Pale Queen's Courtyard

by Marcin Wrona

  Chapter 8: Arrows in Dark Places

  “This is a disaster,” said Hound Barsam by way of greeting.

  He dismounted, followed a moment later by his blank-faced men, and handed his reins to one of the boys that handled the Lugal’s stables. The boy, to Kamvar’s amusement, was doing everything in his power to avoid staring at the stump of Barsam’s right arm. War had been all but absent from Ekka in his brief lifetime. Battle wounds were, mercifully, something he must have seen only rarely.

  “Six men and a Hound, and not only did you fail to catch one Daiva, you lost three men doing so?”

  That, Kamvar decided, was absolutely beyond the pale. He retorted, words clipped with anger. “Maybe if you’d told us what we were facing instead of throwing us to the lions, this–”

  That thought trailed away into a silence born of disbelief after Barsam struck him across the face.

  “It is not your place to question my orders, or those of your late Hound,” the Hound said coldly, his expression one of disgust. “I regret the loss of your brothers…”

  You don’t fucking well sound regretful.

  “… but we had our own orders just as you were given yours.”

  The matter apparently settled to Barsam’s satisfaction, he turned to climb the steps to Lugal Zagezi’s palace gate. One of his men threw Kamvar an apologetic look and shrugged helplessly.

  “Who among you has the command?” the Hound asked as he walked. “Am I to understand it is this young man that disapproves so vehemently of my actions?”

  Fantastic way to make an impression. Barsam obviously had not bothered to learn their names or ranks, but Kamvar had little doubt he would remember being challenged. I suppose the miserable bastard will hold this against me.

  “I do,” said Yazan.

  Barsam turned to look at Yazan, who had neglected to wear his veil, probably against the healers’ orders. His face looked awful, bubbled with blisters. Kamvar was surprised at how far the burns spread. Yazan had drawn perilously close to joining Hound Barsam in losing an eye.

  “So you are Kamvar? The man who wrote me that most interesting letter?”

  “No, Eminence. I am Yazan. Young man is Kamvar. Tahmin is beside him. The duty to inform you was mine, but I was with healers.” Yazan pointed to his ruined features. “It could not wait.”

  The Hound nodded at him, and when he spoke his face seemed to soften momentarily. His voice, however, did not. “I see. From this point, you are the only man of your company with whom I care to speak.”

  It took Kamvar a great deal of self-control to keep a sigh trapped securely behind his teeth. This will be fun.

  Barsam’s promise to speak only to Yazan did not last. Over a midday meal of bread and lamb, he questioned Majid’s men about everything that had happened. He asked them to recount the initial hunt and sewer chase in detail. Yazan spoke, wincing in pain at every other word, and Hound Barsam interrupted him from time to time with questions.

  “What have you done since?” the priest asked.

  “We sent choice men of the Lugal’s guard to seal every exit from Inatum,” Yazan said. “The Daiva had likely left the city by then. We sent messengers to Numush, Sinmalik, Karuni and Ekur with instructions for the Lugals of those cities, and continued investigating here.”

  Yazan told Hound Barsam of Wardum Nazimarut, whose scourging had ultimately proven fruitless. The man had been silent first, and then, as Yazan’s tortures grew more creative, he hurled curses and imprecations, babbling in a dialect of Ekkadi that the Huntsmen had not been taught. Unfortunately, Yazan explained, cheeks flushing, the slave’s condition was deceptively feeble. He died during the interrogation.

  The man had certainly seemed hale enough. As Yazan’s tale turned to the investigation of Shudagan’s home, Kamvar found himself deeply grateful that he had not witnessed the Wardum’s final gasping, flailing moments.

  “And what did you find in this Ekkadi merchant’s house?” the Hound asked when Yazan had finished his story.

  Yazan shook his head. “I was not there. Kamvar and Tahmin led the search.”

  Barsam turned to Kamvar. “What did you find?” he asked.

