Issue #326 • Mar. 25, 2021

“The Captain and the Quartermaster,” by C.L. Clark

“The Colors of Sand,” by Anna Winterstein

For more stories and Audio Fiction Podcasts, visit

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THE CAPTAIN AND THE QUARTERMASTER

by C.L. Clark

        Commander Maeb Len knows that, more than anything, an army needs hope in order to struggle onward. They need a vision to fight for and faith that the future will be better than the past. Better than the present.

        The People’s Army itself is one such hope. The fall of the Tyrant is one such vision.

        Commander Len also knows that people find hope in other, smaller things.

        In the laughter that replaces the moaning of the wounded after a quiet winter of healing and souls put to rest.

        In the green shoots of grass, wildflowers blooming in the untrampled fields around the army’s camp.

        In the unwavering dedication of Commander Len and Quartermaster Omopria to each other, and to The People’s Army. Their teasing romance. The brilliance of their successes. Together, they can do anything.

        Anything to remind the army that the world will go on, and that perhaps, they will, too.

* * *

        Commander Len clasps arms and grips shoulders with the other officers as they gather in the command tent one last time before the final campaign against the Tyrant begins. (No one has said out loud that it is the final campaign. No one would dare.)

        Captain Dhissik, the new leader of Len’s old company, gives her a fierce hug. High Commander Aulia does not. She nods gravely, warily. Lately, Len has been keeping her distance from her old sparring partner.

        The new season brings new promotions, and it will take time to see how they fit.

        Once they are all seated on the circle of blankets, High Commander Aulia raises a hand for quiet.

        “Officers of The People’s Army.” Aulia looks at them each in turn, and Len feels the strength in Aulia’s certainty spread from officer to officer, commander and captain alike. “We’ve been fighting against the Tyrant for six years. He’s stolen our youth. He’s stolen our good looks.” She smiles, and the scar that splits from below her right eye to the left side of her sharp chin stretches. She sobers immediately, though. “He’s stolen the happier lives we might have lived, and the loved ones we might have spent them with.”

        Solemn nods from all. Len isn’t the only one whose grip tightens around a sword hilt or into a fist. Here in this stuffy tent, they are the same. The People’s Fist. The Hand That Would Open the Cage.

        “It’s time we steal from him.” The officers cheer Aulia’s words. “This spring, when the flowers bloom and the trees fruit, so do we.” They cheer again.

        But as the high commander details the plan for the campaign, Len’s heart sinks. They will need the best quartermaster in the world for such a risky campaign. The Army’s standing supply caches had been targeted early in the war. Their quartermaster had worked without sleep to decentralize what remained. From then on, each unit became responsible for carrying a portion of the Army’s stores so the Tyrant couldn’t destroy them with a single blow. It is a delicate balance; one overlooked shortage or faulty supply line, and the entire Army risks slaughter or starvation.

        And unlike everyone else in the room, Len knows in her bones that the best quartermaster in the world wants to leave The People’s Army and go home. She doesn’t think Quartermaster Omopria will last another full campaign.

        The worst part about it is that Len can’t blame her, won’t blame her, if she leaves.

        While the other officers leave the command tent feeling determined, Len finds herself drifting. Instead of convening with her captains, she stands outside of the tent and watches the camp shake off winter’s slumber. There, in the eastern corner, is the sparring square, bright with the clack of wood, the grunts of effort and laughter.

        There, toward the center of the camp, the supply wagons, where Quartermaster Omopria and her staff would be, counting and loading, loading and counting. Someone is cooking the beans for lunch.

        Then she looks to the north, toward the city where the Tyrant waits, not knowing he has rats in his larder, stealing hope for The People.

        “Is everything all right?”

        Len jumps at High Commander Aulia’s soft voice beside her. “Fifth,” Len greets her with her old company’s name.

        Len knows that the smile she gives doesn’t pass muster. Aulia’s expression softens with understanding. Somehow, the scar on her face only makes the expression more tender.

        “I know it’s none of my business, but the soldiers talk and—”

        Len walls up her expression, and she looks balefully at the high commander of The People’s Army.

        Aulia crosses her hands awkwardly behind her back, leather armor creaking. “Just. If you need anything, I’m here. I was married once, too.”

        “Oh?” Len turns sharply, hungry for someone else’s answers. Someone else’s sorrow to show her what to do with her own. “What happened?”

        “A little thing called a civil war.” A complicated grief crosses Aulia’s face.

        Cold fills Len’s belly as realization dawns. “We’re fighting them.”

        Aulia nods solemnly. “We’re fighting them.”

        “I’m so sorry.”

        “So am I.”

* * *

        A long time ago, when The People’s Army was first born from the spark of rebellion against the Tyrant, Captain Maeb Len of the Third Company trudged back into camp on her own sore feet. Agno, her horse, had fallen, stabbed behind one of his legs, and she’d jumped from the saddle, praying for mercy and so much blind luck. She hadn’t even had time to cut his poor throat before she had to face the onslaught of the enemy. Maybe the very ones who’d brought down Agno.

        The rage of the battle gone, her company limped into the marching camp after her, their faces drawn in pain or shame or exhaustion—likely a combination of it all. Truth to tell, Len felt more than a twist of shame herself. And not just because she hadn’t given Agno the mercy he deserved after faithfully carrying her for so long. But the battle was done, and ahead of her was a meal and her first bath in weeks, if she could make the walk to the stream. A dry scrub if she could not. But first, she would ki— No, she wasn’t sure that was true, that she would kill for a decent meal. Not right now. The memory of running her bloodied sword through another thick body, scraping it back out of a bone-caged heart, coating her hands in sticking blood—it made her want to bring up food instead of shovel it down. Luckily, she’d lost all the food she had to spare on the field amid the corpses. Many of her soldiers had. The sick still tasted sour in her mouth.

        Water. A drink of water first.

        She lined up at the officers’ soup queue, among other young captains and senior captains without the colors of distinction on their coats. Well—no color of distinction but the deep arterial red of close combat.

        A woman, the quartermaster’s assistant, doled out the soup in carefully measured ladles, making sure each was equal. So careful, even here with the officers, to make sure that precious goods lasted. The sergeant wore her hair in a tight braid, but curls sprang free at her wide brow; some of them clung in sweat there. She looked thin, as if she should have her own rations doubled.

        “Come on, missy, you cannot give me more than that?” A senior captain shook his bowl expectantly at the woman, stalling the entire line of weary and aching soldiers. The soup’s scent reached Len. Beans. Again. Thank the gods. Better than nothing at all, and though beans could wreak havoc in the communal tents, they would hold to your guts and keep you full. At that moment, Len could not have stomached meat.

        “No, sir, I can’t.” And when he refused to move on, the quartermaster’s assistant shoved past him to the next officer with the next carefully measured bowl. That officer had the sense to move along quickly.

        The senior captain did not. He pushed his way back in front of the assistant. “Excuse me? Do you not think you’re out of line?”

        The quartermaster’s assistant met his glare with hers. “No, I do not, but I would be most glad if you were out of this one.” Then she beckoned the next person to the pot.

        Captain Len stifled a smile as she watched the woman pour, watched the irritation creep into the set of her jaw. This close, the captain saw a streak of gray climbing through her hair. Surprising, as she didn’t look a day out of her second decade, cheeks round, skin unlined. Likewise, Len could smell the blood on the senior captain’s coat. Could trace the tension in his shoulders through the fabric, the bunching before a blow.

        Captain Len reached up and placed a hand on his shoulder. “Sir! Sir, you were brilliant on the field today. I hope I’m half as good as you before I’m promoted. You’ll have a high commander’s cloak before we’re done here.”

