Warmaidens

by Kelly Coon

  Nevertheless.

  “The assassins came for me.”

  “What do you mean?” Dagan breathed. “Are you all right? Is that your blood?”

  Nanaea’s ladle paused over the bowls. “Did they hurt you, Sister?”

  “No. I—”

  The back door creaked open, and Dagan shoved me behind him, his emerald dagger out of his belt and in his hand, poised to throw as Nasu emerged.

  “Easy, Dagan.” Nasu closed the door quietly behind him, his warm brown eyes wary, his hands up in surrender. “It’s me.”

  “Well, announce yourself, then!” Dagan sheathed his dagger forcibly. “I could’ve killed you!”

  He’d erected a set of targets in the back of our home for sport, and I’d seen him throw hundreds of times, so I knew Dagan’s aim was true and straight, his dagger rarely missing the heart of the target.

  Warily, Nasu started to remove his weaponry belt but seemed to think better of it as he stared at me, and kept it on. “What’s wrong? What happened?”

  “The assassins came for me, Nasu. Mudi and Mirrum were…dead when we arrived in the sickroom.” My throat closed, the edge of a sob trying to elbow its way out. I lowered my voice, glancing up the stairs where my little brother slept. “They were murdered. Their throats slit.”

  “Come. Sit down.” Dagan led me to our low wooden table, made roughly by Nasu’s hands, and Arwia scooted over so everyone could fit.

  Nanaea plunked bowls of steaming porridge in front of us. “It isn’t flavorful, since the Libbu has been out of nutmeg and cloves, but it’s warm and filling.”

  We murmured our thanks, and she joined us.

  Tearfully, I described the grisly scene. Finding Mudi and Mirrum. Deciding to stay put and fix Arwia’s ear while Humusi ran to alert the queen. The families coming to collect the bodies. As I talked, we all made a show of eating, though we mostly shoved the food around in our bowls, the gore pickpocketing our appetites.

  At last, Nasu gave up and pushed his food away. “Well, you can rest assured that Sarratum Tabni has fortified the city. Ilu’s mother is friends with the queen, and she heard that the warriors in the larger regiment have been dispatched to the wall, with troops combing the city in twos and threes to find any threats.”

  He folded his hands in front of him. “She also said that the bastard Uruku has been causing trouble in the entire river region down by the sea. Some of his men attacked a group of our traders headed down to the ports. Slit their throats. Left them for the birds. And that Uruku is sending out raids, terrorizing people in other cities in the south. There’s even talk he’s sent a band of mercenaries to places closer to us. Up north.”

  Arwia bit her lip, thinking. Then she turned to me. “I need to go to Sarratum Tabni and beg her to house us in the Palace, which is the safest place for now. Though I am not sitting on Alu’s throne, you are all my subjects and I plan to keep you safe. Kammani, will you come with me? She respects you and maybe she’ll listen if you’re there. She still thinks of me as a child.”

  “We will never be safe.” I shook my head and shoved my bowl of porridge away. “Not here in Manzazu or anywhere else we go. You know that, don’t you? We cannot stay locked up in the Palace forever. Uruku will not stop sending assassins or putting a price on our heads until he’s murdered each and every one of us. He values that throne far too much to be dissuaded so easily.”

  “You’d think if he valued it, he wouldn’t have attacked on Manzazu soil.” Nasu played with his spoon. “The queen is fortifying our city, but she will answer Alu’s threat, and soon.”

  Arwia nodded. “You’re right. She can’t let this go unpunished, which is why it’s even more important for us to go to her and beg her to house us until this is all over. War brings chaos.”

  Not only chaos, but death and disease, too.

  “What she should do is take out Uruku with a band of her Koru warriors instead of launching a full-blown attack,” Dagan said. “Slide into the city in the dead of night and assassinate him. It would save countless lives.”

  “Murder to prevent murder?” I asked him. “That’s what you believe in?”

  “Even your abum would agree with that, my love. There’s no shame in saving your own life and in rescuing others.”

  “What you’re suggesting is different. It means planning to kill a man, not simply defending yourself.” My insides twisted at the thought.

