The moment Zahara had laid eyes on Lucidra Naeem, she knew her husband had bedded this woman, many times, and not once out of necessities.

The woman must have been no more than fifty, judging from her history with Muradi, but those eyes spoke of someone who had lived three times over and was well on her way to the forth. The evidence could be seen from numerous lines that marred face and arms; some left behind by the hands of time, others shaped by devices of wind and sun, the rest seemed to have been carved by humans, or something equally monstrous that ate humans. Lucidra Naeem was a walking testament to the existence of crime and damages that couldn't be undone. She wasn't a beautiful woman, had likely never been before those scars were inflicted, but you could spot her in a crowd of thousands from a hundred paces and never forget that face for life. It made perfect sense that Muradi had bedded this woman for a time; she would have caught his attention, his respect, his eyes.

That's why you thought you could negotiate with her.

But there were limits to how far a woman would endure mistreatment, and from one woman to another, she could tell that limit had been crossed with Lucidra. And she was here, for all the impossibilities of it, to convince this woman to forget and forgive when she herself had not been able to for twenty years. Not to that extent anyway.

She had decided to come on a small boat with only Qasim as an escort, dressed to be identified as a woman from a distance and in the dark. That they approached without appearing a threat was important. A boat full of bandits inspired cautions and would likely be eliminated on sight, one carrying an unarmed woman and an escort might offer a different outcome.

'There are advantages to being considered weak as a woman,' Muradi had said. 'Men who underestimate one tend to not live very long, go very far, or die very well.'

There must have been enough men who wouldn't live long or die well on that ship, because the crew had brought her and Qasim on board without much too many questions. Zahara had revealed nothing about who she was, only that she carried an important message for the captain. No further explanations had been needed. Men were not raised to be suspicious of women. Most men anyway.

But no explanation had been needed with Lucidra. The moment Zahara had removed the hood of her cloak and allowed her hair and eyes to be seen in the light, the older woman knew precisely who she was and why she was here. She could see it in those sharp eyes, in the tightening of that jawline that turned the long scar on her cheek almost white. It occurred to her only then, seeing those wounds and a lifetime of hardships they represented, that she might have been too late. Azram, after all, needed only a body, not his father back alive.

Still, she had to try. "You know who I am," she said. "And why I'm here."

Lucidra turned to the crew and jerked her chin toward the door of the cabin. "Leave us," she said. "Watch the man she brought. Kill him if he makes a move."

The crew left as instructed. The cabin grew quiet, save for the sound of small waves lapping against the hull and the occasional creak of the wood as it rocked the ship from side to side. Zahara took the seat with an unease she hadn't felt for a long time. She had never been on boats or ships before, and the motion it made kept stirring up the content of her stomach. She had also forgotten, until she'd boarded the small boat to get here tonight, that she didn't know how to swim.

Not the best condition to negotiate with anyone over a stake this large, nor a task any careful person would try to accomplish under the circumstances, but she was a trueblood Shakshi, born and raised as one in the Vilarhiti, and out there in the desert, you wait for the best condition, you die waiting, or someone you love would.

Across the table, Lucidra Naeem leaned back on her chair, stretching out her right arm to play with a tool on her desk Zahara couldn't identify. There were so many things she'd never seen on that ship, but something about the woman reminded her of something, or someone.

"You're the Bharavi. The Shakshi wife who cost him the throne," Lucidra said after a strategic stretch of silence––a tactic used too often by rulers and leaders at court she had seen a hundred times. People with power spoke when it was convenient, not when they were expected to.

You could intimidate most people with that, just not her.

"I am," she said. "And you must be the woman he left behind." A risky thing to do––poking at a lioness in her own den––but in a game of power, as she had long learned from having to survive the Tower, establishing one's boundaries at first meeting was crucial to not be eaten alive.

To her surprise, Lucidra Naeem chuckled. "I admire your spirit, Bharavi, but that's not the best opening to beg me for something now, is it?"

