So they had something else in common, Maslakhat mused to himself silently as Ak Burun echoed what he had told her at their initial meeting almost exactly. It was a subtle, auspicious assertion that perhaps they had unwittingly crossed paths in their past. The golden bay stallion did not claim to remember every soul he encountered in his decade plus life among the sands of this and other deserts, but he knew he would have remembered the white-nosed mare. She was not the easily forgotten sort. He filed this claim away for a later conversation, his attention pulled toward Kore’s exuberant burst into the water.

However the Arabian’s mirth was short lived; as Ak Burun directed the conversation toward the whereabouts of her mysterious sister, he returned his gaze to Kore as her expression shifted from playful to soft. Maslakhat offered her a light nod and small smile in acknowledgement, glad she was the one to ask the question. He had wondered precisely who Ak Burun called sister almost immediately after the Akhal-Teke mare first mentioned her, and as Kore suggested, there was a chance Maslakhat already knew who she was.

“It is possible,” he encouraged, and then shifted his gaze back to Ak Burun. “I can say the same,” he said, referring to her absence from Salem. “Though it does us little good to dwell upon the past.”

Like Ak Burun’s assertion of sleeplessness, his statement wasn’t entirely true. However for the purposes of this conversation, it was necessary. There was a pressing need to look forward, to reshape these lands into a mould befitting of its true wardens. It was a process that could not be rushed, but must be chiseled away steadily and with expert craftsmanship—one small chip at a time.


MASLAKHAT

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