El Halin dips her dished head as the black mare bids them both goodbye. “Until then,” she repeats, and follows the path of the Akhal-Teke until her skinny frame is no longer visible in the dark. Only then does the Arabian turn to face her original companion.

The proud red mare also stares after the stranger, nostrils flaring as she sifts through the scents hanging over the Dunes. Her ears are pinned. “Of course he was forthcoming,” she sneers. “If he’s told that ‘Teke too much I’ll gut him. Why is he here?” she demands, pinning the flea-bitten gray mare with her hard, dark eyes.

The High Seer snorts. “You left after I did. You tell me what your son is doing on these Isles.”

Iftikhar lunges suddenly and bites the thick flesh of El Halin’s red shoulder, holding her fast before she spits out the mouthful of skin and allows the High Seer to jerk away with a sharp squeal. “He is not my son,” Iftikhar hisses as El Halin curls her neck to inspect the bite with careful lips. The assault has left a visible welt across the gray mare’s left bloodmark, and the High Seer flattens her ears as she lifts her head to glare at Iftikhar.

“This insult will not go ignored by the Walking Mare,” El Halin promises in a low voice.

“Stuff it,” Iftikhar snaps. “You and I both know there’s no one here to impress. Save your faith for the idiots still wallowing uselessly in the sands of our home. They need your saçmalık more than I do.”

El Halin holds her head straight atop her shoulders and flicks her ears forward as the red mare turns away. Something has shifted and overturned in their relationship. This is not the first time El Halin has felt the power between them shift, but it is the first time on the Isles that Iftikhar has challenged her divine authority directly. “The fact remains that Gabbar is here,” she says, reclaiming the conversation from the red mare’s rage. “Go find him. He will be useful to the two of us. I will remain in the Desert and continue to make headway there; come find me after you’ve spoken with the breeder and together the two of us will discuss our next course of action.”

Iftikhar shakes out her mane. “Fine. But keep that ‘Teke out of it. Both of them,” she adds with a menacing glance over her shoulder. ‘Tekes are trouble, and each of the two she has been unfortunate enough to meet since coming here have left a sharp, metallic taste on her tongue after their departure. Iftikhar does not care for it.

“Go,” El Halin says.

The red mare throws out one white leg and begins her trek across the Dunes, walking at a sedate pace just to spite the gray mare’s implied urgency. Her hips roll beneath the long strands of her flagged tail and her head is held high as she scans the shadowed landscape for any shape of a horse. Behind her, the High Seer turns in a slow half-circle before easing into a trot to head in the other direction.

Soon all that remains is a nexus of scuffed sand with three separate trails of hoofprints leading away from it, marks that are already being consumed by the wind.


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IFTIKHAR & EL HALIN
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