Ignited By Fire

Divided Lands

I wanted to believe that everything would be okay.

It had been over two years since the murder of the Sorran women on West Sorran lands, and tensions were finally simmering down. They believed we did it, and we believed that their own did.

"So, what do you think?" Sarake knew what I'd say, what anyone would say, but I suppose she just wanted to hear it from someone else. From someone she trusted.

"I think you should marry him. You like him, right? And as you've said before, this will go a long way in smoothing things over with King Baru."

I didn't know how much I believed that, but I wanted it to be true. When King Baru proposed that his son, Zaire, marry Sarake to smooth the tensions between the two kingdoms, I wasn't sure. She was beautiful, of course. Sarake, at twenty-four, was one of the most beautiful women I had ever seen. Her curls, laced with gold, complimented her eyes, and her skin the color of the sand that surrounded us. It was a common joke that we were the live embodiments of Sorra. Of course, I was the sand, quick and tumultuous, and she was the mountains above us, stable and beautiful.

But Zaire was angry. Angry at everyone, but especially angry at us. Three Sorran girls, with the youngest merely fourteen, were killed on the West Sorran mountains, further up than most would dare to climb, near the dragons.

When the bodies were retrieved, it was clear, however, that they were not killed by dragons.

They were brutalized in a way that was uniquely human, and of the three girls, one was Zaire's sister, Oasi. At seventeen, we didn't know why she was up that high or why she was on Sorran land in the first place, but we did know that he had never been the same after she died. Oasi wasn't King Barru's daughter, instead born to his wife and one of her guards after they married and had Zaire, but I don't think the King cared all that much. He had his heir, and the child born after that to a woman he never wanted to marry meant very little.

The King wanted peace, that much I knew, and her death may be the way to get it. He didn't want a war, and my sister may be the missing piece. She was beloved by all, because of her beauty, her kind spirit and her lineage - and she was the first child of the leader of the Askari - my father. The Askari were forty thousand warriors who protected the people of the West Sorra, training from a young age in the art of dhanurveda. The Askari were strong, strategic and loyal, their ability to maintain control over the West Sorran lands the major barrier in Sorran attempts at annexation, or as they called it, reunification.

If the crown prince of the Sorra were to marry the daughter of the head of the Askari, and by our ways of government the functional head of state of West Sorra, maybe there would be peace. Maybe the nations would be intertwined once again, and there would be no war. I worried what the marriage between Sarake and Zaire would signify - that we were guilty, and trying to make amends? We had stayed firm in our refusals to unite over the years, and I worried what the implications would be from a union now.

Sarake sat on my bed, her fingers mindlessly drawing shapes onto the silk layers.

"I do like him. He's always been friendly, right?"

I frowned. "He's not friendly."

Now it was her turn to frown. "Okay, but he's polite. We used to be friends, you, know, before. Why not again?"

"Because he thinks that Sun had something to do with his sister's death! That's not something you get over, Sarake."

"He was grieving, and Sun has been cleared! There was no evidence that our brother did anything to those girls, or that he was even on patrol in that area!"

And she was right, there wasn't. That didn't mean that it wasn't true.

After a bit of back and forth with my sister, we ate dinner with our parents. My brother was, well, somewhere, and didn't usually eat with us. Despite the heavily spiced vegetables and perfectly grilled selection of meats, I was more interested in the conversation between my family than I was in the food. My mother, always outspoken, and my father, always willing to debate, were in a heated argument over what to do. My sister wanted this marriage, and so did my father, both seeing it as a way to ensure peace. My mother disagreed, not wanting her oldest daughter to be "sold" in the name of a peace attempt, especially when she didn't believe in reunification at all. My mother and I didn't agree on much, but on this, her and I were on the same page.