        The senior captain looked at her, disdain in his gaze for the interruption but courtesy toward a fellow winning out over it. The higher-ups looked on mentoring as favorable for promotions.

        “Thank you, Captain...?”

        “Len. Maeb Len. Do you want to share a drink?” She leaned close to his ear. “I’ve been hiding a stash of 798, if that interests you.”

        His mood perked up instantly. “Now that I cannot turn down.” And Len led him away, past the other cookpots with other men and women on the quartermaster’s staff and around to where her company would pitch her tent.

        Later, when the senior captain had gone, a slight stagger in his step, Len lay under the stars, stomach growling, still dirty and unwilling to sully her tent with her own filth. That was where the quartermaster’s assistant found her.

        “You forgot your dinner.” The woman smiled, with a bowl of soup in each hand, and lowered herself down.

        “Thank you.” Len sat up, taking the offered bowl. “I’m sorry he was an ass.”

        The quartermaster’s assistant waved the apology away. “It comes with the post. The People’s Army welcomes all people, and so on. Thank you for getting rid of him.”

        “It took almost an entire 798. Well worth it, I’d say.” Len waved the squat-bottomed bottle by its short neck, but the stars spun and her soup sloshed at the bowl’s rim.

        “Steady on,” the quartermaster’s assistant said with a chuckle, easing the bottle from Len’s hand. “I’m Jissia Omopria.”

        “Maeb Len.”

        From the beginning, Jissia had taken care of Len.

* * *

        Four years later, Captain Maeb Len knelt by Quartermaster Jissia Omopria’s side in her own tent. It was bigger than the quartermaster’s tent, and Len didn’t have to share it with subordinates like Jissia did. Still, it smelled sour with sweat and sick.

        Jissia burned with fever. Her hand was clammy in Len’s, and she muttered to no one, delirious and barely conscious. Half the camp was.

        The People’s Army had been fucked for four years, but this day had been an exceptionally bad day.

        “Captain!”

        Her lieutenant’s voice was frantic outside the door. She startled upright, out of her almost-doze.

        “What now, Balissen?” Len tried to shout it, but her voice was too hoarse. She’d been screaming retreat after retreat for weeks. The Tyrant wasn’t letting her people rest. That was the point. Harry them, and when they stopped to catch their breath, harry them again, until they collapsed from exhaustion. If Len let herself go to sleep now, she would never wake up, and she would be glad for it.

        It wasn’t Balissen who came in. Len blinked blearily in the dim candles lighting the tent. Oh. Right. Balissen had taken an arrow through the throat three months ago. She hadn’t been the one to find his body or she would never have forgotten. So she told herself.

        “What is it?” she croaked.

        This new lieutenant’s name was Dhissik. Lieutenant Dhissik first handed her a small cup of what Len already knew was dirty water masquerading as coffee. Jissia had stretched the rations as far as she could so that the soldiers could keep moving, over and over again, but now the officers were hoarding it jealously. Jissia hadn’t approved, but how was Len supposed to make the decisions that would save their lives if she was more than half asleep?

        Len sipped, to make the cup last.

        “Captain Aulia found out what’s wrong.” The lieutenant swayed with exhaustion, but fear made her eyes wide. “It’s the water. They’re dumping corpses upriver. It’s running straight to us.”

        Len’s eyes went down to her coffee. “Shit.”

        “Not that water.”

        The lieutenant didn’t leave.

        “What else?”

        “The Tyrant’s moving again. Not to chase us,” Dhissik said quickly, to forestall Len, “but something else. The Fourth and Fifth just arrived. They want to speak with you.”

        Len turned back to Jissia. The fever hadn’t broken, but the murmuring had stopped. She didn’t once think of sending Dhissik in her place. Dhissik had been a corporal three months ago. She wouldn’t even have sent Balissen, who had been her lieutenant for three of the five years.

        Four years. She turned Jissia’s right forearm over. The inked marriage mark matched the one on Len’s, so that when they clasped forearms the images made a whole.

        There was duty, and then there was duty. Len heaved herself clumsily to her feet. Though the young lieutenant had to grab her by the arm to steady her, Len didn’t spill the coffee.

        “Tell me where they’re meeting,” Len said. “You stay here with her.”

        “Sir,” Dhissik said with a sigh. Her voice cracked. “I can’t. I have messages to run to the other two captains.”

        “Why do they have my lieutenant doing everyone else’s job?” Len growled as she pulled her leather armor back on and buckled her sword belt.

        But she knew the answer. Everyone else was dead.

        And The People’s quartermaster lay alone in her sickbed.

* * *

        How different that was from the beginning.

        With her hand in Deputy Quartermaster Omopria’s, sneaking away from the army’s camp, Captain Len felt like she could climb the clouds. But the sky was clear and blue, and the quartermaster’s smile was bright and warm, and the captain was sinking hopelessly into it.

        Back when the war was new and hope was sweet on the tongue. Freedom from the Tyrant. Rule by The People.

        Len tugged Jissia’s hand again, smiling slyly. “They’ll be fine without us for ten minutes.”

        “Ten minutes?” Jissia raised an arched eyebrow. “Is that all?”

        Len blushed but, even so, pulled Jissia close. “I’m happy to draw this out longer if you are.”

        Jissia’s body melted into hers as they kissed, delighting in the sensation of eyelashes on cheeks, noses nuzzling, hands holding tight at the wonder of it all. Len wanted it to last forever.

        And so she asked, after they peeled apart and lay in the soft grass of the clearing they had claimed. Amid their strewn clothing there was even someone else’s jacket—neither of theirs but another lover, perhaps, who had forgotten it because they were too flush with the warmth of their own kindling. Len would bring it back to camp and tease the owner mercilessly, knowing she would be teased in return. But that, too, was the joy of it.

        “What are you doing in a few months time?” Len rolled over to walk her fingers gently up Jissia’s sternum before tracing the lower curve of her right breast. “When this is all over?”

        Jissia rolled over, tangling her boots with Len’s. She’d pulled her uniform trousers back up but they were still unlaced, and Len gave them a playful tug. “You think this will be over that soon?”

        “No civil war on the entire continent has lasted longer than two years! We’re close. Look how easily we’ve routed them.” She met Jissia’s gaze and held it earnestly. “We have the people on our side. The Tyrant can’t stand against his own nation.”

        Jissia raised both of her eyebrows this time and snorted. “The folly of youth.”

        “You weren’t complaining about my youth a few minutes ago.” Len used their tangled legs as a lever to roll back on top Jissia and kiss her deeply. But when Jissia sank her hands into Len’s long braids, Len stopped. She stroked the thin streak of gray in Jissia’s dark hair. “Would you make a life with me, when it’s all done?”

        Jissia’s face softened in surprise and then tenderness. “Are you sure you’d be happy? You’re a fighter. Even off the field.”

        “I’ve had enough of trouble.” Squads of soldiers lost, the roughness of sleeping in cold tents, waking up knowing so clearly that the day could be her last. Len could walk away happily and never look back. “Let’s have something simple and easy.”

        “And when you get bored, Maeb?”

        Len bent down and kissed her on the forehead, then the nose, then the lips. “No one can fight forever.”

* * *

        Much later, Captain Maeb Len will remember that day with the fever as the day it all broke because it was the day many things broke.

        It was the day that she learned she would fail again and again and again. It was the day she learned that she never wanted to fail those she loved but she loved too many.

        It was the day she truly felt in her bones that war is not kind to love. She had loved Lieutenant Balissen like a brother and had not even looked for his body after the report came in. She had tried not to let the deaths become rote, to force herself to feel disgust instead of numbness at bloody leathers, because that, too, was a failure of love.

        Love was the only thing that held any of them together. The People’s Army went to fight for love of their neighbor, who the Tyrant would have let starve in the street. For love of the mothers, who died in childbirth rather than give birth in the fine hospitals that became debtors’ prisons. For love of the teachers, who starved rather than let their students go hungry.

