Twelve Kings in Sharakhai

by Bradley P. Beaulieu

  He noted her black dress, and seemed to force himself to squat before their small oven, stoking the flames with an iron poker. “A good evening to you as well.”

  “Answer my question.”

  “No one . . .” After working the dying coals a little more, he dropped the poker with a clang and stood, as if he couldn’t put things off any longer. “Don’t go, Çeda. Not tonight.”

  And suddenly she placed the voice. “Hamid,” she said. “That was Hamid, wasn’t it?”

  “Hamid is our friend.”

  “He is a thug and a murderer, and you know it.” At least Emre had the decency to look embarrassed about it. “Are you taking orders from him now?”

  “I’m not taking orders.”

  “You are. What’s he asked you to do, Emre?”

  “Stay and I’ll tell you.”

  Emre looked positively desperate. She could see it in his eyes, in the tightness across his shoulders. Did he know? Had he guessed what she was about to do?

  That was impossible. She’d told no one. This was simply his fears coming back to haunt him. She couldn’t find the words to tell him the truth—Emre, I’m leaving tonight, and I may never see you again—so she gave him a half-truth instead. “I’ve already taken the petal.”

  He raised his hands, trying to forestall her arguments. “Davud came to me today.”

  Çeda felt her face burn. It felt as if she were a child all over again, and she’d been caught stealing figs.

  “He’s worried you’re going to do something rash tonight. Was he right?”

  It felt as if a peach stone were caught in her throat, and no amount of swallowing was going to clear it. Why was it so hard to tell him? Because he’d try to stop me. He’d do something foolish. No, those were lies. Or, at least, they weren’t the real reasons.

  The truth was she couldn’t bear to say goodbye to Emre. Anyone else, perhaps, but not him. That was why she hadn’t said a word in the weeks since her visit to Saliah. That was why she hadn’t been able to tell him the other night when she’d had every intention of doing so. That was why the words were so slow in coming now. “I’m going to the blooming fields to poison myself,” she finally blurted.

  Emre only stared, his mouth gaping open.

  “It’s the only way to prove it, Emre.”

  “Prove what?”

  “That I’m the daughter of a King.”

  There. She’d said it. It was finally out. And she expected what? For Emre to simply believe what she told him? To accept her fool plan?

  “That you’re—” Emre fumbled. “That’s mad, Çeda. You aren’t . . .” His words trailed off as he stared at the expression of dire seriousness on her face.

  “I saw it in Saliah’s chimes,” she replied, as if that settled it.

  “You saw Saliah again?”

  Çeda nodded. “Yes, and the chimes gave me a vision. I know it’s true. My mother had me for a purpose, and I’m going to fulfill it, at least in the ways I’m able.”

  “By doing what? Killing yourself with poison?”

  “The Maidens are all tested by the adichara’s poison, Emre.” To be pricked by the thorns was certain death for those not of royal blood. But the Maidens were different. Their aspirants were sent to the desert on Beht Zha’ir, where they were given to the adichara and poisoned. If they lived, their courage and their blood was proven. And so Çeda would prove that she belonged among them. It was the only way the vision would come true: if she could show the Maidens that she was indisputably the blood of Kings. It was a desperate plan, but she was desperate and had never been more so than when she’d stood before the King in the scent merchants’ tower. She’d known for a long time that she had to try something different. She just hadn’t known what. Not until she’d gone to Saliah’s and the truth had been revealed. “That’s how I’ll know, once and for all, and if I’m proven the daughter of a King, I can do much.”

  “Like what?” He lowered his voice to a near whisper. “Kill them all? Is that what this is all about? When are you going to give up on that fool dream of yours, Çeda? It’s never going to happen! Your mother was mad, and you’re mad for following in her footsteps.”

  Çeda felt struck by a hammer blow. “My mother was not mad.”

  “You can’t stop them,” Emre went on. “Not on your own. Come with me, and we’ll talk with Hamid. They’re the only ones who will make a difference, and you can help. Hamid would be glad to have you. So would Macide.”

