“My moon day?” Melis’s face had turned red. “A bit of blood would do you good! At least then you might care about what’s happened, Sümeya Husamettín’ava.” She practically spat the name of the King, Sümeya’s father. “You stand here with these women, training them, acting as if the betrayal of all you’ve come to know and love is nothing! Acting as if what you do will somehow erase the shame you’ve brought upon yourself. Çeda can’t fix what the Kings have done. Don’t you see that?”
Sümeya finished applying the salve and turned to face Melis. “If you believe that, then why do you stay?”
Melis stared at her own hands, which were shivering with rage or impotence, or both. “I cannot return to Sharakhai!”
“That’s why you remain, Melis Yusam’ava? Because you fear you’ll be killed when you return?”
“I will be! So will you!”
Sümeya spat over the side of the ship. “The Melis I know would never use that as an excuse.”
Melis stabbed a finger at Sümeya. “Everything I love is gone!”
“No,” Sümeya countered. “You have always loved truth. You have always loved justice. We are finding those things now.” She waved to Çeda. “Make no mistake. Just because we now walk the same path as Çeda doesn’t mean we believe in all the same things. We have common cause. That’s all. Let us walk the path a little farther, see where it takes us. There are more truths to uncover, and I would find them. Then, together, you and I will see where justice truly lies.”
Melis looked out into the desert, where the asirim still huddled. They’d hardly moved in the last few days, and their hunger was gnawing at Çeda. It was gnawing at them all.
“They . . .” Melis began.
“They what?” Çeda said.
Melis turned her broad, freckled face toward Çeda, and then she seemed to lose heart. She said no more and left the ship, heading in the opposite direction from the asirim.
Late that night Çeda lay in her bunk, alone in the cabin she shared with Sümeya and Melis. She listened to the songs being sung by the campfire. A dozen voices were raised, and with them, Çeda’s mood was lifted as well. Ramela had not been forgotten, but her death was not the heavy cloud it had been two days earlier.
And yet I’m no closer to solving this riddle.
The song came to a rowdy end, accentuated by a reverberant belch from Jenise and a round of drunken laughter from the others. When someone farted loudly, and a new round of giggles ensued, someone started up an ancient camp song about a mare and a stallion. It was Devorah, Leorah having given way to her as the sun had set. The song was bawdy, and Devorah sang it lustily, a fact made all the more amusing for how serious she typically was. As the women began to neigh the notes of the chorus, Çeda heard footsteps reach the deck and climb down into the ship.
Melis came into the cabin, silent and brooding. Instead of going to her bunk at the far end of the cabin, she stopped near Çeda and sat on the edge of Sümeya’s bunk. By the light filtering in through the porthole, Çeda could see she was holding something. A small pot. She held it out for Çeda to take.
Çeda sat up and accepted it. “What’s this?”
“White ink, to use on the likeness of Salsanna.” When Çeda stared at it, confused, Melis went on. “For the tattoo, on your arm.”
“I know what it’s for”—Çeda opened the lid and smelled the floral scent—“but Sümeya already has ink.”
“Not like that she doesn’t.”
Then Çeda realized. The floral smell . . . “You made this from adichara petals.”
“In part, yes.”
“The petals are dear to us now.”
Melis paused, her hands on her knees, for all the world a lord readying to mete out judgment. “We have enough. I’d rather see that tattoo made in the old way, as Zaïde would have done.”
Çeda lifted her right hand. “Zaïde?”
“Yes. She would have mixed petals into the ink for your tattoo, not just soot from the branches.” She flicked her hands toward the pot. “Salsanna deserves it.”
It was a precious gift, not just the ink but the knowledge of what Zaïde had done. They’d prepared ink for all the women’s tattoos, but as Melis had said, they’d used burned branches after removing the thorns. “Thank you,” Çeda said.
“It’s nothing.” Melis slipped into her nightdress and lay down in her bunk, facing away from Çeda.
“Melis, will you tell me what’s been eating away at you?”
“Not tonight.”
Çeda felt like pressing her, but thought it best to leave it at that. “Very well. Sweet dreams.”
For the first time in all their time together away from Sharakhai, Melis responded. “Sweet dreams.”
Çeda smiled as she lay her head back down.
