Beneath the Twisted Trees

by Bradley P. Beaulieu

  Ramahd questioned Davud first. He seemed to know something about Davud’s story already, perhaps from Esmeray’s message, their offer to speak. Davud thought it odd that he would be so interested, but he began to understand when Ramahd’s questions shifted to Çeda. He pressed for more information on her state of mind while being held in Sukru’s palace. He asked for the details of Davud’s assault on her, a thing Davud was still mortified by. He’d been compelled by Ihsan, the Honey-tongued King, into attacking Çeda with the intent to kill. That Çeda had made it out alive made it no less horrifying.

  Ramahd finished by asking whether Davud had seen her since his escape from the House of Kings. He’s smitten with her, Davud realized.

  Then Ramahd asked Esmeray her reasons for arranging this meeting. To this she would only say it was a debt that needed repaying.

  “A debt to whom?” Ramahd pressed.

  “What is that to you? You came to the Enclave begging for help”—Esmeray made a ridiculously theatrical flourish toward Davud—“and now help has come.”

  Ramahd hardly seemed impressed. “You’re telling me you have the Enclave’s backing?”

  “I’m telling you beggars can’t be choosers.”

  “Perhaps, but only fools ally themselves with other fools.”

  “I owe the Kings a blood debt, and I mean to pay it back.” In that moment Esmeray was like an ancient desert power, an efrit in the guise of a woman. “If that’s not good enough for you, you can tell me so now.”

  Davud felt the conviction in her words and so, apparently, did Ramahd. He nodded to her, and began telling his own tale, the same one he’d shared with the Enclave a week before. As Ramahd spoke, movement along the Haddah drew Davud’s attention. From behind a swath of still-green but fading rushes, a spotted serval cat with teacup ears and hungry eyes had wandered out and onto the cracked riverbed. Their native home was in the grasslands of Kundhun, but the large cats had become favorites of the lords and ladies of Goldenhill. After a brief, inquisitive pause, the serval turned, showing off the white spots behind its ears, and lost itself among the brown rushes.

  Ramahd was not yet done with his tale, but Davud was feeling uncomfortable out here in the open. “That you want to bring your queen to justice is understandable,” he said. “I would as well. What I don’t understand is how.”

  “It won’t be easy. Your help will be a start, but it won’t be enough. I’ll need the backing of several Qaimiri lords.”

  Davud shook his head, confused. “And you’ll arrange that when you’re here in Sharakhai how?”

  “The first of the men I need is already here. Mateo Abrantes, the vice admiral of Meryam’s fleet. If I can convince him, his commander, Duke Hektor, is sure to follow. And if I can secure Hektor’s help, we’ll be halfway to making Meryam pay for her crimes.”

  Davud shook his head. “What crime would be enough for them to want to overthrow their own queen?”

  “Using Hamzakiir to murder her own father would be enough on its own, but there’s also the murder of Kiral the King of Kings and disguising Hamzakiir to rule in his place. The fear of retribution from Sharakhai will force them to—”

  “Wait, Hamzakiir is alive?”

  “Yes,” Ramahd said. Ramahd hadn’t finished his tale, but he did now, telling Davud what he’d learned shortly before the Battle of Blackspear: that Hamzakiir and Kiral had exchanged guises, and that it was Kiral who’d died in the desert, not Hamzakiir.

  Davud stared at Esmeray. “Did you know this?”

  She looked confused. “Yes.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  She motioned to Ramahd, vexed. “He’s telling you now.”

  The sound of the wind was suddenly loud in Davud’s ears. He felt the push of it against his back. Smelled the desert’s warm scent. He turned and stared across the river toward Tauriyat, whose outline could barely be seen through the thick amber haze. If Hamzakiir was still alive, Anila might still find purpose. Hatred and thoughts of revenge were terrible things to center one’s life around, but just then Davud didn’t care. If it could grant Anila a renewed lease on life, he would take it, and worry about a more permanent healing later.

  He was just thinking about returning to Anila when he saw something small and round lift into the air. It had been launched from the opposite bank of the Haddah from behind a stone wall, a short distance from where the serval had wandered onto the riverbed. It was arcing toward them, he realized.