  “It seems the Ekkadi consider this Shudagan something of a subversive. Evidence suggests that he has some involvement with an organization called the Shattered Manacle,” Kamvar said. He explained to the Hound what Anzatesh had told him, and the contents of the ledgers that he had found.

  “The house is built with its back to the Mound of Lumshazzar,” he continued. “A tunnel from one of the higher floors led downward into the bones of the old city. We searched them – Akosh, Tahmin and I – for signs of passage or inhabitation, but haven’t found anything of the sort thus far. We have mapped some of the tunnels, but they are extensive and confusing.”

  Barsam was silent a moment, lost in thought, a finger to his pursed lips. He slowly nodded. “I see. When we have finished here, you will lead the way. I would like to see these tunnels… perhaps I will catch a scent where you are unable.”

  Some time later, Kamvar found himself once again in the tunnels below Inatum. The only scents he caught were earth, decay, and the fetid reek of sewers. Barsam seemed unaffected by the stink.

  The map they had etched was as accurate as they could manage without trained surveyors. Kamvar had compared it against the sewer map maintained by the Lugal’s scribes, and was gratified to learn that the two matched more often than not. The Lugal’s maps had charted portions of Lumshazzar, but the city’s face had changed, it seemed, since the day of the Artalum. New tunnels had been dug in places. Others still had collapsed.

  When Barsam finally did catch a scent, stiffening so suddenly that one of his men almost tripped over him, they were in a corridor Kamvar had already explored. On his map, it was a straight furrow that led from a raised square at the western end of the city, as near the Shalumes as the Mound of Lumshazzar got.

  “Something was here,” Barsam said, running his fingers along the wall.

  “This corridor does not go anywhere, Eminence,” Kamvar said. “It collapses, a few hundred paces from here.”

  Barsam looked faintly amused. He said nothing, but beckoned for the rest of them to follow as he turned and loped into the blackness. His torchbearer, a short but solid-looking man, followed after.

  Tahmin gave Kamvar a helpless shrug. What could they do but follow?

  The corridor ended as he remembered, at a solid wall of fallen rubble. Barsam knelt by the rocks a moment, then nodded.

  “The scent is stronger here. Whatever is causing it appears to be on the other side of this blockade,” the Hound said, turning to Kamvar. “Is there another way around?”

  There was not. Not, at least, if his map was somewhat accurately scaled. He had counted his paces, fifty at a time, but he was no surveyor. It was entirely possible that he’d made a mistake, and he said as much.

  “I see,” Barsam said, snatching the map from Kamvar and peering intently at the clay. “Where are we?” he asked. Kamvar pointed to the corridor. The Hound followed the stitching of lines that represented tunnels, and finally nodded, satisfied.

  “Start clearing the rubble.”

  What?

  “What?” Akosh asked. They had found the old man dicing with the guardsmen. Yazan had suggested that they did not need his help, if he preferred to stay behind, but Akosh simply laughed at that and stood up, collecting what remained of the coins stacked before him. He had not been doing well. Maybe that’s why he excused himself.

  “The rubble, Karhani. I feel sorcery on the other side of this collapse. It had to get there somehow.”

  Barsam’s men were already bowed over before the rubble, clearing it in handfuls to the corridor’s side. Kamvar shrugged and joined them, Yazan and Tahmin following. Only Barsam and Akosh stood aside, the former seemingly lost in thought, the latter scowling.

  “Hound Barsam!” cried one of the men, the same that had shrugged sympathetically at Kamvar whe
n the Hound had upbraided him.

  “Parvish? What have you found?”

  Kamvar looked over. The man named Parvish had rolled away a stone the size of a child. Behind the rock was a tunnel, wide enough for a man to crawl through and shored up with bricks and palm stumps. The rock itself had a bronze clamp affixed to the back, through which was threaded a rope as thick as Kamvar’s forearm.