  “Is it so different?” Dagan asked.

  “The queen would never agree to that. An attack is more powerful,” Nasu said. “It would show Manzazu’s might. Then she could reinstate you on the throne, Arwia.”

  “But I don’t want the throne.” Arwia’s face twisted in angst.

  “It doesn’t matter, does it?” Nasu asked. “You’re the rightful sarratum. And you’ve been telling me that you feel guilty for leaving everyone behind in Uruku’s claws, have you not?”

  Arwia flushed and looked at her hands. “Sarratum Tabni tells me that by abandoning them, I’ve disgraced my ummum and abum. That my parents would be staring at me from the Netherworld, urging me to rule the city in peace.” Arwia looked up at me. “But who would even want me on the throne? No one. I left them.”

  “Whether or not killing Uruku is the means”—I cast a hard look at Dagan—“I doubt there are very many people in Alu who wouldn’t welcome your rule. They loved you before, Arwia.”

  “Some did.” She shrugged.

  “Many more than ‘some.’ ”

  “But I’d have no idea how to lead.”

  “If you were queen, you’d have twelve ensis to help you if you didn’t know what to do.” Nasu stood and took his bowl to the washbasin by the door. He squatted down to scrub it clean.

  “Yes, and those same ensis would have to agree by majority to reinstate me as well. How would we accomplish that if Uruku has been keeping them happy enough by his side? It’s too much.” She stood. “Too soon. We just got here.”

  “It’s been nine moons. And whether you want this to happen or not, here we stand.” Nasu dried his dish and set it on the shelf with the others.

  “And would you come with me if I did suddenly have to rule Alu?” she asked us. “All of you? What of our lives here?”

  “Oh, Arwia, of course we would,” I said.

  “Really?” Dagan sat back and stared at me. “After the conversation we had about me going north?”

  “This would mean supporting a new queen, Dagan. Not commerce.”

  He sighed and rubbed his eyes. “Yes, that’s true. I am tired.”

  I reached over and squeezed his hand. “We are all tired. This has been a terrible night.”

  “Kammani?”

  Kasha’s voice was raspy with sleep. He stood on the stairs, a foot dangling as if to step down, staring at me with worried brown eyes that looked so much like my abum’s.

  “Uruku is coming for us? We are not safe?”

  Nanaea, Kasha, and I had finally been able to be a family again here. I’d watched Nanaea work hard at her sewing, trying to be responsible, and watched Kasha run around with the neighbor boys, chasing dogs and shooting birds out of the sky with their slingshots. We were living normal lives filled with nothing more tumultuous than arguments over who was taking too long at the washbasin.

  So what answer could I give this boy, one whose own father had died by Uruku’s hand?

  Pushing myself away from the table, I went to him and ruffled his dark curls, and kissed the top of his head, which still smelled of smoke from the torches and cookfires at Simti’s wedding.

  “We are as safe as we can be right now, and we are going to make sure it stays that way.”

  He relaxed as I walked him back up the stairs to his chamber. But after I settled him in and rubbed his back, I wondered how in Selu’s name I was going to keep that promise to h
im. Would Arwia agree to ask Sarratum Tabni for an assassination instead of a war? And if so, would the queen even agree if what Nasu said was true?

  While Kasha drifted off, I eased his angst with a childhood song from our ummum, my eyes drooping as I stroked his hair. “Sleep, little bug.” I yawned. “Sleep.”

  When I finally made my way down the stairs and tucked myself into the pallet I shared with Nanaea, she was already asleep, her measured breath blowing a single strand of hair back and forth in front of her face. I lay down, drunk with fatigue, and tucked the pillow under my chin.

  But just as I was drifting off, a man’s whispery baritone sang from the moonlit corner of the room:

  The river is wide

  The river is deep

  I take their souls to earn my keep

  I startled and sat up, my heart pounding, and squinted at the shadows.

  “Hello?” I whispered.

  A shadowy figure appeared like a strike of lightning near my old wooden rocking chair, then vanished.

  I clutched my quilt to my chest. “Nobody wants you here. Nobody! Do you hear me?”

