“Into the warehouse,” Dardzada said, leading the way.
The soldiers of the Moonless Host routed them into the building quickly and efficiently, then removed them of any knives they still had on them. The Spears were breathing like jackrabbits now. The same was true of both Tai Lin and her men. Their eyes were darting about, looking for ways to escape, to summon help.
“There must be some mistake,” Tai Lin said.
“No mistake.” Dardzada beckoned Tai Lin and the leader of the Spears deeper into the darkened warehouse, a place filled with crates marked with the seals of Mirea and the caravan that had brought the goods here. “Let’s start with the two of you.” When they’d moved beyond the circle of turbaned soldiers, Dardzada nodded to the same woman he’d signaled to at the archway that led to the Garden. “Kill the rest.”
Shouts of surprise followed, but they were quickly cut short as arrows bit and short spears drove into the chests of the doomed men. When all was silent once more, Dardzada looked to Tai Lin and the Spear he’d allowed to live.
“Now,” he said, “as you might imagine, there are a few things we need to discuss.”
❖ ❖ ❖
Dardzada returned home late that night, more tired and shaken than he’d been in a long while.
In short order they’d discovered a false floor in one corner of the warehouse, a half-cellar where dozens of naked children lay cowering, shackled to the walls, leeches all over their bodies. As Dardzada pulled each from the darkness, the soldiers had helped, using the technique Dardzada had showed them to free the slick, blood-fattened leeches from their bodies. The children, one and all, had been in a daze, walking when asked to walk, standing and quavering when asked to stand still, muttering to themselves occasionally but only very softly. And how very old they had looked, how frail. By the gods, they might have had the bodies of twelve-year-olds, but their eyes were sunken, their skin sallow. Many had lost so much hair it was thin, as if they’d been ravaged by lupus. How long some of them must have been here… Months, surely. Perhaps years.
Unforgivable, Dardzada had thought more than once. An unforgivable crime.
The soldiers of the Host had left soon after the children were freed. There was no sense allowing them to stay and running into trouble with the Silver Spears, or worse, the Blade Maidens and the Kings themselves. He’d then sent word to Ozan, a Silver Spear and a man he trusted. Ozan brought a dozen Spears to the warehouse to help, but Dardzada had remained and helped throughout the day to find the families of the freed children. He and Ozan spoke to each of them in turn, and then, for those lucid enough to tell them the names of their mothers or fathers and where they lived, they were given to the men of the Silver Spears to be escorted home. Like this, the number of children slowly dwindled until only a few remained. These were taken near sundown by Ozan to the Garrison, and Dardzada finally felt it proper to allow himself to return home for a bit of rest. He’d check up on the remaining children in the coming days, make sure some sort of home was found for them.
During their questioning, Tai Lin and the lone remaining Spear had given up much. They both confirmed a number of names in the wing of the Jade Masks operating here in Sharakhai, people above Tai Lin in the pecking order. Dardzada had fed the names to Ozan in hopes that appropriate actions would be taken. The Silver Spears being what they were, however, an overly large organization with far too many masters, he wasn’t going to hold his breath.
Ezren was never seen again, but the Silver Spear had confirmed his involvement in the Garden. Ezren had been paid not merely to look the other way, but to supply the Jade Masks with children from Sharakhai’s west end. The Spear hadn’t been able to name anyone above Ezren, however. “He never bloody said,” he’d told Dardzada again and again, “and I never pressed. Why would I? I follow my orders, I go home, I wake up the next day, and then I do it all over again.” The man hadn’t even known whether Ezren reported to a man or a woman. Tai Lin was no better, which was a shame, for this was something Dardzada dearly wished to know.
When he was convinced he’d get nothing more from the Spear, Dardzada took him to the corner of the warehouse where the children had been secreted away, slit his throat, and shoved him into the pit. The man had stared up at Dardzada, eyes wide and pleading, but Dardzada had merely walked away. There was no sense keeping him alive. The likelihood that the Silver Spears would protect their own and let him free was simply too great. Besides, he didn’t want the man telling everyone about the soldiers Dardzada had rallied to his cause. Tai Lin, on the other hand, he let live. He did need someone to hand over to the Spears for questioning.
