Beneath the Twisted Trees

by Bradley P. Beaulieu

“Well do you want to talk or not?” Kameyl called to her, but Yndris kept walking, not even bothering to look back.

  Soon Kameyl reached the garden, which had red gravel paths and flower beds whose blooms were all some varying shade of blue. Four massive topiaries stood in the center of the beds, each trimmed to resemble a mystical animal. Yndris waited at the center of the garden beneath a large, square arbor choked with green ivy. The ivy wrapping around one of the stout wooden posts obscured her face.

  Almost as if she doesn’t want to be seen, Kameyl thought.

  Her heart beat faster as she stepped carefully along the border path. As she moved, the woman—Kameyl was now certain it wasn’t Yndris—moved with her, so that her face remained hidden.

  Kameyl drew Brushing Wing. “Whoever you are, you’ll come to regret the steps that led you here.”

  “I already regret them,” the woman said, “but not for the reasons you think.”

  She recognized the voice. How could she not? She’d obeyed orders from the woman who owned it for years. And so it came as no surprise as Kameyl reached the path leading to the arbor that she found her former commander, Sümeya, standing before her. Her Maiden’s Black had been altered so that the cut of her skirt and the set of her turban made her look more like Yndris’s, at least from a distance. She’d also mimicked Yndris’s churlish body language. It had been enough to fool Kameyl, but she refused to be fooled again.

  Never taking her eyes fully from Sümeya, she scanned the roof line and the windows overlooking the courtyard. She listened carefully, and reached out with her senses, feeling for heartbeats. Her senses felt dulled without the use of the adichara petals, and she’d never been one of the more gifted at it to begin with, but she was relatively certain she and Sümeya were alone.

  The gravel crunched beneath Kameyl’s boots as she took measured steps forward. She stopped several paces away from arbor’s entrance, just out of sword’s reach. “What possessed you to come, Sümeya?”

  “To convince you to join us.”

  Kameyl laughed. “Join you?” Her fingers flexed against the well-worn hilt of her shamshir. “I suppose next you’re going to start spouting nonsense about the thirteenth tribe.”

  “It isn’t nonsense. Much of what they’re saying is true.”

  Kameyl stabbed Brushing Wing at Sümeya’s chest. “And how would you know?” Kameyl took a half step forward. “Were you alive when it happened? Are you somehow privy to more knowledge than the Kings?”

  Sümeya backed away but hadn’t yet dropped into a fighting stance. “All I’m asking is for you to listen.”

  “In all my time in the Blade Maidens, I came to respect only a few. Melis was one of them.” As she advanced another half step, Sümeya retreated into the sunlight, maintaining their distance. “You were too,” Kameyl went on, “but that’s all been shattered. I don’t trust you. I don’t trust Melis. And I certainly don’t trust Çeda. So if that’s why you’ve come, to spout her traitorous nonsense, then I’m afraid you’ve made a grave miscalculation.”

  When she took one long stride forward, Sümeya sidestepped into one of the flower beds, putting an arbor post between them. “The asirim were enslaved on the night of Beht Ihman.”

  As Kameyl moved faster, circling the post, Sümeya shifted in a rush of lithe, balanced steps to the next path over. So Kameyl ducked under the arbor, ready to charge. Sümeya, sensing blows were near, finally drew her sword, but seemed reluctant to do so. She drew the scabbard as well, holding it like a second sword.

  “They’ve been slaves for four hundred years,” Sümeya went on. “That is the truth you must come to see. And you will if you but listen with your heart and your mind.”

  “Save it,” Kameyl said. “You can tell it all to King Cahil.”

  And with that she sprinted forward. Sümeya retreated, her sword and scabbard at the ready. Kameyl was so eager she nearly missed the sound of the nearby heartbeat, nearly missed the telltale signs of the thin rope that lay along the ground.

  She leapt as the rope was pulled taut. Even so, the rope snapped tight higher than Kameyl thought it would. It caught her right ankle, and she stumbled hard but managed to keep her feet.

  Sümeya was on the move from the moment the rope tripped her. She blocked one awkward swipe of Kameyl’s sword with her wooden scabbard, then dropped and snapped one leg out, catching Kameyl across both legs just as she was starting to recover her balance. Kameyl fell but rolled away quickly and came up at the ready.

