Beneath the Twisted Trees

by Bradley P. Beaulieu

  He felt himself falling into the darkness, an oubliette of Meryam’s making. I am Hamzakiir, he said once. I am . . . And then he was lost completely, the King of Kings once more.

  Weeks later, Kiral wasn’t sure how many, he sat within the Sun Palace at the base of Tauriyat, Meryam by his side. A council of the Kings had been called. Sukru and Cahil, returned from their failed mission in the desert, sat on his right, while Beşir, Ihsan, and Azad were on his left. With Husamettín taken in the desert by the traitor Çedamihn, and Zeheb lost to madness, they were a poor group indeed. And King Azad wasn’t even truly one of them!

  And what about you?

  Gods, how muddied his mind was. What had he just been thinking about? Azad. His daughter’s true identity masked. But as happened so often lately, the thought was lost like a stone swallowed by the sand.

  “The other Kings have grown impatient,” Azad was telling them.

  “Impatient,” Sukru spat. “We have more important things to worry about than pretenders to the thrones.”

  “Not pretenders,” Azad said forcefully. “The rightful heirs.”

  “Well,” Sukru replied with a sneer, “we all know where your loyalties lie.”

  “They lie here, with us,” Azad said. “I’m merely advising caution when it comes to the inheritors of the thrones left vacant by recent events. They are not a problem now, but they will become one if we continue to ignore them. The war keeps them in check, but when it’s over, they’ll come to us with demands.”

  “What demands?” Meryam asked.

  King Sukru stiffened at this. He still hadn’t fully accepted Meryam’s presence at council. Nor had most of the others. But they suffered it for Kiral and for the power she was bringing to Sharakhai’s defense.

  “They’ll each want their full twelfth of proceeds from taxes, as their forebears had. They’ll want full representation in our councils.”

  Cahil laughed. “Why should we pretend to care what they want? They’ll get what we offer and be glad for it, or we’ll find another to take their place. There’s no shortage in any of the lesser Kings’ houses.”

  The term lesser Kings had been coined to describe those who had inherited the thrones of the dead Sharakhani Kings. They were the rightful Kings, but hadn’t been blessed by the desert gods, and thus were referred to as lesser, while those who had lived since the time of Beht Ihman were often referred to as the greater Kings.

  “It isn’t wise to use that term,” Kiral said.

  “What?” Sukru spat, incredulous. “They are lesser Kings.”

  “Perhaps, but the illusion that they aren’t is a useful one. And we mustn’t discount them so easily.” Kiral’s mouth might have uttered those words, but he knew very well it was Meryam who’d spoken them. He had some few thoughts of his own, and was allowed to voice them from time to time, but she always seemed to know when their minds differed, and stepped in with an ease that was frightening. He also felt how important this was to her—to smooth things over with the lesser Kings—and it made him wonder why. Before he had a chance to develop a theory, he was waving to the empty seats around the curving table. “Whether we like it or not, they hold some power in Sharakhai. Perhaps more than any of us would like to admit. Dozens of influential families and businesses sit beneath the shade of their trees.” Sukru had opened his mouth to speak, but Kiral raised his hand. “We would do well to consider how to bring them to the table without giving them a seat, as it were.”

  Sukru, as always, seemed displeased, but pressed no further. “I have something more urgent to bring to the council in any case. The matter of Davud Mahzun’ava and Anila Khabir’ava.”

  “Who?” Cahil asked.

  “The two magi,” Sukru said.

  Cahil sneered. “Why didn’t you just say the magi who killed my brother and escaped my palace?”

  Sukru dragged his sour look to Kiral and, surprisingly, Meryam, who he normally ignored. “I request permission to speak to the Enclave, and demand they be delivered to us.”

  “You know that isn’t part of the covenant,” Meryam countered.

  Sukru pounded the table. “Then they will know that we make formal claim on them! They will refuse them sanctuary, and any other form of help they might request.”

