Naamah's Curse

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Around and around we went, trying to conceive of a plan that would get us up the path to Kurugiri without sustaining untenable losses, and deal with the problem of Kamadeva’s diamond at the top.

Hasan Dar, Amrita, and Ravindra hadn’t had any success, the latter chastened and made uncertain by the failure of his first plan.

Bao’s knowledge was helpful, but it didn’t eliminate the obstacles facing us. I listened as he discussed the treacherous path with Hasan Dar, sketching out the likeliest places for assassins to lay in waiting on a map based on his tattoos.

“The problem is that they will always have the higher ground,” he said. “See, here, here, and here. We will always be coming around blind corners, where they can pick us off one by one.”

I thought of an offer I had made Snow Tiger once when we faced an ambush-and a warning my mother had given me. “Unless they can’t see us,” I murmured.

Bao gave me a sharp look. “Your twilight.”

I nodded.

“No.” He shook his head. “No, Moirin. I will not risk you again.”

“No, I do not like it either,” Amrita said unhappily.

“What is she talking about?” Hasan Dar asked, bewildered.

It was easier to show him than explain. I had them close their eyes and summoned the twilight, wrapping it around Bao and me, then letting it fade before their open eyes. Ravindra and Hasan Dar stared in awe; the Rani Amrita, who had seen me call the twilight before, just looked worried.

“And you could kill a man thus concealed?” her commander asked. “Or Bao could?”

My mother’s words echoed in my thoughts. It is a grave gift and one never to be used lightly. Only to sustain life. Do you ever use it for sport or any idle cause, it will be stripped from you.

Snow Tiger’s, too, her voice gentle and firm as she refused my offer. What you suggest is dishonorable.

But when I glanced at Amrita’s beautiful, worried face and her son’s thin, clever one, I knew I was willing to take the risk. “I could. I cannot speak for Bao.”

Bao frowned, fidgeting with the bands of steel that reinforced his bamboo fighting-staff. “I would have no trouble killing those men who serve them willingly,” he said. “They are assassins who kill by stealth, and it is fitting that they should die thus. But I would not like to kill those who were trapped as I was.”

In the end, it remained a moot point, for we could devise no plan for dealing with Kamadeva’s diamond.

“I could accompany you,” Amrita said quietly. “I am not affected by it, at least not with Jagrati wielding it.”

“No!” Four voices spoke in emphatic unison.

Bao reckoned we had a few more days’ grace before the Falconer and the Spider Queen decided that Divyesh Patel had failed and sent a new assassin in his place. After our initial attempts at group strategy failed, Bao suggested in private that he and I go alone. Since my diadh-anam had been twinned, I could hold him in the twilight as easily as myself. If I could hold it long enough, the two of us alone could approach Kurugiri without ever being seen, without alerting the Falconer’s assassins.

“We could steal Kamadeva’s diamond rather than take it by force,” he mused, stroking my hair.

Lying in his arms, I shook my head. “I don’t trust myself around it. Do you?”

“I don’t know,” Bao admitted. “Here, with you… yes. I walked away from it once. But…”

“What if Jagrati got me to betray myself utterly, Bao?” I shuddered. “What if she sent me against my lady Amrita and her son? I can summon the twilight. I know where the hidden room is located.”

“And you are rather deadly with a bow,” he added. “No, you’re right. It’s too dangerous.” He toyed with my hair, which had grown out well below my shoulders, but was still much shorter than it had been. “Why did you cut it, Moirin?”

“It wasn’t my idea.”

His brows furrowed. “Whose was it?”

For the first time, I told Bao the whole of what had befallen me after the Great Khan’s betrayal-the journey and the whole long, awful ordeal in Vralia, the chafing chains that bound my spirit as surely as my flesh, the Patriarch and his incessant demands that I confess the litany of my sins, Luba and her shears, cold water, and lye, the endless scrubbing of the temple floor, my knees aching, the ever-present threat of being stoned to death.

I wept.

Bao held me. “I could kill them ten times over for that!” he said fiercely, his breath warm against my temple. “Do you want me to?”

“No.” I sniffled and laughed. “No, I don’t ever want to go back there.”

“How did you escape?”

I told him about Valentina and Aleksei, although not the part about Aleksei and Naamah’s blessing.

Bao suspected it anyway, regarding me with a wry look. “I swear, Moirin, you fall in love as easily as other people fall out of a boat.”

“I don’t!” I protested.

“You do.”

None too gently, I tugged on a hank of his longish hair. “Why did you let it grow? I thought it gave enemies a handhold in combat.”

He didn’t answer right away. I withdrew a little, propping myself on one elbow and watching his face, watching Bao decide whether or not he was ready to talk about his time in Kurugiri.

“She liked it that way,” he said eventually.

“Jagrati?” I asked softly. Bao nodded, a muscle in his jaw twitching. “Was it terrible there?”

“No,” he said after another long silence. “Or maybe it was. I don’t know how to talk about it. I was in a terrible place inside myself while I was there, thinking you were dead, thinking I had only myself to blame for it.” He shrugged. “It was a strange place. So much opulence, so much stolen treasure, hidden away in a stark fortress. Between her spell and the opium, it seems like a fever-dream now.”

