you're feeling something at all," Dee said, dragging a chair over to sit by the bed. He looked better now than yesterday when Hasheem had seen him. In the past five years they'd spent together, he couldn't remember if he'd ever seen his mentor so drained of energy. If it had been the possibility of his death that had taxed Dee to that point, he'd never expected it.
But Dee was right. He should be glad. People didn't survive from Zyren. The only reason he was still breathing was that he'd been force-fed the poison for five years straight like all of Dee's assassins. Hasheem wasn't sure if he was supposed to be thankful for that. For all he knew, it could have been Dee who'd sold Saracen the poison.
Now that he thought about it, it probably was him. He wondered if Sarasef knew. Then again, it probably wouldn't make a difference. They went back a long way—Sarasef and Dee—but theirs was a relationship of mutual understanding that killing each other was not off-limits if profits or sense demanded it so. 'It's the safest kind of relationship you can have, really,' Dee had said once. 'One with no emotions attached. Just logic and reason.'
"You, of all people, should know I'd survive," Hasheem said sardonically. It came out more bitter than he'd wanted it to. "I can't seem to die no matter what I do." How he'd managed to survive this long when everyone else in his life was dead was a mystery. From the raid, the time spent at Sabha, the jobs he'd done for Dee, the escape from Rasharwi, him being spared when caught by the Visarya, and now, even the deadliest poison existed couldn't kill him. It felt sometimes, that there was some divine being sitting up there having one hell of a time watching him suffer and keeping him alive for the sake of it.
As if Dee could read his thoughts, the corner of his lips lifted into an amused grin. "Sorry, kid. Just got to suffer like the rest of us for a while longer. Your role here isn't yet done."
"My role?" He could almost laugh at that. Almost. "What role do you suppose I have now? I can't do shit with these wounds." The plan had been for him to kill Saracen. It was the only card they had to convince Sarasef to side with the White Desert. With these wounds and the state he was in, that possibility was gone. Sarasef couldn't wait for him to heal. He couldn't afford to especially with this last assassination attempt.
He turned to Sarasef then, thought about it for a time and decided to just deal with the issue. "What will you do now?"
"What will I do?" Sarasef traced the question like trying to recall the taste of his favorite wine. "Your bharavi didn't really give me much of a choice. She muscled me into forming an alliance with the Visarya using your sacrifice to call on my honor. The other boy has been released and sent back to negotiate that alliance four days ago. Za'in has accepted the offer. It's done."
Hasheem blinked. "She did that?"
Sarasef nodded. "While you were still sleeping. The reply arrived this morning."
Relief went through him like being doused with cold water in the midday sun. Hasheem sank into the pillow that had been propped against his lower back and allowed himself to breathe freely for the first time since he'd awakened. In a way, he should have seen it coming. Djari was Djari. She had her wits about her even in the most hopeless situation and the guts to back it up. He wished he'd seen it though, that image of her trying to muscle Sarasef into agreeing with this and then succeeded.
"There is," said Sarasef, "just one problem to be discussed. They know who you are now."
It hit him like a stench from a corpse left to rot in the attic when someone opened the door ten days later, and suddenly everything seemed to crumble. They knew who he was now, of course—there had been no way to hide it after everything that had happened. That ugliness was out in the open, and there was no way to put it back.
He was the Silver Sparrow. That name would follow him anywhere, dictate everything in his life no matter how long and how far he'd left it behind.
You thought you could run, didn't you? You were stupid enough to believe you could leave it all behind, start all over and the past wouldn't catch up and drag you down the same pit you crawled out of.
They would want him dead now if he were to set foot back into the khagan. Even Djari couldn't fix that. If she still wanted him back.
'You traitorous whore,' the prince's mother had called him once. He remembered her face then, the look in her eyes, the disgust in them that wanted to incinerate him on the spot. He'd wondered many times if Djari would have felt the same way had she known who he was. Now she knew, and she was avoiding him.
"I see," Hasheem said, pushing that thought aside. She could still come. Tonight. Tomorrow. And everything would be as they were. "So what happens now?"