  What followed was lost on Kiral. Davud’s name had been like a stone thrown into a thicket, causing more and more memories to lift like a flock of frightened pheasants, each taking him somewhere else. To a ship sailing toward Ishmantep. To encountering a young man on its deck, a budding mage with great potential. To speaking to him from the top of a pit, asking him to consider his future carefully. He’d been undergoing the change, the first step in becoming a blood mage, and he, Hamzakiir, had been trying to help him survive it.

  In the end, Davud had relented, and aiding him had cost Hamzakiir. He’d used his skills and the power derived from Anila’s blood to douse the flames Hamzakiir had unleashed on several of the ships docked at the caravanserai.

  The conversation in the council room drifted in and out of consciousness. Meryam was pressing Sukru about his past encounters with Davud and Anila.

  As Sukru spoke of training them, Kiral was reminded of the collegia students. How he’d changed them in dark ways. How he’d delivered them to Sharakhai and unleashed them on the aqueduct and the great gate of King’s Harbor. He remembered returning to the House of Kings to find the cache of elixirs he’d so long pursued, and his own pleasure at having gained them for Meryam.

  He remembered the trip to the desert with Meryam and Ramahd and King Aldouan. Summoning Guhldrathen, Meryam and Ramahd escaping—and his falling back into her clutches.

  The discussion about the Enclave was winding down. All agreed that Davud and Anila were dangerous, and that allowing them to ally with the Enclave would be unwise. Meryam would speak to the Enclave herself and demand they refuse sanctuary to them.

  They spoke of the war. Meryam gave her report on the plague’s progress. All was going according to plan, she said. Scores were now infected. Soon it would be hundreds, then thousands. In little time, the Mirean fleet would either leave or attempt to throw their strength against the gathered Sharakhani fleet. Either would prove their undoing, and the Sharakhani fleet would be in good shape to return and pit themselves against the forces of Malasan.

  “But there’s been a wrinkle,” Meryam said.

  “What wrinkle?” Sukru asked.

  “The alchemyst, Alu-Waled, has been taken by an ehrekh. We fear it is Rümayesh, who seems eager to meddle in our affairs.”

  Cahil spun a knife on the table with one finger, as if none of this mattered to him. “I told you we shouldn’t have sent the alchemyst.”

  “There’s more,” Meryam said, dismissing Cahil’s concern without so much as looking at him. “Our kestrels report having seen a second ehrekh.”

  Nervous looks passed throughout the room, not only from the vizirs and viziras but the gathered Kings as well. They knew the sort of havoc ehrekh could cause. Several had seen it with their own eyes over the centuries, most recently during the Battle of Blackspear, where Rümayesh and Guhldrathen had fought.

  “If the description is accurate,” Meryam went on, “the second is Behlosh.”

  “Forgive me,” Ihsan said, “but I’m rather behind on my demonic lore. Who, by the gods who walk this earth, might Behlosh be?”

  “An elder,” Meryam said. “One of the first Goezhen made.”

  “As is Rümayesh?” Ihsan replied.

  Meryam nodded.

  Ihsan made a show of taking in everyone at the table, everyone but Meryam. “My Kings, I thought the reason we . . . entertained the idea of having Qaimir take a seat at our table was precisely because we were promised we would get an ehrekh on our side, while simultaneously ridding ourselves of another.”

  “We did rid ourselves of another,” Meryam said.
>
  “No thanks to you,” Ihsan shot back. “You left when the one you promised would grant you the power you needed was freed by Brama, a bloody backstreet thief!”

  “And how pleased you seem by it!”

  “Do you see me smiling? We gambled much on the Battle of Blackspear, largely because we”—he emphasized we while staring at Kiral—“believed you could deliver us a victory.”

  Ihsan was making a play, that much was clear. He wasn’t usually so aggressive, but he had argued hard against releasing the scourge on the Mirean fleet. He might even have believed his own words. The turn of events would have annoyed the real Kiral. He, the man hidden behind Kiral’s mask, might have been amused had he been free to think his own thoughts. As things stood, however, this disagreement between Meryam and Ihsan felt like an opportunity.

  Meryam’s lips were pinched. “We were victorious.”

