The Desert Prince

by Brett, Peter V.

  The other nie’Sharum continue their slumber as I pull on the robes with as much modesty as I can manage. After weeks in nothing but a bido and sandals, I thought my modesty was gone, yet dressing in front of someone still feels…intimate. I eye Chadan warily as I get to my feet.

  “You don’t trust me?” he asks.

  “Should I?” I ask. “It wasn’t long ago that you and your friends beat me in this very place.”

  Chadan shrugs as if this is nothing of note. “It was your first night in sharaj. Everyone is tested their first night.”

  I turn to meet his eye. “Were you, Prince Chadan?”

  Chadan smiles. “The Nie Ka came for me, yes. He spent a week in the dama’ting pavilion, and six more before his casts were removed. No nie’Sharum has dared challenge me since…save you.”

  “It’s nice to know I’m special,” I say.

  “You’re special in many ways,” he says. “And they’re not my friends.”

  Despite my mistrust, the unexpected praise pleases me so much it takes a moment for my mind to catch up with what was said after. “Who aren’t?”

  He nods to the boys sleeping in blankets. “Gorvan. Montidahr. Menin.” He sweeps a hand over the entire sleeping class. “All of them, really. They obey me, but…” He chuckles. “They’re more your friends than mine.”

  “Whose fault is that?” I follow as Chadan strides toward the door. “The seeds of friendship cannot grow, if you do not plant them.”

  “One day we will be men, and I will lead them in alagai’sharak,” Chadan says. “Some, I may order to their deaths. Others, I may have to kill myself, if they break and run from the enemy. Father says it is best not to befriend such men.”

  “And me?” Chadan and I have stood next to each other at every meal for a month, but seldom spoken. He’s kept out of my way, and I, his. I don’t know anything about him, including how he feels about me.

  He shrugs. “Grandfather told me Princess Olive was to be my bride—something I wanted no more than you, I assure you. But then they returned with a prince, a son of Ahmann Jardir, and Father warned you might try to supplant me.”

  I snort. The very idea is ridiculous. “I have no interest in being Nie Ka.”

  “Perhaps,” Chadan says. “But neither do you lack ambition. You give orders and expect the others to follow you, title or no. Father says you challenged the Damaji, himself.”

  “He’s not my Damaji,” I say. “He’s my goaler.”

  “He’s my grandfather,” Chadan says. “Who saved our people from serving a corrupt regime when your brother murdered Damaji Aleverak in his attempted coup.”

  “Before I was even born,” I note. “In another country where I have dozens of brothers I’ve never met. Does a blood debt carry so far?”

  Chadan shrugs. “If Everam wills us to be enemies, it will be so. Until then…”

  “We are who we choose to be,” I say.

  He grunts. “It’s not like anyone else in sharaj will ever understand us.”

  “Us?” I ask.

  “Princes,” he says.

  “Ah,” I say. “Someone who understands the horrors of palace life.”

  “You mean to say you were never punished because the servants discovered something you’d carefully hidden while ‘cleaning’ your chambers?”

  “Night, that’s my whole life,” I say.

  Chadan smiles. “Perhaps we are not so different, after all.”

  We fall into silence as we cross the training grounds and exit to the narrow streets of the city proper. The training grounds guards say nothing as we pass, simply nodding at the young prince.

  “No one’s worried I’ll try to escape?” I ask.

  “Run if you wish.” Chadan shrugs. “It’s not my job to stop you.” He nods at my armlet. “How far do you think you’ll get, before the dama’ting’s trinket brings you to heel?”

  I can’t argue. If Micha has an escape plan, it had best involve keeping both my arms.

  The city is just coming to life, preparing to celebrate the first day of Waning, when the moon is new and the demons will be their strongest. In Krasia, Wanings are sacred days of peace, when families come together, debts are paid, and transgressions forgiven.

