The Obsidian Heart

by Mark T. Barnes

  “You could’ve gotten word to me, at least to say goodbye.” Mari fought down the old resentment that clutched at her chest. It was replaced by a smouldering anger at herself that she still cared.

  “My father wasn’t willing to risk Vashne’s patience,” Nadir scowled. “We took what we could and rode as fast as possible to the Ygranian border. Our Family needed money, so we rode to Masripur and signed on to work for the pahavāns in Tanis.” The pahavāns—princes and princesses of the Avān—were the successors of the once Great Houses of Chepherundi, Murinder, and Daresh, decimated when the Humans rebelled against the Awakened Empire. Now their descendants and their mercenary armies defended the Conflicted Cities along the Harasesh River and the war torn Tanis-Manté border. Mari had wanted to serve there, though her father had other plans.

  “What are they like, the Conflicted Cities?” she asked, trying to change tack.

  He frowned into his coffee cup. Took up his spoon, stirred, opened his mouth as if to speak, then stopped. When he looked up his eyes were haunted. The scars on his face were vivid against his tanned skin. Nadir blinked, seemingly to rid himself of the phantoms only he could see, and changed direction just as easily as she had. “I hear you’ve become quite the hero. Rumour is you’ll be the next Knight-Colonel of the Feyassin, no less. Congratulations.”

  “Thanks.” She felt her lips quirk in the crooked smile she remembered he had liked. Mari took a sip of coffee to hide it. “Are you interested in joining?” she said, her tone light. It took a harder edge, though, when she said “Which reminds me: what was it you did after you left the Lament?”

  Nadir chuckled as his eyebrows almost met his hairline. “Oh, I can just imagine how popular a choice I’d be in the Feyassin. Nadir, the disgraced son of an Exile, now defending the honour of the highest political posting in the land! You can have that!” He took a sip of his coffee before speaking again. “As for what I did? A little of this here, a little of that, there. Fighting every day to stay alive against enemies who very much wanted me and my comrades dead. But Mari, you know what it’s like to have parents like ours. You do as you’re told, because you’re serving something greater than yourself.”

  “Whom do you serve now, Nadir?”

  Nadir’s expression was little more than a vague shifting against his silhouette. “Our fathers.”

  “What?” she snapped.

  “Your father lost his Master of Assassins, who was also his Kherife-General, in Amnon. My father has taken on Thufan’s old role, and your father was kind enough to take me on as his adjutant. Apparently his last one—your cousin, Farouk—died under questionable circumstances.”

  “Pretty much everybody who serves my father does so under questionable circumstances. Some live. Many don’t. I wish you the best of it, Nadir.” If Mari thought Thufan was a villain, he was nothing compared to Jhem’s reputation. Jhem was renowned for his dispassion. In those final months before his exile, he had been described by some as the coldest part of Corajidin’s shadow.

  “Mari,” Nadir urged, “Let me explain.”

  “What’s there to explain?” she said flatly. “Your Family was exiled. My father has offered yours his status back, trading one crooked henchman for another, possibly worse. Though I wonder whose father has more blood to wash from their hands, yours or mine?”

  “Your father’s going to be the next Asrahn, Mari. My Family will become part of his inner circle. We’ll be as close to a Great House as one can get, possibly even becoming one in time. We command an experienced nahdi army, honed in the Conflicted Cities and in service on the Ebony Coast to the Serpent Princes of Kaylish. All the Exiles have similar stories. Cleansing Shrīan of its apathy would be as easy as breathing for us. Then there are our witches, keener to serve our purposes than the scholars are yours.”

  “Nahdi? Witches?” Mari scowled. “Do you already plan more war, Nadir? Hasn’t Shrīan been through enough? Is this what you learned in Tanis? Forget sende and make war on the innocent? Such isn’t our way.”

  “Sende was a luxury we couldn’t afford in the Conflicted Cities. Not if we wanted to survive.”

  “Shrīan needs peace!”

  “And peace there’ll be. Your father’s armies haven’t disbanded after Amnon. The Exiles have brought a terrifying strength of arms. Rahn-Narseh as the Knight-Marshall commands one of the deadliest forces of heavy infantry ever assembled. But this is all for a greater, lasting peace! A unified Avān people!

