Beneath the Twisted Trees

by Bradley P. Beaulieu

  Suddenly Sümeya’s lips went tight. A smile broke across her face. She laughed, a sound so pure Çeda nearly laughed with her. She would have, had the desire in her not been so strong.

  When their lips met once more, Sümeya’s lips were soft. Their tongues played as Sümeya pulled the blanket down, exposing Çeda’s breasts, her belly. Sümeya’s touch became more insistent. Her lips closed on Çeda’s hardening nipple. Her hand slipped down along Çeda’s thigh then between her legs, never breaking contact. When she touched Çeda, when her fingers toyed with her, a wave of pleasure ran through Çeda that was so great, so welcome, she moaned without meaning to.

  The conversation outside the cabin dropped. There might have been a few laughs.

  Çeda didn’t care. As the conversation resumed, Çeda grabbed the hair at the back of Sümeya’s head and pulled, exposing Sümeya’s neck. She placed kisses against her soft skin, feeling Sümeya’s pulse beneath her lips, while her other hand roamed Sümeya’s well-muscled back. And when she found that same place between Sümeya’s thighs, she heard a long, satisfied groan.

  For a time they were playful as a clear mountain stream. Çeda enveloped Sümeya, and they drifted, rushing toward the rapids in ceaseless, unknowable currents until the two of them crashed, loud and vibrant and joyful in the sun.

  Chapter 31

  AS DAVUD, ESMERAY, and Fezek were being led toward the safe house by Cicio, the curly-haired Qaimiri, Davud wondered why Sukru had come for Anila instead of him. It was clear he’d waited until the two of them were separated. The Blade Maidens had been sent after Davud, but Sukru himself had chosen to go after Anila, which meant he either considered her more dangerous, or more important to his plans.

  Fezek lumbered at the rear of the group, wearing the new hooded robe they’d found for him. He hated wearing it. Said he wanted to feel the light of the sun on his skin.

  “Can you even feel it?” Davud had asked once.

  Fezek had shrugged. “Not as such. But I like to imagine I could.”

  As they turned a corner onto a nearly deserted street, Fezek looked past Davud and Esmeray to Cicio. “Is it much farther?”

  Cicio called over his shoulder, “You ask that question one more time, ah? I put you back in the ground.”

  “I was only wondering if we were close,” Fezek grumbled under his breath. “Always so touchy!”

  Davud didn’t bother replying. Say a word and Fezek was likely to bend the conversation back toward his poetry, which was about as interesting as a braying mule. As Fezek remained blessedly silent, Davud’s thoughts returned to Anila and the reasons Sukru had allowed her to learn the ways of necromancy in the first place. He’d asked her several times about it. She’d confessed how Sukru had come to her in his palace and given her some books that detailed the rather brief lives of necromancers.

  One was the chronicle of a famous man who’d lived centuries ago, a man who lost all ten of his children to a brutal encounter with a drug lord and had nearly suffered the same fate as his children. They’d been tossed into the pit of bone crushers the drug lord kept as pets. The father had stood before the pile of bodies, his eyes afire with white light, a cold fog rolling off his frame, and had called his children back from the dead. Despite their hunks of missing flesh, despite tendons cut, throats ripped out, they’d risen and killed the bone crushers, then raided the drug lord’s compound in a night of terror that had come to be known as Black Malahndi.

  As dawn arrived, the man’s children fell lifeless to the ground, one by one. The man himself lasted another two days. The Silvers Spears found him staring numbly at his dead children, a smile on his face and tears in his eyes. He’d been swiftly delivered to King Sukru for questioning, whereupon Sukru had recorded his account. It, and several more like it, had been enough to put Anila on her way to becoming a necromancer.

  “But surely Sukru gave some hint as to his purpose?” Davud had asked her.

  “Never,” Anila had replied. “It felt like he was curious more than anything else.”

  When Davud shared his thoughts with Esmeray, she’d only shrugged. “You’re searching too hard. Why does Sukru need a reason other than to gather more power?”