  “Gods, Emre, were you with me in the scent merchants’ fort? Did you see how the Host burned those innocent people? Those innocent children?”

  “Yes, and did you see what the Kings hung from the walls of Hallowsgate the following morning?”

  “I need no reminder that the Kings are both violent and vile.”

  “Then perhaps you need a reminder of what happened to your mother. They hung her for all the city to see, Çeda, and they’ll do the same to you. You cannot make a difference by throwing your life away.”

  She heard a lonely wail in the distance. Even as far away as the asir was, the hair on her skin rose. The call sounded like one of the desert jackals, but it went on much longer, and sounded too painful, too human, especially in light of what she was about to do.

  “There isn’t a day that goes by when I don’t think of her, Emre. And I’m not throwing my life away.” Dear gods, please let this not be in vain. “I have to go,” she said, heading for the door, but Emre lunged forward and grabbed her wrist.

  “Don’t,” he said.

  She stared down at his hand. “Emre, let me go.”

  “There’s so many of them, Çeda. It just doesn’t feel right. Wait until the next Holy Night. Wait for a better night.”

  She’d never seen him so worried over her, and there was a part of her—the weak part, the fearful part—that wanted to give in to his request. But she couldn’t. Wait, and she might never go. “There’s never a better night,” she said. “Not for something like this.” And she wrenched her hand free.

  When he tried to grab her again, she slapped his wrist away. “Emre, stop it!”

  He tried again, and she fended him off with increasing ferocity. Emre was not as accustomed to fighting as she was, but he was moderately fast and very strong. Even if she weren’t fully steeped in the effects of the petal, she could have reached the door, but invigorated as she was, it was child’s play to slap his hands away, to skip backward as he lunged.

  “I said stop it!”

  He knew this was a losing battle so went for the door instead, hoping to bar her way.

  She spun low, snapped her heel out and caught an ankle, sending him sprawling to the bare floor while she leapt easily over him.

  He came to his knees as she opened the door. His eyes were wide. “Please, Çeda.”

  “I’m sorry, Emre.” Another wail, louder this time, sounded over the city. “Don’t worry over me. I’ll be fine.” Before Emre could protest, she shut the door, took the stairs down, and began jogging toward the bazaar.

  She could hear him behind her, calling into the night, “Çeda, please!” A foolish, foolish thing.

  Thankfully he soon fell silent.

  WIPING AWAY HER TEARS with one hand, Çeda pulled the black veil across her face with the other. The bazaar stalls were torn down, the bright canvas tents folded away for the night. Tulathan was already well above the eastern horizon, her silver face staring down over the desert, watching as the asirim stalked over the sands toward Sharakhai. Her sister, golden Rhia, was bright in the west.

  Çeda listened for a moment before choosing her path. The wails were coming from the north, so she jogged southeast along the winding Serpentine and then onto the Trough, heading toward the southern harbor. As she ran, the buildings changed from simple dwellings and shops to stone mansions on either side of the street. As the Tro
ugh curved, the buildings shrank once more, but now they were of much older construction. This close to the edge of the city she had to be more careful. The asirim might enter Sharakhai from any direction, and if some had come from the south, they would be nearing the city’s edge by now, or they might already be within her borders, wandering, taking those marked by Sukru.

  No sooner had she thought this than she heard a heavy knocking on her left. A more final sound she’d never heard. She cringed as her boots scuffed the dirt and the smell of the asirim came to her, that sickly sweet scent that had wafted from their King just before he’d kissed her. She pressed herself into an alcove in a wheelwright’s stables. It had suddenly become difficult to breathe. She could think of nothing but the asir’s warm lips pressed against her forehead.

  The knock came again, the sound like a skull pounding wood. Çeda dared not move, and yet she found her right hand itching to draw her shamshir, an instinct borne of fighting in the pits, although she knew very well a blade would do her no good.

  When the knock came a third time, it was accompanied by the sound of splintering wood. A thumping followed, the heavy tread of feet upon a wooden floor.

  Çeda tried to control her breathing, but with the asir only paces from where she stood, she couldn’t. It came in deep, rapid gasps. She licked her lips, told herself to remain calm, but a moment later a scream tore through the still of the night.

