Beneath the Twisted Trees

by Bradley P. Beaulieu

  “Perhaps, but even if they do, who’s to say you didn’t kill him? Who’s to say you’re not trying to aid one of Meryam’s rivals? There are many who might do so. Many who might be pulling strings to discredit our queen and sow discord.”

  Amansir glanced over one shoulder. “I’m not asking you to believe me outright. Ask the queen for her version of events, but be prepared to look beyond her lies.”

  Mateo stared at the head, increasingly skeptical that the stony face was Kiral’s at all. “And if I’m still not convinced?”

  “Let’s set aside Meryam’s crimes for the moment. I’m going to tell you precisely what will happen when you go to her.” Amansir rolled the head back into the bag. “She will reacquaint herself with you, ask careful questions about your recent past, and your family’s past, especially as it relates to her father, the throne he vacated when he died, and any inclinations you or anyone in your house might have had to place another on the throne.”

  Mateo suddenly felt awkward in his own skin. How much did Amansir know? How much did the queen know? Mateo had made no moves himself, but he’d been involved in a dozen conversations with both sides of the family. Even Hektor, the late king’s brother, had come to listen to their appeals, and while he mightn’t have seemed ready to overstep his niece to seize the throne, neither had he seemed wholly opposed to the notion. Hektor was a careful man, but they all knew that with a bit more convincing, he would come around to their way of thinking.

  And then the crate had arrived, sent all the way from Sharakhai with orders to be opened only before a meeting of Qaimir’s grand council. Inside lay the body of a man. Gasps of horror and recognition swept across the council. It was Gautiste Remigio, a young noble who several years earlier had been sent to Sharakhai to serve the embassy. The corpse’s skin was white and taut, and the gaping wound in his gut made it look like he’d been gored by a bull. The servant who’d accompanied the crate from Sharakhai poured a stream of blood from a phial—first upon the eyes, then the lips, then into the slightly parted mouth. Along the corpse’s chest and throat and mouth, the skin took on an unnatural shade of pink, but its extremities turned blue. Its veins stood out in rhythmic, pulsing black.

  The naked body moved, standing on limbs that cracked and popped. Its eyes spread wide, an unnerving stare set among wild streaks of crimson. When it turned its head to take in those who’d come for council, all in that room knew it was not Gautiste who looked upon them, but Queen Meryam herself. In the end, Gautiste’s gaze came to a rest on Duke Hektor, and a ragged voice began to speak.

  “I have come to assure you that your queen is safe, that the crown is safe, and that I have begun to unfold plans that will enrich all of Qaimir, particularly those in this room. Fear not over what happens in the desert. Worry not that the throne in Almadan remains unfilled for the time being. It will not remain so for long. And know that when all is said and done, Qaimir’s allies will be richly rewarded, while her enemies, wherever they may lie, will be punished as they deserve.”

  With those last words, the gaze lingered on several: a duke, a duchess, and a count, those who’d been most vocal about overthrowing Meryam. Gautiste’s corpse had then collapsed, and the council had devolved into a rush of anxious conversation. Mateo had learned later that Gautiste had not been killed by Meryam, as some had initially feared, but had died fighting for the queen on the Night of Endless Swords. That knowledge did little to blunt the message itself, which had been anything but subtle. It showed the type of reign Queen Meryam was preparing and the fate that awaited those who opposed her.

  “Meryam knows the conversations that took place in her absence,” Amansir said.

  “I only listened,” Mateo said. “I made no moves against her.”

  “Which is why you’re still alive. But make no mistake, she will never trust you. She’ll listen to your story. She’ll take your counsel for the looming war and the part Qaimir should play in it. And then she will ask for your blood.”

  Mateo’s head jerked back in surprise. “She wouldn’t.”

  There had always been an uneasy balance between the nobles of Qaimir and the blood magi. Wars had been fought, and in the end, a compact was made: The blood of nobles would never be requested by any blood mage, not even one of royal lineage. It might be given willingly in a time of need, but it was too precious and dangerous a resource to otherwise be surrendered.

