A Desert Torn Asunder

by Bradley P. Beaulieu

The messenger got his bidding paddle, just as Ahya had promised. A wide smile broke over his face as he smoked from the hookahs filled with rare tabbaq. He chatted gaily with the other auction goers while sipping golden brandy. He looked to be having the time of his life, hobnobbing with so many of the city’s upper crust, and Ahya left him to it, calm in the knowledge that she’d have long enough to do what she needed.

  After slipping five sylval to the auction house’s stablehand, she found herself alone in the stables and opened the messenger’s saddlebag. She took out the note from the ailing locksmith and proceeded to copy it word for word, forging his loopy script, which she’d practiced for days to master. She changed only one thing in the new letter: the identity of the locksmith he recommended. She specified a space along the Trough she’d rented a month back and had outfitted to look like a locksmith’s. When word had come that King Yusam urgently needed her expertise, she’d gladly answered his call.

  Now, in Yusam’s treasury, she began the painstaking work of changing the vault’s combination. The tricky part wasn’t changing the mechanism itself—locksmithing had been a necessary part of her training, and she’d mastered it years ago—it was getting rid of the guards long enough to look through the vault’s contents.

  She took the set of keys and spoke to the younger guard, the one who seemed most naive. “Could you hold these?”

  The guard accepted them from her, confused.

  She took up the lantern, stepped inside the vault, and motioned to the reinforced jamb. “I need to make sure the tenon’s setting into the mortise properly.”

  He shrugged, but did so with a flash of pride, the sort that came with being trusted.

  With that she closed the vault door and twisted the mechanism that sent the thick steel tenon into the mortise, sealing the door. The key clanked as the guard inserted it, but nothing happened when he turned it. She’d removed the pin that let the mechanism drive the tenon, effectively locking herself inside the vault.

  “It’s not working,” she heard the guard call.

  “Try again,” she called softly.

  “What?”

  “Try again!” she called, louder this time.

  “Still nothing!”

  “Ah! I see the problem. It won’t be but a moment.”

  What followed was a series of mishaps: her making the mechanism jingle like she was doing something; the guard trying the key to no avail. She left long pauses to indicate she was thinking, or preparing her tools.

  In reality, she was searching the many shelves within the vault, looking for a particular chest she’d heard rumor of years before. She found it at the back, a metal chest with jewels and golden filigree in the design of a spread-winged roc. It took her several tries with her lock picks, but eventually she had it open. Inside, she found a small jewelry box lined with red satin. Within the jewelry box was a glass vial with a brown, oval seed inside. An acacia seed. As she’d seen in a vision on one of her visits to the desert witch, Saliah.

  From her pack she retrieved a silver vial with intricate designs etched along its length. Inside it was another seed, also from an acacia, this one collected from a tree in the temple district. She switched them, made all as it had been, and returned to the door just as a clanging sound came from the opposite side.

  “Are you trapped?” the young one called, sounding worried. “Should we send for help?”

  She replaced the missing pin she’d pulled earlier, unlocked the vault door, and swung it wide. “This is a delicate mechanism!” She scowled at the shamshir in the guard’s sword hand, which he’d clearly been using to bang on the door. “You don’t fix it by swinging a bloody sword at it, you know!”

  He looked angry but also a bit chagrined and said no more as she went about her work.

  “You’d think she’d know how to get out of a gods-damned vault from the inside,” she heard the older one say. The younger chortled in agreement.

  Only when she’d left the palace and returned to her fake premises along the Trough did she allow herself to take the seed from the silver vial and look at it. She held it to the sunlight streaming in through the window, wondering what it was for, wondering why Saliah’s fabled tree had shown it to her.

  But the mystery remained, and she put the seed back into its vial.

  Chapter 21

  The morning after Nayyan’s fainting spell and the scare with Ransaneh, Ihsan was awakened by a growing din. Leaving Nayyan and Ransaneh sleeping, he went to the window. Up the street, people were rushing toward the Spear, the large thoroughfare that started at the western harbor and ended at the gates to the House of Maidens. The sound that had woke him was chanting. Ihsan had heard the sort before. Civil strife. Voices raised in anger.

