The Call of Crows

Chapter 4: Hunted

Najeem woke up feeling awful.

The mattress under him was lumpy and stiff. And his bones ached as though they were overly stuffed with marrow. His mind was as fuzzy as his vision and his limbs screamed with pain as he tried to push himself up.

He fell back, soaked in sweat and staring at the yellowed ceiling of whatever chamber he'd been dragged to.

He smelled the air and listened closely to his surroundings.

He was in an unfamiliar place. The noise of shouting and bartering told him he was near a marketplace. The scent of fish meant he was in a port city of some kind.

He heard faint bits of music come through the floor, accompanied by...laughter. When Najeem really tried, he could smell the bitter scent of wine. Alcohol was prohibited by Qahtan's state religion, but ports could always get away with things other places couldn't.

Najeem was in a tavern.

"Najeem?" a soft voice came from the end of the room closer to the foot of Najeem's bed. "You're awake."

Najeem tilted his head up and saw her. Princess Shahla, wrapped in the dress of a common woman.

"P-Princess?" the Asasiyun groaned. "Where are we? What happened?"

"You got shot by those crossbowmen!" Shahla hissed. She wore a scarf that covered her face just enough to hide the evidence of her Plague Scars. Najeem remembered she'd gotten those.

"Crossbowmen? I didn't even know Ali employed crossbowmen."

"That's your reaction?" Shahla asked.

"How long was I out?"

"You lost a lot of blood. You've been asleep for nearly a week."

"A week?" Najeem exclaimed.

"It's alright, though," Shahla promised. "I managed to join a merchant caravan. They'd been picking up refugees and escorting them for a small fee to Marizz. Which is...here. I plan to get us a ferry through the canal into the Mesogeonian, then to Koinelia."

"Hold on, princess. What's the end goal with all this? Why go all the way to Koinelia? We should go to the Al-Kubra and your tribe," Najeem asked.

"Prince Ahmed is personal friends with a Senator there. Florentius, I think his name is," Shahla said. "He'll lend us the power we need to rescue the Prince."

"But why are we going south? Has Ali captured the whole of the north?"

Shahla nodded. "I feel it may be too risky to even try the canal. In that case, we will have to go through Nikan to go West. But, outside of Qahtan, no one important knows our faces."

Najeem sighed. That trip into Nikan would also add almost a year to their journey, depending on where they landed. "This entire experience has been a humiliation of me as an Asasiyun. I apologize, my lady. If you wish to punish me or let me go, I understand."

"Oh, please. You have nothing to apologize for. You did everything you could," Shahla said. "Also, I won't be able to make it out there without you."

"Now that I think about it, how did you escape, Lady Shahla?"

"I...I'm not sure myself. I used some kind of power or magic connected to the moon. I have tried to do the same thing other nights, but I haven't been able to. Perhaps because it wasn't a full moon..." Shahla muttered.

"You have Plague Scars, but you don't seem sick to me, Princess," Najeem mentioned.

Shahla shrugged, "I haven't felt the least bit off aside from the pain I felt that night."