I schooled my face to look impassive. He gave me a smile that didn’t match the tension in his shoulders. “Just needed to get out of the sun on a day like this.” His voice was sure and smooth, like I remembered from last night. There was no hint of recognition there, and I felt a flicker of disappointment.
“It’s not a big town, you know. They’re bound to look here sooner or later. I’d guess sooner.” Another horse clattered past, then slowed, looping around. It came to a halt outside the shop, and the mounted soldier called something out. Two more horses came into view. A muscle in the foreigner’s jaw twitched. The knife at his side was the same one he’d taken off Dahmad last night. When he’d saved me, and I’d left him to fend for himself. “You might want to find a better hiding place.”
His hand was still playing with the hilt of the knife when he looked up, questioningly.
I stepped back, nodding to the gap below the counter. The soldier was dismounting now. In the second that his back was turned, the foreigner dashed across the short space between the door and the counter.
He vaulted over the counter and landed so close to me, I felt his shoulder brush mine before he ducked down below. I quickly adjusted myself so I was standing square in front of him a second before the soldiers entered. The first one stood in the doorway for a long moment, looking in every corner of the tiny place, the other two flanking him. Finally his scrutiny landed on me.
He was young. His hair was combed back more carefully than most soldiers, and he had a round face that made him look soft. But the gold sash across his uniform told me he was in command.
“Afternoon, sir,” I said in my best shopgirl voice. I was keenly aware of the foreigner below the counter, trying to quiet his breathing.
“Commander to you.” His hand twitched, and he turned the gesture into a straightening of his cuffs.
“Can I help you, Commander?” I’d learned young to give the army false respect.
The two soldiers who’d followed their commander took up position by the door. Like I might make a run for it. One of them was older and looked every inch a career soldier: stiff back, dark eyes straight ahead. The second one was younger than his commander, maybe even younger than me. He slumped in a uniform that didn’t quite fit, with a glazed look on his face. I’d bet that he wasn’t going to live long enough to ever look like a soldier.
“I’m looking for a man.” The commander’s accent was sharp and northern and expensive. I felt the foreigner’s arm brush my leg as he tensed. I didn’t know if it was the soldier’s voice or because he thought I was about to sell him out.
I gave the commander my best guileless blink. “Funny, most men round here are looking for a woman.” The words were out of my mouth before I remembered that he could shoot me in the head and call it justice. The older of the two soldiers coughed, covering a laugh.
The commander just frowned, like he thought I didn’t understand him. “A criminal. Have you seen him?”
I shrugged. “Seen a few people today. Fat Pama and her sons were in a few hours ago, and the Holy Father, too.”
“This man’s not from around here.” His head twitched from side to side, peering around the small store. He started pacing evenly. His steps made the glass bottles of liquor on the shelf behind me clink together.
“Is that right?” My eyes tracked him as he walked to the door of the storeroom and squinted through into the dwindling stacks of tinned food. Our supplies were too sparse to hide anyone there.
As the commander turned back toward me, I noticed a fresh speck of red on the counter. Like a drop of blood. I laid my hand across the stain as casual as I could.
“You’d know if you’d seen him,” the young commander was saying in his tightly coiled accent.
I smiled like my heart wasn’t racing in my chest, telling me to run for the hills. “Like I said, not many folks round here today. Not many foreigners, neither.”
“You sure about that?”
“Well, I’ve been here all day. It’s quiet on account of the heat and all.”
“You’d be clever not to lie to me, girl.”
I bit my tongue. He was barely older than I was. Eighteen. Nineteen at most. Probably the same age as the foreigner.
I crossed my arms, careful to hide the bloodstain, and leaned over the counter with a smile. “Oh, I don’t lie, Commander. Lying is a sin after all, isn’t it?” Where was Tamid when I needed him to share a joke?
But to my surprise the younger of the two soldiers spoke up. “This desert is full of sin.”
The commander looked toward his soldier in the same moment I did. I expected him to get a sharp reprimand for speaking out of turn. But the commander didn’t say a word. No wonder the older soldier didn’t work too hard to hide his laugh. No commander who wanted respect would let a soldier talk out of line like that.
The young soldier met my gaze and I realized with a start that his eyes were as blue as mine.
I’d never met another Mirajin with light eyes. Desert dwellers had dark hair, dark skin, and dark eyes. It was the Gallan who had pale features.
Just because they were entitled to our weapons, the Gallan army seemed to think they were entitled to everything else in the desert. A couple of years back the men of Dustwalk hanged pretty young Dalala Al’Yimin after a Gallan soldier took a bit too much of a shine to her. All the women in town comforted Dalala’s mother by saying how it was the best thing to do, considering she wasn’t any good to anyone now he was done with her. That night I’d looked at my own blue eyes and thought of the Gallan with their pale eyes and light hair. For years I hadn’t really understood what my father meant when he’d get into one of his drunken rages and call my mother a foreigner’s whore. But I was fourteen then, old enough to understand that folks didn’t actually believe the dark-eyed desert man my dark-eyed mother was married to was really my father. I figured my mother had just been smarter than Dalala. She’d gotten herself married to Hiza in time to pretend the reason she was swelling up with child was him, and not some foreign soldier who’d caught her alone and against her will on some dark desert night. And by the time I came along with my contrary eyes, there was no admitting I was anything but Hiza’s daughter, not in this town.