A Veil of Spears

by Bradley P. Beaulieu

  The last time Emre had come here, he’d been paying Galliu to gather volunteers to join the Moonless Host. It had been shortly before the Night of Endless Swords, a night that had seen two of the Kings’ caches of life-giving elixirs destroyed. Emre himself, along with Macide, Ramahd Amansir, and Meryam, the Queen of Mirea herself, had gone to Eventide, the palace of Kiral, the King of Kings, where they’d destroyed his cache, while their brother and sister scarabs had done the same to the one in Ihsan’s palace. The third, Zeheb’s, had been found by the forces of the blood mage, Hamzakiir, before the Moonless Host arrived. Hamzakiir’s men had stolen the elixirs, so between them they had robbed the Kings of the bulk of their magical draughts while at the same time shifting a good deal of power to Hamzakiir.

  It was a disturbing outcome, to say the least. Hamzakiir had posed as an ally to Ishaq and his son Macide, but had soon betrayed their trust, using his power to siphon off much of the support the Moonless Host received from the shaikhs of the desert tribes and other powerful people in Sharakhai. In the days before Hamzakiir’s arrival, the Moonless Host had been beset with trouble, but at least its ranks had been filled with optimism. Now, though . . . Emre stared at the boy on the pallet, sizing him up anew. Is this what we’ve come to? One lone, brave boy has answered our call? Leaning against the crumbling brick wall, legs pulled to his chest, the boy looked small and fragile, and that in turn made this whole endeavor feel like a house of sand ready to crumble the moment the desert winds came howling.

  Galliu chuckled at Emre’s reaction. “You expected an army?”

  “I expected more brave souls to stand up.”

  “Perhaps the souls of this city aren’t quite as brave as you thought.”

  Emre glanced back at Frail Lemi, who merely shrugged. One, Emre thought. One to add to our cause. “You told them the new reward?”

  Galliu waggled his head. “I did, but they might be worried about you paying. The west end’s alive with rumors that it’s not Macide who has the money, but someone else.”

  Hamzakiir. He meant Hamzakiir, who was vying for the hearts of those sympathetic to the Moonless Host. Since dawn had risen on the Night of Endless Swords, he’d been working steadily against Ishaq and Macide, slowly driving a wedge between them and their followers—sowing seeds of doubt that they could free the downtrodden in Sharakhai. He’d promised money as well as protection, but unlike Macide, he’d been able to deliver.

  Emre dropped ten sylval into Galliu’s outstretched palm and said, “Raise the price to one rahl each.”

  The coins disappeared. “The price of a life in Sharakhai.”

  “Save your cheap philosophy,” Emre said, waving the boy to stand and follow Frail Lemi from the room. “Just see that it’s done.”

  “Of course,” Galliu said as he gathered up the last of the nuts and dropped them into a cloth sack between his feet. He’d kept one in his hand, which he split and ate, but then he did something strange. He placed the shell on the windowsill, but it slipped off the edge, a thing he’d been careful never to do.

  Until now.

  Emre spun around, suddenly wary. From the hallway he heard the clash of a cymbal ringing over and over. It came from the open window as well, the sound rebounding off the mudbrick buildings. It sounded as if it were coming from their building.

  Lemi was leaning out of the doorway, looking down the hall. The boy had inched toward him, and when he saw that Lemi wasn’t watching he burst into motion, a knife suddenly raised in one hand.

  “Lemi!”

  Frail Lemi turned in time to see the boy rushing him. He tried to shy away from the knife, but he’d only managed to take one step back when the boy lunged and drove the tip of the knife into Lemi’s chest. The next moment, Lemi had grabbed the boy’s wrist and wrenched it upward. The boy cried out, and the knife clattered to the floor. Then, in a blur of movement, Lemi lifted him like a sack of flour and drove him down onto the dry, wooden planks. The impact shook the walls. The sound was like the strike of a battering ram. The boy curled up like a fiddlehead as he fought to regain his breath. In that moment, Frail Lemi grabbed the blood-slicked knife.

  “No!” the boy gasped. “I had to!”

  But that was all he had a chance to say before the knife blurred and landed with a thump over his heart.