  “No!” A woman pleaded. “Not my son! Take me instead! Take me!”

  Her shouts were cut off with a sound like the sledges butchers used to fell cattle. Çeda spun away, refusing to look back. If she did, she might be caught by its gaze. She would not be so lucky as she was last time, King of the asirim or no.

  She sprinted down a narrow alley between two houses, flew along the street it led to, listening for sounds of pursuit. She could hear nothing—nothing save the pounding of her heart and the heaving of her breath. The petal’s energy carried her on. She made a turn at the old grain mill that always smelled of mule dung and hay, and then again at Kavi the jeweler’s.

  Ahead, ships’ masts stabbed upward from beyond the row of warehouses. The harbor opened up before her. Çeda reached a set of stone stairs that led down to the sand, and there, with practiced ease, she slipped her zilij over her head and tossed it down. As it skimmed over the surface, she jumped upon it, her feet finding the boiled leather straps she’d nailed into the gently hollowed topside. She kicked with her left leg, which sent her sighing across the sand as easily as the sidewinding vipers that nested along the Haddah’s riverbed. Leaning this way or that to steer, she moved beyond the borders of the harbor and into a long inlet hemmed in by high stone outcroppings, barely wide enough for two ships to pass one another.

  Within minutes she reached the desert proper, the Great Shangazi, where the dunes opened up before her. The dunes changed often, and tonight they were tall. High sands, they were called, the sort that would force ships to wait in harbor to sail, or if they were caught in the desert, to find higher ground or risk being washed under by the shifting sands.

  For one lone woman with a zilij, however, they were easy enough to navigate. Çeda used her skimwood board to fly along the slope of a dune, allowing her momentum to carry her up the next one. The moment she slowed she would hop off and hike to the summit, and once there throw the zilij down, leap upon it, and race down, leaning into the curves to keep her balance or to steer away from the occasional outcropping of rock.

  Time was already growing short. Tulathan was reaching her apex.

  Çeda continued, skimming, climbing, skimming, climbing, for nearly an hour. When the sand became rocky ground at last, she slung the zilij over her back and jogged easily. Rhia stood over the western horizon, a twinkling eye in the distance. Tulathan was directly overhead, surrounded by a host of attendant stars.

  The blooming fields soon came into view, the twisted forms of the adichara given definition by the light of the moons. At first they looked like little more than a mass of darkness huddling in patches, but as she came closer, details were revealed: a branch reaching toward the stars, a bough twisting around itself and others. The blooms glowed ever so softly beneath the moon, and when the breeze picked up, Çeda could see trails of shimmering blue pollen carried on the wind. She could smell it now as well, a scent like red wine, like powdered amber, subtle yet deeply powerful, as if these twisted trees somehow fed upon the stories of man throughout all the pages of time.

  As she stepped closer, a buzzing filled the air—rattlewings moving drunkenly from bloom to bloom, oblivious to Çeda’s presence. Like hummingbirds, they collected nectar from the flowers, but only when the moons were brightest. Çeda approached two trees that looked like lovers entwined in one another’s arms. After hunkering down in the shadows, she pulled her slim kenshar from its sheath at her side. This close, the petals of the adichara blooms glowed a pale blue, almost white, not unlike bright Tulathan. The five golden stamen inside seemed to shiver, though perhaps that was merely a trick of the wind. She reached forward and slipped the edge of her knife beneath the flower and cut the stem. She cut a second and finally a third, stashing each in the leather pouch at her belt.

  Then, after sliding the knife into its sheath, she stared at the other blooms, at the thorns that graced the length of their stems. In truth, these were what she had come for, not the flowers.

  Ever since the sail back from Saliah’s, when she’d stared down at that drop of dried blood on her thumb, she’d known she would come to the adichara and taste of their poison. “What say you?” she said softly to the trees.

  She held her hand out, saw her hand not merely quivering, but trembling, as if she’d been stricken by palsy. The branches wavered, but made no move toward her. The wind picked up, making the adicharas rattle, and still she waited, hoping it would accept her on its own.