        War brought the captain and the quartermaster together, because they believed in love over the Tyrant. They had to love each other more than the war would have torn them apart.

        It would not be one crack but many, and still Len would always try again.

* * *

        After six years of civil war, Len sits at her travel desk to draft a letter to a potential ally recently freed from their own queen. That is the first task High Commander Aulia has given her. The words don’t come out right. If she sounds too desperate, they might balk; what use in sending troops to fight for a lost cause, no matter how just?

        But The People’s Army is desperate. Six years. Even Len can see that there won’t be a year after this. Not with this army. Not these leaders.

        Len looks down at the embroidered crimson fist on the breast of her jacket. She is a commander now. Aulia is counting on Len’s intelligence for the new campaign.

        She feels a warm hand on her shoulder. Jissia hands her a cup of coffee that smells strong, black as pitch. Len’s eyes watered. It smells like hope.

        “Where did you—”

        Jissia shakes her head and kisses Len gently on the cheek.

        “This is it, isn’t it?” Jissia asks softly. “Either we win or...”

        Or. They both know the other would finish that sentence differently.

        Len takes Jissia’s hand and kisses the knuckles gently.

* * *

        Len also remembers a time, in the middle of the war, the third year, maybe the fourth? They had already been fighting longer than The People’s Army had prepared for. Longer than Len had prepared for. Still, Len thought they had turned a corner in the war. She’d had an idea for a new, more devastating munition.

        “Jissia!” she called happily when she found the quartermaster in her domain. The unit’s supply wagons were nestled within the camp so that they couldn’t be easily picked off by the Tyrant’s raiders. Even though the ground around them had been trampled, green grass had begun to shoot up in tufts between the wheels.

        Jissia pecked Len on the cheek, and Len caught one of the junior quartermasters hiding a smile. Len smiled tentatively at Jissia in turn.

        “Yes?” Jissia said suspiciously.

        “We’ve had an idea,” Len said, now almost shy. “We need to melt all of our extra iron into some kind of heavy impact projectile.”

        Jissia’s face darkened immediately. “Extra iron? We don’t have any iron left.”

        “Wait. What do you mean we’re out of iron?” Len pursued Jissia around the supply wagons while Jissia checked this thing and that thing in her inventory ledger. “Jiss, we’ve been doing shit-all for a whole season! What do you mean we’re out of iron?”

        Jissia pressed the ledger to her forehead before enunciating slowly, as if Len were stupid. “I mean that between the reinforced shields, the re-shod horses, and the new wagon axles that you’ll need to start moving your army again—we’re left a bit short.” Jissia lowered her voice so the underlings couldn’t hear. “Besides, we don’t have the facilities for casting iron. If you stopped playing games and paid attention to the actual war, you’d know this.”

        “Playing games?” Len was almost tempted to throw her sword into Jissia’s arms, to make her swing it. It would show her just how easy these games were. “This is why we have you. You help us make this possible. My job is to coordinate the ground strategy within the army. That includes knowing my soldiers and training them, too.”

        She didn’t understand why Jissia begrudged her the time in the sparring square even though it brought Len some of the only peace she ever felt.

        Jissia’s own outlet had soured. At first, she had painted, carrying small scraps of canvas and painting until she tired of the same dull colors, the same dull scenes. Len wondered if Jissia saw the same things she did, over and over again. Brown mud, grey-brown corpses, red-brown dried blood.

        “I saw you with the captain of the Fifth.” Jissia didn’t look at Len when she said it.

        Len didn’t look at her either. She felt the need to protect something small inside of herself. She dug the toe of her boot into the dirt.

        “That wasn’t the vow we made.”

        “She understands me. That’s all.”

        “Good for her. I’m glad someone does.”

* * *

        And the silence. Cold, lonely silence.

* * *

        Len had also struggled to find her place, though Jissia perhaps hadn’t realized it. By the third year, Len finally understood the cycle of war: the wintering camps, the spring thaw into movement. When spring came, the fighting would start over again without care for those who needed time to catch their breath or whose legs and back had become too weak to carry the weight. She was still not used to the death, not exactly; she would regret the day the dead were nothing to her. Her body, however, could learn to tolerate the exhaustion.

        And yet, she no longer thought of Balissen. There were the living to think of.

        One day that third winter, the sparring square was full of soldiers trying to keep themselves sharp. And by sharpening herself here, Captain Len thought that, perhaps, she could forge herself into something better for Jissia.

        Len pulled a practice blade and arced it across her body. Already she was able to replace thoughts of Jissia with the natural flow of her own body.

        “Third!” A cheerful voice interrupted the flow. Captain Rix Aulia, of the Fifth. She was tall and narrow, with sharp eyes and a sharper chin. Her face was smooth and unlined despite a few sporadic gray hairs amid her cropped black curls.

        “Fifth!” Len tapped Aulia’s bare blade with her own in an invitation.

        They crashed together in a joy of panting. Each near miss, a curse tinged with laughter. In the end, Len slipped within Aulia’s longer reach to disarm her. They fell to the ground. She ended up weaponless beneath Aulia, whose forearm rested on her throat.

        Aulia of the Fifth smiled, showing crooked eyeteeth.

        Len left the sparring square with the flutter of finding cherished jewelry that she thought she’d lost.

* * *

        Four months before High Commander Aulia gave the army its commands for the final campaign, Len and Jissia lay awake in the pitch-black tent. The candles were snuffed. Outside, the early winter wind howled like the hungry coyotes dogging the supply train. The Tyrant was pulling back for the season.

        Len felt the hands-breadth of space between them like a wall. The effort it took to keep themselves distinct. And still, she could have drawn the shape of Jissia’s body beside her.

        “I want you to go,” Len whispered. “I can’t do this anymore.”

        Saying it felt like siphoning poison from her blood.

        “What?” Jissia’s voice cut through the quiet.

        “I know you want to leave. Go. There’s still time to live the life you dreamed of. I won’t steal it from you, like the Tyrant.”

        “You have no idea what I’ve dreamed of. What I’ve given up for this war. Do you?”

        “The same things we’ve all given up.”

        “No. You’ve found glory. You’ve found friends. People who think and act like you. I’ve grown more and more isolated, with each passing year.”

        “Your assistants—”

        “They’re not my friends any more than an unranked soldier is yours.”

        “Some of them are my friends.”

        “Then I’m not like you. It’s not easy for me.”

        “You’re right. And it doesn’t have to be. You can go.”

        “I stayed here for you. I’m not leaving now. We’ll see this through to the end. Together. Like we promised.”

        Silence stretched, full of Len’s doubts. Jissia’s hand snuck over, hesitant. Len remembered times that the two of them had been as tightly laced as fingers, able to support more together than apart.

        “You’re sure?”

        “Of course.”

* * *

        During that autumn campaign season, the captain and the quartermaster worked miracles together, even when they thought they couldn’t.

        “There’s no way to get an extra two weeks’ worth of food all the way to a company you’ve stationed on the ass-end side of the world.” Jissia ran her hand through the snarl of her curls, a riot of gray and brown. She rounded on Len. “You’ve stationed them too far from us.”

        “I know. I’m sorry. We didn’t mean to let it get like this, but it was our only option. They knew the risks and—”

        “An army marches on its stomach. And its gear. You’ve stripped away my ability to provide for either. That is my job.” Jissia about-faced and strode away, leaving Len to trail, limping, after her.

        “I know. Of course, I know.” Len searched for the words to soothe her quartermaster, but, as happened more and more often these days, she found herself at a loss. No matter how much she explained, it was never quite enough—or perhaps, never quite right. When they ducked into their tent, she added, “It’s my job to make sure this war is won.”

