Beneath the Twisted Trees

by Bradley P. Beaulieu

  Dayan, usually careful not to tip his hand, seemed impressed. Neylana seemed anything but. “Does Macide hope to make himself a King in the desert?” she asked abruptly.

  “No,” Emre said. He’d discussed this very topic with Macide at length. The thirteenth tribe’s existence was tenuous, but it was also colored by their history. They arose largely from the Moonless Host, and the Host had long wanted to see the Kings fall. They’d never come close enough for anyone to wonder what would happen if they succeeded, but the question now arose: as Macide gained more influence, would he use it go beyond mere survival?

  “And yet,” Neylana said, “he sent you here to gather others beneath his banner—”

  “Not beneath it,” Emre corrected, “beside it.”

  “You,” Neylana went on, “a man who risked the life of Mihir, Shaikh of Tribe Kadri, in the vain attempt of stopping King Onur.”

  Aríz, seeming affronted, sat straight. “We did stop him.”

  “No. As we heard from Emre’s own mouth, the ehrekh stopped him. Çedamihn Ahyanesh’ala stopped him. Why wasn’t she sent to treat with us?”

  Emre felt his face flush. Çeda’s shadow had been growing longer and longer. He’d no idea it extended this far, though. “I’m here—” Emre began, but Neylana cut him short.

  “You’re here to beg, as you’ve already admitted. You’re here to ask us to cede ground that has been ours since the desert’s dawning. You’re here to ask us to weaken ourselves that you, who were drummed out of Sharakhai by the might of the Kings you sought to bring down, can profit. And now you are trying to convince us that you have been owed it all along.” With an abrupt flourish of one hand, she tipped her glass of araq over, spilling it onto the sand. “Well I won’t have it. What’s ours is ours, and we won’t give it up for you”—she stood and cast her gaze pointedly at Aríz and Dayan—“or for anyone else.”

  With that she paced from the tent as if she were queen of the desert.

  Dayan looked shocked. Emre could practically feel him reworking his previous calculations. If Tribe Halarijan was unwilling to shift the boundaries of their territory, what did that mean for his own tribe?

  As Emre feared, the negotiations that followed went horribly. Dayan would only assist with food and supplies. They gave up a single ship, an old schooner, under the proviso that it would be returned in a year’s time, or a better one given to Tribe Kenan. And they promised to aid the alliance if they were outright attacked by the Kings or by the invading Malasani fleet. But he would go no farther than that.

  Throughout the entire conversation, Haddad had remained silent. And when Emre confronted her about it after, she looked at him with a bemused expression. “It wasn’t my job to convince them, Emre. It was yours.”

  “Well I hope you’re bloody proud of her,” Hamid said that night as the sun was going down. He was staring at Haddad’s dhow, where she was leaning on the gunwales with her rangy cuss of a first mate.

  “What do you mean?”

  For once, Hamid’s look of calm arrogance faded, in favor of a look of profound disappointment. “I have no idea what Macide saw in you, to send you here.”

  “I spoke to her. She said she made a few trade arrangements. Where’s the harm in that?”

  “I swear to all the gods of the desert, Emre, in you their quest to forge a pure, unadulterated idiot was fulfilled. It may have looked like we failed today”—without looking, he stabbed a finger toward Haddad—“but it was already set up to fail. Trade agreements or not, she asked them to keep away from us.”

  “Why would she do that?”

  “For her king! For Malasan!”

  “That makes no sense.”

  “It makes perfect sense if you’re King Emir. Would you want a fucking alliance forming at your back while you’re preparing to attack the greatest city in all the Five Kingdoms?”

  “Well, even if she did”—Emre was confused more than anything—“what do you want me to do about it now?”

  “In Sharakhai, we had easy solutions for such things.”

  Those solutions all amounted to the same thing: the long sleep for the one giving the Moonless Host trouble. “We’re not in Sharakhai anymore. And killing Haddad may have no effect at all. It may push them toward Malasan, not farther away.”