  He went stiff all over and gripped Frail Lemi’s wrist, mouth agape in a silent plea to the gods for kindness in his final moments.

  Emre turned on Galliu as he heard the stomp of boots along the hallway. In a flash of anger, he drew his shamshir. “I name you traitor to the Al’afwa Khadar!”

  Galliu, who looked strangely pensive, stared straight ahead. “Depends on who you think is leading the Al’afwa Khadar.”

  Emre felt a white-hot rage burning inside him. He meant Hamzakiir. Galliu, one of Ishaq’s oldest soldiers in Sharakhai, had somehow been turned as well. With one swift stroke, Emre swung his sword across Galliu’s neck, knocking him back off his chair and onto the dusty floor, blood spurting from the gash. Pools of his blood collected along the dirty floor, turning it the color of a dusty rose.

  A woman’s voice bellowed along the hall. “In the name of the Kings of Sharakhai, lay down your arms!”

  Frail Lemi stood at the door, his sword in hand, blood flowing down his chest. In another man, such blood loss would seriously hinder him, but not Lemi. He stood, ready to fight, his eyes feral as they searched for a way out. Emre moved toward the window to see how many might be waiting below, but the moment he went near it a black arrow streaked into the room. It caught him with a searing burn across his right arm. He’d only just managed to duck away as three more flew in, all from different angles.

  Emre shook his head at Frail Lemi, whose eyes hardened. “I’m no fucking lamb, Emre.”

  “No,” Emre said. “Neither am I.” He’d rather die than sit with the Confessor King. But what could they do? Both exits were blocked.

  The call came again, “Lay down your arms!”

  And now Emre could see her, a Maiden in her black fighting dress, veil, and buckler, the ebon blade in her right hand making her look like a revenant come for its due. There were two more behind her, and a line of Silver Spears behind them.

  Emre looked to the window, to dying Galliu, to the boy who now lay lifeless. As Frail Lemi engaged the Maiden and the ring of steel made this already small space feel smaller, a grapnel swung up and hooked over the windowsill. Pistachio shells scattered everywhere. Drawing his knife, Emre rushed forward, careful to stay out of sight of the bowmen. He took a chance, trying to reach out and cut the rope, but the moment he did, an arrow punched through the meat of his forearm, sinking into the wood of the window frame.

  Gritting his teeth against the pain, he gripped the shaft of the arrow and pulled up in a sharp, violent arc. The shaft snapped as the rope was cut. Blood streamed down his arm as more arrows thudded into the floor. He’d seen in that split moment how many there were outside: a pair of Maidens and a dozen Silver Spears.

  He sat near the window, his back against the wall. With a terrible spasm of pain he yanked what remained of the arrow shaft free of his arm. He shut his eyes as the pain peaked. When he opened them once more, he noticed the state of disrepair in the corner of the room, how badly the bricks were crumbling, and a mad, desperate thought occurred to him.

  Rising to a crouch, he shifted closer to the door. Only an arm’s reach away, Frail Lemi bellowed with rage as his sword flashed, defending against the Maiden’s incredible speed. Emre ignored the fight and ran at the wall, powering one shoulder against it.

  Something crunched in his shoulder. Bits of the mudbrick flaked away, but the wall held.

  Frail Lemi, retreating into the room, glanced back. His eyes went wide like a child who’d been shown a card trick for the first time. In unspoken concert, he nodded as Emre picked up one of the heavy wooden pallets. Emre’s arm burned f
rom the bloody arrow wound, and his shoulder felt as though the bones were being pulverized, but he managed to lift the pallet and run toward the open doorway as Frail Lemi launched three hard, precise blows against the Maiden’s defenses and backed away.

  Emre drove forward with the pallet, shoving it hard against the Blade Maiden as she tried to enter the room. She was caught off guard, forced back by the massive hunk of wood driving toward her. She braced herself, but too late, Emre shoved her into the hall, crowding those behind her as well.

  As Emre picked up his fallen sword, Frail Lemi drove into the wall like a charging akhala stallion. The entire face of the wall caved inward, a wooden beam cracking in two as Frail Lemi, bricks, and a cloud of dust, broke through to a small living space on the opposite side. The support above the wall gave a bit, and more bricks crumbled down into both rooms.

