Izzi tried to block out the music and loud voices. On the third attempt she still couldn’t read the spell all the way to the end. It was about secrecy, about remaining invisible—not the simple shimmer they taught at the Magekadeh, but a deeper, harder-to-detect disappearance between the layers of place. 

The handwriting and sigil script were tight and difficult. In her last days Mother was frail, hands cramped into claws barely able to hold the quill. She also had to unscramble the cryptic alterations that kept the knowledge secret. 

A deep resonant beat began, rushing the air in and out of her ears. The uneven laughter of a man already deeply drunk seemed to race up the stairs, chased by the higher peal of a woman’s laugh. It was a waste of time. She closed the journal, neatly slid it back into place, and spun the lamp wick down. Firelight from the courtyard below flickered in the intricate carvings on her ceiling. 

The foundations of the khan tensed, like a breath indrawn. Roots of ancient apricot trees clenched the stones like Mother’s old hands, gnarled and desperate, as if holding tight to something slipping away. Izzi always felt the magesty of the khan as if those roots twisted through her bones. 

She wrapped her hair back up, slipped into her sequinned slippers, and checked the ward of magic on her door. She sat on the veranda stairs for a while—chin on hands on knees. The general smokiness separated out into baked goat, spilled wine, and warm dust.

It was the usual celebration of a successful journey. Her half-brother, Simurgh, the caravan leader, laughed with a few of his men—his familiar voice echoed. Khan folk mingled with the caravaners in this rare moment of permitted downtime, now that the serving of the meal and formalities were over, and the growing beat signalled dancing. She slipped down a few more steps to the next level, observing like a ghost in her own khan, her own home—thinking about the spell of secrecy. 

Of course! She tilted her head back and smiled—the last part of the spell had just unravelled in her mind. 

The khan breathed out, leaving only the background pulse of magesty thrumming through Izzi like a second heartbeat. The wards her mother had laid over the khan were so sensitive, sometimes giving false tellings. Perhaps that’s all it was.

Izzi descended the remaining stairs, staying to shadows. Polished armour flickered. One of Hakim’s men nodded, then continued his patrol, tugged along by his huge mastiff dog.

The drum beat quickened, three burly musicians banging tombeks with a fury. Two older women strummed many-stringed qanuns, sounding like a band of hundreds. Near the main fire seven men cheered, lifted their cups to smack them together, wine splashing, then passed them quickly to others before raising their fists in a collective grip. With a shout they threw their hands down to draw their swords, and with a gasp everyone close rushed back.

But it was the three musicians blowing their humble neys that was the signal that started the dancers, and their sinuous tune seemed to guide the foot-stomping, swirling, treacherous dance of the scimitars. 

All onlookers clapped to the beat and cheered. Scimitars hissed through the air, narrowly missing each other and everything else. Sweat sprayed from flicking beards. The dancers dared death over and over, eyes flashing with concentration and zeal. The ultimate teamwork, the ultimate trust.

Izzi could not begin to understand what drove them to such foolishness, but she clapped with the others. Eventually the dance ended in a final flourish and shout. 

The music slowed, and many other young men joined the sword dancers in an informal time of dance training and laughter. 

She hung back behind a group of young people from both caravan and khan, who sat on benches away from the fire. She knew most of them casually. A girl a few years older than Izzi noticed her and beckoned. She had a round Kythian face like Izzi’s mother’s, eyes dark and slightly slanted above stern cheekbones. A name popped into Izzi’s head: Fariha. 

Izzi attempted a smile, and moved forward, but the music changed to a wavelike rhythm and Fariha’s attention turned away. Six women wove in to replace the men in the dance. The men taunted them with comments Izzi could not hear, causing reactions of feigned outrage and laughter.

Fariha winked at Izzi then jumped up and ran in to join the dancers. Izzi found herself closer to the group. Embarrassed, she backed away a little.

The ney players fell silent, allowing one qanun to dictate the movements of the dancers in a slow, rhythmic cadence. They turned and swirled, slippered feet seeming to spell out an elusive charm that Izzi tried to decipher like her mother’s tight script.

If there was a message there, it was in no language she could read—she could never move like that. The movements were fluid, hypnotic, the shimmer of their gold-threaded scarves catching the firelight as they twirled.

Izzi hovered at the edge of the group. One girl whispered too loudly to another, to be heard over the music.

“How can Fariha dance like that when her home village has been burned? Smoke rose over Xiktar only yesterday. The war swallowed it entire.”