Beneath the Twisted Trees

by Bradley P. Beaulieu

  Sümeya shook her head. “I’ve asked her. She won’t come.”

  Çeda fumed, but decided against ordering Melis to come. This day was for the asirim, and she refused to taint it.

  As it happened, only Mavra was left without a bond, and so, later that day, Çeda took up a cloth bundle filled with inks and tattoo needles and walked into the desert toward the huddled asirim. Mavra waddled forward to meet her. She stood before Çeda, chin up, perhaps sensing Çeda’s purpose.

  “We are bonded, grandmother, and will remain so”—Çeda lifted the bundle—“but I would have you tell your tale.” She paused, suddenly unsure of herself. “If you would.”

  Mavra’s shoulders, so tight a moment ago, relaxed. She glanced at the bundle in a way that revealed how touched she was. It was the sort of look that might have stolen over her centuries ago when a grandchild offered her a perfectly imperfect statue: a thing made of clay and love and childish moldings, held up in tiny, hopeful hands. To Çeda’s offer, however, she shook her head. She motioned to the asirim behind her, then to those who were tattooing their stories on the Shieldwives.

  “My story is already being told, Çedamihn Ahyanesh’ala al Malakhed.” Her voice was high and thin, like stone scraping stone. She’d used the old name for the thirteenth tribe, Malakhed, the name she would have learned as a child. It was a sign of acceptance, of welcoming Çeda to her family. It made Çeda’s heart swell with pride. “And you have your own to tell,” Mavra went on, “one that will eclipse mine. One that must eclipse mine.”

  Çeda felt foolish standing there, her offer denied. “You’re certain?”

  Shaking her head with a smile, Mavra looked in that moment like any number of proud grandmothers Çeda had seen in Sharakhai, a woman who, upon reaching the sunset of her life, had looked upon her life’s work and found herself content with all she’d accomplished. “Go,” she said. “Tend to your flock, while I tend to mine.”

  Three days passed and sunset was nearing as the last of the tattoos were completed. Çeda’s bonds with the asirim were gone, all but Mavra’s, which had grown incrementally stronger as each of her children was passed off to one of the Shieldwives.

  Through Mavra, Çeda felt the other bonds. They were different from the old. They were pure and dark and strong as ebon steel, but also complex. The asirim battled between their centuries-old struggle for freedom and the siren call of submission, between a wish to find peace and the desire for revenge, between their instinct to shield the weakest among them and the repressed hope that they might lay aside their anger and simply heal for a time. It was all in constant flux as the Shieldwives and asirim improbably, beautifully, learned to live with one another.

  Like a tribe, Çeda thought. Tears formed at the very notion.

  The pain in Çeda’s right hand had eased; not fully, but it was a manageable pain now, and a great relief. She wasn’t sure if she could have gone much longer without beginning to fray.

  Near sundown on their sixth day at the oasis, the camp began to tear down. Tomorrow, they would sail for Sharakhai, to liberate Sehid-Alaz.

  No, Çeda thought. Not liberate. Not really.

  She’d become convinced that in order for the rest of the asirim to be free, Sehid-Alaz had to die. It saddened her terribly, so much so that she’d hidden it from everyone, even Leorah.

  Not everyone, child, Mavra called to her. I’ve known since we left the blooming fields. But I pray that you’ll free him first. Let him taste the desert air once more before we take that step.

  Çeda was embarrassed over her slip, but felt relieved all the same. Thank you, grandmother.

  Mavra’s cold indifference felt like a shrug. We all die, Çedamihn. Sehid-Alaz has known the truth of it for centuries. Likely he’ll welcome it.

  She’d thought Mavra would fight her, but she seemed as prepared as Çeda to do what was needed. And so they would. They would free Sehid-Alaz and see what might be done for him, but Çeda was increasingly certain that for the rest of the asirim to be free, Sehid-Alaz needed to die. We’ll do it our way. We’ll honor him as he steps toward the farther fields. He will go with his head held high.

  When morning’s light broke along the horizon, they made the ships ready and were about to pack the last of their provisions and set sail when a blood curdling scream came from the Red Bride. Cries of fright and alarm followed. The Shieldwives aboard the Bride were pointing up through the rigging. Above the yacht, something dark streaked through the charcoal sky. Çeda drew River’s Daughter and squinted. She saw a hint of flapping wings, but little more.

