Queen's Gambit

by Karen Chance

  Hassani was laughing.

  “I was so afraid of you!” he yelled. “So afraid! And look at you now! Dead and dusted and gone, like all the gods’ children, while ours—ours are still here. Who inherits the Earth now, you bastard? Who rules now?”

  There was no answer, unless you counted Hassani’s own devilish cackling. The kid and I looked at each other, and then back at the boss, who had found a piece of snake skin he liked and was holding it to the lantern flame. And shit!

  The dry old stuff went up like a torch, but Hassani didn’t drop it. He wrapped the end in a piece of his robe and shook the heavily burning taper around the room, giggling like a madman as he did so. Soon, the whole place was burning.

  Flames ran up the walls, finding pieces of shed skin that I hadn’t even noticed, and forming garlands of fire. It ate across the huge skin on the floor, making it twist and writhe as it was consumed, as if, in its last moments, it lived once more. The fire consumed the main part of the skin, then swept the ground, setting all the smaller pieces aflame, too.

  And threatening Hassani himself.

  I turned to Lantern Boy, because it was definitely save-the-boss time, but he had clearly had enough. He must have understood some English, or perhaps he just decided that the consul had gone crazy, and the better part of valor was called for. He ran.

  I, unfortunately, did not have that option. I was a shitty ambassador, but allowing a consul and ally to die on my watch was a bit much. Not to mention that I had no idea how to get out of here alone. This place was huge; I could end up wandering around for days.

  So, I womaned the hell up, threw an arm over my face and went to rescue a possibly crazy and certainly disturbed master vamp.

  Which is when things got weird.

  Chapter Eleven

  Dory, Cairo

  Hassani was just standing there, surrounded by flames, I had no idea why. And then I realized why. The snakeskin was burning up, but as it did so, it was throwing out more than just sparks.

  Two chariots raced, neck to neck, the black flanks of their horses gleaming, the sun on the golden armbands of the drivers blinding, the sand spraying from under the wheels like waves in the air. A crowd roared as one chariot pulled ahead, crossing a line in the sand a split second before the other. But the winner did not look pleased.

  Instead, he jumped off his vehicle before the horses had even stopped, hit the ground and rolled, but not to his feet. He knelt, despite the fact that the burning sand must have been all but cooking his flesh. “Please,” he begged.

  It was not enough. The whole point of these games was to remind the people who ruled—and why. Seeing a human best a god at anything might lead to the idea that the gods could be bested at other things, could even be driven out.

  No, not close to enough.

  The god glanced up at the sun, his father’s symbol, boiling hot and brilliant overhead. And then just as hot down here, as a column of blinding white light surged earthward. The charioteer’s screams echoed around the racetrack, turning to shrieks and then to gurgles as his skin sloughed off, as the meat cooked on his bones, as he fell over, toppling to the ground as his pharaoh lifted a hand.

  And the handlers released the lord’s favorite dogs, free now to enjoy their freshly cooked meal.

  The vision shattered and I stared around blindly for a moment, before realizing that my left sleeve was on fire. I shook it out and grabbed Hassani. “Come on! Come on, we’ve got to go!”

  But we weren’t fast enough.

  The pool sparkled dimly in the lantern light, throwing golden ripples on the dark water. Inside, a dozen hand selected girls bathed under the watchful eyes of the harem eunuchs. The women came from all over Egypt and beyond: nubile temptresses from Ta-Seti and Punt, their skin as dark as midnight and lustrous with lotions and perfumes; golden skinned beauties from Canaan and Lebanon, with rippling tresses that almost reached to their feet; and rare, moon-skinned lovelies from further afield, acquired through trade with slavers from faraway lands.

  The girls had noticed his entrance, flanked by sumptuously dressed servants, and felt the weight of his gaze. Some slid farther down in the water, their hands moving to conceal their bodies. Others did the opposite, putting their charms on display, hoping to be the lord’s next wife.

