|| - Debts of Duty - ||

"I'd learned that somethings are best kept secret..."

- Nicholas Sparks
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Ten feet - he had started with ten feet. Those days were clouded with a haze of determination that dulled the pain he endured in his joints as he rolled off the hard ground. The height he had to survive increased with each day, fifteen feet, seventeen feet, twenty, twenty five. He had never questioned what the purpose of learning this particular skill was. Sure enough, his father would have given him one of the riddles he usually came up with. No, David could do better than losing his sleep mulling over an answer he would not die without.

Just like it was with the blind folded knife throwing, or the countless maps they pondered over, the dusty books in the vast library that he was demanded to finish before his father returned home from one of his consignments, David continued to scrape walls and fall down without hurting himself gravely. Falling - as his master used to say, was an art just like climbing. You should simply learn to preserve your fragile points from the collusion and meet the ground with your strong points. There would be a dull pain; yes - nothing in life was painless. But you could simply bounce back to your feet and pursue whatever it your target was.

Nothing James McLane deemed his son should learn proved to be unrewarding. The thought crossed his mind as Dave assessed their chances of getting back on to the roof. His analysis was cut short by the thundering footsteps up the stairs that he imaged led to the watch post over which they were dangling at the moment. There was no more time to calculate as he let go of the ledge he had been holding on to.

In time he turned around to see her eyes widening. In shock - he told himself, for he could not somehow string together those fiery eyes with fear. The scream died in her throat, as they fell through the whipping wind, warm and smoky with the fire below. He had not let her go yet, for he was sure, no matter how great an archer she was, she had no training of taking a fall from such a height with grace. On air they turned following the gravitational pull but him keeping her away from the impact of collusion.

He hit the ground first, a dull thud masked in the chaos around them. She followed a second later, secure in his arms. Their dark grabs kept both of them disguised as a part of the shadows from anyone who looked down from the watch post. David had assumed enough not to expect a 'thank you!' but he had not been smart enough to avoid the blade at his throat.

To her credit, she could have killed him had it been her target. She did not; he took it as a plus point.

"Would you kill the man who saved your life twice over?" He asked her, in her own tongue, watching the fire that burned in her eyes with a steady gaze of his own. Warriors were easily dealt with - he was taught - their blades are restrained with their honour which in turn could be used as his own shield. With effort she pressed the blade closer to his throat, wanting to frighten him into a submission which he refused to give in to.

"Identify yourself, or I swear you will die here now!" She spoke in refined language, not the village drawl. A noble if not a royal, he made a mental note.

"Not all strangers are enemies, lady." He shot an arrow in the dark and watched her blink in confusion. A fear of recognition flashed across her face that almost had her recoiling back to run away. He snatched hold of her wrist, in the process actually pressing the cutting edge against his throat. He could not afford to let her leave just yet.

David could have cared less for the drop of blood that trickled down his throat, their gazes locked again.

"There!" Somebody shouted. The yell was followed by an arrow and it was too late before any of them moved.

"Ahh!" She hissed falling forward almost tossing him off balance as her jaw knocked against his shoulder. The arrow had found her bicep.

"Meghdyuth is down there! Catch him! Don't let him escape!" The commands were enough for David to spring into action. And he wasted no time in removing them from the vicinity of the guards now running amok through the burned city square and ducked into the shadows of one of the passageways running beneath the wall of inner Chandranagara connecting it to the lawns of the fortress.

The general confusion of smoke, darkness and the chaos the crowd was making numbed them into a silence of few moments. Meghdyuth leaned against the rough stone wall of the passageway, her features scrunched in an attempt to tolerate the pain and her eyes narrowed with something else. David steered his attention to the path they had taken for a moment, the last thing he wanted was a trail of blood leading the guards to their exact location. Thanks to the pitch black night and the years of dust accumulated on the ground, any trail was hardly distinguishable. He tried to hold himself from overthinking, reminding himself that the route he had taken was a well-guarded secret that he happened to discover. It was highly unlikely that a troupe of low graded outer city guards would follow them through these secret tunnels. Then he shifted his gaze back to his exceptional companion.

From the dying fire of the city square he could see most of her features. There was a thin sheen of sweat on her forehead, a painful twitch to her lips as she kept the pressure on her arm just below where the arrow was still protruding from her muscle. Finally his gaze trailed up to halt against her narrowed eyes. Suspicion - he tagged that expression.

"How did you know this route?" Her tone was throaty a little, but hardly shuddering in pain and David's thoughts steered towards the afternoon spent in the market place where he made sketches of all the important points of the architecture of the Chandranagara city - the fortress and the walls - under the pretext of sketching the little scenes from the busy market. Instead of voicing the same he shook his head and stepped closer.

"You need to take it out," he told her frankly, tilting his head towards the arrow. She raised her hand as if to go through with it and he held it back, suddenly insistent. "No, don't pull it. You might end up ruining your arm forever, you know that?"