  Jenise and Auvrey, swords at the ready, came running toward Leorah’s ship.

  “Imadra’s badly hurt,” Jenise said. “A gash across her neck.”

  Çeda could hardly take her eyes off the sky. “From what?”

  Jenise shook her head. “I saw only a flash of wings. It flew like a demon—”

  A piercing shriek like a salt flat eagle cut through her words. It went on and on, and the longer it did, the more Çeda’s skin prickled, the more her guts turned to jelly.

  All eyes turned to the western sky, where a dark form swooped closer. Its beak was made for rending. Its talons were wickedly curved. Broad wings batted the air, pinions spread like a display of freshly forged shamshirs. And billowing in its wake, a train of slate blue plumes. A sickletail, Çeda thought, but grown to grotesque proportions.

  Arrows flew but the sickletail avoided them with lazy twists of its wings, flying ever closer to two Shieldwives who were pulling furiously on a rope, drawing up the Red Bride’s anchor.

  Melis, who’d just gained the deck, sprinted forward, her ebon blade drawn, calling, “Lai, lai, lai!” in a high ululation as she imposed herself between the bird and the women hauling on the anchor rope. Her sword was poised, ready to strike, but at the last moment the bird swerved around the mainmast’s starboard shroud and fell upon the rearmost Shieldwife. Talons raked. Wings drummed, and then it launched itself into the crisp morning air with a leap and a sweep of its broad wings.

  The Shieldwife’s hands shot to her neck. She staggered backward as blood spewed from the wound left by the bird’s talons. She collapsed to the deck a moment later, eyes wide, staring at the sky as if she couldn’t quite believe what had just happened.

  Leorah sat nearby in one of the chairs affixed to the deck. The amethyst on her right hand glimmered, its glow only partially attributable to the rays of the rising sun. She looked tired, weary as the world. She hardly seemed able to keep her head up. Lifting a quivering hand, she pointed over the gunwales and mumbled something too softly for Çeda to hear.

  “Ships!” a Shieldwife shouted from atop the mainmast. She was stabbing one arm northwest, the same direction Leorah had just pointed. “Four clippers! The royal navy!”

  Sensing danger, the Shieldwife switched her grip on the mast and spun, mere moments before the sickletail swooped up behind her. She tried to fend it off, but the bird had fearsome speed and reflexes. It sunk one of its talons into her forearm, the other into her turban. As its wings pummeled the air, its curving beak darted down again and again, knifing into the flesh of the Shieldwife’s face. She reeled, then slipped, but before she plummeted she managed to grasp the bird’s leg, clearly hoping to take it down with her. The bird, however, would not be so easily defeated. With mighty beats of its wings it gathered the dry desert air to its chest. It lifted her above the rigging, above the sails. Only when it had borne her twice the height of the ship did it start pecking and clawing.

  In moments the Shieldwife’s hands were a ruin of flesh and sinew. She fell, and like a tumbling stone twisted end over end until she met the deck with a resounding thud. As she lay there, unmoving, the sickletail flew away, lost in the gloaming once more.

  Several rushed to the Shieldwife’s aid, but the sinking feeling in Çeda’s stomach told her it was already too late. She focused on t
he approaching ships instead. There were four of them: sleek and dark, their sails full and golden in the morning light. Their prows were capped in dark iron.

  “Bakhi’s bright hammer,” Çeda swore, then bellowed to the other yachts. “Sail! Sail! All ships set sail!”

  Chapter 18

  “CALL YOUR ASIRIM TO PUSH THE SHIPS!” Çeda cried. “Keep your swords loose and your bows close to hand. Sharp eyes, now! And sail smartly! Our lives depend on it!”

  In a rush of activity, they all began to prepare the sails, ready buckets of blue dousing agent, and pull the anchors. Çeda, meanwhile, asked for aid from Mavra. The asirim were nervous. They moved to obey, but not quickly enough. They were terrified, and suddenly Çeda realized why. The Kings. The Kings were aboard the approaching clippers.

  Come, children, Mavra said. They have no hold on us now!