        “And then we can stop, yes? Isn’t that what you said four years ago?” Jissia didn’t bother to light a candle. They were running low, and she limited them to strategy meetings only now. The officers needed to read missives and see the maps. Letters from home—such that they were—could be read by daylight or moonlight or not at all.

        Len didn’t need a candle’s flickering flame to see the severe set of Jissia’s mouth.

        “Part of me feels like you’d be fine for this to keep going forever,” Jissia said. “You thrive on this. I don’t.”

        The remark stung. “No? You don’t thrive on the satisfaction of keeping our soldiers alive?” Len snorted. “I know the way you get when you solve a problem we couldn’t figure out.” Smug and beautiful with the sheer brilliance of her mind. Jissia had saved them more times than Len could count. The two of them could do it again, but only together.

        Len could see Jissia gathering breath, like a snake coiling for a strike. As if granted a vision of the future, Len knew what could happen: they would strike and parry until there was nothing but silence between them. Tonight of all nights, she didn’t want that.

        Len held up her hands in surrender. “I’m sorry.” She reached out to clasp Jissia’s forearm. Though their clothing covered it, their marriage marks lined up and reminded Len why they had bound themselves together.

        Jissia clasped back, tentatively at first, as if she wasn’t sure she was allowed. “Me too.”

        They slept together that night for the first time in many months, but it wasn’t until after Jissia rolled away that Len admitted to herself what she couldn’t during the act. Jissia had either forgotten how to touch her, or didn’t want to. The captain turned her back to the quartermaster. Her core felt hollowed out.

* * *

        Two days after receiving High Commander Aulia’s orders and one day before The People’s Army marches, Quartermaster Jissia Omopria requisitions all of the sugar in the army. She calls it hope.

        With her help and The People’s cooks, every soldier has one sweetened biscuit to eat.

        It shouldn’t be enough to cry over, or enough to set a field army to carousing happily through the rows of tents as if at festival.

        But it is. Jissia is right. Sugar is hope, and that’s what The People’s Army needs after six years of attrition. That’s what they need for one last push.

        Commander Len and Quartermaster Omopria eat their biscuits with their closest friends. Captain Dhissik of the Third. The First. High Commander Aulia and the new captain of the Fifth. Deputy Quartermaster Chessian.

        Len’s knee bumps Jissia’s, and when Jissia cups Len’s knee with her hand, Chessian giggles. He has a sweet laugh and dark doe eyes, and he idolizes Jissia. Len feels Aulia’s eyes on them.

        “How long have you two been together?” Chessian asks. “Longer than the war?”

        Jissia tears up a clod of dirt and tosses it at him as she laughs. It sounds as forced as Len’s own strained smile.

        They share a knowing look before answering.

        “We’re as old as the war.”

        “We started because of the war.”

        Chessian mock swoons, but when he recovers, he looks at them with a sugar-shine in his eyes. “It’s nice to know that something good can come out of this, after all.”

* * *

        And behind the forced smiles, the silence still; now scalding to the touch and swollen, like a blister.

        But a blister must be lanced before a march.

* * *

        And in the morning, The People’s Army is on the move again.

        Len helps Jissia saddle her placid horse and kneels to offer her a vaulting step onto its back. It is the horse least tempered for war that Len has ever seen. Jissia strokes its neck from the saddle.

        High Commander Aulia rides over. She looks anxiously at the sky, judging the position of the sun, which has not even crested the horizon. The deep black of night is only just turning gray. It’s time to go.

        Aulia sees Jissia’s saddlebags. They don’t have the familiar waxed ledger cases to keep the inventory books safe from rain and blood and whatever war would throw at them. “What’s going on, Commander?” Her eyes flick between Len on the ground and Jissia, on her horse. “Quartermaster?”

        “Quartermaster Chessian has his orders,” Jissia says. “He’s more than up to the task.”

        “We have a plan in place,” Len adds.

        And though something inside Len is asking are you sure are you sure are you sure that you will not break without each other, Len knows that she has never been more sure of anything.

        She sees the same certainty in Jissia’s face.

        She expects Aulia to balk at losing the best quartermaster in the world; expects her to try and convince Jissia to stay.

        Instead, Aulia turns her horse. She nods to Jissia in farewell and says to Len, “We move out in ten.” She leaves them their privacy.

        “I always knew—”

        “You know, I thought—”

        They stop. They laugh. It feels as if they should weep.

        Len holds her arm up one more time, and Jissia clasps her elbow. Len’s bare arm, her sleeve rolled up, shows one half of the marriage mark, tattooed in black.

        “You’re my best friend.”

        “We’ll be okay.”

        There is nothing else to say, and their efforts to find the right words, the right last words, feel futile.

        Nothing else to say but: “Thank you, Jissia.”

        As Len looks up at Jissia, her face finds it hard to smile, even though it is all she wants to do, for Jissia’s sake.

        Jissia squeezes Len’s arm. “Thank you, Maeb.”

        They stay like that, arms linked, for eight more minutes, even though Jissia’s back must be straining and Len’s shoulder aches.

        Then, when the former quartermaster is gone, the commander reaches for the reins of her own horse, pulls herself up, and rides after the high commander.

* * *

        The night before, after the celebrations, they sat on their shared blanket amid their shared pillows. Years of words unspoken sat with them.

        “That was well done, Jissia,” Len said. “Genius.”

        Jissia smiled. “An army marches on its—”

        Len rolled her eyes and gave the quartermaster a playful shove.

        “Len?”

        Len looked into Jissia’s eyes, startled to see them shining. Outside, the revel continued. Firelight and starlight crept in through the cracks of the tent.

        Suddenly, it was as if there wasn’t enough air in the tent. Len could only say, “Mm?”

        “Chessian is ready to take over.” Jissia let the weight of her words sink in.

        “What happened?” By which Len meant, why now, how did you change your mind, are you sure?

        “We’ve been the captain and the quartermaster for so long. I thought we couldn’t be anything else.” Jissia shrugged. “Tonight... I realized that may not be true. But if I stay, I won’t find out.”

        And instead of pain and fear, Len felt the salt tears of relief.

        For the first time in too long, the air felt truly easy between them.

        “Here.” Jissia smiled through her own tears as she pulled out a tiny paper parcel.

        Len knew what it was the moment she held it in her hand. She laughed. She pulled out her own small package for Jissia, this one wrapped in admittedly dingy cloth.

        They opened them at the same time. Each parcel held the slightly crumbled half of a sweetened biscuit.

* * *

        When the quartermaster and the commander go separate ways, no one will understand why. Commander Len will assure everyone that the Jissia is still a dear friend; they will exchange letters—when the war ends, when Jissia opens a school, when Len takes a seat on The People’s Council.

        They will both remember things that they had forgotten, like how to walk on two legs instead of four, or how to take enough food just for one, not two. They will both love again; other people, other ways.

        Len doesn’t weep until The People’s Army is riding away from their winter camp and her quartermaster is just a speck on the road, heading the other direction.

        Life goes on. In their own corners of the world, they will go on, too.

Copyright © 2021 C.L. Clark

Read Comments on this Story on the BCS Website

Cherae Clark is the author of The Unbroken, the first book in the Magic of the Lost trilogy. She graduated from Indiana University’s creative writing MFA and was a 2012 Lambda Literary Fellow. She’s been a personal trainer, an English teacher, and an editor, and is some combination thereof as she travels the world. When she’s not writing or working, she’s learning languages, doing P90something, or reading about war and [post-]colonial history. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in FIYAH, PodCastle, Uncanny, and Beneath Ceaseless Skies.

