* * *
Alila finally convinced the princess that the unicorns were strong enough to carry her weight. Resting on the thick goat’s wool pads, the two women made their way out of the canyon, Alila’s eyes searching the sun-baked hills for signs of the mercenaries. They stuck to the narrow ways and rockier parts as they crossed from hill to desert, Alila and her unicorns picking ways that men on horseback could not traverse.
She left Yaehala and the unicorns near moonrise and went to a tent village, bartering with the herders for another dajib and headscarf, the weave a striped pattern of desert colors, orange, grey, and sulfur. They buried the princess’s bloody silks in the shifting sands and rode on, stopping only to rest in the hottest part of the day.
The first two days, Yaehala left Alila mostly to her own thoughts, giving up on conversation after a couple abortive tries which Alila fended off with flat stares and hunched shoulders.
When the moons rose on the third night, the princess refused to be silent any longer.
“Ali,” she said, jerking Alila out of her own thoughts. “How did you manage to tame two unicorns?”
Alila ran her fingers through Gabi’s silken mane. The unicorns had settled into their tireless running walk, gliding more than moving across the shifting sands that moved with the moonwinds like shadowed waves rolling across a distant sea. They knew the way through the dunes after all these years of traveling with Alila on her trading route.
“I was alone in the desert,” Alila said, looking ahead between Gabi’s curled ears. “They found me and I followed them to that canyon where I found you. I’ve harvested the frankincense ever since.”
“I think there are many holes in your story,” Yaehala said. Her voice was gentle, if curious.
Alila shrugged. Her words were true enough. She did not know how to tell the full story anyway. How to describe the vast emptiness inside herself when she’d crawled, bleeding and broken, into the desert. What the clear, cold water against her cracked lips had tasted like. The first dim sight of the twin unicorns, the feel of their smooth tongues licking the grit from her wounds.
Nor would she have told the princess the other things, the reasons she was alone in the desert, the reason for the scars on her breasts and between her legs. Alila had kept the tattoo beneath her left cheekbone hidden as well, though the headscarf grew heavy with accumulated sand and the skin around her mouth chafed from wearing cloth next to it for such a prolonged period.
They rode in silence for a while. Alila listened to the other woman breathing and realized she was growing accustomed to having another human with her. In a few days, they would reach Gwadar Falls and Yaehala would leave, returning Alila to her solitude. The princess hadn’t been a bad companion. Mostly quiet, she had never complained about the lean fare of trail cake and tepid water, or sleeping on the ground wrapped only in her dajib. The only thing she asked of Alila was that they stop every now and then for her to piss.
Alila snuck glances at the princess and finally relented. She had no desire to talk about herself, but she decided it would be safe enough to let the princess speak.
“What awaits you at Gwadar?” she asked.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Yaehala jerk in surprise and turn her head.
“Araji ships, sent to carry me,” she paused and rubbed her belly, “Us, to the sacred isles until the Pashi is old enough to return and claim his birthright.”
Alila nodded. The devoted of Araji offered sanctuary that no nation or mercenary would breach. “How do you know it is a boy?”
“I pilgramaged to the Oracle at Dhofa. It was there that Medb’s plan first showed itself. She came with me. I thought her my closest friend and we had both gotten with child inside the same month.” Yaehala’s voice turned bitter. “When the Oracle told her she was with girlchild and that I bore the son, a man who would be ruler of all Namoh, I should have known. She tried to poison me first, so that I would lose the child. My servant, Amag, insisted on tasting my food.” The princess twisted and looked behind them.
Alila followed her gaze, seeing nothing but swirling sands under blue and green moonlight. Whatever Yaehala saw there, it was behind them in the clouded world of memory.
“I left her,” she whispered, so softly that the moonwinds almost stole the words before Alila could make them out. “When the mercenaries came. I rode through them, thinking only of my baby. Amag is the one who wrote to the Ajali, who arranged for my safety. We had no proof, nothing to go to the Pashet with. Medb is his First, and I am the newest. Until the Oracle’s word is made flesh in my son, I am nothing.”
Alila nudged Gabi closer to Hezi and Yaehala. Tears glittered on the princess’s skin, refracting the moons’ light like precious gems. She stretched an arm out to Yaehala and caught the princess’s soft hand in her own calloused one.
“I left her,” Yaehala whispered again.
I, too, know what betrayal feels like, Alila wanted to say, but the words caught like honey in her throat, so she stared ahead into the moonlit sands, offering all she could through a gentle squeeze of her hand, human skin on human skin.
After a long moment, the princess sucked in a shaking breath and squeezed back.