When she’d reached home the previous night, after returning Djaga’s skiff, she’d reread the book by lamplight before falling asleep, hoping there might be some clues in the stories—Tulathan’s capture, or her escape with the help of her sister, Rhia, or Yerinde’s subsequent banishment from the desert for many long years. But there were none. None that she could find, in any case.
She flipped to the back of the book and stared at the poem. It felt as though her mother were just there on the other side of the page, trying to speak to her, but Çeda had no way of understanding. How she wished she could speak and have her mother hear.
Did you love me? Ever?
And how she wished she could hear her mother’s voice in return, even one last time—not merely to gain answers, but simply to hear her. How she missed the timbre of her voice as she’d read stories to Çeda late at night.
Lying there on her bed, she continued to page through the book, though now it was with tears clouding her vision. Sunlight played over the letters. The brown ink of the poem her mother had written was nearly burned into her vision. She examined the tiny marks buried deep in the gutter between the pages, looked to the black ink that Saliah had used, compared that ancient, looping script with her mother’s elegant style.
A huff of wind blew the curtains back. Sunlight shone brightly on the page. And Çeda gasped, blinking to clear her eyes.
She sat up and pulled the curtains back, allowing the full light of the sun to fall on the paper.
One of the words had been inked over. It couldn’t be seen in dim light, but in the sunlight it was plain as day. King, it read. King had been re-penned in brown ink, an exact match for the marks in the gutter.
She turned to the next page. She found no words re-inked but neither did she find any markings in the gutter. She examined each page in the sunlight until she found another: unsealed, with three short marks in the margin. And then more: strength and petals and loom. Draw and dunes and thorn.
She searched the entire book, finding forty-five in all. Forty-five pages with forty-five words and forty-five sets of marks. They were linked, she was sure, though how she could fit them together she had no idea.
A soft knock came from out in the street.
Not now!
She snapped the book closed and returned it to its hiding place. Through her open window she could see Davud wearing short linen trousers tied off at the knee and a loose flowing shirt and rope sandals, not the robes of a collegia scholar. He looked so young.
No, she realized. He looked his age. His manner when he wore the collegia robes made him seem older.
He caught her looking and smiled, waving nervously.
“Come on up,” she said.
He looked around to see if anyone was watching from the shadowed windows that lined both sides of the street, then took the stairs up. She ushered him inside, offering him a seat, an offer he quickly refused with a shake of his head. Finally, after licking his lips, he spoke. “You came to the scriptorium for help.”
“I did,” Çeda said warily.
“And Amalos refused you.”
“Yes, but—”
“Is it important?” Davud asked. “The thing you’re looking for?”
“I think it could be very important, Davud. Not just for me, but for Sharakhai.”
It seemed Davud had to screw up his courage before asking his next question. “What are you looking for?”
And now it came to it. Davud wanted to know her secrets—some of them, in any case. She was loath to share them, but she knew that if he was going to help her at all, she needed to give him something.
“I want to know more about the night of Beht Ihman,” she finally said. “I need to know the truth, not the story the Kings tell.”
He nodded. “I gathered that much from the little I overheard. But why?”
“Because I believe the night of Beht Ihman is a story, one written by the Kings for our consumption. In the texts I’ve read, I’ve already found dozens of small discrepancies. With the histories available to you, I’m sure you’ve seen some as well. I believe there are secrets there, Davud, secrets that may reveal the truth behind my mother’s death.”
“How can you be sure?”
What could she say? There was so much she’d learned that was unclear and yet related in some extraordinary way. She didn’t understand it well enough. How could she possibly make it clear enough for Davud to understand?
She couldn’t, not here and now, in any case. Nor would she want to, even if she could. As cruel as it was to say, the less Davud knew, the better. So she finally said, “In this you’ll just have to trust me.”
Davud paused, clearly unconvinced, but finally nodded. “Can we go for a walk?”
Çeda smiled suddenly. “Have you come to court me, Davud Mahzun’ava?”
She’d meant to simply break the tension, but Davud’s cheeks burned so brightly she felt she’d been cruel. He looked around a little desperately, with no idea how to reply. He made a half-hearted gesture toward the door, looking like he regretted coming, when Çeda said, “Please,” while squeezing his arm, “let’s walk.”
They strolled through Roseridge together, Çeda falling naturally into the limp she’d been feigning for years. He led her gently, not toward the bazaar, nor toward the center of Sharakhai, but south, and soon she understood why. Ten blocks south of Çeda’s home was an ancient well. It was the reason the neighborhood—the same one as Osman’s pits—was known as the Well. It had long since run dry, but it was noted for its width, and for having a set of stairs running down into it, as if it were a tower built not upward, but down into the ground. Çeda remembered her mother telling her how children had once swam here to keep cool in the summer heat. It had been a place of joy. But that was decades ago. Since running dry, the well and the houses around it had become a place that many shunned, claiming it was cursed by the gods.
“Davud, what are—?”
Davud held up a hand and began taking the stairs down into the well.