Read more Beneath Ceaseless Skies

THE COLORS OF SAND

by Anna Winterstein

        The first sign Bas’hai sees is a break in the shimmer. There is something wrong on the horizon between the dunes; a shift invisible to less piercing eyes. But Bas’hai has been standing here, on this cliff, for two years, the first of four lookouts strung along the edge, and that is no mistake: she is one of the best Shashti, so she gets the post on the bluff. It is she who must make out the first speckles of dust the bedri’s hooves are bound to throw as their riders reach the farthest dune; she who must count how many mounts, how many riders, how many weapons; she who must send the signs to the next lookout and he to the next; and at the end of the relay is the spot where the Lashti stands and can be heard across all of Shahanan. Lashti, the Voice; Shashti, the Sight. You cannot be one and the other.

        But today neither will be needed. Bas’hai squints into the hot air, the treacherous air that offers most Shahan only lies and delusions. It never lies to her. A minute passes, then another. Her sweat gathers at the roots of her short-cropped hair, wets her temples, and she tastes the salt in her mouth. No use. The horizon is still again, moved only in waves by the bleak light of the Suns. The air does not lie to her, but it jests. The long wait will not end yet.

        Still, she resumes her watch, her attention redoubled. In the distance, the glistening heat blurs the horizon and welds together the ground and the sky. It is like a brushstroke, if you could paint with colors: the red sand turning yellow as you look away from Shahanan, the burnt green shrubs scattered across the dunes, and the pale bleached sky, a light blue like Mele’san’s eyes. They say each time the riders come, the ground bleeds into the sky and turns it red, the sand redder. The thought sends a shiver down Bas’hai’s spine—not in dread but in anticipation. The wait has been grinding her patience. The memory of war cries pulls on her blood.

        When she ends her shift and makes her way back to the city, the heat is unbearable. Her eyes are starting to hurt, and her breath catches in her throat. A few moments longer and she might find the city locked down; she is cutting it close, and she knows it. The riders would never appear after the Suns have passed the third dune; it would be as deadly to them as it is to her, the scholars say. But she is wary. The scholars know much, but even they have no knowledge first-hand; not a living Shahan does. So she stays until she knows she can stay no longer, until even the bedri have crawled inside their large carapaces and gone to sleep. As she, the last of the lookouts, enters the city, the guard salutes her from the door of his cavern and she smiles back. Then the massive clay gates slam shut behind her

        Before the air becomes unbreatheable from the heat, Bas’hai seeks out the general. The horizon turned still again, but the disturbance was there, clear and noticeable, for the first time since Bas’hai has started her mission. It is bound to have meaning, and it deserves reporting. Bas’hai takes pride in being a good soldier; her gift has rescued her from a despicable life, and every time she uses it for the benefit of her people, she feels a rush of pride.

        The general sits in his day house, a man of many years, stern of face and kind of gaze. Although he wields immense power, with every Shahan ready to answer his commands, nothing in his clothing or his demeanor distinguishes him from other elders. His garb is simple and grey, devised for one purpose only: to conceal him against the stone and the sand. Within the city’s sturdy walls, subject to the same rules as any Shahan, he carries no weapons.

        Bas’hai can barely speak above a murmur, and using her voice hurts her throat, so most of the time, she signs. He watches her now with patience, his hand bringing here and there a date to his mouth. When she is finished, he sits back and takes a reassuring tone.

        “It’s probably nothing. The heat is high today, and you were on duty for many hours. They haven’t been spotted in centuries. If they do come, they won’t announce themselves. You’ll see the whole army, or none of it.”

        Bas’hai lingers, considering whether to insist. Complacency is not permitted to her people; the general knows that and must be above such feelings. It is on her, then, to weigh her thoughts and convey her hunch with clarity.

        “Still, perhaps the army could be gathering—”

        But already he adds: “Good job, soldier. You can rest easy,” then he bites on another date and returns to the papers laid out before him.

        Bas’hai should feel frustration at being dismissed, but instead, she is filled with quiet satisfaction. It is rare to receive such direct praise. She gives a shallow bow and makes her way out.

* * *

        Bas’hai’s voice, like that of all the Shahan gifted with the Sight, is hoarse and broken. Mele’san, on the other hand, can barely make out shapes if they are at the farther end of the table. But that does not matter; Bas’hai is the one who guides them through the pale narrow streets, and when they are together, they require no words.

        They sit in one of the sleep caverns, facing each other, their hands almost touching but not quite. There is very little light; if it could seep through the cracks, so could the heat, and they would all be dead in minutes. For Bas’hai, that makes sleep caverns the perfect refuge. The last of the luminous bees flies away and plunges them into darkness. Bas’hai extends her hand and finds Mele’san’s fingers open, waiting. She pulls them to her until Mele’san’s whole body is breathing against her, and her silent lips seek out Mele’san’s.

        They fall asleep entangled on the cavern floor, Bas’hai’s head resting on Mele’san’s hair like a cushion.

        Usually, when Bas’hai closes her eyes, exhausted by the day’s heat, all she sees is a comforting black. But tonight, a harsh light invades her rest, and there she is, standing in the desert again. Sand extends in front of her, heat presses on her temples, and the horizon trembles like it did earlier, but now the tremor only gets stronger. Before she can even squint, it grows before her: the dark cloud of the riders bearing down upon them.

        But that is all she can make out—a cloud. There are no details there, no features, and no matter how long she stares under the crushing heat, with her body welded to the rock, she cannot see what is truly there. She is blind like a little child, like she was before the Sight came to her, and she screams, but no sound comes out, for she has no voice. And there she stays, a traitor to her duty, as her life flows back to the desert like so many others before it. Then she wakes.

        The cavern is pitch-black around her, the only sound the low purr of Mele’san’s rest. Bas’hai extends a hand to caress Mele’san’s hair, just a light touch, a familiar reassurance, but Mele’san stirs awake at once. “Is something wrong?”

        Bas’hai feels her own heavy heartbeats resonate on the stone floor. Even in the dark, Mele’san’s pale eyes always glint a little, like a beacon of smooth glass.

        “Earlier today, I saw something on the horizon, I’m sure of it. What if... what if they’re really coming...”

        Mele’san stops her with a finger on her lips. “Breathe, my love. If you saw something, then it’s worth reporting. You should speak to the general.”

        “I did. He says it’s nothing...”

        Mele’san’s melodious voice hardens to a chuckle. “Of course he does... Bring it up to the Council, then?”

        “What do you mean, of course he does?” Bas’hai is surprised at the doubt in Mele’san’s words. The general is a good leader, not someone she ever questioned.

        “I only meant, if you saw something, then... I hope you were wrong, but you should still pursue it. That’s just what I think. Let’s go back to sleep now...” Already she trails off, and Bas’hai sees her pale irises disappear in the dark.

        “You hope I’m wrong...? Why?” Bas’hai whispers, but no answer comes.

* * *

        When the heat falls, it is what the Shahan call morning. You can feel it in your bones because the ground becomes cold as death, so cold no dream can hold its sway over it. As usual, when Bas’hai opens her eyes, Mele’san is long gone. Bas’hai dresses in a moment and makes her way to the surface, guided by the pure voices singing in the melon-scented air. She is the last one out. Everyone else is already kneeling before the choir, eyes closed in rapture, lost in their cherished connection to the gods; the trance that only a hundred Lashti singing together can induce. Bas’hai kneels as well, but she does not close her eyes. Instead, she seeks out Mele’san. Mele’san is standing at the front of the choir, the Voice leading all other Voices, and when her lips open to let out the high notes of the morning hymn, even though she cannot know where Bas’hai is kneeling, still she looks straight at her and sings only for her.

