Beneath the Twisted Trees

by Bradley P. Beaulieu

  Night’s Kiss thrummed in her right hand. It sensed Çeda’s revulsion over its thirst for blood, but was smug in its certainty that she would do nothing about it.

  I could, she said. I could throw you overboard.

  And yet the sword remained in her hand. It took all her will to sheath it. As it set home, it emitted a sound like a hyena’s barking laugh.

  With their sails now flapping in the wind, the dhow beside them was beginning to flag. Melis and Sümeya, after unleashing a flurry of swings, leapt back to the Red Bride. The gap between the ships widened ever further, and the Malasani crew did nothing to prevent it. They’d had no idea the sort of warriors they’d find aboard their ship, and seemed relieved they would no longer have to face them.

  “Ahead!” Jenise called from the wheel.

  Directly ahead of the Bride, the same ketch that had dropped the golems lowered a rake into the sand to slow its speed. They hoped to match the Red Bride’s pace and board her, but Mavra and the other asirim had resumed the chase. The crew launched fire pot after fire pot, hoping to stave them off, and the sand behind the ship lit in bursts of orange flame and billowing smoke. Several well placed strikes lit one of the asirim ablaze, but then the rest were up and onto the deck. The crew didn’t stand a chance. It was a slaughter that sobered Çeda, dousing the blood lust that Night’s Kiss had instilled in her.

  She took in the ships around them, which continued to close in. And while the dhow to their port side had been decimated by the other group of asirim, Çeda knew they couldn’t continue like this. They had to escape.

  “There,” Melis said, pointing toward a line of low rocks the enemy were steering to avoid. Their ships skirted inside the rocks, bringing them closer to the Red Bride, forcing them to cluster more than was wise.

  “Yes,” Çeda said, seeing Melis’s intent. “Jenise, ready the ship. We’ll turn toward those rocks.”

  Çeda bent Mavra’s will toward the yellow-sailed dhow at the head of the largest cluster of ships. The other Shieldwives, sensing Çeda’s intensity, urged their bonded asirim to do the same. As the asirim moved to obey, Çeda stepped to the ship’s pulpit, spread her arms, and tilted her head back, feeling the desert like never before. Her right arm burned like a beacon fire, a star in a sand-laden sky. She lifted it high, gripped her right hand tight, and called upon the wind, summoning it to her, drawing it up and along the path of their yacht.

  And it obeyed. The sails stretched. The hull creaked. And the ship was driven forward, fleet as a falcon.

  “Now, Jenise.”

  Jenise guided them unerringly. They skirted the now-pilotless ketch along their port side and continued toward the tight line of Malasani ships. Moments later, the asirim reached the yellow-sailed dhow and overwhelmed it, howling all the while. The dhow slowed sharply, forcing the trailing ships to avoid it, but hemmed in as they were by the rocks, they couldn’t all do so.

  Ahead of the dhow, an ever-widening gap was made. It was into this that the Red Bride flew. As they reached open sand, the asirim disengaged, another ship fallen to them. Horns blew, and the few Malasani ships that had started to give chase disengaged. The cost of taking the Red Bride was simply too great.

  Çeda continued to guide the wind. Not until well after the Malasani ships had been swallowed by the storm did she unclench her fist and lower her right arm. The wind calmed, her deep awareness of the desert dimmed, and at last they eased into a less frantic pace over the sand.

  Çeda turned to find the Shieldwives staring at her with a reverence that made her supremely uncomfortable. “We’ve wounds to dress and repairs to make.”

  “Aye,” came their chorus.

  As the Shieldwives set to it, Çeda was caught by the looks on Sümeya and Melis’s faces. Even with their veils drawn, Çeda could see the awe in Sümeya’s stare and the look of utter revulsion in Melis’s.

  Chapter 28

  INSIDE THE LONG, narrow infirmary of the bustling hospital ship, Brama knelt beside Mae’s cot and lifted her head. “Please drink.”

  He couldn’t tell if she heard him or not. Her eyelids quivered and her lips trembled, as if she were caught in the midst of a terrible dream.