  “Shocking,” Barsam said, clearly unsurprised. “I’ll take the point. Fall in behind me. Last man through pulls the stone back in. And try to make the rubble look more natural before you close the tunnel. We conserve whatever advantage of surprise we might have. No stupid risks.”

  “What if we need to retreat?” asked Tahmin.

  Barsam regarded him as he would a child asking why the sky was blue. “If we need to retreat at a crawl through this tunnel, we’ll be crossing the bridge whether we need to push a stone or not.”

  The tunnel crawl was hard on Kamvar’s knees. He held his spear close to the head to avoid stabbing the man in front of him – one of Barsam’s – and tried to move in time with the rest of the group. Right hand, right knee, spear in tow. Left hand, left knee, and repeat. He could not have said how long the tunnel ran. The awkward march seemed to take an eternity.

  Barsam was right. If they needed to retreat through this passage, they would all of them join their brothers in the land beyond the Shinvat.

  Presumptuous, aren’t you? But had he not lived a life in tune with the Prophet’s teachings? Tahmin’s discomfort had worried him, even if he’d not admitted such. If Tam of all people fears for his soul, what chance do I have?

  Kamvar formed an image of Sahar and Ashuz as a ward against evil thoughts, and shook the doubts from his mind.

  When the tunnel finally came to an end, Kamvar found himself in a place that seemed older, somehow, than the rest of the buried city. The light of their torches reflected in places from what remained of a mosaic, its pieces dulled by time or scattered where they had fallen at the foot of the otherwise bare wall to Kamvar’s left. If the walls had been painted in those ancient days, when rain still fell on Lumshazzar, no trace remained. A single corridor led out of the room they had entered.

  “The Lugal’s map made no mention of these tunnels?” Barsam asked, his voice a whisper.

  “It did not, Eminence,” replied Yazan.

  “Then I have little doubt that this is where we shall find our Daiva.”

  I have plenty of doubt. Leonine, or Rakshan – whatever the Daiva’s name was –could not possibly have been fool enough to remain in the city. Lumshazzar could hide a man for months; that was hardly a matter for debate. Still, the murderer had proven canny beyond their expectations. He would know, no matter how tangled the corridors beneath the mound, that his best chance of survival lay outside Inatum’s walls.

  But if Barsam’s caught a scent… At the very least, perhaps Leonine had passed this way. How many Daiva could there possibly be in a city like Inatum?

  No sooner had Kamvar posed himself that question than he withdrew it. He did not want to know the answer, not truly. A city such as this, with an underworld such as this, could hide many things from the Shimurg and the eyes of virtuous men.

  Barsam led the way, a sword gripped tightly in his left hand. Kamvar found himself wondering if the Hound could fight tolerably well, if he had learned to cope with the loss of his right arm and eye.

  The ground was dusty, but not in the way of some of the tunnels Kamvar had come across in his explorations of Lumshazzar. The powder left behind by dried and crumbled clay lay heavy by the walls, but the path they walked was clean, obviously well-used.

  Ahamash guide my spear, and protect me from those of my enemies. There could be fighting this day. Men who went to such troubles to hide from the world above were men who would defend their tunnels from unwelcome visitors.

  The passage they followed led to another room, this one larger than the first, if otherwise unremarkable. Kamvar watched as Hound Barsam left the shelter of the corridor and entered the chamber, the stout torchbearer at his side. They seemed terribly out of place, a point of light blazing in the depths of the earth.

  “This is bloody unnerving,” Akosh grumbled. Barsam turned briefly, his scarred face contorting somewhere between a smirk and a sneer.

  “We have nothing to fear from such men as would hide in a place like this,” said Barsam’s torchbearer. Tahmin nudged Kamvar, incredulous. It was unlike Barsam’s men to offer opinions unsolicited.

  Akosh laughed bitterly – the idea that they had nothing to fear was ridiculous beside the memory of the funeral they had held – but Barsam spoke before he could retort.