"Beg?" Zahara tilted her head and smiled at the chosen word. "You must have me confused with a Rashai. I am a Shakshi, Captain. We trade for water in the desert or kill for it when no hospitality is given. We do not beg. It's tradition."

Lucidra's smile was calm, too calm for her liking. Not a leader to be easily provoked. Not a good sign. "If you're here to trade for his life," she said. "Then you're wasting my time. It's a bit too late for that now."

A rock landed in Zahara's stomach, adding to her already urgent need to throw up. The possibility of his death had been slipping in and out of her mind from the beginning of their conversation, and there were too few reasons for her to believe otherwise. Still, something in Lucidra's eyes gave Zahara a pause. "No," she said. "I'm not. You haven't killed him."

The captain watched her from across the table with no more than curiosity on display, her hand still playing with the unidentified device. "Why wouldn't I?" she asked. "It's a lot easier to keep a head than a live prisoner, and I have more reasons to keep the head."

Zahara caught those eyes, reached over to touch the desk with her finger, and tapped it twice. "The head," she said, now more certain than the first time, "would be on this table if you'd done it. For those reasons."

Lucidra's dark eyes narrowed. "Revenge is a great dish, I agree, but I can also be practical."

Her turn to smile. "Being practical doesn't include beating up a man you intend to kill. Those bruises are new, or do you have a thing for punching a corpse?"

The Captain followed her eyes to her own bruised knuckles, and this time allowed a hint of approval to show. "I'm impressed," she said and poured them both a drink.

Zahara leaned back on her chair and took a courtesy sip of the rum, trying her best to mask the fact that she was just waiting for a chance to throw up. "You're not the only one who has been hurt for two decades, Captain, and for what he's done, there's no one on this peninsula with more cause to see him die than me. I understand the need for vengeance." She placed the drink back on the table. "But now is neither the time nor place for it."

'The art of negotiation,' Muradi had said to Lasura one night, 'is about paying attention. Listen to what they wouldn't say, find something they intend to hide, and tell them what they don't expect to hear. Present yourself as an ally looking to share profits. Don't make an enemy out of someone willing to negotiate.'

It did the trick well enough. The captain now looked at her from above the cup, wearing an expression of someone trying to solve a puzzle, not assessing a potential enemy. "I see," she said. "Out of curiosity, what's in it for you?"

"The same thing you seek," she replied. "To save something important."

"Your son, maybe?"

"My land, my people, our freedom," she said, "and, yes, my son from our enemies."

A small pause, followed by a recognition. "In that order?"

She made no reply.

A venomous smile, paired with eyes that took a bite of something too close to heart. "A heartless bitch for a heartless bastard," said Lucidra. "You two make a good couple."

An anger danced around the edges of Zahara's mind, dragging with it a string of other emotions she didn't welcome. She ignored it and focused on the task at hand. I have no time, no room for weaknesses. "My reasons are my own, and whatever they are, it's in your best interest to reconsider his offer. Handing him over will not end well for you or your brother. Azram is not a man of honor and cannot he trusted."

"Neither," Lucidra's words rasp like a blade, oiled and unsheathed in broad daylight, "is he."

She could see it now, the resemblance she hadn't been able to pinpoint earlier. That bitterness, that hate, that need for vengeance, for retribution. She might as well have been looking in a mirror.

"You can take me as a hostage. That is what I've come to trade," she said. "Let him go. Work with him to get your brother out. He'll deliver. As long as you have me as a hostage, he'll stay the coarse." The same old trick she'd used with Qasim, only this time she was dealing with someone bigger and much more intelligent.

"That's a pretty big claim you're making."

Too big even for me. "I cost him the throne, remember?"

Lucidra took a sip of her drink and twirled it in her hand. "Maybe you are or maybe you aren't a good enough hostage, but the facts remain: he's a king without a throne, without power, without an army. Even if I'm willing to forget that he's fucked me over and is perfectly capable of doing it twice, it can't be done. You can't break Niroza out of the most secure prison in Samarra even with the men you have and mine. It's a foolish dream of an arrogant man a long way past his prime who believes he can outrun his own destruction."