  The disease had progressed at a steady pace. Her lips had turned dark, her skin had blackened around her eyes and nostrils, she had terrible coughing fits, and her piss and shit were both laden with blood. She’d lasted longer than most, but she didn’t have much time left—a day or two at the most. Brama tried using a spoon to give her more of the tea, but most of it dribbled from her lips. She held her stomach and moaned, uttering a long, rapid string of Mirean.

  The infirmary was overflowing with those afflicted by the scourge. Twice the normal number of cots had been brought in to allow for three hundred in the primary hall of healing. The other decks held more, so that a full five hundred now lay diseased and dying within the ship. Four days earlier, a dunebreaker had been assigned to help. Soon it, too, would be full. The scourge was sweeping through the Mirean encampment like a scythe.

  As Brama prepared to move to the next cot, one of the boys tasked with ferrying messages to the main encampment entered and scanned the room. Brama waved to him. The boy, spotting him at last, waved back and began weaving his way through the aisles. The entire room watched him with fleeting hope, as if he’d come with news of a cure, but hope faded when it became clear who he’d come to see.

  Like the others tending to the sick, the boy wore no mask, having recovered and thereby developed an immunity. The scourge had left him with a light graying around his eyes, a darkening of his lips. He hadn’t even developed a cough. There were now enough survivors like him who were the only ones allowed to tend to the sick. Regular inspections and quarantining efforts had further slowed the disease, but it was still spreading at an alarming rate.

  “Juvaan send.” The boy’s voice quavered as he spoke, a common symptom of survivors. His limbs trembled as well. “He wait.”

  Brama signaled to the nurses that he was leaving, then followed the boy. Juvaan waited a good distance away on his horse. He held Kweilo’s reins, ready for Brama to take. In the distance, the Mirean encampment squatted beside the caravanserai like a pack of bone crushers. The two ships filled with the afflicted had been separated from the rest to avoid the possibility of ill humors being borne on the wind to the healthy ships.

  Brama mounted Kweilo, and he and Juvaan rode together toward the main encampment. Juvaan looked haggard. He’d been shouldering the brunt of their efforts to halt the spread of the scourge, and it showed in his eyes, in the dulled way in which he scanned the horizon. “You asked to speak alone,” he said in a listless voice.

  “Yes. I need to ask you a question. And I need you to answer it as best—”

  “Just say it,” Juvaan said wearily.

  “I need to know what your queen asked of Behlosh when he arrived. And I need to know his answer.”

  “You’re asking me to betray my queen’s confidence.”

  “I am, but for good reason.” He waved to the ships behind them. “You’re dying, Juvaan. Alu-Waled’s medicines had no effect, and I’m willing to bet they never will.” He did not mention that Rümayesh was barely helping. She’d agreed to ease the pain of some few chosen by Queen Alansal, but like Mae, the rapid progress of their symptoms hadn’t been slowed. “If something doesn’t change,” he went on, “your entire fleet may be lost.”

  Juvaan rode in silence for a time, his face in deep shadow beneath his conical farmer’s hat. “Let me pose a question. Were you in my queen’s place, would you not be suspicious?”

  “Of course I would.”

  “Would you trust the servant of a creature like Rümayesh?”

  “That would depend on his words and deeds.”

  “My queen is appreciative of all you’ve done on the ships,” Juvaan said, “but we all saw Rümayesh’s attempt to heal Mae. The
queen thinks she withheld her power. Is she wrong?”

  Brama had known the question would come. It felt strange to want to keep Rümayesh’s secrets, but he refused to protect her any longer. “No, she isn’t.”

  “Why?” Fire bled into his words at last. “Why would Rümayesh do that?”

  “I don’t know,” Brama answered truthfully, “which is why I need to know more about Behlosh.”

  Juvaan nodded, as if he’d expected that answer. “What good will it do you?”

  “I need to convince Rümayesh to help you. If I can’t, your cause is lost. Knowing Behlosh’s purpose will help.”

  Juvaan rode in silence, stiff-backed. Brama thought he’d lost him, but then Juvaan’s head swiveled, his attention caught by something to their left. Brama turned as well, and saw buzzards circling lazily over the mass grave.

