Beyond the Black Door

by A. M. Strickland

  Giddy whispers rose all around. “Ramir” was even more mysterious and desired in court circles than me, sharing only his music and nothing else with patrons. Rumor had it there was a secret love he had been pining over … and now everyone in this room likely suspected who it was.

  Zeniri appointed himself the judge and set about shuffling and dealing cards. The four suits were as the name of the game suggested: the three Gods and the King’s Court. Heshara’s card, her midnight hair bleeding into the black sky and her white arms cradling the full moon, was followed by the seven other phases of the moon in her suit. Tain’s card, the sun burning like a halo around his dark face, fire in his eyes, led the seven Guardian Constellations he’d sent to protect Heshara. Their daughter Ranta’s card, her soft brown arms proffering a bouquet of roses with a map of Eopia behind her, shared her seven bounties, among them Water, the Harvest, and Iron. The King’s card was accompanied by seven members of his court, including the Queen Consort, the Heir Apparent, the Priest, and so on, classically depicted to resemble no one in particular.

  There were many ways to win, such as simply having a hand with higher-ranking cards than your opponent. But when it came to the Waning Crescent in Heshara’s suit versus the Guardian Constellation Ktema in Tain’s, or the Courtesan in the King’s suit, or Wood in Ranta’s, all with the numerical value of two, who took the hand? That was where the game got interesting—and why a judge was crucial. It was a matter of arguing your case, spinning the best story for the judge’s ears. Razim had never been as good as me at Gods and Kings, but perhaps he’d been practicing.

  The thought of Razim winning the game spurred me to use Vehyn’s gift almost immediately. The look in his eyes had matured with the rest of him over the months, now possessing the deep heat of a well-tended bed of coals. His goal, his desire, was obvious. As he bent over the five cards in his hand, ready to match them one by one against mine, my lips parted and I let out a slow, shallow breath, exactly as Vehyn had taught me. No one would have seen the shadow in the air even if they were looking for it, or have seen Razim breathe it in, his dark eyes clouding almost imperceptibly.

  Vehyn might not have been Moholos, but he’d made me somewhat like the mythical folk figure. After our exchange, an exhale from me could put people to sleep, or, if used delicately, into a light trance they couldn’t even remember falling into afterward. They could still function, but a part of their spirit was slumbering, leaving their soul unguarded and exposed. The gift was a powerful one. Very. It didn’t surprise me that Vehyn had been reluctant to give it to me.

  It also gave me the ability to lapse into my own trance that I could snap out of in an instant. My vision blurring, I pretended to focus on my cards. This wasn’t like exploring a soul, walking through the halls of a nehym. It was more like peering through a window from outside, with a curtain billowing across it, and glimpsing only small flashes that overlapped with the waking world. But it was all I needed when I knew exactly what I was looking for and how to call it forward.

  That didn’t mean it was easy. Not only did I have to keep up the pretense that I was playing cards, but even within my trance, my focus was split. Part of me gleaned which cards Razim held in his hands, while the other concentrated on the question:

  What happened the night of the fire?

  The answer floated up like words in a book for me to read through the window into Razim’s soul:

  I returned from the wine house to find the villa aflame. The Twilighters had given me word, but barely, slipping a piece of parchment under my mug of wine.

  Don’t try to save him, the note said. He’s already dead. But she isn’t.

  I rode home as fast as I could, whipping my favorite horse to a foaming frenzy. Nyaren followed with a wagon, at a slower but still reckless pace.

  The horse would have died for me, just like I would have died for my father. But the Twilighters’ messenger was right; my father was already dead … and my mother, the queen consort, soon to follow him.

  But Kamai wasn’t. I had to make sure she was safe and take her away from there.

  It told me so much … and not enough. I searched with another question: Were the Twilighters responsible?

  It was more of a feeling than a thought. No.

