Twelve Kings in Sharakhai

by Bradley P. Beaulieu

  ÇEDA STARED AT EMRE’S WOUNDS, his fine clothes, and wondered what in the wide, bright world had happened to him. But of course she knew. Ramahd. His men. They’d brought him here. They’d made sure he had come. She was about to give Ramahd her thoughts on the subject when he backed out of the room, refusing to meet her eye. He closed the doors behind him, the crisp sound of his footsteps fading as he strode away.

  When the doors closed, Emre looked as though a hundred pounds had been lifted from his shoulders. He moved toward Çeda, Çeda met him halfway, and they fell into one another’s arms. Emre held her so tightly it surprised her. She felt his cheek against hers, and slowly her anger was replaced with the simple desire to live within Emre’s arms and forget the world for a moment or two.

  “I thought you were dead,” he whispered to her.

  “I thought I was too,” she whispered back.

  After a long while, they separated, and it felt as if she were losing him all over again, as if she were being drawn back into the House of Maidens even now. “You look terrible,” she said, wincing as she examined the wounds on his face and on his hands, which she still held in hers.

  He shrugged, wincing immediately after. “I had a rather unfortunate disagreement with a set of stairs.” He smiled, copying the face Çeda had made when she’d once used the same beetle-brained joke. “It didn’t go so well.”

  She smiled, and then gave his jaw a mock punch. He moved with the blow in slow motion, coming back with a honey-slow punch of his own. She couldn’t help it. She laughed. He looked such a fool, but that was what she remembered most about him. And the times they’d laughed together. Nalamae’s sweet tears, how she would miss them.

  Emre lifted her right hand and examined the tattoo that now marked the front and back of it. He ran a finger over the puckered white scar that didn’t quite look healed—a wound that would never heal, if Zaïde had spoken truth. “By the gods, Çeda, what happened?”

  She stammered for a moment. “There’s a lot to tell.”

  Emre looked around, eyes wide, as if he were peering into corners for hidden spies. “It appears we are alone.” He moved to a cart with delicate glasses and a large decanter of deep red wine—the only thing in the room to drink—and poured two glasses. “And we have time.”

  She took one from him and waved to the pillows that surrounded the grand fire pit at the center of the room. They sat next to one another, drinking their wine. It had rich currant and pepper overtones, and something Çeda couldn’t quite put her finger on. Something almost metallic. Çeda took Emre’s bruised hand, kissed it once, then launched into her tale, her night at the blooming fields, going to Dardzada for help, waking in that strange physic’s cellar and cutting him before she escaped. She now suspected it was a place she’d been taken for healing and for safekeeping, not for Dardzada to cut her arm off to save her from the poison. Wounding him was a thing she felt acutely ashamed of, but at the time she’d had no way to distinguish reality from her fears.

  She told him how she’d wandered through the city, how the poison nearly destroyed her; how Dardzada disguised himself and brought her to the House of Maidens. She told him of the days of pain, and how Zaïde had tattooed her hand and hemmed in the poison. She told him about her visit with the Jade-eyed King, his grand palace, and of Nayyan, the woman whose place Çeda had taken in Sümeya’s hand.

  When she told him about the attack on the Maidens’ compound, she watched him closely and saw exactly what she expected to see: a note of embarrassment, a touch of chagrin. She’d guessed that he had been involved with it in some way, and this was cold confirmation of it, but she said nothing and moved on to the fight between Husamettín and Sümeya, finishing with her presentation to the Kings in the Sun Palace and her ill-fated dance with Kameyl.

  By the gods, can it be that so little time has passed? It’s a lifetime wrapped into a handful of weeks.

  Emre finished his glass and poured them both another as Çeda told him about her sword, River’s Daughter, a thing that made his jaw fall slack. “You with an ebon sword . . . The gods play strange games, Çeda.”

  “They do,” she replied. “And tomorrow I’m to go out to the blooming fields so the asirim may judge me.”

  “But you’re not going to stay with them, are you? You can leave now. We can hide. The city will protect us.”

