40°23'37.1"N 49°58'48.4"E

  Qara?uxur, Bak?

  29.05.2024 – 03.15 UTC +04.00

  The world was quieter again. No shining mirrors, candles, no confounding glitter or bright flames. It was safe to open my eyes.

  I saw the kindest grey eyes, half-shut, twisted falcon-like. I would recognize them anywhere. I had messed up in more ways than just one.

  I had awakened in a fetal position back in my room in Qara?uxur, my spying succeeding and failing in a spectacular way, but safe within my warded circle. The candles were out. Across me, another man lay still asleep. As nude as I was, exposed by the very same Cursed tricks.

  Orxan.

  I had tricked him into getting trapped in the deflecting mirrors and opening my route into Ramin’s and Züleyka’s secret meeting.

  I stood up, stepped out of the circles of the sand from the Sultan’s Cape, and before I even dressed myself, I looked for the salt in the kitchen. I had plenty.

  So you shall stay. So you shall stay.

  I whispered as I sprinkled salt around the circle of sand. Bolstering, changing the ward’s purpose.

  Orxan slept like a child in the middle of the ward-turning-prison. At least until I figured out what I was meant to do with him. I passed the two circles with salt, again and again, until I had nothing left.

  So you shall stay. So you shall stay.

  I repositioned the mirrors. One of them was cracked out in the aftermath of my escape, but it was the best I had.

  “I hope you will understand,” I said, as I lay on the bed on my side, watching over him.

  I looked at him, the witch with the monicker of Zephyr. The wind of the West. One of Starling’s best Terrors. Sleeping heavily, he looked like the kid I had met years ago. Some of his hair had already started greying at such a young age. Perhaps a symptom of his mutation, or the overuse of his Curses at the name of Starling.

  My eyelids grew heavy, but every now and then, they opened to surveil him. Make sure he stays put. Until the waking hours, when we would have to figure out the mess we were in.

  ? ? ?

  I woke up to a silent scream and a sigh. Opening my eyes, I saw Orxan sitting and blowing on his left hand. A steaming red brand, as if he had just laid his hand on embers, pulsed golden. He had tried to break the ward, thinking I would have set a passive trap. Not expecting salt for his wounds.

  “It is not meant to hurt you. Just contain you,” I said.

  “Well, meant or not…” he said, and then he puffed and huffed air from his mouth onto his aching hand, “you managed to greatly hurt.”

  “Orxan,” I said as I stood up.

  “Yes,” he said, with a mocking tone to his voice.

  “Look at me. Orxan!”

  I had not shouted at him like that in years. Since his training. The same instincts kicking in me were activated in him as well. He turned and looked at me, his falcon eyes widened to look at me. Was that excitement or wrath? Maybe both.

  “I am looking, Nisy. Explain to me what I am looking at? Is it a mentor? A friend? A lunatic, or a traitor?”

  “I could ask you the very same thing.”

  “My allegiance has always been by Starling’s side. Ah!” He shouted as his burn stung. He continued huffing at it.

  “Your allegiance is secondary to common logic.”

  Orxan stood, forgetting all about his hand. He took a step inching as close as his confinement would allow. He did not shout, but he enunciated every word through his teeth, almost like a hissing bird. Or a serpent.

  “Common logic? Abandoning your post is common logic? Breaking out the damn king of the Shadows? Abducting me in your hideout – and stupidly enough within Bak??”

  “I did not mean to abduct you. I had to break away. I must have broken the deflector your reflection was caught on, and pulled your body into my ward…”

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  I tried to explain that this was not intended, but as I spoke, we both realized that it did not matter.

  “You…”

  “You,” I interrupted him, “tried to kill me. In that hexed Safehouse.”

  “That was Hokum?.”

  “That was bullshit. You knew I was there.”

  “I hoped that…”

  “Don’t talk to me about hope!” I shouted, and the salt circle around him turned golden, briefly. “I saw hope vanish in the airport. The Coven that protects the West – such a pile of lies!”

  “We had to secure the airport. Adil had men planted everywhere in…”

  “The blood, Orxan, the blood you spilled! Did you see it? Were you there?”

  He squinted his eyes, trying to see past my anger, past my mind. I had nothing to hide, but he had.

