Twelve Kings in Sharakhai

by Bradley P. Beaulieu

  “In her youth, yes. She’s led an amazing life.”

  “I’d love to meet her one day.”

  “Sadly, she’s far too ill for visitors.” She glanced back, and then beckoned Emre in. “But do come inside. She’s sleeping. You can show me what you’ve brought.”

  She led him into the residence, her hand never releasing his, and brought him to a dining room. When they were both seated, he brought out a cloth case, which he untied and lay open on the table. Twelve vials were revealed, each resting in its own snug pocket. He’d bought the lot the day before from an apothecary in the west end who knew how to keep her mouth shut. “There are three types here, strong elixirs, all of them. The first two”—he pointed to the vials tinted red and green—“would likely show signs of improvement immediately if they’re going to help her at all, so I suggest you try them first. A spoonful in the morning and another at night. If they don’t work, we’ll try the third. This one, according to my master, takes longer to show results, which is why we’ll save it for last, but it’s also the strongest of the three. Gods willing, one of these will help.”

  In truth, they were simple remedies for cough, itching, and gout. He’d added Malasani spices to all three in case the Matron or Enasia herself recognized any of the unadulterated remedies.

  Enasia stared at the set of them, lifting one of the blue vials and swirling the liquid within. “This is a godsend, Emre. What does the Matron owe you for these?”

  He raised his hands. “Pay me when we find one that works.”

  She returned the vial to its sleeve. “Then what do I owe you?”

  “Well, that’s an entirely different question, isn’t it?” He stood, ready to take his leave. She stood after a moment, and the two of them walked side by side through the front door and toward the front gates. “You don’t owe me anything, but I’ll admit, when I saw you the other night, I found it intriguing that the gods would cross our paths once more.”

  Her knowing smile had returned. “There’s nothing you would ask of me?”

  They reached the gate, at which point Emre opened it and turned to face her. “Well. Perhaps a stroll. Perhaps some tea along the Trough.”

  She reached out and squeezed his hand. “I’d like that.”

  “Then we’ll seal it with a kiss.” He lifted her hand to his lips and kissed her fingers, then released her and stepped back, never once losing eye contact.

  She gave a practiced smile, closing the gate with a clank. “Soon, yes?”

  “Soon,” he agreed.

  And then she was gone, waving as she returned to the house, the wind pushing her as if it somehow knew of Emre’s ill intent.

  Emre, meanwhile, turned and strode slowly away. While doing so, he looked up and nodded at the water tower. He couldn’t see Darius, hidden in the shadows as he was, but Emre was sure he was there.

  He turned right and walked uphill to the Trough, and then, despite the wind, strolled a short way farther and sat outside a teahouse in plain view of anyone who happened by. There were few enough strolling along the wide thoroughfare. Most were headed for shelter, some going so far as to board up their windows until the storm had passed. Emre was wondering if the teahouse owner would do the same, when Darius walked across the street, strode up to his table, and stared at him with an unreadable expression. Irritation, perhaps. Or maybe jealousy.

  “Come with me,” he said shortly.

  “Why?” Emre asked.

  “You know very well why.” He turned and began striding away. “Hamid wants to speak with you.”

  IT WAS A DAY WHEN King Ihsan would rather be anywhere but out sailing the sands of the Shangazi, and yet here he was on the deck of his own royal clipper, heading southeast over dunes that were just shallow enough to make the ship rock and creak incessantly. He might have stayed in Sharakhai and let King Yusam come on his own, but the Jade-Eyed King had seemed so frightened the other evening when he’d come to Ihsan in a breathless rush, speaking of his mere, the deep well of water that gave Yusam his visions. He’d told Ihsan how strong they’d been, how inscrutable.

  Ihsan had seen this sort of fear on Yusam’s face before, but only rarely. Only when it was some momentous event that stood not just before Yusam or Ihsan, but before all the Kings. Yusam’s visions were often difficult to decipher, but they could be trusted in this much: to know when danger was coming.

