Nights of Silk and Sapphire by Amber Jacobs

Author:Amber Jacobs
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Ylva-Publishing
Published: 2016-03-30T16:00:00+00:00

Under the light of a full moon, the group of mounted figures moved across the shifting sands, riding single file to hide their numbers. They kept to the shallow ground, skirting the higher dunes to avoid offering any watching eyes the opportunity to spot their silhouettes against the starry sky. Their rear guard trailed a lightly weighted skid behind his horse to obscure any trace of their passing in the rocky sands.

Bahira, a young woman who had served as a scout of the Scion for almost a third of her life, listened to the echoing silence of the desert at night. Her eyes, trained over the years to be ever-watchful, skipped along the expanses of rock and dune, never idle, always attentive. This assignment was important to her. Falak, the leader of the scouts and Bahira’s sometime lover, had entrusted to her the task of keeping watch on the stirrings among the renegade tribes being led by Shakir Al’Jadin. It was a promotion she did not intend Falak to regret giving her.

Glancing over her shoulder, around the raven-fletched arrows that were the trademark of the Scion’s elite scouts, Bahira nodded to the line of troops behind her. These were all skilled and able soldiers. They had been her family since she first left behind her nomadic tribe to seek her fortune in the city of El’Kasari. Nasir, the slender, hard-muscled man riding directly behind her, was her second in command and had fought beside her through many battles. She gestured for him to ride at the front with her.

Nasir gave his commander and friend a smile, his eyes remaining watchful; this was, after all, the wild-land. The land of their enemies. “The night seems quiet,” he said in a low tone, one practiced so the sound would not carry more than a few feet. “Shakir and his dogs would be fools to move about under the light of a full moon.”

“We must be vigilant still. I do not flatter myself to think that our presence here has gone entirely undetected. Shakir knows the Scion will be watching him. It is possible he may try to blind her eyes.”

“True enough. Yet we have been here some time now, and they have made no move to attack us.”

“Our mission is too important to leave to chance,” Bahira reiterated. “The Scion needs to know when Shakir decides to strike.”

Nasir was silent for a long while before he asked gravely, “And what of the thunder? Have you reported it to Falak?”

Bahira frowned. Everything, it seemed, came down to the thunder. Her fellow scouts were edgy and concerned. Through the weeks they had been here, their efforts to watch Shakir’s actual camp had been foiled by geography. The camp was nestled in a wide canyon, surrounded on three sides by towering, sharp-toothed cliffs, impossible to climb, even for the adept scouts. The position afforded Shakir great protection from spies; his men patrolled a wide perimeter, and Bahira had been unable to penetrate their ring of steel.

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