  She caught movement from the corner of her eye—a dark form off to her left—and the moment she did, she felt it: a pinprick against the meat of her thumb. Her breath drew in sharply, her heart went wild, not merely for the pain or the implication of what the poison would soon do, but for the sudden expansion of awareness that swept through her. When she took the adichara petals, she often felt as though she could sense the vast ring of trees around Sharakhai. Now she felt not only that, but also a deep, insatiable hunger. She had no idea what it might be, but could only think of the asirim, their anger bleeding through the poison to touch her heart, to infect her like a wound going septic.

  A huff filled the cold desert air, the sound of a horse exhaling. She heard the thump of hooves in sand, though it stopped before reaching the rocky ground around the adichara—a clever move if one was wary of an interloper in the field ahead.

  Already the poison was spreading. The skin around the thorn prick was going numb. Bakhi’s grace, could the poison lay her low before she could return to Sharakhai?

  She listened carefully for the horse, or its rider, but heard nothing. Through the boughs of the adichara, though, she saw something: a woman moving with deadly grace. Her dress was cut in the style of the Blade Maidens, but, strangely, it looked a different color, perhaps purple—it was difficult to tell in the moonlight. She must be a Maiden, though, for she held an ebon blade in her right hand. Her face was covered by a veil so that the only skin Çeda could see was around her eyes and the backs of her tattooed hands. A glittering ruby hung on her forehead, just above the bridge of her nose, and she wore a necklace of sleek, finger-length thorns.

  The Maiden had fouled everything.

  She might kill Çeda outright or take her to the House of Kings to be questioned before being hung or drawn and quartered in the city square. What she might be doing out here, Çeda had no idea, but she knew this: if she didn’t leave now, it would mean her death.

  The Maiden stalked through the adichara with slow and steady purpose, the ebon blade held easily in her hand. It did not gleam in the mo
onlight; instead, it shone dully, a wicked, dark smile in the night.

  Çeda could already feel the skin along her thumb and the upper part of her wrist going numb. Breath of the desert, how quickly it was happening! As the Maiden tread softly through the twisted trees, the burning anger from the adichara intensified within Çeda, urging her to stand, to attack the maiden and drink of her blood. Çeda smothered the thoughts as well as she was able. She didn’t wish to give the Blade Maiden any sort of edge, but it was difficult; the feelings ran so very deep.

  The Blade Maiden stalked closer, listening, hunting. Çeda hoped she would move toward the bulk of the adichara so Çeda could sprint north, over the dunes toward Sharakhai, but no. She was headed straight for Çeda’s hiding place, and she was no longer scanning the trees to discover who was there.

  She knew, Çeda realized. She knew exactly where Çeda was.

  So she ran.

  The Blade Maiden called out, “Lai, lai, lai!” Both a warning and a demand for her to stop.

  She didn’t care. She sprinted faster, pulling her zilij off her back. But she was still on rocky ground, and the Maiden—gods she was fast!—was catching up. She shouldn’t have been able to, not with Çeda’s petal still giving her inhuman energy, but here she was, pacing Çeda like a maned wolf—indeed moving ahead to cut her off before she could reach the sands.

  While drawing her sword from its sheath on her back, Çeda slipped her left arm through the straps of the zilij and held it like a shield. The Blade Maiden lowered into a fighting stance, advancing, dark sword at the ready.

  Çeda darted forward, arcing her blade high. The Maiden blocked her stroke, but as she did Çeda snapped a kick into her gut. Çeda had only meant it as a warning, to give this woman pause, and indeed the message seemed to hit home. The Maiden’s kohl-rimmed eyes widened in the moonlight as she reassessed Çeda. She advanced more cautiously, while Çeda gave ground, hoping to slow her enemy down; she needed to reach the sands, where the zilij would be faster than a horse. But the Maiden guessed her purpose and advanced once more. They traded a flurry of blows that rang through the cold night air. Çeda blocked with her zilij, though the ebon blade bit deep into the wood, and the Maiden ducked one of Çeda’s high slashes, twisted in a blur of motion, and cut from the side.