  The air is full of the smells of cooking food—hava spice most of all, mixed with meats and vegetables; fried dough, yogurts and sour cheeses. Black-robed women are filling the streets, some shopping for the day and others pushing carts to hawk flowers or fresh bread.

  The workers are mostly pale-skinned greenlanders, the conquered “thralls” of the Majah tribe. I imagine they once felt as I do—kidnapped and trapped with an endless desert between them and their homes—but after fifteen summers, they seem to have assimilated.

  They wear muted colors and keep scarves around their shoulders, but I see women with bare faces and uncovered—if bound—hair. They call out their wares in a perfect Majah dialect, but speak Thesan to one another. My heart aches to hear the familiar sounds, and for a moment I allow myself to wonder about home.

  Mother must have returned by now. She would be tearing the duchy apart looking for me, if the dice have not already pointed her here. Belina is right that it would be difficult to move an army all the way here from Hollow, but Mother is stubborn. She won’t just let me go.

  I shake the thoughts away. There’s no point guessing what she might or might not do. I turn my attention back to the present.

  The chin street vendors take one glance at our dark skin and gray robes, and make way as we pass. Even nie’Sharum are several castes above them, destined to become part of the ruling class.

  Indeed, we soon reach the gates of the Holy City with their white-sleeved guards, the Arms of Everam. Even the Holy City is massive—large enough to house the Majah tribe in its entirety, thralls and all. Yet most of the buildings we pass are deserted, and many are in ill repair. Desert Spear was built to give home to millions, and the Majah are but a tiny fraction of that. Everywhere there are signs of a glory long gone.

  Even the lesser palaces of Krasia dwarf the manses of Hollow, with high warded walls, mushroom-domed roofs, and minarets that serve as both guard towers and places for dama to sing the call to prayer. But the dama will not allow commoners to live in palaces, so they stand with gates open, yards deserted and covered in dust, like corpses that no one had time to burn.

  Sharik Hora is not in disrepair, however. As we draw close to its great dome and soaring minarets, I see fresh paints and mosaic, with Arms of Everam patrolling the walls. They call out at the sight of Chadan and rush to open the gates.

  Inside the walls are lush gardens rich with fruiting trees and manicured grass, tinkling fountains surrounded by statues of heroes and leaders past. The whole of Gatherers’ University and the Cathedral of Hollow could fit within these walls, with room to spare.

  “You…live here?” I think of the scant blanket Chadan wraps around himself on the cold floor of sharaj.

  He shrugs. “I did. Now I live in sharaj, the same as you. Father says it is good not to become attached to material things.”

  “Easy to say, when surrounded in such wealth,” I note. Chadan glances my way, but he says nothing.

  * * *

  —

  In gray nie’Sharum robes, I am not considered a man, and am thus allowed into the private gardens of the palace harem. Micha is my sister, and there is no dishonor in my seeing her here.

  Unlike the gritty dust outside in the city, the gardens are lush and green, filled with tinkling fountains and awash in colorful blooms. It is more visual than utilitarian, but still it reminds me of Mother’s private gardens in Hollow, and I feel a pang of homesickness.

  The women are in their finest robes, hurrying to and fro with food and gifts to greet husbands, sons, and fathers visiting for Waning. There are joyful cries as families
are reunited, and the sounds of singing and prayer. I realize how little I know about my Krasian heritage, and feel sadness for something I never realized I was missing.

  When I finally come to the place where my sister awaits, I almost don’t recognize her. I am unprepared to find her clad in light, flowing silks of emerald green, her wrists and ankles jingling with jewelry. There is a lattice of gold coins over her headscarf, a necklace around her throat, and her fingers glitter with rings.

  I am drab and colorless by comparison. Once it would have made me jealous, but the Olive who enjoyed such finery feels like a different person entirely, much as this new Micha does.

  “Sister,” I breathe. “You look—”

  “Like a heasah pillow dancer,” she cuts in.

  “—beautiful,” I finish, and she snorts.

  “Not beautiful enough for them to find me a suitor after I broke the last one’s arm.”

