The Silver Sparrow

A Mistake Waiting to Happen

The sunset that evening reminded her of the massacre. The clouds had looked like this—torn to shreds and soaked through with blood. Only here and now no houses were burning, no smoke was rising with the accompanying smell of charred human flesh to suffocate everyone who stood within a hundred paces from the fire. Out here, deep in the Djamahari, Djari imagined the screams of people being burned alive by the hands of Za'in izr Husari would have echoed everywhere if the same thing were to happen.

Her father had done that. A husband who had always been gentle to his wife, a kha'a who lived to protect his khagan, a parent who loved his children despite the harshness of his words had done that. It was possible that the people you love could do these things. It was also possible to continue loving them and hate the event, the same way she had hated sunsets for the memories of that evening but not her father. Never her father.

Love, Djari realized, could make one so corrupt, so dishonest, so blind. Not too different—not at all—from hate if one were to look at it from a certain angle. In a way, one could call it an act of love that had brought about so much hate in Za'in izr Husari. She wondered sometimes if she would have done the same being in his position. She couldn't answer that, not with any certainty.

I have to start getting used to these things, Djari thought, fixing her eyes on the fading sun as it disappeared behind the mountain. War was coming just around the corner. There would be blood where she was going. One day, in the near future, she might have to be the one doing the slaughter, the burning, the killing of babies and mothers. Those things came with war, no matter which side you were on, that much she had not been naive enough to believe otherwise. Sometimes life exacted such sacrifices for other lives to live.

Djari had decided long ago what sacrifices she would be willing to make, only the one man she would have liked to hold her hand through these things might die tonight.

In all fairness, it was simply another death she would have to endure in her lifetime as a bharavi and the one chosen to end the war. A small snag only in a larger tapestry she would have to weave and sew.

Still, she had stood there by the bed last night, watching them bleed Hasheem with her heart in her throat, her strength draining from her limbs faster than his blood, realizing just at that moment that she was about to lose the first man she had come to love.

It had become clear to her then, facts by indisputable facts, memories after living memories—the reason behind every foolish thing she had done in the past few weeks. Because there was a reason she had pursued him the first night they met, a reason she had kept the arrowhead, had said the things she'd said, had ridden out of camp the moment she'd heard of the trouble at the hunting ground.

Had asked him to kiss her that night when she had no right to.

She had been certain then, as the thought of losing him sank its fangs into her heart, that love had been at the very center of it. He was her first kiss, her first breath taken away, her first skip of a heartbeat among many that followed and would continue to follow for a long, long time.

If he survives.

She squeezed her eyes shut at the other possibility, tried to force herself to not tremble at the thought and failed at that too. She seemed to have failed at so many things lately.

"It's chilly out here, my lady," a voice she identified readily by its silky smooth Khandoor accent said from behind, pulling her abruptly out of her thoughts. "You might catch a cold."

She kept her eyes on the horizon as he placed a cloak on her shoulders. The fox pelt was exquisite, warm, and priceless, as befitting a man who could afford a countless number of such things.