  “What’s happening?” Nayyan said as she lifted her head and squinted at him.

  “It appears Queen Sunay was successful in her attempt to foment rebellion in the streets,” Ihsan said.

  Nayyan propped herself up on one elbow. “Riots . . . ?”

  “Net yet, from the sound of it, but with the food shortages as bad as they’ve been, I’m sure violence isn’t far off.”

  An urgent knock came at the door. “My lord.” It was Tolovan. He sounded worried, but Tolovan never sounded worried. The knock came again, harder this time. “My lord, please let me in.”

  After giving Nayyan a moment to pull on her night coat, Ihsan opened the door.

  Tolovan rushed inside. He was red in the face, breathless. “He’s gone, my lord.”

  “Who’s gone?”

  “The storyteller. Ibrahim. I went to find him as you asked. It took me some time before I found where he lived, but I went there before daybreak, only to find a squad of green cloaks already there. They battered down his door and took him away in chains.”

  Gods, no, Ihsan thought, not when we were so close. He threw off his night shirt and began pulling on his trousers. “Where did they take him?”

  “They were headed toward the House of Kings”—he motioned at the window—“but by then people were marching. Sensing trouble, the green cloaks took him to the garrison for safekeeping. He’s there still, but there’s no telling for how long.”

  The sounds outside had been steadily rising. Mixed among them were screams of pain. Orders being bellowed. The streets were about to slip into chaos.

  Nayyan’s brow furrowed as she worked through the implications. “I might have said Queen Alansal is following the same sort of scent we are, but her water dancers are dead.”

  “True,” Ihsan said, “but who knows what visions she gained before they died? We need to intercept Ibrahim before he’s taken to the House of Kings. Gather the Maidens,” he ordered Tolovan, who nodded and left in a rush.

  With the door closed, Ihsan slipped into a thawb and donned boiled leather greaves and vambraces, which he hid beneath his slate blue khalat. By the time he finished wrapping a patterned keffiyeh and black agal around his head, garb more commonly found in the city’s west end, Nayyan was tugging at the ties of her dress. It took him a moment to realize it was her violet battle dress and turban.

  Ihsan raised his hands. “You need to stay here with Ransaneh.”

  “No,” she said flatly. “I’m going with you.”

  “You have to take her out of the city if things get worse.”

  Nayyan paused with her sword belt across her hips, not yet buckled. “Is Ibrahim important to our mission or is he not?”

  Ihsan hesitated, and nearly lied to her. Nearly told her there were other clues that could lead them to Meryam. But it wasn’t true. “Fine. I admit it. Everything may ride on what happens to Ibrahim. But what if I’m wrong?”

  “Ihsan, for the sake of all we’re trying to do here, stop.” She clasped her buckle and adjusted the belt. “No one in the desert sees what lies ahead and how to stop it better than you. If Ibrahim is a knife we can
use to cut the net closing around us, then we need to get him.” There was a great roar from the east, and Nayyan gestured toward it. “This is for Ransaneh as much as it is for us.”

  Ihsan didn’t want to admit that he was inspired by her words—doing so would lead to his letting her come along, letting her be in terrible danger—but the truth was, he’d never been more proud of her. He’d never been more proud of anyone.

  “Very well,” he said as he buckled his own belt, this one with a sheathed fighting knife. “Let’s go get Ibrahim.”

  After handing Ransaneh to the wet nurse and assigning two Blade Maidens to guard her, Ihsan, Nayyan, and Tolovan left with their remaining three Maidens, including Yndris. Together they wove through the city streets. They tried to avoid the crowds but, breath of the desert, there were people everywhere. Whatever Sunay had done, it had riled up half the city.

  At the horde’s outskirts, people were raising their fists and shouting, “Down with Mirea! Down with Malasan!”

  The farther they went, the more people were waving knives, swords, or clubs in the air. Some roared. Others drummed their weapons against round shields. The sound was deafening. As they neared the collegia and its collection of ancient, sandstone halls, they passed along the edges of the esplanade. At the center of the open space, people lifted their weapons high, crying in ululations.

