of Nineteen.”
“What miracle?” A contemptuous dig from Khashayar. “The First Oralist is the only miracle in these lands.”
Najran barked at the herder. “Tell the guard to chain him outside.”
Khashayar scrambled to his feet. Najran did the same, removing the opal-edged dagger from his belt. A white line bisected his pupils. The little herder shrank back, hurrying to carry out his orders.
Rising, Arian looked to the Shaykh. “Enemy or not, you received my escort as a guest.”
Two men entered the tent and grabbed hold of Khashayar. The Shaykh waved his pipe. “Hold him. Do not harm him.” Then, to Najran: “Sit. I would hear the end of this debate.”
As Khashayar was led outside, Najran sheathed his dagger, the white line fading from his eyes. He had shed his robe. Under his uniform, his lean frame was honed to an edge.
“Your soft heart will not save him,” he said to Arian.
“Your dark arts do not matter. You have no power against me.”
He smiled suddenly, a stern slash across his face. “Shall we see, sayyidina?”
He waited for her to sit before taking his seat again, wearing his menace like a shroud.
Speaking to the Shaykh, Sinnia echoed Khashayar’s words. “I do not understand either. We know of no miracle of Nineteen in the lands of the Negus.”
The Shaykh set down his pipe. He pointed at Sinnia’s arms.
“The inscription on your circlets are the opening words of the Claim.”
Sinnia nodded, still puzzled.
“Nineteen letters. The opening verse occurs nineteen times throughout the Claim, the opening word—one hundred and fourteen times, a factor of nineteen. The opening word is absent in only a single chapter of the Claim. Nineteen chapters occur between the place where it is missing, and the place where it reappears twice. The number of the Claim’s verses are a factor of nineteen. The number of the Claim’s chapters, a factor of nineteen. The first revelation … nineteen words. The last revelation … nineteen words. Should I go on?”
The Shaykh’s fervor was that of a true believer, of a man who, though illiterate in the Claim, could inspire others with his passion.
Arian responded with a scrupulous observation.
“The total number of verses are only a factor of nineteen if you choose to disregard two verses of the Claim.”
“Irrelevant,” he snapped, no longer lounging on his cushions. “The verses you speak of are heretical. They stand apart from the Claim.”
“Do they?” Arian asked, certain in her knowledge as First Oralist. “Or have you declared them heretical in order to preserve your miracle? There is no metaphysical truth to ‘nineteen,’ aside from the meaning you assign it.”
“Sacrilege,” he whispered through dry lips. But even though the Shaykh wanted to deny her—to dismiss her without measuring her erudition—he couldn’t denounce the First Oralist’s claim to knowledge. He looked to his sayyid for confirmation of his beliefs, receiving a nod of reassurance in return. A sly smile curved Najran’s lips, as he took heed of Sinnia.
A prickle of awareness crept along Arian’s spine. Najran wasn’t an ideologue or an impassioned believer. He was a paid assassin. With all an assassin’s tricks.
Speaking to Sinnia, he said, “You claimed to have proof of Nineteen.”
Sinnia didn’t hesitate. Linking her hand with Arian’s, she began to recite, her low, throaty voice rich in its offering of beauty.
“Mention in the Book, the story of the Adhraa when she withdrew in seclusion from her family to a place in the east. She placed a screen to screen herself, then We sent her Our Ruh, and he appeared before her in the form of a man.”
The Shaykh paused, letting the words sink in. Then he motioned for Sinnia to continue.
“She said: ‘I seek refuge with the One from you, if you fear the One.’”
She looked to Arian, who added, “The spirit of the Ruh announced to the Adhraa the gift of a righteous son.”
Though her eyes were bright with tears, Sinnia finished the verse: “She said, ‘How can I have a son, when no man has touched me, nor am I unchaste?’”
Najran cut across the spell woven by Sinnia’s words, speaking solely to the Shaykh. “She comes from the land of the Negus. Small wonder she spins these fables that honor the Esayin. The Najashi are Esayin—they learn fables from birth that hold no meaning for us.”
Arian rose to her feet, bringing Sinnia and Wafa up with her.
“The Najashi may have their own scriptures, but they are also people of the Claim. Sinnia gave you the nineteenth chapter of the Claim, which is the story of the Adhraa.”
Now the Al Marra had proof of their knowledge of the Claim. And in all his veneration of the miracle of Nineteen, the Shaykh could not discount the honor bestowed upon a woman by the nineteenth chapter of the Claim. It stood not only for the Adhraa herself, but as a lesson as to how women were meant to be treated by the people of the Claim.
Her hand was bound to Sinnia’s, memory flaring of their journey to the Golden Finger, the minaret where two rivers met. The minaret had been inscribed with turquoise bands of calligraphy, and circling the tower, Arian and Sinnia had found verses that told the story of the Adhraa’s utmost esteem in the Claim.
Najran helped his Shaykh to his feet.
“As I said, the mother of the Esayin.” Those strange eyes flicked over her face. “The Claim grants women no such honor.”
Her time was running out. Najran’s influence over his shaykh was too powerful, his menace all-consuming. She would have to call upon the Claim as something other than recitation.
“Then why is it women who were chosen as its guardians?”
Najran’s fingers moved over the daggers at his waist. “Because we took the Council of Hira at its word.” He gripped one of his daggers and drew it from his belt, the hilt concealed in his hand. “But now our truths are ascendant: ‘Over this are Nineteen.’”
Arian had no answer. The verse was an obscure one. She had puzzled over it for months; she was still no closer to deciphering it.
The one thing she knew with certainty was that it could not have reduced the grandeur of the Claim to a numerological miracle. Not if it had to deny other verses of the Claim to do so.
If she could show them the Bloodprint, she could shred the Nineteen’s heresies with irrefutable proof. The fact that she couldn’t was a weakness Najran was prepared to exploit.
“The Bloodprint confirms it. Over this are Nineteen. What does the Council of Hira have to offer in response?”
His arrogance