  From the floor above, the muffled sound of an old woman’s voice shouting in Kundhunese filtered down. A family of five cowered in the room beyond, staring wide-eyed at Frail Lemi and the hole in the wall of their one-room home.

  As the Maiden threw the pallet aside and made for him, Emre charged another of the exposed wooden supports. It was dry as bone, and hardly thicker than his arm. He rammed it with his good shoulder, praying to Rhia for kindness.

  As the Maiden sliced an arc through the air with her ebon blade, Emre met the support. It splintered as he crashed into it. And the floor above began to rain down.

  The Maiden tried to follow, tried to get beyond the falling debris to reach Emre, but Frail Lemi had stood and picked up a heavy iron cooking pot. He swung it by the handle and brought it down with all his might against the Maiden’s head. She tried to roll away, but it caught her along the top of her skull with a crunch that was swallowed by the growing stream of debris falling from the floors above.

  Emre headed for the open doorway, but Frail Lemi was just standing there, staring at the Maiden’s form, his eyes afire.

  “Quickly!” Emre hissed, grabbing Frail Lemi’s arm and pulling him toward the open doorway. “Lemi, quick, or we’re both dead!”

  He wasn’t sure Frail Lemi had heard him, but a moment later, Lemi’s eyes turned to his. The fire in them faded a bit, and he looked around at the ruin they’d created. Then a bit of fear returned, and they sped off, into the hall, following a rush of fleeing men and women and children. Most probably didn’t know what they were running from. Few bothered to look back. They just ran, sensing that to remain would be to die. The Shallows had a way of instilling such instincts.

  When they came to a set of stairs, Frail Lemi was about to follow the rush, but Emre grabbed his arm. “This way,” he said, guiding him to a nearby room. It had a small stove at its center with warm bread spread around it, abandoned in the panic. On the far side of the room was a window and beyond, a space only wide enough for a man to slip along sideways—a victim of the slapdash planning that plagued the Shallows. They were three stories up, but the closeness of the buildings was an asset here. Emre slipped into the gap, one foot on the wall ahead of him, his back against the opposite wall. Bracing himself between the two, he slid slowly down, scraping painfully at times in his haste to reach solid ground.

  Frail Lemi came after. When they struck dirt, they sidled quickly along, then squeezed themselves through the narrow gap at the end to reach one of the hundreds of nondescript alleys in the Shallows.

  They ran, farther and farther away. The more distance they put between themselves and Galliu’s building, though, the more disconsolate Frail Lemi became.

  “He was just a kid, Emre. Why’d he have to take a knife to me like that?”

  “I don’t know, Lem. Things are changing in the city.”

  Frail Lemi, coated in both his blood and the boy’s, didn’t seem to hear him. “He was just a fucking kid.”

  Chapter 3

  IN THE QAIMIRI EMBASSY HOUSE, a knock came at Ramahd Amansir’s door.

  “Come,” he called.

  As the heavy, carved door groaned inward, Ramahd stopped writing. He looked up to find not a servant, as he’d expected, but Amaryllis.

  It was winter moving into spring in the desert. The city had been cool, even cold at times, but you wouldn’t know it from looking at her. She was wearing the sort of clothes a west-end harlot might wear: a slit skirt that revealed her shapely legs well past her knees whenever she moved, and a sleeveless shirt she’d tied around her waist to reveal her belly and accentuate the curves of her breasts. Both garments were dyed a vibrant mix of orange and ruby red, a match for the dozen ribbons she’d braided into her hair. Together the clothes and the ribbons were a perfect contrast to her dark hair, which cascaded down past her shoulders in curly locks, accentuating a look that was already sultry.

  “Can we talk?” she asked.

  “Is it important?”

  “It’s about Tiron.”

  Ramahd immediately put his quill back in its inkwell. “You found him?”

  She took one of the two chairs by the open patio doors behind him. The chair was so large, and Amaryllis so relaxed as she pulled one foot onto the seat, that she looked like a rag doll, tossed there and forgotten. “I found him.”

  Ramahd joined her in the sunlight, which warmed him to the point of discomfort. “Where?”