With the sun set and Floret Row lit only by moonlight, Dardzada entered his home and headed for the stairs leading up to his bedroom. He’d just reached the first step when something crashed into him from behind. Someone rolled him over and struck him hard across the jaw.
It was Ezren. Dardzada nearly laughed. Of course it was him. Dardzada could see his enraged face by the moonlight filtering in through the front windows.
“I thought you’d be well into hiding by now,” Dardzada managed to get out through the pain in his mouth.
“I will be soon enough.” He punched Dardzada again. “But I’ve got a debt to pay, don’t I?” The third time he struck, a keen ringing filled Dardzada’s ears. “I’d hoped you wouldn’t be quite so good as Amir seemed to think you would be. Gods, I should’ve killed you when you had that ridiculous fit!”
“Why didn’t you?” Dardzada replied.
“Your act was good, I’ll admit.” He struck Dardzada across the mouth. “I thought you would die of your own accord!”
Ezren tried striking one more time, but Dardzada caught his wrist and grabbed for Ezren’s throat. Dardzada might have been an old apothecary with pain in his joints, but he wasn’t always so. He was no stranger to the ways of arms and armor, of swords and fists.
The two of them wrestled on the floor of Dardzada’s shop, each gaining the upper hand for a moment before the other turned the tables. Glass vials and jars crashed to the floor, spilling their contents and filling the air with a mixture of bitter and floral scents.
Finally, Dardzada shoved the younger man away. Ezren came up in a lithe move holding a long, curving knife in one hand.
“Does Layth know?” Dardzada asked as he made it to his feet with ungainly movements.
If Ezren was surprised at Dardzada’s question, he didn’t show it. “Layth doesn’t much care as long as he gets his money.”
“Does he know about the children?”
“What does it matter?” Ezren said. “You know I can’t allow you to live.”
“It matters. How can you have subjected children to this?”
“Perhaps you haven’t noticed, but the city is lousy with them. We hardly know what to do with them all.”
More than what you’ve done, Dardzada thought. Certainly more than that.
Ezren took a step forward, brandishing the knife, but before he could take another, Dardzada reached into his left sleeve and retrieved a blowdart hidden there. It was already fitted with a poison-tipped dart, so that all it took was a sharp puff to launch it into Ezren’s neck.
Ezren spun away, his hand slapping his neck where the dart had struck. He bowed over as if winded, pulling frantically at the dart, but it was barbed and difficult to remove once embedded in the skin. He fell to his knees, then collapsed onto his back with a heavy thud against the floorboards. His muscles would already have started to grow leaden. Soon he would be unable to lift his arm, be unable to speak. His lungs and heart would follow in less time than it took to plead for one’s life.
Dardzada walked calmly to his side and knelt as Ezren finally managed to pinch the dart between his fingers and pull it free. He looked at Dardzada pleadingly.
“It’s a deadly poison, I’m afraid. There’s no longer anything you or I can do about it. Now tell me before it’s too late. Was my brother involved in this?”
Ezren mere
ly stared.
He slapped Ezren’s reddened face. “Were you paying him? Did he know?”
In the end, the poison was simply too fast-acting. Ezren’s eyes glazed, and his body fell slack. The blood drained from his face, leaving him looking strangely at peace, a thing that angered Dardzada so much that he stood and kicked the young Spear in the side. “They were children!”
To this final accusation, Ezren’s lifeless body declined to respond.
Dardzada stood over him a while, breathing heavily, but then set about making the preparations needed to hide the body, a thing Dardzada had done more times in his life than he cared to remember, but a thing he did gladly in this case. For here was a man who deserved no remembrance.
No remembrance at all.
❖ ❖ ❖
After wrapping two bundles of lemongrass stalks in burlap, Dardzada tied the package efficiently with twine. “Steep it for thirty minutes. Best if he’s in the room when you do it. Tell him to breathe deeply.” The ancient woman on the far side of the counter accepted the bundle with shaking hands. “Then remove the stalks and boil it down by half. Use it in a stew of white meat—pheasant, chicken, fish if you can find it—but never red. No beef, no goat. Understand?”