  Ihsan didn’t understand why until he stood on the marble plinth of a statue. A squad of green cloaks were trapped at the center of the mob. More than cut up and bloody, they were a travesty of human flesh. Having trapped them, the crowd was taking turns hacking them to pieces.

  “Come on,” Nayyan said, pulling Ihsan down from the statue and away from the horrific sight.

  New shouts of pain and fear rose along the edge of the collegia grounds. The Mirean regulars had come. Rank after rank of armored soldiers stood at the ready. Through occasional gaps in the crowd, Ihsan saw those at the front holding large wooden shields—war doors, they were called. They were meant to create a barrier for the soldiers behind the front line, who brandished long spears. Like thorns along the snaking branch of an adichara, the spears jutted outward from the makeshift wall. In lockstep, the spearmen would stab their spears into the mob. The mob, screaming in outrage, was forced back, which created space for the shield men to advance a step. Slowly but surely, they were creating the space they would need to launch a more violent assault, which was clearly about to happen. Behind the war doors and spearmen, several companies of cavalry and heavily armored soldiers bearing daos and kite shields were forming into orderly ranks.

  The garrison where Ibrahim was being kept was a blocky monstrosity that lay just beyond the esplanade, though they couldn’t reach it. The crowd, thick already, was growing thicker by the moment as the Mirean soldiers pressed the rioters back, trying to gain control. Making matters worse, the Mireans would have dozens, perhaps hundreds, of their soldiers inside the garrison itself.

  Ihsan had seen plenty of spontaneous riots. This was more organized, no doubt due to Sunay’s long and careful preparations. Gang leaders called orders. Mobs threw rocks and glass bottles. Some threw clay pots filled with kerosene, which arced through the sky, trailing smoke. They landed among the Mirean soldiers and broke, spreading orange flames.

  But the Mirean soldiers were fresh from war and reacted with cool discipline. They batted out flames where they caught and retreated as needed, always keeping the rioters at bay through the quick and vicious use of their spears.

  The mob tried to fight back. Some grabbed the soldiers’ spears to prevent them from stabbing anyone. While the spearmen were occupied, others would rush forward, grab the massive war doors, and yank them aside. Some of the Mirean shieldsmen fell to knives or swords. A few more were dragged into the crowd, where they were given the same barbarous treatment as the trapped green cloaks. But it never came close to overwhelming the Mireans. The foreign soldiers were too disciplined, too numerous. When the rush became too much for the front line to handle, they would simply let some of the crowd through. As the swordsmen behind the spearmen cut them to ribbons, the shieldsmen would push hard and close the line once more.

  Nayyan took in the chaos. “Do we go around? Or take to the tunnels?”

  A gap had formed in the Mirean line. Through it, a full squadron of cavalry were pouring onto the collegia grounds. The bulk of them pressed back the riot line. A company of eight, however, peeled off and made for garrison.

  They were after Ibrahim. Ihsan knew it in his bones.

  He thought of charging the Mirean line, of using his power to command them. But his power might falter, and with the noise, they might not hear him in any case.

  Ihsan scanned the faces of the Sharakhani crowd. With the cavalry approaching, many looked like they wanted to break and run. He’d never felt as though the city were slipping away from him as much as he felt it then. Bottling his fears, he lifted his hands like a prophet and bellowed, “To our shores have these jackals come!”

  He poured so much of his power into those words it hurt. He cared little for the pain, however. What he cared about was that it seemed to be working. The crowd around them had stilled. They watched Ihsan with wary eyes.

  “More of their dunebreakers arrive by the day,” he went on. “They bear soldiers and weapons meant to quash rebellion, meant to silence all speech against their queen.”

  The looks of worry and wariness in the crowd faded, and the anger that had burned so brightly moments ago returned with a vengeance.

  “They refuse to let more than a handful gather in the streets! Their queen and her generals hide behind walls we built. And why?” He thrust a finger toward Tauriyat. “Because they fear us!”

  The crowd rumbled with discontent.

