Beyond the Black Door

by A. M. Strickland

  One of the soldiers, his blade gleaming red, called out, “Kamai Nuala?”

  I dropped all the way to the floor, fist in my mouth to keep even my ragged breathing from reaching him. Why me? was all I could think. Why not Hallan or Razim as well?

  The soldier tried to move for the stairs, but another caught his arm, pulling him back, shaking his head. “If the girl was in the house, she’s not now. She wouldn’t have kept quiet through all that. Let’s go.”

  He gestured at a third soldier, who poured a clear liquid all over the floor, including the base of the stairs, flinging it on the curtains and furniture while he was at it.

  They weren’t going to leave anything behind.

  They knocked over a standing candelabra, and all the guards backed out the front doors and into the evening as everything went up in flames.

  3

  STRAΝGE COMFORTS

  I dashed to the top landing to go down to my mother, but the heat was sudden, immense, like running into a wall. I leapt back involuntarily, away from the fire, my skirts snagging as I scrambled back down the upstairs hall on hands and knees. Thick black smoke was already pouring up after me, churning across the ceiling’s bright mosaics like river rapids over stones, swallowing them. I didn’t make the decision to run from it. I just did.

  There was a second staircase the servants used—had used. They were all dead now. When I wrenched on the handle at the base of it, the door didn’t budge. It was supposed to open into a back entryway, with a door just beyond it that I’d often used to sneak out. But the soldiers must have blockaded it.

  I ran back up the stairs and had to drop into a crouch to breathe. Coughing, I crawled into my room and kicked the door shut.

  Other than the haze in the air, it was peaceful, candles casting a soft glow over the teal and black spirals of the rug, the heap of silk pillows on the bed, and the statue of smiling, serene Heshara. Like my entire life wasn’t burning down around me. I flung open the window shutters.

  The grounds below were quiet in the deepening twilight. The air still hung heavy and hot from the day, but it was only the weakest whisper of the heat behind me. A horse whinnied shrilly somewhere far away. Perhaps the men were gone, but it didn’t matter; I’d still break my ankle if I jumped. I couldn’t even see my landing. I spun back to the room, looking for anything I could use to climb down, but froze when I saw the smoke flooding in under the crack of my bedroom door, forcing its way in.

  There wasn’t time. I had nowhere to go. If the black door had suddenly appeared in the waking world, I would have thrown it open and dashed inside to escape.

  “Kamai!” came a hoarse shout.

  I turned back to the window, squinting and coughing. It was too dark to see clearly, but a shape slipped out of the shadows of our garden.

  “Jump, Kamai, and I’ll catch you!”

  I wasn’t sure who it was, but I didn’t think twice. I tossed my legs over the sill, only making sure my skirts were clear, and then shoved myself out into the night.

  It wasn’t like in the stories, where the brave rescuer catches his lady and sets her on her feet in the same smooth motion. I may have been slight, but I hit hard. My cheek smashed into a shoulder, my skin tore against the studs of leather bracers, and my delicate silk dress ripped at the waist. My weight dragged both of us to the ground, knocking the breath from my lungs.

  So I couldn’t scream when I saw it was Razim who’d caught me.

  He sat me upright, his arm firm and steady around my back despite our collision. “Are you hurt? Can you move?”

  I opened my mouth, but only to gasp and cough. My mother’s words echoed in my mind. Dangerous. Stay away from him.

  “Come on,” he said, lifting me to my shaky feet, while he stood tall and strong from the years he’d grown and trained since boyhood. “I’m not sure what Marin did to bring this down on our heads, but you’ll be safe if we hurry. The Twilighters will still take you in, even if you’re not one of us.”

  The Twilighters. My mother said they were behind this. And Razim was one of them. That was why my mother’s killers hadn’t called his name, at least, along with mine: he was already with them. And now he was likely trying to finish what they’d started, to lure me closer in order to kill me, or else this rescue attempt was some other sort of trick to betray me to them.

  My mother had also told me to run. So even though it shamed me later, I did.

  Razim caught my arm before I’d made it five steps and hauled me back. “Where are you going? The wagon is this way!”