  “Play your first cards,” Zeniri said, snapping me out of my trance. I had to keep from blinking and gasping, as if surfacing from underwater. I was still getting the trick of it, and what I’d discovered from Razim was so surprising I could barely breathe.

  Razim had been telling the truth. He didn’t think the Twilight Guild was behind our parents’ deaths.

  There was no way to signal Zeniri. I would just have to tell him later. He knew what I was doing, even if he didn’t understand it. Lenara hadn’t, either. My ability frightened them, but I hadn’t seen any means of disguising it, other than to imply it was a form of hypnotism I’d always had. There were, of course, street performers and miracle workers who claimed such powers, but the clergy had always denied their existence. Now I was living proof of the ability. Only Nikha knew it had come from Vehyn. Zeniri and Lenara weren’t sure what to make of it, but they were cautiously pleased to have me use it in the service of the Keepers.

  Razim set down the second-highest card in Tain’s suit, with a numerical value of seven: Guardian Constellation Pusha. He was hoping to flush out my highest cards. I played my weakest card: one of Ranta’s bounties, Wine, with a value of one.

  “Cheers,” I said, receiving laughter in response. Zeniri held a hand out to Razim, giving him the point.

  The next round, at the same time, Razim threw down Ranta, and I, Heshara. Both goddesses. Both with an equal value of eight … technically.

  “The daughter is always subservient to the mother,” I said, and Razim, like usual, struggled to come up with a suitably clever response. He also looked a little off-balance from the strength of my card, and perhaps the fog of Vehyn’s gift. Zeniri gave me the point.

  Now, knowing I likely couldn’t match such a high card, Razim played the King. It was technically of the same rank as the Gods, but that argument never held up with any judge who didn’t wish to anger the gods. A lucky hand, he had. Mine would have to be equally lucky. I needed either Tain to match him, or …

  I played Darkness next. The card, filled with inky black whorls, didn’t belong to any suit. It made the number of cards in the deck thirty-three and was considered both lucky and unlucky. It supposedly didn’t bode well for one’s game, but it neutralized any card that wasn’t a God—including the King.

  Our audience gasped. What I’d done—killing the King—was considered especially daring and, to say the least, impolite.

  Razim’s lips thinned and Zeniri gave me the point. Now I was ahead, two to one. While the audience whispered about my strategy and Zeniri let them, waiting to regain their attention before continuing, I took the opportunity to lightly exhale in Razim’s direction again.

  Who killed our parents?

  I didn’t see words this time, but a flash of the card that still lay on the table:

  The King.

  What is your plan?

  The words floated up like a message in a bottle: They told me to finish what my father started and gain revenge for his death at the same time. I must assassinate the king.

  It took all my willpower to keep from falling off my chair. This was Razim’s revenge? If indeed the king had been responsible for our parents’ deaths, I wouldn’t have minded killing him, either. But the stability of the land depended on his rule, and just because Razim believed the king was to blame, that didn’t mean it was true. Even if the king had given the order, someone may have convinced him to do it … such as a Twilighter.

  On the other hand, Hallan may very well have been trying to kill the king, rather than the queen consort, for the Twilight Guild, which made sense since my mother had been trying to stop him, as a Keeper. But if so, why, and how on earth had everything turned out like it had?

  I coul
d have cursed Zeniri when his words once again snapped me back to reality. “Next round.”

  Razim blinked, looking more muddled, and he played what I knew he would. Between the next two rounds, which I handily won with cards of indisputably higher value, I searched his soul as quickly as possible, like tearing through drawers in a dresser.

  Why did the queen consort die?

  My father’s affair with the queen consort was discovered before he could kill the king, and the king ordered their deaths.

  Who betrayed them to the king?

  I don’t know.

  When are you planning to kill the king?

  Not until my birthday. I am forbidden. His frustration was clear. I’m allowed to do it that day and only that day.

  His birthday was soon after mine. I did a quick calculation. He would be twenty in a week.

  That was all I could get out of him before everyone was applauding my victory.