  The sun glared angrily down as the clipper sailed on, the wind picking up the spindrift and tossing it across the endless sea of sand. Four Blade Maidens stood at the fore of the ship, another three amidships, two aft, and one more sitting in the vulture’s nest atop the mainmast. Five asirim escorted them as well. Two galloped on either side, and a fifth ran a quarter-league ahead of the ship, watching for danger. They would sometimes come to a rest at the top of a dune and wail their pitiful wails, but then the Blade Maidens’ call would compel them to carry on.

  Even Ihsan would admit it was a sizeable force for such a short trip, but it paid to be careful these days. The Moonless Host grew ever bolder, and it wouldn’t do to see all his plans unravel from a failure to take a few simple precautions.

  Still, he doubted the Host would attack even if they did spot his ship. They were flying the colors of Sharakhai—a crimson field with a shield and twelve shamshirs fanned around it—and a strong wind was blowing, carrying the long pennant streaming starboard, snapping as the sails carried them up and over the dunes. The Host would see it; they would know attacking a ship like this would almost certainly mean their death.

  Yusam stood at the prow between his Maidens, watching the way ahead. On the horizon, a dark line barred their way. They were the killing fields, where the adichara groves lay. Ihsan went to stand by Yusam’s side, waving the Maidens away as he came. “I daresay we’ll be well enough without those blades of yours at hand. Stand amidships if you must, but leave us in peace.”

  The Maidens bowed and left, clearing the foredeck for their Kings.

  “Have you felt nothing?” Ihsan asked.

  Yusam glanced back, his annoyance clear, but then returned his gaze to the way ahead. He didn’t care for interruptions, but Ihsan didn’t care for the way he constantly hedged. And you’ve been hedging for a hundred years, dear Yusam.

  Yusam’s mere revealed paths, paths along which the future might take him, Ihsan, the other Kings, even Sharakhai. The mere was both blessing and curse, two edges of the same wicked sword. One need look no further than Yusam himself for the truth of it. Before Beht Ihman he had been a confident man, given to bold proclamations; logic be damned, he would let his emotions control his decisions. Even Ihsan wouldn’t have denied that he’d been an inspiring figure. Of all the Kings, he had been the best at breathing life into a tribe that—if they were all being honest—had few enough other sources of pride.

  In the early years after Beht Ihman, Yusam had used the gift effectively, working out which threats were most dangerous and advising how to avert them—which wasn’t to say he made no mistakes along the way. One misinterpretation led to the death of his own daughters, three of them, lost when he’d misjudged the intentions of a rebel tribe. They’d been killed and gutted, their viscera spread across the sand. No matter that the women who’d done it—and their daughters—had been found and killed. The damage had been done, and Yusam began to question his own readings, becoming progressively less sure of himself as the decades wore on, always wondering whether what he’d seen was accurate or not, whether it showed the entire picture and, even if it had, whether he was interpreting it in the right way, with the right subtleties and allowances for error.

  It was a supremely difficult thing, and in many ways Ihsan was glad he’d been given no such gift by the desert gods. Yusam can keep his bloody mere. I don’t wish to know my future. At least, no more of it than I can discern myself. More than that and the mind goes mad.

  As the adichara grove
s neared, the captain called orders, and the crew began pulling in sails. The ship slowed, making for an orderly approach. Next to Ihsan, Yusam stiffened as he stared fixedly at the groves—surely something he’d seen in his vision. He pointed two points starboard, and the captain corrected to the more southerly course. Soon they neared the place Yusam had identified—a patch of growth indistinguishable from any other in the leagues upon leagues of twisted trees. The ship curved around to point back toward Sharakhai for their return voyage, and when it finally came to a rest, the two anchors, fore and aft, dropped with the clank of chain and the thud of their dead weight against the sand.

  And still Yusam stared over the groves.

  Ihsan crossed his arms over his chest. “Come, Yusam, I have too much to do in Sharakhai to sit about waiting for you.”

  Only then did Yusam turn to Ihsan. “How many times must I say it? Had I found anything I would have told you, but interrupting my concentration does neither of us any good.”

