“Yes,” Hasan said, his forehead wrinkling. “But why?”
“Because,” Nicholas said, watching the morning light spread over the tile floor, “I’m going to need you to tie me to my horse.”
IT WASN’T THE ROLLING FLOW of the horse’s gallop, or even the rope burns around her wrists, that finally brought Etta around. It was the cool mist of the morning air, and the scent of orange blossom on the breeze.
She cracked an eye open, already sick from the riot of movement and the damp, hot press of the man riding behind her. Every breath against the back of her neck made her stomach churn harder, twisting in time with the pain at her right temple. There was no way to know until she had her hands free, but Etta had a feeling that the bump there was going to rival the mountain behind them.
They left Damascus through a series of groves, weaving through the orderly rows of trees. The golden line of the horizon was ahead, and Etta suddenly understood why Hasan had called the desert a ruthless beauty. From a distance, with the sun rising over it, the dust was cast in glorious shades of gold. But the single tone of color hinted at something far more sinister—its barrenness.
“Oh—you’re awake.”
Her fingers curled around the lip of the saddle as she turned slowly. Etta let her expression fall into a scowl. “Sorry.”
When she’d left Nicholas’s bedside to find a doctor, or Hasan, or anyone who could confirm that she wasn’t going crazy and that his fever really was breaking, Etta had nearly missed her standing there, leaning against the wall. Sophia had called her name, but even then she’d been so deliriously tired she was half-convinced she was hallucinating.
But no. Sophia had been wearing the entari and shalvar of the women of Damascus in shades of ivory and gold, her head inclined to the side in its usual arrogant way.
“What are you doing here?” Etta had managed.
“You’re not an idiot,” Sophia had said. “You don’t need me to answer that. I’m here to help you finish this task.”
Even then, confused, overwhelmed, Etta had known to be suspicious. Sophia could only have found them if she’d followed them—not just through Damascus, but through all of the passages. Or…if she’d managed to get her hands on the reports the guardians were no doubt sending back to Ironwood about their sightings.
“I’m not leaving,” Etta said. “Not yet.”
The other girl’s face had hardened behind her veil. “I was afraid you might say something like that.”
A sharp pain, and then…nothing.
And now, this.
“I apologize for the rough treatment,” Sophia said as she brought her horse up alongside Etta’s with ease. The pounding of the hooves kicked up enough dust in the air between them that she was momentarily shrouded.
“We simply didn’t have time,” she continued without a trace of remorse. “I could see in your face you weren’t going to leave, and in the time it took to convince you, we could have been halfway to Palmyra.”
Etta straightened, trying to throw an elbow back against the man behind her. “How do you know about Palmyra?”
“I had these guardians tail you in the market yesterday, and make inquiries. The Arab you were with mentioned your destination to the man who sold you the goatskins. Careless.” Sophia shrugged.
I had these guardians tail you in the market…
Etta twisted around in the saddle, horror tightening her stomach like a fist. The man was a mess of swelling bruises, a cut lip, glowering down at her.
These were the men who had tried to grab her—one of them had stabbed Nicholas. A wash of white-hot fury flooded beneath her skin, and she began to struggle that much harder.
“Stop it!” Sophia snapped. “I had to pay him twice as much to ride with you—he spouted something preposterous about his faith not allowing him to touch a female who wasn’t a relation. Don’t test their patience.”
Etta gritted her teeth. “You shouldn’t have put him in the position of having to do it. That wasn’t very kind of you.”
The look the man sent her was filled with so much disgust, Etta was sure she was on the verge of being struck again.
“Did you…” The words caught in her throat. “Did you hire them to kill Nicholas?”
“What are you going on about?” Sophia’s nostrils flared. “If someone attacked the bastard, it wasn’t anyone here.”
It felt like a freezing hand had wiped all feeling from Etta’s face. She stared at the girl, shocked. “Were you there?”
“In the market? Of course not,” she said. “I was trying to go through the room—the one the passage opened up into—while the three of you were out. Why? What are you going on about?”
The man riding behind Etta tightened his grip around her center until it felt like one of her ribs would crack. Something sharp dug into her side, and Etta took the silent warning for what it was.
Why didn’t the man she was riding with, or the one riding just up ahead of Sophia, want her to say anything? Because they feared this Ironwood’s wrath for acting outside the scope of her orders, and it getting back to the Grand Master?
“Someone…tried to rob me,” Etta said, when she realized Sophia was still watching her. “Nicholas jumped in and got hurt. That’s why we were in the hospital.”
“What a shame,” Sophia said without a hint of pity.
“He’s your family,” Etta snapped. “And you have more in common than you think—”
The other girl reached out, gripping the reins of Etta’s horse so brutally she brought them both up short. The horse whinnied in protest, stamping its feet against the loose dust. When Sophia spoke, her voice was heavy with venom. “I will only say this once, so listen to me: the bastard is not family. If you say it again, you will regret it.”
The word she’d used, the way she’d said it—bastard. It told Etta everything she needed to know about the way Sophia felt toward herself and her family.
Thank God Nicholas hadn’t been raised by these people. She needed to find a way to ensure he’d be out of their hands forever.
“What are you doing here?” Etta demanded finally. “You said that you were here to help, but this”—she tugged at her restraints—“implies otherwise. If you were following us through the passages, why didn’t you say something? Talk to us?”
Sophia dropped the reins and turned her horse back to the road, speaking to the hired men in what Etta assumed was Arabic. She’d mentioned before that the travelers learned languages as part of their training, but this still somehow caught Etta off guard. There was no way she’d be able to understand their plan until it was too late.
“If you didn’t want to be followed, you shouldn’t have left in the middle of the night, and you shouldn’t have stolen from me,” Sophia said finally. “What did you think? He was going to just let you go, and cross his fingers that the bastard held up his end of the bargain?” The other girl gave her a mocking look of pity. “What? Didn’t you know about the deal that Nicholas made behind your back? That he’d get everything—”
“I know about the deal,” Etta snapped. And she’d understood—she had—even as the hurt had sliced through her. It was a good enough reason to align himself with the old man, and it would give him everything he wanted. But to keep it from her…“He told me about it himself.”