  “My queen was surprised when a second ehrekh arrived,” Juvaan said. “She thought her gamble with the bones might lure one at most. She certainly didn’t expect Behlosh, another of the Shangazi’s eldest, to answer her call. But he did. He arrived in her pavilion and demanded to know why such a scent was on the wind. When my queen answered and presented him with a vial similar to the one you now possess, Behlosh seemed intrigued, even tempted—who can tell with such creatures?—but instead of agreeing or denying the offer, he said he would bring it to his lord.”

  “To Goezhen.”

  “Who else?” Juvaan replied.

  “That’s why you asked about Rümayesh. It’s why you thought she might have gone to Goezhen as well.”

  “It can’t be a coincidence that she failed to return from the desert on the very night Behlosh arrived.”

  Brama acknowledged the point with a nod. “Has Behlosh returned?”

  “No.”

  Brama reined Kweilo to a stop. Juvaan mirrored him.

  “I have to meet with the queen,” Brama said.

  “I know. But I’ve already presented your request twice and been denied. Alansal won’t suffer a third request, not even from me.”

  As he had for days, Brama considered forcing the issue. He could find a way to steal into Alansal’s capital ship and meet with her. But he knew the queen well enough to know that she wouldn’t listen. Not like that. Not everything can be solved by leaning a shoulder into it, his father used to say. Sometimes it takes a bit of oil.

  Brama stared into Juvaan’s ice-cold eyes. “Your queen will suffer another request, because this time you’ll impress upon her the importance of it. You’ll make it clear I’m offering a way for her to save her people. And you’ll ensure that it be just the two of us, none of her generals. I won’t have their influence affecting her decision.”

  To Brama’s relief, Juvaan didn’t become angry. “You think I have so much influence over my queen?”

  “You have more than you’re letting on. And more than you’ve used thus far.” Brama clasped his hands before him, a gesture of supplication in the desert. “You cannot let this go on, Juvaan. Fail now, and your survivors will be able to return to Mirea on a single ship.”

  Juvaan seemed hesitant and weary and inclined to send Brama away with a half-hearted assent to consider his appeal, but just then a skimwood sleigh broke away from the circle of dunebreakers. It was a common sight these days: another group of scourge victims being ferried toward quarantine. For a long time, Juvaan could only stare.

  “I’ll get you your meeting,” he said, then urged his horse into a gallop.

  Brama rode Kweilo across the desert. True night reigned, but a cavalcade of stars accompanied him on his journey. The sky was so brilliant, the dunes so dreamlike, it felt as if they were riding not over the desert, but across the firmament itself.

  A rope ran from the back of Kweilo’s saddle to a sleigh, which carried Mae. She was blanketed against the night, but it was hardly necessary; she’d developed a fever, one of the last stages before death. Brama was doing his best to ignore how captivated he was by Mae’s condition, how close she was to crossing over, but it wasn’t easy. The best thing he’d found to combat it was to steep himself in the physicality of this place—the sights, the sounds, the smells—and ignore Mae altogether. He felt callous for doing so, even shameful, but it was better than the alternative.

  As Kweilo crested a dune, her hooves and the trailing sleigh sent waves of sand hissing down both sides of the peak. From this vantage the line of dark hills Brama had been heading toward stood out like a jagged line of broken pottery. Those hills were where Brama would find Behlosh. Brama could feel him, lying in wait like a ravenous wolf. Whether he, in turn, was aware of Brama’s approach, Brama had no idea.

  He received his answer a short while later. As Kweilo neared the top of the next dune, a soft rattling sound broke over the desert. The sound became a hum became a thrum. Far ahead, an undulating cloud occluded the stars, flowing eel-like toward him. It descended onto the dune, then shaped itself, forming a solid figure from the dark, writhing mass. As the sound faded, a four-armed beast was revealed, a creature with two great horns like scythes sweeping back from its forehead.

  It was Behlosh. Kweilo had stopped, but Brama urged her forward. The skin along her shoulders twitched but, brave horse that she was, she plodded farther along the dune.