A foolish dream of an arrogant man. That statement did something to her, set alight an anger, a rage triggered by something she didn't recognize. "That arrogant man took my home, slaughtered the largest army the White Desert has ever united, and conquered what no Salar had ever accomplished since Eli. The man you want to kill holds the power to change every life on this peninsula. This little problem you think he can't fix is nothing but a pebble in his shoe. Muradi is no fool. He's not on a run. He's not here to rescue your brother over some personal reasons. He's here," she said, "to reconquer the Salasar, unite this peninsula, and end the war."

And when it was done, Zahara found herself standing over the desk, sucking air back into her lungs with the realization that somehow, somewhere along the way, she had come to believe this to be true. Since when do you see yourself on his side, riding the same dream?

She swallowed the need to vomit, strangled the life out of it, and seated herself back on the chair. "This is bigger than your hate and my need for vengeance, Captain," she said. "And you know it."

Another wave rolled under them in the silence that ensued. The wood creaked again, louder this time. Lucidra Naeem stared at her from across the desk, her chest moving more visibly as she did. Her hand on the device, Zahara noticed, had stopped moving.

"Perhaps I do know it," said the captain. "And maybe you have a point, a reason to make him an ally despite what he's done. But you forget one thing, Bharavi." A slight raise of her voice. A release of bitterness long caged and clawing to be let loose. "I don't give a fuck about the Salasar, about this war, your war, your people, or your land. My home is the sea, my family is my crew, my brother, and my son. I want them back, and I will have my retribution. If the world has to burn for that, then so be it."

Zahara sighed. Revenge was a great dish, and who would understand it better than she did? She had come prepared for it, after all, and for that reason. "I take it that's still a no?"

Lucida snorted. "He can crawl on all fours to suck my dick and it would still be my answer. Go back to where you came from, find someone else to fuck and solve your problems. This is how I solve mine."

Zahara nodded. No use for logic and reasons when hate still clouded the mind. It would take time for Lucidra to move on, time they didn't have. "Very well," she said. "I have given you a chance to take his offer as a former acquaintance, but since you've decided that's not an option, then the time for peaceful discussions is over. I will now make my own offer as a Shakshi. It means there will be no negotiations, and we do not make an offer twice." She pulled out a piece of paper from her pocket, placed it on the table, and pushed it toward the older woman. "Your brother's life for the former Salar of Rasharwi. You decide."

Lucida stared at the red snake on the paper, her expression altered as soon as she recognized the symbol.

"We may not be able to free Niroza without Muradi and your cooperation," she continued. "But making sure a prisoner never walks out of prison is a matter of connection and money. I told Deo di Amarra if Qasim doesn't return with the former Salar, Niroza Naeem goes into his Jar of Souls, tonight, immediately. It has been arranged. The downpayment has been paid as stated on that receipt. The Red Mamba doesn't take jobs he can't accomplish. You have until sunrise to make your decision."

From across the table, she could see the hand that held the unidentified device tremble as it squeezed the object. "He won't let you kill Niroza. I know Ranveer. That's one thing he would never allow to happen."

"Ranveer," she said, "is being tied up somewhere on this ship and is in no position to make demands, which puts me in charge of this operation. You should have dealt with him when you had a chance. Now you will deal with a Bharavi of the White Desert, and you will remember that I have no reasons to keep your brother alive."

Lucidra Naeem's jaw tightened, her next words delivered through tightly gritted teeth. "You kill Niroza and none of you will leave this ship with your life."

"And you, Captain, will live with this mistake for a long, long time as the person responsible for your brother's death before you die old and alone on your miserable ship with your incompetent crew, chewing on nothing but your need for vengeance with no one left to take it upon while my troubles will be over. I am a Shakshi, Captain. We are prepared to die for something as fragile as honor and pride on a daily basis, however hard that is for a Rashai or a Samarran to understand. You can't threaten one with death. It doesn't work that way."

