Beneath the Twisted Trees

by Bradley P. Beaulieu

  When he heard footsteps and a hushed conversation approaching the top of the stairs leading up to deck, he tested several of the cabin doors across the passageway, finding the third one unlocked. He waited for the voices to pass by, then slipped quiet as a shadow up to deck, over the ship’s side, and down to the sand. He was careful of his wounds, but it still wasn’t enough. Eyes screwed tight, one hand clawing the sand involuntarily, he waited for the pain to pass.

  Rhia was a crescent in the sky, leaving much of the camp in darkness. A scattering of pockets were lit by hanging lanterns. Brama avoided them all, sliding from shadow to shadow, heading steadily toward the queen’s pavilion.

  The pavilion’s canvas walls were in place to keep away the night’s chill, and there were a dozen guards posted outside, making it all but impossible for Brama to get anywhere near it. He didn’t need to, though, for just then the pavilion’s flaps were pulled wide, and out stepped a creature that, despite all Brama’s experience with Rümayesh, made his knees go weak.

  It was tall, with skin that glistened in the moonlight. Twin horns curved like scimitars up and away from its bald head. A tail moved, snakelike, behind it. When it had taken several steps from the tent, its four arms moved rhythmically, seeming to draw in the night. It was gathering power, Brama realized. He could feel it. But then its arms stopped, and its head swiveled toward his hiding place in the darkness. Eyes that seemed too small for its head shone like pearls. Brama couldn’t be sure, but it seemed to smile. Then burst into a cloud of locusts. A droning sound made Brama flinch, made his wounds itch. The cloud flew up and away in an undulating mass and in moments was gone, leaving behind a chill that prickled Brama’s skin.

  Chapter 11

  RAMAHD WAS CROUCHED, as he had been for the last hour, along the edge of a roof overlooking the dry, cracked bed of the River Haddah. Even for Sharakhai the day was scorching. The wind was listless, the very air hot as a foundry. It was near high sun, a time when most would be indoors, taking meals with their families and having a nap before returning to work, yet the streets were busy. It was a sign of the looming war. Many were nervous that the Malasani fleet, which had been spotted to the southeast, would arrive any day.

  The spyglass Ramahd held to his eye was trained across the riverbed on an old mansion, the finest along a stretch of homes that might once have been grand but now reflected, at best, a middling affluence. The windows of the central room, and the double doors open on its far side, offered a limited view of the mansion’s central patio. On that patio, sitting and talking easily with one another, with a bottle of what looked to be fine Qaimiri brandy between them, was a bent old woman dressed in funereal black and the portly frame of Basilio Baijani.

  They’d been speaking for some time and things appeared to be wrapping up. The woman, a figure known to most in Sharakhai as the Widow, was pointing east, perhaps toward the House of Kings, while Basilio, arms crossed over his ample chest, seemed to take in everything she was saying, then nodded and stood. He made a few placating gestures before kissing the Widow’s offered hand.

  As Basilio was led from the room by a servant boy, Ramahd moved to the edge of the building and slipped down a rope to ground level. He strode along the near side of the river while, on the far side, Cicio fell into step twenty paces behind Basilio, who was flanked by two guards, a man and a woman Ramahd knew quite well. All three were dressed in ordinary Sharakhani garb.

  Ramahd was pleased that their gamble with the Widow had paid off, but he was still uncomfortable with having sent Tiron off to a drug den to lay the trap. Cicio had been incensed, especially considering they’d just lost Vrago, Cicio’s closest friend. “We can still go to the embassy, my lord,” Cicio had said in Qaimiran, pleading with Ramahd. “We’ll find your blood so Meryam can no longer track you. We’ll see you safe. Just don’t send Tiron into those fucking dens again.”

  It was the same argument he’d had with Tiron. “We’d never make it,” Ramahd said, “and if somehow we did, we’d never make it out again.”

  Cicio knew better than most how tight security around the House of Kings had become. He’d scouted them on their return to Sharakhai and told Ramahd it would be no good trying to sneak over the walls, not until the war was over.

  “Let me go,” Cicio pleaded. “I’ll take the lotus.”

  Tiron had agreed to smoke a bit of black lotus while he was there. It was necessary for his story to be believed.