  Ramahd had sensed something was wrong, and was following his gaze. With Ramahd distracted, Davud did something that felt foolhardy, but was necessary to gain the power he needed—he launched himself forward and grabbed Ramahd’s wrist.

  “Ey!” Cicio shouted from behind him.

  The crunch of gravel came as Cicio, Davud presumed, darted toward him. The object, meanwhile, a clay pot, plummeted toward them. Using his blooding ring, Davud pierced Ramahd’s wrist. Ramahd shouted, tried to push Davud away.

  Davud smeared a trail of Ramahd’s blood over his palm as Cicio tackled him.

  “I’m trying to save us!” Davud said.

  Cicio didn’t seem to care. “What I tell you, you little pig fucker?” He had his knife out and looked ready to use it, but in that moment Esmeray swept in and grabbed Cicio’s wrist. The palm of her other hand was bloody. She pressed it against Cicio’s forehead, at which point his mouth went wide and his eyes rolled up in his head.

  A dozen paces away, the pot shattered, coughing a billow of black smoke into the air. Another pot was lifting behind it, launched from the same position as the first.

  Ramahd recoiled from the wound Davud had delivered, but seemed to understand that Davud meant him no harm; he waited as Davud smeared the blood over his palms. As the black cloud swept toward them, Davud curled his arms in precise motions, rendering a sigil in the air before him. Over defend he layered impurity and air—a simple but effective spell. As the barrier formed around him, he pressed his arms outward, spreading the effect so that it encompassed not only him and Esmeray, but Ramahd and Cicio too.

  A moment later, a roil of gray gas swallowed them. The second pot struck closer, its dark, billowing cloud adding to the first. For a moment it was so dark it occluded the sun. Even with the spell he’d woven, the noxious fumes threatened them. Davud’s eyes watered, and he began to cough.

  As quickly and carefully as he could, he traced another spell. Upon veil he added regard, resonance, and redolence.

  It manifested just in time. He heard footsteps approaching, and through the cloud spotted dark shapes. Dark swords drawn, a hand of Blade Maidens prowled through the racks of punts. A second hand of Maidens followed the first. They wore black battle dresses and turbans, but instead of their normal veils, each Maiden wore a muzzle of sorts that covered her nose and mouth.

  Whatever had gone into the making of those muzzles was proof against the gas. Davud was tempted to cast a spell to weaken the straps and remove their protections, but it was too dangerous. There were too many, and any one of them might manage to sense where Davud and the others were.

  “Move calmly but quickly,” Davud said. “And do not speak. Not until I tell you.”

  His words were muted, and would be all but imperceptible to the Maidens, but the Maidens had powers he could only guess at. Indeed, the nearest of them, their warden, stopped in her tracks and raised one fist. Those behind her instantly froze while the warden’s gaze swept over the six of them as they slowly backed away.

  Davud was ready to unleash a spell should the warden sense them, but thankfully the more they backed away, the more uncertain the warden seemed. Eventually she waved her Blade Maidens forward and they swept deeper into the boatyard. The moment they were lost from sight, Davud and the others headed into the city streets.

  That was when a chilling thought occurred to Davud.

  “Oh gods,” he
said. “Anila.”

  Understanding dawned on Esmeray. “Let’s go.”

  “What?” Ramahd asked as he helped Cicio to walk.

  Davud was already sprinting down the Corona, heading back toward their room in the cellar, but Esmeray called behind him, “If the Kings tracked us to the boatyard, they could easily have found Anila as well.”

  Davud knew what he’d find at their rented cellar room, but it was still a shock to see. The door lay in ruins. The room was empty. Fezek lay crooked on the landing outside the door. Gods help him, he was trying to hold in his guts, which were spilling out as fast as he could rake them back in.

  Davud knelt and pushed him back so that he lay flat on the packed earth. “What happened, Fezek?”

  Fezek’s jaw worked, but he couldn’t seem to say anything. He hardly seemed to know Davud was there. Davud felt terrible for it, but he shook Fezek hard, and slowly the ghul’s cloudy eyes focused on him.

  “Sukru,” Fezek said in his hoary voice. “Sukru came and took her.”