As a donkey brayed and a man yahed somewhere in the distance, Çeda followed. The sun cut across open space, bathing much of the westward face in light. Only when they’d circled down to the bottom and were hidden by the shadows did Davud turn to her. “I’ve something to show you.” He glanced nervously up to the rim of the well three stories above, and then squatted to press on one of the stones at its base. “There are many tunnels all throughout the city. Did you know?” He levered the stone outward—it was hinged, she realized, and it yawned open like the maw of some great, toothless beast. “One even leads to the scriptorium.”
Çeda’s heart leapt. This was why Davud had wanted to walk; he was offering her the chance to gain access to the knowledge within that ancient place. She laughed, then clapped a hand over her mouth. “You’ll be expelled, lashed, perhaps worse if we’re found out.”
“You said this was important.”
“I did.”
“Then let’s go.”
He was about to duck through the entryway, but before he could, Çeda stopped him with a hand on his arm and planted a kiss square on his lips.
His cheeks went redder than before, as red as she’d ever seen them, but he didn’t flinch away. He held her gaze and nodded, an ally and an equal. And then he kissed her back—a quick thing, and daring. And then he was off into the tunnel.
Çeda entered and pulled the stone back into place behind her. The fit was perfect, and the light leaking in was extinguished, plummeting the tunnel into darkness. As her eyes began to adjust she realized she could see faint shapes. Stones were embedded into the tunnel walls, shaped like the crystals that hung from Saliah’s tree, but they were larger and gave off a faint, blue light, not unlike Rhia when she was a sliver in the sky.
Where they were headed in this maze Çeda had no idea. She tried to follow the twists
and turns, but she quickly lost her way, relying on Davud to lead her. She saw spots of pure darkness, but also caverns where the glowstones were tightly crowded. There were places where the ground was lumpy, slick, and uneven and others where the stone had been cut by the hand of man.
Or perhaps this place was built by Thaash in the days before the wandering tribes came. Is Sharakhai not favored by the gods, after all?
Çeda guessed they’d walked a quarter-league by the time they came to a tight, winding set of stairs, at the top of which was a thick ironbound door. Davud pulled out a key and unlocked it. After so long with silence as their only companion, the clatter of the mechanism sounded loud as a battering ram. Once it was done, though, the door swung open quiet as a blade slipping from its scabbard.
There was only darkness inside, but Davud used a flint striker to light a lamp, and revealed a circular room with empty shelves and iron pegs near the door.
“They give you keys to the scriptorium?”
“They give Amalos keys,” he replied, “and he gives me leave to take them whenever I need. His eyesight is so bad he no longer comes here.”
“But others do?”
“Few enough. We’ll be safe here if we stick to a certain schedule.” He stepped to the door on the opposite side of the room. “Softly now.”
He led her from the bare room, down a short hallway and to another that held a number of bookshelves and a rich carpet of crimson, black, and gold. There was a table in the center of the room, and on it lay a stack of clay tablets in wooden trays.
“I found these, and they should get you started, but if you tell me more about what you’re looking for, I can narrow my search.”
Çeda shook her head. “Davud, what is this place?”
He motioned back the way they’d come. “Amalos is the warden for the door to the tunnels. He used this office years ago, but since I became his apprentice he’s stopped coming here. He sends me down once a week, and he stores a few old books here, but otherwise no one else ever bothers to visit. There’s an inspection a few times a year by the House of Kings, and the last one was only a few weeks ago. So I can bring things here for you to read.” He pointed to the ink and quill sitting next to the tablets, on a stack of mismatched paper, bits and pieces. “Write down whatever you want to learn about and when you can return, and I’ll bring what I can.” He pointed to a small brass urn on one of the shelves. “Drop the note in that urn, and I’ll find it. Otherwise leave everything as you found it.”
“Couldn’t I just tell you?”
“No! Never speak of it outside this place.”
“But the notes might be found.”
He glanced back at the urn. “Those I can explain away as research if need be. We can speak from time to time. I’d like that. But not of this. I can’t have any of it getting back to Amalos. Or worse, the Kings themselves.”
“What, you’re worried that the King of Whispers will hear us?”
“You joke, but he hears much in this city. And once his attention is drawn toward you, he homes in, sometimes over the course of weeks, months, until he has you. Men and women have died because they weren’t careful enough.”
“I’m sorry. You’re right.” Çeda knew how much he was risking for her. “I understand.”
His panic eased, and for a moment he looked like the young boy who used to race through the stalls in the bazaar, his mother shouting after him.
“Thank you, Davud.”
“You said it was important.” He’d said these words before, but now he said them with great care.
“It is.”
He nodded to her. “Then make sure this is all worth it.”
And with that he left, leaving the door open just a crack.
She sat down at the table and looked at the first of the tablets. It was difficult to read. Language had changed since it was written. How old were these tablets? A hundred years? More? They could be no more than four hundred years old, since that was when Beht Ihman had taken place, but she doubted it was anywhere near that old. They spoke of the event in a distant way as they recounted the bargain the Twelve Kings had struck with the gods that fateful night.