  “No,” Ramahd said. “Tiron’s been there before. They’d suspect something if it was you.”

  In the end Tiron had decided to go to the same drug den he’d used in the past. While there, after breathing in the smoke that loosened so many tongues, he spun a tale within hearing of those who ran the den: that Lord Ramahd Amansir of Qaimir had found a way to the Enclave and, fearing they would only shelter one person from Queen Meryam’s anger, had abandoned Tiron to his own fate. It was bait, pure and simple, designed to lure Basilio out of hiding. The story would reach the Widow, and the Widow, Ramahd had gambled, would have a way to contact the queen. As it was Enclave business, Meryam would send Basilio to investigate.

  And so she had. Now it was simply a matter of convincing Basilio it was in his best interests to share.

  Ahead, Basilio and his escort wove around a mule cart and turned a corner. Cicio, instead of following, hopped an ironwork fence and ran quick and low toward the rear of the mansion’s small estate, planning on catching the group from another angle while Ramahd chased them from behind.

  Ramahd picked up his pace, weaving through the crowd and turning the corner. The street ahead eased to the left. Dozens walked along it: men with clothes baskets on their heads, gutter wrens squatting in the shade near a tea house, a clutch of collegia students in flaxen robes listening to a portly priest of Bakhi. Of Basilio, however, Ramahd saw no sign. Nor did he see his guards.

  His heart beginning to pound, Ramahd loped to where the street met the cart path that ran along the rear of the estate where he thought he’d find Cicio, but Cicio had vanished too. Ramahd continued down the street, craning his neck to look farther along the curve. In the distance he thought he saw Cicio’s cocksure stride taking him through the arched mouth of a narrow alley, but that didn’t make sense—Cicio hadn’t had the time to run that far.

  Ramahd sprinted after him. The crowd stared, but Ramahd was well past the point of caring. He reached the alley, where the buildings were four stories high and crowded shoulder to shoulder. It left the alley in deep shade. It was also perfectly, completely empty. No Cicio. No Basilio. No one at all.

  There was something off about this. Like a home that had witnessed some recent, violent death.

  “Cicio?” he rasped as he ran down the alley, looking through the doorways, through the slats in the windows. By the time he reached the next intersection, he was out of breath and drenched in sweat despite the parched desert air.

  “Cicio!”

  He continued straight, his stomach twisted in knots. Far ahead, he caught the flare of an embroidered silk skirt passing beneath an archway that led to an abandoned building. Ramahd sprinted toward it and found an empty floor covered in dirt and stones, filled with the detritus of forgotten industry. Other doorways led deeper into shadow. Rats scattered as he headed for the one opposite the arch.

  In the room beyond, he caught sight of a window and halted in his tracks. The window, little more than a gaping hole in the mudbrick, gave a view of the desert. Ramahd blinked at it. Spit gathered in his mouth quickly, painfully. He was supposed to be in the center of the city. He was in the city’s center. And yet the view was of the open land to the northwest of Sharakhai. It was rocks and sand dunes as far as the eye could see. Looking back the way he’d come, he saw a square arch, and a stairwell leading down. The hum of the city had been replaced with a faint sound of whistling wind.

  Years ago Ramahd had traveled to his uncle’s estate along the e
dge of the Austral Sea. He and his cousin had hiked through an ancient forest to the shore and watched the sun set. They’d laughed at the stories their parents used to tell them: stories of a forest alive, that harbored ill intent, stories of snatchers who lived in the trees, dead men and women who were drawn to those who lingered. When the sun went down, however, it took their courage with it. The forest that had seemed meek only hours ago now seemed indomitable. Malign. Hungry beyond all measure. They who’d felt like conquerors now felt meaningless, and each step felt as if it were summoning the very snatchers they’d earlier scoffed at. The hopelessness Ramahd felt as he wandered the abandoned building felt the same. He was trapped in a place he could never hope to understand, much less gain sway over.

  He was no longer some impressionable young man, though. The twisting feeling in his gut had swelled since he turned down the street after Basilio—and passed through the outer edge of the spell that now held him in its sway. He was no stranger to the inner workings of magic, but this particular weaving was so refined, so intricate, he could discern neither its edges nor the pattern of its fabric.