  On her left, a woman in green camouflage lunged from behind the nearest topiary. It was Melis, holding two fighting sticks. She unleashed a flurry of tight blows, but Kameyl blocked them all, then sent a devastating back kick into Melis’s chest. Melis grunted, off balance, and fell hard when she tripped over a line of small, flowering bushes.

  Sümeya reengaged, her skill with a blade and her economical movements on full display. It was difficult for Kameyl to find any openings, but she was so full of rage she pressed her former commander steadily backward. Sümeya blocked only with her scabbard, surely so that the fight wouldn’t be heard as far as the pavilion.

  “Please, Kameyl,” Sümeya said as she retreated beneath the arbor. “I’m only asking you to listen.”

  But Kameyl wouldn’t. She’d rather die than swallow the lies of traitors. Behind her, Melis was regaining her feet, so Kameyl pushed Sümeya hard. It was then that she heard movement on the arbor’s roof. Leaves rustled. Wood splintered.

  It happened so fast she didn’t even have the time to look up before a heavy weight crashed down and bore Kameyl to the ground. Brushing Wing flew from her hand. Kameyl struggled mightily to free herself, but an arm had already wrapped around her neck. When she drew her knife, ready to stab at her attacker, a hand was suddenly there, gripping her wrist.

  The tattoos on her attacker’s hand confirmed Kameyl’s fears, that her third assailant was Çeda. She struggled to break free, but Çeda’s grip felt inhuman, like stone.

  A petal, Kameyl thought. She must have taken a petal.

  The knowledge did her no good, however. She was starting to black out.

  “Kameyl, please,” Çeda said. “We need your help.”

  “Never,” she grunted and drew a ragged breath. “You speak only in lies.”

  Sümeya crouched before her and stared with regret. “Then we’ll take you to someone you will believe.”

  Kameyl refused to wonder who. She only struggled harder. But Çeda replied in kind, tightening her grip on Kameyl’s neck until the sunlit world of the courtyard went dark.

  Chapter 35

  BRAMA WAS BELOWDECKS in one of the Mirean dunebreakers’ larger cabins. The room, meticulously clean, was grim. Indelible stains marked the floorboards and the surface of the lone table. The strong scent of the solution used to clean the room could not quite cover up the morbid scents beneath. It was the room used by their field surgeons, for amputation mostly, or for other operations involving the body’s viscera.

  A plain-looking man of thirty summers lay on the operating table, a foot soldier. He was naked, with a folded white sheet laid across his legs and pelvis. A damp cloth covered his mouth and nose, somewhat muting his soft snoring. The air was laced with a sharp, piney scent, traces of the anesthetic that had put the man to sleep. His symptoms were strong but not severe. He had traces of the scourge around his eyes and inside his lips. More around his fingernails. Brama had wanted to try to heal someone deeper in the throes of the disease, but the queen had insisted on prudence.

  “Heal one,” she’d said, “and you may certainly heal more.”

  Near the head of the table stood Mae, whom Behlosh had cured the previous night. She seemed diminished without her armor, but her high leather boots, simple silk trousers, and belted tunic let Brama see the woman she’d been before being saved by her qirin, Angfua. Already the dark color around her mouth and eyes
had faded, leaving her skin a dusty gray instead of purplish black. The inflammation had decreased considerably, and her coughing had all but ceased. More promising was the fact that she showed almost none of the shakes that afflicted other scourge survivors. It was as complete a recovery as anyone could have hoped for, and was likely to get better with time.

  Her gaze wandered to the reliquary hanging from the chain around Brama’s neck. Like the one he’d given to Behlosh, it was an amulet with a lid and compartment. Resting inside the compartment, visible through the amulet’s weave of golden strands, was a black bone the size of a grape. The amulet itself was heavy, the bone even more so.

  And why not? Brama thought. The weight of the entire fleet rests on it.

  The door opened and Juvaan stepped inside, followed by Queen Alansal, who looked to be in a dark mood. Brama could see it in Juvaan’s face as well. Word had come only an hour before that Alansal’s nephew, a general in her fleet who’d been suffering the worst of the scourge’s effects, had passed. Alansal had surely taken time to look upon his body, even if from a distance, before it was ferried to an open grave with the others who’d died over the course of the day.

