I didn't wait for orders or permission. My hand shot out, grabbing two of the younger fighters by their sword belts. "You two, with me. We're going to the stables."
"But Rafi said—" one started.
"Rafi's handling Marzuq's men. We handle the prisoners." I turned to Yasmin and the two women we'd rescued from execution. "Can you ride?"
"Been riding since before I could walk properly," Yasmin said, already moving toward the nearest horse. She swung up with the easy grace of someone born to the saddle, her movements fluid despite days of captivity.
I mounted behind her, my arms bracketing her waist as she gathered the reins. The other two women doubled up behind riders already wheeling their mounts, faces grim with understanding.
"The stables are half a mile through the eastern alleys," I told the lead fighter. "We cut loose whoever's still breathing and drive off any guards stupid enough to stand between us and them."
"Guards won't be the problem," the fighter replied, spurring his horse forward. "Half of them fled when Rafi broke free. It's what Marzuq might have done before running that worries me."
We thundered through alleys barely wide enough for two horses abreast. The sound of our passage echoed off narrow walls, hoofbeats drumming like war drums. The smell hit first—smoke threading through the usual stench of refuse and mud. Not cookfire smoke, not the gentle curl from chimneys, but something thicker, angrier.
"That's not good," Yasmin muttered, leaning lower over the horse's neck. "That's wood burning fast and hot."
The smoke stopped being rumor and became air itself, thick enough to scratch our throats. A dark column rose ahead, billowing up from exactly where we needed to go.
"Faster!" I shouted, though the horses were already stretched to their limits, foam flecking their mouths.
We crested the last rise, and the sight that greeted us turned my blood to ice water.
Flames licked out through gaps in the stable's warped planks, throwing hellish red light across the yard. The entire structure burned like a pyre, smoke pouring from every opening.
Yasmin's hand reached back for my arm as I slid from the horse before it had fully stopped. "Zahra, wait—"
But I was already running, my sister's name tearing from my throat. "Leila! LEILA!"
The heat hit like a physical wall, driving me back from the doorway. Inside, through the inferno's mouth, there was no movement—only the gorgeous, terrible hunger of fire devouring everything it touched. The roof beams groaned, then cracked, sending a shower of sparks into the darkening sky.
"They're gone," one of the women said behind me, her voice hoarse with smoke and sorrow. "Either moved or..."
"He's taken them." The certainty in my voice surprised even me. "Marzuq wouldn't waste sacrifices on a simple fire. He needs them for his ceremony."
"But where?" Yasmin dismounted, moving to stand beside me as I stared at the burning stable. "If not here—"
"Where would you hold a blood ritual if you wanted the whole village to witness?" I asked, though the answer was already forming in my mind, aligning with every path and clearing I'd known since childhood. "Where does water meet earth, where the gods might actually be watching?"
"The lake," three voices said at once.
"By the lake where they do the cleansing rituals," Yasmin added, her face going pale. "Gods, he's really going to do it. All of them at once."
"Not if we get there first." I was already moving back to the horses. "I know every bend of that path, every root and stone through the cedars. We can make it."
"It's nearly dark," one of the fighters protested. "Those paths are treacherous enough in daylight—"
"Then we ride them in darkness." I swung up behind Yasmin again. "Unless you'd rather explain to those girls' families why we waited for better light while their daughters bled out."
That ended the debate. We rode harder than before, the horses' sides heaving as we pushed them down paths meant for careful foot traffic.
Branches whipped at our faces, leaving stinging welts. The cedars pressed close, their shadows deep enough to swallow sound.
Then the trees opened, and the lake's blue-black bowl spread before us like an eye reflecting the dying light.
Bonfires already rimmed the shore, dozens of them, their light turning the water's surface to hammered copper.
A ring of people had formed on the shingle beach, their bodies packed tight, voices rising in that familiar, horrible chant.
"There," Yasmin pointed with her chin while keeping the reins steady. "At the center."
Two figures cut through torchlight and shadow, their movements sharp and violent in the ritual circle.
Even from this distance, I recognized Rafi's form—the way he moved like water finding the fastest path, each strike flowing into the next. But there was blood on his sleeve, and the set of his shoulders said he was tiring.
Marzuq fought like a man possessed, his blade work less elegant but more brutal, using his weight and reach to drive Rafi back step by step toward the water's edge.
Yasmin and I dropped from the saddle together, our boots hitting the ground in unison. She caught my sleeve before I could charge forward, her fingers tight enough to bruise.
"Be careful," she breathed, her eyes tracking the crowd. "These aren't all Marzuq's people, but they're not yours either. They're scared, and scared people are dangerous."
"I know." I touched her hand briefly, then pulled free. "But I didn't come back to Banu Sahar to be careful. I came back to change lives here."
"Starting with your own if you're not smart about this." But she released me, understanding that nothing would stop me now.
I moved. The outer ring of watchers stood mesmerized by the violence at their center, some cheering for Marzuq, others silent with the paralysis of those watching disaster unfold.
I slipped through them like smoke through trees, using their distraction, their focus on the fight.
The shore blazed with firelight and violence, but I moved along the lake's edge where torch-glow thinned to shadow and the bound maidens knelt forgotten by all but their own terror.
The crowd's attention fixed on the combat at center stage—exactly what I needed.