“How did you get there?” I wanted to keep him talking.

“There’s a cauldron that hangs on a chain and a winch from a plateau above the trail,” Bao said. “I heard about it during my journey there. I petitioned Tarik Khaga to take me into his service. A day later, someone came to blindfold me and lead me through the maze. I thought…” He shrugged again. “There is a kind of honor among thieves and thugs when it comes to the rules of combat. I thought perhaps there was among assassins, too. When I was granted an audience, I said I had come to claim you. I offered to fight any man among them for the right to take you away with me.” He gave me a sidelong look. “Stupid plan, huh?”

“Better than none,” I said. “So Jagrati ensorceled you instead?”

Bao shook his head. “Not right away, no. My story, our story… it wasn’t what she expected. It intrigued her. She’s the one who rules Kurugiri, you know. Not him.”

“I know,” I said. “I saw.”

“So.” He blew out his breath. “No one had ever attempted to rescue someone they had taken before. She thought it was a piece of irony that the only living soul to do so had come on a fool’s errand. She wanted me to know it. She let me search to my heart’s content, questioning anyone I liked. She even gave me access to the harem. And there was no trace of you anywhere. By the end of the first day, I knew it must be true. The Great Khan had killed you, and sent me away in vain.”

I stroked Bao’s arm, not knowing what to say.

He glanced at the vivid zig-zag markings on his skin. “Then she unveiled Kamadeva’s diamond. I didn’t even care by that time. I was drowning in despair. Might as well drown in false desire and opium instead. And there were fights there, lots of fights. It suited my mood. I’d lost Master Lo, and then I’d lost you. The only two people I ever truly loved. I’d died a hero, and wasted the life that was given back to me on stupid choices. Running away from you, marrying Erdene. I didn’t care if I got killed again.”

I took a long, deep breath. “I am very, very glad that you weren’t.”

“Me too.” Bao fell quiet once more.

I waited a while before prompting him. “So the Falconer’s assassins quarrel amongst themselves?”

“Not exactly.” The muscle in his jaw twitched again. “Sometimes Jagrati would choose a favorite and keep him for days on end. Other times, she liked for us to fight for the honor of her favors. To the death, if she was in a foul mood.”

“Oh.” I didn’t know what to say about that, either.

“I don’t know how long I’d been there when I felt something change,” Bao mused, touching his chest. “You, your spark was back, only it was all tangled with opium dreams and the spell of that cursed diamond, and I didn’t know what to believe.”

I nodded. “I felt the same way the other day.”

“You understand, then.” He looked relieved. “Jagrati does not like to lose what is hers. I do not know if she suspected the truth, but she set out to convince me that it must be a lie of some foul magic. And… I believed it. Because I was so very sure you were dead, and it had been so very long.” Bao shook his head. “When I died, even though it was only minutes or hours, it seemed to me that days passed in Fengdu, in the spirit world. You had been gone for months. Whatever had come back, it couldn’t be Moirin. The other day in the meadow, I would gladly have killed the thing wearing your face.”

I shuddered. “And I am very, very glad that you didn’t.”

Bao shuddered, too. “So am I. I am quite sure it would have driven me mad. But… then I began to doubt.” He touched his chest again. “Your spark, I’d felt it calling to mine in the meadow. I had to know the truth. And the rest, you know.” He turned to regard me, a rare vulnerability behind his eyes. “Do you hate me for it?”

“No,” I murmured. “Of course not! You crossed the Abode of the Gods to find me, you dared the Falcon in his eyrie and the Spider Queen in her lair. It wasn’t your fault it was all a lie. As for the rest…” I smiled ruefully. “You saw how vulnerable I was to Kamadeva’s diamond. How can I blame you?”

“Well.” Bao smiled a little. “Desire. It is a particular weakness of yours, Moirin.” He laid one hand on my cheek, cupping it. “And a particular strength, too.”

I leaned upward to kiss his lips in reply, softly, lightly. It felt like enough for now. Enough to feel his diadh-anam entwine blissfully with mine. Naamah’s gift did not often counsel patience, but in these days, it did. The shadow of the Spider Queen lay between us, and there was too much yet to be done.

“So.” Bao cleared his throat. “Shall we speak of your royal lady? I must admit, I’d rather.”

“It’s not what you think,” I said to him.

The acerbic glint returned to his eyes, familiar and welcome. “It seems I’ve heard those words before. Only this time, there isn’t a dragon to blame.”

“No.” I traced my finger down the strong column of his throat, letting my fingertip rest in the hollow, feeling the sturdy beat of his pulse. “But there is a diamond, which left me much disturbed; and my lady Amrita does not like to see anyone suffer. Out of the goodness of her heart, she has shown me many kindnesses.” I kissed him again. “That was one of them.”

“The Rani must care for you very much to have endured such a hardship,” Bao said in a grave tone.

I thumped his chest with the heel of my hand. “You are insufferable!”

He laughed; and I could not help but be glad, dizzyingly glad, that despite everything that had happened, despite everything that had befallen us, despite the dangers and challenges we yet faced, laughter endured.

I had a feeling there would be precious little of it in the days to come.