  But there was no response, save for a lone dog barking somewhere in the distance.

  “Sister?” Nanaea murmured, stirring. “Dreams again?”

  “Shhh. Go to sleep. It’s okay.”

  I stroked her hair with a shaky hand and stared at the corner of the room until my eyes burned and the sound of his voice faded from my ears. Until the cold fear gripping my heart relaxed enough that I could lie down and drift off into blackness.

  THE CROOKED STREETS that led to Tabni’s Palace were crowded with merchants coming to the Libbu to trade. Despite people milling about like any other day, the caution in their eyes made it clear that word of the assassination attempt had spread and orders had been issued.

  The sarratum’s army was present in full force, sickleswords in hand, spears tucked against their sides, faces resolute. War carts and chariots were lined up in the Libbu, workers tending their wheels and loading them up with provisions and weaponry.

  “Kammani, look what is happening in this city right now.”

  Arwia’s brow was furrowed, the small birthmark that hovered above her lip standing out starkly on her face, which had paled due to the stress of last night. Her attempted assassination. The injury. And now, the question she was going to ask Sarratum Tabni.

  Gnats tumbled in my belly, and I took a long, shaky breath. “Yes, I know. War is on the horizon.”

  “Just as we thought.” Manzazu, our safe haven, was definitely preparing to retaliate.

  Iltani shifted Nanaea’s basket of dinner linens on her hip as she, Arwia, and I approached the Libbu. Dagan and Kasha walked a few paces back, both of them with daggers in hand. Dagan had been teaching Kasha to throw, and though my brother’s aim was improving, I prayed to Selu he didn’t need to fling the blade. Someone would likely lose an eye.

  Behind them, two Koru warriors marched, hands on weapons, eyes on the people around us. One was Humusi, who always seemed to radiate a nervous energy, bouncing on the balls of her feet. The other was a bulky warrior named Higal, who had a scar down her left cheek and a scorpion tattoo on her right. They’d been stationed by our home and had immediately followed us when we left, though Higal looked aggrieved that she’d been forced to watch us.

  Next to me, Iltani was bleary-eyed, her continuous revels over the last several moons no doubt taking a toll. I placed the back of my hand against her forehead and pulled it away when she batted at me.

  “Iltani, the last thing I need to worry about right now with all that is going on is your health, so I beg you to keep it together. You’ve been drinking too much brew. Staying out too late time and again. Last night Dagan said he searched for you for almost a full hour and had to pull you, half-dressed, out of the bushes.”

  “Yes, and you slam the door when you come into the house late at night and wake everyone up,” Arwia groused. She shifted our basket of offerings for Linaza to the other arm. We couldn’t enter the temple without a gift, so we’d brought a selection of our favorite things.

  “At least I am good at earning coins, if not at being silent like the rest of you walking dead.”

  Though she’d slept through our conversation early this morning, she’d jumped at the chance to leave the house. I’d begged her to stay behind, but she refused. Her ruse was that she wanted to sell Nanaea’s linens. The two of them had teamed together since Nanaea had proven to be ineffective in bartering, whereas Iltani could wring coins from a stone. But if I knew Iltani, she’d be flush with money in a half hour and two cups of sweetwine deep before noon.

  “Just sell them quickly and get back home.” I lowered my voice. “There are people literally trying to kill us.”

  “Kill you. They want nothing to do with me. I was a poor rat in Alu. They have no idea I’m here or who I am. Anonymity, as I’ve come to find out, is grand, especially if you’ve been after another woman’s husband.”

  “For the sake of the gods, Iltani.” I scowled at her, but she just laughed.

  We jostled around another group of warriors into the Libbu that encircled the Palace. Its six domes of rose gold glittered in the warm morning light, and jade-green tents were scattered around it like seeds in a field. People haggled with the merchants in front of them over baskets of fish and multicolored shawls.