  Amansir’s look had turned sympathetic, like a father for a son who knew too little of the world. “I know Meryam better than anyone,” he said. “She’s drunk with power and thirsty for more. But mark my words well. That same thirst has given birth to a paranoia that was intense before the Battle of Blackspear. It’s only grown worse since.”

  “And what would you have me do? Go to the embassy house and clap the queen in irons?”

  “Ideally, yes.”

  “And failing that?”

  “I expect you to behave as Hektor bid you, to observe and act as Meryam’s loyal servant until he arrives.” Amansir hoisted the bag over his shoulder and backed away toward the rear entrance of the temple.

  Mateo waved to the temple around them. “Why meet at all, then?”

  “Because it had to start somewhere. Never fear, Mateo. There’s more to come.”

  “Such as?”

  Amansir shook his head. “We’ll speak again when the situation has become clear to you.” He lost himself down the hallway, but his voice echoed back. “When you’ll be rather more amenable to what I have to say.”

  Mateo left the temple in contemplative silence. He returned to his coach and was driven back inside the walls of the House of Kings to the Qaimiri embassy. Shortly after, he was summoned by the queen, who had apparently arrived for one of her increasingly rare days away from Eventide, the palace of Kiral King of Kings. She wore the golden raiment of a queen but was so thin she looked like a dying pauper. It was a wonder she remained seated in her chair.

  They discussed a great many things by the hearth in her apartments. The numbers of ships in the fleet. The soldiers, the war effort. The names of the blood magi who had accompanied the fleet. He thought Meryam would be pleased, but she was in a dark mood, her gaze often wandering to stare beyond the nearby walls, toward the palaces, perhaps, along the slopes of Tauriyat.

  “Is there anything more I can help the queen with?” Mateo said near the end of their discussion.

  “Hmm?” She was staring northward again. “Oh, yes, there’s one last thing. I’ll be leaving, Vice Admiral Mateo.”

  “What? When? Why?”

  “I’m leaving Sharakhai tonight to stop the advance of the Mirean fleet.”

  “You? But why?”

  She snorted as if she’d been asking herself the same question. “To prove my worth to my fellow rulers.”

  “Have you not already summoned your fleet to help them in their war? Were you not instrumental in the defeat of the Black Spear?”

  Queen Meryam waved her hand dismissively. “I’m going, Mateo. I’ll return as soon as I’m able. Until then, I hope you’ll work diligently with the Silver Spears to prepare for the fleet’s arrival.”

  “Of—Of course, my queen.” He bowed his head, lower than he should have, really. He was just so relieved. Amansir had been wrong. Which called into question everything he’d said. That bloody head could have been anyone’s.

  “Is there anything else, Count Abrantes?”

  “No, my queen.” He left her apartments only to discover a woman sitting behind a desk in the adjoining antechamber. She was stunningly beautiful, with curly hair that fell past her shoulders. It took him a moment to connect the woman to the name.

  “You’re Amaryllis,” he said in practically a stutter. “Welcome.”

  Amaryllis smiled. “It’s kind of the count to welcome me to Sharakhai.”

  Mateo tried hard to hide his embarrassment but was sur
e his momentary cringe had given him away. “I meant to say: it’s good to finally meet.”

  A bowed head. A practiced smile. “Rest assured I feel the same.”

  “Well.” Mateo put one hand behind his back and tipped his head to her. “I hope to see you again.”

  “There is one last thing, Count Abrantes.”

  “Yes?”

  Amaryllis pulled open a drawer in the desk and retrieved a glass vial with a flared mouth and a cork stopper. It had a bit of clear, green-tinted liquid within, an anticoagulant. Mateo hadn’t noticed it before, but Amaryllis was wearing a blooding ring on her right thumb. Its thorn jutted out past her first joint, ready to pierce skin.

  “I beg your pardon?” Mateo said, though Amaryllis had yet to actually request his blood.

  Her smile might have been meant as calming. It was certainly alluring, but somehow that made it all the worse. “With the queen leaving for the warfront”—she waggled the vial at him—“she’ll need a way to contact you.”

