Uiziya had not spoken nor awakened. I kept trying to heal her, weaving my deepnames into familiar healing patterns, but even though her injury was fresh, my magic was powerless to undo it. Uiziya’s leg felt withered to the touch. Just short of the city’s Desert Gate, I shaved my face and retied my sash in a Surun’ man style, deciding that it was safer for me to present as a desert man, not Khana. I drew on my deepnames to help me carry her, for fear that a flying carpet would be taken away.
And so I stood at last before the Desert Gate of Iyar. Chiseled stone and roses everywhere, masking the rot underneath. From afar, the briny smells of the sea.
The guards at the gate spoke in the desert’s common language, and I was satisfied that they thought me a Surun’ nomad. Thank Bird for that, for my people were not allowed to wander the streets of Iyar without a special permit.
“Your sister is diseased,” they said. “You cannot bring her in.”
“No, no. It’s just her leg. I was told I can find a good physicker here.” I wanted to make a moving chair for her in the city. This idea had possessed me in the desert as I labored to steer the burdened carpet west. I would make for Uiziya a moving chair, like I’d made once for Bashri-nai-Leylit. This was important to me.
The guards eyed us both warily, but I had plenty of gold from my years of trading, and that helped. Once in the city and out of their sight, I wrapped the unconscious Uiziya in her carpet, and after many at- tempts, I made the bundle float just slightly, and the burden of Uiziya’s body lessened in my arms. I would not be able to carry her long, otherwise.
Now I hesitated whether to put up my veil. Khana people wore veils whenever they ventured out of the quarter, but the men rarely did so, unless they decided to flee the inner quarter forever. And I was supposed to be Surun’, Uiziya’s brother; that was what I told the guards.
She had a beautiful, ample shape where Benesret’s feeding fire had not touched her. The carpet eased the burden; I could not help but notice how all of her now was inert in my arms, given in to a place beyond pain.
I wore no veil as I carried her through the side alleys, out of curious eyes.
Uiziya e Lali
I came to. Didn’t it always begin like this? A story, floating somewhere here in the darkness, pulsing with the insistence of pain.
I could not yet open my eyes, but I saw it. Yes. A story without a name. My left thigh, pulsing in the darkness as I pulsed, screamless, though my throat felt scorched and lacerated with screaming, as if I had given birth.
This had been no birth.
Or had it been? Benesret.
“Take what you need from me . . .” I had said, take it, take it, and she took and took. I had asked her to teach me.
The hollowness in my ribcage was greater than pain.
I tried to move. Disoriented.
The hollowness in my ribcage was the Orphan Star, the star of all those rejected by Bird, the star that watches and waits in the earth beneath the School of Assassins. It was darkness buzzing with death, a star made of diamondfly deepnames that fed on its own and could never be satisfied.
The desert had revealed itself to me. And everything in it was made of death.
If I could move my fingers, I could weave from it.
The realization, jolting-yellow with sun’s brightness. My eyes peeled open and nen-sasaïr’s face swam too close, frowning. “Uiziya? Heart?”
He’d never before called me “heart”. When I had called him so, he’d winced.
I tried to speak, but could not. This had been real—bones, and my aunt’s hunger, my learning, the pain. Nen-sasaïr gave me water from his flask, and fussed over me until I could open my eyes and see what seemed much less real.
I was not in the desert. A city. Stone walls, and the intensity of verdant smells in the air.
“Iyar,” said nen-sasaïr. He looked as if he wanted to speak on, but I could not listen.
I was on a carpet. My carpet of sand. It rested not on sand but on stones that dug into my thighs—my right thigh, where I had sensation. In my left, I did not. I was covered with cloth, stained and bloody, but even though I could not see under it, the shape of my body seemed different at the thigh—no longer wide and plentiful as the rest of me, but charred, immovable. Wilted. That, too, was me, as was my aunt’s art and her dereliction.
“It’s not as bad as it could be,” said nen-sasaïr defensively. “I begged her to stop, and at last she did. It would have been worse if she hadn’t.”
“All my life I waited,” I said. The first words out of my mouth, but I had to force them out somehow. “Waited for her to come back and teach me.” She hadn’t. She had fed on me instead, just like she had devoured my husband Lali.
I’d asked her for it.
“I tried to heal you,” said nen-sasaïr, “but I couldn’t. I will get you a physicker. Just a moment of rest now.”
I had asked Benesret to take what she wanted because I wanted—I yearned and yearned so much for her touch. And for death? I must have, for all Benesret made and made was death.
That had been a different me. I could no longer remember. I wanted to be her food. I wanted to prove myself to her. That emotion still stirred me.
“What you need . . . what I need to make for you,” said nen-sasaïr, “is a moving chair like I made for Bashri-nai-Leylit when she could no longer walk. You could steer it with your deepnames.”
He wanted to solve my pain, I saw. To solve and make it better. But I had no thoughts like this. I wanted the pain to stop and I wanted, I wanted to understand who I was now. Where I was. I did not want a moving chair.
“I have my carpet,” I said. I had made it myself, before I truly needed it to help me move. I tried to stir now, to change my position, but even a small motion sent sharp waves of pain up my torso, radiating into my chest and throat. I could not breathe properly.
And everything in it was made of death.
Fear flogged me as I gulped the air, stale and perfumed with rot and blooming roses, so different from the expansive desert air. This was Iyar. Iyar. I felt nen-sasaïr’s touch on my good thigh. “I need to get you to a place where you can rest.”
I turned my head slowly. Tall walls. There was a child here, a child of about eight, and gaunt-looking, with a curious glint of their eye. The child looked at me with that singular hunger that reminded me of Benesret, and I wondered if they were there to witness my death.
I remembered wanting to die before I tasted death. Before I gave myself to Benesret to feed upon, like she fed upon Lali, like she fed and she spun and she fed. I did not want to be food. I wanted to be a weaver. That was what it all was about, that I wanted to be like my aunt. To weave from hope first, like she did before she could learn to weave death.
I tried to speak again. We need to make it to the palace, to the coffers, to that place where song and hope lay hidden, so I can bring it back to Benesret like she wanted, so I can prove myself to her, so that I would no longer be food, so that I too would weave from death.
But only gurgling came from my mouth, and after it, the soft yarn of darkness.
nen-sasaïr
“I know a person like this,” said the child. I had not noticed when he appeared by my side. I was not even sure if the child was a boy; my time among my Surun’ friends taught me that it did not matter. Perhaps this child was an in-betweener, like Kimi.