The next morning is pandemonium. They find half of the guards still passed out on the ground at various points, snoring into the sand, and the other half dragging themselves groggily to their feet. If it was one man they would dismiss it as the aftereffects of too much drink, but not when it is all of them at the same time. And not when Kaza comes forward to say that one palace maid is missing from his tent.

Sholu hits him, hard, knocking him to the ground. Kaza tries to catch himself but lands awkwardly on his arm, spraining a wrist. Still, he keeps his head down while his commander berates him. Grey eyes flash and hands go to a gun threateningly, and for a moment I think I've miscalculated, that he might shoot, but the gun is holstered a moment later. It was just a prop.

The rest of the guards aren't treated much better. They're stripped of their uniforms and given plainclothes, told they aren't fit to call themselves soldiers if it only takes one little girl to incapacitate the lot of them. I smile to myself watching them hand over their jackets, allowing myself to revel in their humiliation. My hate loves to watch their heads hang, to hear Sholu dismiss them with a snarl. They deserve as much.

I expect him to come for me. To tell me he knows this was my doing, because he has to. I've seen his eyes darting over to me often enough this morning. But he doesn't. He ignores me and tells everyone to get ready to move, that the caravan departs in half an hour. He ignores Halima, too, because as far as I can tell no one leaves the area. No search parties.

Soon I'm back in my box of a carriage with Kaza, pulling at the threads of my tunic as the beast that is the caravan lurches and begins to crawl forward. Nothing went how I expected it to go and I'm disconcerted, disturbed even, trying to account for the deviation.

"Why are you so tense?" Kaza asks me, cradling his injured hand in his lap. "This is the best outcome possible for you. They aren't even searching for her."

"Exactly," I say, leaning towards him. "Why aren't they looking for her?"

He shrugs. "Suppose they don't think one maid is worth the trouble."

"But she isn't just one maid," I explain. "She's a tool he can use to manipulate me. Do you really think Sholu is the kind of man to lose a tool and not look for it?"

Kaza sighs. "I don't know, O'otani. Maybe he thinks he doesn't need the tool anymore."

I look up. "You're right. That has to be it. Here I was searching for conspiratorial motives but it all comes back to arrogance, doesn't it? He thinks he can control me without her. I suppose he plans to just start threatening my life instead of hers." I laugh at the thought.

"That's not something to take lightly," Kaza tells me. "He'll be threatening your life, for goddess' sakes!"

"Let him," I say with a smile, "And we'll see how that ends."

_________

I said I wanted to be reborn. In the days following Halima's escape, I realize I have been. I'm someone different now that there's no one left to love. No one left to protect. My family is gone, my city is gone, Shira is gone, and now my little dove has flown away too... my soul feels so hollow it echoes with the hoof beats of the caravan horses. Alone, it seems to whisper to me, alone, alone, alone.

But there's something glorious in it, too. In being so utterly lonely. For the first time in my life, I'm living entirely for myself. There's no family to be embarrassed by my lack of decorum, no city expecting me to act the goddess' emissary, no Shira or Halima to call me protector. I'm no longer O'otani Koritzu Amarin, Izsaiki of Arzsa, blessed of Aramizsa and beloved of Zsavina. All the superfluous has been stripped away, leaving me as just O'otani, cold and hard and raw.

I think of Sh'turen often as the carriage bumps and jostles over the sand. I think I understand her for the first time. When all else has left you, or been taken from you, your tether to the earth stretches thin. You might sink into misery or despair, and die of a broken heart, of you might let all that tragedy sharpen you to a point. Make you into a weapon. Somehow wretchedness has made us both something more than mortal.

I am cold, and alone, but not exactly desolate. Freedom is another name for loneliness, I realize, and coldness can wrap itself around you like armor. I like to imagine this, to picture sheets of metal glinting in the sun and molding to the shape of my body more closely than any lover. Attaching themselves into a suit, making me indestructible. A human dagger.

I have one purpose now, I tell myself. Only one thing left to do. There's a man who needs to die and I will be his executioner, I will make myself into his executioner. No more daydreams about murder, about the wetness of his blood on my hands or the light fading from those damned grey eyes. No more plans for torture and ideas to prolong his suffering. What I need now is a solid plan, something indestructible as the emotional armor I now wear, because I instinctively feel I'll only get one chance. And I cannot, will not fail. Damn what comes after, I think. Make me the third goddess of the desert if you like, I'm not afraid of suffering.

Something in me has shifted. I feel strangely at peace as I run through plans in my head, one after the other, discarding the rasher visions of just tearing a gun from a guard and riddling his body with bullets. The desert passes me by but I don't see much of it, I'm so lost in schemes. I feel like I did that moment during the massacre when I realized I was going to die. My ending is decided, I feel, but how we get there, and what happens before, now, that is up for debate. That, at least, is in my power. So I smile to myself, and I plan.