  “You know I can’t. They’d come for me. They’d find me.”

  “Then we’ll go to the desert. We’ve always talked about sailing the sands.”

  “I don’t want to, Emre. I’ve been given an opportunity, a gift, and I’ll not waste it.”

  “But the asirim may kill you, Çeda.”

  “They may,” she allowed, “but the one who kissed me? I wish to find him again.”

  “Are you listening to yourself? You might live out the rest of your days and never see the crowned asir again, and there’s no telling what the others might do to you.”

  “I know. Believe me, I’ve thought of little else these past few days, but our lives are fleeting anyway. The Silver Spears might find you tomorrow and kill you, Emre.”

  “That’s different.”

  “How is that different?”

  Emre frowned, as though he didn’t want to answer. “What can you hope to do, even if the asirim somehow approve of you? Will you kill the Kings as a Maiden? Don’t you think they might object? That someone might notice?”

  “Know thine enemy. Isn’t that what the Al’Ambra says?”

  “Know them. Don’t sleep in their halls. Don’t raise your glass in their honor. It’s too dangerous, Çeda.”

  Çeda laughed. “Don’t speak to me of danger, Emre. Don’t think I don’t know what’s become of you.”

  “What? What has become of me?”

  She lowered her voice. “You were involved in the attack on the House of Maidens, weren’t you? Or in the attack on Lord Vesdi. Or both!”

  Emre paused, gathering the right words. “I wasn’t there, if that’s what you’re asking, and I thought you were dead. You weren’t harmed, were you?”

  “No. But others were.”

  “What do you care about the Maidens?”

  “I don’t, but I would never have guessed you would do such a thing.” She stared into his deep brown eyes, wondering at the Emre she used to know. “You’ve changed, Emre.”

  “My eyes have been opened. There’s a difference.”

  “No, it’s more than that. You would never have done these things a year ago.”

  “That Emre disgusts me. That Emre doesn’t exist anymore.”

  She knew where this had all started, knew to the very night. “What happened that night, when I found you in the Haddah?”

  He was staring into the cold ashes in the fire pit, a hard expression on his face, until Çeda took his hand and squeezed it.

  “Tell me.”

  “You don’t want to know.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  As she watched him, his eyes lost their hard look, and the expression she remembered so well—the fearful look that had been with him so often after Rafa’s death—returned. He was silent for a long time, his mouth opening and closing, his eyes searching the fire’s flickering fabric for answers. When he spoke again, his tone was as distant as the winds of winter. “What happened that night in the Haddah . . . It was the same thing that happened with Saadet the night he killed Rafa.”

  She squeezed his hand again. “There was nothing you could have done. You weren’t even there.”

  Emre ripped his hand away. “I was there!” Tears formed in his eyes. “I lied to you, Çeda! I’ve lied to you all along!”

  A shiver ran down Çeda’s frame, and with a sudden clarity she understood exactly what he meant. “The bravo. You saw what he did.”

  “I wasn’t half as smart as I thought,” Emre said, “and that Malasani pig
not nearly so dumb. When I got home, he bulled his way into the house, just as I was opening the door. Rafa was home, and he came running out to see what was the matter, but Saadet,” Emre shook his head, jaw rigid, perhaps reliving the events of that night, “he was too large, too strong. He cuffed me and I fell, hit my head and crumpled to the floor like a pup. He held Rafa down, and he pulled out that long knife of his. Do you remember it? The blade was straight. And the edge was keen. It had an ivory handle with little nicks along it. See these, boy? he said in that thick fucking accent of his. He was holding Rafa’s throat and showing me the nicks in that foul knife, like he was proud of them. Every single one of them. These are men I killed, he told me, men who do less to me than you. But you are young still. I give you that. Maybe young enough to learn that stealing from a man of Malasan is a dire mistake. And then he smiled, he smiled, and offered me a choice. You tell me who you want to die, you or this one? And he pointed to Rafa with the tip of that knife.”

