Karina paused. The Comet Meirat was what the Kennouans had called Bahia’s Comet.
. . . the Rite of Resurrection is the most sacred and advanced technique, possible only during the week the Comet Meirat is visible in the sky . . .
She skipped to the images below the description. The first showed masked individuals around a corpse wrapped in bandages while the second showed the figures laying a human heart stuffed with a bright red substance on top of the corpse’s body. The third image depicted the corpse walking around, color returned to his form.
Karina clicked her tongue and stuffed the book back in her bag. If the Kennouans had really known the secret to resurrecting the dead, someone else would have discovered it by now. Perhaps she’d give the book to Farid when she returned home. He’d always been fond of boring, ancient things.
They reached a bend in the road. To go left would lead them to River Market and the Western Gate, while going right would take them through Jehiza Square and into the Old City. Though some time remained until sundown, the desert night’s chill had already taken hold, and Karina pulled the scarf round her head tighter as she contemplated which road to take.
In a way, Ziran was truly two cities in one. The first was the Old City, the original kasbah in which Bahia Alahari had built her fortress of Ksar Alahari and which housed the Zirani court. Unfurling westward from the Old City was the Lower City. This sprawling jumble made up nearly three-quarters of the city’s square area, and it was where all the people who made Ziran interesting lived.
Surrounding it all was the Outer Wall and, beyond that, the rest of Sonande. Karina had spent enough time studying the map of their continent to know what she’d find if she ever left Ziran. Going north would take her to the dense jungles of Arkwasi while heading west would lead to the Eshran Mountains, and those were only Ziran’s immediate neighbors, just a small part of a world waiting to be explored.
But knowing the world was out there and actually seeing it were two different things. Yet every time Karina approached the Outer Wall, a sharp pull in her gut tugged her back toward home. Despite her efforts to fight it, her sense of duty was annoyingly strong.
Karina turned left, ignoring Aminata’s grunt of protest. “Let’s head to Temple Way. Maybe we can get a spot at the Wind Temple Choosing Ceremony.”
Karina herself was Wind-Aligned, though she felt little attachment to her patron deity, Santrofie. She’d had only one prayer after Baba and Hanane had died, and her god had never answered it.
“By the way,” said Aminata as they flattened themselves against a wall to make way for a team of dancers leading an irate warthog. “I didn’t know you knew that song in all those languages.”
“I didn’t. Not before tonight, anyway.”
“You were translating as you played?”
“Years of language tutors have finally paid off,” said Karina, not hiding the smugness in her voice as Aminata rolled her eyes.
At first glance, the two were quite the mismatched pair, her maid plain and reserved in all the ways Karina was outgoing and careless, Water-Aligned to Karina’s Wind, thin and lean where Karina was thick and soft. Aminata’s tight coils were cut nearly an inch from her head, whereas Karina’s curls poofed out past her shoulders when she wore her hair down. But Aminata’s mother had been Karina’s favorite among her army of nursemaids, and the two girls had been inseparable since childhood. The only people Karina had spent more time with as a child had been her parents’ ward, Farid, and her older sister, Hanane.
“If you put even half as much effort into your actual lessons, you’d probably have the highest marks in the city.”
“And give the Kestrel even more expectations for me? I’ll eat camel dung first.”
“I’m sure your mother,” Aminata pressed, refusing to use the nickname the common folk had coined for the sultana, “would be delighted to know you’ve absorbed so much of your studies. Speaking of, we should head back before she notices you’re gone.”
“I could fall to the ground dead before her eyes, and my mother wouldn’t notice I was gone.”
“That’s not true.”
An unusually strong pang of guilt hit Karina’s chest. However, she had not come all this way to debate the Kestrel’s affection for her—or lack thereof.
“Mina, what day is it?” asked Karina before her maid could start lecturing anew.
“Solstasia Eve.”
“Exactly.” Karina gestured toward the western corner of the sky. “Bahia’s Comet will be visible tonight for the first time in fifty years, yet you think we should waste this opportunity trapped in the palace with people we see every day.”
Tales of the wonders of Solstasia had brought people from every corner of Sonande to Ziran, even those from regions that did not believe in the patron deities. Why should she waste her time with people who would still be here in a week when there was so much they could only see and do now?
However, Aminata was right that Karina’s disappearance would only go unnoticed for so long. She’d gotten out of Ksar Alahari by using one of the abandoned servants’ exits everyone thought she didn’t know about, but eventually someone had to discover she wasn’t preparing for the comet viewing like she was supposed to be doing.
Karina glanced up at Ksar Alahari once more, the palace a glittering jewel on the horizon that grew smaller with each step she took from the Old City. At least in the streets she could be among the action of Solstasia, even if she had no true part in it all.
“I’m not going back,” muttered Karina, more to herself than to Aminata. “Not yet, anyway.”
“Not going back where exactly?”
Both Karina and Aminata spun around at the voice of the bard from the Dancing Seal. He slid from the shadows with a knife in his hands, forcing the girls to back up against a building. Karina threw a protective arm over Aminata as the man approached them.
“I’ve heard rumors of a young musician sweeping her way through Ziran,” said the bard, his dagger glinting in the low light. “She always leaves right after a performance and never visits the same venue twice.”
Karina’s eyes swept the street for aid, but it was maddeningly empty. In this part of the Lower City, people knew to make themselves scarce when violence was in the air.
“If you have this much time to research your opponents, you have time to spend improving your own craft,” Karina replied. She considered screaming for the guards, but she didn’t want to risk startling the bard into attacking.
“Is that all you have to say, sweet gazelle? Or should I say . . . Your Highness?”
His eyes flicked to her forehead, where a coil of her hair had fallen out of her headscarf, and Karina cursed internally. She could lie every minute of every day, but no lie would hide the reality of her gleaming silver hair, the same color as clouds before a storm.
The defining mark of the Alaharis, the royal family of Ziran.
“Since you know who I am,” said Karina, dropping any pretense of hiding a truth that could not be hidden, “then surely you realize it is in your own best interest to drop your weapon and walk away.”
“On the contrary, I think it is in my own best interest to see how much of a ransom Haissa Sarahel is willing to pay for her only daughter.”