  Many of the merchants’ tents, however, were gone. The spice tent had disappeared. The silks. Even quite a few of the stalls selling trinkets for children and scorpion amulets for praying to Linaza. A few weeks ago, I’d had to trade healing services for just the smallest bottle of arnica, and I was rapidly running out. Trade from the sea had been cut off by the skirmishes near the ports, apparently led by Uruku and his mercenaries. It was going to be severely problematic if it wasn’t resolved soon.

  A family went by, a little girl clinging to the mother’s hand, a skinny father leading two roped rams at her side. Iltani’s eyes dimmed as she followed the man with her eyes.

  “Is that one of the husbands you’ve been hounding?” Shading my eyes against the sun’s glare, I looked up at the rounded crimson temple that sat in the middle of the Palace’s domes. Arwia had said that the queen spent the morning in prayer and we could find her there.

  “No.” She cleared her throat, and the twisted smile was back on her face. “Reminded me of someone from Alu. Now go. Shoo. Be gone. I have money to make, and your presence reduces my chances significantly.”

  As we reached the sandstone stairs, I felt a surge of love for this poorly mannered friend of mine and tugged Iltani into a hug. “Make smart choices. And stay with Dagan and Kasha. Think of them, if not yourself, all right?”

  “You worry too much.” She laid a big, wet kiss on my forehead and shoved me away. With a keen eye toward the merchants’ tents, she wandered off, likely wondering who would be the most malleable clay in her hands.

  “Kasha and I are going to get him a new blade and will keep track of Iltani.” Dagan pulled me close. Tucked my hair around my ears. “Then we’d better get back to our home and lock ourselves in.” He looked past me to the carts and the weapons and lowered his voice. “Do you think she’ll agree to send in the assassins, Arwia?”

  “Perhaps.” Arwia’s long braid slipped down over her shoulder, and she winced when it brushed the stitches on her ear. “Though I’m not sure I’m the best person to sit on the throne if she does manage to oust him.”

  “You’re stronger than you think, my friend.” I wasn’t sure I agreed with asking to kill a man outright, but as I’d lain there trying to sleep, tossing and turning, the logic of it was hard to deny.

  That didn’t make it morally right.

  I stood on tiptoe and kissed Dagan’s lips softly. “Stay with Iltani. Please.”

  “Of course.” He rubbed his thumb over my chin. Kissed
me once more. “You have my heart, Kammani.”

  “And you, mine.”

  Disgust filled Kasha’s face at our conversation, but Dagan clapped Kasha on the back with affection, issuing a final warning for me to be careful. Together, they trailed after Iltani. The warriors behind us split. Humusi and Higal debated, then with a scowl, Higal followed behind Dagan.

  Although I felt a prickle of unease spidering into my scalp as we ascended the stairs, only part of it was because of the likelihood of a second assassination attempt. The other part was because there was a good chance we were all going to be facing an entirely new tomorrow, depending on what Sarratum Tabni said today.

  * * *

  The temple glowed in the morning sun. The goddess Linaza with her scorpion’s tail, wings stretched full and weightless from her back, was painted in vivid blue over the arched doorway. Ummi stood rigidly next to it, battle-axes in her belt, cropped black hair hanging from her helmet.

  She opened her arms in the Linaza salute as we approached. “Sarratum Tabni prays. Do you have business with her?”

  Tamping down my nerves, I bowed my head as Humusi edged past us and slipped inside. “We do. Will you let her know?”

  “Of course. Wait here.”

  She followed Humusi into the cool interior, where the queen sat on a narrow wooden bench, facing an altar piled high with gifts for the goddess: Talents falling out of baskets. Gold coins, beaded jewelry, fruits, and even sheaves of wheat.

  “I suppose this is it, then.” The diminutive Arwia stood as tall as she possibly could, but her lips were trembling.

  “What are you going to say?” I bit my thumbnail, then quickly dropped my hand.

  “I’m going to ask her to advise me on how to keep you all safe, and perhaps she will invite us to stay in the Palace while we sort everything out. My first piece of business is keeping everyone alive. Then…” She blew out a breath. “I’ll ask her to remove the threat and spare the Alu citizens.”

  “Even if that means you’ll take the throne?”

  She shook her head, her eyes bleak. “What else is there to do?”