To the Al-Zabriti, horse-thievery is a crime tantamount to murder. Most times, offenders suffer a fate worse than death. But sometimes? Sometimes the hardship shows you who you ought to be…
For Ashivla, growing up with her father, Feraz, on the open trade roads was an endless adventure. Before she could even walk, she was helping him misdirect wealthy merchants or nobles, or giggling at just the right moment for him to slip by unnoticed. The two traveled the Qadiran lands, the dashing swashbuckler and the mouse girl. She could squeeze into tight places. She could bat her eyelashes at a boy and melt him where he stood. Con after con the pair performed until they came to the lands of the Al-Zabriti. The elaborate lie they wove over themselves as nobles, father and daughter from an ancient lineage thought dead (many such lineages Ashivla and Feraz had come to use over the years), that they had come to buy a horse on credit for her coming of age ceremony, but it had faltered after Ashivla made a crucial mistake, saying the wrong family name at a crucial juncture. The Al-Zabriti families saw through their ruse and captured them. To Feraz, they fitted him with a plow and harness and forced him to work and driving back the ever-encroaching sands from the town, something the undesirable or lame horses of the Al-Zabriti lines would have done. Feraz worked day in and day out in the burning sun, given only enough water to survive, though barely.
For Ashivla, they imprisoned her for a short time, but then one night they knocked her out and dragged her into the desert, leaving her there to die. When she woke, she staggered about the dunes, trying to find her way back to her father but became lost. She wandered into the domain of a sphinx. It lifted its large head, slumbering for untold generations and peered down at Ashivla, broken, scared, and on the verge of death. The winds of the desert roiled around them.
It said in a voice like ancient winds:
I can be big and I can be small.
I can hold the things you treasure most
Or I can pass by unnoticed, insignificant;
Your life is made up of me.
Ashivla thought. The sand and the wind bit her face. She thought of her father, the sweat pouring off of him as he worked. She said to the sphinx: ”A moment.”
The sphinx considered this. It said then:
Can you save
What's most precious to you?
Would you steal your future
to save your father's?
Ashivla said, resolute amidst the driving winds, ”Yes. I will do anything.”
The sphinx touched a claw to Ashivla’s forehead. A bright light curled through the talon into Ashivla's eyes. It spoke:
Go then: run, jump, stab, hide,
Create your own timeline.
Visions spun through her mind. The only thing she could make out was a training ground, the flag of the military. If she could join the military and attract a wealthy and influential patron, she could free her father from bondage. She left the desert changed. She did what she was always meant to.
She stole.