  “Hesam, don’t be a fool.” Barsam’s voice was terse.

  The torchbearer’s mouth worked soundlessly for a moment, as if trying to stammer out an apology, but he evidently thought better of it, and simply bowed his head.

  Idiot.

  Tahmin hid a snicker behind his hand. Kamvar threw an elbow into his side, but not before one of Barsam’s men – Zavar? – turned back to glare at the two of them. Tahmin, Kamvar thought despairingly, you’re a child.

  “A spell was cast here,” Barsam said, pointing to the ground at his feet. “I cannot be certain exactly how long ago, but the scent is recent. A day, three days…” He shrugged. The mannerism looked strange on a one-armed man.

  Barsam beckoned for them to come closer. The room in which they stood seemed to have been the main room of a house. One of the walls was cut through with an arch that must once have held a door. A bricked step in one corner of the room had been a hearth, long ago.

  Something seemed to occur to Barsam. “I do not think this was our Daiva,” he said. “The scent in that who–” he trailed off, apparently reminded of the presence of Akosh. Ila-uanna’s captain bristled, then drew a deep breath through clenched teeth. So our Hound does have some slight understanding of diplomacy. “…in that widow’s manor… it was fainter than this, even when recent. The girl’s, on the other hand, I would expect to be stronger. They’ve probably left the city, at any rate.”

  Of course they had. Barsam was not stupid.

  “So why are we here?” Akosh asked flatly.

  “Because at the moment, other than what we have found here, we have nothing. The wrong trail can still lead a man to the right one.”

  Barsam sheathed his sword and took the torch from Hesam. He paced around the room in a slow circle, examining the walls and ceiling.

  “We’ll learn nothing else here,” he said finally. “Into the street. And be careful.”

  Hesam led, sidling up to the archway in which a door had once hung, and peering around the edge. He waved to the rest of them to follow, and stepped into the buried street.

  The rubble lay heavy here. The tunnel they had entered opened to their left and right. The walls had been shored up, but the workmanship was haphazard and uneven, and the earthen ceiling had collapsed in places. Kamvar could not decide whether he was more uneasy at the evidence of other men’s passage than gratified that somebody was hard at work keeping these hidden tunnels from collapsing atop him.

  “The Shimurg doesn’t see places such as these,” said Tahmin. There was an uncharacteristic uncertainty in his voice.

  “Then don’t die here,” replied Barsam, less than helpfully. Men who died in a place like this, their passage unobserved by the heavens, could not expect a fair accounting when they crossed the Shinvat. Not something I want Tahmin worrying about in the state that he’s in.

  Barsam looked down the tunnel in one direction, then the other. “We go this way,” he said finally, pointing to the right of the buried doorway. Kamvar could not tell if the Hound had a reason for choosing that direction, or if he was simply guessing. He supposed it did not matter.

  The street they followed must once have been a slum. The houses here – what remained of them – were small and cramped, their bricks weak and crumbled. The area would probably have been near the docks, Kamvar real
ized. The Shalumes was further north now, but if this was in fact the edge of the Mound of Lumshazzar, and thus the edge of that ancient city, the river must have flowed differently once.

  If that was true, this part of the city would have been home to labourers and dockhands, and many among them slaves. It seemed oddly appropriate that Shudagan’s history had led them here.

  He imagined the murmur of the river, and the men and women that strode these streets once, when their city stood atop the earth and not below it. Strode? No. Lumshazzar was not yet abandoned. There are still people here.

  The murmur grew louder and louder, until Kamvar realized that he was not imagining it. “I hear water,” he whispered. “Running water, up ahead.”

  “I hear it too,” said Akosh. “Careful. Where there’s water…”

  They crept as quietly as armoured men could, although the effort was likely a waste. An enemy, hidden in the dark, would see the light shed by their torches well before their footfalls could be heard. That thought made Kamvar uncomfortable.