        As soon as the Lashti song ends, the fast is broken around the large stone table laden with fruit and fresh bread. Today Bas’hai will not go to the cliff’s edge. Others will take her place; for her, it is a day of study and meditation. But neither will come easy: her dream has muddled the memory of the trembling horizon into uncertain confusion. She searches herself and wonders if she might have been mistaken, but she feels in her bones the truth of what she saw in the desert. In two years of watching, she never spotted that thickness in the air. They will come soon. What if they come today?

        Mele’san was right. It needs reporting. But how? All she can do is seek Mele’san’s comfort, upon which she has grown so used to relying. She finds her a few steps away from the breakfast table, removed from the buzz of morning conversation, a shadow adept at hovering on the cusp of presence; so enticing yet inconspicuous—a talent that Bas’hai cherishes, as one cherishes the comfort of a haven closed to everyone but them. They exchange a glance, then slip away to Bas’hai’s daytime home; a moment of respite before their daily duties.

        They sit at the low clay table in the sparse room. The Gifted do not have much to their name. The only decoration is Bas’hai’s garb, hung cleanly on the wall: the same grey suit as the general’s, the red glove she uses to signal to the next lookout. Grey is the only color permitted to the Shahan. When you crush the red sand and mix it with water, it loses its tinge and becomes an ink identical in color to stone. The ink is used to write, and it is used to dye the suits that camouflage Shahanan’s soldiers. No one knows how the red gloves are made, although people mutter; rarely, children are taken to remote corners of the caverns and never seen again. They still live, that is for sure; all the Shahan would know if they did not. But the suspicion is that, deep under the cold ground, they cut their hands again and again on sharp rocks and let their blood soak the sand brought to them from the desert. They dye two gloves for each new Shashti—one to use, one spare. There can be no more, and dishonor awaits if both are lost. Other colors, they say, are not for humans to make. It would be blasphemy, and no one knows how, anyway.

        Mele’san’s melodic voice breaks the silence. “You seem troubled. Are you still pondering what you saw yesterday?”

        Bas’hai hesitates for a moment, then rasps her reply. “I think you were right. What I saw must hold meaning. But the general didn’t think it mattered... What if the desert is eating at my mind?”

        “Tell me the details. What did you see, exactly?” Mele’san asks. Bas’hai describes for her the change in the shimmer, her dream of death, and every word uttered makes her certainty stronger, as if she was the vessel of a strange prophecy unfurling on the sand.

        The silence stretches for a while after she falls quiet.

        Finally Mele’san sighs. “I trust your eyes, and I trust you, to the end of the dunes and back. You have been watching the desert for years. If you saw a change, that warrants attention, at least. You should discuss it with the whole Council. You’ve never raised the alarm in vain, there must be something in this. However...”

        There Mele’san stops and wavers. Bas’hai waits for her to continue, but Mele’san’s pale gaze does not rise to meet her eyes.

        “However, is there a chance you were mistaken? We’re not prepared for this, and that makes me afraid.” When Mele’san looks up, at long last, sure enough there is worry in her, and part of Bas’hai’s heart goes out to her, but another part is irked by that sign of weakness; so unusual, and unwelcome.

        “Here you go again. What do you mean by that? We’re readier that we’ve ever been. We’ve worked on our plan forever, Mele. They won’t kill us this time. We’ll trap them instead, and make them bleed out in the sand. The sooner the better.”

        Mele’san’s face only grows darker. “But we don’t know anything. Who are these people? Why do they seek to kill us but not to raze us? Why do they wait so long, then come back anyway? They should have forgotten us, or they should have destroyed us—Suns know they have the might. There must be something behind it all, something beyond it all, beyond the legends and the dunes. Some sort of reason, and we’re not looking for it. We only burrow inside walls built by better people than us. We haven’t even seen any of those strange creatures that our ancestors sculpted on our gates. We don’t know who our enemies are. But worse still, we don’t know who we are.”

        Bas’hai sits there, stunned. There is only one goal for an honorable Shahan: to dispatch the invaders once and for all, when they come back. Theirs is not the power to question, to wonder or to explore. She feels a jagged rift open between her and her lover, and her voice raises like a rockfall.

        “We know enough! They are not people, they are devils, and devils do not reason. The only one cowering at this instant is you. You better take your post, while I go to the general.”

        There is an insult in those words, and she regrets it the moment she utters them, but Mele’san only looks sad. “Yes, I must go,” she says. “I only hope when the sand settles, we don’t have regrets.” Then she kisses Bas’hai’s forehead and walks out, her warning hanging in the heat, pressing heavy on Bas’hai’s mind, stoking her anger and a rare doubt.

        The love between them is a dangerous thing. That both of them are women makes their primary sin lesser; often enough it happens that two men or two women linked in close friendship overstep those bounds, and among the voices heard in the sleep caverns, sometimes two that breathe to the same rhythm also have the same pitch. Some shake their heads at those who would seek passion for its own sake, but after all, it gives no lasting offence or prejudice, and such discreet misbehavior slides off the city like sand off a dune.

        But what the Ungifted do, those who carry on their shoulders the virtue of the people cannot afford. A story goes around of a Lashti and a Shashti falling in love ages ago, and of them producing offspring. They say the child was born misshapen and monstrous, dried up like a fig in the heat, with cruel eyes and nails like claws. They say the child was born evil, and that as it grew, it demonstrated magic never known in these parts; magic dark and nefarious and an offence to the Suns. They say the child’s tongue was cut out and it was sent to the desert to die, and its parents were condemned to a life deep underground where the cold is crushing even when the sleep caverns are warm. And something that is never said but only murmured under their breath by the elders: that the demon child did not die. Indeed, it thrived in the scorching heat, it crossed the desert to beyond the sand dunes, and there it founded its own people, the savage tribe who, ever since, ride the bedri to bring death to Shahanan.

* * *

        Bas’hai dons her garb; her misgivings can wait, as can study and meditation. She has a more pressing duty now. If she is right, she will be needed today; everyone will be needed today. She inhales the heady air and feels it remove the wrinkles of discomfort from her tongue, her lungs, her heart. Then she steps out into the street.

        Shahanan is not a noisy city. Sometimes a child will exclaim; sometimes a desert fox taken for a pet will cackle. But most of the time, people hold their breath. The heat is always there, and it muffles noise like a big handkerchief laid across your face. Yet there is more to this than quiet; indeed, there is a soft sound that never stops, that you can hear along walls, around tables, in the caverns, even when everyone is asleep; a sound that Lashti, Shashti, and Ungifted can all make out if they pause. It is the sound of waiting. On this day, Bas’hai feels, that sound may coalesce into a thousand screams, and the Suns alone know which voices will rise to Them when the battle is over.

        A hunch is all she brings to the Council, and she fears that the general will dismiss her again. But her newfound conviction lends weight to her words; and under the glances of the other elders, who stand ready to judge the general’s decision, he has little choice left. She secures approval: the alert level will be raised, the centuries-long preparations will be tested. Soon she walks out of the city gates, an additional help in case the grain in the shimmer turns into an army.

        As she walks by the low clay pen of the Lashti post, she takes in Mele’san’s tall body draped in the white robe of the priests, her long hair tousled by the desert wind, the sand on her smooth brow, the soft lines only just starting to show around her lips—and the pale blue eyes hidden behind a white veil to protect them from the light. The sight comforts her and clears all doubts away from her mind. Mele’san’s heart is soft and pure, compassionate and searching, and Bas’hai will protect it. She commits the sight of her lover to her memory, perfect in every detail, and thanks the Suns for making her Shashti, so she can always see Mele’san as clearly as if she was holding her in her embrace.

* * *

        Before Bas’hai took her for hers, Mele’san was always sitting alone at the food table, not disdainful nor even shy but happily turned inwards. Bas’hai was singled out back then, because she was willful, obstinate and turbulent, a latecomer to the Gift from an Ungifted family. At the meals the Gifted shared, she got used to sitting next to this lonely Lashti with the lovely voice. They did not talk, but as the weeks went by, their silence became companionable.