She looked at him again, something akin to amusement flickering across her dark gaze, before her jaw tightened and she yanked the arrow out of her arm in a flash of a movement. Before gasping and leaning further into the dusty wall. David stared in horror at the blood gushing out of the hole it left on her skin, seeping in to the torn sleeve of her dark tunic.

"Perhaps it is time you know, that I do not need saving," her words were curt and breezy, almost as if she was cutting off whatever temporary alliance they had struck up and the voices and footsteps outside where growing louder. "Nevertheless, thank you stranger! Meghdyuth would settle this debt one of these days."

"What on earth -"David never got a chance to complete his sentence as there was a screeching of metal against stone.

As if Meghdyuth had pulled a hidden leaver on the wall she had been leaning against, the stones backed out of her way and she fell into the shadows slowly. Had he not been shocked by the sudden revelation of a trapdoor within a trapdoor Dave might have caught up with her before she vanished into the shadows altogether.

**

Noor held herself before she started to hum again. These days her spirits were soaring and she felt only a tad bit of guilt at that. Although she would not dare to share her thoughts with her Ammi, or her ladies in waiting - who she was sure, were spies of her father - she shed most of her inhibitions as soon as she entered the Palace of Darkness as she called it. Kashi's mehel* was indeed called 'Shab*', and since it was drowned in an eternal night, there was nothing else it could have been named after.

Tonight, she wanted to be happy without being frowned over. After all, being officially released from a horrendous engagement was nothing but a blessing. Of cause she felt a tad bit guilty that her freedom had come at the cost of a life, but the guilt was never enough to quench the rebellious spirit that she was.

So instead, needing to break free from the mourning atmosphere of the central rooms of her mother and herself, she had volunteered to bring Kashi's dinner to her chambers. Noor did not get a chance to sit and chat with Kashi since that unfortunate morning when she had tried to show her the winter sunrise. She could not even inform her best friend of her impending doom in the form of an engagement. Instead as soon as the missive of the Mirza's arrival she had been arrested by a well-meaning but fit to replace the executioner, set of groomers who had spoiled her day and night on a quest of grooming her into the ultimate delicate princess. So she was not planning to leave Kashi with her dinner simply, instead her plan was to spend some quality time with her best friend.

It was no wonder to say that Noor was astonished to find Kashi's chambers shrouded in darkness. The clusters of candles were extinguished by the onslaught of wind coming through the open windows.

"Kashi?" She called out taken aback by the silence of the room. There was no response. Stumbling in the darkness, Noor kept away the silver tray she brought and felt around to make her way towards the window. A single meek candle burned in the far corner, at the edge of the dressing table by the bed. Outside the window the sky was dotted in trillions of stars that donated a feeble glow to the shadows in the room.

Abandoning her original idea of reaching the window, Noor went to the burning candle and lifted it off the dressing table, gripping the cold ornate candle holder with all her might. But she dropped it as soon as she turned around with a shrill yelp of surprise to accompany the resonating sound it made as it rolled on the ground - the candle burning a hole in the plush rug around the bed.

A dark shape hoisted itself in from the open window and collapsed on the carpeted floor. There it lay, motionless; a shapeless heap of darkness against the star scattered sky. Noor mentally slapped herself, even as she moved forward fetching the candle back from the ground, for not calling the guards in first.

But of cause as soon as the candle light brought features to the shapeless heap, she was glad of her moment of insanity. Her lips trembled as she leaned forward, examining the pale face of the intruder with astonishment.

"Kashi? Ya Allah! What happened to you?"

Kashi tried to find her voice, mentally running over any possible explanations for her state that did not involve any bit of the truth. It seemed unlikely that she could escape this particular tight spot in her current state. Noor knelt beside her before anymore words were being spoken and her candle revealed more than Kashi wanted to.

"You're hurt!" She exclaimed then her voice rising in octaves until it was shrill enough to make her flinch. "You're bleeding Kashi!"

True enough, she was losing the strength in her arm with which she kept pressure on the bleeding puncture. Dark spots danced around her vision as she tried with all her might to focus on Noor's eyes.

"Don't - call - anyone," she gasped trying to convince Noor before she went running to people she did not want to alert of her condition. Noor's eyes widened further, her eyebrows almost disappearing into her hairline.

"Kashi - are you crazy? You'll bleed out, if you -!"

"Noor Banu," Kashi said strictly, cutting her inane blubbering almost instantly. "No one should know. Do you hear me? No one should know!"

Noor exhaled loudly, her eyes running over taking in Kashi's appearance. An almost understanding dawned on her face, only to be overtaken by an extreme wonder. Her mouth gaped open before she clasped a hand over it.

"Meghdyuth! You are Meghdyuth!"

**

||Glossary||

*Mehel - Palace, used here to denote a separate residence within a fortress

*Shab - night in urdu

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Okay, Kashi's got some explaining to do. That is once they deal with the wound and Noor's panic. Who do you think will help to settle the situation? Tell me in comments!

We will meet again on Monday, with a new chapter.

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Thank you!