  The sound of running water grew louder. Are we coming up onto the sewers?

  They were not. The tunnel they followed opened into a square, divided into four equal sections by deep furrows over which stone bridges had been built. The torchlight cast an orange reflection into the furrow nearest them. Water. There’s actual water running through –

  A shout broke the stillness, then a strangled cry. Ahead of Kamvar, a man fell to the ground. He heard a whistling noise any warrior would recognize, and then the sharp impact of an arrow striking the tunnel wall and ricocheting away. He heard another cry of pain, but did not stop to consider it. Instead, Kamvar broke into an instinctive dash and dove, rolling over his spear, to take cover behind the bridge nearest him. An arrow flew over his head and embedded itself harmlessly into clay bricks.

  He peeked briefly over the lip of the bridge, searching for the archers, but could not see them. Damn those torches and damn these fucking tunnels.

  Kamvar looked over to where his brothers had stood. He saw torches littering the ground, and one moving rapidly towards him. The others had dropped theirs and run for cover just as he had, but for the man approaching. By his height, it seemed to be Hesam, though Kamvar could not make out the details of his face. Barsam’s men reacted quickly. He had expected no less. A dark shape flitted between him and the nearest torch. A moment later, Tahmin was beside him, breathing rapidly.

  “Two down,” he whispered. “Barsam’s.”

  Kamvar nodded. “Can’t spot the archers.”

  “Damn.”

  The cavern’s roof was high. The archers’ aim would not be hampered here, as it might have been in tighter quarters. As if to prove the point, an arrow struck the bridge Kamvar and Tahmin hid behind and snapped, the shaft whirling end over end as it flew over their heads.

  “What do we –”

  Tahmin’s question was interrupted by a bloodcurdling yell.

  “Ahamash… look!” Kamvar whispered, pointing across the square, to one of the other bridges. The torchbearer – it was Hesam – had left his cover. He ran to the source of the arrow fire, as evasively as he could manage, other dark shapes following after.

  “What are they...? They don’t have shields!” Tahmin said, incredulous. Kamvar heard the hiss of released arrows, heard them hit ground. Ahamash, keep me safe.

  He stood up and ran across the bridge, following the bobbing light, blood pumping in his ears. “Kam!” Tahmin shouted.

  Kamvar did not heed him, pressing onward, leaping across the square’s central river in his haste to join the others. He heard the hiss of an arrow, too close. A moment later, one of Barsam’s men cried in pain, and fell noisily to the ground.

  Hesam, leading the charge, threw back his head and roared Ahamash’s name. Other men took up the cry. This is insane. Why am I doing this? The thought was interrupted by the noise of an arrow striking the ground near Kamvar. It bounced at him, the shaft whipping painfully against his leg. Kamvar hissed and stumbled momentarily. He planted his spear butt in the tiles ahead of him and pushed off, trying to get his feet beneath him.

  A dark shape overtook him, and briefly grabbed his elbow. Kamvar glanced over, startled, and recognized Tahmin. Apparently satisfied that his friend had regained his balance, Tahmin let go and grinned.

  This is insane.

  He realized a moment later that arrows had stopped flying. He heard panicked shouts from ahead, and the unmistakable scrape of swords leaving scabbards.

  Swords? Where would such men as would hide in a place like this get swords?

  “One alive!” somebody shouted. Hesam’s torch cast its light on a staircase at the far end of the square. Kamvar saw a man leap from the darkness, his arm a blur that gleamed in the firelight. There was a dull noise, like an axe hewing a sapling, and then he saw Hesam fall – no, dive! – at his attacker’s feet, bowling him over.

  “Attack!” a man screamed – their own or an outlaw, Kamvar could not tell, and now he too was at the front, near the staircase. Before him, a man in flowing robes swung a blade, which was batted aside by somebody else. Kamvar impaled him. A heartbeat later, an axe took the outlaw’s arm.