  “I suppose he doesn’t, but when he came for me, he did have a purpose, which I doubt he’s abandoned, despite King Kiral ordering him to do so.”

  Esmeray had given him a side-eyed stare, then a smile of understanding broke over her face. She poked him in the chest. “You’re jealous. You’re wondering why you, with all the power the gods saw fit to grant you, weren’t taken first.”

  “I’m not jealous. I’m worried for Anila.”

  “By the Great Mother’s teats, Davud”—she laughed until his cheeks burned, in a way that was somehow equal parts endearing and infuriating—“you’re aware you can be both, right?”

  He felt he should be angry at the implication he would ever put himself above Anila’s safety, but part of him knew she was right. He exhaled noisily, and it became an awkward laugh. In that moment he spotted movement along a side street. Ten doors down, a large cat was hugging the walls of the three-story homes. The serval from the banks of the river had found them again.

  “Is it much—” Fezek began.

  “Be quiet,” Davud whispered, and rushed Fezek, Esmeray, and Cicio farther up the street. From the mouth of an alley the four of them watched the cat prowl toward them. When it crossed their path it slowed, its tail went stiff, and the hair on its back stood up, as though it had heard a mouse in the walls.

  Davud was already weaving a spell to steal the breath from the serval. Esmeray, watching, snatched both of his hands. “No,” she breathed, and cast a spell of her own. Her hands moved in quick, precise strokes. She was much better than Davud had given her credit for. And that was before he realized she was casting two spells simultaneously, one with each hand.

  As the serval slunk nearer, Davud felt the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. He expected clay pots to start flying from the tops of the buildings at any moment, but they didn’t, and soon the large, spotted cat had come to a stop only a few paces from Esmeray. It looked suddenly unnatural, however. It stood stock-still and hardly reacted when Esmeray leaned down and picked it up. She was careful, Davud noticed, never to allow its eye contact with the road ahead to be broken.

  The index finger of her right hand had blood on it, taken from a small wound on her palm, courtesy of her blooding ring. She used it to draw a pattern on the cat’s chest. The sigil for forget—no, deny—and something else Davud couldn’t make out.

  “Add yours to it, Davud. A drop in the center.”

  She’d left a place in the sigil for it. He complied, and dabbed a drop where she’d indicated.

  When she set the cat down, it paced away with the same sort of ease it had shown before catching their scent.

  “What happen now, ah?” Cicio asked.

  Esmeray glanced his way, but then fixed her eyes on Davud once more. Why did she always seem so amused with him? “It turns someone else into its quarry and follows them instead.”

  “Whom?” Davud asked.

  “Whom . . .” Esmeray exaggerated the word back at Davud, then laughed. “Whomever it finds most interesting, collegia boy.”

  Fezek and Cicio were both smiling while staring at Davud. Davud, meanwhile, felt his face redden worse than it had in some time. “And if there are others on our tail?” he asked in a rush.

  “Then we’ll take care of them, too.”

  It was intricate spellwork, what Esmeray had just done. He motioned to the retreating cat. “Will you teach me?”

  Esmeray seemed affronted by the very question, but then the look faded. “If you’re nice.”

  He didn’t have a chance to ask her what constituted nice before she left him to join Cicio. She spent more time talking with him than Davud would have liked.

  They
resumed their walk toward Ramahd’s safe house, which turned out to be a tiny room over a locksmith’s shop, accessible from the small yard behind his home. Seeing them safely inside, Cicio headed for the door.

  “Where are you going?” Esmeray asked.

  “My lord say bring you here safely. He no say nothing about watching over you like some fucking wet nurse.” And with that he closed the door, leaving them in the tiny space.

  In one corner, where the low, sloping ceiling met the floor, were several small crates containing various parts for locks. Four pallets lay spaced about the rest of the floor, with blankets wrapped around each. Esmeray flopped onto one of them, the skirt of her dress billowing as she did so. She looked like a hopeless gutter wren sitting at the edge of the street.

  Davud sat on the pallet across from her. “Sukru will send more than cats after me. He has enough blood to chase me for months. Years.”