  Alansal’s black silk dress swept behind her as she sat across the operating table from Brama. When Juvaan had taken his place beside her, she said, “Alu-Waled is dead.”

  Brama felt his mouth go dry. Alu-Waled was the Sharakhani alchemyst who’d had the biggest hand in the creation of the scourge. Brama wanted to console the queen—after all, with Alu-Waled’s death went all hope of finding a cure in time to save her fleet—but what could he say? “What happened?” he said numbly.

  Queen Alansal seemed unwilling to explain further, so Juvaan did. “He managed to form a rope by braiding strips of cloth torn from his khalat. He tied them to a ceiling beam and hung himself.”

  The implication was clear. Though Alu-Waled had already confessed that there was no hope in finding a cure to the scourge, Queen Alansal and everyone around her had still been holding out hope that he could. With that possibility gone, and Rümayesh still adamantly standing behind her claim that it lay beyond her power to heal the scourge, even with the bone of Raamajit, their last, thin hope lay in Brama.

  The sheer weight of responsibility squeezed Brama, made it difficult for him to breathe. More than two thousand had already succumbed to the scourge. Another three thousand were sick with it. Even if Brama healed the man lying before him, how could he possibly stem this tide?

  He echoed Alansal’s words. Heal one, he told himself. Heal one.

  Queen Alansal waved to the man on the table. She was so distracted she spoke in Mirean, but Brama understood well enough. You may begin.

  Brama nodded to Mae, who took up a scalpel and made two precise cuts in the man’s chest in the same places she’d been pierced the night before by Behlosh. A small moan escaped the man, and he stirred, but as Mae pressed two clean bandages to the wounds, he fell silent once more. When the flow of blood had stemmed, Brama unscrewed the top of the reliquary and rolled Raamajit’s bone onto his waiting palm. A rush of power swept through him. It was so strong, so swift, his knees went weak from it, forcing him to grip the edge of the table until the dizziness passed.

  Before he could think overmuch about it, he popped the bone into his mouth. It felt gritty on his tongue. It tasted of minerals and copper and something sour, like turned milk. The dizziness became more pronounced as his perceptions swelled. He felt the man’s body. Felt his soul. He felt Mae’s as well. And Juvaan’s. And Alansal’s. He felt the hundreds upon hundreds of others in the hospital ships to the west. He even felt the bright press of soldiers in the main encampment before he managed to steel himself and draw his awareness back to the small room inside the dunebreaker.

  Queen Alansal was a distraction. She glowed brighter than anyone else, and the steel pins that held her black hair in place glittered, trailing light like shooting stars whenever she moved.

  By taking deep breaths, Brama was able to stem the tide of power, and once that happened, it began to settle and he was able to focus on the man on the table once more. As Behlosh had done with Mae, Brama draped his fingers over the man’s shoulders and pressed his thumbs to the wounds. He’d been able to sense the man to some degree a moment ago, but in touching his flesh the veil was lifted. Brama sensed the compression of his heart, the drawing of his breath. He felt his troubled dreams, filled with images of a chase through a dark forest and the sound of howling wolves. More than anything, he felt the scourge spreading through his body like a growing stain, reaching ever deeper into healthy flesh.

  Again came that revolting combination of curiosity and pleasure, but Brama refused to linger on it. Do that and he would surely fail. He did as Behlosh had done. He needed to separate the scourge from the man’s body, but found he was only able to tear it away. It came like cobwebs, and however much he tore free, the scourge returned, rushing in like floodwaters wherever he managed to clear some of it from the man’s flesh.

  He tried not to rush. But the man’s reactions—the quickening of his breath, the tripping of his heart, the splotchy reddening of his skin—urged Brama to make haste. He gave in to the urge, finding that only by moving faster and more violently could he make headway against the disease. He tore at the scourge and was able to stay ahead of its ability to return to the places he’d cleared, but the man’s condition was worsening.

  “Brama?”

  A soft voice. Mae’s.