__________

My body aches as I walk down the hall, reminding me with stiff joints and muscle cramps that I've just spent two weeks sitting stagnant in a carriage. It's only the day after we returned to Arzsa and all the travel has left me weary. I just lengthen my strides to match Kaza's and straighten my back proudly, unwilling to show my fatigue.

Sholu has called for me. Kaza doesn't know why, but from the nervous glances he keeps casting my way, he expects something serious. Maybe he worries I'm going to be punished for Halima's escape.

Maybe I should be worried. Maybe I should feel dread eating away at me as I pass the guards and the servants and the closed doors, each step bringing me closer and closer to Sholu's private office. He can do anything he wants to me, after all. Kill me with a word. Who's going to stop him?

But I'm not afraid. What can he do to me, really? Everyone I love is gone. I suppose I could be afraid for my own future, but it's hard to muster the emotion when even the word future feels like an impossibility. So I walk with my head held high, without shaking, with a small smile staining my lips. Let them come, I think. Let them do their worst. Sands, I'm ready to do mine.

Kaza watches me warily, glancing over every so often with a discomforted look on his face. I smile back at him, probably looking genuinely insane, but I'm beyond caring. Halima is gone. They can't touch me.

"O'otani," he whispers to me, under his breath so no passerby's might hear. "O'otani, look at me."

I do, sparing a glance for the only guard I trust.

"Don't try to fight him," he says, words eerily reminiscent of those he uttered the last time he was leading me towards Sholu's door. "You won't win. It's not worth it."

That's all his advice will ever be, I realize. Keep your head down, don't make trouble, try to be elsewhere when the guns start firing. Defer to those with more power because if you don't they'll make your life hell.

But I'm already in hell, and I'm too far gone to care about getting caught in the crossfire.

If you're going to be a casualty in the end, what's the use for caution?

"I'll decide what's worth it," I tell him. "It's my life, Kaza. For once it's my life."

"Don't give it up so easily, then," he mutters, stopping to indicate we've reached Sholu's door. "I know you've been thinking. Planning. You'll fail, O'otani, you have to know that. It's like Halima was your caution and now that she's gone you're..."

"What?" I snap. "I'm what?"

"Untethered," he replies. "Possibly delusional, if you think you can hurt Sholu."

"Well, then, leave me to my delusions," I quip, reaching out and giving the door in front of us three hard knocks. "It's not like I asked for your advice to begin with."

Kaza opens his mouth to reply, but before he can, a strong "come in" issues from the other side of the wooden door.

Sholu is seated in Somitu's old chair still, never having replaced it with one more suiting his tastes. He must like the appropriation, the implied metaphor of dominance. I might laugh at making metaphors of wood and fabric if seeing him sitting there wasn't so damn infuriating.

"O'otani," he says as I walk in, a slow smile thawing his icy features. "It's lovely to see you."

"I can't say the same," I remark, pulling out the chair in front of his desk and sitting down before he asks me to. I make a show of reclining, of mimicking him and placing both my arms on the arm rests, trying to look at ease. I might as well have put my feet up on his desk, as far as Shikkan etiquette goes.

Instead of ire, his smile widens. "No, I don't imagine you can," he says, fiddling with a quill. He brushes the feather between his thumb and forefinger again and again, almost like he's stroking it. "Not knowing how we parted."

It all comes back to me in a flash. The strange gleam of his eyes, his lips pressing so violently against mine, my fist colliding with his face. The blood crusted on my ring afterwards. I straighten up involuntarily, reliving the ghost of those initial emotions.

"The look on your face..." he says with a low chuckle. "Goddess, you looked at me like I'd inflicted a mortal wound instead of a kiss."

"I would have liked a mortal wound better," I retort.

"I imagine you would have. Violence is the only language you speak when it comes to me, isn't it?"

"How could it be any other way?" I ask, for once honest in my curiosity. "You've taken everything from me, Sholu. Did you honestly imagine I would welcome a kiss from you?"

"No," he sighs. "No, I suppose not. It was too sudden. I was carried away." He smiles faintly, touching his cheek. "But I don't regret it, I must confess. It was well worth the bruise."

I don't understand him. There's that thing in his eyes again, that sparkling depth I cannot explain away as power or greed or sheer psychopathy. It's insistent, yet soft. Full to the brim of- of something. I just wish I knew what. I feel like I'm standing in front of a locked door, missing the key, trying to guess what's behind it.

"If you ever touch me again I will cut off your hand," I inform him, giving up scrutinizing that indefinable quality I cannot seem to pin down. Still, it irritates me, the itch that something about his expression is very wrong.

"Will you now?" he asks with a smirk. "Do you plan to use a butter knife again? If so tell me now so I can have them locked up, please."

I burn under his mockery. "No, I do not plan on using a butter knife," I reply through clenched teeth. "When I slide metal between your ribs and pierce your heart it will be a well-honed blade-"

"Really, O'otani," he chides, shaking his head. "I'm no longer impressed by your baseless threats."