  Akosh. The old man flashed him a grin.

  Two more men that had been running to meet them stopped near the top of the steps, evidently thinking better of it once they saw their numbers, and turned to run. Kamvar caught a flash of movement to his right, beyond Akosh, and one of the fleeing men fell with a yelp of pain.

  “Take the landing!” Barsam shouted, and they surged upward, leaping from step to step. They met no resistance on their way. Kamvar found himself shoulder-to-shoulder with Barsam’s men, breathing quickly, spear leveled at the darkness. From below, from where they had come, came a litany of curses.

  Their attackers had melted away. Flickering torchlight illuminated a profusion of houses in good repair, leaning one against the other in a tangle of side streets.

  “I don’t think we want to be here when reinforcements arrive,” Akosh said. There were a hundred places where an archer could hide, a hundred alleyways from which men could spring.

  Kamvar saw Barsam nod. “Agreed. Hesam left one of them with a leg wound; he won’t have gotten far. Take him, and our fallen, and let us turn back. The Lugal’s guards can clean up this mess.” From where they stood, the square was like a night sky, darkness dispelled in places by the fire of fallen torches.

  Barsam instructed Kamvar to carry their hostage. He lay close to where Hesam had tackled him, his back against the staircase, leg bent beneath him at an ugly angle. A torch lay nearby, illuminating a face weather-beaten like a farmer’s and scarred like a soldier’s. A slave-brand of some kind marred his forehead.

  A sword lay by the man’s side, but he made no move towards it. Instead, he sneered, mouth twisting with contempt. “Kill me, dog,” he spat. “Kill me for your masters, your soft silk eunuchs and priests–” Kamvar decided to interrupt his tirade before it began with a spear-butt in the teeth.

  “Be quiet, and show me your hands,” Kamvar said.

  “Why should –” the man began, blood spilling from a split lip, when Kamvar struck him again.

  “Listen to me very carefully,” he said, trying – perhaps successfully? – to imbue his voice with a growling menace, to hide the growing sickness and guilt inside him. “You don’t fear death. I can see that. But there are good deaths, and there are bad ones. How would you like to be impaled outside Inatum’s gates?”

  His hostage’s grin became a little less self-assured, then faded away. “Honourless coward,” he muttered. He held out empty hands. Kamvar kneeled beside the man and checked his clothing for hidden weapons, then tore strips from the hostage’s robe to tie hasty shackles around his wrists and ankles. Touching the latter made the man wince, though he tried to conceal it. Kamvar found himself admiring the brigand’s stoicism.

  “I will carry you,” Kamvar said. “Make it difficult for me, and I will make it di
fficult for you. No harm will come to you so long as you cooperate with us. Understood?”

  The man nodded sullenly, and Kamvar slung him over his shoulder, eliciting a hiss of pain. It was a lie, of course – or, at best, a promise Kamvar had no power to keep. His hostage’s safety relied on a number of factors, the most significant of them a one-eyed warrior-priest.

  When Kamvar rejoined the other Huntsmen, they were engaged in that most dreaded duty, attending to a battle’s aftermath. He knew the trepidation, had felt it so many times before, that sick, dull fear of turning a man over to learn that a friend – a brother – had crossed the bridge.

  Zavar was one of the fallen, an older man with a bald head and an unruly beard flecked with wetness. An arrow protruded from his side, and his breathing was weak. Moving him would be difficult, Kamvar knew, especially on their way back through the tunnel. Yazan and Akosh were the first to reach him, and they shared the burden. Parvish had taken an arrow in the hip and could not walk, though he appeared to be otherwise unharmed – he grinned, in spite of his pain, when Hesam scooped him up in his arms. “My hero,” he said, then winced.

  A moment later, Kamvar heard Hesam’s voice constrict in pain. “Behrouz, your brother! He’s… he’s dead.”