  Esmeray was looking at him wistfully.

  “What?”

  “The Enclave knows of a way to deal with such things. It isn’t permanent, but it may not need to be. There’s a good chance Sukru will assume you’re dead when his attempts to find you produce no results.”

  “What—” He swallowed and felt his face flush. Esmeray was a good deal prettier than he’d realized when they’d first met. “What do we do?”

  She smiled. She looked fierce when she smiled, and he liked that. “The Enclave knows of a way to taint our blood so that our signature, the trace we leave behind, is altered. It makes mundane tracking spells fail, and many of the more complex ones as well.”

  “Mundane?” Now it was Davud’s turn to laugh. He was immediately glad he did for it rekindled Esmeray’s smile. “I think you’ve been in the Enclave too long.”

  She shrugged. “Perhaps. It involves an exchange of blood. Once done, the protection that applies to us will be passed to you. And then no one, not Sukru, nor Queen Meryam, nor even the Enclave, will be able to track you by use of your blood, even had they a ewer-full. I warn you, though. The first time it’s done, you’ll feel sick. Hot. You’ll fall into a fever dream not unlike when the change first overcame you.”

  “As bad as that?”

  “No,” she said, “not so bad as that.”

  “How long does it last?”

  “It’s different for everyone. For most, one night. For those stronger in the red ways, as I suspect you are, it could take days.”

  Days . . . Days lost in trying to save Anila. But what else could he do? He couldn’t very well rescue Anila without it.

  “Very well,” he said.

  “Very well,” she echoed.

  She slipped off the pallet and crawled the short distance between them until she was close enough for Davud to feel the heat coming off her. Bakhi’s bright hammer, her scent . . . She smelled of lemongrass and ambergris and a strong, womanly musk that made her seem all the more exotic. It felt vaguely threatening to have her so close, but Davud’s body was tingling so much he said nothing. When she took his chin in her hand, however, and leaned toward him, tilting her head, he reeled back.

  “Is there no other way to exchange our blood?”

  “There is,” she replied, “but this is how it was done for me. And it is how I will do it for you.” Her eyes stared into his. “Unless you wish me to stop.”

  He swallowed, wondering what Anila would think of this. She wouldn’t care, he told himself. She’s never thought about you that way. Even so, it felt like a betrayal when he shook his head no.

  “Good,” she said, and pressed her lips to his.

  It was warm, like a kiss, though he doubted Esmeray thought of it as such. She sucked his lower lip in and bit him, hard enough to draw blood. He’d grown accustomed to this sort of pain, but still he winced. The mixture of the slickness of her lips and the closeness of her body was making him more aware of himself than he’d been in a long while. He felt clumsy and foolish, a boy still growing into his body, but he also felt more need than he ever had before, even more than the days he’d spent in the desert with Anila.

  “Now you,” Esmeray said, her voice husky.

  He did as she asked. He sucked her lip into his mouth and bit it. She inhaled sharply. And then the two of them were kissing softly, exchanging blood, his mouth filling with copper as they shared a moment that lit Davud from the inside.

  He slipped a hand around her neck. She did the same to him, lay him down on the pallet, and pressed her body against his. His hands slipped to the small of her back. Hers gripped the side of his head and held him still as she straddled his hips and began to writhe.

  When he slipped one hand up to her breast, she stiffened and grabbed his wrist. He stopped immediately, knowing he’d taken it too far.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered.

  He saw no fright in her eyes, no anger, but still she pulled away. Their lips made a smacking sound as they parted. “That’s enough,” she said. He wasn’t sure if she meant his advances or their exchanged blood.

  Davud’s mouth was warm. It was filling with spit, some strange reaction to Esmeray. He swallowed hard. “Could—could you do this for Ramahd too?”

  The look of surprise on her face made it clear that was a misstep. “I’ve offered Amansir help, but no, he doesn’t get this.” She pushed him hard onto the pallet. “Now close your eyes. It will come on quickly.”

  “Where are you going?” he asked as she slipped toward the door.

