Twelve Kings in Sharakhai

by Bradley P. Beaulieu

  His knees were drawn up against his chest. He listened to the wind whistle, watched the swirls of sand whip past, looking like waves in the sea, crashing against the shore. But what did he know? He’d never been to the sea and was sure he never would. Not in this life. He was a gutter wren. Always had been. Always would be.

  He waited as the day grew dimmer. He was starting to think he shouldn’t have gone to Hamid after all. Hamid had been ill-pleased by Emre’s request, but Emre had insisted it was necessary. It was information Macide would want to know.

  “Then tell me,” Hamid had said.

  “No,” Emre had replied. “I can only tell Macide.”

  Hamid, with deceptive casualness, had pointed with his chin to Emre’s wounds. “What happened to you?”

  “That’s what I need to talk to him about.”

  “I don’t like it, Emre.”

  “Even so,” Emre had said, refusing to back down.

  In the end, Hamid had nodded and sent him away, pausing only to ask where, assuming he assented, Macide could find him.

  “Bent Man,” Emre had replied.

  Hamid had stared at him, perhaps wondering if he was serious, and then he’d laughed and nodded. “Very well, Emre. It’s your grave.”

  Emre saw forms walking through the sand, which blew even harder now. They darkened and formed into a group of older wrens, seven of them—five boys, two girls. They pulled the veils and scarves from their faces and headed for the incline that would take them up toward Emre, but they stopped upon realizing someone was there.

  One of the girls broke away, taking a few steps closer to Emre. “This is our place.” She and the boy who came to stand just behind her were both nearly Emre’s age.

  “Not today it isn’t,” Emre replied.

  Two more of them fanned out beside the other two, their faces intent. “You heard her. Move on.”

  Emre didn’t. Instead, he pulled his knife and held it, blade against forearm, and stared into the girl’s eyes. He’d seen her look before. False bravado. He knew it well. He’d used it nearly every day for the past six years. Not anymore, though. He’d changed. He didn’t quite know how, but he had, and in some fundamental way.

  He stared into the girl’s eyes and held his knife, part of him hoping they would attack, if only so he could release some small amount of the endless store of rage that had been building within him for years.

  He didn’t know what the girl saw in him—perhaps a place she was afraid to touch within her own soul—but in the end she looked to the others and said, “Come on. I’m hungry.” And off she went, back into the sandstorm.

  The others looked from her to Emre, but then followed her, and Emre was alone once more. Though not for long. Only a few moments later, another form resolved from the amber-streaked winds. A tall man with a forked beard and a turban with a veil pulled tight across his face. When he saw Emre, he pulled the veil free. It fluttered in the wind like a child playing snap the snake.

  He nodded to Emre as he approached, his smile a shallow one, a knowing one. He didn’t say anything, though, not until he was sitting next to Emre and the two of them were looking out over the riverbed. “I used to come here as a child.”

  Emre was surprised. “I thought you were raised in the desert.”

  “I was, but my father brought me to Sharakhai from time to time.”

  “Why?”

  “Why what?” Macide asked.

  “Why did he come to Sharakhai?”

  Macide shrugged, an unexpectedly childlike gesture from such an imposing man. “For many reasons. He tells me he hates Sharakhai, that he would burn it to the ground if he could, but all men who see Sharakhai cannot help but be impressed, cannot help but be drawn to some part of it. I think that was why he came, to experience the thing he hated, like pressing your tongue against a canker.”

  The wind blew fiercely for a time, the sound of it like a lost soul, shrieking its pain to an uncaring world.

  “Why did you ask me here, Emre?”

  “So that you could help me.”

  “You are newly beneath my wing, and you summon me to ask for favors?”

  “It will help you as well.”

  “So much mystery, young falcon. I’m intrigued.”

  “You wish to capture Hamzakiir, and you hope to find him unguarded in Külasan’s palace. Is it not so?”

  Emre tried to read Macide’s expression, but Macide simply watched the riverbed and nodded. “It is so.”

  “There is one who will go there tomorrow on Beht Zha’ir. She goes to kill Külasan.”

  Macide frowned, his eyes blinking away a bit of gathered sand. “Killing a King is no simple matter.”