The following morning, she woke with a jolt.
Sümeya, sensing it, awoke too. “What?” she asked blearily.
But Çeda ignored her, turning instead to Melis, who was twisting in her bunk, her expression half annoyance, half confusion. “The ink,” Çeda said.
“Yes?”
“We use it to tell our tales.”
“Yes, but—”
“The asirim can’t.” Çeda got up, changed into her battle dress. “They have no one to tell their tales.”
“Of course, but—”
“Meet me outside, both of you.” She took to the stairs, and called over her shoulder. “And bring Leorah. Quickly!”
Chapter 13
EMRE ACCOMPANIED YOUNG Shaikh Aríz to greet the two tribes as they arrived at the oasis. The Rushing Waters of Tribe Kenan had arrived early, their fleet like a herd of akhalas surging over the dunes. By the time the White Trees of Tribe Halarijan joined them near sunset, a feast was already underway. They ate a stew of roasted lamb, tomatoes, and sweet onions, then charred flatbread with smoked eggplant, crumbled cheese and fire-roasted peppers laid over it, and finished with a rice pudding that was so creamy, so perfectly spiced with cinnamon and clove, it put a smile on everyone’s face.
There wasn’t as much to go around as everyone would have liked—they were all aware of the need to preserve supplies, especially as they headed into late summer—but everything had been prepared with love, and the night was filled with so much dancing, music, stories, and drink that no one gave much heed to the fact that their bellies weren’t completely full.
There were even a few games of skill and strength and riding. The one most watched was the test of strength. Any could enter, but it soon became clear that the only two worthy of the title were Frail Lemi and a White Tree, an ox of a man named Gall. The man was just as large as they said, and very strong, but when they came to the stone toss, and Frail Lemi threw his the length of a ship, Gall had simply dropped his own onto the sand and started laughing. Frail Lemi had laughed with him, childlike, and no one was quite sure whether Frail Lemi knew why Gall had found his throw so funny.
When their laughs had faded, Gall held out his hand to Frail Lemi. “The gods gave you too much.”
To this, Frail Lemi, in one of his rare moments of pure clarity, had sobered and pointed to his shaved head and the scar there, evidence of the fall that had robbed him of his wits. “What they gave in some places they took in others.” Frail Lemi broke into a wide grin.
Gall seemed unsure whether to laugh or not, but then he did, harder than before, and clapped Frail Lemi on the shoulder. “Come,” he said. “In drink at least, I’m certain to win.”
Day shifted to night, and carpets were laid around campfires. One campfire was so sought after that many stood just to get a glimpse of the three shaikhs talking around it. Shaikh Aríz of Tribe Kadri, Shaikh Neylana of Tribe Kenan, and Shaikh Dayan of Tribe Halarijan sat on piles of pillows, raised glasses of araq, shared news and jokes, and listened as storytellers told tales of prior meetings between their tribes
. They were often joyous tales of marriage, or of mystic adventures in the desert.
The topics of war and battle were assiduously avoided—no one had a wish to enflame old grievances—though since they’d come to speak of the thirteenth tribe and a potential alliance, it was almost impossible to avoid mention of the days leading up to Beht Ihman, when all the tribes had banded together. It made for a bit of discomfort for Emre and the others from the thirteenth tribe, for theirs was a tale of betrayal and of being forgotten for centuries. Their tribe had been sacrificed by the Kings and transformed into the asirim, or else killed in the massacre that followed when the asirim were sent to hunt and murder their own kin. Mere handfuls had escaped, either by hiding in Sharakhai or by living amongst the other tribes, forsaking their names, their blood, their past.
Later, while wandering the camp, Emre would meet a dozen men and women who confessed they had blood of the thirteenth tribe, nine of whom stated they wished to join him when he returned to Macide. It was a sign of healing. A small one, to be sure, but it did Emre’s heart good to witness it.
Logs were added to the fire, sending great plumes of embers high into the night. At Shaikh Dayan’s bidding, Emre recounted the days leading up to the Battle of Blackspear, and the harrowing battle itself. It felt a bit surreal, telling it from the distance these past few months had added. In years past, Emre might have embellished his own role in it, maybe winked at a girl who’d caught his eye, but to embellish here would feel ridiculous. The tale was so fantastic as it was he wondered if anyone would believe it.
