In the Empty Quarter by G. Willow Wilson

Author:G. Willow Wilson
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Fantasy, Adult, Science Fiction
Publisher: Amazon Original Stories
Published: 2021-01-28T00:00:00+00:00

“Breathe again, bintu adam. Chop-chop.”

Jean felt teeth on her neck. She recoiled with a gasp and lashed out at the yellow eyes floating in the darkness before her.

“What are you doing?” she wailed.

“Waking you. You fainted. I was only going to chew a little.”

She felt movement. A warm weight lifted from her body and shook itself like a dog, sending dust into the air that made her sneeze. As her eyes adjusted, Jean saw a feeble, bluish thread of light overhead, where the sky was not quite obscured. In place of the cave, there was now a modest pocket, too small to stand up in, where the remains of the two limestone slabs met. A primitive fear stole over Jean’s body, and she began to shudder violently.

“There’s no way out,” she whispered. The sand muffled her words.

“What a pity,” said Vikram, with sympathy that sounded genuine. “I suppose you’ll either starve or suffocate. Still, there are worse tombs than a white sand gully at the edge of the Empty Quarter. I find this spot rather beautiful. Goodbye.” The yellow eyes began to fade. Jean had a sensation like half-waking in the middle of the night, and she fought to bring the eyes back into focus.

“You can’t leave me here,” she snapped. “What about all your gratitude for having been set free? Did you save my life only to let me die? What kind of honor is there in that?”

“Honor?” The eyes blazed up. “You flatter me. I have no honor.”

“I thought—” Jean fumbled for the right words. “I thought it was important here, for men. Debts and tribes and all that.”

“I am not a man, I am not from here, and you have been reading too many romantic novels. Honor indeed. If you had any sense, you’d be more frightened of me than you are of dying in this hole.”

The dark pressed at Jean. Vikram was no longer distinct from it; he was a pair of eyes woven into its very fabric, less a physical being than a threat of violence. Some small corner of her mind, neglected since childhood, comprehended what Vikram had said, and shrank from it.

“You’re some kind of demon,” she said in a voice hoarse with dust.

“No. But I’m not far off.”

Jean’s breathing sounded hollow in the small space that remained to her. The air was growing hot and stifled. She considered the eyes hanging like stars in the nothing before her, unblinking and fixed, not altogether unkind.

“I don’t believe you,” she said.

“About what I am?”

“About having no honor.”

“Then you’re a fool, for I’ve told you the truth.”

Jean’s legs were numb. A sudden rage shuddered over her, a hatred of her own fumbling, helpless body. She wanted to strike the creature in the dark, to rake the disembodied eyes with her nails and punish them for their animal unconcern.

“Please don’t make me beg.” She thought of all the ways she had pleaded with Harold: pleaded to travel to the City with him, pleaded to join his excursion into the desert with Masoud.

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