  “Even so, that’s what she plans to do. And I would help her if I could.”

  “How?”

  “By drawing the King’s attention away. Or his guards. Or both.”

  “Drawing them toward us.”

  “Yes.”

  “You know that my father has plans for us beyond Beht Zha’ir. You know there is much to do if our mission in Külasan’s palace is successful.”

  “Of course, but how often might we have a chance to kill one of the Kings?”

  “How? How can she hope to kill one of the Kings when so many others have failed?”

  “Using the secrets she found.”

  “Secrets?”

  “Secrets from the night of Beht Ihman, long thought buried or forgotten.”

  “She has some trove of information that no one else has? Some scroll? Some placid mere to grant her such foresight?”

  Emre considered lying, but there was power in Çeda’s story, power that a man like Macide would recognize. “There were riddles, hidden in a book of her mother’s. Riddles passed to her even after her mother’s death, as if the gods themselves wanted her to have them.”

  “And who is this woman? What is her name?”

  “Çeda.” He’d thought of lying, but surely he knew of Çeda already from Hamid.

  “Çedamihn Ahyanesh’ala.”

  “Yes,” he said, surprised that he would know her full name.

  Macide was quiet for a time. He stared out, arms crossed and laid across his knees like a bridge. There was a glint in his eye. A tug at the corner of his lips. “Very well, Emre. We will go. We will go on Beht Zha’ir, and we will see if your Çeda can do what she hopes to do.”

  “And we’ll have what we want as well.”

  “Yes,” he said, patting Emre’s knee. “We will.”

  With that he stood and began taking measured steps down the stone slope, but he stopped when Emre called out to him.

  “Wait!” The way this had gone . . . It had all been so easy. “Do you know Çeda? Did you know her mother?”

  At this, Macide turned to face Emre. There was a look in his eye—a wry look, a knowing look, a tricky look as well, one that gave a small glimpse into the emotions roiling inside him. “I very well may have, Emre.” He turned and resumed his trek down to the riverbed. “I very well may have.”

  The wind howling around him, Macide strode along the Haddah as if he had not a care in the world. And the blowing sands seemed to lift him away.

  AT NOON ON THE EVE of Beht Zha’ir, a message arrived for King Ihsan, summoning him to Eventide, the palace of Kiral, the King of Kings. He went as bid, traveling up to the highest of the palaces on Tauriyat, reaching its central courtyard as Kiral himself paced at its center with his greatsword Sunshearer sheathed at his side. Navakahm, the Lord Commander of the Silver Spears, a veteran with three decades of service to the Kings, stood facing him.

  Standing might be too generous a word for the Lord of the Guard, Ihsan decided. Swaying was more like it. Shuddering. He was a bloody mess from the attentions of King Cahil, their self-elected, baby-faced confessor, who stood behind Kiral with a
bored-looking expression and hands clasped behind his back. The man hadn’t even bothered to wash before coming here. His hands were still bloody from his time with Navakahm. He enjoyed his work altogether too much, and it was often a waste, the things Cahil did, electing to torture their prisoners as a first option, rather than giving Zeheb and Ihsan time to wheedle the information from them and their allies. Too often Cahil’s eagerness tipped their hand to their enemies, but try telling that to Cahil, or Kiral—a man quick to anger, quicker to act, rarely sifting through the implications to see what might lie beneath the surface.

  King Onur might have come—the Spears were his to command, after all—but the King of Sloth had long since given up caring what happened outside of his own palace, and Kiral had long since given up caring what Onur thought of anything.

  Cahil had apparently finished with Navakahm, using whatever methods he felt necessary to determine whether the man was telling the truth when he said he’d had no idea that Külasan’s first son, Lord Vesdi, had been targeted by the Moonless Host, and, further, that he’d uncovered few clues to where Lord Vesdi had been taken since his abduction two weeks ago—or, more importantly, why he’d been taken. Making matters worse, Navakahm also had no leads regarding the attack on the House of Maidens.

  None of this came as any particular surprise. Zeheb himself had little to report. The Host were becoming particularly adept at foiling his abilities, and he wasn’t a man who could claim to be infallible in any case—even the King of Whispers could not bend his ear to all that was whispered in every corner of Sharakhai.

