A/N: Reposted to fix some very silly continuity errors.

14.

Kel-Garas is dead.

Those words were strange. I kept trying them out in my head, first, to see how I might make them fit.

Kel-Garas is dead.

It was of no use. In no world that I knew would those words actually make any sense. Our enemy had always been there. I had thought that he would always be there. Much as I hated him, I could not imagine a world without him there. Such a circumstance was beyond my experience.

Kel-Garas is dead.

I had fulfilled my oath – at least, I thought as much. I had not killed the lich, but I had seen him dead. He had looked so small, just a jumble of bones and cloth on the floor before the altar of Lathander. It seemed so strange, that the ancient enemy who had always loomed so large in our perceptions could be brought down to that.

Kel-Garas is dead, I mused. We are free.

I sat on the broad, flat rock beneath the cedar tree and watched the caravan pull away. I wondered whether standing on my head would help this strange new concept to settle into my brain. It did not seem likely, but perhaps it was worth making the attempt.

I heard the soft crunch of footsteps behind me. I did not turn around. I recognized the rhythm of Ali's stride and the particular rustle of fabric and the sound of breathing which was unique to him, though I could not have said how I recognized it so well. Best to say that he was my brother, and I knew him.

That is to say, I knew Ali as well as I knew this oasis, which meant that I both recognized it as familiar to me and I no longer recognized it at all.

Eventually, he spoke, crisply. He used his sheikh's voice. "So, they are gone," he said. "Good."

I rested my chin on my folded forearms. "They say that the priestess was the one who called the rain," I said quietly. The oasis glittered down below, clean water lapping against the sides of its basin for what seemed like the first time in a lifetime.

I heard my brother drum his fingers against his scabbard. His voice betrayed his unease. His words came in fits and starts, rather than flowing easily, the way they usually did when he was confident of what he was saying. "And who knows what curse she may have left on us in return?" he countered. "Besides, the only ones who say this are the little folk, who are notoriously unreliable-"

I clenched my teeth. "Malik said it, as well," I argued. "He said that she saw her at the edge of the oasis. She spoke to a man who was not there, and then the rain came."

"Malik was delirious with fever."

"Not so delirious, after she gave him her medicines."

My brother's voice went sharp. "Nadiya," he said. "Enough. You have made enough of a spectacle of yourself, speaking so loudly on that woman's behalf-"

My shoulders stiffened and my jaw clenched. I would have liked it if my voice and posture did not betray my anger, and would allow me to be as guarded as Hammad, but they never seemed to cooperate in that regard. "That woman," I spat, "-has a name. It is Rebecca. And she healed me."

"She beguiled you."

"She killed Kel-Garas."

"No. The mage did that."

The mage. That was another thing which I could not fit into my head. I could have stood on my head and jumped up and down, or turned somersaults, and still the concept would not have fit. If I had the way of writing, I could have written the idea on parchment, folded it up, sawed off the top of my head, and dropped the words directly into my brain, and still they would have made no sense.

I had not known what I had expected a mage to look like, but it had not been that. The one who had killed Kel-Garas had been large, and strange, and fey, and bad-tempered, and very, very loud.

Oddest of all, he had not even been human.

His skin had had a greenish tint, which I would have taken for a sign of illness had he not been so energetic and so obviously hale, and his face had had the fierce and brutish cast of a hungry hyena. Ali had called him half-orc, which helped nothing, because no one would explain to me just what an orc was, nor what it meant to be half of one.

I had not caught his name. That was probably for the best. I was not certain what to make of such a creature, or man, or whatever it was that this mage had been, and I could certainly not have spoken to him directly to find out. He was male and unrelated to me. Worse yet, he was an outlander, and a mage. Not even Ali could have protected me from censure, had I dared to speak with that one directly. I was already in enough trouble for having defended the priestess. It did not matter what she had done, only that she followed a god whom the stories said would betray us. I should have thought the same way, but…

…but the others did not see the look in her eyes. They did not speak with her. She bore no love for us, but neither did she find any joy in our suffering.

My long silence seemed to prod my brother into speaking again. "Little sister," he sighed, and from the corner of my eye I saw him crouch down beside me. "You are young, and you have never been outside our oasis. You do not know the perils that exist beyond our canyon."

I did not know much of the world beyond our home, that was true – but I knew that Kel-Garas was dead and we had water again, and I knew that it was all the doing of the outlanders.

I turned my head to look at Ali sideways. "You do not like that it was an outlander who…killed the lich," I said abruptly. I would have said saved us, but I could not get the words out. Even the thought was, in its way, humiliating. Kel-Garas had been our enemy to face, not theirs, and to know that a pair of soft outlanders had succeeded where we had failed was like having a splinter embedded beneath one of my nails – stinging, aggravating, and impossible to either remedy or ignore.