  But it was one of the former that caught his eye. “That one.”

  The royal scepter singled out a girl with hair like flame and skin like milk, little more than a child with her breasts just beginning to form. Two eunuchs pulled her from the pool and brought her, dripping and naked and trembling, before the god. She knelt and one of them lifted her chin to show him her face; she was breathing hard, her skin flushed, and her eyes—

  “Closer.”

  She was pulled to her feet and brought forward, and yes, he had thought so. Her eyes were as unusual as her other coloring, like the water in the shallower reaches of the Nile. Beautiful—and rare.

  He smiled in approval. After a nudge from her handlers, the girl smiled hesitantly back. Until she saw the fangs.

  She screamed, a small, brief cry that was quickly silenced, for the god could drain a vessel in seconds. She sagged in the hands of her holder, withered and lifeless, and hidden from the others’ eyes by the eunuch’s bulk. She was carried away, and the son of Ra surveyed the pool again.

  “That one.”

  The vision shattered—just in time. I ducked, and dragged Hassani down with me. A piece of the burning tail slung by overhead, shedding an arc of sparks in its wake. They rained down on me harmlessly, but Hassani was not so fortunate.

  “Fuck!” I yelled, as the consul went up like a roman candle.

  I always carried temporary shields in my arsenal, but I hadn’t activated them. I’d thought that this would be a quick in and out; my mistake, and possibly Hassani’s death if I didn’t do something. And a shield wouldn’t help here.

  There was no time for finesse. A grab in a pocket, a tear of his clothes, a slap to his chest, and a small golden charm sank into his skin. I just hoped it wasn’t already too late.

  With the typical vampire flammability, Hassani already had orange-red wounds opening up all over his body, with the skin blackening and tearing and splitting around them. He had seconds at best. But that was before the charm started spitting out little tattooed rain clouds that shot in all directions.

  They were supposed to be used for camouflage: to raise a rainstorm to disguise the sounds of a getaway, or to wash away evidence, or to persuade nosy humans to run inside. They were meant to be deposited on the side of a building or shot straight into the air. They were not intended for use on a body.

  But necessity is the mother of stupidity, and sometimes, stupidity works.

  Well, sort of.

  The room should have been awash in water, with a literal rainstorm blowing up inside the walls. But charms like this had to draw their resources from the natural world. They didn’t contain water; they just pulled whatever was available in the vicinity together. And there wasn’t much in the bone-dry temple to work with.

  But they were finding something. Because, every time a spark on Hassani’s skin turned into a conflagration, they were there, enthusiastically showering the hell out of it. We didn’t get a rainstorm, but we got enough to keep him from dusting away to nothing, although it came at a price. We were both drenched in seconds from the enthusiastic sprays, and when I finally did activate the shield, the small bubble it projected around us quickly started to fill with water.

  I sloshed for the door, while images from the beast’s life hammered at my cranium, trying to force their way in. I managed to hold them off, grateful for once that Dorina wasn’t here, because the mental gifts were on her side of the brain. I was all but mind blind without her, dull as a block of wood, which was usually a problem living and working with people who could talk as easily mentally as physically.

  But not today.

  Today, it was a gift, and one the consul did not have. Hassani was cat
atonic, caught in whatever vision had contorted his face and widened his eyes as I dragged us toward the door. I’d been pulling on his clothes, but the robes were weakened by fire, and the piece I was holding split in my hands. And, as soon as I touched his skin, a sneaky little vision caught me, leaping from him to me like lightning and throwing us both to the ground.

  “Nothing to say?”

  The speaker was a small man, thin, brown and bald, someone you might have passed in the street and never looked at twice—except for the haughtiness of his face. That much arrogance was reserved for kings and gods, the latter of which he absolutely believed himself to be. The son of Ra . . .

  I felt my lips, bone dry as they were, crack into a smile.