  Chapter 26

  AS THE WIND SCOURED THE ALLEY, Ramahd stood at the top of the stairs to the cellar room where, apparently, the young blood mage, Davud, had been hiding with his friend Anila. What remained of the door hung awkwardly on its hinges. The rest was shattered.

  The rangy man to whom Davud was speaking seemed nearly as broken. His name was Fezek, and he was a ghul, some unfortunate soul who’d been raised by the necromancer, Anila. Bad enough he’d been ripped from his rewards in the next life; now the poor man was lying with his back to the wall, trying to hold his intestines in against a gaping wound. Ramahd could only guess Sukru had torn him open with a crack of his whip. Davud was crouched by his side, speaking softly, a look of terror slipping through the cracks of his calm facade—not for Fezek’s sake, but for Anila’s.

  Everything Ramahd had learned about Davud had shown him to be a kind, calculating sort, someone who planned his steps carefully before acting and with thought for others before himself. That he cared deeply for Anila was obvious. He felt responsible for her having being stolen away by King Sukru, and perhaps he was. Ramahd vowed to keep an eye on him; such things had a way of forcing one into emotional decisions.

  Esmeray seemed furious at the turn of events. Ramahd had the impression she was more angry with herself than King Sukru, though. And she was nervous. He could tell by the way her eyes kept flitting to the rooftops and to the opposite end of the alley, where Cicio stood guard.

  She’s right to be worried, Ramahd thought. It isn’t wise to linger. He took the stairs down to the landing, where Davud was using needle and thread to sew Fezek’s belly back together. The sound of it, like day-old stew being stirred, turned Ramahd’s stomach.

  “You hardly need to be so precise,” Fezek was saying while craning his neck to stare at Davud’s handiwork.

  Davud hardly seemed to notice Fezek had spoken. He was too focused on the curving needle, brow knitted as he worked with precise, confident technique.

  “Don’t be too hard on yourself.” Ramahd said to him. “You couldn’t have known.”

  “I knew very well Sukru was coming for us.” Davud finished the last of the stitches. “I just thought . . . I thought she’d be safe for a few hours. I thought she’d be safe here.”

  As Davud packed the needle and thread into a small bag, Fezek stood without a hint of pain and lumbered to the top of the stairs. A moment more for Davud to collect his things, and they were all standing in the alley.

  “I have a place we can go,” Ramahd said, “but it’s inside the walls.”

  Davud nodded, not quite piecing together the challenge that getting there would present, but Esmeray took his meaning. With the arrival of the Malasani fleet, it was going to be difficult getting so many of them through the city’s outermost defenses.

  “I can get us there,” she said, and headed into the blustering wind.

  She’d not taken three steps, however, before a man and woman resolved from the dust-strewn air ahead of them. Ramahd recognized them from his meeting with the Enclave as Esmeray’s brother and sister: Esrin and Dilara. Cicio immediately moved to intercept, but came to a halt when Esmeray raised a hand and said, “Leave them be.”

  “You’re being rash,” Esrin said calmly. He was a handsome Sharakhani with dark skin like his sisters. He also had a patronizing look on his face, a thing that seemed to spark Esmeray’s fury.

  “I’m doing what I should have done a year ago.”

  “Our brother Deniz is dead,” Dilara replied, “and nothing you do will bring him back. For once, Esma, think with your head and not your heart.” She placed a hand over her chest while touching Esrin’s shoulder. “What you’re doing puts us at risk as well. It puts the Enclave at risk.”

  Dilara’s voice and manner were softer than her brother’s, but Esmeray seemed no more receptive to them. “The Kings must pay for what they’ve done.”

  “They have paid. King Sukru’s own brother, the Sparrow, lies dead!”

  She waved to Davud. “By his hand, not by ours. His and that of the woman just taken by Sukru.”

  “What of it?”

  Esmeray’s eyes went wide as the moons. “Who do you think gave Deniz to the Sparrow? Who do you think came here and stole away a woman who came begging for sanctuary?”

  “You know the covenant as well as I do,” Dilara said. “They’d been marked by the Kings. The Enclave couldn’t take them in.”

  Esmeray spat on the ground. “The covenant has always been a coward’s agreement, to the Kings’ advantage.”

