Read Of Sand and Malice Made for Free Online

on her belt. “What do I do?”
    â€œWear it in their presence. They will listen to you, and they will grant you one favor.”
    â€œA
favor
? What am I to do with that? Can I ask them to simply leave?”
    â€œPerhaps, but that would be unwise. They must be turned to Rümayesh now, to make her forget about you. I fear that is the only way for you to survive this.”
    â€œAnd for you to return to her good graces . . .”
    Ashwandi shrugged. “We want what we want, andI’ve given up much for that to happen.” She began stepping away, her eyes still on Çeda. “The twins are drawn to water. You’ll find them along the Haddah, often at dusk or dawn.”
    And then she turned and was gone, swallowed by the growing darkness over Sharakhai.

    With the eastern sky a burnished bronze and the stars still shining in the west, Çeda pulled the black veil across her face and crept along the edge of the Haddah, watching carefully for signs of movement along the riverbank. She had arrived hours ago, hoping to catch the godling twins either in the night or as the sun rose. She still hadn’t found them, and soon the city would be waking from its slumber. She didn’t wish to be skulking along the river when it did, but the desire to find them was palpable as a canker, and every bit as maddening.
    The talk with Ashwandi had so shaken Çeda she hadn’t gone home last night, preferring to sleep in a hammock at the rear of Ibrahim the storyteller’s tiny mudbrick home. She’d unwrapped the rolled bandage and found Ashwandi’s severed finger resting there with a leather cord running through it like some depraved version of thread and needle. She’d held it up to the starry sky, looked at it beneath the light of the moons, Rhia andTulathan, wondering if she would feel the magic bound to it, or through it that of the twin boys. She’d felt nothing, though, and after a time she’d slipped the cord over her neck and worn the finger like a talisman, which was surely what Ashwandi had meant for her to do.
    It rested between her breasts, a thing she was all too conscious of, especially when she walked. It tickled her skin like the unwelcome touch of a man, and she longed to be rid of it, but she couldn’t, she knew. Not until this was all over.
    She parted the reeds and padded farther down the Haddah. She passed beneath a stone bridge, looking carefully along its underside, which was more than large enough for the boys to hide in, but when she found nothing she moved on, heading deeper into the city.
    Above her, beyond the banks, a donkey brayed. A woman shouted at it, and the sounds of a millstone came alive, dwindling and then replaced by burble of the river and the rattle of stones as Çeda trekked onward. The sky brightened further. Carts clattered over bridges. Laborers trudged along, their lunches bundled in cloth. A boy and a girl, both with wild, kinky hair, headed down to the banks of the Haddah with nets in hand. She even saw one of the rare Qaimiri trading ships rowing toward a pier, her lateen sails up, catching a favorable wind.
    But of the twins she saw no sign.
    She was just about ready to give up when she saw movement near an old acacia. Half the branches were dead, and the thing looked as though it were about to tip over and fall in the water at any moment. But in the branches still choked with leaves she could see two legs hanging down, swinging back and forth. The skin was the same dark color she remembered, and when she looked harder, she saw movement in the branches above—the second twin, surely, sitting higher than the first.
    She took to the damp earth along the edge of the bank to silence her footsteps, then pulled her kenshar from its sheath at her belt, whispering a prayer to fickle Bakhi as she did so. Reaching past her mother’s silver chain and locket, she slipped Ashwandi’s severed finger from around her