  “Victorious?” Ihsan’s face was full of mock amazement. “Did you say victorious? Ships lost. Men killed. Our standing in the eyes of our people shrunken to the size of a shriveled up prune. But at least the Moonless Host slipped through our grasp again! And even better, they did so with three other desert tribes backing them and more sure to follow.”

  Meryam tried to wield the weight of Kiral’s word before the council. What’s done is done, she tried to say. He felt them on the tip of his tongue—What’s done is done! What’s done is done!—but he fought her with every dram of fight left in him. He fought her, and he won! He felt her keen displeasure. She would be wroth when this council was done. She’d make him hurt himself again. But unless she was willing to spend more effort, a thing that, if done in front of the other Kings, might tip her hand, she was unable to tilt the scales.

  “What’s done is done,” Meryam said to the others. “We must look to the shoring of our defenses—”

  “So we must!” Ihsan cut in. He was a man afire, quite unlike the circumspect manipulator they were all accustomed to seeing. “In our history, the Kings have all gone to battle in the name of Sharakhai. We’ve bled to defend our thrones.” He waved to her place at the table. “As my good queen now enjoys the same fruits as we do, I would suggest she go to the warfront to ensure Mirea’s advance is halted.”

  “I did go to war,” Meryam said.

  “And then fled.”

  “I’ve spearheaded the effort to unleash the plague on Mirea. A tactic that is paying vast dividends.”

  “So you say. But what better way to protect that investment than to check on its progress yourself?” Ihsan looked about the table. “What say you, my good Kings?”

  An uncomfortable silence followed as all waited for another to speak. Queen Meryam pressed hard on Hamzakiir. Come, my Kings, she wanted him to say. This is foolishness. We need Meryam here. But he resisted. A trickle of sweat crept its way down his forehead, but he maintained his hold on himself.

  Ihsan, meanwhile, seemed to be focusing his attention on Azad, clearly hoping for him to rally to his side. They were lovers, Ihsan and the King-in-disguise, and yet Azad remained silent.

  It was Sukru who ventured into the silence first. “We have all fought,” he said while swinging his gaze to Meryam. “Our new Queen should as well.”

  “And given that we’re confident in holding off the Malasani threat,” Cahil chimed in, “and that we have spent and will spend so many resources to stop Mirea, it does seem prudent to have our queen—who promised us much as her dowry—prove her worth.”

  Again Meryam tried to have Hamzakiir intervene, and again he resisted.

  “My fleet has already set sail!” Meryam’s voice echoed harshly off the hard walls and sharp edges of the room. “Thousands are coming to the defense of Sharakhai.”

  It was Cahil who replied. “And in your absence they’ll be positioned as we see fit.” He spoke in that infuriatingly easy manner of his. For once Hamzakiir was glad for it. It was pushing Meryam beyond reason.

  “I must be here when my fleet arrives.”

  “Did you not say that your Vice Admiral Mateo would be arriving soon?” Ihsan asked.

  She had. There was no denying it now, and the implication was clear. Her orders could be given to him on his arrival, at which point she could depart the city.

  Meryam remained silent, and in that silence she pushed Hamzakiir as much as she could. The balance was precarious. Ihsan, Sukru, and Cahil had all effectively voted in favor of Meryam going. Azad and Meryam, who had a vote at council as well, were clearly against the idea. With Beşir fallen into a deeper silence than normal, waiting for other voices to chime in, it fell to Kiral.

  Cloaked in silence and a burning will, Meryam tried to break him. With all her might she tried, but she’d been pushing herself hard for weeks. She had little strength in reserve, and she hadn’t expected Hamzakiir’s sudden awakening. He wanted to tell them who he was. Who he truly was. But that truth was a heavy weight, and he found himself unable to lift it.

  To side with Ihsan and the others, though, was simpler. A more bearable task. It was a thing Kiral might do, and the cage around Hamzakiir’s mind was built to let such things through. So it was that he found himself with both the will and the words.

  “Queen Meryam will go.”

  The statement struck like a gavel. The silence that followed yawned ever wider, the Kings swiveling their heads to Beşir even though, in effect, the decision had already been made.