  Still, whatever limitations he might have, Zeheb was an indispensable ally. It was why Ihsan had chosen him decades ago and eventually told him of his plans. There was some risk in this but, unlike Kiral, Ihsan recognized that he could do none of what he wished alone. And besides, Ihsan had known Zeheb’s answer long before he’d broached the subject. He might be good at keeping secrets, but there wasn’t a man or woman in the Great Shangazi who Ihsan couldn’t read or turn to his own purposes given enough time. It was a thing he was particularly proud of, especially with a specimen like Zeheb, who had once been the most faithful to the Twelve Kings and their common cause.

  No longer, though.

  Time deals all wounds, as they say.

  Zeheb’s slow change of heart was all the more satisfying for the decades of care it had taken—the subtle lies, the reveal of betrayals, however small, the revelation that the house they had built would not last forever. Bit by bit Zeheb had come to see things as Ihsan wanted him to.

  And make no mistake, having Zeheb by his side was essential, as was remaining a confidant to Yusam so that he could guide the Jade-eyed King in his readings, an objective as necessary as remaining in Kiral’s good graces. To move forward without these three Kings—Kiral, Yusam, and Zeheb—would mean a quick end, not merely to Ihsan’s plans, but to Ihsan himself. And he had no desire, the gods of the desert as his witnesses, to submit himself to Cahil’s attentions.

  In the courtyard, Kiral glanced back at Ihsan and Zeheb, then drew Sunshearer, his massive two-handed shamshir, and regarded the bloody, beaten man before him. As dissatisfied as he might be with Zeheb and Ihsan for their lack of answers, he had no opportunity to vent his frustration on them. Navakahm, on the other hand, was a different matter.

  Kiral stared intently at the heavily jowled man, his jaw working so hard his pockmarked skin rolled like the dunes. Sunshearer swung lazily back and forth, as if the King of Kings was itching to use it. “Do you have any last words?”

  “Only that I know I have failed, and that I swear to take up the sword for you once more in the farther fields.”

  A fool’s oath, Ihsan thought. Who knows what the farther fields will bring? It might have been that Navakahm, having crossed to the other world first, would have reign over Kiral, but no longer, not after a pledge like that. The gods have ears, my friend, even the first gods—especially the first gods—and they might just hold you to your oath.

  Kiral seemed to care little for Navakahm’s oath. He’d heard much the same over the centuries, from men and women more loyal to him, and considerably more gifted, than Navakahm. Little chance that Kiral would give him a place of honor once he’d reached the other side.

  But Kiral still followed custom. With his free hand he grasped the back of Navakahm’s neck and pulled him forward to place a kiss upon the crown of his head. Then he stepped back and lifted Sunshearer, the sword glinting in the sunlight, and with a mighty swing of both hands drew it swiftly across Navakahm’s neck.

  Like a vase spilled from a pedestal, the Lord of the Guard’s head tipped from his body, rolling down along his frame before his headless corpse fell like a drunken reveler.

  Kiral turned to Ihsan and Zeheb and strode toward them. He took up the bolt of white cloth Cahil handed him and wiped his sword clean of the bright scarlet smear along its length. He may have meant it as a message to Zeheb and Ihsan—this dark theater with Cahil and Navakahm—but if so, it was ineffective at best and at worst cemented Ihsan’s feelings that things could not remain as they were. Ihsan cared little for Kiral’s innuendos. He only wished to stay close enough to know what Kiral would do, which way he would turn. Kiral held much sway, the most of any one King, so Ihsan pasted on a face that would look as properly chagrined as the King would expect and then waited for the King of Kings to speak.

  “What news?” Kiral asked. “Have you found Külasan’s son?”

  “I bear dark tidings,” Zeheb said before Ihsan could say a word. “We’ve found Vesdi. He was discovered by one of our patrol ships a league out of Sharakhai, in the center of the Haddah’s riverbed.”

  Zeheb had told him nothing of this, so Ihsan didn’t have to feign surprise. He hated surprises, but they hadn’t spoken since the day before, and he trusted it was merely timing that had prevented Zeheb from warning him.