  Brama spared a look for her. She was worried. The man’s eyes were wide open. His whole body was rigid, his teeth clamped, the muscles along his neck taut as sail lines. But gods, so much of the scourge still remained. Brama could stop, but if he did, what would all of this have been for?

  “Brama.”

  He ignored Mae and worked faster. His tearing at the dark taint of the scourge was both frantic and desperate. Slowly but surely, however, he managed to strip much of it away.

  “Brama!”

  Not yet. He was so close! His own breath came in great heaves as he ripped the last remnants of the disease from the man. He was free of it at last.

  Then Mae was pushing him away. His hands lifted defensively, he blinked and saw the man’s state clearly for the first time since he’d started. He wasn’t breathing. His heart was weak. Faltering.

  Brama pushed Mae away and returned to him. He placed his hands on the man’s chest, but had no idea what to do. It was like trying to repair a crumbling statue. His slightest touch only made it worse.

  “Bakhi,” he breathed, “please don’t take him. He doesn’t deserve it. Take me instead.”

  His plea fell on deaf ears. Nothing he did seemed to slow the dimming of the man’s soul. The brightness within him faded. The frail beating of his heart stopped altogether. And then all was still.

  Brama lifted his hands. Stared through his tears at the blood covering them. He tried to swallow the twisting knot inside his throat, to no avail. He looked up and saw Queen Alansal staring fixedly at the man with an expression of numb shock. She’d believed Brama. She’d given up one of the most powerful artifacts in all the world so that he might find a way to help her people, and he’d failed her.

  “We must try again,” Juvaan said, leaving unsaid that each failed attempt would cost a life.

  His words snapped Alansal from her reverie. She stood from her chair in a rush, stared down at the table, at the dead man upon it, then swept toward the door. “Take him from our camp and ensure that he leaves.”

  “My queen—” Juvaan began.

  But the queen cut across him. “Inform the generals. Finalize our preparations to set sail for Sharakhai.” She stopped at the threshold, looking back with a grim expression. “If the Sharakhani Kings wish to visit death upon our people, then we shall return the favor.”

  And then she was gone.

  Worse than the disappointment in Queen Alansal�
��s face, worse than his own disappointment, was the fact that Brama had felt something terrible in himself as the man’s soul had departed. A rush of pleasure, stronger than anything he’d felt before, had swept through him. It was Rümayesh’s taint, but it had been happening so often it didn’t feel like Rümayesh anymore. It felt like him, as if this were now a natural part of him.

  Dear gods, what’s happening to me?

  He could almost hear Rümayesh laughing.

  The bone was taken from Brama, of course. And then, as the queen had ordered, Juvaan led him on horseback to the edge of camp. He offered him Kweilo, but Brama refused.

  “She’ll only be in danger if she remains with me.” He slipped down from the saddle and handed the reins to Juvaan.

  “Where will you go?”

  Brama shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  An uncomfortable silence passed between them. “I know you tried,” Juvaan said. “That’s more than many would have done.”

  Brama nodded, and then Juvaan was off, riding back toward the Mirean camp in the distance. Brama felt exhausted. The experience of trying to heal the soldier had weakened him greatly. The bone of Raamajit held incalculable power, but Brama had spent so much energy simply trying to harness it.

  Brama walked away, eventually losing sight of the caravanserai and the great fleet. Near midday, dust rose along the horizon and more than a dozen Mirean scout ships came into view, sailing south toward the Kings’ fleet. Brama watched them for a time and then, without really meaning to, began walking back toward the Mirean camp. He kept wondering how many of those sailing for war would return. A fleet of fifty thousand had left their homeland. Would a fifth of them return? A tenth? And when they met the Sharakhani fleet in battle, would the Kings’ forces become infected? Would the scourge breach the walls of Sharakhai?

  When pressed, Alu-Waled had said it wouldn’t affect the populace of Sharakhai. He had twisted the disease to have devastating effects on those of Mirean stock, leaving those of Sharakhani blood practically untouched. But even if the disease’s peculiar tastes held true, there were still tens of thousands of Mirean descent living in the city. And there were those of Kundhunese and Malasani and Qaimiri blood to consider as well. The disease might primarily affect Mireans, but who could say what might happen to those from other nations?