  “I asked you if you were…”

  “No, I was not. I was at the Mountaintop. But I watched,” his voice cracked, “I watched everything my eyes would show. I saw you too. With the Shadow, and the Tree. Escaping.”

  I took one step further, my face as close to his as I could. I spoke in a low voice, whispered almost. Disappointed, honest, furious.

  “I taught you to see, not to watch! Starling’s plans are not for peace anymore. I might have thought they were. And you are smart enough, yet here you are loyally doing her bidding.”

  We stared at each other in a contest of will. His unblinking falcon pupils dilated as they peered into my soul.

  “What did you hear?” He eventually asked, breaking the silence.

  “None of your concern,” I backed off. I had more rage in me, but it was futile. He was riling me up to get information out of me. I had to break his strategy. “You will stay in your circle like a good boy. I have to go.”

  I walked to the small kitchen of the apartment.

  “For what? And you will leave me here?”

  “Sure, I will.”

  “Nisy, if you let me go now, you and the territory won’t face Starling’s wrath. If she suspects I am captured, then…”

  “Then what? Will she lay waste to the most populated city of the damn country? Or won’t she care because they are not hers?”

  I put on my shoes and grabbed the keys.

  “Nisy, she will find me, and when she does, you are done for. Please stop this.”

  I picked a few granola bars from the kitchen counter and threw them at him. Two of them landed on his face, the rest on his lap.

  “Pace the snacks until I am back, kid.”

  “Nisy!” He started shouting, but I shut the exit door behind me.

  ? ? ?

  Salt, enough of it to sustain the ward for a day or two. After that, I did not know what I would do; the sun’s scorch on the sands would dissipate, and Orxan would inevitably break out. Until then, I needed a solution.

  Convincing Orxan to work for me instead of Starling was futile. So, I needed help.

  The morning view of the A? ??h?r Boulevard was born out of blue and orange. The waves crashed against the piers that usually remained empty, waiting only for ceremonial or royal ships. But now three of those ships had docked. Caspian ships. Adorned with little bells, white, grey, and silver ribbons, decorated for intimidation and enchantment. These frigates belonged to one of the most elusive fleets of the continent. Although their mother sea was surrounded by land, they had their own Cursed ways to embark on trips, spawning in the Persian Gulf or the Mediterranean, only ever witnessed through mist. No state dared lay hands on them, or cared enough to risk it. They bothered nobody, hidden in their Cursed island somewhere in the center of the Caspian Sea. Luckily, I had lived enough there to feel at ease among them, and there were now many. They had set up camp in the Boulevard, setting up market tents across the streets. Azeris, both mortals and Shadows, had taken a moment out of their usual Wednesday to peruse the exotic wares.

  “S?h?r Xeyir, good morning,” I said to a Caspian sailor, bartering to sell wine. His face lit up hearing an Azeri pronounce in his ways. I knew he felt homesick; all the Caspians loved their land to an unhealthy extent. “Can you tell me if anyone is selling herbs and leaves among your crews?”

  “S?h?r-i nur! A morning of light, indeed! Yes, the other ship carries spices and leaves. Go ask for Abbas over in the next batch of tents.”

  I nodded. I kept my face hidden behind a tightly wrapped kelaghayi, covering my hair, and I walked through the crowd.

  It took a little bit of searching, but I eventually found the man they called Abbas, behind a stall with various leaves and herbs. My bet was successful. At the top right corner, huge leaves of the platanus trees only found on their Caspian isle, were piled one on top of the other.

  “Abbas, I was told you sell fine leaves. Of platanus.”

  The man, bartering with an old man about a batch of dill, looked at me with a side eye.

  “I do,” he said. “Who is asking?”

  “Nilay.”

  He got some bills out of the man’s hands and handed him the dill – then promptly approached me. His voice dropped, and he whispered.

  “Is this a trick? Who are you looking for, woman?”

  All herbalists had connections with Men of Adil. Enchanters of nature and of cultivation, without them, nobody could be successful, not even a Caspian. But they were all, always, men. This was the best and only angle I had, however. Asking at the market.

  “His name is R??id. I need to find him. He is looking for me, as well.”