Zahara rose from the chair, pulled her hood back over her hair, and brushed out the crease on her dress. "That said, I don't think you'd be sitting here as captain if you were that incompetent, so I suggest you get off your seat and release him quickly, because neither you nor my husband crawling on all fours to suck my dick is going to stop Deo di Amarra from killing your brother, and we are running out of time."

***

The cell smelled the same. Pigs and chickens and rotting fish remains never changed where scent was concerned. The stench, however much he hated it, was still a lot better than that of charred human flesh, blood, puss, shit, and semen at Sabha. Get used to that, and one could say any other prison in the world came with perks and privileges.

That Lucidra had given him the same cell Niroza threw him in when they first met stung like a stake in the heart, which was the point. Twenty years, and you're back right where you started, complete with the name Ranveer Borkhan to top it all off. That fake name given to him at Sabha to conceal a prince's identity had never delivered its intended outcome, but it sure stuck like the brand on his back, like the smell of blood, puss, shit, and semen you couldn't wash from anyone who'd been at Sabha. He probably smelled like that even now. Even more so now.

'You smell like a pirate,' Niroza had said after a day or two of locking him in this cell. 'Would you like to try that on for size, kid?'

And he had, tried it on for size, out of curiosity and to stay alive, to find that it fit him like a glove, well enough to have lived that life without regrets, enough to have stayed and married Lucidra, produced a bunch of kids, shouldered only that much weight, and never look back.

Wishful thinking of a drowning man. He laughed at his own thought. How far can you run? How long before it catches up with you?

'Live, my son.' His mother's words he'd long forgotten now rang as clear as if they'd been spoken yesterday. 'Live and rewrite the fate of this peninsula. That is who you are and what you were born to do.'

What he was born to do... Have I, he thought, been living my whole life by a sentence spoken four decades ago? How much of it was him, and how much of what he'd become a product of what his mother had said, or what his father had done? How much of Lasura had been shaped by every word spoken––or unspoken––by him and Zahara? Have I become the father I'd wanted to see dead?

He snorted and laughed again at the possibility. Five decades, and he wasn't any closer to answering any of those questions. What a fucking mess.

"What's so funny?"

He looked up at the dark corner of the hold from where the question came. "I was wondering when you were going to come out of hiding. Glad it didn't take you all night."

The speaker stepped out of the shadow, pausing at a distance close enough for his features to be seen, far enough to keep the more subtle expressions hidden. Thick, unruly curls of hair red enough to sting the eyes caught the light, made the face one would need to look twice to remember more sedated than it should. Small and shorter than average, almost to the point of looking feminine, the young man was a great specimen for di Amarra's bronze-ring assassin who needed to get in and out of places without being noticed. Another face in the crowd, only that.

"Do you know who I am?" asked the pirate with a voice that belonged more to a singer than a killer. Not a good thing to have on a ship full of men who'd gut you for a few coins.

"Yes, Leandras," he said. The young man did look lot like Lucidra, just without her intensity. "I know who you are."

A pause to breathe, perhaps to swallow. "You know my name?"

"I have enemies." He shrugged. "It's important to know the names of people who might want you dead."

"I don't want to kill you," said Leandras, softly, and then with more grit to it, added, "Not yet anyway."

A boldness there if only a little careless. But from bitterness or the presence of spine, he wasn't sure. "Your mother does."

The grimace could be seen from afar. "I'm not her."

Another son who hates his mother. "You might be surprised how much of her is in you." It was true. He could see the resemblance even from a distance and without the matching presence on the outside. "You're here to ask me something. Ask. There may not be time."

Silence and awkwardness tiptoed around Leandras, turned the air in the room thick enough to drown everyone in it. He'd expected that much. The young man would need some time to make his decision. Anyone would.

No, he corrected himself, the decision had been made a long time ago. The questions, too, had been prepared and weren't difficult to put forward. The hardest part was hearing the truth. He understood it better than anyone. He'd had the same questions, needed the same answers at one point in his life. A lifetime ago, to be precise.