  When he heard the sound of scraping from below, he took a set of stairs down and began to expand his awareness. He stood there, wrapped in wonder, as the spell and its sheer scope became known to him at last. Dozens of threads reached out, supporting it like a grand spiderweb, connecting this place not only to others in Sharakhai, but to more in the desert as well. He considered dismantling it but had no idea where to begin. It was easy to undermine a spell as it was being formed, but quite another to unravel one that had already been cast. This one felt complex as clockwork, as if many had lent a hand to its making, and in so doing had concealed the method of its creation, and therefore of its destruction.

  He followed the hall at the bottom of the stairs to a courtyard. Of the four people standing there, Ramahd recognized three as members of the Enclave’s inner circle. There was Prayna, their de facto leader: a woman Ramahd’s age with a serious face and soulful eyes. Undosu: an old Kundhuni man with wrinkled black skin and a leather cap with a pattern of shells sewn into it. Nebahat: a man with dark skin, a smile as bright as sunshine, and a painted yellow forehead with a bright red stripe running down its center. The last was a young Mirean woman of perhaps fifteen summers whose light skin appeared untouched by the harshness of the desert sun. Ramahd had heard of her: Meiying, a prodigy who’d risen quickly through the Enclave’s ranks and seized the inner circle’s final seat, not merely by means of the power she commanded but the clarity of her insights.

  Calm Prayna, evenhanded Prayna, stepped forward. The sun cut in through a hole above and shone on her pale green head scarf and its golden chains. “Out of respect for our past dealings we offer this one meeting.”

  “Where’s Cicio?”

  Prayna glanced to one corner of the room. As a cloud passed over the sun, Ramahd saw him, Cicio, lying on the dirty floor, unconscious but breathing. When the sun returned, he was gone.

  “What do you want?” Prayna asked.

  “I want us both to prosper,” Ramahd replied.

  Prayna’s humoring smile made the purple scrollwork tattoos over her eyebrows curl. “You want to be saved from your new queen’s vengeance.”

  “The last I checked, she was your queen too. Besides, wouldn’t saving myself be considered prospering?”

  Nebahat’s smile grew wider. “What does that have to do with the Enclave?”

  Ramahd felt as if he were walking a tightrope—one misstep and all would be over. “When Meryam first came to Sharakhai, she accepted your offer to meet but refused to join your ranks.” Ramahd took them in one by one. “She claimed, as I recall, that it wasn’t necessary, that it would be imprudent given her position as the daughter to King Aldouan and heir to the throne.”

  The pipe Undosu had to his lips had no tabbaq in its bowl, but he puffed on it just the same. After considering Ramahd with a wary stare, he removed the pipe from his mouth, pointed the end at Ramahd, and spoke in a thick Kundhuni accent, “No mage is forced into the Enclave. You know this as well as we do.”

  “And yet you must have wondered, despite her claims, if there were other reasons behind her refusal.”

  Prayna, ever the pragmatist, frowned. “Say what you mean to say.”

  “Meryam declined because it would give you too much power over her. It freed her to use your charity against you. She made a study of you and your ways, your capabilities, your politics. She’s gained more power through her marriage to Kiral, and now she’ll use that knowledge against you as she moves on to another conquest: mastery of the Enclave itself.”

  Uncomfortable glances passed between the magi. “Do you have proof?” Prayna asked.

  “In Qaimir, she broke Hamzakiir’s mind. She’s been dominating him since, using him as her slave.”

  Ramahd thought they might argue with him, claiming, as many would, that Hamzakiir had been killed by the ehrekh, Guhldrathen, during the Battle of Blackspear. It hadn’t been common knowledge at first, but the returning soldiers had told their tales, and the story had spread like wildfire through Sharakhai. Instead, Prayna turned and motioned to a sack on the floor, the sack that contained Kiral’s head, the one he’d secreted away in the back rooms of an armorer he’d come to trust.

  Behind Prayna, one of the windows had come to life. Instead of shadows and an abandoned room beyond, it showed the back room of that very armory. Silver Spears were tearing it apart, looking for something. A Blade Maiden stood among them, guiding their search.

