Part 1:  OF FOXES AND HAWKS

 

 

Chapter One

Zair

 

Danger.

Its sulfuric smell traveled in the hot desert winds, down the tall dunes circling the academy to taunt my senses. I almost called out a warning, but no one would believe the girl with the evil eyes.

“Utterly profane,” a Mizsab tutor spat. Her nose ring glinted as she glared down at us from a classroom’s balcony. “This tribe of humans with aziza blood tainting their veins. That it’s Visiting Day doesn’t mean they can come and smear this academy!”

Her vicious stare scraped over my face like talons.

I silently listed the positives as my sandals tapped on the winding footpath.

At least the balcony’s shade is a good reprieve from the Sahara Desert’s heat.

She isn’t throwing things at us.

My sister didn’t seem to hear the woman’s words of rejection.

At eighteen years old, I’d learned that however small, focusing on the good always made the spite easier to swallow. But even those couldn’t silence the warning chimes in my ears. Trouble traveled on the wind to the Nergal Healing Academy.

The academy remained oblivious, its majestic buildings rising around us in a network of halls and stairsthat emanated steam in the heat. White marble tilesadorned the soaring walls and sable banners fluttered from the mahogany posts that lined the footpaths. A guard wearing a headscarf against the sun led a wild dog—a hulking canine with long fangs and piercing eyes—into our aisle.

I squeezed the callused oak of my longbow as the canine’s black and flaxen fur brushed my skirts. It sniffed and snarled at us. The guard watched, anticipating a howlof warning. But the beast didn’t smell any trouble.

Jaw clenched, the guard finally led the wild dog awaywithout apologizing.

“If only I had an elite soldier’s rank,” I whispered to my father, who towered like a great rock beside me, “then they would respect us.”

“You are worthy of respect even without a rank, Zair,” he said, his gray-streaked brown hair framing his passionate expression. “Never doubt that.”

Perhaps in theory but not in reality, papa.

My mother’s copper bangles jingled as she waved me closer to her. Although she stood a few inches shorter than me and wore flat old sandals, they weren’t the reasons she appeared timid here in the academy. The balcony above cast shadows over her downturned rosy lips. “Zair, do you feel it too? The chimes of trouble in the air?”

A chill rippled under my skin.

“I do, mama.” I glanced toward the sand dunes, understanding her need for my confirmation. The threatsour family faced out of people’s hatred for her tribe forced us to constantly look over our shoulders for enemies. But this aura of danger… it prickled my skin like tines.

She touched my father’s arm, her head barely reaching his chest, and leaned close to keep my sister from overhearing her. Sarai’s keen senses were yet to mature fully, and mama would not want to frighten her needlessly.

“We should tour quickly and leave, husband,” my mother murmured.

His thick brows fused. “Leave? We’ve just arrived and traveled a long way to visit the academy. We need to take our time. Make sure it’s a suitable academy for Sarai.”

She shook her head, her veil rippling over her maroon cotton blouse. “The atmosphere is unsettled. The air wails like a grieving mother.”

My father glanced at me, taking in my tight grip on my longbow. If my older sister, Niah, had been here, she would have affirmed the hum of danger too, but she had volunteered to stay home to attend to my mother’scustomers. My father knew the instincts we had inherited from my mother’s tribespeople did not give false warnings. If we were troubled despite the heavy security in the academy—the stoic swordsmen patrolling every corridor and archers watching from the balustrades—it was safer to leave soon.

“Should we warn everyone?” he asked.

My mother glanced at the library’s colonnade wheretwo librarians frowned at us. “Our abilities warn against different kinds of threats. It could be that someone is watching and waiting to harm our family alone. Even if the danger is to the academy or someone here, they’ll scorn our instincts rather than listen to them because…”

Because we are so despised. Her unsaid words pierced my stomach like needles, and I glanced at the granite floor to hide my wince.

“Alright,” he said grimly, his light-brown eyes darkening both with apprehension and resolve. “We will leave soon. Let Sarai have a quick visit first.”

A few feet ahead, my little sister fluttered on like a butterfly, anxious as my family toured the domed academy that ran along the eastern borders of Thalesai.

The teachers will love you, I wanted to reassure her, but I couldn’t promise her that.

“Nergal’s healing academy is very different from its military academy, Zair,” Sarai exclaimed, waiting until I joined her on the open bridge of the second level. Her footwear clapped eagerly on its mosaic tiles. “Even the healing students’ uniform is less severe than the military’s. I like it very much.”

My mother had styled Sarai’s hair into a neat bun, very different from my sleek zigzag weaves that rippled down to my waist. Sarai had also insisted on wearing a black caftan with silver trimmings to imitate the Nergal uniform colors that its students proudly displayed. Whether it was the Nergal’s Military Academy, Healing Academy, Philosophy Academy, or the Engineering branch, our colors were the same. Just like our insignia: a fox’s head with its mouth wide and its fangs ferocious.

“You will look wonderful in their uniform,” I said.

Her golden eyes brightened with pleasure. “I’ll score the highest in the exams and make you very proud!”

A lump formed in my throat, and I nodded. Thalesai’s elite academies were built solely to train the future rulers of the kingdom. The smartest, strongest, quickest, and most innovative youths to inherit the leadership mantles someday. As our rivers coursed to kingdoms with magical people who were more powerful than us humans, Thalesai needed intelligent rulers to thrive.

Sarai looked precious, like a cub, and I grew antsier over the wind’s whispers of dawning trouble.

“There are so many classrooms in the healing academy too,” she observed.

“Indeed, our classrooms are fewer,” I agreed, seeking a distraction from the bell-like ringing in my head. In a few moments, we would be gone. “We military students enjoy our training pits far more than we enjoy books and classrooms.”

The Thalesain soldiers who overthrew our oppressors in the War of Beasts hadn’t battled with quills and paper.

“But reading is your favorite pastime,” Sarai chimed with a conspiratorial grin.

I lightly flicked her nose. “Hush or you’ll ruin my fierce reputation.”

She giggled.

“And, thankfully, only the guards here carry weapons, rather than students and teachers clanking like gongs with every step they take,” my mother teased.

Still, she couldn’t hide the worry edging her lips. The same full lips my sisters and I had. Just as we had inherited her midnight hair, brown-gold eyes, and beautiful oval face that lit up with rare smiles. She had pulled her maroon veil low over her face to conceal her eyes, but Sarai and I went without veils. Not even against the blistering sun. While he left my mother to make her choice, my father would not hear of it that his daughters hid in shame while he was present. The double, golden rings in our eyes proclaimed our mother’s Esan tribe to any who looked.

And look they did, bristling like sidewinders. The teachers in silver robes and black turbans striding briskly by us; the students ambling in and out of classrooms, balancing tomes and jars of experimental medicine; the guards with sheathed adaswords before every entryway.

As our sandals thudded past their stations, the guards gripped their hilts as if the steel could incinerate us with a mere touch. We are more human than aziza. And steel doesn’t even burn aziza, only pure iron, you fools.

“Oh, this place is big!” Sarai remarked as she tipped her head back and surveyed the structures marching for the sky amid the yellow sand dunes. “I have to train here.”

My father patted my shoulder with his huge, brown paw of a hand. “Keep studying and working hard like your sister did. And after you turn eleven next year, you just might.”

***

Excerpt from A Desert of Bleeding Sand by Lucia Damisa, published by Darkan Press Inc. March 27, 2025.

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