  I smile in spite of myself. “What did he do?”

  Micha shrugs. “He was Majah. And I am already wed, though even my people do not consider marriage to a woman to be an impediment to finding a proper jiwan to ‘bless us with children.’ ”

  She leaves out that the Tenders in Thesa are little better, though Mother keeps a tight rein on their power in Hollow. Even so, goodwives gossip and men leer when she and Kendall show affection in public.

  “Let us not waste what time we have on such things,” Micha says. Tell me of sharaj. You have done well.”

  I glance at the yellowed bruises all over my body. I am a fast healer, but even I can’t recover from a baton beating overnight. “What makes you say that?”

  “They whisper of you in the harem,” Micha says. “The greenland prince who will not suffer his brothers to go hungry.”

  “They’re not my brothers,” I say.

  “They are not,” Micha agrees. “But that is not how the palace women see it. They expected you to be weak. Effeminate. The push’ting prince raised in greenland gowns. Instead you dominate, as I knew you would. I am so proud of you, sister.”

  Sister. How long has it been, since someone has referred to me as female without mockery? It’s a reminder of who I was, as is Micha, even in her pillow silks.

  But I’m not sure that is who I am anymore, either.

  “Every matchmaker in the city is looking to sell you a bride, once you take the black,” Micha says.

  “Sell?” The idea of treating women like property makes me no less angry as a “male” than it did when Belina came to Hollow to bargain for me.

  Micha shrugs. “Krasians value women differently, but it is not so different in Hollow. Krasian women do the majority of the work, so men can fight. They bear their children, and raise them. Women are valuable, so a father must be compensated when a man takes one of his daughters as jiwah.”

  “And the woman?” I ask. “What does she get?”

  “A good husband, who will give her comfort and strong children, if she is lucky,” Micha says.

  “And if she is not?” I ask.

  “Then she must endure,” Micha says. “Luck is a rarity.”

  “I don’t want that,” I say. “Not to be a man’s possession, nor to own a woman.”

  “I thought your mother’s ways decadent, when I was first sent to the North.” Micha drops her eyes. “Now, I must admit that if my duties were relieved, I would wish to stay in Hollow, and not just for Kendall.” She shakes her head, and for the first time, her voice cracks. “She must be so worried, if she even holds out hope I am still alive.”

  She produces a tear bottle, and I take it, collecting my sister’s tears for her lost wife. As I lean close, I whisper in her ear. “We have to escape.”

  “It will be difficult.” Micha lifts the cuffs of her flowing pants, revealing a pair of warded anklets, not unlike my armlet. They are beautiful, but I see the familiar metal fang and red stone of a blood lock. “Belina has seen to it that if I try to escape again, I will not get far.”

  “So we are trapped?” I ask.

  Micha shakes her head. “It is only a matter of time before Belina drops her guard and I free myself. One way or another, I will bring her blood with me when I come for you.”

  The image of Belina flat on her back with a bloody nose, knocked cold by Micha’s Precise Strike is not a displeasing one. But the dama’ting invented Micha’s fighting art, and she may not be so easy a target. “And then?”

  “Our escape will begin here, in Sharik Hora,” Micha whispers. “My spear sisters and I were raised in the catacombs beneath the temple of Heroes’ Bones, and guarded the Damajah as she walked its halls. There are secret passages even Belina will not know, and the magic in its walls will shield us from her dice.”

  “So we spend the rest of our lives hiding behind the bones of the dead?” I ask.

  “Only until we can gather supplies to cross the desert,” Micha says. “There are tunnels beneath the temple that can take us into the city unseen. Aleveran lacks the warriors to guard every inch of the city walls. We can find a place to climb and disappear into the sands.”

  “And the sand demons?” I ask.

  Micha shrugs. “First we have to make it that far.”

  It’s a thin plan, but it is all we have, and I cling to it. “What can I do?”

