Imraan had vacillated between returning with the wood until Tariq and Surayyah appeared with the hunt, but it seemed the siblings had either gotten into a scuffle about the prize or some other conflict, for Imraan heard raised voices in the wood.

He had never heard the schoolteacher and the businesswoman raise voices before – at least, not with each other. But now that Imraan thought of it, although they were siblings, he had never truly noticed them interacting very much in the several times that Surayyah would visit.

So Imraan rustled about through the trees gathering wood, cursing himself for having brought along the calligrapher.

It was evident that she saw him through the same eyes which the entire realm saw – a despicable distortion of a man, never to be truly trusted, no matter what he did. He had seen the change in her eyes when she first grew aware of his identity. When she’d met him in the square, and through the journey up to the house on old Layla and Azim’s cart, the calligrapher had appeared to be private, certainly, averting her eyes and speaking little, but she acknowledged his help, seemed kind – albeit a little stubborn.

But in the moment the truth dawned upon her, Rahena Ansary’s eyes grew cold and hard, and then curled within themselves, as if she was looking upon something sickly, rotted. He could not forget that transformation in her eyes.

Yet why should he care what this woman thought of him? And what gave her the right to look at him so?

She must not have been very different from him, after all, based on the accusations of her. But no – he could not allow such thoughts to enter his mind – he himself knew how the lies of Aziz Ardashir and the empire could erode even the most critical of minds. The royalty, the elite – that was a simple task, they profited off of the Shayfahan’s policies, after all. But when the masses, the leathermaker’s son and the boatman alike believed any iterations produced by the Royal Scriveners of the realm, so insidious as they were going from villages to towns, holy temples to market squares to riversides, despite their own deaths at the Shayfahan’s hands – that is when you knew how powerful the lies were.

But he had to remain faithful in the people, for it was true not all of them were blinded by Salman’s charming Scriveners. For charming they were – Salman and Ardashir selected them quite smartly indeed – those who could engage you with a simple smile, a shake of the hand, a teasing joke, a laugh. They were good, the Scriveners – he had witnessed one several years before, just after he had begun his campaign against Salman. It had been in a town square in Mazandran, where Imraan had gone to meet with an old defector of Salman’s army, Waqar Marouf.

The Scrivener — he forgot what his name had been, but certainly something invoking vaguely traditional — had spoken to the town as if they were old friends, as if addressing each and every member individually. This is what he heard people say afterward – it was as if the Scrivener knew each of them, and was whispering directly into their ears. “Aliya Ilmen wanted to poison the realm – faking the cure for her own profit. But the eminent, generous Salman fought to ensure a true cure. And so he did.”

Imraan had wanted desperately to barge through the crowd and launch himself at the man, tear him to pieces. And the crowd’s murmurs of agreement, of smiles, made him the more angry. How could they not know the truth? How could they not see Aliya had sacrificed her life for them all, and here they were, condemning her?

But he had resisted the urge, taken a deep breath as his hands trembled beside him in fury, and turned away towards the strange candle-lit teashop where he was to meet Waqar Marouf.

Yes, Scriveners were convincing. But he had hoped over the years that he would become more convincing. What an idealist he had been.

And now he was stuck on a weeks-long journey with a woman who retreated away in disgust from him.

But no, it could never be true that she was like him. She had too much of an honesty in her eyes, despite the shield she thought she had put up. The candor of her manners and words broke through any veil she had constructed. No, such a woman could never be like him.

And perhaps that is why he cared so much about what she thought of him.

But the truth was, he had brought her along because he thought that if she truly did hold the powers Ardashir said she did, perhaps she could be of use to the resistance, if it ever ignited again.

It was not truly her argument about reporting his location to the Shayfahan that had made him wary – although this is something he always feared. It ate away at his mind sometimes at night when he tried to sleep. What if he brought down the whole of his nightmare upon Cypress House? Upon the children, Maryam and Omar, who had finally found a home? Upon even the servants Zahir and Layla and the new woman, Sarah – they were all refugees Al-Ghazan had found. What if he, the monster of Khardin, one day brought hell raining down upon the only home they had found, by his own doing? What if one day Salman discovered that the headquarters of the Traitor of Khardin lay so close, right in the lair of his own physician’s home?