The woman nodded and put the lemongrass into a bag slung over her shoulder, then left, leaving Dardzada finally, blessedly, alone.
It had been a long day. Not so busy as a festival day, but busy all the same. Perhaps the gods were shining upon him, balancing the scales.
While Dardzada was noting the transaction in one ledger and adjusting his inventory numbers in another, the front bell jingled. The door creaked softly open, then closed with a clatter. Heavy footsteps drummed an uneven gait over the floorboards, and someone with an impressive heft to his frame sat on one of the stools on the far side of his desk.
“I’ve got some mustard oil and camphor you could use for your gout, Layth. Perhaps some ginger tonic like the old women use.”
Layth, never one to accept help unless it was demanded, replied, “My gout is well enough, little brother.”
Dardzada finished the line he was recording, then returned the vulture quill to its inkwell and regarded Layth. “At least go to the market a few times a week. Suck on some lemons. It’ll help.”
Layth’s broad face was unmoved. “Another flight of children were found in a second warehouse near the southern harbor.”
Dardzada was unsurprised, but relieved. “Hedging their bets.”
Layth nodded. “We found twenty in the ring.” He shrugged. “Some were killed in the act of apprehension. Others are awaiting their date with the Lord Chancellor himself.”
Dardzada’s brows raised of their own accord. “The Lord Chancellor. The Kings are taking note, I see.”
“They are.” Layth let the words hang between them for a moment before continuing. “The investigation was wrapped up nicely with the information you and the woman who somehow managed to survive the attentions of your convenient allies provided.”
Dardzada shivered at the memory of those children, how frail they’d looked.
“So where did you come by them, these friends of yours?” Layth asked.
“I have friends all over this city. It wasn’t difficult to rally them to my cause.”
“And yet you’ve given my lieutenant no names. Even to Ozan, your trusted servant, you gave nothing.”
Dardzada laughed. “I didn’t know who I could trust, Layth. I still don’t.”
“Come, the danger is over. Surely you can tell me.”
“I’ll not tell anyone from the Silver Spears, and that includes you.”
Layth frowned, making his jowls puff out unflatteringly. “Six Spears fell that morning, Zada.”
“All of them complicit in that crime. Whatever happened to those guardsmen that day, they deserved it, and worse.”
Layth tipped his head, as close to agreement as Dardzada was going to get. “The Lord Commander of the guard demands answers.”
“Then give them to him! Ezren and his men were taking coin to steal children from the west end of our city! He was feeding them to those merciless bastards! You’ve done well! You’ve removed a terrible stain from this city—a thing any man should be able to spin into a tale that would leave the Lord Commander more than satisfied, a thing I’m sure you’ve managed before, Layth. The only thing I’d be worried about is whether the Commander believes his captain involved in the crime.”
Dardzada watched Layth carefully at this. He wanted to know—he needed to know—whether Layth was involved. But either Layth knew nothing or he’d been anticipating this. “Of course his captain knew nothing of it.” He lifted the bulk of his frame from the stool and smoothed his soft, white uniform down. “But tell me this, Zada, if the Lord Commander demanded a more thorough investigation, would he find that the Moonless Host, the scourge of this city, were involved in the attack on the Spears that day?”
And now it was Layth watching Dardzada for signs of a lie. But this was a lie Dardzada had been telling for years. It was a lie he’d be telling until the day he died. Layth had no more hope of catching him at it than anyone else in this city did.
“Of course he wouldn’t,” Dardzada replied.
“And what of our good Ezren?”
“What of him?”
Layth sighed. “Have you seen him, Zada?”
“Neither hide nor hair. And good riddance to him.”
Layth hardly weighed him. He stared for the span of a breath, his expression more relieved than anything else. “Children… Such a terrible tragedy.”
“Yes,” Dardzada said.
“Why did you say the girl, Çeda, left you?”
“I didn’t.”