  As Behlosh’s head swiveled to watch them, he lifted to his full height, two of his four arms crossing like some inflexible guard before a shisha den. His restless tail pounded the dune, creating a spray of sand with each blow. “Rümayesh’s pet,” he said in a voice that threatened like thunder.

  After reining Kweilo to a stop, Brama dismounted. The hair along his arms and the back of his neck stood on end. The gulf between their two dunes was wide, but just then it felt insignificant. Brama was reminded of the first time he’d seen Rümayesh—his terror, the power that rolled from her in waves. There was no doubt Rümayesh had always been conniving and cruel, but she at least harbored genuine curiosity about the lives of mortals. The empathy it lent her might be slight and unpredictable, but at least it was there. Not so, with Behlosh. The glint in his eyes, the set of his mouth, the way he began to pace like a caged lion, made him seem malicious, angry, and above all hungry to inflict his desires upon Brama.

  After taking a deep breath, Brama spoke clearly into the night. “Behlosh the Elder, I come to you in peace, to offer you a bargain.”

  Behlosh’s hungry eyes cut through the night. The sinuous movement of his tail looked purposeful and arcane, a spell being woven. “Thine undying queen hast already laid a bargain at my feet.”

  Brama blinked, shook his head, cleared his mind of the cobwebs that had suddenly appeared. “A bargain you’ve neither accepted nor declined. I’ve come with one of my own.”

  “Name it.”

  Brama waved toward the sleigh. “Here lies a single one of the diseased. Heal her, and your part of the bargain is fulfilled.”

  Behlosh stared at Mae. “But one . . .”

  “But one.”

  The ehrekh came storming down the dune. It took only six long strides for him to reach the summit of Brama’s dune. Brama took a half step back but then steeled himself while Behlosh, head twisting, horns sweeping, stared down at Mae. “In her veins flows the blood of thy queen?”

  “No.”

  “Someone favored by her then? A lover?”

  “She is favored, but no more than many of the soldiers in her army.”

  Behlosh stepped around to the back of the sleigh and crouched so low his face was inches from Mae’s. Kweilo, ever brave, stood still, though her tail swished constantly. Finally, Behlosh stood to his full, towering height. “Why hast only one been brought?”

  “That isn’t part of what I’m offering.”

  “Then what is thine offer?”

  From around his neck Brama retrieved the necklace given to him by Queen Alansal. On the end of the chain was an amulet, which B
rama held out between thumb and forefinger for Behlosh to see. The golden amulet was the size of a fig with a hollow core that was visible through the elegant filigree work in its walls. It reflected the starlight, while the object inside swallowed the night.

  “A bone of Raamajit the Exalted,” Brama said. “Yours if you heal this woman.”

  Low laughter rolled from Behlosh. “A lone soldier from a dying army in exchange for the bone of an elder god?”

  “You agree, then?”

  “A lone soldier for the bone of Raamajit . . . .”

  “It would make for a pretty prize for your lord, would it not? Or for you to call your own?”

  Behlosh’s four hands tightened into fists. His tail swished faster than before, slapped the sand harder. “Dost thou hope to master the second bone? Or mayhaps thy wish is to play on Rümayesh’s tenderness.” Behlosh waved toward Mae. “Thou thinkest that healing this one might guilt her, sway her to join thy cause. Thou thinkest that if she breaks from our lord Goezhen, thy precious fleet might be saved.”

  “My reasons are my own.” Using the chain, Brama spun the amulet in the air, a thing Queen Alansal had assured him would put the bone’s scent on the wind. “What say you, Behlosh? Will you enter into this bargain with me?”

  Behlosh stared at the twirling amulet and Brama was sure he’d erred. He was certain Behlosh had taken offense and would leave. Or would take the amulet from him by force, perhaps delivering it to Goezhen. It was what he and Alansal had both feared as they’d discussed this plan. She’d nearly declined, she was so set on keeping the treasures of the bones, but she’d come to see that her gambit had failed, that for some reason Goezhen had interceded to prevent her from sailing as easily as she’d hoped toward Sharakhai. If she hoarded her power and refused to allow Brama to use one of the bones to forge an agreement with Behlosh, she risked the destruction of her entire fleet, or worse, her homeland.