  Behrouz had been walking ahead of Kamvar. He stopped short abruptly.

  “What?” he asked, voice small and weak, disbelieving.

  “An arrow took him in the leg… and then another found his throat. I’m so sorry, Behrouz.”

  Behrouz ran to where Hesam was standing. “No. Oh, no. Bosmin,” he cried, kneeling and laying his head on his brother’s chest.

  “Leave him,” Barsam snapped.

  Behrouz whirled around. “Down here? In eternal dark?”

  “Leave him,” Barsam said again, softly this time. “We have not the men to carry so many, Behrouz. Not that we can spare on a dead man. We will return for him, I swear it.”

  Fear warred over Behrouz’s face, its opponents trust, anger and despair. Behrouz finally heaved a deep breath, a shudder wracking his body. Barsam laid a gnarled hand on the man’s shoulder, his own face impassive, and Behrouz nodded weakly.

  They turned and trudged into darkness, carrying their fallen and a hostage. Behrouz, his burden sorrow rather than flesh, took up the point. Barsam guarded the rear, alert for pursuit that never came.

  The return through the tunnel through which they had clambered to reach these hidden chambers was far worse than the first trip had been. There was not space enough in the tunnel to carry men, so the soldiers following Behrouz crawled backward, cradling the injured in one arm and pulling themselves along with the other as best they could.

  They moved slowly, for minutes, or hours – who could tell in a dark place such as this? The man in Kamvar’s arms was silent but for the occasional hiss of pain when his leg struck against a stone.

  It would have been so much easier to have simply killed the brigands. It was an unworthy thought, perhaps. But under the circumstances, he was sure Ahamash would forgive. He thought back to the torture of the slave Nazimarut, and winced. If there’s anything to forgive. Perhaps this man would be happier with a spear through his heart.

  As they neared the end of their crawl, Zavar’s weak moans ceased. But for the shuffle of cloth being dragged over stone, and the slow breathing of labouring men, they made the rest of the journey in silence.

  Kamvar knew what that meant. They all knew what that meant. As the tunnel finally opened into the sewers that had already claimed so many of his brothers’ lives, Kamvar heard muffled weeping. The old man’s wounds had been too grave. He was dead, his passing announced by a brother’s tears.

  They returned to the sewers as Barsam had promised, with a cohort of the Lugal’s soldiers behind. They were grim, scowling men, each armed with a spear and a torch, long knives at their belts. They came with hearts pounding like war drums, and the taste of blood in their mouths. Some were grizzled veterans of countless dusty skirmishes, others fresh-faced boys newly become men, but all came with a singular strength of purpose. These were angry men, and fierce, and they were prepared for slaughter.

  They found none.

  In the caverns below the city, where rivers still flowed under bridges that had once been strewn with flowers, they found a single corpse: Bosmin, fallen brother of Behrouz. My brother as well, Kamvar added, if only briefly.

  The soldiers scattered in small groups, each following a different tunnel to find where it led, leaving a trail of small stones in their wake so that none would be lost to the depths. They returned with no blood on their blades, and each of them told the same story. The tunnels wound up, and down, and around each other. Many patrols found stones scattered by their comrades. Many more found rooms within which fire pits had been recently used, and in some were burlap sacks of grain and other supplies. But of robed swordsmen there was no sign.

  The next day they gave Bosmin and Zavar to Ahamash, and subjected the outlaw Kamvar had carried to Hound Barsam’s tender ministrations. He told them nothing and everything. His name was Luhe and Tawasi and Abbawas. The Manacle was based in Ab-Ewarad and Sumudkam and Inatum. Its leader was a merchant, a priest, a sorcerer-king, and dead.

  Kamvar carried the branded man back to his cell, bloody and bruised, missing an ear, an eye and three fingers. Barsam was more skilled – or perhaps merely less enthusiastic – than Yazan had been. The man did not find the release of death until somehow, during the night, he found the strength to smash his own head open against the wall. Kamvar felt a certain relief at that, and included the man in his prayers.