It was no wonder that Ali was so bitter. "It is good that they have gone, and asked for no more than water," he muttered. His dark eyes stared after the caravan, brooding. "Had they known enough to ask us to make good on our true debt to them, I do not know how we would have repaid it."

I gnawed on my lip, briefly. "Blood for blood," I murmured.

Ali glanced at me, briefly. "Just so," he said. Then he rose. "But enough of our tribe's blood has been shed as of late," he added briskly. "For now, we are safe – and if the priestess of the jackal-headed one calls in her due, well, we will worry about that particular problem when we come to it."

I bit my lip so hard that I tasted copper, but I said nothing. Ali knew that the outlander woman had been evil. I knew that she was not. I could argue until I was blue in the face, and still I was certain that I would not be able to change his mind, nor he mine.

I sighed, and rose to my feet as well. "You are truly the blood of al-Rashid," I said sourly, not looking my brother's way.

His voice was mildly inquisitive. "Oh?"

I scowled. "You are as stubborn as a goat."

Ali's laughter rose up like a flock of birds startled from a bush. "As are you, my sister," he retorted, and held out his hand. "Come," he said then. "Walk with me a while. I do not like to leave you alone out here, at least until the outlanders are long gone."

I did not like his implication that I was incapable of defending myself, but Ali was smiling again, the shadows lifting from his eyes, and I did not want to spoil it. I took his hand and allowed him to help me down from my perch. "How is Malik?" I asked my eldest brother.

He laughed wryly. "Complaining."

"Oh? Then he must be feeling better."

"What makes you say that?"

"He always groused when I kicked him in the shins, but he said nothing at all when I once bloodied his nose. From this I must conclude that he only complains when it does not truly hurt."

Ali blinked. "You once-"

"Yes. Do not give me that look, Ali. He deserved it." I paused. "But please do not tell our mother," I added. "It was years ago, but if she finds out, she will be as angry as if I had done it yesterday."

"That much is true," Ali murmured dryly. "The women of our family are well-known for their ability to hold a grudge."

I narrowed my eyes at him. "What is that supposed to mean?" I asked suspiciously.

My brother gave me a limpid smile. "Nothing at all, little sister," he replied smoothly.

I hesitated. Then, sighing, I decided to ignore his teasing, and I took his arm instead, hugging it to my side as we walked. He was my brother again, for now, and no more than my brother. That much was worth enduring a little gentle needling.

For the first time in months, the oasis smelled green again. I had spent so long with nothing but dust and the stink of death in my nostrils that even the smell of growing things was new to me, and did not seem to fit into the world as I had come to know it.

The jasmine was blooming. It smelled like our mother's perfume, to me. Quite suddenly, I missed her. Guiltily, I wondered how she was faring. She could not know that we were well, and the lich was dead. She must have been worried.

I had to keep my oath, I thought defensively. There is nothing I can do but wait to apologize to her and accept whatever punishment she deems appropriate, now. Then, firmly, I pushed the thought out of my head. What would happen would happen, and I could do nothing about it right now.

Ali's hand tightened around mine as we drew to the edge of the oasis. We came to a halt and looked down at it. Ribbons of sunlight rippled by, carried past us on the slow flow of the water towards the creek. From there, the creek entered the wadi, and from that narrow artery, all of the other waterways in this area would fill. Travelers would return to our region of the desert. So, no doubt, would the raiding parties. At least the lack of water had granted us some reprieve from that, for even the hardiest of warriors needed water if they wished to fight.

They will be back soon enough, I thought. And we are so few, now. Dozens had died in the lich's last, desperate attack. More would no doubt die during this coming night.

I heard a soft sigh escape my brother's lips. "So few left," he murmured, echoing my own thoughts. Then he squared his shoulders. "They will have to do, though," he added, and turned to me. "When the few scouts we have are healed enough to travel, I will send them across the desert to El Ma'ra," he told me. "They will go to bring the women and children back." His face hardened. "And you will go with them, and you will return to our mother's tent, and there will be no more talk of swordplay from you until all of this is settled. Do you understand me?"

I stared at him. Was that fear, chilling my blood, or was it something else? I did not know, though I wished that I did. "Ali-"

He made a quick negating gesture with his hand, slashing it through the air as if it were a blade. "No, Nadiya," he said. "I am not your brother in this. I must be your sheikh, and you…" He trailed off, and grimaced. "You have not heard what the men have been saying," he said in a low voice.

I knew the heat which cut through the cold dread in my belly and made my cheeks flush. That was an emotion I recognized. It was embarrassment. "I have heard enough of it," I mumbled.