Imraan felt sicker when he thought of what would happen to Al-Ghazan. But the old lion-maned physician would always tell him he chose this life, the life of a double-edged blade. Did he ever have any fear of being found out? Imraan had once asked him one evening by the fireside in winter. No, Al-Ghazan had said. What kind of a man would I be if not one of firm conviction, Imraan?

Yet Imraan knew he was lying.

Of course he was.

Sometimes Imraan thought of moving it all outside of Cypress House, perhaps far away to Mazandran – he could get used to the region’s fresh air closer to the sea, its odd teashops stocked with arrangements of tarts of all combinations imaginable – dewberry with honey, mangoes with resslt leaves, or bellflower with lemon.

But then Imraan could not do it – he could not leave Cypress House behind. Somewhere along the way, it had become his home, and he could not bear to leave it. Perhaps that made him selfish.

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No, he knew — as did the calligrapher — that the threat of revealing him to the Shayfahan was an empty threat. They both could do so of each other, after all.

It was something else – that for a moment as he spoke to her, the disgust had left her eyes, to be replaced by a second’s worth of – what was it? What could he call it? Compassion? Or was that absurd to think? Barely a second, yet it had been there, he was certain of it. And it made him curious, made him want to see if it would, could expand, continue, swell into something more real than a second.

But what if he had merely imagined it, persuaded himself out of want, a desire to believe such a thing could be true of how another human being saw him? A foolish desire, indeed.

No, at best, her powers could serve them. He was curious of these powers, what she was capable of.

Imraan strode through the forest grounds, dusklight falling in thin rays through the forest canopy upon the grounds of decomposing leaves, branches, white and brown and golden-tinted bird feathers, rotting soil and mushrooms hiding in shaded corners.

It seemed Tariq and Surayyah would take their time finding their hunt, or resolving whatever argument they had become tangled in. So Imraan began to gather the wood, searching for dry bark, and resigned himself to the fate of facing the calligrapher woman alone.

When he returned, the woman sat beneath the oak tree, rifling through the pages of a small book in her hand. She still wore her calligrapher’s robes, and the image of a scholarly-dressed woman in the midst of the wilderness conjured up for him a scholar’s grounds, as if just nearby was the keep where philosophers, naturalists and astronomers conducted their experiments and studies; and the wilderness-inclined scholar woman would at any moment return inside the scholar’s keep.

As he approached carrying the wood over his shoulder, the woman did not seem to notice him.

____________________________________________

The midnight-blue clad woman and her brother left to find something to hunt, and the scarred man went off to gather wood. Rahena dragged their packs beneath the old oak tree. It was soft but stable ground for them to settle for the night.

But even as she went down to the river to fill their water, she felt as if their eyes were watching her, wary, suspicious. Can you blame them? She fought against Imraan and refused Surayyah’s questions. But she would fear herself too, if she knew everything. But they do not know everything, she told herself.

The rebel looked at her with disdain too — no, not disdain, perhaps, but something she could not precisely identify. It unnerved her, for she had become familiar with the sensation of accurately evaluating others’ sense of mind. But with this scarred rogue, she could not. Except, of course, besides the fleeting half a second’s worth the day before when she happened to touch the fabric of the man’s cloak. But she could not comprehend it.

Was the Traitor of Khardin so enigmatic across all of Khardin that even she could not determine the reality of his mind?

Perhaps the businesswoman Surayyah was right, after all – what was she doing here with these strangers – no, worse, with the most hunted man in the realm – to go seek a room from a vision in olden Arassan?

But Rahena sensed, deep down, that rationality was not a primary factor in the visions she had had for years – of souls, of Arassan, of the cypress so many years ago. Somehow, they were connected. For a long time, she had no longer wanted to know why or how; for a long time, she had shut it out, ignored it, convincing herself that if she neglected these questions, it would perhaps disappear. Like a flame that needed fuel, she thought that as long as she did not feed it, it could die.