  “I thought perhaps you simply didn’t wish to speak to me.”

  “There is that,” Yusam said. “For a man known as the Honey-tongued King, you seem to have few enough souls who wish to speak to you of their own accord.” He strode proudly past Ihsan toward the starboard side, where the crew were lowering the gangway into place.

  Ihsan followed. He couldn’t argue. And it was a truth he’d recognized in himself long before now. It wasn’t that he didn’t like conversation. Far from it. It was that there were too few conversations that piqued his interest.

  Together they took the gangway down to the sand. The Maidens followed, but only so far as the sand itself where they remained, their orders to give Ihsan and Yusam their privacy. Yusam walked carefully along a flat plateau of rock, eyes intent, as if he’d been to this place before, as if it held secrets, if only he were clever enough to find them. Ihsan followed silently as the wind played, filling small depressions in the rock with sand, then lifting it out again. Ahead, the adichara trees arched, their branches reaching this way and that, as if grasping for some unseen foe. Açal beetles buzzed through the air, some even landing on Ihsan’s shoulder, or his outstretched hand, before flying away. But they avoided Yusam entirely, as if afraid of the Jade-eyed King.

  “This is the place,” Yusam said.

  “Do tell.”

  Yusam scowled. “Do not mock. This concerns you as well.”

  “Then get on with it. I’ve more to do in Sharakhai today.”

  “We must be careful,” Yusam replied easily. “Now more than ever.”

  “I know very well how careful we must be. Now tell me what you saw.”

  “Tell me first how the draughts are progressing. Are the experiments of our good King Azad doing as well as we’d hoped?”

  Ihsan tipped his head noncommittally. “As well as can be expected. Azad has been helping as well as he’s able, and I think their potency has been extended, but it will be years before they’re as effective as they once were.”

  “I am brimming with confidence,” Yusam said.

  “This is no easy thing. We’re fortunate enough to have stores of the draughts set aside, so there is still time yet. Why do you ask?”

  “Because I saw Azad coming here, to this place. And he faces danger.”

  “Then perhaps we should not allow it.”

  Even after eleven years it felt strange to speak of Azad in this way, but there was nothing for it. Ihsan couldn’t break the pact they’d all made to hide Azad’s true nature.

  “There lies the rub,” Yusam went on. “Azad comes and is placed in danger, but if he does not come, the rest of us face danger in his stead.”

  “You saw this?”

  “Yes.”

  “What, exactly, did you see?”

  “In one vision, I saw Azad dressed as he used to be, crossing swords with a woman. A common girl, here among the twisted trees. I saw a Maiden given an ebon sword. I saw her praised in her defense of the Kings. I saw blood upon one who wears a crown.”

  “Which?”

  “You know I would never be shown such a thing.”

  It was a peculiarity of the gifts granted to Yusam by the desert gods, and a particularly cruel one at that. He saw much—Ihsan would not deny it—but when it came to the direct fates of the Kings, Yusam had difficulty seeing anything with accuracy. And where it came to his own fate, he was blind as a babe.

  “And the other vision?”

  Yusam had once been an intense man, not given to fear, but the Yusam of old was well and truly gone. When asked this question, terror filled his bright green eyes. He licked his lips, started to speak, and stopped several times, perhaps fearing that to repeat this tale would act as an invocation, bringing that future path into being. “I saw Goezhen standing upon Tauriyat,” he finally said, “raging to a stormy sky. I saw Tulathan by his side, trying to calm him. I saw the other gods standing behind them. Thaash and Rhia and Yerinde and Bakhi. All but Nalamae.”

  “We have witnessed the gods before, Ihsan, you and I and the others.”

  “True, but in this vision, Sharakhai was gone. Destroyed.”

  Ihsan pursed his lips, nodding, as if he were giving this the consideration it deserved. But the truth was that the second vision was one that he’d suspected might come. It seemed they were coming to a time when many plans would clash. It would be tricky telling which fork would be the right one, but this decision, he felt, was an easy one to make.