  “Let me go!” I screeched, trying to wrench my arm out of his grip.

  He held me tight, lifting his other hand in the darkness to his lips. “Quiet, idiot! Are you trying to get yourself killed?”

  All at once, I quit pulling away and turned on him, like I should have from the beginning. “Why do you care? You want me dead anyway. This is all your fault!”

  “What? No, those were the king’s soldiers—”

  “Anyone can hire soldiers or even dress like them, especially the Twilighters!” I spat. “I’m not an idiot, but I would be one to believe they’re not responsible!”

  Razim squinted. “Why do you have reason to fear the guild? What did your fool mother do to—?” He cut off when one of my hands caught him on the cheek, and the other clawed for his eyes. “Kamai, stop!”

  I didn’t stop. I shrieked like a wild animal and threw myself upon him, hitting, scratching, and kicking. Somewhere in there were sobs, and a grief that was eating me alive. I would tear Razim to pieces with my bare hands if it meant I could somehow escape it, reverse what had happened. Bring my mother back to life.

  Razim seized my wrists, pinning them together, and tried to drag me with him. I bent and bit his hand as hard as I could.

  He shouted a curse and let me go.

  I took off in a blind sprint in the opposite direction. I didn’t know where I was going, only that I couldn’t go with him. He was one of them—the men who’d killed my mother and set fire to the villa. I wasn’t sure why he wanted me to follow, but the reason couldn’t be good for me.

  As if to prove me right, Razim slammed into me, bringing me to the ground. His weight crushed my ribs, twisting my wrist underneath me.

  His hand gripped the back of my neck, holding me down, and he leaned over and growled in my ear, “Gods, Kamai, you stupid girl! Fighting me now will get you nothing. Come with me, and be quiet.”

  I screamed into the dirt as loudly as I’d wanted to when my mother had been stabbed through the heart.

  He clamped a hand over my mouth, pinching my lip hard against my teeth. I tried to twist away and claw at him, but he swung his leg over me, sitting on my lower back and pinning my arms between us. He kept hold of my mouth with one hand while fumbling with the other. I gasped and tried to bite him again, without success. In seconds, he tossed a handkerchief next to my face and then let me go only long enough to block my shouts with the cloth instead. He cinched it brutally behind my head. I sobbed and gagged, vaguely hoping I wouldn’t vomit into the handkerchief.

  “Kamai, you’re making me do this,” he whispered, his voice furious. His weight shifted again, and something whipped the warm air—his belt as he yanked it off. Hot, it was so hot with him on top of me, and I could barely breathe to fight. I felt suffocated by his proximity, but it was too late—his hands found mine in the darkness, and he bound my wrists tightly behind my back with the leather strap.

  He rolled off me then and heaved me to my feet, seizing my elbow like a vise. That didn’t stop me from struggling, so much he practically had to carry me under his arm.

  The blow to the back of my head stopped me, finally, as we made it into a dense stand of palms. I’d been bent forward, kicking and writhing, so I didn’t see where it came from. It wasn’t Razim, since both of his hands were occupied. I didn’t have a chance to look around as the pain blinded me. I only saw the back of a covered wagon.

  Razim let go of me, and I f
ell to my knees, and then on my face since I couldn’t catch myself on my hands. I rolled onto my side, blinking away the sweat and dirt, to see Razim seize a man by the shirt … only to shove him away.

  “Don’t touch her,” Razim snarled.

  I heard the smirk in the other man’s voice even if I couldn’t see it. “It looked like you needed help. Ranta’s tits, what a match! I would have rescued you from your fierce little assailant earlier, but I didn’t want to draw any more attention to our position than she already has.”

  “Gods.” Razim wiped sweat, and maybe blood, from his brow, and looked down at me. “She must be mad with grief.”

  “Doesn’t she know who her friends are? Stupid girl.”

  “Don’t call her that,” Razim said. “Whatever her fool mother did to get herself killed, Kamai must have watched her die. It can’t have been easy.”

  “Your father is dead too, and yet you’re holding it together.”

  My breath caught. They’d killed Hallan as well? Horror rose with the bile in my throat.

