Twelve Kings in Sharakhai

by Bradley P. Beaulieu

  Çeda barely managed to block it with her sword. It struck like a hammer, numbing her arm from the elbow down. She nearly dropped the sword, and she knew, as another blow came for her, that she couldn’t hope to win this fight. This woman was too good by far, and Çeda was having more difficulty simply retaining her grip on her sword.

  She started to give ground faster after that, feigning weakness. The Maiden took the bait, but didn’t overcommit. She was steady and careful, firmly in control of a duel that increasingly favored the Maiden the longer it continued.

  Knowing a retreat was hopeless unless she put the Maiden on the defensive, Çeda stopped near the edge of the sand and unleashed a vicious combination of blows, moves that had won her fights in the pits many times before. Never with a numb hand, though. The Blade Maiden blocked her blows and then kicked high, connecting with Çeda’s wrist, as if she knew about the poison.

  Çeda’s shamshir went flying through the midnight air, flashing in the moonlight as it went. And in that moment, Çeda jumped onto the sand, spinning and holding the zilij by only one strap. She brought its tip across the sand, sending a spray up and across the Blade Maiden, who twisted away, raising her arm to fend off the spray. But she was too late and it caught her full in the face. She uttered not a sound, but she stepped back several paces, blade ready, shaking her head to clear her eyes.

  It gave Çeda the time she needed. She ran, threw her zilij down against the sand, and leapt on it. In moments she was skimming down the flank toward the trough between the dunes.

  She spared a glance behind her. The Maiden had initially given chase, but had already realized her mistake and was running back for her horse.

  By the time Çeda reached the crest of the next dune, she saw the Maiden in the saddle, galloping forward. The horse would never catch her, though. It would plod through the sand and tire quickly, while she was able to fly down one side of the dune and sprint up the next.

  When she’d crested two more, she stopped and looked back, holding her zilij by her good left hand. At the top of a dune, just north of the blooming fields, the Maiden was watching from horseback. Çeda waved, threw her board down, and was gone.

  When Çeda reached the southern harbor, she was forced to rest before climbing the stone steps to the docks. Her throat and lungs burned. Her legs were leaden and white hot with pain. They felt as if she’d been beaten mercilessly with clubs, not only from the run back from the dunes but also because the effects of the petal were beginning to ebb. It was something she was used to, an ache she often enjoyed, but with the effects of the poison still spreading through her body, she had pushed herself harder than ever on her return journey.

  Tulathan was low in the sky now, leaving layers of heavy shadows along the streets and alleys. Çeda staggered along the Trough as quickly as her legs would take her, heedless of the sad wheezing sounds she was making. But instead of heading west toward Roseridge she turned east and moved into the merchant district. She listened carefully for signs of the asirim. They were often gone by this time, but some had been known to remain late into the night, leaving only as dawn approached. She heard nothing, however, as she came to a row of two-story stone buildings. The third one had impressive windows filled with thick, wavy glass that gave a distorted view of the shelves of bottles and vials within.

  Çeda couldn’t knock. She couldn’t let anyone know—other than Dardzada himself—that she’d come.

  Positioning herself beneath a tall window on the second floor and placing the ball of her left foot against a wide first-floor window pane, she took two deep breaths and launched herself upward. She caught the second-floor windowsill with both hands. Her numb right hand slipped off, but she held on tight with her left until she could swing back and try again. Her hand held this time, and she pulled herself high enough to reach up and grab the ornamental brass sun-and-moons nailed above the window. The simple decoration had been there for so long, she feared it might pull right out, but it held, and she set herself carefully against the window.

  Her legs quivered from the exertion, and her wrists began to weaken. But she managed to stay in place long enough to draw her kenshar, wedge it between the window panes, and work it inward, ready to flip the latch. But no sooner had she begun rocking the hilt up and down than the panes swung inward and a meaty hand jerked her into the darkness. She sprawled to the floor as the windows closed behind her. Dardzada’s voice was a harsh whisper from the darkness. “What in the name of Nalamae’s teats are you doing here?”