“That’s right. You didn’t.” A cruel smile distorted Layth’s already-smug face—a smile that, despite Dardzada’s years of practice at hiding them away, brought on a host of bitter memories.
Without another word, Layth turned and left Dardzada’s apothecary.
The bell jingled. The door clattered shut.
About the Author
Bradley P. Beaulieu fell in love with fantasy from the moment he started reading The Hobbit in third grade. From that point on, though he tried reading many other things, fantasy became his touchstone. He always came back to it, and when he started to dabble in writing, fantasy—epic fantasy especially—was the type of story he most dearly wished to share.
Twelve Kings in Sharakhai, the first book in his latest series, The Song of the Shattered Sands, was named to over twenty “Best of the Year” lists when it was released in 2015. His critically acclaimed series, The Lays of Anuskaya, has recently been released in omnibus form.
Brad, who recently became a full-time writer, lives in Racine, Wisconsin with his wife and two children. Beyond writing, cooking has become an obsession. His favorite dishes are French, Italian, and Mexican/Southwestern, but he is also fascinated by the art of bread baking.
For more, please visit www.quillings.com, and to sign up for the author’s low-volume newsletter, click here.
Twelve Kings in Sharakhai is the first book in the new Arabian Nights-inspired epic fantasy series, The Song of the Shattered Sands…
Sharakhai, the great city of the desert, center of commerce and culture, has been ruled from time immemorial by twelve kings—cruel, ruthless, powerful, and immortal. With their army of Silver Spears, their elite company of Blade Maidens and their holy defenders, the terrifying asirim, the Kings uphold their positions as undisputed, invincible lords of the desert. There is no hope of freedom for any under their rule.
Or so it seems, until Çeda, a brave young woman from the west end slums, defies the Kings' laws by going outside on the holy night of Beht Zha'ir. What she learns that night sets her on a path that winds through both the terrible truths of the Kings' mysterious history and the hidden riddles of her own heritage. Together, these secrets could finally break the iron grip of the Kings' power...if the nigh-omnipotent Kings don't find her first
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With Blood Upon the Sand is the second book in the Arabian Nights-inspired epic fantasy series, The Song of the Shattered Sands.
Çeda, now a Blade Maiden in service to the kings of Sharakhai, trains as one of their elite warriors, gleaning secrets even as they send her on covert missions to further their rule. She knows the dark history of the asirim—that hundreds of years ago they were enslaved to the kings against their will—but when she bonds with them as a Maiden, chaining them to her, she feels their pain as if her own. They hunger for release, they demand it, but with the power of the gods compelling them, they find the yokes around their necks unbreakable.
Çeda could become the champion they’ve been waiting for, but the need to tread carefully has never been greater. After the victory won by the Moonless Host in the Wandering King’s palace, the kings are hungry for blood. They scour the city, ruthless in their quest for revenge. Unrest spreads like a plague, a thing Emre and his new allies in the Moonless Host hope to exploit, but with the kings and their god-given powers, and the Maidens and their deadly ebon blades, there is little hope of doing so.
When Çeda and Emre are drawn into a plot of the blood mage, Hamzakiir, they sail across the desert to learn the truth, and a devastating secret is revealed, one that may very well shatter the power of the hated kings. They plot quickly to take advantage of it, but it may all be undone if Çeda cannot learn to navigate the shifting tides of power in Sharakhai and control the growing anger of the asirim that threatens to overwhelm her.
A Veil of Spears is the third book in the Arabian Nights-inspired epic fantasy series, The Song of the Shattered Sands.
The Night of Endless Swords was a bloody battle that saw the death of one of Sharakhai’s immortal kings. When former pit fighter Çeda narrowly escapes the battle and flees into the desert, she takes with her the secrets she learned while posing as a Blade Maiden, one of the elite women warriors who protect the kings. Foremost among these is the revelation that the asirim, the kings’ frightening immortal slaves, are in fact Çeda’s own ancestors. They are survivors of the fabled thirteenth tribe, men and women whose lives were bargained away so that the kings could secure their wondrous powers from the desert gods.
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