Black Bird, Blue Road by Sofiya Pasternack

Author:Sofiya Pasternack
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2022-09-20T00:00:00+00:00

Twenty-six

Ziva found Almas sitting down by the water, throwing pebbles into it. She lingered a distance away until Almas said, “Pesah banished Shabriri. She won’t come back until he’s gone.”

“I wasn’t staying back because of Shabriri,” Ziva said, even though that had been part of it. She wandered closer to Almas and sat an arm’s length away from him. “I want to apologize.”

Almas threw another few pebbles and then said, “So apologize.”

“I’m sorry for—”

“Apology not accepted,” Almas said.

“You didn’t even let me finish!” Ziva said.

Almas said nothing. Tossed pebbles. Ignored her as she seethed in the darkness.

Ziva went through what Pesah had said to Almas and tried to figure out how she could say something similar. But she wasn’t good at apologizing or admitting she was wrong. She had been really wrong about Almas. She’d judged him based on her own unfair bias. Baba said judges had to be fair above all else, or else the court of Atil might as well let mobs dictate justice. “If a man is brought to me accused of stealing,” Baba had asked her once, “and he has stolen before, should I assume he is guilty because of his past, or allow him to prove that he has changed?” The latter, Ziva had said. The correct choice. Of course, that correct choice was easy to make while sitting in Baba’s office without any risk attached to it. She sat in front of risk now, as he continued to throw tiny rocks into the water. Could she and Pesah afford to trust Almas?

She watched too many of his throws plunk in without a single skip, so she picked up a smooth rock and said, “You can’t just throw them in. You have to angle and kind of . . .” She demonstrated, tossing the rock across the surface of the pond. It skipped along the dark surface, leaving perfectly round ripples in its wake.

Almas watched, then looked at Ziva. He lobbed a pebble at the pond without even trying to skip it, and it landed with a hollow splash and not a single skip.

Ziva sighed. “I made assumptions about you based on . . . nothing. And that was wrong. And I understand if you don’t want to have anything to do with us after we get to Luz. So . . .” She hesitated, then stood. “I’ll go. Just. Sorry.”

She turned and took a couple steps, but stopped when he said, “You didn’t make assumptions based on nothing.”

Ziva turned. “Yes, I did. You’ve not actually done anything wrong.”

Almas turned the current pebble he held over in his fingers. “You made your assumptions based on me being half-sheyd.” He looked up at her. “If I were all human, would you be as suspicious of me?”

Ziva opened her mouth to say of course she would, and it wouldn’t make a difference, and she would be mistrustful anyway.

But.

That wasn’t true.

So she shut her mouth. And shook her head.

Almas nodded. “Even though you can’t bind a human to help.

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