  Hamid regarded Emre with that flat, hangman’s stare of his. “Fix this, Emre, before I’m forced to fix it for you.”

  With that he stalked away, leaving Emre’s failure feeling even more complete than it had moments ago. He looked to Haddad, who spotted him and waved. After a moment’s discomfort, Emre waved back, feeling a perfect fool for doing so.

  Chapter 14

  TAKING UP THE INK MELIS had given her and Sümeya’s bag of tattooing needles and inks, Çeda rushed from the ship before either Sümeya or Melis could say anything more to her. She was too excited to remain, too excited to even speak of it until she was out under the sun with the asirim near to hand. She was worried the idea would start to fade like a dream. But it didn’t. Not as she left the ship. Not as she went to those sleeping around the now-cooled fire. Not as she found Jenise lying beside her lover and sister Shieldwife, Auvrey, their arms entwined.

  “Come,” Çeda said to Jenise after rousing her.

  Jenise’s sun-bleached hair was unbound. She blinked the sleep from her eyes then looked about in alarm. As she took Çeda in, however, her worry faded. With care, she unwound herself from Auvrey’s embrace, then wrapped her wheat-colored turban around her head with practiced ease. The two of them walked side by side, away from the ships and toward the asirim, far enough that they could speak without waking the whole camp. By then, Melis was walking by Leorah’s side, supporting her as Leorah thumped Nalamae’s tall staff into the sand. Sümeya came just behind, and soon Çeda was facing the four of them.

  Çeda held out her right hand, then motioned to the hands of the others, who all had tattoos in roughly the same place, even Leorah, though hers was the lone tattoo not designed around the prick of an adichara thorn. “The tattoos,” Çeda began. “We all have our tales to tell. And we’ve done so, not just with our words but in the stories we’ve inked into our skin.” She waved to the asirim, who huddled in the distance. “But the asirim have been bound for centuries. They cannot tell their own tales. They’re bound by the gods, forbidden from speaking it, and few enough will tell their tale for them. Were we to give them a way to do so, however, I think it would free a part of them.”

  They all stared at her.

  She lifted Melis’s pot of tattoo ink, the one made from the branches and blooms of the adichara, and focused her attention on Jenise. “You will become the canvas for their tales. You and all the others. You will forge your bonds through story.”

  “And if you’re wrong?” Sümeya asked.

  The idea felt so right that Çeda nearly denied her out of hand—she needed this to be true—but she knew that was her younger, more callow self speaking. Gone were the days when she could let her impulses rule her; she was responsible for so much more now. “If I’m wrong, I may lead another to the farther fields. I would let them try it on me, but that would prove little. I’m already bonded to them. And having them try it on either Sümeya or Melis is out of the question. Their anger would be too hot.”

  Jenise was no fool. She knew very well why Çeda had brought her here. “I’ll do it,” she said.

  Leorah groaned and grumbled, her tongue searching for something inside her cheek. “Sharakhai was not built in a day. Let us take some time to think on it.”

  “No,” Jenise replied, her voice soft and distant. “I can feel the hope in Çeda’s heart, and I can feel it spreading among the asirim.” She stared intently at the huddled group, lit purple in the pale morning sun. “Some will deny it, though—Imir, Natise, even Sedef—and that is a blight that will only grow.”

  She took the pot of ink from
Çeda, then opened the case and took out an inkwell, needle, and striking stick. Çeda hardly knew what to say. She wanted to yelp with joy. With the sun rising, and Jenise taking up the torch Çeda had lit, it felt like they’d all been saved. But she worried as well. The images of Amile’s teeth tearing into Ramela’s soft throat were playing over and over again.

  The others had been roused, and were joining them, watching with a strange fascination. Auvrey was at their head. “What are you doing?” she asked Jenise.

  “I’m doing what we came here to do.” Jenise walked to the top of the next dune. Auvrey made to go with her, as did Çeda, but Jenise stopped them both with a raised hand. “I go alone. They must see that I’m unafraid.”