  “They may have slipped past our Kings’ fleet. They may have stolen onto the mountain to hide like frightened amberlarks. They may think themselves safe in the House of Kings. But they aren’t, are they?”

  The rumble became a roar. “No!”

  “No,” Ihsan repeated, “because they haven’t reckoned with us, the children of the Amber Jewel. They haven’t learned the most important lesson: what it means to invade our city. They don’t realize we will die before we live under their rule.”

  A high ululation, swords, knives, and clubs rising. They were poised, a surging river held back by a crumbling levee.

  Ihsan pointed to the line of soldiers. “Let’s teach them.”

  With those words, the levee burst. The crowd rushed past Ihsan, Nayyan, and their Blade Maidens with a thunderous roar. They threw themselves at the spearmen. Some took terrible wounds and fought on. Others fell, dying. Meanwhile dozens, then hundreds, made it beyond the shield wall. It was a terrible, bloody slaughter. The Mirean foot soldiers engaged with swords. Their spearmen stabbed. The Sharakhani swung wildly with their weapons. The Mirean line was sturdy, but there were simply too many Sharakhani surging forward, their own vengeful feelings and the power of Ihsan’s voice working together to drive them beyond their normal limits.

  First the Mirean line buckled.

  Then it broke altogether.

  “Now!” Nayyan yelled to the Blade Maidens.

  Ihsan would have ordered them forward himself had his tongue and jaw not been in so much pain. Spit pooled in his mouth. The hinges of his jaw felt like spikes were being driven into them. Tears streamed down his face from the sheer intensity of it. He swore it felt as awful as when Surrahdi the Mad King had cut his tongue out.

  Nayyan noticed, but Ihsan chose to ignore her. He couldn’t so much as move his mouth, much less speak.

  Together they ran. Yndris and the other Blade Maidens went first, bulling their way through the chaos. Yndris paused along the way to pick up two fallen spears. She handed them to two of the Maidens beside her. “Take the lead.”

  The Maidens complied, and Yndris, Ihsan, and Nayyan followed. Ahead, th
e line of cavalry approached. The clop of hooves and the screams from their horses rose above the sounds of battle. At the garrison, the stout front doors had been opened. Exactly as Ihsan had feared, an old man with a long gray beard was being led out and down the steps toward the company that had broken away from the cavalry’s main group. Ibrahim.

  Nayyan pointed to the nearing line of cavalry. “Can you stop them?”

  Ihsan shook his head no. Nayyan nodded, then pointed to the four cavalry riders that had just reined their horses toward them.

  Yndris backed up and whistled a series of notes that meant set spears, at which point the lead Maidens slammed the butts of their spears into the ground, set their back feet on top to keep them in place, and crouched low, pointing the tips at the barded chests of the approaching horses.

  One rider pulled on the reins so hard his horse came to a skidding stop. The others swung wide, clearly hoping to flank their small group from both sides.

  Yndris, meanwhile, sprinted toward one of the crouched Blade Maidens. She launched herself off her sister Maiden’s back to fly high through the air. The cavalryman who’d reined in his horse managed one wild swing of his dao before Yndris landed on his horse’s rump. In a blur of movement she grappled with the rider, threw him from the saddle, and slipped into his place. The soldier gained his feet, his sword in both hands. But Yndris, uttering a ragged battle cry, was already swinging her ebon blade in a vicious downward blow. The soldier’s helmet and skull were cleaved in two.

  As the other two Blade Maidens used their spears to fend off two of the cavalrymen, Nayyan charged the third. The soldier maneuvered his horse and raised his shield, hoping to block her, but just then one of the Blade Maidens disengaged and sprinted toward him, swift as a desert hare. The soldier, clearly unused to the Blade Maidens’ synchronized battle tactics, appeared unsure which of them to block. He effectively blocked neither. Nayyan swung, driving the edge of her blade into the man’s knee. As he screamed in pain and dropped his shield, the Blade Maiden thrust the spear past his guard and through the underside of his jaw. His strangled cry was cut off as she advanced, sending the spear up and through his mouth, and shoved him from his saddle.