"Believe me," I say, smiling back at him savagely. "They aren't baseless."

He sighs. "Violence really is the only language you know, isn't it?" He asks, almost to himself. "But you can learn another. It will just take time for you to acclimate."

"Acclimate to what?"

"To a new idea. A new way of things." And there it is again, that damned look in his eyes.

"Enough!" I say, glaring at him, fed up with indefinable looks and vague statements. "Tell me why I'm here. Why did you call for me?"

I expect him to say something about Halima, but instead he answers "I wanted to tell you a story."

"...A story," I repeat, brows knitting together in confusion.

"Don't you like stories?" he asks. "I've seen those books in your room. You must."

"I like a few," I reply. And then a spark of memory makes me smile. "In fact, the jungle animal you call Matachai told me a lovely story recently. I always meant to repeat it to you."

He raises his eyebrows and waits.

"It's about a rich merchant and his pet oxgrove cat," I begin. "He collared the cat, you see, and walked it around the village like it was a pet. All was well until he went missing. They found him days later in his own home, gored to death."

"Fascinating, kionike," Sholu murmurs.

"She ate his face off," I tell him, giving the cat a gender. "I wonder, If I ate your face off, would they still follow you?"

He just looks at me for a moment, then chuckles and shakes his head.

"You have the bloodlust of an oxgrove cat, I'll give you that," he says. "But my story is a little different. It comes from one of my generals. It's about a boy who should have died but didn't."

"You, then."

"No," he says. "This boy was a royal baby, one who escaped from the palace and resurfaced on a ship going the long way across the Karithian channel. His mother thought the captain was a loyalist. She was right; it was the first mate who told. Collected a handsome reward too."

And just like that, it all falls apart. All my thoughts of freedom, of control, of ever gaining the upper hand. My blood runs ice cold and my heart begins to beat faster, too fast, echoing inside of me with the force of a drumbeat.

"You're lying," I whisper, clutching the arms of the chair for dear life, wanting with all my heart to believe the words falling from my lips.

"No, I'm not."

"You're lying!" I cry. My voice is suddenly high and shrill, like someone is constricting my throat as I try to speak.

"Now the rich merchant knows where the royal babe lies asleep across the sea," he says, ignoring my frantic outburst. "Tell me, what does the oxgrove cat think of that?"

What do I think? I think I'm drowning. I thought he was safe. That was the one thing that comforted me, the one succor I had: Shira was someplace far away, someplace unreachable. I trusted Somitu to get him there, I trusted his own sense, I trusted my own naïve stupidity because I never should have dared to hope. Because I dared now it all comes crashing down around me, shards of my security splintering off and stabbing me in the gut. I ache. I burn. I hear a distant roaring like the ocean in my ears, but it's probably just the panic, or the beating of my overstressed heart.

"Tell me you didn't hurt him," I pant, leaning forward so my arms are on the desk. "Tell me you didn't hurt him, you son of a bitch!"

"Now, is that any way to talk to me after I just told you a story?"

"IS HE ALIVE?!" I yell, leaning farther forward over the desk. "Goddess help me if you've hurt him- if you hurt him I will strangle you here and now, I'll cut your tongue from your mouth and gag you with it, I'll- I'll- goddess, tell me!"

"Calm down!" Sholu says, rising from his chair so we're eye to eye. "There's no need to panic, O'otani."

"I'm not panicking!" I say, drinking down big gulps of air. "And I asked you a question! Tell. Me. Is he alive?"

Sholu hesitates a moment before nodding. "He's alive."

I let out an audible sigh of relief, some of the mad rush of adrenaline abating. He's alive, at least. He's still breathing.

"Don't hurt him," I say, halfway between commanding and begging. "Don't hurt him. Please, don't do anything, he's nothing to you now. You've won Shikkah, haven't you? You've won. Just let him go."

"I'll let him go," Sholu agrees, "if..."

"If?" I ask, hanging on his words. "If what?"

"I told you a story," he says. "Now let's make an exchange. Something you want, for something I want."

"Anything," I gasp immediately. "Anything you want. Take my life, I don't know what else I have to give, but whatever it is, take it. Just don't hurt him. Don't hurt Shira."

"Are you sure you'd do anything?" He asks. "Anything at all?"

I pause a moment. The look in his eyes is undisguised glee. I imagine him parading Halima out from behind his chair and asking me to shoot her. I imagine him giving me over to the guards, a scrap of meat thrown to hungry curs. I imagine it all, but all I can say is, "yes. Anything."

He smiles. "It's done, then. I will let your prince boy live."

"And?" I breathe, waiting in horrible anticipation of what will come next.

"And you will marry me in three week's time," he says simply, his smile widening into a Cheshire grin. 

__

SO that was the last chapter of part two. Part three begins whenever I can figure out how to write it, hopefully soon. It's been a long journey but we're officially over halfway done with Heir of Beasts! If you liked it, please leave a comment. And as always, thanks for reading! 

- Swpoet