  Mateo felt pinpricks of fear traveling up his scalp until it felt like a thousand spiders were dancing there. A moment ago Amaryllis had seemed an ally, but now everything he knew about her rushed in like a gale off an angry sea. Stories of how gifted she was at subterfuge and disguise. How adept she was at gaining the rooms of those she’d been sent to kill, no matter how well protected. Amaryllis was one of Qaimir’s master assassins, and she was holding a vial meant to house Mateo’s blood.

  “This is quite extraordinary.”

  “A fact our queen acknowledges. But we live in extraordinary times, Count Abrantes. There really is no other way.”

  The way she’d said those last words. They’d not been uttered as appeasement, but as a warning. For a moment, instead of Amaryllis’s beautiful face staring at him, it was Gautiste’s, his blood-streaked eyes glistening while Meryam spoke through his mouth. Her enemies, wherever they may lie, will be punished as they deserve.

  Bits of Lord Amansir’s story returned to him. The blood mage, Hamzakiir, taking Amansir and Meryam to the desert. Meryam ordering Amansir’s death. The unearthing of a desert grave after the Battle of Blackspear, when Hamzakiir’s long face had given way to Kiral’s.

  Mateo blinked the visions away. He had known Meryam since she was a child. She’d been an ambitious girl who’d grown into an ambitious woman. But to do all of that? To kill her own father, to kill a King of Sharakhai as well, because she coveted the desert’s Amber Jewel? In that moment it seemed preposterous.

  So he held out his hand, and felt the sting as Amaryllis pierced his wrist and collected his blood in the vial.

  Mateo left the antechamber, but lingered in the hallway outside. He heard the door to Queen Meryam’s apartments opening, heard Amaryllis’s voice carry. “My queen, King Alaşan has arrived. He’s waiting—”

  And then the voices faded as the inner apartment doors were closed.

  “You’ve business to attend to I’m sure, my lord.” One of the two guardsmen outside the door was motioning to the curving stairs leading down to the main floor.

  “What?”

  The man gestured again, insistent, as if Mateo were a lesser lord. He felt he ought to be angry, but just then a change overcame him. His worries over Queen Meryam began to fade, replaced by a warmth he hadn’t felt in a long while toward anyone but his wife.

  A moment ago he’d been worried over his future. A moment ago he’d been curious what the queen wanted of King Alaşan, one of Sharakhai’s lesser Kings. With each step he took down the curving stairwell, however, his worries faded further.

  He left the embassy house content in the knowledge that he’d made the right decision. As for Amansir, well, the man was simply too dangerous to trust. When he presented himself again—if he presented himself—Mateo would clap him in irons and hand him over to the queen.

  Chapter 33

  WHEN ANILA WOKE, it was like she’d never left Sukru’s palace. She lay in the same bed, staring at the same ceiling in the same room she’d occupied after recovering from the terrible, frigid burns she’d sustained in the caravanserai of Ishmantep. The door she’d made rot in order to escape had been replaced with one made of iron. The two tall windows now had iron bars on them. In all other respects the room was the same, including the table near the hearth where she’d spent long hours studying the texts Sukru had brought for her.

  With the sun shining brightly through the windows, everything was telling her to rise, that it would do her good, but she felt so very lethargic. The farther fields were calling again, and it was all she could do to resist.

  I could let go, she mused. It would be so easy. The passageway was just there, close enough to touch, and like a lover’s embrace, it made powerful promises. Here will you find love, it said. Here will you find care and understanding. Here will you find all that has been missing since the day the coldfire consumed you.

  “Not true,” she whispered softly. “Davud loves me. Davud cares.”

  But Davud didn’t understand. He didn’t know what it was like to live beneath that constant lure, nor with the pain that plagued her. She missed the friends she’d spent so many long nights with. Those she’d laughed and cried with. Those who’d been consumed by Hamzakiir and his foul plans. She missed Collum’s wit. She missed Meiwei’s sweetness. She missed them all.

  She lay back. Closed her eyes.