  Only a scant bit of light came in from the edges of the curtains, outlining Dardzada’s bulky form. “I need help.”

  He kicked at her legs, forcing her to slide backward. “That’s no worry of mine, Çeda.”

  “I’ve been poisoned.”

  He kicked her again. “It was you who sent that note, wasn’t it?”

  She’d had a messenger deliver it yesterday morning: a note written, supposedly, by a visiting caravan master who requested a meeting here at sunrise, about a large order of Yerinde’s Kiss that he planned to bring back with him to Qaimir. It was a very expensive aphrodisiac Dardzada was famed for. The messenger had delivered Dardzada’s prompt reply, saying he would be most pleased to meet, first thing, to discuss terms. Her ruse had ensured that Dardzada would be at home over Beht Zha’ir and not somewhere else in the city, but it had also, predictably, enraged him. Not because there was no profit in the offing, but because he’d been fooled, and by none other than Çeda.

  “If the Silver Spears saw you come here, we’d both be dead, and let me tell you, you’re not worth that. You’re not worth half that. How could you have been so foolish?”

  He tried to kick her a third time, but she slipped away and rolled over one shoulder to her feet. “It was no accident, Dardzada. I poisoned myself.”

  Dardzada stopped, chest heaving like a winded bull. “You what?”

  “I poisoned myself.”

  “For the love of the gods, why?”

  “To enter the House of Maidens.”

  She said it, expecting Dardzada to rail against her. To be confused or tell her she was mad. But instead he stared at her in a silence that was anything but innocent.

  “You know I’m the blood of Kings,” Çeda accused.

  Dardzada looked as though a thousand answers were playing themselves out in his mind.

  “You knew and you never told me. Who is he?”

  The stocky apothecary closed his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose for a moment as he shook his head back and forth. “Ahya refused to tell me.”

  Çeda wanted to spit. “That’s a lie.”

  Dardzada shook his head. “Even in the end, Çeda. She would never tell me.”

  “She knew she was going to die! Why wouldn’t she tell you?”

  “Because she was deathly afraid you might be found. She worried that if she told me, that I would pass the tale to you or others, and she wasn’t willing to risk the King of Whispers hearing of it.”

  There had been few times in her life when she felt Dardzada was being completely forthright with her, and strangely, this was one of them. She could see her mother going about it exactly as Dardzada had described, especially since the information had no real bearing on the plans she’d had for Çeda since her birth. Or it might even be deeper than that. She might not have wished for Çeda to harbor any feelings of love toward the Kings, especially her own father.

  Small chance of that, Çeda thought. “I need to find a way to avenge my mother,” she said, “and in order to do that I will enter the Maidens’ home.”

  “They won’t have you.”

  “They will, and you’re going to help me.”

  “I have no control over the Maidens, Çeda.”

  “Yes, you do. There’s a woman inside, you said. An ally. I heard you telling my mother.”

  “I can’t simply reach her at th
e toss of a coin.”

  Çeda flexed her right hand. It was numb around the point of the wound, but pain was now spreading along her shoulder. “That puts me in a very precarious position, Dardzada.”

  “Why? Why didn’t you come to me with this?”

  “And what would you have done?” She paused, waiting only long enough for him to open his mouth. “I’ll tell you. You would have driven me out of your home, calling me a foolish girl. And if for some reason you thought me serious, you would have moved against me, knowing my plan would put you and your allies in jeopardy.”

  “It does put us in jeopardy.”

  “I don’t care, Dardzada. My mother had a plan. She died before she could share it with me, and you’ve refused to tell me any of it, so I’ve made my own. Now, either you take me to the Maidens or I die. The choice is yours.”

  “You can’t just come here and lay this at my feet!”

  “I can do exactly that. My mother begged you to take me on as your own, and a piss poor job you’ve done of it.”

