Free Throne of the Crescent Moon by Saladin Ahmed

Adoulla needed to try a different tack. “Zamia, I don’t mean you any insult. I know what it is to lose your happiness to the ghuls. And I can help you, girl. If you let me.”
    When the girl spoke it was with the voice of a dead woman. “I lied. When I spoke of finding the marshmen’s bodies, I said that I had never seen such a thing. I lied. I had seen it days before. It happened to my band.”
    So that’s it
. Adoulla reached out a comforting hand to the girl, but she stopped him with an angry look. She swallowed, wiped away another tear, and continued. “I was out scouting one night, far ahead of the rest of the band. The next morning, when I returned to where they’d set their tents…What I found…” The girl’s matter-of-fact tone slid away. She fell silent, her eyes wide with remembered horrors. Then she smothered her pain again and went on.
    “Bodies. All of their bodies. All seven and fifty of the Banu Laith Badawi—old Uncle Mahloud and spoiled little Wazzi. Faziza, who believed that she really ruled the band. My father. My beautiful young cousin, who would have been chieftain—his body had been burned. All of them, do you understand? I am the last.”
    It had the sound of something the girl had been repeating to herself. Adoulla did not speak, hoping the girl would go on.
    “There were foul, puzzling smells everywhere,” she said after a moment. “Jackal-scent where no hair could be found. Fresh spilled child-blood that smelled of ancient buildings. But these scents led nowhere. The only sign I could find was this.” Reaching into her tunic the girl drew forth an ornate curved dagger. The blade was stained with what looked like dried blood.
    “It was my father’s. He had hidden it in the folds of his chieftain’s robes. There is blood on it, but the scent is neither man nor animal. And if the stea qd if thetories are to be believed, ghuls bleed no blood.”
    Adoulla’s mind raced, recalling the strange phrases that had come to him earlier when he’d sought God’s help in finding the ghuls.
‘The jackal that eats souls.’ ‘The thing that slays the lion’s pride.’
He turned the lines over in his head but still came up with nothing. “Generally, thestories are
not
to be believed,” he finally said to Zamia. “But that one at least is true. Which means that your father wounded something or someone else. God willing, that dagger may hold answers.”
    “God willing,” the girl replied, though she didn’t sound as if she held out much hope. “I have been trying to find the trail of the creatures for days now, seeking to avenge my band so that I may die with honor. I came upon them almost by accident just as they attacked you two.” Zamia was quiet for a moment. She swallowed and then spoke again.
    “This…this…soul-eating. This is what they did to my band.” It wasn’t a question. She looked straight ahead as she spoke, and her now dry eyes looked almost soul-eaten themselves. She held the dagger aloft. “This is all that I have of my father, though I will never wield it—for since I was given the lion-shape I foreswore other weapons. ‘
My claws, my fangs, the silver knives with which the Ministering Angels strike
.’ This is the old saying.”
    God save us from the poetry of barbarians!
But the words were as bitterly spoken as any Adoulla had ever heard. He had seen God-alone-remembered how many pained faces during his career, but looking at the pain on the face of this rough little girl who was a lion, was not made easier by that history. Still, he knew that, unlike most victims he had dealt with, this one would want and need hard truth more than coddling.
    “Listen to me, Angel-touched one. Your family is dead, in body and soul. I can offer you nothing that will change that. But I can offer you a chance at vengeance.” It was the only thing a tribesman could want right now, Adoulla knew. “You may travel with us as an ally if you wish, Zamia Banu Laith