  “You’ll need water. Lots of it.” She wiped her lips with the back of one hand. “And the Enclave will be searching for us. Best I cover our tracks.”

  Davud was feeling bold, and he tried to hide his smile but was perfectly sure he’d failed.

  “What?” she asked.

  “You said the effect was temporary.”

  Unlike Davud, Esmeray didn’t try to hide her smile at all. “So?”

  “That implies we might need to do this again.”

  “Well that depends on whether you live long enough for it to be necessary, doesn’t it?”

  Davud swallowed the growing lump in his throat and hoped his reddened cheeks weren’t as obvious as they felt. “How long?”

  She returned to the bedside and leaned over him until they were face to face again. “Wouldn’t you like to know?” With one quick, powerful kiss, she was gone.

  Davud stared at the door a long while. He soon found, however, that Esmeray had been right. A heat was starting to consume him, and he wondered if the wonderful, queasy feeling in his chest was due to that or to Esmeray.

  Don’t be stupid, Davud.

  As he lay down and stared at the ceiling, he breathed deeply, savoring the scent of lemongrass and ambergris and a strong, womanly musk.

  Chapter 32

  COUNT MATEO ABRANTES OF QAIMIR stepped out of the araba, taking care that his trick knee didn’t buckle, then tugged down his uniform jacket. Mighty Alu but the desert was hot. And the worst thing about it was he couldn’t build up a proper sweat. Nor did water seem to help. The desert air was a thief, stealing all comfort from him.

  He climbed the steps to the Temple of Alu. He’d arrived the previous night and had just been driven in from the Qaimiri embassy house. It was a time-honored tradition to visit the temple, and he’d not risk angering Alu now, not when so much depended on it. It was a way of welcoming Alu from the seas, of inviting his protection. A thing I’ll have great need of in the days to come, Mateo thought.

  Inside the temple, the priest sprinkled Mateo’s hands with salt water from the Austral Sea, then left him in peace to pray. A short while later, a man entered. “Welcome, friend,” Mateo said, as any good follower of Alu would, but then he looked at the man properly and realized who he was.

  Ramahd Amansir stood beneath a scalloped archway holding a bag over his left shoulder, leaving his right arm free. When Ramahd noticed Mateo’s eyes
drifting to his sword, he said, “I only wish to talk.”

  Mateo had thought Duke Hektor mad to take this meeting. They’d all heard the rumors of how Amansir had betrayed their queen. But Hektor had always been bothered by the manner of King Aldouan’s death. There was no denying that the way Meryam, Hamzakiir, and Ramahd had swept into the capital, then taken Aldouan with them when they left, was strange. Hektor wanted there to be something wrong with Meryam’s tale. He wanted the real story behind his brother’s death, not some fanciful tale of an ehrekh somehow finding them by chance in the desert. But that was precisely what worried Mateo. If a man wants to believe in something desperately enough, he’d do so, truth and reason be damned.

  “Speak your piece, Lord Amansir.”

  What followed was exactly the sort of story Mateo had expected. A tale of Hamzakiir being ensorcelled by Meryam. Of Meryam pulling his strings and leading her father to the desert. Of Meryam summoning Guhldrathen that her father might be killed, clearing her way to the throne of Qaimir. “Now that I look back on it,” Amansir said, “I think she was manipulating me as well. Grief stricken as she was, she ensured that I was the one to bargain with Guhldrathen to save the two of us.”

  He finished with the tale of Kiral the King of Kings and how Meryam had set him up to die at the hands of Guhldrathen and put Hamzakiir in his place. From the bag he withdrew a severed head, which he proceeded to set onto the floor so that its sightless eyes were staring up at Mateo.

  For long moments Mateo stared back at it. There was no doubt it had many of King Kiral’s features, and yet . . . “This is a wild tale, and the very fate of our country rides upon the truth of it. I’ve always thought you a forthright man, Lord Amansir”—he waved to the head—“but I couldn’t rightly say whether this is Kiral or not. I only met him once, many years ago.”

  “It’s him,” Amansir said. “Many others will corroborate it.”