        One day, a boy Bas’hai had beaten up called to her: “With an ugly face like yours, no wonder you’re angry at everyone!” The insult stung. Bas’hai knew better than to fight before the masters, so she sat down, brooding, next to the girl she had not yet learned to call Mele’san, expecting nothing more than the quiet habit of her company. But for once, the girl spoke: “He is wrong, you know... I think you very beautiful.”

        Bas’hai turned sharply, ready in an irate retort to make fun of this Lashti short-sight. But as she was opening her mouth to speak, she took in Mele’san’s face: her kind, honest smile, and the eyes which, although barely seeing, saw deeper than any Shashti she had ever met.

        She shook her head. “I’m not beautiful, but it doesn’t matter—you are.” And so it began.

* * *

        The horizon starts to tremble, the yellow of the dunes bleeding into the blue, and before Bas’hai even sees the first hoof, she knows. She was not mistaken, the air did not lie; it was a warning. The long wait is ending. They have come.

        She raises her hand and gives the signal. She feels calm, calmer than any of the days when, for the past two years, she has been standing at her post of duty. Eight days of the ten that make a week, for the forty weeks that make a year; that is over six hundred days, her brain calculates despite her. Every one of those days, she has been waiting and waiting, and she knew she would not be waiting in vain.

        The warriors of Shahanan, in full garb already, flow out of the city gates to take their posts. The trap has been well rehearsed. It was invented after the riders last came, because so many of them, the scholars say, managed to escape unscathed; and across the years it has been polished to perfection. The smaller canyons that lead to the city have been blocked, patiently, over decades, so it would look like natural erosion and not the work of man. There is only one path left from the expanse of the desert to the city gates, a large, welcoming gap that divides the cliff Bas’hai stands on from its sister on the other side. The metal-clad warriors will not wait there; they will stand at the city gates, protecting them and taunting the enemy. But another army will hide in nooks and recesses dug out in stone, and some especially trained will lie on the cliffs, archers crouching ready behind their backs, and when the invading army enters the canyon, the trap will spring. None of them, neither rider nor mount, will ever make it back, and the desert will eat their bodies.

        Now the bedri are getting closer, and Bas’hai’s Sight allows her to make out the first rider clearly. She expected... she is not sure, there are so many tales that she didn’t know what the riders would be like. The only sure belief is that they are closer to demons than men; ugly, terrifying, and very unlike the Shahan.

        But under the helmet, this distant man’s face looks like many faces she has seen, around the table, at prayer, in the caverns. She keeps looking as more riders emerge. All men and women, sitting astride the bedri, clothed in brown hide and a metal she has never seen before, a metal that gleams green, red, and blue, the fruit of their strange magic. Their weapons still sheathed, they look huge and powerful as they loom on the horizon, large enough now that anyone can see their line across the sand. Yet men and women only, and not a demon among them with fiery eyes or pointy teeth. Good, Bas’hai thinks. They are just human, and thus easier to kill.

        The first notes of the Song of Welcome resound above the canyons, sung in Mele’san’s clear voice. That song is a greeting to foreign visitors, sung in a language that has no language, so that every listener can understand its meaning. It offers respect and acceptance, and asks whether they come in peace. The invaders are nearing the entrance to the path between the cliffs, and the first of them pull up to listen.

        Slowly the whole army comes to a stop, like grain flowing to a dam. They look at each other and seem to hesitate, bewildered by the music—or is it worry that the army of the Shahan, for once, is already outside the gates, waiting? Bas’hai fears for a moment that they have seen the trap. But as she crawls closer to the city and peers into the crevices across the cliff, even she cannot spot her soldiers, cloaked in stone-colored cloth and decades of training.

        The Song stops, and a tense silence follows. The warriors of Shahanan are standing still by the gates of the city, hands on their hilts, a wall of gleaming resolve. They wait. Not a noise from the armies; only the slow breathing of the bedri, like a soft roar coming from the sand.

        Then the figure at the head of the foreign army raises her hands. She gestures something: a reply, or is it a threat, a provocation? Bas’hai follows the deft movements of the fingers and the wrists to the face of this leader—broad of shoulders, strong of expression, defiant yet calm, almost kind. In the unfamiliar signs Bas’hai can almost recognize a shapeless meaning, and she scrambles to get closer, but it brings no clarity.

        The leader looks to her right, at her adjutant. After a second that feels like an hour, they nod in agreement, then the adjutant gestures to the army and they move forward again, the words of peace left unsaid.

        Bas’hai should be excited to witness this: the result of centuries of planning and a hope to end the invasions once and for all. But a disquiet is nagging at her. The army moves fast but too slow; the bedri are walking, not cantering. The canyon is wide enough for the riders to charge, yet their weapons are still in their sheaths. On the faces she sees from afar, it is not lust for blood that is written but doubt, fear... and, could it be, hope?

        The invaders are outnumbered two to one—they will all die, she knows, and only a few beats ago she would have welcomed it. But now it strikes her: how wrong it would be to let these strangers who look like them be taken by the desert, so far from their homes. Who would miss them? Who would mourn them? Who are they? She shivers with a strange foreboding, and the sand tugs at her soul; it remembers what the living have forgotten, and she almost feels the shape of that memory within her reach.

        She needs more time. She needs to understand. Mele’san was right—the Shahan don’t know anything; neither her nor the general, so placid in his home, bent on keeping things as he wants them. She needs to delay the trap. She jumps on a tall rock and, in full view of the commanding table, raises her red-gloved hand and makes the urgent sign for pause—

        But just at that moment, the last of the bedri crosses the line from light to shadow, and Mele’san’s Voice rises again. It grows deep and coarse as she intones the Song of War, the one meant both to frighten the enemies and to breathe courage into the warriors of Shahanan; a song so powerful, so bright, that as long as it keeps jumping from stone to stone across the canyons, Bas’hai would gladly go to her death if that means protecting her people.

        Then the world comes crashing down on the riders.

        From the recesses in the cliffs, like a dune collapsing, pour the Shahan soldiers, galvanized by the Song of War. At the rear of the enemy army, grey cloak after grey cloak jump on the bedri’s backs; a mere shimmer when they slip along the stone, then a gleaming blade. The first white swords pierce iridescent amour. Mele’san’s singing falters for a heartbeat, only long enough for Bas’hai to notice, then recovers.

        The first arrows fly, and their bright tips catch the light as they travel through the air, so slow, so fast, so beautiful. Then they find their target, lodge in a neck, a heart, a thigh. Riders slip off their mounts. The strangers are surprised but not only at the trap; they are not disgusted like an army who senses defeat but like visitors who are expecting another sort of welcome. Their weapons are still sheathed and their shocked faces show nothing but betrayal.

        Then the grey line of the Shahan forces steps forth from the gate and marches grimly to meet the strangers’ army. It has been an instant—it has been but a change in the desert air—but it has been enough. The Song of War takes on a harsher tone, and every Shahan feels it pull on their blood, a call to fight with no mercy. With a terrible tremor, the red blades leave their sheaths and meet the white ones. The blue bows tense in the riders’ hands. And the true bloodshed begins.

        For a while, the air becomes too thick to breathe. Every gasp is saturated with the smell of dirty blood curling on the hot sand. Little by little, the mass of the foreign army seems to shrink inside the pincers designed by Shahanan, yet her people are not left unscathed. Many of the silver-grey amours now lie empty on the sand, the Suns reflecting off them, beautiful and terrible like a well turned a dark, unnatural red. Bas’hai sees everything, but she understands nothing. For the first time in years, her eyes cannot look beyond the surface of the world. The sight of blood has made her blind.