  Emre sniffed. Tears streaked down his cheeks and fell to the lush pillows. She had never seen him look so grief-stricken. She wanted to take him in her arms, but she was certain that would be a terrible mistake. “You were fourteen, Emre. I remember how huge he was. There was nothing you could have done.”

  He pinched his eyes tight and shook his head, more violently than before. “Nothing? I had my knife Çeda. He smiled and watched as I pulled my knife and held it against my chest like a useless little talisman. That dog turned away from me, turned his back to me. No choice, he said, means I choose. Rafa was dying before my eyes. His eyes bulging. His face going red.” Emre’s hands tightened, as if he were still holding that slim fisherman’s knife he’d found along the river the year before Rafa’s death. “I could have done it. I should have done it. Saadet practically dared me to. But I sat there. I sat there as he held my brother down and slipped that knife between his ribs. I stayed there all night, holding Rafa’s hand, hoping he’d wake. I waited until the sun came up.” He blinked away his tears and drew in a deep, stuttering breath. “And then I told everyone I’d just come home and found Rafa dead.”

  Çeda had never seen Emre look more devastated, not even right after Rafa’s death. “Emre,” she said with care, “you were fourteen.”

  “You killed him at fourteen!”

  “I had help from the petals.”

  Emre threw up his hands, looking around this rich room, to the windows bright with sunlight, then back to Çeda. “Are you listening to me? I was a coward,” he said. “I was a coward then, and I was a coward that night you came and found me on the Haddah.”

  “You were unconscious when I found you.”

  His hands balled into fists and he shook from head to toe. “Just listen. I’d already picked up the case from my contact at the southern harbor. He said to be careful, as there was word tribesmen were about, men sympathetic to the Kings, men who knew about Macide and the Moonless Host and even of the agreement Macide had forged with Juvaan, and thought ill of it. They were on us only moments after his warning. Juvaan’s man pulled his sword and attacked.” Emre shivered, as if the very thought of that night left him feeling cold and useless. “They attacked him, and he looked to me for help, but I couldn’t. I froze. Like a cold, gutless lizard. And then I ran. They killed him. They must have done. I don’t know. But when we’d made it back home—after you’d saved me again, Çeda—I swore on Thaash’s bright blade I’d never let myself be like that again.”

  “Emre . . .” Dear gods, she’d made so many mistakes.

  “What?”

  “I should never have fought Saadet without your permission.”

  Emre shook his head. “You were only trying to protect me.”

  “Yes, but I killed him. Without warning you.”

  “It doesn’t matter. That was lives ago.”

  “And now it’s led you to the Host.”

  “Çeda, I knew he was in Sharakhai.”

  Çeda sat there, stunned. “What?”

  “Tariq told me. He’d seen Saadet, and he told me about it, asked if I wanted him to help avenge Rafa. I told him I needed to think about it.” Emre laughed and threw up his arms. “I told him I needed to think about it. I would never have gone after him. Never. And when you did, it showed me just how great a coward I truly was. When you killed him in that pit, it freed me, Çeda.”

  “What do you mean it freed you?”

  “It was the first step toward rising above my fear.” Emre’s face had taken on a completely different quality. The change was startling. No longer did he look like a lost little boy. He was confident, bordering on fearless, and she could tell it wasn’t mere bravado. It was a look she’d seen in the pits, in hardened warriors who no longer cared what happened to themselves or to their bodies. It was also something wholly alien on Emre, a thing she would wipe from him if she could. It looked unnatural on him, but more than that, she knew it had been born in deep, indescribable pain. “I was there when they brought Lord Vesdi.”

  He said the words with pride, and it chilled her. This wasn’t the Emre she knew. Remembering what Davud had said about preparing the breathstone and what it needed, it took her only a few moments longer to reason what had come next. “They used Vesdi’s blood to feed the stone, didn’t they?”

  “You know?”

  “Enough of it, but not why. Or where they hope to find Hamzakiir.” She took a deep breath, committing herself to the next step. “Don’t you see, Emre? I might be able to help.” There was a part of her that didn’t want to usher him into danger, but she could no longer protect him, not to the detriment of all else. Besides, the longer she stared into his eyes, the more convinced she was that he wasn’t going to change his mind, and neither was she, so why not try to help one another?