  “Let’s not fight, Mari. It’s your father’s vision I honor.” He leaned forward. One hand reached across the table to rest perilously close to hers. It was so different from Indris’s hand. Nadir’s was broader. Scarred and calloused. She could never imagine those hands ever holding an ink brush. Or cradling an ancient book with as much tenderness as it caressed her skin. She left Nadir’s hand where it was. “Even in Tanis I kept track of your career. I was surprised when I learned you’re in a relationship with—”

  “How are Kimiya and Ravenet?” Mari asked quickly, face burning. “They look like they’ve done well for themselves.”

  “Kimiya was the mistress of a nahdi witch in Tanis,” Nadir said with a frown. “A rebel Human from Manté. He would call her his apprentice. Father called her his concubine. She doesn’t care much either way. Ravenet took more after father and me. There’s no shame in talking about your relationship with—

  “I can’t talk to you about—”

  “The Näsarat,” he continued. He finished the rest of his coffee, then put the cup down hard on the table. Nadir pursed his lips. “What’s the old saying? News travels fast on the lips of witches. Indris’s reputation is, well, a little hard to credit. Maybe I don’t have the right to talk to you about your life. But I’d like to earn your trust. You know, after we survived their displeasure, our fathers had hoped you and I would marry—”

  “Don’t remember us as we used to be, Nadir,” Mari warned. “The present will only disappoint. I know what both our fathers hoped for. Those days are gone.”

  “Are they? I was what you wanted of me, regardless of what was set against us.”

  “Fond as memory may be, we weren’t Mirajin and Eshemé,” she said, recalling the doomed lovers in the famous tragedy of the same name by Nasri of the Elay-At. Born to warring Great Houses, Mirajin and Eshemé had fallen in love despite their differences. Though they survived assassination, machination, and civil war, their relationship had been doomed from the start and the lovers had died in the end. It was one of Nasri’s more depressing plays. Mari preferred Nasri’s romances and comedies. Life could be dark enough without literatures gloomy cloud.

  “We were happy together,” he said wistfully. “Tell me honestly you never thought about marrying me.”

  Mari stared down into the murky dregs of her coffee. Right now she wished it was laced with something stronger than cream. The well-remembered sight of Nadir in the morning, carrying a basket of bread warm from the oven, a wheel of cheese, bacon, and an iron pot of tea swinging by its handle. The way he had made her laugh. Or cry. Or scream with so much anger she had to throw something. The long hours in the shallows of night, when dawn was a blush in their room and his face had been a landscape of light-brushed ridges and shadowed valleys. She had run her fingers lightly over his skin and wondered what their children would look like.

  Now he worked for her father.

  “No, Nadir. It wasn’t anything I really thought about.”

  After that, their conversation had stumbled into the realm of awkward inanities until Mari had decided she had enough. After a fumbling goodbye, she had fled into the city with her memories of the conversation—and of times longer ago—fresh in her mind.

  They had been damaged, scared and feeling alone all those years ago. Mari doubted whether time had improved either of them much. Of all Nadir had said, it had been the questions about Belamandris that had upset her most. She had not seen him since Amnon. In fact, there had been no word of him at all since Amnon. She un
derstood how Belam would be angry with her, but for him not to even try to speak with her? Each day she had debated whether to swallow her pride and go to him. Each day she thought better of it. To see Belam would mean risking seeing her father and that was something she was not prepared for.

  Rahn-Erebus fa Corajidin: the man who would bring the witch covens back into Shrīan. In her most bitter moments she wondered whether it would have been cleaner for her father to have died. To have kept some semblance of the man she knew he could be. Moments later, time measured in heartbeats, or the angry tapping of her fingers on the hilt of her amenesqa, she would berate herself for her thoughts. Blood ties were hard to break.