He found himself wishing not for some pretty woman to sit near him at the fire, nor even for Haddad to come from her ship, where she’d sequestered herself—this night is for the tribes alone, she’d said when he’d come to invite her. No, he wished Çeda were here. How he missed her. Her quirky smile. Her simple, stark beauty. Her wit. For what felt like the thousandth time since she’d sailed away with Leorah and the Shieldwives, he told himself the fates were determined to keep the two of them apart. Very well, he thought, knowing that to rail against them would only make things worse, but could you at least give me a sign that we’ll be together again one day?
Aríz added more to the tale of the Battle of Blackspear from his own perspective. By then the campfire was choked with people, some standing on tiptoes to hear. They were impressed, Shaikh Dayan especially, who seemed to wear his heart on his sleeve. Neylana was more reticent, but even she nodded as Emre and Aríz came to the high points: Mihir’s one-on-one battle with Onur, the flight from the dragon, the spying of tribe Khiyanat and the jubilation that followed, and finally the lengthy battle that saw the arrival of the Sharakhani Kings, the queen of Qaimir, a pair of ancient ehrekh locked in battle, and the death of Onur at Çeda’s hands.
“You ordered the Autumn Rose to charge Onur’s ship?” Shaikh Neylana asked. She was a woman of fifty summers with a face that seemed unaccustomed to smiles. The running joke was that Neylana was too busy feasting on the blood of her enemies for humor. And now Emre could see why. The fire’s ruddy glow softened many of the faces sitting around it, but against Neylana’s skin it somehow gave her the look of a crag owl, hungry and wary as it waited in the night.
Emre waved to Aríz. “I made the suggestion, Shaikh Aríz approved it.”
“And you led the attack on the King of King’s ship?”
“I joined in, with two others.”
“And after all that, the Silver Spears just let you go?”
“Yes, and they were thoughtful enough to give me gifts before our parting.” He pointed to the right side of his head, where a scar could be seen before being lost in his dark hair. “This.” He pointed to another on his neck and pulled his thawb away to reveal one more on his shoulder. “And these, before I was so kindly escorted from their ship.”
Neylana smiled. “Even so,” she said, “an entire ship against three men.”
“Three men and one ehrekh.”
She nodded, brows raised, as if the explanation were perfectly reasonable, but Emre could tell she found his story anything but. She pressed no more, and the feast continued, but Emre began to worry. He’d thought this council was going to be more ceremony than a true negotiation. It was clear, however, that he would have to keep his wits about him; Shaikh Neylana, and possibly Shaikh Dayan as well, were not as committed as he’d thought.
The following morning saw the start of the formal council between the tribes. In a large pavilion, Aríz, Dayan, and Neylana sat with their vizirs. Aríz wore traditional garb, a thawb with ornamental bracers wrapping his forearms and his turban set at a jaunty angle, as many of the younger men in Tribe Kadri were beginning to do. Shaikh Dayan wore a brilliant yellow khalat and a turban with a malachite brooch shaped like the delicate flower after which he’d been named. His raiment was the richest in the pavilion, a thing he was famed for, and noticeably more impressive than Shaikh Neylana’s, who wore a plain black abaya, a headdress of pale green beads, and a sky-blue hijab that hung loosely over her head and shoulders. Haddad’s long, unbound hair and bright bodice and skirt set her apart as a foreigner, but you wouldn’t know it by the way she sat, looking as if she belonged in the circle every bit as much as the shaikhs. Lastly, there were Emre and Hamid, who sat as equals, representing the thirteenth tribe.
Aríz did much of the talking early on, laying out the proposed terms of the alliance that he, Macide, and the other shaikhs had nominally agreed to. It offered mutual protection and mutual trade, free of the dictates of the Sharakhani Kings who often pitted one tribe against the other for their own benefit. No mention of war against Sharakhai was made, but all knew that the larger the alliance grew, the more likely such a thing became.
Dayan was the first to touch on one of the more difficult subjects. He nodded to Aríz and spoke softly. “It seems generous of the eastern tribes to cede ground to Khiyanat, the thirteenth, but you seem to be implying that we should cede ground as well.”
