The Theft of Sunlight

  Dedication

  For every girl who chooses the hard road

  and uses the fire in her heart to light the way.

  Map

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Map

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Books by Intisar Khanani

  Back Ad

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Chapter

  1

  There’s a mangy dog crouched beneath the second-to-last vegetable cart. As a rule, I avoid mangy dogs. Especially ones with bloodshot eyes and a clearly infected paw. But this is a sad-looking creature, its narrow face streaked with mud and its coat thinned to almost nothing over its ribs, skin scaly and pink beneath the grime.

  “Something wrong?” Ani asks as she switches her brightly woven market basket to her other arm. At her side, her little sister, Seri, dips a booted toe into a puddle left from this morning’s spring rains. The crowd around us shifts and moves, a sea of brown faces and bright clothing filling the wide town square to brimming. For a moment I lose sight of the dog as a group of older women push past, skirts flapping around sturdy boots.

  “No,” I say, turning to my friend. “I’m just wondering where Bean is. Have you seen her, Seri?”

  Seri looks up, twin black braids swinging. “Oh yes! She’s across by the horses. Should I go get her?”

  “Yes, please.”

  Seri grins and scampers away after my own little sister.

  “Seri! Watch where you’re going!” Ani calls helplessly.

  “She’s quick,” I assure her. There’s not much harm a six-year-old can come to at Sheltershorn’s market day; for all the crowd of shoppers, almost everyone knows one another, and no one would be so stupid as to come galloping through on a horse. In truth, the biggest danger here would be the mucky puddles, and I’m pretty sure Seri loves running through those.

  “Do you need anything else?” Ani asks, glancing into her basket. “Mama wanted me to find radishes, but I haven’t seen any.”

  “Might still be too early,” I observe. “They should have them next week. Ours are only just starting to mature.”

  Our home may be a horse farm, but Mama and my middle sister, Niya, make sure we have a few beds of greens and vegetables, and our early spring greens are growing strong this year. Really, the only reason we’re here at the first big market day of the spring is to catch up with our friends.

  Ani and I are still chatting by the cart when Seri comes racing back, dragging the much taller Bean by the hand. “I found her!”

  “I was busy,” Bean protests, nearly tripping as she jerks to a stop before us. At fourteen, she’s like a young colt unused to the way of her limbs, still awkward and liable to knock things over, including herself. “Couldn’t it have waited, Rae?”

  I pretend to consider this. “But there’s someone under the cart there I thought you might be able to help.”

  “Someone—?” Bean echoes at the same time that Ani swivels around to look under the cart.

  “That thing is—it’s diseased!” Ani exclaims, reaching to grab Seri before she can dart closer for a look. “You can’t mean for Bean to approach it?”

  “Bean has a way with animals,” I say serenely. Even mangy, red-eyed creatures that could scare away grown men.

  “Oh, you poor baby,” Bean croons, squatting beside us. The dog looks over and wags its scruffy tail once, proving my point.

  “Come on out, sweet baby.” Bean holds out an inviting hand. “We’ll get you cleaned up and then no one”—she spares Ani a hard look—“can call you mean names. And maybe my sister Niya can take care of your paw. She’s very good with cuts. And I know a thing or two about them as well.”

  The dog, lured by Bean’s innate kindness, creeps out from under the cart and sits at her feet, earning a series of exclamations from the adults around us.

  “Eh, Rae-girl!” the vegetable woman cries, her long silver earrings swinging. She’s known us since we were born, and isn’t the least surprised to see Bean with a bedraggled stray. “Take that creature away now. I can’t have it by my food.”

  “Of course, auntie,” I say, dipping my chin in respect. “Bean, do you think the dog can make it to our cart? You know where Mama left it.”

  “Sure she can,” Bean says, one hand buried in the patchy bit of fur about the dog’s neck, scratching vigorously. I wince.

  “Just . . . make sure to wash your hands afterward, all right?”

  Bean casts me a disgusted look and rises to her feet. “Come on, little lady. You can ride in our cart, and we’ll get you all cleaned up at home.”

  “You aren’t actually taking that creature home?” Ani breathes. Even she doesn’t dare say such a thing loud enough for Bean to hear.

  “Of course she is,” Seri asserts, her eyes shining with adoration.

  “Someone has to take care of it,” I say as the dog limps off beside my sister. “She’ll fit right in with all of Bean’s other reclamation projects. You’ll see, Mama won’t even say a word.”

  But Ani’s not listening anymore. Seri’s run ahead to catch up with Bean and the dog. Ani calls after her, “Seri—you may watch only! No touching! Bean, see that she doesn’t!”

  I suppress a grin and walk on, knowing that Bean will make sure Seri stays safe around the dog. When Ani quits yelling, I point out the final cart in the marketplace. “Good news! I’ve found your radishes.”