  “To who?” My voice, usually one of my best qualities, was little more than a dry rasp in my throat. I persisted anyway. “To the child unwanted even by his own parents? What was it they called you? Sokkwi, ‘Little Fool’? They knew what they’d birthed, and nothing ever done to you afterward has changed that. Little Fool you were; Little Fool you remain.”

  “You see this, captain?” The fool—and the monster—glanced behind him. “I share secrets with him, and he uses them against me. Trying, in a clumsy fashion, to persuade me to anger, hoping I’ll kill him, no doubt.”

  “Yes, Lord.”

  The monster smiled gently at me. “It will not be that easy. Not for you. I wondered when those others rebelled, who was behind it. Wondered which of them was smart enough to plot so cunningly and so well. They never told me, did you know? They’re here still, downstairs, dried up like old firewood. Perhaps that is what I’ll use them for, someday.”

  He laughed, and the captain of his guard, a huge man with a scarred face, laughed with him.

  “Perhaps, one day, I shall afford you the same privilege,” the fool said. “But not yet. And not soon.” He glanced about the room, to where my friends and supporters were chained, suffering as I was. Then he leaned in. “Do they hate you yet? Before I’m done with you, they will.”

  He left, but the captain stayed behind. And in a moment, I felt it—the coolness of metal in my palm. I looked down to see a key glimmering there. I looked up—

  And found him gone.

  Of course; he couldn’t risk so much as a word. Neither could I. But words were not what was needed here.

  I started working on the lock to the magical cuffs that held me; not that they needed magic. Not anymore. I had no idea how I would get through the door in my current state, or past the soldiers who would doubtless be guarding it.

  But when it came to it, the door was open, and the soldiers gone.

  My people looked at me, clear eyed and stalwart, despite all that they had endured. They did not ask any questions. Even in my head their voices were silent, too exhausted to manage a simple connection. But I knew what they wanted to know.

  “Someday,” I croaked. “Someday, we will light the biggest bonfire in the world over his corpse. But not today. Today, we live.”

  I slammed back into myself with the words still echoing in my brain. Today, we live. Today, we live. Today, we live.

  I knew the door to salvation was just ahead, even if I couldn’t see it. Grayish white smoke billowed around the outside of the bubble, blocking my view and threatening to choke me, even through the protection the shield offered. Worse, that protection had become our trap, filling up like a water balloon while I was out, leaving Hassani floating and me rolling uselessly around the floor.

  So, I dropped it, heard the water hiss away into steam, felt the heat slam into me like a hundred ovens opened at the same time. The air was hot enough to sear my skin, even without the fire touching me. It didn’t matter.

  “Today, we live,” I rasped at Hassani, and crawled toward safety, dragging him behind me. “Today, we live.”

  It wasn’t easy going. Mind blind I might be, but the visions coming off the dead god were getting wilder and more numerous. I’d felt them batter me as soon as the shield dropped, in a hurricane of little bits and pieces, like the patches of shed skin burning up in the air all around us. And each of them seemed to have a story to tell, an attempt to drag me back inside a memory and leave me helpless.

  One of them succeeded.

  A huge palace, surrounded by date palms and sycamore figs, a man-made oasis where none had existed before. Stars overhead, brightening the otherwise solid black of the skies. The dark of the moon: beautiful, but deadly.

  With no light, they would never make it out of here.

  “I will burn, and light the way.”

  It was Zakarriyyah who spoke, he whose master power was to resist flame. I could not see his eyes, but I knew they were burning, too, with the resolve he’d always shown. He had the stoutest heart of all my people; he would gladly die to save us.

  And slowly burn to death, over the long journey across the sands.

  But I could not let him. “My Child—”

  A hand covered mine. It was rough and dry, more like clasping wood than flesh. We were all so weak, so close to turning into living statues. That is what the fool would have us be, to decorate his palaces, something to be used to cow any who would challenge him.

  “We cannot be that,” I said roughly, as a tremor went through my Children, some pieces of my thoughts bleeding over. “We were not the first, and will not be the last to oppose him. Those who come after us must believe that they have a chance.”