  Just let go, she told herself. Let go, and find peace. Let go, and deny Sukru the satisfaction of his torture, or whatever it is he has planned.

  Anila shook her head a moment later. What a weak and bitter broth you brew. Using Sukru to mask her own cowardice brought no sense of calm. It only stirred up memories of his crashing through the cellar door with his whip, of his lashing Fezek practically in half, of that infernal whip somehow wrapping itself around her wrists and neck before she’d had a chance to do more than push herself off the bed. The whip had tightened like a noose, cutting off her air supply. She’d been in pain and afraid and also, she recalled now, elated that it was all, finally, coming to an end.

  The next thing she knew she’d woken in her room in Sukru’s palace. She squinted at the sun’s brightness, tried to rise from the bed, only then realizing her arms and legs were chained to it. The despair that followed was nearly enough to make her give in. As sad as it was to admit, she missed the anger that had kept her alive, the will to have her revenge against Hamzakiir.

  But fear is a motivator too. Fear can keep you alive, at least for a little bit longer.

  She’d wanted to see Hamzakiir dead, but she’d also wanted to see Davud safe. She’d wanted to see him live. He’d left the cellar room with Esmeray to meet with Lord Amansir. Had he ever come back, or had Sukru found him too? Was he still alive?

  In the weeks since Ishmantep, the call of the other side had never left her. Her rage had allowed her to create a state of near-perfect balance: close enough to call upon the power of the farther fields, far enough to avoid its lure. But everything had changed the day Davud shared the rumors with her: Hamzakiir had been found in the desert, slain by an ehrekh. Since then, it had been a slow and steady slide, a losing battle that saw her anger fade more by the day. The only thing that kept her from giving in was the careful curation of reasons to reignite her anger.

  Today that reason was Davud. But she was exhausted, so she did the one thing she’d become quite good at. She forced herself to sleep.

  When she woke again, it was to a jostling of her bed. Her eyes were so heavy she was barely able to open them. But open them she did, to find herself strapped to a stretcher and being carried by a pair of Silver Spears. Where she was going she had no idea, nor did she have the strength to ask, and soon she’d fallen into slumber once more. She was consumed by dreams of fire and ice, the two alternating constantly while people screamed.

  A peculiar odor lifted her from her dreams. It was a stale smell, a sort of
decay that nearly but did not quite mask the more delicate scents of jasmine and sandalwood. It was cold, and the dead air was laced with a crisp, mineral sort of smell.

  Upon cracking her eyes open, she found herself in a subterranean vault with pillars spaced around an expansive room. Iron sconces gripped flickering torches, but the light they threw wasn’t nearly enough to fight the oppressive darkness.

  She was on a platform of some sort. A sarcophagus, she realized. In a mausoleum. She could see the telltale signs of individual tombs along the distant walls now that she knew what she was looking for. There were several other sarcophagi like the one she was lying on, but only a bare handful.

  She felt a pale ghost of her anger return as King Sukru, wearing a rich khalat of brown and gold, scraped his way up the few steps to the side of her sarcophagus. He grunted as he moved, making it clear how much his joints pained him. His bald pate was reddened, his face splotchy, though the color began to fade as he stared at her with his small, ratlike eyes.

  “You led us quite the merry chase.”

  Whatever anger she’d mustered was already seeping away. She knew she ought to care about her fate, but the simple truth was that, other than faint relief that Davud wasn’t here with her, she didn’t.

  “You left many wrongs in your murderous wake. Raising young Bela for your foul purposes. Slaughtering my personal guardsman, Zahndr, who, despite what you might think, petitioned for leniency for both you and Davud. The butchering of my blood, my kin.”

  “Your brother was going to kill Davud.”

  “A right he’d earned.”

  Her dull, muted anger flared to life anew. “You would claim that a game in which you determined the rules, a game that cost countless men and women, and surely children as well, their lives was a right?”

  “The Kings were granted the desert by the gods themselves”—Sukru leaned forward, as if daring Anila to strike him, a telling posture given that she was bound and at his mercy—“and that means everything in it.”