  Ani’s face lights up, and she happily sets to bargaining for them. I wander a little farther on, coming to a stop where the road leaves the square. It’s a bright beautiful day, the tall adobe buildings bathed in sunlight, the great wood timbers that strengthen each floor throwing shadows where they extrude from the walls. Above the noise of the market, I can hear birds chittering, and I can still smell the fresh scent of green things blowing in from the plains.

  “Now there’s a girl who’ll end up alone,” a voice says somewhere behind me.

  I freeze up, my shoulders stiff as old wood. I can’t even make myself turn around, or look to see who else they might be talking about. I don’t have to, anyhow. I know it’s me.

  “No su
rprise there,” another voice says. “Shame her parents’ll have to keep her. No one else will.”

  I make myself turn to the side and stump away, back toward Ani, because I don’t need to see who’s talking to know which boys they are. And anyway, I won’t end up alone. I’ve got my sister Niya, same as she’s got me.

  “What is it?” Ani asks as I reach her. She glances past me. “Were those boys bothering you?”

  “No.” My voice is hard and flat. I try to ease it a bit. “They didn’t say a word to me.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s Finyar’s son; he’s always full of ugly things. Want me to punch him for you?”

  I laugh, taken back to that day Ani and I became friends a good dozen years ago, when she punched a boy who was heckling me and then proceeded to play with Bean. Anyone who would take on bullies and then befriend a toddler couldn’t possibly be someone I didn’t want to know. Even if I prefer to fight my own battles.

  She flexes her fingers now. “You know, you haven’t let me punch anyone in ages. How are they going to learn their manners if someone doesn’t set them straight?”

  “They’re not worth it,” I say easily. That much, at least, is true. They aren’t even worth acknowledging. “And it would ruin a lovely day. Let their mothers deal with them.”

  Ani snorts but lets the subject drop. I loop my arm through hers, and together we make our way back through the market. We spend a half hour catching up with mutual friends before parting ways, Seri pattering off to visit her grandmother and Ani calling admonishments to watch her step.

  Ani and I get along wonderfully, Mama once told me, because at heart we were both cut from the same stubborn cloth, tight-woven and sheltering. Ani would go to war for her friends, and for her sister. And I’ve learned to do whatever it takes to protect my own sisters: Bean from her hotheadedness, and Niya because of the secret she keeps.

  Still, Sheltershorn is a quiet town. There are few dangers, even fewer strangers, and little that threatens us beyond inclement weather and the occasional accident. So, when Ani comes up to our cart over an hour later, as we ready ourselves for the ride back home, it doesn’t occur to me that anything can be too wrong. The market is slowly emptying out, the remaining shoppers lingering over their purchases as they catch up with friends. There’s nothing apparent to worry about.

  “Rae,” Ani says, glancing from me to Bean and back again. “Have you seen Seri? I can’t find her anywhere. It’s been an hour at least.”

  “What?” Mama asks, coming around the cart.

  Inside the cart, seated as far from the dog as possible, my middle sister, Niya, looks up, gray eyes worried.

  “It’s my sister,” Ani says, the gentle brown of her face faintly sallow. “I can’t find her.”

  Chapter

  2

  “Could she have gone off with a friend?” Mama asks, calm as always.

  Ani hesitates. “She said she was going to our grandmother’s, but when I went to fetch her, Nani said she’d never come. No one’s seen her along the way, either. I know she’s not at home. I was hoping she’d come back to check on the dog.”

  Bean frowns. “She only helped me settle it in, and then she went back to you.”

  “You haven’t seen her since?” Ani asks.

  We shake our heads.

  “We’ll help you look,” Mama says. “Bean and I will ask the market sellers with you. Rae and Niya, you head to Ani’s home and ask everyone along the way. Niya . . . you don’t mind helping?”

  It’s not the question it seems to be. In that moment, I know Mama believes something bad has happened to Seri, because she’s asking Niya to look for Seri in the way only she can, using the magic that she’s kept hidden her whole life. Mama would never ask such a thing unnecessarily.

  It’s a risk—it always is, when Niya uses her magic—because by this point, we’ve broken every law there is about harboring a secret talent. She should have been taken from us when her powers first manifested, to be trained as a mage in service to the king, but Mama and Baba had met a mage or two by then. They didn’t want their child taken away and raised to be a stranger. So they kept her, and hid her, and Niya has trained herself, working small magics around the ranch, and then teaching herself healing to help the animals, and eventually to subtly aid Mama’s midwifery patients when nothing else can. Only a handful of people know Niya’s secret, and for Mama to ask her to use her gifts now? She’s very worried.

  “Of course I’ll help,” Niya says. She grabs the small bag that holds her sewing and hops down from the wagon. “Come on, Rae.”