  Razim raised a hand, his voice tight. “Don’t, Nyaren. I … it’s too new.”

  “Have it your way. Just know that every one of us have sacrificed a lot for the guild. We’ve all lost someone, but that’s just the price we have to pay. She’d best learn the same lesson too.”

  Hallan … Hallan might have been only pretending to be married to my mother, but I’d known him all my life and he was the closest thing I had to a father. A sob lodged in my chest, a terrible whine escaping from behind my gag.

  In contrast, Razim was just standing there, when the men who’d murdered his father were nearby—maybe even right in front of him, in the form of this Nyaren. It didn’t matter if the Twilighters would spare my life in exchange for my compliance, if their offer wasn’t just a trick to discover what I knew before they killed me. That wasn’t a trade that I, or anyone, should be willing to make.

  And yet Razim must have made such a bargain for himself, if he wasn’t already their creature through and through. In either case, he wasn’t just dangerous. He was inhuman. I thought I’d known him, but I’d been so very wrong. How could I know anyone? That was a lesson my mother had tried to teach me; I’d just learned it too late.

  But perhaps I’d learned a final lesson, even if it was too late for her: Never fall in love. Because this was apparently what happened when you did.

  Nyaren turned my way. “Still making noise, is she? Is she even worth all this trouble? Although she is a pretty thing, I’ll give you that.”

  Razim was in his face again. “She’s mine. I told you not to touch her. Never touch her.”

  A pretty thing. His. Maybe that was the only reason I wasn’t dead. He’d finally managed to claim me.

  I’d always viewed my lack of desire like a stone in the path of becoming like my mother. Now it would be a stone that I would use to build a wall between me and people like this, so they could never touch me. I would refit my brokenness to be my armor.

  If I ever escaped.

  Half rolling, half inching along the ground like a caterpillar, I tried to drag myself away from them both.

  “Get control of yourself.” Nyaren shoved Razim back. “So she’s yours. Understood. Now do you want to get her in the wagon or let her crawl away?”

  They both came for me. Razim took my shoulders, his fingers digging into my arms as he climbed into the back of the wagon with me, while Nyaren took my legs. I thrashed, trying to kick Nyaren in the face, without success. At least he let go of me once I was inside. I kicked the side of the wagon instead, over and over, my feet pounding against the wooden slats like a giant’s knock. I bruised my heels through my thin slippers, but I didn’t care.

  “She is a wild one,” Nyaren said. “I didn’t think you’d need it for your lady love, but there’s some mohol in the satchel there.”

  Razim drew me to his chest to hold me still, trapping my legs with his and leaning against the front wall of the wagon. His skin was hot, sticky, touching too much of mine. “Shh,” he said in my ear—gently, somehow, after all the violence. Comforting. I wanted to vomit more than ever. He leaned, reaching with one arm, and pulled a small bottle from a leather bag.

  I couldn’t see clearly in the darkness, but I knew well what mohol was. I struggled harder, sobbing, but it was no use. He slipped part of the soggy handkerchief up over my nose, uncapped the bottle with his teeth, and poured some in his palm. Then he pressed his hand over my nose and mouth.

  I had time to thrash once more before the dizziness hit me in a wave.

  “I’ve got you, Kamai” was the last thing I heard in the waking world.

  * * *

  For a while, I couldn’t open my eyes, not even in the sleeping realm. Unlike the diluted tonics my mother had occasionally given me, straight essence of mohol kept me too far under at first. I didn’t know how much time was passing, but I had the vague, drugged sense of it slipping by in my muddled nightmares.

  When I next opened my eyes, there was no covered wagon around me, only walls. They were the thick gray stone of an impenetrable keep. Torches burned in sconces every few feet to keep the shadows at bay. I was alone, standing in a surprisingly warm hallway, and wearing a clean black dress, darker than ever, with no stains or rips. This wasn’t the waking world, then. But it wasn’t my clearing. The air had a familiar clean, woody scent—Razim’s soap.

