The wheels of the prisoner wagon did not have springs. Every rut in the road, every stone, sent a jolt of agony through Khalid's shackled wrists. But he did not feel it. He was numb.
Through the iron bars, he watched the dawn bleed into the sky. It was a pale, sickly grey, illuminating the scene he was leaving behind.
The Captain had kept his word, but it was a bitter mercy. The Al-Fayid were not slaughtered, but they were broken. The order had been given: Exile. They were to leave the grazing lands of Damascus immediately. They were to return to the deep desert, forbidden from trading in the city for a generation.
Khalid watched the chaotic retreat. Tents were struck in panic. Camels were loaded with clumsy haste.
Then he saw him.
Hamza was running alongside the wagon. The soldiers pushed him back with the shafts of their spears, but Hamza fought them, his face streaked with mud and tears. He wasn't screaming in anger this time. He was screaming in grief.
"Brother!" Hamza howled, his voice cracking. "Tell them! Tell them it was me! Khalid! Do not do this!"
Khalid gripped the bars. He wanted to reach out. He wanted to tell Hamza that he was forgiven, that he must lead now. But he couldn't. To speak would be to break the lie.
He looked at Hamza one last time—the brother he had saved, the brother who would now have to live with a debt he could never repay. Khalid hardened his face into a mask of stone. He turned his back.
"Go," Khalid whispered to the floorboards.
Behind him, Hamza's screams faded into the distance as the wagon picked up speed, heading toward the stone maw of the city gates.
At the shrine of Sidi Yahya, the sun rose on an empty world.
Layla was no longer standing. She was on her knees in the wet grass, staring at the horizon where the black smoke of the camp's cooking fires—now extinguished—was drifting away.
She had heard the commotion. She had seen the wagon leave. She didn't know the details, but her heart, tuned to Khalid's like a second string on a lute, felt the severing.
"He is gone," she whispered. The words felt like pebbles in her mouth.
She heard twigs snapping behind her. She didn't turn. She didn't care if it was a soldier come to kill her.
"Ya Layla."
It was not a soldier. It was Amira, and behind her, two of her father's menservants. They looked terrified, their eyes darting around the ruin.
"Child," Amira sobbed, rushing forward to wrap Layla in her arms. "We have been searching for hours. The city is in an uproar. They say... they say the Bedouin Prince killed the Pasha's nephew."
Layla went rigid. "Killed?"
"Captured," Amira said, stroking Layla's hair. "They took him to the Citadel. Oh, my daughter, thank Allah you were not with him. You would be dead."
Layla pulled back. Her eyes were dry. "I am dead, Amira."
The menservants stepped forward. "Sitti, please. Your father... he has torn his clothes in grief. He thinks you were kidnapped. We must go back. Before the neighbors see."
They reached for her. Layla didn't fight. The fight had drained out of her the moment the wagon disappeared. She let them pull her up. She let them guide her stumbling feet back toward the city.
She walked like a prisoner, flanked by her guards. She clutched the small bag of salt in her hand so tight that her fingernails pierced the burlap, bleeding into the grains.
She was going back to the cage. But the bird that lived inside her had flown away, following a wagon into the dark.