  “It’s fortunate for you,” Prayna said, picking up the sack and holding it out for Ramahd to take, “that we are not thieves.”

  The vision through the window faded as Ramahd accepted it and looked inside. There, as he’d left it, was the head of Kiral, King of Kings, the man whose face and body had been altered by Meryam to look like Hamzakiir. “You know the truth, then,” Ramahd said. “She’s already enslaved one mage. What makes you think she won’t enslave you?”

  Nebahat—for some reason his orange turban had become bright and almost painful to look at—seemed surprised. “You speak of crimes against the Enclave.” He waved to the sack. “Hamzakiir has much to answer for in this regard.”

  “Which may become part of the problem. Even if Meryam’s designs on Sharakhai were entirely innocent—and I assure you they are not—Hamzakiir’s will would eventually affect her. He trusts no one. Meryam is the same. They will not suffer the Enclave’s existence once they take the reins in Sharakhai.”

  “What do you want from us?” Prayna asked.

  All around him the windows, the doorways, and the broken section of wall changed. They revealed different places, none of them like the next. Some rooms were shaded, others bright as the sun-scorched desert, others lit by candles or hearths. Men, women, even children stood within them, silent, expectant, as if awaiting Ramahd’s answer. This was a full meeting of the Enclave, then. They had all come to hear his plea. And when he was done, they would render their verdict.

  “I want Meryam to answer for her crimes,” Ramahd said, turning to take them all in. “I want the rightful heir to the Qaimiri throne, Duke Hektor, to take her place. But in order to do that I need help. I need protection. I need to be shielded from Meryam’s attempts to find me until I can reach the House of Kings and expose her.”

  It was a straightforward request, and Ramahd felt hopeful. Some of the magi opened their arms, palms facing him, a gesture of acceptance in the desert. But more and more, the gathered magi gripped their hands into fists and crossed them over their chests. By the time the circle was done, crossed arms outnumbered open palms three to one. Ramahd thought the inner circle might vote as well—and perhaps they would have had it not gone so heavily against him—but what did it matter in the end? They could count as well as Ramahd.

  Nebahat’s bright smile faded. As did Undosu’s curious, piercing stare. Meiyin
g had a troubled expression that made Ramahd think she wasn’t altogether comfortable with the decision just made by the circle. Still, she remained silent, watching and waiting. Prayna merely smiled, a pleasant enough thing, Ramahd supposed, though clearly at odds with her pitiless gaze. “I’m afraid your request must be denied”—she motioned to the sack gripped in his right hand—“but you must do as you see fit for you and your nation. We won’t interfere in your quest.”

  “She’s got to you,” Ramahd said, staring into Prayna’s depthless eyes. “She’s already made an arrangement with the Enclave, hasn’t she?”

  The circle remained silent. Many in the windows began to fade.

  The disappointment Ramahd had felt at the vote was already turning to fear. “You’ll come to regret this.” Gods how he hated the pleading sound of his voice. It was just that he’d pinned so many hopes on this meeting. “You cannot cede so much power to Meryam and expect it to go unpunished.”

  More magi faded. One, a woman with a scowl on her face who’d voted for Ramahd, stared hard at Prayna before turning and fading like the others. Soon Ramahd was alone with the four members of the inner circle. Prayna was the first to leave, then Nebahat with a sad smile. Undosu puffed on his unlit pipe and turned away as if Ramahd didn’t exist. As they left through different doorways, Ramahd felt them being whisked away to other parts of the city, each departure undoing a part of the spell that had constructed this strange meeting place.

  The doorways and windows, instead of revealing homes all across the city, now opened onto the dirty floors and broken walls of the abandoned building. All save one. Only Meiying remained.

  “Please,” Ramahd said to her. “Don’t do this.”

  “It’s already done,” she said, her tone polite but firm as new-forged steel.

  She waved to the final doorway, which showed a dark, smoke-filled room. Men and women lay sprawled over the floor, eyes fluttering, their minds taken in what Ramahd recognized as the pall of black lotus. Among them Ramahd saw Tiron, curled on the floor like a child, his eyes closed, fluttering madly as if gripped in nightmare.