        She is afraid. She thought she had felt fear before, of a master and his cruel eyes, of her bullies when they came in packs. But that was not fear; that was merely a grain of sand in her shoe. Fear is a beast, and it seizes her whole, envelops her in its grip, shackles her in a cage where she stands transfixed; not quite alive, not yet dead. The only thread that keeps her sane is Mele’san’s song.

        Breathless, eyes half-closed, she staggers toward Mele’san’s post, seeking resolve in Mele’san’s familiar voice, letting it wrap around her like it always does: a ward against despair, a gift without price to the ugly girl with the Sight. But as she draws nearer, Mele’san recognizes her and stops. “Bas’hai... The echo... something’s not right.”

        That snaps Bas’hai out of her panic. Her eyes focus on the faces of the enemy warriors, just as her ears catch what Mele’san caught long ago. She runs to the edge of the cliff. And because her Sight and Mele’san’s Voice are united in that moment, Lashti and Shashti come together in spite of edicts; because the Suns value courage and offer truth to those who seek it, and perhaps to ask forgiveness for what is to come, they show her what no one else was shown: in the gaping mouth of the foreign rider fighting to the death below her, there is no tongue, and in his heart, there is no hatred. She looks around, and sure enough, where the foreign tribe hisses and pants, still no sound is made, because their mouths are empty.

        The sand she grips in her hand has stopped flowing. What she sees now is but a ripple of a thousand memories scattered across time; an ugly feud, an unforgivable waste, a fight of siblings gone horribly wrong.

        For that is all there is to it: the riders from beyond the dunes are the children of the monstrous child, the children of the child of love, the child without a tongue, riding to them without a voice, seeking to meet them but ever unable to answer the Song of Welcome; yet ever hoping the Shahan see, understand, and greet them as brethren; but always greeted by arrows instead, by mighty warriors, and defending themselves only until they can free their mounts to go back beyond the dunes and bring their people the news that there is no hope, that they need to stop coming to Shahanan.

        And so they do, for ages, until the memory has blurred across their city and someone signs the question: “Shall we try again?”

* * *

        Bas’hai finds the general standing before the command table, looking glumly at the field where a people who do not look like demons kill his family and friends. Before him are spread the Lists of the Shahan, on which the name of every Shahan is inscribed when they are born, in the stone-grey ink made of sand, which disappears of its own accord when they die. On many pages, there are gaps where there were none this morning. He looks as the strangers are driven back to their mounts, while men and women fall on both sides and their bodies melt into the sand, and his shoulders slump ever more as the pages grow emptier.

        Bas’hai has to stand right before him to get his attention, but when she does, she half-signs, half-rasps what she has seen: the empty mouths, the absent tongues, the eyes astonished, disappointed of the people from beyond the dunes. And as he listens, the general knows it all rings true, but he also knows, just by looking at the pages, it will take more than this knowledge to erase the memory of loss, the memory of hate and the blood-red color of the sand before Shahanan’s doors. Nevertheless, he sends the signal to the Shashti standing next to Mele’san, for Mele’san to chant the Song of Retreat, the one that calls for the soldiers to come home.

        Soon her Voice rises again, and alone it covers the noise of the battle, the clatter of swords, the sickening pang of the bows. She sings, healing, coaxing, appeasing, and the warriors flow back to the gates, setting free the riders, who take refuge between the powerful legs of their mounts, surprised, relieved, and soon ready to flee. The last weapon is sheathed, the last arrow flies past Bas’hai’s head. It flies, and Mele’san’s song stops.

        In that moment, Bas’hai knows. She knows why Mele’san’s voice has gone mute, and a cold horror spreads through her chest. Still, she seeks confirmation. She frantically searches the Lists for Mele’san. But for them, there will be no other miracle. Mele’san’s name, in the corner of a page, is losing its shape. The dark lines that it is made of are not held by the thread anymore. They are drifting apart on the leathery surface. Then, as Bas’hai watches, a gust of desert wind kisses the page and sweeps away the last of the ink that made out Mele’san’s life.

        Bas’hai shrieks, a low, guttural sound that hurts her throat and her tongue. She runs to the Lashti post. She knows there is no point, she knows the desert takes back what the desert has given and that she will find no body, because the magic will return to the sand and leave no trace, just like the name that is now gone and she cannot conjure it in her mind anymore, the name of the woman she loved. Yet still she runs, and she throws herself on the sand inside the small enclosure, digging with her elbows, her nails, her forehead, as if she could find Mele’san right there, under the surface, waiting, looking at her with the soft gaze of those who cannot see.

* * *

        Hours have gone by. The Suns will soon reach the third dune, and the bedri make their rumbling cry as they canter back, far across the horizon. Impossible to say how many dead among their riders, but certainly the desert looks thicker, the sand darker; gorged with the blood of both tribes. Bas’hai sits huddled in the lookout, waiting for the Shahan warriors to come and take her away, put her deep underground in the cold passageways, a punishment for the love and the grief she so clearly let show.

        But no one comes. And Bas’hai understands now: that she remembers what no one else will; that with the name, the memory is gone too; and the weight of her loss, she is the only one to fathom and carry.

        The Lashti, hidden behind the high walls, let out the prayer of the dead, a shapeless cry for each name erased from the page, and many a Shahan mourns the absence of love and warmth, the source of which they no longer recall. There is one cry the Lashti make that lasts longer and sounds truer, and Bas’hai thinks she can almost recognize her name in it. The moment passes and will not present itself again, but no matter: Bas’hai is Shashti. Who has no name can still be, if you keep vivid the image of her long hair, the light lines on her skin, and her blue eyes sheltered by a white veil.

        She shakes off her grief and focuses on what is in front of her: the sand at her feet shimmering in shades of reds, yellows and blues, the colors of the desert and so much more, a promise of places beyond the dunes where dwell strange beasts and a silent people clad in fabrics of infinite hues. It might be the lost magic tinting the grains. It might be the lost love. Whatever it was, it is hers now.

        So she gathers the sand and fills with it her pockets, her sleeves, the sheath of her knife. Tonight, when everyone sleeps in the caverns, she will go to the bees’ refuge. Under their light, she will mix the sand with water, and it will not fade. Then she will kneel and paint with the forbidden colors, paint her memory vivid and bright on the stony ground, to remain there forever; defying oblivion, like a spit into the face of the Suns.

        Tomorrow, for the first time in her life, she will circumvent permission. She will go to those Lashti she trusts, she will take one of them with her, and together they will set out on a journey that was only attempted once before: they will cross on foot the desert to beyond the dunes, until they reach the city of the voiceless and make their people one again.

Copyright © 2021 Anna Winterstein

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Anna Winterstein was born in Russia and grew up in France, which might explain her penchant for drama, both in fiction and in real life. After years of circling around stories in her past careers, she has decided to meet them head-on: she now studies Game Design the better part of the day, writes fiction in the wee hours, and takes pictures or draws illustrations when she catches a break. She lives in London with two bunnies and a very bunny-like human, and can be reached on awstein.com or on Twitter @awstein.

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COVER ART

“Arathi Temple Complex,” by Leon Tukker

Leon Tukker is a student based in the Netherlands, self-taught in 3D software and digital painting. After graduating a game design course, he plans to start freelancing or join a company. He has always been a big fan of fantasy and science fiction, and most of his paintings are about those subjects. He has a fascination for all natural things on earth that have an alien feel about them. See more of his artwork in his gallery on ArtStation.com.

Beneath Ceaseless Skies

ISSN: 1946-1076

Published by Firkin Press,

a 501(c)3 Non-Profit Literary Organization

Compilation Copyright © 2021 Firkin Press

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