  Mari found herself back at the Carnat-Farhi Bridge at mid-afternoon. Crowds milled at the markets, faces from all across South-Eastern Īa: dusky eyed, bronze skinned Tanisians in a spectrum of vivid silks; olive-tanned Ygranians in their shirts, jerkins, breeches, and turned-down boots; Kaylish islanders, tall, muscular, and tanned, with their tribal tattoos and long dreadlocks. There were even a few of the lean, ponytailed, and leather-clad Darmatian horse speakers. She smiled at the sight of harlequinesque Seethe in their brightly coloured vests, close-fitting breeches, and high boots with their split toes. Children giggled and squealed by turns as the images on the Seethe trouper’s glass masks changed from smiling faces of surpassing beauty, to leering monsters, to crying maids, to polished skulls. The Seethe troupers played their flutes, bells, sonesettes, and theorboes as they performed along the Gahn-Markesh. From time to time a Seethe Elder would spread their massive tinted wings, twirl and spin like they wore a galleon-sail cloak of white, pink, and grey feathers. At one point the Elder leaped high, wings cupping air, to soar above the crowd before landing light-footed amongst his troupe. An innocent part of her wanted to follow the Seethe to their lantern-like pavilions, bright with light and heat and colour, all care, all trouble, forgotten for a time.

  Avānweh was so different from the dour emptiness that had fallen on Amnon. When the Seethe fled the Teshri’s misguided persecution, it had been like they had taken the city’s laughter with them.

  She picked up her pace as she crossed the bridge. The Shoals were a combination of wharves, stilted guest houses and taverns, connected by a serpentine maze of cobbled lanes. There was nothing wide enough, or long enough, to be called a street.

  At the far end of the Shoals, she saw the sun-bleached and weather-mottled canvas of Indris’s pavilion. It was a simple construction that dropped in elegant folds from the forecastle and stern deck of the wind-galley. The phoenix-headed prow, broad wings with ornate metallic feathers and bird tail stern cast sharp-edged shadows on the pale sand. Without a thought for who saw the width of her grin, Mari lengthened her stride as she neared her destination. She felt butterflies in her stomach. Was light-headed and short of breath. She relished the warmth of anticipation that infused her.

  Mari called out, but nobody answered. After a few moments she pulled aside one of the flaps and entered the pavilion. It was gloomy inside save where the light speared through the holes of eyelets and the slits in the canvas walls. Rugs had been spread across the sandy ground. Leather sprung camp chairs, cushions, and ilhen lanterns were set about a small, blackened oven. The curved landing gear had sunk into the sandy earth, leaving the bronze keel of the Wanderer a little less than a metre from the ground. The air was pungent with wood smoke and lavender oil. She climbed the boarding ramp to the deck. Called out again. Silence.

  With a lazy smile she walked towards the stern of the vessel. Took the wide stairs down, past ilhen lamps like glowing crystal flowers growing from lacquered bulkheads. As she walked she unwound her sash from around her waist to let it fall to the deck. In sight of the double glass-panelled doors to the great cabin, she unlaced the front of her tunic before she fumbled with the buckles of her trousers.

  Mari revelled in the wanton sway in her hips as she threw the doors open—

  To find Roshana and five of her Lion Guard in Indris’s cabin, along with another man Mari did not recognise.

  They turned to stare at her. Rather than adjust her clothing Mari locked her gaze on Roshana. The Rahn-Näsarat was her usual self: square-jawed, square-shouldered, and straight-backed. Something about her made everything she wore look military. Roshana’s expression was somewhere short of friendly.

  The Tau-se were known and dangerous, as were all their kind. It was the other man, the disarmingly casual one, who caught her attention. Slightly taller than average, he had an athlete’s physique and the disturbingly placid, almost dreamy, eyes of a casual killer. He was handsome, blue-eyed, and fair-skinned beneath curled dark blond hair. When Mari looked at him she noted the way his expression changed to one of contrived blandness. Assassin, she thought. Her hackles rose.

  “Where’s Indris?” Mari asked from her place in the doorway.

  “I’d ask you the same question, though obviously you don’t know either.” Roshana looked away, mouth downturned. “Are you going to cover up?”

  “You’re not the company I was expecting.” Mari made no move to lace up her tunic or tighten the buckled trousers that hung precariously low on her hips. “Why are you here?”

  “Business with my cousin,” Roshana countered. “Nazarafine told me what she asked you to do. How many Feyassin are fit for duty?”