"Are you my father?" Leandras asked.

An echo, loud enough to bring something back to life after four decades. What was it the man had said?

'You are a prince of the Black Tower, my lord. That is who you are and the only thing you need to know.'

He could almost laugh at the familiarity, could even see the same questions to follow in Leandras' eyes. Am I a son of a king or some unimportant nobody? Was it love or hate that created me? Do you care? Funny how life managed to come back and bite you in the face. He said, "What did your mother say?"

Silence, and then a decision. "That I am her son."

Sounded like Lucidra. Like Zahara even. "And you are, are you not?"

"You haven't answered my question."

A spine, this time, underneath a softness. The complete opposite of Lasura. "My answer, Leandras, will not change anything." He rose to his feet, and stepped into the light, thinking, still, of what his mother's lover's reply, and the answer he'd wanted––needed––that never came. "What would you rather hear? That your mother killed your real father who'd used and abused her for twenty years, or that your real father was never here to begin with because he had other agendas more important than you? One is already dead, the other would still take no part in it. I've walked away when I didn't know you existed, but don't think for a second that I wouldn't do it if I knew. I'd do it again today, tomorrow. It makes no difference to me."

You are a prince of the Black Tower. That is who you are... the only thing you need to know.

The fists by Leandras' sides clenched tighter. He understood that anger, that hate, enough to know there was nothing to be done about it. "You don't care at all, do you?"

He'd said that too. Did he care? Was there ever room in my life to care? Was there room in his mother's lover's to offer the things he'd wanted?

Deep down, he'd known the answer to that, but it had never been so clear as it was now. "I was born to unite this peninsula, Leandras, not to father sons." That is who you are and what you were born to do. "There are bigger problems for me to deal with than your desperate quest for a father, and if you need one to make something of your life, then, no, I don't think you're mine. My sons will kill me for what they need, for what they desire, and I will do the same to mine, to them. That," he said, "is the blood that runs in my veins."

Leandras listened quietly, his less than handsome face wearing a stillness that reminded him of Lucidra, just before she made a decision to strike. "And you've killed two sons."

"The third one will die with his mother when I get back to Rasharwi."

"For vengeance?"

"For putting at risk the lands I have slaughtered thousands to build. I am prepared," he said, stepping closer to the young man who might be his son, which was not important, "to kill you and your mother to save this city. That is my priority. It will always be my priority. You'll do well to remember it." What you were born to do...

"Oh he will remember." The door swung open and in walked Lucidra. She turned to her son and tossed him a set of keys. "Enough with the sentimental shit. Father or not, you should have killed the son of a bitch for what he's done, and now that chance is gone. Open the fucking door."

Leandras blinked, confused. "You're letting him go?"

"Apparently," she said, biting every word as if hoping to hear them scream, "he's not the most despicable, back-stabbing, vindictive sack of toxic shit in the long fucked-up history of the Salasar."

Muradi smiled at that, wouldn't be able to stop himself if he tried. "I take it you've met my wife?"

Zahara stepped in through the door at that moment, looking like she'd just swallowed something rotten and was trying not to throw up. "You've planned this." The woman, as always, took over the room like someone who owned the damn ship, even with the need to vomit. "You knew she wouldn't kill you, for the same reason I didn't, that I would come."

He stepped out of the cell Leandras had opened and brushed out the dust on his tunic. "I've planned nothing, Zahara," he said, aware that he would die right here had he gone that far. "I knew only that my head will rot beyond recognition before she's done negotiating with Azram and she's too smart to risk it. That, and I'd bet my life anytime on the fact that you would never let me die by someone else's hands."

He turned to Lucidra and realized Zahara would now have to fight for that opportunity. This is going to be fun. "Now, where are we?" he said. "Are you ready to discuss Niroza's release with me, Luce, or would you rather deal with her?" 

***

A/N: TBH I wanted to name this chapter: "Don't fuck with my wife." XDD