  “You were willful!”

  “I was a child! But now I’m a woman grown, and you owe me. Do this, and the ledger will be wiped clean.”

  He stared at her, his heavy breath the only sound in the deadened city.

  “Dardzada, my hand is so numb I can’t feel any of my fingers. The pain is spreading to my chest even now.” She lifted her right hand. He couldn’t see details, not in this light, but he could see that it was swollen, he could see the tinge of blue where the thorn had pierced her skin.

  “No matter what you may think, I cannot contact her whenever I wish. It takes time.”

  “Then use the skill the gods gave you. Slow this poison down, and then contact her, with all the haste you can muster.”

  After one glance toward the window, he motioned to his bed. “Lie down.” The stairs groaned as Dardzada headed for his apothecary. “And by Tulathan’s bright smile stay still, Çeda. The less you move, the better.”

  As the sound of tinkling glass rose from the ground floor, Çeda lay down on Dardzada’s bed. She’d done so only a handful of times in the past, and only when Dardzada had been away for several days on business. The smell of it—the smell of him—took her back to her childhood in an instant, and she found herself wishing she could return to those days, to choose a different life. But that wasn’t how it worked. Life chose you; it was how you dealt with it that mattered.

  She didn’t want to die. She was working to avenge her mother’s death, and she wouldn’t change a thing if she died. Except . . . She would tell Emre she loved him. She cared for him so deeply yet so rarely told him. Their love was an unspoken covenant—they were practically brother and sister; they would do anything to help each other—and yet she thought here, this once, she would voice those unspoken words if he were standing before her.

  When the early light of dawn crept around the heavy drapes, her hand was much, much worse. She could see the wound in the meat of her right thumb. The flesh was swollen horribly, and the blue stain beneath her skin had spread to her fingers, the back of her hand and much of her forearm.

  “Gods be good,” she whispered.

  SEVEN YEARS EARLIER . . .

  “ÇEDA . . .”

  Çeda pulled her blanket over her shoulders. She was cold. So cold.

  “Çeda, wake up. The rain’s about to begin.”

  Çeda’s eyes shot open. She threw off the blanket, heedless of the cold, and sat up in the tent where she’d somehow managed to fall asleep, despite the bitterly chill night. After pulling on her boots, she threw aside the tent’s flap and joined her mother on the vast pan of the desert before her. The sun was already up—they’d arrived so deep into the previous evening that Çeda fell asleep the moment they’d finished pitching the tent and laying out their blankets.

  An immense lake spread across the landscape before her, so calm that it perfectly reflected the thin morning clouds over the line of dark mountains.

  Her mother blew into her hands and rubbed them together. “Ready?”

  Çeda nodded, giddy with excitement, and for the first time in a very long while, Ahya took her daughter’s hand. Hers was rough and callused and warm—warmer than Çeda’s, in any case. As they walked toward the edge of the lake, their boots crunched over the salty ground. A salt flat, her mother had called it, a vast plain where bright white salt covered the ground like sand. She reached down and pinched some between her fingers, placed it upon her tongue. She spat it out immediately as her mother glanced down and smiled wryly.

  “You didn’t believe me?”

  Çeda shrugged. “I just wanted to taste it for myself.”

  Ahead, a flurry of bright blue wings rose up from beyond the rightmost edge of the lake where, as far as the eye could see, small salt bushes and wiry tufts of grasses stood. More birds followed the first fluttering wave, and more still, until entire swaths of the shadowed land seemed to lift, as if a great quilt of sapphires had been laid over the earth and was now being lifted by the hand of an elder god.

  As Ahya stood by Çeda’s side, the immense flock drifted over the center of the lake, parts of the writhing mass coming nearer, parts farther away, the entirety of it holding improbably together as the fast little birds flew over the perfectly calm, crystal clear water.

  “Blazing blues, they’re called.”