  “But”—Auvrey, her hands gripped over her heart, looked perfectly impotent—“why now?”

  “Because waiting will bring ruin.” Jenise’s eyes lifted to the sunrise. “Because now is the perfect time.”

  “It’s all right,” Çeda said, trying to calm Auvrey, trying to calm her own nerves as well. “We know the signs. We’ll be ready to protect her.”

  Auvrey held her tongue, her eyes full of fear. Jenise, meanwhile, moved to the next dune and sat cross-legged. After placing the ink, needle, striking stick, and basin on the sand next to her, she stared over the distance between her and the asirim and reached out to them. Unlike Ramela, she wasn’t waiting for one of them to respond to her. She was calling to them, summoning one in particular.

  In the distance, a figure stood, towering over the rest of the huddled asirim. He broke away, back hunched, his body turned sideways as if he couldn’t bear to look at Jenise as he approached.

  “No!” Auvrey cried. “Not Amile, Jenise. Not Amile! Please!”

  When Jenise didn’t respond, Auvrey sprinted forward but slowed when Melis intercepted her. Auvrey was so upset she tried to bull past, but Melis caught her and sent her reeling backward with a powerful shove. In a blink, Auvrey had a knife in one hand. Melis didn’t wait for her to advance. In a whirlwind of lithe movement, she slipped past Auvrey’s initial swing, snatched her wrist, and twisted her hard to the ground.

  After disarming her, Melis stood and used the tip of Auvrey’s knife to point at two of Auvrey’s friends, who were rushing forward to protect her. “Jenise has chosen to sit on that dune so that none of you would have to be the first. Don’t think to dishonor her by taking that choice from her.”

  Auvrey, more than a little shocked, stood and backed away. Her expression was no less worried, but she let the ritual continue. Jenise sat calmly, waiting, for all the world an ascetic in commune with the Great Mother. Amile approached, his thoughts every bit as black as they’d been before he’d tricked Ramela into attacking him. It wasn’t all darkness, though. There was curiosity as well, as if he’d found a strange fruit lying in the desert and didn’t yet know what to make of it.

  He lurched down the slope of one dune, climbed the next. Soon he was approaching Jenise, walking low to the ground, defensive, as if he expected Jenise to attack him. Jenise said something, her words lost in the bluster of the morning wind. Amile replied in a stream of sibilance that barely rose above the hiss of spindrift. Çeda felt his mixture of confusion and anger, both so near to his bottomless well of rage that she nearly ran forward to stop him before it could go any further—if they lost another of their number, there would be no convincing the women or the asirim that this process of bonding was worth pursuing—but it was in this moment that Jenise turned away from Amile, undid the ties of her dress, and slipped free of the bodice and sleeves, baring her chest and back down to her waist. Gathering the sleeves into her lap, she leaned forward, exposing her back to Amile in a display of trust that was so complete it elicited gasps from many of the women, Auvrey and Çeda included.

  All the women stared, rapt, as Amile crawled forward like an insect, wary, his thoughts dark as a winter storm. Auvrey whispered prayers to the gods as Amile reached Jenise’s back. He sniffed her hair, her exposed neck. A flare of anger rose in him. It was so strong and frightening that Çeda nearly called out a warning. Leorah, however, sensed Çeda’s mood and grabbed her wrist before she could utter a word. It gave Çeda the patience she needed to wait a moment more.

  With studious care, as if he daren’t disturb a thread on her dress, nor allow his blackened limbs to brush her copper skin, Amile sat on the sand behind Jenise, cross-legged, just as she was. He stared at her back and for a long while simply shook his head. Çeda had seen a boy in the bazaar like this, the son of a carpetmonger who’d been kicked in the head by a mule when he was young. He could perform simple tasks—fetch water, carry carpets, brush the very mule that had kicked him—but most often he would sit on the carpets and shake his head just as Amile was doing now, as if each intermittent thought caused him some small amount of surprise or pain or worry.