Sarasef moved closer to the bed. Behind him, Dee leaned back on his chair, rubbing a thumb over the blue velvet of the armrest. He did that when he was paying close attention to something, which told Hasheem this was also news to him.
"They want you escorted to Al-Sana to stay until this blows over, then you will be reintroduced into the khagan with a new identity. That is the only way you can go back to the White Desert."
That surprised him. Gave him a glimmer of hope he hadn't anticipated. "For how long?"
"A few years." Sarasef shrugged, threw a wild guess, from the looks of it. "Long enough for people to look another way. Three. Maybe five."
Three to five years was a long time, but at the very least he could still go back. "Where is Al-Sana?"
"It's a mountain in the north of the White Desert," Dee replied instead, still rubbing his thumb on the chair's arm. "Treacherous to climb so no one lives there except one Zikh-clad warrior and the apprentices he chooses to train. Akai izr Imami is a legend. Everyone he's trained became Dyal champions at some point and ended up a kha'a or on the council. If they want to send you there, it means they want you to train with him and return to hold a position." A grin appeared on Dee's lips at what seemed to have occurred to him just then. "Someone there understands your value as much as the two of us, it seems. Someone very, very smart."
Or had been given a vision, Hasheem thought. It had to be Nazir. No one else would have fought as hard for him to return, or had the power to influence that decision. "I see."
Dee tilted his head to one side, the same way he always had when trying to read his apprentice's mind. "You hate the idea."
"I don't want to hold a position in the khagan." That came out easily. He had forgotten how honest and carefree he could be with Dee, how many times he'd confessed something to his mentor without holding back.
"Once, you wanted nothing more than to have control. You've worked and killed for it. Now you want anonymity?"
"Things were different then."
"How so?" Dee asked. "What is it that you have now that you didn't?"
He thought about that for a time. What was it that was different? His struggles in the khagan were the same as in Rasharwi. He was an outcast, an excess no one wanted except for Nazir and Djari. He wasn't living any better, perhaps even worse than the life he'd left behind in the city. But there were, undeniably and persistently, a calling in his blood that had lingered since the hunt. A sense of peace even in the middle of chaos. A clear awareness of his own existence every time Djari was present. "A home," he said and surprised himself as he did.
There was an ache in Dee's smile, one that disappeared too soon for anything to be caught. It suddenly occurred to Hasheem, that his mentor might have considered himself a home to him after all this time. For a moment, he thought he should say something to rectify that, and then realized it wasn't needed.
Dee wasn't family. He wasn't home. He was a mentor who'd taught him everything he knew, a companion he could trust and be honest with, a helping hand that was always there when he needed it. Theirs was the kind of bond that didn't need to be nurtured, could be taken for granted even, and what he saw in those yellow-green eyes confirmed it so.
"I've warned you once," Dee said, "to never love something so much that you can't live without. Do you remember?"
"I do."
"A home is one of them."
"I know."
"Then it isn't about what you want, is it?" Dee said, smiling like the first time when he'd asked if Hasheem wanted to join his house of assassins. That memory was still so fresh in his mind. "There's only what you need to do and what you must do to protect that which you can't live without. Fate will exact a heavy price for everything you treasure in life, and less so for those who treasure none. Only fools believe they can have something of value without some sacrifice." He paused, leaned a little forward to look Hasheem in the eyes. "Go to Al-Sana and come back a man who can protect your home, if that is what you want, or walk away from it, now, while you still can." He turned to Sarasef then, remembering something. "Does he have that choice?"
"Al-Sana is a part of the agreement," replied the Grand Chief. "But if he doesn't want to return, it can be accommodated."
"How?" Dee asked.
"The agreement rests on the fact that he is Djari iza Zuri's swornsword. They are willing to gamble on this because of his oath to her. If there were no such tie, they wouldn't risk it."
Dee frowned. "It would require getting her to release him from his oath, then. That could be a problem."
"It isn't," said Sarasef, turning to Hasheem now. "As of this morning, she has agreed to let you go."
***