  Razim was looking around like he wasn’t quite sure what had happened.

  Before anyone noticed his mild disorientation, I raised my glass to him. “A fair game, sir. I was merely lucky, or perhaps your wine won the game for me.” The comment came off as generous, if condescending. More spectators clapped.

  Razim glared, his eyes growing sharper now. “A rematch.”

  I could have agreed and gained more time to search for answers, but I was worried he would face-plant on the table. When I’d practiced on Lenara, Zeniri, and Nikha, eventually they grew tired enough for my gift to put them right to sleep. Maybe I could try getting answers the old way: talking.

  “So soon?” I asked, sounding concerned. “While this is a mere flesh wound, I fear a rematch might cause you to bleed out.” More laughter, another glare from Razim. “But I will ease your pain by granting you not my bed, but a few minutes of private conversation out on the balcony.” There was a lovely outdoor space, stretching off the salon, with gauzy-curtained doorways and mosaic-studded alcoves to provide privacy. I’d tried my best to sound flirtatious, and it seemed to work.

  “Are you going to lick his particular wound?” someone asked cheerfully. “Be gentle. It is probably rather swollen.”

  Gods. Simply pretending I was training in the pleasure arts wasn’t enough for me to get a better grip on sexual innuendo. At least this time, my suggestive comment seemed intentional. There were even a few whistles, and someone gave Razim a congratulatory clap on the back. Not that he looked grateful. He knew me well enough to gather we wouldn’t be kissing … or doing anything else. Rather, he looked careful. Wary.

  Maybe I wouldn’t be getting many answers. But he still reached for my hand, and I took it across the table. He helped me up from my chair and let me lead him out the nearest pair of double doors, closing them firmly behind us. Both of us ignored the laughter and shouts of encouragement that tried to follow.

  “Tain’s eye,” Razim said as soon as we were alone. “I thought I didn’t want you to marry one of them, but this might be worse.”

  I sighed, looking over the stone banister at the dark palace grounds, lit by the hundreds of glowing windows belonging to the surrounding buildings. It was all night, soft rain, and candlelight swimming in the warm, fragrant air. Colorful tiles, flecks of metal, and slivers of mirror glittered on the mosaic-covered walls and columns around us. Razim leaned out next to me.

  Instead of arguing with him, I said softly, “You also lost your mother that night. I didn’t know her, but I know exactly how it feels.” It was the first time I’d spoken much with anyone about my mother’s death. Now that I knew he hadn’t played a part in her murder, the words came much easier, but I still had to swallow a lump in my throat. “As far as Hallan … Just so you know, I loved him like a father.” More than the man who is supposedly my father.

  “He loved you too,” Razim said, his own throat tight. I could hear the weight of unshed tears.

  A hot, painful knot grew in my chest. But one that hurt in a good way too. “Thank you. That means a lot to me. My mother…” I hesitated. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to say. Maybe that she’d loved Razim? But it wasn’t true.

  As if he could read my thoughts, he said darkly, “Your mother hated me.”

  “She didn’t hate you,” I said, turning to him. “Why would you say that?”

  Razim stared at his hands, clasped over the railing. “It took me a while to figure it out. She always seemed to resist my father’s orders from the guild, to try to talk him out of it. But she was a member of the Twilighters just the same.” Fear caught in my lungs as I waited for him to continue. He couldn’t know about the Keepers, could he? “I think it was because she was jealous, because she was in love with my father. Both his assignments and I were constant reminders that his heart was with another woman.”

  I didn’t think that had anything to do with it. Jealousy was powerful, but I remembered the look on my mother’s face as she admitted to me that she was in love with Hallan. There was only peace in her expression, despite whomever Hallan himself may have loved.

  “Sometimes I wonder if she was the one who…” He hesitated.

  My fingers tightened against the banister. I knew what he was going to say. He thought she might have betrayed Hallan and the queen consort to the king, but I knew she would never have done something like that. I knew it as well as I knew anything.