It had not.

And the room of Arassan had grown almost lucid in her dreams, like a view approaching closer, clearer.

She should have set off on her own — but how far could she have gotten? You had to be invisible to pass through the Shayfahan watchpoints — or have good connections, know someone. And who did she know?

Everyone she had known had shunned her by now, besides the most notorious man in the realm. And they both knew that her claim of reporting his whereabouts was a lie.

Imraan

The calligrapher ripped apart leaves, for the sole purpose of doing something with her hands, it seemed.

Across from her, Imraan stoked the flames with the limb of an yew tree he had discovered several yards away.

The fire flickered in between them.

The silence stretched on until he could no longer take it. Surely even conversing with one who despised you was better than this awkward silence?

Why was he so prone to filling silence with talk? He could not stand the stretching emptiness of it — too much could pass through one’s mind in the midst of that emptiness. He hated it.

“Ever been to Arassan before?” Imraan asked.

The woman did not look at him, now stirring the flames with a branch as if it needed more stirring.

“No,” she finally grunted out a reply.

“Are you always this amicable of a travel companion?” Imraan said.

“I have never been a travel companion before, how was I supposed to know I was to keep you amused?” Rahena said.

“Did you not travel from Bayrun to Ifsharan?”

The woman glanced up now, raising a brow. It arched over her eye giving her a sharp impression, her gaze striking him as if daring him to ask further questions about the subject. But then the tension left her features, and she replied. “I did, alone.”

“Ah.”

“Unless, of course, you count the boatman and the merchants who gave me a ride to the mainland.”

“The poor travelers,” said Imraan.

“Because they did not have a passenger who chattered away at them as they’re trying to do their job?”

“Oh, is that what I am doing?” Imraan countered. “Chattering away? I will leave you alone then, calligrapher.” He rose.

“Into the darkness away from the fire in this chill?”

“That is true. I will have to endure your gaze here with the fire.” He said as he sat back down.

“You know I am not ungrateful for your help,” Rahena said. “But how can I not be wary of the Rebel of Khardin?”

A shadow crossed Imraan’s eyes, and he looked away.

The woman must have seen it, for her features seemed to shift, softer somehow. She was about to speak again, when the rustling footsteps of the siblings returned.

Surayyah carried over her shoulders a dead rabbit, and Tariq followed her. Both of them seemed in worse spirits than the two by the fire, their brows furrowed, not speaking with each other.

Surayyah dumped the rabbit down in front of the fire. “Let’s cook this and go to sleep then,” she muttered.

“Not even an enjoyable meal?” Imraan asked. “Why is everyone in such a bitter mood?”

Surayyah didn’t answer, but began rummaging in a sack for a metal pot. They could hear her making a lot of noise as if in answer to Imraan’s question.

Tariq came and sat down, his casual jovial laughter replaced by a grim darkness.

“You joining us in staring at the fire too?” Imraan cajoled him, but Tariq shoved Imraan’s hand away.

Surayyah came back and began simmering something in the pot over the fire. As the water boiled, she took the rabbit at a distance and began skinning it, slicing it right through the centerfold.

“Can I help with that?” Rahena asked after a while, feeling as if she should do something, although she had no knowledge of how to skin a rabbit, or any animal for that matter. But as she approached, she saw that Surayyah had already pulled off the skin, tearing it through.

“No need,” Surayyah muttered. “It is done.” She bent down to clean it, tearing off gristle and fat, then passed Rahena by and threw the rabbit into the pot.

Imraan attempted to joke through the meal but it was evident that it fell flat and no one was in the mood, so he stopped soon thereafter.

“What a joyful supper we are having, companions,” Imraan muttered as they ate in silence but for the crickets chirping somewhere in the woods and the soft nickering of horses nearby.

By the time they all lay down on their spread of thin linen and rested their heads on their lump of cloaks besides Tariq — who was keeping first watch — the flame had died low.