  “Very well,” Beşir said.

  Azad was then forced to tip his head in agreement, at which point they moved on to other business.

  Meryam burned in silent fury. Hamzakiir had been right. When they returned to Eventide that night, they retired to their bedchambers and she forced him to strip and kneel before her.

  She handed him a flagellation whip. “Draw me my blood.”

  He didn’t try to resist. He was well aware he wouldn’t be able to, not now that they were alone and he and his pain was her sole concern. However, as he swung the whip across his shoulder, as it struck skin, as blood began to trickle down his back, he smiled from within.

  He’d defied Meryam. And that meant he could do it again.

  Chapter 21

  IN AN OCTAGONAL ROOM OF rich walnut panels and golden candelabra, Davud and Anila sat side-by-side in two lustrous, high-backed chairs. The close air smelled of linseed oil and fragrant kyphi, which burned in brass censers set on pedestals in all four corners of the room. Fezek, who upon reaching the rich manor had tried reciting a new sonnet on the futility of life to anyone who would listen, had been left in the antechamber outside.

  He and Anila had been treated with respect, and their words given more weight than he could have hoped for. They sat in a circle with the Enclave’s members, including Esrin, Dilara, and Esmeray, whose cold, humorless expression hadn’t changed since the circle had convened. More than their manners, Davud was relieved to see their story taken seriously. It gave him hope for the first time since leaving King Sukru’s palace that they might find some respite from a life constantly on the run.

  The first hour of the circle was spent detailing their time with Sukru, and later with his brother the Sparrow, finishing with their harrowing escape. The nature of the Enclave’s questions made him increasingly convinced they would grant them sanctuary, perhaps even allow them into the Enclave formally. Undosu, the old Kundhuni with the beaten leather cap, asked for particulars about Davud’s awakening as a mage and about Anila’s transformation into a necromancer. Meiying, a Mirean girl who’d surely seen no more than fifteen summers, was curious about the blooming fields and the strange crystal in the cavern below the city, whereas Nebahat, a Malasani man who had a painted golden forehead with a red stripe down the center, seemed most interested in the Kings and their dealings with one another.

  As time wore on, however, they began asking more pointed questions, particularly Prayna, a strikingly beautiful Sharakhani woman. Sh
e focused on King Sukru, to the exclusion of everything else. How long had each of them been mentored? Who did the mentoring? What sigils and other knowledge had they been supplied with? How had his brother, the Sparrow, become involved, first with Davud and later with Anila? And, perhaps most importantly, what sort of assurances had Sukru demanded before allowing them to remain in his palace?

  “Did he take your blood?” Prayna asked.

  In that moment she was all cold calculation. Davud hadn’t mentioned the taking of their blood and neither had Anila. He thought about lying, but the chance of its being discovered—indeed, of the Enclave already knowing the truth—was too great.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Both of you?” she pressed.

  “Yes,” Davud replied.

  Prayna nodded with her lips pursed, then looked to the others as if she’d heard all she needed to hear.

  The others continued for a time, but the tone had now changed. They had the air of botanists who had to be quick in studying a rare and dying breed of flower. They asked more about the Kings and their capabilities, and delved deeper into the peculiarities of necromancy and Anila’s relation to it. But soon it was done and they filed from the room to deliberate. When they returned, the mood, formerly so optimistic, was funereal, so it came as no surprise when Prayna leaned forward in her chair and smiled sadly. “Your request for sanctuary has been denied.”

  “But why?” Anila demanded angrily. “We are brothers and sisters, are we not?” When no one responded, she stood and glared over the assemblage. “We are being hunted by your enemies!”

  Prayna stood tall, a regal figure every bit Anila’s equal. “The Kings are not our enemies. Nor are you. You came here begging favors, and we’ve declined. There’s no more to it than that.”

  “Not your enemies?” She spread her arms wide. “The Enclave was only formed because the Kings were hunting you down!”

  “That tale began and ended centuries ago,” Prayna countered, “and has little to do with our current arrangement with the House of Kings.”