  Esrin’s handsome face grew hard. “The covenant has kept us alive. We all loved our brother, but he was a stubborn, beetle-brained fool. It wouldn’t have been so bad if he didn’t have so much bloody ambition to go along with it. That combination got him into trouble with the Kings, got him expelled from the Enclave’s ranks, and got him killed. You are as dear to me as anyone, Esma, but you have more of Deniz’s leanings than you’re willing to admit. It isn’t your fault—you got it from our father. But I beg you now to see this for the fool’s errand it is. Don’t make the same mistakes Deniz did.” He waved to Davud and Ramahd. “They aren’t worth it.”

  Esmeray met his gaze with a silent stare, but Dilara stepped into the silence. “The Enclave doesn’t interfere in the lives of the Kings.”

  It was a threat, an indication that, were Esmeray to take this any farther, the Enclave would be forced to act.

  In the months since awakening to his abilities, Ramahd had become more and more adept at sensing when power was being gathered. He felt it now in Esmeray, a weight ready to come crashing down. Thankfully she took it no farther. “A debt is owed,” she said, “a debt the Enclave should have paid the moment Deniz was found lying in the Haddah. A debt we three should have paid together. You tell me you find your purses empty. So be it. I’ve enough coin for us all.”

  Her brother and sister shared a look of regret.

  As he had with Esmeray, Ramahd felt another spell gathering, this time from Dilara. No, he realized, Dilara and Esrin were working together, creating a spell stronger than either could weave on their own.

  Thin black tendrils reached from the two of them toward Esmeray. Ramahd tried to sap their power. Neither was a match for Meryam, not even close, but together they were strong, making it difficult to interrupt the spell. He gained a foothold as the vinelike tendrils whipped outward, and once he had that, he found the path to the spell’s dismantling. The tendrils crumbled to dust and were taken by the wind.

  Esrin tried to weave a new spell, and this time Ramahd stopped it before it had even begun. Esmeray, meanwhile, had summoned a shield. It shimmered wildly with faint cerulean light, sand and dust curling around its edges, and grew as Esmeray poured more power into it. It formed a dome that protected her, Davud, Ramahd, and Cicio.

  Davud glanced at Ramahd, clear
ly embarrassed that he’d been caught so flat-footed by Dilara and Esrin’s attack. Ramahd was hardly surprised, though. Davud was a collegia scholar, not a foot soldier.

  Dilara stared at them as the strong wind tugged at her beautiful headdress. “This is how you want it to be?”

  Esmeray said nothing.

  “So be it,” Dilara said.

  After sparing a final, flinty look for Ramahd, Esrin joined her and the two walked away, side by side, until they were swallowed by the storm.

  Esmeray led Ramahd and the others in the opposite direction, to a small tenement north of the Red Crescent. She walked right into one of the homes and nodded to an old woman she found sitting in a rocking chair with a cat in her lap. The old woman did no more than glance up, as if intrusions by strangers were something that happened every day. They continued to the cellar where, in a small room filled with root vegetables, was the entrance to a tunnel. When they’d all filed into the darkness, Esmeray flicked her fingers in the air, and a small blue light floated ahead, leading their way through the stone-lined tunnel.

  “That could have gone bad quickly,” Ramahd said to her softly.

  “Yes, but it didn’t, did it?”

  “Your brother Deniz ran afoul of the Kings?”

  “Never mind about my brother.”

  “If it’s likely to happen again”—Ramahd pointed with his thumb back the way they came—“we deserve to know.”

  Esmeray shot his thumb an annoyed look. The two of them were in the lead. Behind them, Fezek was yammering on about something, the futility of life or some such, loudly enough that it covered Ramahd and Esmeray’s conversation. Even so, she waited for a turn in the tunnel before speaking.

  “Esrin wasn’t wrong. Deniz was always a bit of a fool. For all his gifts in the red ways they never brought him the adoration he craved. He loved akhalas and owned several powerful enough to race but not enough to win. Though it was strictly forbidden to interfere with the interests of the Kings, he got it into his head that a few races won would go unnoticed and would open doors that, having been born in the Shallows, had always been closed to him.”