  “It’s a ford the royal patrol ships cross often,” Zeheb continued, “so easy enough to spot.”

  Kiral’s jaw worked, his eyes calculating. “They wanted us to find him.”

  Zeheb nodded. “Adichara vines were braided like a rope and wrapped around his feet, and the mark of the lost tribe was carved into his forehead.”

  Kiral’s eyes widened. His head jerked back. It took much to surprise Kiral, but this did, and it surprised Ihsan as well. The assassin, the mother of their young new Maiden, had been marked in the very same way, by Cahil himself. It had been a foolish thing; a warning to those who would oppose us, Cahil had said after he’d hung her before the gates of Tauriyat. But such things had a way of coming home to roost.

  Kiral turned to Ihsan. “A reprisal?”

  “Of course,” Ihsan replied, bowing his head. “But why warn us?”

  Kiral’s broad chin jutted forward. “And why now, so many years later, on the eve of Beht Zha’ir?”

  Zeheb shrugged, a ponderous and awkward figure next to well-muscled Kiral. “I cannot say, other than to note that the Moonless Host have proven themselves patient.”

  Ihsan found himself more intrigued than he’d been in a long while. This had something to do with their new Maiden or he was a beggar’s son. And surely it had something to do with Külasan too, else why take his son? He thought on it for a moment, and came to one conclusion. If he was right, it wouldn’t do to have Kiral worrying for Külasan overly much, especially tonight and perhaps not for the next few nights. “The woman who last wore that sign,” he said, echoing what the others were surely thinking, “stole into Tauriyat to attack one of our own. Who’s to say it won’t happen again?”

  Kiral frowned. “What, an attack where we’re strongest?”

  “Had this happened any other night, what would we have done? We would have scoured the city for answers. We would spread ourselves thin looking for clues. Were we to do that tonight—as I suspect the Moonless Host hope we will—it would give them exactly what they
’re looking for. We draw our attention to the city when their true goal lies within the House of Kings.”

  Kiral looked to Zeheb, who played it well. He nodded noncommittally, as if what Ihsan had said sounded plausible but he hadn’t yet had time to digest it. “They are becoming more bold. They may have done this to bait us.”

  “Where is Külasan?” Kiral asked.

  “By now, he’ll be taking Vesdi to the tombs beneath his palace, to grieve in peace.”

  Were it any but Külasan, a King would have waited in Sharakhai and grieved properly, but Külasan’s particular sensitivities made him shun Sharakhai, especially around the Holy Night. He would have done exactly what Zeheb said: taken his son with him to wait out the night and grieve as he chose, well away from the other Kings.

  “It is a safe enough place for him, Kiral,” Ihsan said.

  “We’ll send him more men.”

  “As you wish, but we have work of our own to do.”

  Kiral bristled. “Will you cower in your palace, Ihsan?”

  “Cower? No. But I’ll prepare a proper welcome for those who might come. As should we all.”

  This had the desired effect. Kiral, as did all of the Kings, including Ihsan himself, wanted to strike back at the Moonless Host. The only difference was Ihsan could wait. The time to deal with the Host would come, but today, there were others he needed to focus his attention on.

  Kiral gave Ihsan a half-lidded expression that bordered on disappointment. “Best you get to it, then.”

  No one could fail to recognize this as the insult it was, but Ihsan merely bowed his head and smiled. “And so I shall.”

  THE SUN HAD ONLY RECENTLY SET, but the moons had risen full and bright as Çeda rode at the rear of a line of six tall horses. Zaïde rode at the lead, then Sümeya and Kameyl, followed by Melis, Jalize, and finally Çeda. Zaïde wore her white Matron’s dress, while the rest, including Çeda, wore the black dresses of the Maidens.

  Çeda’s horse, a black gelding that fought the reins with every plodding step it took, shook its head and whinnied until Çeda tightened the reins once more. “Foul beast,” Çeda muttered under her breath. She’d never liked horses, and they’d never liked her. She’d much rather be riding her zilij over the sands than a willful creature who could throw her the moment she wasn’t looking.