  “Kamvar?”

  These days, Kamvar thought ruefully, it seemed Tahmin hardly slept at all. I’m one to talk.

  “Yes, Tam?” he asked, opening his eyes. The room was suffused by the weak amber glow of oil lamps shining through the cracks in the doorjamb. He could just barely make out Tahmin’s features in the huddled shadow perched atop the room’s other bed.

  There was a silence, then an apology. “I shouldn’t wake you. Never mind, I’m just being an idiot.”

  Kamvar shrugged, then realized his friend could not see the gesture. He swung his legs over the straw pallet and sat up, yawning. “I haven’t been sleeping very deeply these days, Tam.”

  Kamvar rose and walked over to Tahmin’s bed, then sat down beside him. He clapped his friend on the shoulder, then hunched over wearily. Tahmin chuckled.

  “What’s funny?”

  “We look like two old buzzards in a cypress.”

  “I feel old, Tam,” Kamvar replied. “Today, anyway. This whole business with Barsam…” A week ago, their leader had been their friend, and for all that Majid could be stern, he was first and foremost a kind man with a quick laugh. Not the sort of man whose every word was gravel rubbed into a cut, who tortured men with a shrug and a smile, who… You’re being stupid. Majid was no Jazd either. “… I don’t know, I don’t think we were prepared to lose Majid yet.”

  “Or Yazan,” Majid muttered.

  Or Yazan.

  “Is that unfair?” Kamvar asked. “He lost his closest friend.” And his face. “We should try to be understanding, but…”

  “Kam, did you see his eyes when he ordered that slave scourged? Did you hear his voice? I don’t know. Yazan could always be vicious, but he never seemed to… to enjoy it. I thought that our own brother had been replaced by… well, by Hound Barsam.” Tahmin shifted, leaning back against the wall. He said nothing for a moment, then continued, his words slow and measured.

  “But then, when Barsam saw Yazan’s face, he seemed… I don’t know, moved. And then in the tunnels, with Behrouz…”

  It was just too inane. Kamvar laughed and shook his head, clapping his friend’s knee. “Listen to us, Tahmin. We’re sitting here muttering like fishwives, shocked and surprised that a man we barely know has shown some tiny smattering of human emotion. Of course he was moved. How could he not be? He’s just a man.”

  A petty, vindictive, rough
man, but a man nonetheless. It was funny. Barsam seemed somehow less threatening now, in the dark, his terrible secret exposed.

  “Is he?” Tahmin asked, more quietly now. His fears had evidently not been assuaged. “Can a man – any man – just give his own family to Ahamash? If Sahar were a Daiva, could you give her to the desert like that?”

  Kamvar knew that Tahmin would not see his incredulous stare in the dark, though at the very least he’d be able to hear it in his voice. “Of course not. Don’t be stupid. Besides, it could just be a rumour.”

  “Maybe. Neither could I, you know,” Tahmin said softly. “Kamvar… that is a failing, not a strength. Imagine that. We’re warriors sworn to Ahamash, and yet we’d balk at the sacrifices He demands?”

  Kamvar sighed. He was not at all interested in one of those discussions.

  “That’s why he’s a Hound,” Kamvar said, “and we’re just apes with spears.”

  Tahmin snorted. “Great, Kam. You really know how to cheer a man up.”

  Oh, Ahamash. Why me?

  Kamvar grunted and rose from the pallet.

  “I don’t like where this is headed,” he said. “I think I’ll go for a walk. Join me?”

  “Now? In the dead of night, under the Serpent’s Eye?”

  “Forget I asked,” Kamvar said. He opened the door to their room and squinted as the hallway’s lamps assaulted his eyes. “Try to get some sleep.”

  If Tahmin responded, Kamvar did not hear it. He shut the door behind him, and followed a pride of painted lions into the cool night air.