  They moved faster, their courage building. They gathered around the struts just as the sails of their three yachts were beginning to billow. Such was the strength of the asirim that the ships lurched into motion, knocking Çeda off balance for a moment.

  “Beware!” Sümeya called. “We’re attacked from the south!”

  Çeda turned and spotted the sickletail flying low over the dunes. Its wings brushed the crests, creating strange, almost mystical patterns in its wake.

  Gripping River’s Daughter with both hands, Çeda stepped in front of Leorah to protect her. Sümeya, Auvrey, and Jenise, meanwhile, lined up beside her. Çeda tried to feel for the sickletail’s heartbeat, as she could with mortal man. She hoped she might press upon it, slow it down, enough that one of the others might slice it from the sky. The moment she spread her awareness, however, she felt something open up inside her. It started in her heart, delicate as a newfound worry, but quickly expanded into a dread that threatened to consume her.

  Her head tipped back. Her eyes went wide. She stood on a precipice with a terrible expanse before her: a wide, dark, scintillant void. She felt another presence, something beyond the sickletail. The bird was a window to another world, Çeda on one side staring in, and on the other . . .

  “Breath of the desert . . .” A name came to her numbed lips. “Yerinde . . .”

  The goddess was beautiful and powerful and fearsome. So different from Nalamae. Nalamae felt grounded, a part of the mortal world, where Yerinde seemed of the heavens—a reluctant observer of mortal man—and yet Çeda was certain that Yerinde had fashioned this strange creature and given it to the Kings, an act of encumbrance that bound the goddess to the Kings and the desert at large. It was the reason, Çeda suspected, that she could sense the goddess at all.

  The sickletail swept over the bow, a gale of wings and wind, but instead of attacking the women, it sliced clean through the mainsheet, the rope that held the mainsail’s boom in position.

  “Gods, no!” Çeda breathed.

  Çeda ran for the rope’s severed end—the one still attached to the boom—but the boom was already swinging sharply into the wind, going wide of the ship until the sail was heading to the fore. Çeda cringed as the boom cracked near the mast.

  It took several long moments for the import of that sound to hit home. They weren’t lost. They could repair the mainsheet, and the ship was still moving. The jib was full, and the asirim were pushing hard against the struts below. The enemy, though, was at full speed and closing quickly.

  Çeda looked at the Red Bride and The Piteous Wagtail. They were beginning to move with more speed. If need be, one of them could steer alongside Wadi’s Gait—they could abandon the wounded ship and still escape. But they had no hope at all if they couldn’t stop the sickletail. The bird arced into the sky like the swing of a sword. Having wounded Wadi’s Gait, it seemed intent on doing the same to the other ships. As its path curled toward them, Çeda cupped her hands and bellowed, “Aim true, Shieldwives! Protect the rigging!”

  They tried. They truly did. A dozen arrows inked sharp lines in the magenta sky. Some even clipped the bird’s tail feathers—their severed tips fluttered down as the bird’s powerful wings beat ever onward. But the bird dove and swooped, bending its course with deadly ease.

  Still feeling the presence beyond the bird, Çeda gathered herself and reached toward it. This time she felt Yerinde’s eyes falling not on the ships but on her. Çeda felt amusement. Anticipation. At the same time, a change was overcoming Çeda. Not since she’d climbed Nalamae’s tree and looked into the hanging shards of glass so long ago had she felt so connected to the desert. She had no idea what it might mean. Perhaps it was her experience with Nalamae echoing in another of the desert gods. Whatever the case, she ignored her feelings of awe and pressed on the bird, pressed on Yerinde.

  Çeda felt a tug in return. She felt like a child trying to yank on the lead of an ox, and the ox had decided to pull back. But it worked. The bird’s wings faltered, and in that moment, Jenise released an arrow. The shot blurred, a stroke of black, piercing the bird through the chest. Down it went, wings aflutter, twisting, tailing, wheeling toward the desert floor to land with a thud and a spray of sand.

  As one, the Shieldwives raised their hands and shouted with joy, while Çeda pressed one hand to her chest. She was bent over and coughing, the experience having caused her heart to start beating like a top sent tumbling down a set of stairs.