  “Were there any strangers here today?” I hear Bean ask as Niya and I start walking. I cock my head, listening, and catch Mama’s answer: of course there were a few, but we can’t assume it was strangers.

  We also can’t assume that it wasn’t.

  “Do you think she could have been . . .” Niya hesitates, and I hear the word she won’t say, the one I don’t want to speak either.

  “That hasn’t happened in years,” I say, my voice short.

  “But it has happened.”

  I look away. “That’s why you need to track her.”

  It’s still possible Seri only popped into a friend’s house and is happily eating honey cakes, blissfully unaware of our worry. But Ani’s already been asking about her all over town; someone would have said if they’d seen her.

  “Hurry,” I say, walking as fast as my uneven gait can take me. Niya keeps pace easily. We call out to the people we see, all of them familiar, and by the time we’ve arrived at the blacksmith’s home, right beside the smithy, there are a dozen more people out looking for Seri. All the children have been sent home, though.

  “Rae?” Ani’s mother, Shimai, calls out to us as we hurry to her. She stands with two other women just outside her house, one of them holding a bread basket. It’s a normal scene. Too normal. It hadn’t occurred to me until this moment that Ani’s mother wouldn’t know about Seri’s disappearance. But then she says, sharply, “Seri’s not at my mother’s, is she?”

  I shake my head. “She never went there. Do you know where she could be? Ani and my family are searching the market, and we’ve asked all along the way here. No one’s seen her in the last hour or so.”

  Beneath the brown of her skin, Shimai’s face pales, her lips bloodless. “She has to be here.”

  “We should mount a proper search,” one of her friends says. “Before it gets any later. There’s no time to lose.”

  “I’ll check her friends’ houses,” the other says. “Shimai, where should I—?”

  Shimai gives herself a shake and starts forward with a jerk, her expression shifting from panic to determination. She rattles off a short list of friends’ names for her friend to check, directs the other to inform her husband, who is absent from the smithy today of all days, and sets off down the street toward the market to rally a proper search. As she hurries past, she says, “Rae, you get your sister somewhere safe. Both of your sisters, just in case. They can stay in my house, if needed.”

  “Yes, auntie,” I say, thankful for the excuse to send Niya into the house.

  I stand in the doorway, watching Shimai as she races down the street, her legs flashing beneath her skirts. Behind me, Niya runs upstairs. This is why Mama sent us here: if we can recover a hair or two, or possibly even a ribbon or scrap of cloth that Seri has worn, then Niya might be able to use it to track her.

  “Got it,” Niya calls from upstairs, and I sag against the doorframe with relief. “Took a hair from her comb.”

  “Good. What else do you need?”

  “Water. I’ve got everything else.”

  There’s the kitchen, which has the decided advantage of keeping us hidden from sight. “Will a bowl do?”

  Niya nods. “Just fine.”

  “This way.” I lead the way through a house I know as well as my own. The adobe walls are smooth and cool, the kitchen shutters pushed open to light the room with its fire grate to one side and it
s low worktable to the other. I fill a bowl with water from a pitcher while Niya hurries outside, returning a moment later with a leaf in her hand. She pulls the door shut behind her.

  I set the bowl before her as she drops onto a cushion before the table. “Do you know how to do it?”

  She shrugs, delving into her bag. “I’ve never tried tracking before, but I know how to make a compass. If I can get the compass to point toward her, rather than north, then we’ll have a direction.”

  “Brilliant.” I sometimes wonder if Niya wishes our parents hadn’t hidden her. Wishes she could have learned these things properly instead of fighting her way to each new success, all in secret.

  “Not my idea,” she mutters. “Heard about it once. It has to do with flow.”

  I nod and close the connecting door to the kitchen, as well as the shutters. I light a lamp to take the place of the sunlight. When I turn back, Niya has set a leaf on the water, and on top of that, her prized silver needle. She snips a small length of the hair she took from Ani and Seri’s room and sets it beside the needle.

  There are two ways mages have for working with the latent magic around us—what is often referred to as the current. One can work with the flow of magic, directing it into new uses and directions, or one can work with the patterns that exist already, replicating those with slight shifts to achieve one’s aim. Flow tends to be the preferred method taught in Menaiya, because, quite simply, it is easier to master. Niya discovered a long time ago that a fever might be understood as a flow of heat and healing through the body, which her magic could mimic and more efficiently complete without harming the body.

  Now she holds one hand over the leaf with its double burden, her head bent so low I can barely see past it. If she starts with the attraction of a magnetized needle toward the North Pole and redirects its flow—from the pole to Seri—we’ll have a way to focus our search.

  I wait, listening for the sound of someone entering the house. Anything to indicate I need to hide what Niya’s doing. I can hear a woman calling to her children somewhere in the distance, and the general sounds of the town: a wagon creaking its way down the road, chickens clucking in someone’s backyard, and, faintly, people calling Seri’s name.