  “Nothing,” Micha says, “save what you are doing. Endure. Fight. Win glory. The more you appear to be one of them, the less you resist, the more lax their guard will grow and the better our chances when the time comes to escape.”

  I nod. “I will make you proud.”

  “Oh, sister,” Micha takes me into her arms, “you already have.”

  The words, the gesture, are meant to offer strength, but instead they sap the strength from me. My resolve melts away, and Micha holds me close as I shudder, close to tears. But then I feel my sister stiffen, and turn to see Chadan waiting. Like me, he is still in his bido, and thus allowed in the harem, but still he keeps his back turned out of respect.

  “We must go,” he says.

  “I’ve only just gotten here,” I protest. “I was promised—”

  “You were promised proof your sister was alive and well,” Chadan says, “and you have had that. I do not wish this interruption any more than you, but we are needed atop the walls tonight.

  “There is a storm coming.”

  28

  WALLTOPS

  The Horn of Sharak sounds again from the minarets of the Palace of the Sharum Ka. The drillmasters stand grim-faced as nie’Sharum classes muster outside the famed Maze of Krasia—the killing ground where my father’s people have fought demonkind for centuries. I’ve read about the place in histories, but never laid eyes on its carefully crafted terrain.

  “Some of you,” Drillmaster Chikga nods at Chadan and a few of the older boys, “have seen storms before. Others have not. They are rare, thank Everam, but the dama’ting predict a great one is coming tonight, and the alagai hora are never wrong.

  “It is Waning, when the moon is dark and the alagai can bring their strongest forces to bear. It is said that on Waning, Alagai Ka walks the surface of Ala, guiding his infernal forces personally. We must be vigilant, and prepared.”

  He taps the top of the helm jutting from his turban, etched with mind demon wards. Each of the nie’Sharum, myself included, has similar wards drawn on our shaved heads with blackstem, a paste that stains the skin. The wards will remain for a week or more before fading. More than time enough to get us through the new moon. In addition, there are wards around our eyes that will charge slowly with ambient magic once the sun sets, granting us wardsight in the darkness.

  I don’t know if we need the mind wards. It is said Arlen Bales killed all the mind demons, but it’s not something I’d risk my life on. I think of Mother’s argument with Mrs. Bales. Could the Father of Demons truly be out there, hunting me and
Darin?

  Iraven seemed not to think so. I remember his words from our first meeting. Without minds to lead them, the sand demons have become…cannier. They’ve formed into far-ranging storms that can number in the thousands.

  Just a handful of demons were enough to destroy the borough tour camp and overcome a fit, if inexperienced, fighting force. What could a storm of thousands of them accomplish? Could even the fabled walls of Desert Spear stem such a flow?

  “But you have drilled for this!” Chikga shouts. “You have practiced and studied until your very nature is attuned to Sharak. Remember your training, and you will live to see the dawn.”

  The drillmaster paces back and forth, meeting the eyes of each boy in turn, searching for a sign of cowardice, a sign that we will break before the coming storm. I meet his gaze with a hard one of my own. I may not know storms or the Maze, but I have seen up close what a demon attack can do. Whatever my feelings about Aleveran, this city is full of innocents.

  “Remember the rules,” Chikga growls. “Nie’Sharum do not fight. Nie’Sharum do not set foot on the Maze floor. You are here to scout, ferry supplies, and relay messages. You will follow the chain of command, and obey instantly when a Sharum gives you orders. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, Drillmaster!” we all shout.

  “Again!” Chikga barks. “Everam is listening!”

  “YES, DRILLMASTER!” we boom.

  “Good,” Chikga says. “Because if any of you disobey, if you break the rules, or worse, run, I’ll kill you myself.”

  I glance around, and see the other drillmasters are giving similar speeches to their classes. All of them seem agitated. More than one slips a small bottle of couzi from their robe turning away to throw back a mouthful of the strong spirit.

  Alcohol is a violation of Evejan law, but knowing what they face, I cannot blame the men for wanting a sip of courage.