  Sümeya was by her side, bent and talking low. “Are you well?”

  “Well enough.” With Sümeya’s help, she tried to stand tall. She felt another coughing fit coming on and managed to get out, “Guide them, Sümeya,” before it overtook her.

  For a heartbeat, Sümeya stared, her concern plain on her face, then the old Sümeya suddenly returned and began calling orders crisply. She ordered the Red Bride and The Piteous Wagtail to abandon their attempt at rescuing those on Wadi’s Gait and to sail southeast. As they moved to comply, she ordered Wadi’s Gait steered windward. With the wind helping, they swung the mainmast aftward and lashed the wounded boom in place. It would make for dangerous sailing, but it would allow them to capture the wind and save the vessel.

  The Kings’ ships had closed within a league. By the time they’d brought all three ships up to speed, they’d cut the distance in half and were still gaining. They were royal clippers, sails full and powering over the sand like a pack of black laughers who’d sensed their next kill. There were dozens of Blade Maidens aboard, and the crews would have grapnels ready, fire pots prepared.

  Worse, they had asirim of their own.

  Çeda saw them bounding over the sand beside the ships. They were released moments later. They came on, baying, barking, braying as their speed ate the distance between the tall royal ships and Çeda’s feeble fleet of three.

  “We can still outrun them,” Çeda said.

  Sümeya’s expression was grave. “No, Çeda. This is now a choice between fighting to the death and surrender.”

  Seeing how quickly the asirim were moving, Çeda realized she was right. They couldn’t outrun the Kings’ ships. Not any longer. Not with the wind so strong and the direction so favorable for the clippers. She looked to Jenise and Auvrey, looked to the other ships, where all eyes were locked on the clippers and the galloping herd of asirim. Their fear was plain—swords lowered, shoulders slumped. She felt it through the bonds they’d all made with the asirim.

  Mavra and her children wailed, not because they might die, but because they were about to do battle against their own—more misery to be piled on the ziggurat they’d already built.

  Sümeya took a step closer and spoke so that only Çeda could hear. “You can still surrender, Çeda.”

  She waved a hand toward the clippers. “You think they’ll let any of us live?”

  “There’s at least a chance,” Sümeya replied.

  “To live what sort of life? Most of us would be slaughtered. Some few would be kept as bargaining chips, or worse, bait, to use against the thirteenth tribe.” She h
eld Sümeya’s striking brown eyes. “I can’t give them up. I won’t.”

  “We cannot win. Even you must see this.”

  “We all die, Sümeya,” Çeda said, suddenly awash in a fey mood. “What we do today may open the door for another.”

  Sümeya seemed to weigh her words, then nodded. Çeda couldn’t be sure, but Sümeya seemed pleased, if such a thing were possible on a day like today. “What would you have us do?”

  Çeda used River’s Daughter to point to the oncoming ships. “There are Kings aboard those ships. Let’s make them pay for what they’ve done.”

  As the Kings’ asirim came ever closer, Çeda moved to the foredeck and studied the terrain ahead. There were some few rocks. Not many and not very tall, but it would give them a slight advantage. She called out her plan, such as it was, and it was relayed to the other ships. If they could make it to those rocks and pull the ships into a circle, they could fight and take as many of the Kings and their soldiers with them as they could.

  Her Shieldwives pulled their veils into place. Sümeya followed suit a moment later. Çeda did as well, then turned to the trailing clippers. They were close enough now to make out individuals: King Sukru standing on the foredeck of one ship, his whip already in his hand; King Cahil on another in golden armor, a shield and war hammer at the ready; King Beşir on a third, his tall black bow to hand.

  And on the fourth, standing at the gunwales, King Husamettín. Tall and dark in his black armor, he had one boot propped up on the railing as if he were preparing to leap for Çeda’s ship. His two-handed shamshir, Night’s Kiss, was unsheathed, held loosely by his side. Even at this distance Çeda could see how it devoured light. A terrible thrill ran through her at the sight of him—her father, if Ihsan were to be believed. The Honey-tongued King had told her so after the Battle of Blackspear. It might be a lie, but Çeda didn’t think so. It felt true, and had from the moment the words had left Ihsan’s mouth.