  “Forty-seven are battle-worthy, with another eleven fit for light duties.” She tried to banish the frustration from her voice. “There are eighteen too wounded to travel—they’re still in Amnon for the foreseeable future. The others died defending the Tyr-Jahavān.”

  “Angry? I know it’s little consolation, Mari, but it was their job.”

  “I know,” Mari shrugged with equanimity. “I also know why they died there, in case you were tempted to remind me again of my father’s actions.”

  “Wouldn’t dream of it,” Roshana said insincerely. “Shouldn’t you be recruiting?”

  “Haven’t decided whether I’ll take the job,” she shrugged. Then smiled. “Maybe I’ll just spend more time with Indris.”

  “Hmmm.” Roshana frowned as she stood, the Tau-se looming over her, silken fur over iron muscle. The unnamed man seemed to glide to his feet rather than stand. Roshana took an unsealed letter from her jacket. She dropped it on Indris’s desk. “See he gets that, will you?”

  “Roshana?” Mari hated the tremor in her voice. “Has there been any word from the Arbiter’s Tribunal about my father?”

  “How can you care for that man after everything he’s done?”

  “None of our forebears are without sin, Roshana,” Mari said with steel in her voice. Her hand curled reflexively around the hilt of an amenesqa that wasn’t there. “What can you tell me from the Arbiter’s Tribunal?”

  Roshana gestured for her guards to leave, expression pensive. Mari felt a chill at the base of her spine. A small voice began to wail in panic in the shallow place where fear still dwelled in her. Once her guards were gone Roshana folded her arms and leaned back on Indris’s desk.

  “The Arbiter’s Tribunal has yet to make its decision. That said we learned this morning that several of the key members of the Tribunal have changed their votes.”

  “Do you know why?” Mari asked.

  “I have my suspicions your father or his followers are involved. The murders of the arbiters in the explosion yesterday were no doubt a strong motivator.”

  Start with a small gesture to let your enemies know they were vulnerable. Let them fear worse was to come. Nothing preyed on the mind quite like the imagination.

  “We expect he’ll be acquitted in a closed hearing today,” Roshana said scornfully, “but nothing is confirmed as yet.”

  “What’s going to happen?” The dread of her father’s machinations rose in her chest, constricted her throat. “If he’s acquitted will the Teshri let him run for Asrahn?”

  Roshana shrugged. “The Teshri neither returned the governorship of Amnon to him nor restored his rank as Asrahn-Elect. But they’
re formalities. All the new sayfs he appointed from amongst the Exiles are an unwelcome complication. There’s one consolation though.”

  “What?”

  “My Jahirojin stands,” Roshana smiled grimly, the tips of her fangs showing. “If we’re lucky somebody will be inspired enough to kill your father and we’ll not need to worry.”

  When Indris returned almost an hour later Mari saw the tension in him. Reclined on one of the couches, her clothing in disarray, she did not feel desire so much as need.

  Indris pulled up short when he saw her, a welcoming smile fighting through his overcast expression.

  Their joining was a frantic thing of desperate hands, hungry mouths, and fever-hot skin. There was nothing of gentleness as they used each other. Mari exorcised thoughts and memories as she at once surrendered to, and mastered, Indris. He met her spiralling passion so much so she almost feared what troubles he was trying to banish in her.

  Afterward, Indris frowned at her cuts and bruises. Muttered profanities in what Mari suspected were at least four different languages. Her skin tingled with warm pins and needles as he crooned a canto, his hands haloed with a pale corona as he drew away her sullen bruises. Sealed her skin and eased her pain.

  They rested under the striped, coloured sunlight that streamed through the stained glass windows. Mari, her breasts pressed against his back and legs wrapped around his waist, traced the tattoos on his arms with her fingertips. She was hungry and thirsty, but too settled in her languorous afterglow to move. She explained what had happened to her at Nanjidasé and how Ziaire had taken her in.

  Mari could not see Indris’s face, though the way he hung his head told her their tryst had not improved his mood much. She told Indris of Roshana’s visit as well as the letter that had been left for him. Indris stared at the letter from under lowered brows, eyes distant.