They had little to teach her, these tablets, but she did find one interesting fact. Whoever had written the fourth account of Beht Ihman spoke of Nalamae. Çeda had always believed that all seven desert gods had been there, but this tablet spoke of Nalamae’s absence. Nalamae’s refusal to come was frowned upon by Kiral, supreme among the Twelve Kings, but with the assembled gods untroubled by her absence, the dark ritual had commenced. She’d have to look for more. In none of the dozens of accounts she’d read so far had Nalamae been mentioned as missing. Some had simply referred to the desert gods as a whole, some had called Nalamae by name, but none had said that the youngest of the gods did not come when called.
When her reading was done, she scribbled on one of the scraps of paper, recountings of the gods present on Tauriyat, and miracles performed by Nalamae, and, thinking of Saliah’s blood left on her thumb, she wrote: customs of the Blade Maidens. Below those, she wrote Savadi. Today was Hundi—then came Lasdi, followed by Savadi—which gave Davud two days.
She hoped it was enough. She clearly had much to learn and little enough time in which to learn it.
THE WIND BLEW FIERCELY through the streets as Emre followed Darius toward The Jackal’s Tail, a shisha den on Tiller’s Row, one of the few streets in the Shallows with any businesses to speak of. The wind was so thick he could hardly see a dozen paces ahead. All the windows in the city were shuttered closed. A gust of wind blew his shemagh loose, and he caught a lungful of dust and sand. He coughed and spat while retying it tighter, leaving the narrowest of slits for his eyes.
Just before he and Darius reached the Tail’s covered porch, a few young toughs opened the door and stepped out, their turbans wrapped tightly around their faces. They stopped just off the porch and watched as Darius stepped inside. Emre grabbed the door but held it for a moment. He turned to the two men, who were watching him too intently to ignore. A month ago he might have been afraid, but much of the fear that had been with him since his brother Rafa’s death had been burned out of him. Not from the strange night of Beht Zha’ir, or the asirim that had nearly ended his life, but from the dual realizations of how long he’d been running from his past and that he couldn’t keep running. He didn’t have it in him. Not anymore.
The decision had not felt as liberating as he’d hoped it might. There was too much pain in his past for that. But it had given him a simple, heartfelt confidence that no one could hurt him as much as he’d already hurt himself. Coupled with it was a new desire for conflict, as if the years he’d spent avoiding it had stored it up, and now it was coming out in a rush.
The two toughs returned his stare—one even took a step toward him. But when Darius stepped back out and guided Emre into the den with a hand on his shoulder, they turned away and were lost in the storm. Finally free of the biting wind, Emre felt the thundering beat of his heart slowing. He hadn’t even realized how bad it had gotten. Darius was unwrapping the veil of his turban and shaking the sand from his clothes. Emre did the same, the sand falling from the them like rain onto the thick horsehair carpet just inside the door. Some in the room turned to eye him, but most merely drew on their shisha tubes, blowing thick, fragrant smoke into the air as they sat on threadbare pillows before low tables.
Emre followed Darius toward the back corner, where a group of young men and women sat at an oval table. A beautiful woman with piercing brown eyes and a trio of golden nose rings was refilling several empty glasses with araq from a tall green bottle. She was leaning far over the table toward a man’s glass as he laughed and slid the glass back and forth, making her spill araq on the table.
When the woman sat back down, Emre could finally see the man sitting to her right. Emre almost didn’t recognize him: Hamid, his boyh
ood friend. He’d grown and filled in his lanky frame. And he’d hardened. There was no trace left of the shy, smiling boy he remembered, only the steely eyes of a man who’d seen too much, young as he was. His clothes were darkest green, well made but not too fine. Nothing that would attract attention here in the Shallows. The tattoos on his face and the backs of his hands would attract little attention here, either. The gold bracelets on his wrists, however, and the rings on his fingers and through his nose and ears, were a different matter entirely. They marked him as a man who had no worries in a part of Sharakhai that few trod if they could avoid it.
There were some changes that ran deeper, though. Much deeper. They were of an age, Emre and Hamid, but he easily looked ten years older.
Emre knew the signs well; of wear, of neglect. As sure as the sun did shine, he’d been taking black lotus. Emre’s eldest brother, Brahim, gods protect him, had been addicted to it for years. And probably still is, assuming the lotus hasn’t already taken him into its final embrace. Hamid had the look of a man who hadn’t yet fully succumbed. His skin looked stretched, but you might not notice it if you hadn’t grown up with him. His eyes were reddened, though hardly more than might be caused by a hard night’s drinking.
Hamid considered Emre with those sleepy eyes of his but said nothing. The others stopped talking, however, noticing the sudden change in the air.
“Hello, Hamid.”
“Emre.”
For a moment, the two of them merely stared at one another, Emre wondering why he’d been invited, Hamid still silent. Those around them went from ease to wariness as tension filled the air like the scent of a long-dead dog.
“It’s been a while,” Emre said.
Hamid nodded, grudgingly.
“Perhaps,” Emre began, unsure where to go next, “we could have a drink.”
Hamid cracked one knuckle. “A drink.”
“If you would.”
Twelve Kings in Sharakhai Page 27