  “We’ll send Azad. He could use more samples in any case. It seems that when Tulathan is brightest, and Rhia is rising, the draughts take on more potency. We shall see. And we shall see about this vision of yours as well, of the woman who crosses blades with Azad.”

  Yusam, ignored him, fixated on the adichara again, his eyes scanning them as if he were watching a vision of the days ahead, unfolding before him.

  “Did you hear me?”

  Yusam turned, waking from his reverie. “What?”

  “I said I shall send Azad.”

  Yusam seemed ill-pleased. Haunted, even. But he nodded just the same. “Very well.”

  They made their way back toward the ship. “We’ll find our way,” Ihsan said consolingly. “With your help, we’ll find our way.”

  A proud man, Yusam was never above a bit of flattery. But this seemed to please the Jade-eyed King not at all.

  “As you say,” was all he said.

  And soon they were back on the ship, heading for Sharakhai.

  SEVEN YEARS EARLIER . . .

  ÇEDA AND EMRE had spent two nights in the blooming fields—two harrowing nights that made their return to Sharakhai all the more surreal. Walking through the streets, hearing the sounds of the city, moving with the crowds along the western end of the Spear was very comforting after the silence of the desert. Their first stop was Emre’s flat, which he shared with his brother Rafa. Çeda and Emre stood on the doorstep, neither saying a word, and then Emre hugged Çeda, as simple as that, and ducked inside. As she walked away, she thought of losing herself in Sharakhai for a time, but she knew that if she did, it would be avoiding the inevitable. Instead she wound her way through the city to Dardzada’s. It was nearly midday when she walked through his peaked doorway and found him working at his table, grating ginger into a wide wooden bowl.

  She was tempted to try to slip past him, to run upstairs to her room and hide the swollen evidence of her first encounter with the rattlewings, hide the adichara bloom she’d stolen—it lay within her satchel, heavy as a lodestone—but she decided to face Dardzada and take whatever punishment he chose to mete out. She owed him that much: an admission of what she’d done, against his wishes. Standing before him, though, her gut churned with butterflies and all the confidence she’d talked herself into evaporated like so much water on a sun-baked stone.

  Dardzada’s hand moved back and forth methodically over the grate
r, filling the air with the scent of ginger. He was pointedly ignoring her, but Çeda remained where she was, hands clasped, refusing to move, and eventually Dardzada’s movements slowed and stopped altogether.

  He looked at her, almost as if taking her in for the first time. His face was unreadable, but his eyes looked her up and down quickly, assessing her as he would a client who’d come begging for a cure. It felt as if Dardzada were looking at her for the first time, not as some remnant of Ahya or of the life he’d shared with her. It likely didn’t bode well, but Çeda was strangely proud over his reaction.

  “Take two teaspoons of the nahcolite,” he said. “Mix it vigorously with one tablespoon of vinegar and a half-teaspoon of papain.”

  “A half-teaspoon of what?”

  “Papain.” He went back to his ginger with renewed gusto. “It’s a powder made from dried papaya. It’ll help with those bites.”

  She pulled out the drawer full of the white nahcolite powder and the bottle of vinegar and looked among the dozens of other drawers in the grand cabinet that covered the walls of his workroom.

  “Five to the right of the nahcolite,” Dardzada said, “three down.”

  She found it and mixed the ingredients into a paste, which she then applied to the bites. They were not as swollen as they’d originally been, but they were reddened and painful. As she applied the paste, though, the pain deadened to a dull burn.

  When she was done, and when she’d had her fill of water from the urn in the corner, she was feeling a hundredfold better.

  Dardzada had moved on to crushing pistachio shells in a granite mortar. His arm worked, round and round, grinding the contents slowly but methodically, wearing it down like wind against stone. He’s angry, but won’t admit it. Which was not a good thing at all. She’d rather he just say it and be done with it. But all he said was, “Fetch more water,” without looking at her. “And then I need milk. Twenty stalks. Not nineteen, this time. Not twenty one. Twenty. Understand?”