Aríz, showing more aplomb than his years might indicate, motioned easily to Emre and Hamid. “We welcome our brothers and sisters and rejoice that they no longer need to hide from the Kings. All we hope to do is restore the old territories.”
“The old territories?”
While the pavilion’s roof above them snapped in the morning wind, Aríz unfolded a map. “The lands of Tribes Kadri, Salmük, and Masal would shift like so. While your borders”—he circumscribed the new territories for Tribe Kenan, then Halarijan—“would move here.” When Dayan’s pleasant smile turned humoring, Aríz seemed to lose confidence. Suddenly he looked less the statesman and more the wide-eyed young man of fifteen summers he truly was. “It’s hardly land you would miss.”
“And how would you know what Kenan would miss and what it wouldn’t?”
Aríz pointed again to the map, specifically the desert tract and the portion of the mountain ranges Kenan would be giving up. “There are few enough resources to be found there. And because of the agreements reached between your father and my grandfather, neither of us have sailed there in any case.”
“But now you would sail there.” He leaned back from inspecting the map. “It’s a good bit of land to give up.”
“Made less so by the amount Halarijan would cede in turn, and Narazid to them, and so on.”
“Assuming that all the tribes agree.”
Aríz nodded, ceding the point. “Which we are hopeful will happen.”
“Presumptuous of you,” Dayan said, though not in a way that provoked, Emre thought. He was merely being realistic.
“Nothing will change right away,” Emre said. “It will take time. Years, in fact. Macide merely hopes to secure your agreement now that we might find our place in the desert.”
Dayan picked up a stuffed grape leaf and took a bite. “So not only are you asking for land, you’re asking for food, medicine, armor, weapons, and ships.”
Emre tipped h
is head. “We cannot sustain ourselves without help.”
“And the coffers of the Moonless Host that we contributed to over the years?”
“Spent, the last of it lost in the flight from Sharakhai.”
Dayan took another bite with a calm, unconcerned air. “You would have us believe there’s nothing left?”
“Please understand. There are hundreds upon hundreds who lived in Sharakhai but who now face life in the desert. After generations of living in the shadows of the tribes who protected us”—Emre bowed his head to both Dayan and Neylana—“some have come to us to help, but most are new to your way of life. Skills you take for granted must be learned anew. Trade agreements that were established by your tribes generations ago must be forged from scratch. And meanwhile, we do not have the jobs we once had in Sharakhai to support us. That helped to sustain us and our families, and many had well-paid work that allowed contributions to the needs of the Host. That’s all gone now, ripped from us in our flight from the Kings.”
“Life in the desert is harsh. Better, perhaps, if you had remained in hiding.”
Hamid’s face turned red. “You might have forgotten what it was like before the Moonless Host was born, but the scarabs do not. It was the Host who turned the eyes of the Kings from the desert to the city. It was the Host who spilled blood to take down the Kings, who weakened them, sparing you from the skirmishes and killings that once kept you in line.”
Dayan sniffed, his lips becoming a meandering line filled with skepticism. “The Kings continued to do those things.”
“Yes, but they were considerably worse before us. Where would you be now had we not fought your fight for you?”
Emre put a hand on his arm, and thankfully Hamid quieted. “I might not have put it so bluntly, but what Hamid says is true. The tribes helped the Host, and the Host helped the tribes in return. On the back of the long campaign we waged in the city, you profited for years, generations.”
“Oh?” Dayan said. “How so?”
“If I recall, Kenan had no trade agreements with Sharakhai, and no right to trade in the caravanserais, before the birth of the Moonless Host. But when the Kings began to ask your great-grandmother for help to root us out, she exacted concessions from them: the trade agreements that survive to this day.” Emre turned to Neylana. “The same is true of Halarijan. And more than once, when some of your tribe were wanted for piracy, we fed you information to avoid the Kings’ navy. There’s more besides, but I don’t wish to dwell in the past. The truth is that the thirteenth tribe, Tribe Khiyanat, deserves a place in the desert. We’re asking you to respect that right, to make way for us, and to profit with us once we’ve found our legs. With your help, that will happen sooner than later.”
Beneath the Twisted Trees Page 15