  With trembling hands, Amile took the small pot of ink, lifted the lid and smelled the contents. His head arched back, and Çeda heard a groan the likes of which she’d never heard from the asirim before. There was pleasure in that sound, but also yearning, like a man who’d once had the perfect bottle of araq and, on smelling some component—new leather, a whiff of jasmine, a copper bracelet on his skin—longed once more to taste it.

  Amile poured some of the ink into the empty well. He looked like an aging painter who knew his palsy was incurable, but who’d also found his life’s inspiration, and refused to give in until his masterwork was complete. Setting the pot aside, he took up the needle and striking stick, dipped needle into ink, and began tapping it into Jenise’s skin.

  For a long while, no one spoke, but then Sümeya broke the silence. “You feel it?” she asked, to no one in particular.

  By this time there were tears streaming down Çeda’s cheeks. She had no idea when they’d started to fall. She nodded while wiping them away. “I do.”

  The feeling was slight, but unmistakable: Çeda’s bond to Amile was weakening, while a new bond was forming between Amile and Jenise.

  Chapter 15

  DAVUD AND ANILA walked into an empty stone amphitheater. Behind them came the ghul, Fezek, carrying the unconscious form of Esmeray the blood mage. High above, a stippled bank of clouds was lit by the lowering sun, making them look like dahlias, fire-filled and fallen on a field of cobalt blue. The rows of seats arced around a shaded, semicircular stage. Other than a layer of dust and a bit of graffiti here and there, it was a clean space, as if the owners had left on a short holiday and would be back at any moment.

  A holiday perhaps, Davud thought, but it isn’t likely to be a short one.

  The amphitheater had long been the home of a legendary show. The owners, a Kundhuni couple and their three children, had trained condors and falcons and other birds to perform tricks. Through entertaining lectures interspersed with displays of the birds themselves, they spoke of the birds’ lifestyles, their habitats, even their feeding habits, including displays of how they would dive on prey from on high. Davud had been to it several times. It was a treasure. But when rumors of war struck, the couple had taken it as a sign and, unable to find anyone to buy the show or even the land, had packed up their family and sailed for the hills of Kundhun.

  No squatters had yet claimed it, and the walls of the stadium itself were high enough that it provided a place for Davud and Anila to meet the Enclave with little chance of being observed. It was a convenient place for the coming confrontation.

  Anila motioned Fezek to the stage. The tall, lanky ghul lurched to the place she’d indicated and set Esmeray down. Fezek pulled the hood of his robe back and placed himself near her head, ready, at Anila’s command, to lift his foot and crush her skull should the need arise.

  The Enclave would already be looking for Esmeray. Of that Davud was certain. The only thing preventing them from finding her was the sigil of masking he’d painted onto her forehead. They were an extremely secretive lot, the Enclave, and given their
long history of betrayals from within, were wary of new members. It sometimes took months, even years, for them to approach new magi and offer them a place among their ranks. Davud didn’t have that much time. They’d managed to avoid Sukru so far, but they couldn’t keep it up forever.

  After exchanging sharp nods with Anila, Davud took Esmeray’s wrist and blooded her again. This time, however, he took off the ring and collected her blood in the small reservoir worked into the underside of the claw. After closing the wound with a swipe of his thumb, he moved around Esmeray in a circle, allowing the blood to drip onto the dry earth. When it was complete, he touched his finger to the last of it and drew a sigil upon Esmeray’s neck that combined sense with magic, then trigger and shear. He infused the blood with intent as he did so, giving the symbols the life they needed to trigger the spell without his interference. He finished with a line across her neck, then stood and regarded his handiwork.

  The spell would, if it sensed magic crossing the boundaries of the circle of blood, cut Esmeray’s neck like a knife through butter. It was one of the most complicated sigils he’d yet created. Any small mistake would ruin it, leaving both him and Anila exposed, or worse, having it trigger under the wrong conditions and kill Esmeray when he didn’t mean for it to. But he was satisfied that all looked proper.