  Maybe because of the hard set of my jaw, Razim seemed to remember he was talking less than generously about my dead mother. “Sorry,” he said. “We don’t have to discuss this. Tell me about you. Where have you been? I’ve been looking.”

  “I still find it hard to believe that the Twilighters had no idea.”

  He glanced at me, his eyebrows flickering a fraction before he smoothed his face, and I didn’t need to use my gift to see that he found it odd as well.

  “Razim, what are you doing for them?”

  “I’ll tell you if you tell me what you’re doing. Because I can’t quite figure it out.”

  “You said you wanted revenge. Maybe I can help, if you tell me how. Because you’re right, it’s also what I want. I want to find out who killed my mother.”

  “I know who killed her, because it’s the same person who killed my mother and father.”

  He thought it was the king, of course, but there was more to their deaths than the punishment of a discovered affair. There simply had to be, with both the Twilighters and the Keepers involved. Gods, and he wanted to try to kill the king on his birthday? In a week?

  I understood his desire for revenge, but beyond that I wanted to ask him why he—or rather, the Twilight Guild—was so bent on doing such a thing. Whatever the king’s role in this whole affair, he was one of the best rulers in recent history, helping Eopia thrive with his trade deals. And he had no heir, so at the very least his death would plunge the nation into a struggle for succession that could set us back years; at worst, it could perhaps risk the bond with Ranta. But if I betrayed that I knew Razim’s intention, that would raise too many questions about how I had discovered it, which could lead back to the Keepers and soulwalking. I couldn’t risk it.

  “Razim, just … can you promise me you won’t do anything rash? I don’t think you have all the answers.”

  He squinted at me. “Why don’t you share some with me, then?”

  “I still think the Twilight Guild is behind all of this.”

  Razim groaned and put his face in his hands. “Would that I could convince you otherwise.”

  “Then why don’t you share your answers with me?” I asked, and he couldn’t help but laugh.

  “Both wanting the same thing, but unable to trust each other.” His hands fell away as he looked at me. Something else burned in his eyes now. Candlelight and raindrops gleamed in his dark hair—he was tall enough and leaning far enough out that they’d sprinkled his head and shoulders. He didn’t seem to notice, and for some reason, the sight was endearing. Or maybe it was only that my perspective of him was changing. “Kamai, I want you … I mean,
I want us to trust each other with everything,” he amended quickly.

  “You could start by telling me everything.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Well then.” I smiled. “For the rest, you’d better beat me at Gods and Kings.”

  I left him standing there alone, staring after me.

  22

  DARKEST KNOWLEDGE

  Nikha and I met with Zeniri and Lenara later. We all gathered in his purple-and-orange sitting room, hunched around the coffee table, whispering by candlelight even though the walls were thick. These were words not to be spoken too loudly, anywhere. I told them of Razim’s plan to kill the king—Hallan’s original plan, supposedly.

  Lenara snorted. “If it was Hallan’s intention, he certainly wasn’t acting fast. He had ample opportunity during the twenty years he spent with the queen consort. Perhaps he was trying to convince her to kill the king for the Twilighters, but he wasn’t able to?”

  However long it might have taken, Razim now had a week to complete what he thought was Hallan’s end goal.

  “What would happen if Razim succeeded in assassinating the king?” I asked. “I don’t mean politically—”

  “Which would be a catastrophe,” Zeniri interjected.

  “—but to the king’s sacred bond with Ranta?”

  Both Zeniri and Nikha looked to Lenara, who pursed her lips. This was definitely a question for a priestess, and yet we hadn’t talked much about the king’s bond, even within this private, secretive group. I got the sense that it was so sacred, so important, that all information about it was carefully guarded among the clergy and maybe even the Keepers.

  “If the king dies without an heir, the bond will remain intact,” Lenara answered finally, “simply unfulfilled, until an heir is chosen and given the proper rituals and blessings. It won’t break. But such a situation is still tenuous and best avoided.”