  “They trust me to a degree, Çeda, but not enough to tell me that.”

  Çeda glanced at the doors, wondering how long Ramahd would give them. “Are you to go with them?”

  “Yes.”

  “And they told you nothing of it?”

  “Only that it would be another week before we left, and that the target was one of the palaces.”

  “They said that? One of the Kings’ palaces?”

  “Külasan’s desert palace, Macide said.”

  Çeda froze. “By the gods who shine above . . .”

  “What?” Emre asked. “What is it?”

  She rose to her feet, her mind working feverishly. At her presentation in the Sun Palace, Külasan had been the King wearing the crown made of red gold. The medallion in the center of the crown had tickled a memory, but she hadn’t been able to suss it out then. The moment Emre had said those words, though—Külasan’s desert palace—it had all came back in a rush. “Do you remember the night we went out to the blooming fields?”

  Emre stood as well. “I nearly died. I’m not likely to forget.”

  “When you were unconscious from the rattlewing bites, someone rode a horse—an akhala—out into the desert as if Goezhen himself were on his tail. He rode to the tree I climbed. You remember? The one with the stone wedged between the roots.”

  “It had a symbol on it.”

  “The same symbol that’s on his crown.”

  Emre frowned. “You’re sure? That was a long time ago, Çeda.”

  “I remember it like it was yesterday, and I saw it again two weeks ago, Emre. I’m sure of it. Külasan was wearing it. When he reached the tree, out in the desert, the roots reached up for him. They embraced him and drew him down into the sands. I’m sure it was Külasan, and he was being taken to his palace.”

  “How can you be so certain?”

  “He’s known as the Wandering King. The Lost King. This must be why. He goes to a place in the desert, hidden away from Sharakhai.”

  Emre’s eyes went distant. “That was on Beht Zha’ir, right? Why hide himself in a palace, if that’s where he went?�
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  “The poem: While far afield, his love unsealed, ’til Tulathan does loom. Then petals’ dust, like lovers’ lust, will draw him toward his tomb.”

  “Petals’ dust . . .”

  “The pollen.” Çeda began pacing back and forth near the windows. “He’s hiding to escape the pollen from the adichara blooms.”

  “But he’s practically in the blooming fields, maybe right underneath them. Wouldn’t that make it worse?”

  “The roots may have delivered him to a place deep underground, some chamber he had built for the purpose. Perhaps it’s been enchanted in some way, I don’t know, but after he’d risen from the desert, in the morning, he stepped into the adichara. The trees embraced him, and all his ills seemed to vanish. He stepped from those trees unharmed, a new man.”

  “By inverted thorn his skin was torn . . .”

  “And yet his strength did grow,” Çeda said, completing the verse.

  “But an entire palace out in the desert?”

  “We don’t know how large it is,” Çeda replied. “And don’t forget. Beht Ihman was four hundred years ago. How long would you wait to have a place to hide from the thing that threatens to lay you low every holy night?”

  Emre’s face screwed up, trying to remember something. “What was the first part?”

  “From golden dunes and ancient runes, the King of glittering stone. There was something King Ihsan let slip in the Sun Palace about glittering stones. I knew I’d read about them, but it took me a few days to remember: to the southwest of the Shangazi, the ancestral homeland of Tribe Rafik has dull stones that can be found littering the ground in places. They look like eggs, and when you break them open, the insides are thick with gemstones. And there are dunes there tinged gold, especially when the wind gusts and the blowing sand reflects the sunlight.”

  “Which accounts for the King of glittering stone and golden dunes, but what about ancient runes?”

  Çeda recalled her readings night after night in the collegia cellars. “On the low plains before the mountains, there are massive runes cut there, each symbol as large as a palace, and in a language that’s no longer in use. Many believe they were written by the first gods or their disciples, in the days before they fled this place. It all fits.”