  Razim had held me as I’d passed out, and he must have gone to sleep next to me in the wagon. That would mean this was his soul, his nehym. I wasn’t dizzy here, or sweaty and battered and bound. But I was just as afraid, and the weight of my grief was enough to crush me. Despite the rich tapestries lining the hall, the lush burgundy rug under my feet, the warmth in the air, this place felt like a prison. I spun a full circle, hugging myself and quaking like a palm frond in the wind.

  I tried to wake up, but I couldn’t. The mohol had relaxed its grip on me, but not enough for my spirit to come fully back to my body. The mind was always less affected by sleep than the flesh, which was how soulwalkers could do what we did.

  For so long, I’d wondered what Razim’s soul looked like. Now I only wanted to close my eyes again. Anything but explore, which would feel like drawing closer to him than I already was. But there was no way I could let myself slip back into dreams; I was too vulnerable, too afraid to just let go and drift. And yet, without my own nehym or the ability to wake up, I had nowhere else to go. I could have found the door out to my clearing, but I didn’t think my legs would carry me that far. They were already threatening to buckle.

  I wanted to curl up in a corner and hide, but I couldn’t stomach letting the walls of Razim’s soul touch me. I would have rather stood in one spot and not moved.

  It was then that the black door appeared.

  I hurtled straight for it, as if running into its embrace. Somehow, for the first time in my life, it was a source of comfort. It was familiar—something I’d seen my entire life, no matter the soul. It was something I’d so long associated with my mother, even if it was only through her prohibition of it.

  I wasn’t stupid enough to open it. Not yet. But I threw myself against it and slid down its length, pressure building in my throat and behind my eyes.

  Hallan … Zadhi … oh, gods, Mama. Mama, Mama … There, with my shoulder pressed against the smooth, warm surface and my knees hugged to my chest, a cry ripped through me. I sobbed until I couldn’t anymore.

  Eventually, I grew calm enough to see straight. I was every bit in the same place—alone, in danger, and with no one I could trust—but I felt empty, at least, if not at peace. Blinking swollen eyes, I looked down past my arms, to where something rested on the dark stone next to my foot:

  A single red rose petal. Just thin enough to have been slipped under the black door.

  4

  CREEPIΝG THIΝGS

  The sight of the rose petal jarred me so much that I jumped awake. When I opened my eyes in the waking world, the air was cool with
deep night and I was alone under a blanket—but not alone in the wagon. Across from me, Razim leaned against the sideboard, broad shoulders slumped, arms resting on his knees, head hanging forward. He was definitely asleep.

  No one else was with us. We weren’t moving. I turned my head, cushioned on empty feed sacks, and heard logs snapping and saw the soft glow of a campfire through the wagon’s hide covering. Nyaren was probably right outside. I had no idea where we were, but we’d traveled far enough that there was no evidence of the inferno that had been my home.

  Nyaren was likely keeping watch out there and Razim in here. The bottle of mohol sat at his side, his handkerchief folded by it. It was too dangerous to give mohol to a person already under its influence—they might never awaken—so he was probably supposed to watch for signs that I was coming around.

  Razim had retied my wrists with proper rope, probably for my comfort—a kindness I would make sure he regretted—though he’d also bound my ankles. Even with my hands before me, it would have been impossible to free myself without my mother’s gift.

  I had to go through quiet contortions, but I was able to reach into my bodice and pull out the slim, wooden-handled pocketknife she’d given me for my tenth birthday. It was made for a man’s pocket, of course, not my makeshift one, but my mother had always insisted I carry it nestled between my breasts.

  My mother had trained me well, if not for this exact scenario. I knew how to move silently, how to trick people in darkness, and how to free myself without looking. My hands contorted again to pop open the blade. I slipped it between my wrists and sawed at my bindings. With the tension and the sharpness of the blade, the rope parted like string. Carefully drawing my knees to my chest, I made short work of the ties around my ankles too.

  My skirt went next. The silk was lightweight, meant for the heat of the day, but voluminous, and it would only snag or slow me down. It was barely attached in the front, where it had ripped at the waist as I’d fallen into Razim’s arms. I finished it off, leaving only the thin lining beneath, which was fortunately as dark as the rest of the dress—the better to move unseen. Slowly, barely breathing, I slid out of the skirt and out from under the blanket.