Maslakhat nodded to acknowledge her departure and watched her go, his eyes narrowed with slight reservation. There was a sinister quality about this Akhal-Teke mare that unsettled him—something beyond the steps to all-too-familiar dance for the upper hand. Like a gnarled tree, sun-bleached from exposure with roots that ran deep enough into the sand to keep it standing even though it should have fallen years ago. He wanted her to be like Valve, but she was not.

In either case, he would not trifle with her, nor would he allow her to puppet his sinewy strings if he could not understand her true motivation. This would take time, and would involve discovering the identity and whereabouts of her sister. From her words, he would guess she either lingered within the territory here or she was keeping to the expanse of greater Salem. Perhaps then it was time to roam beyond the borders of the Dunes, to discover precisely who else dwelled within the confines of this island.


MASLAKHAT

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