"Not all of it." He looked at me, and his eyes softened in sympathy. "Nadiya-" he began helplessly, and then shook his head, scrubbing his hand over his face. "Hammad chose to indulge you, though it was a risk to him if anyone discovered that he had put steel in the hands of a woman. And I-"

I folded my arms across my chest and frowned at him. "Make them accept it," I hissed, my eyes darting to see that no one was near to hear this. "You are sheikh."

He cocked his head at me, a grim and sad censure written into the lines of his face. "I am sheikh of a scant handful of warriors," he corrected me, "-and the blood of al-Rashid ceased to speak so strongly for me as soon as the phaerimm's power faded. And now, with the lich dead-" He let the rest of his words fall unspoken, like rain, and I thought I heard the rest of it in the silence between us.

Your position is weak, and you do not have enough men to stop any number of them from breaking away – or taking the sheikhdom from you by force, I concluded. I may not have been a man, but now that it had been brought to my attention, it was not hard to see how the death of the lich would sway the balance of power among them. Even Hammad had not been a very strong sheikh, for he had been the unsteady younger brother who had passed most of his youth in the outer desert and beyond, and that made many suspicious of him. But Hammad had been the blood of al-Rashid, no matter his position within the family, and while the power of the phaerimm endured, that had been enough.

Ali, on the other hand, was admired, but he was young, and he ruled over a near-broken tribe, and the power that had kept al-Rashid's line in the sheikhdom was no longer needed to keep us safe.

And he cannot even control his own sister, who defies all that is good and proper and insists on taking up the sword, I thought, quavering. I had never thought of it that way before. Now that I had, I clutched the hilt of my sword, desperately, and wondered if this was the last I would ever see of it.

No, I thought weakly, but I knew it for the forlorn cry of a child who would deny the inevitable, even as the inevitable happened. The sheikh must be the strongest of us, the first among equals. What would happen to him if he was perceived to be weak? Such things happened in the other tribes, but they had never happened here. Al-Rashid's blood had prevented it.

Now, though, al-Rashid's blood meant much less than it had, and I felt as if I was standing on a dune just as the bedrock beneath it had begun to gape open. I swallowed hard, because my throat seemed to want to close up and would not let me speak. "Will they leave?" I croaked.

His eyes went shuttered and dark. "That is no business of yours, Nadiya," he said shortly. Then he shook his head, sharply. "And it does not matter. Not now. They will do nothing immediately. As I have few hale men, so do they. We must rebuild, and heal, and regain our strength." He gave a short, humorless laugh. "Besides, they are waiting for the return of their women and children, which will take some months. I have time to win allies. And they will do nothing to you if I send you away, or to jeopardize the return of their wives and kin."

A startling little light dawned in my head. "Which scouts will you be sending?" I asked slowly.

Ali slanted me an unreadable look. "Those whom I can most afford to be without," he said blandly. He laid a hand on my shoulder. "They will not harm you, little sister," he reassured me darkly. "While they are apart from others of like mind, and they have not seen for themselves that their women are safe, they will make no move either way." He essayed a weak smile. "We have a little time, yet, before we must worry of such things."

We, I thought. He said 'we'. Reluctantly, I took my hand away from my sword. Perhaps I could not fight – not openly, certainly. But perhaps I could still help my eldest brother, who was not nearly as much of a goat as my other brothers, and who was more worthy of the sheikhdom than any of those fools who thought that the gods would strike us down because a woman had dared to lift a sword. Ali's temper was mild and not naturally suited to command, that was true, but at least he knew how to think.

Taking a breath, I touched my fingers to my forehead, and then to my lips and my heart, and bowed from the waist. "What would you have of me?" I asked simply.

Ali folded his arms over his chest. He did not bow. A sheikh never did, though he did give me a solemn nod of acknowledgement, and I thought I saw the old warmth I had always known, there in his liquid dark eyes. Then he extended his hand. "Give me your sword, Nadiya," he said gently. "Please, do not make me ask this of you again."

Tears burned behind my eyes and nose. I tried to blink them away. The blood of al-Rashid does not cry like a little girl, I told myself sharply. A warrior does not blubber when given an order, no matter what it is.

Still, the click of my belt unlatching sounded like the boom of a tomb door, and the feel of my scabbard leaving my hands was like having a piece of me wrenched away.

I ground my teeth and pulled my eyes away from the sight of my sword lying across Ali's palms. There are other ways to fight, I thought grimly. And I will win it back, when this is done. I will. "By your leave, my sheikh," I said hoarsely, and, with a last salute, I turned on my heel and left before my brother could see me start to cry.