  “And lapis eyes,” Çeda replied, proud of herself for having remembered when they’d spoken months ago about coming here in the heart of winter.

  “That’s right, for the way their wings beat like eyelids over their breasts.”

  “I know, memma.”

  Ahya ran her hand down Çeda’s long black hair. “You know so much, do you?”

  Çeda stared at the wonder of it. The blues dipped lower, then higher, then inverted and blossomed like a rose with petals of bright cobalt. A more mesmerizing, awe-inspiring, breathtaking sight Çeda had never seen. “They seem alive.”

  “They are alive.”

  “I mean together. All of them.”

  “I know what you meant. But they are alive together. They’re a tribe, Çeda. They are each separate, but they are all one.”

  They walked into the lake, which, even one hundred paces out, even two hundred, was only ankle-deep. There were little creatures in the water—pink ones, no larger than weevils, flitting to and fro along the bottom of the water. These were the brine shrimp her mother had told her about. As Ahya and Çeda walked, kicking up clouds of white salt in the water, and as the billowing mass of blazing blues swooped and wheeled, casting heavy shadows, the tiny pink creatures grew agitated. That’s when the birds began diving toward the water.

  Hundreds, thousands of them, came low over the lake, dipping their beaks. They hardly made a splash, so quick were they, but it made the mirror surface of the lake dance with movement. Çeda began to laugh. It was happening all around them. They were surrounded on all sides and above by the bright blue birds. The sound of their beaks dipping into the water began to sound like rain.

  A rain of blue, her mother had called it several days before, when she’d said they’d be starting their pilgrimage here. My mother brought me here when I was young, Ahya had said, and so I’ll bring you.

  Çeda had no idea who her grandmother was—Ahya told so few stories about her—but she was glad to be here now, holding her mother’s hand, walking in this magical place.

  “Now take a handful of water,” Ahya said, reaching down and scooping up some water into the palm of her hand. She lifted it above her, and the birds flew closer, many speeding like javelins over her hand, snatching up the tiny shrimp skipping on her outstretched palm.

  Çeda did the same, excited and afraid in the same breath. The shrimp wriggled, tickling her skin as she raised her hand and waited, and then she laughed as the blues stormed over her, picking at the shrimp. Their beaks felt like
hundreds of beetles crawling across the skin of her palm. But amazingly they touched only her hand. Nowhere else was she even brushed, except by the wind of their wings. Still, she cringed away, fearful they’d start pecking at her, yet mesmerized in the same breath.

  Her mother was smiling, and as she picked up another handful, she too began to laugh. They stood ankle-deep in the water, alive and laughing, as if they were the only two people in all the world.

  Çeda let go of her mother’s hand. She ran across the lake. Chased the birds as the falcons were doing far above, but just like them, she was much too slow and never so much as touched one.

  Suddenly the cloud of them was so thick she lost sight of Ahya. She spun around, wondering where she’d gone and gradually her delight was replaced with worry. She called for her mother, afraid she was going in the wrong direction.

  But then Ahya strode through the blue cloud, the birds parting for her as if she were Nalamae herself. “Come, Çeda,” she said, holding out her hand. “It’s time to go.”

  “I don’t wish to go,” she replied.

  “And yet we must.”

  Çeda hesitated, staring up through the haze of birds, the intense blue of their feathers mixing with the pale blue of the sky above them. They look like the sea. Like waves on the deep blue sea. With great reluctance, she turned to her mother, who was still standing there, her hand still poised. Çeda didn’t want this day to end. She would stay here with her mother forever if she could, but after a moment’s pause, she reached out and took her mother’s hand.

  Çeda woke with the sun beating down on her.

  “I don’t wish to go,” she whispered to the dry desert air.

  She sat up. Her lips were cracked and bleeding. The memories of her mother and that distant day were so strong she didn’t at first remember where she was. Nor could she remember the last time she’d had anything to drink. Yesterday morning, she realized, which wasn’t good. Not in the dust-dry heat of summer.