  “Teacher—” Zakarriyyah pleaded.

  “And they will. We will. And you will be among us when we do.”

  “Not if we do not escape tonight!” The hand grasping mine trembled, but there was resolve in his voice. “Let me do this. Let me help—”

  “Have you fools never heard of lanterns?”

  The hissed words came out of the darkness, almost in my ear. I turned, human slow, to see the slim figure of the monster’s chief Child standing there, a lantern in each hand. I did not have time to greet her, or to attack. I could not think clearly enough in my current state even to determine which would be best.

  And she did not give me the chance. The dark-haired beauty sat down the lights we so desperately needed, and a moment later, a pack hit me in the face. It was clothing by the feel, which we also needed, as our tattered rags would give us away wherever we went.

  “One to each,” she said, her voice low, and two maidservants hurried to obey.

  I watched, uncomprehendingly, as packs were distributed to each of my people. Until a rough hand jerked me around. “Feed.”

  I stared at her. She was offering her own arm. It made no sense.

  “He will kill you for this,” I rasped.

  “If you keep standing there, looking at me, very likely!”

  I looked at her arm instead, gleaming golden bright in the lantern light. “I cannot partake when my people starve.”

  She said something shockingly rude in Greek. And then I found myself grabbed by my rags, and dragged down to her face. Her fangs were out; a breach of etiquette at court. She did not look as if she cared.

  “Listen to me, old mummy,” she hissed, “and listen well. If you want to live, you will do exactly as I say. Feed, enough that your eyes aren’t crossing and you can think to lead your people. Ride for Fustat—it’s due east. Get there before sunrise, or you will surely die. Even your masters have no strength left. Go to this address,” she pushed a piece of parchment into my hand. “The man there knows me; he will hide you, find blood pigs for you. Drink; recover. Then get as far away from these shores as you can.”

  She did not wait for me to reply. She slit her own flesh with a dagger like fingernail, and shoved her arm in my face. And the smell of it—

  Ah, it would take a better man than I to resist!

  I drank, so briefly, and she turned to go.

  “Wait.” I called her back.

  She spun. “I must leave! I’ve been here too long already.”

  “First, tell me why you help us. You owe us nothing—”

 
“This isn’t for you,” she spat. And then her eyes went to the palace, and the expression in them . . . even in darkness, it was palpable.

  The enemy of my enemy, I thought, and understood.

  “One day,” she told me, and then she was gone.

  Rain hit me in the face, bringing me back, and I looked up to see a tiny cloud on Hassani’s shoulder, busily putting out an ember and squirting me in the face in the process. I opened my mouth, caught a few drops on my tongue. Thought I’d found paradise—

  Only to feel the excruciating pain of the other place, as the vision fully released me.

  I screamed, my hands and arms and back burning, while what was left of my leather jacket melted to my flesh. This wasn’t a normal fire; this wasn’t a normal anything. And then I coughed, retching and hacking, dizzy from the lack of air. Hassani said and did nothing, still lost in his dreams—

  And, suddenly, I understood. They were his dreams. The fluttering bits of memory or whatever they were coming off the dead demigod weren’t the problem. The first two, yes, but these last—they had both been through Hassani’s eyes. I couldn’t shake them off because I was touching him, but I couldn’t get us out unless I did!

  But my jeans were full of black edged holes, with burnt red flesh peeking through. And I had nothing else to use, unless I stripped my flesh off with my jacket! Hassani was no better, in tattered rags half burnt away, and weakened to the point that they ripped as soon as I touched them. There was nothing—

  Well, almost nothing.

  I grabbed a piece of the dead demigod, no longer caring when it crinkled under my hands, and used it like an oven mitt to keep from touching the consul. I still saw images: the mad dash through the desert, the furtive days of hiding that followed, the creak of a ship sailing God knew where. But they were distant, transparent, a glaze on the burning, smoke filled hell we were crawling through, nothing more.