  “In the Shallows. A drug den owned by a woman known as the Widow.” The look that had settled over Amaryllis was one of regret or despair. Perhaps it was both. “He’s deep into the reek. He won’t last a fortnight if he stays there.”

  “Did you speak to him?”

  “I tried, but he just lay there, staring at the shisha.” Amaryllis paused, lips curling in disgust as she gazed through him. “It was a sty, Ramahd. People everywhere, naked, filthy. It smelled like a charnel for the damned.”

  “Is he still there?”

  Amaryllis shrugged. “Probably. He likely paid them ahead so that they’d keep him there, filled with the drug until the coin ran out.”

  Ramahd pinched the bridge of his nose, remembering the Tiron of old. He’d always been dour, but strong as steel, the sort of man Ramahd depended on in the desert, so far from home. Whatever burden Ramahd had given him, he’d shouldered it and borne it silently.

  Until they’d gone to King Kiral’s palace, Eventide, on the Night of Endless Swords. That was the night he and Meryam, disguised as Amaryllis, had gone with Tiron, his cousin, Luken, and eleven others to destroy King Kiral’s cache of elixirs hidden beneath Eventide. Luken had fallen, ravaged by a demon made from the stuff of nightmares—skinless body, eyeless head, massive, sweeping horns. Meryam, desperate, had fed on Luken’s heart and used the power gained to save them all.

  Tiron was a hard man, but Luken had been like a brother to him. Even the hardest men can become brittle in ways that cannot be seen. His grief weighed heavily, and he finally broke, turning to black lotus and embracing it like a newfound lover. Though he’d tried to hide his growing dependence on it, it quickly became an open secret. Everyone in the embassy house knew, and Ramahd had looked the other way, hoping it would help Tiron forget, that he’d find the will to stop on his own. But after watching him stumble down a set of stairs and hardly notice the pain, Ramahd had confronted him. Tiron grew angry. Angrier than Ramahd had seen him in years. He denied it all, and for a time things had improved, but then Tiron began staying in the city overnight. He’d claimed it was for a girl. A seamstress who created beautiful embroidery. He even brought a few pieces to show Ramahd.

  A night here or there turned into days away, and it soon became clear Tiron had found a shisha den somewhere in the city. Ramahd demanded that it stop. Their argument had shaken the walls, and Tiron had stormed out. He hadn’t been seen since. That had been two weeks ago.

  Ramahd had sent Amaryllis and others to find him—even making inquiries himself when he found the time—but they’d had no word of him until today.

  Ram
ahd glanced at his desk, at the half-finished letter sitting atop the leather blotter. He was working to secure Meryam’s power in Qaimir against those who wished for any other to sit the throne. He’d been working to secure her power here in Sharakhai as well. Neither was certain. The work was important. He had a dozen more letters to write before a caravan left for Qaimir in the morning.

  But Tiron was important too.

  “Let’s go and get him.”

  Amaryllis nodded, and the harried look on her face eased. They were heading for the door when another knock came. The door opened before Ramahd had a chance to reply, and in strode Basilio, the heavyset lord who was Qaimir’s primary ambassador in Sharakhai.

  Basilio’s round face was blotchy, as if he’d sprinted up the stairs. He looks scared, Ramahd thought.

  Basilio took out a kerchief and patted his forehead dry. “You must come with me.”

  “It will have to wait for my return.”

  “Your queen requests your presence.”

  “Tell the queen it is important. She’ll understand.”

  “She most certainly will not.”

  Ramahd shoved past him.

  “Lord Amansir!” Basilio groused. “A messenger has arrived from Eventide. Our queen’s presence has been requested and she’s of a mind to attend and . . .”

  Ramahd turned. “What?”

  Basilio straightened himself up. “For some reason”—he pulled his vest down to cover more of his belly—“she requested that you attend her rather than me.”

  Worms churned inside Ramahd’s gut. They always did when the precariousness of Meryam’s position here in Sharakhai struck him. She wanted to accept an invitation from Kiral, the King of Kings? Gods, if only she’d left the day after the Night of Endless Swords, as Ramahd had bade her. The Kings might have lost four of their number—Azad, Külaşan, Yusam, and Mesut—but they were still more dangerous than a pit of scorpions. Better for Meryam to deal with them from the safety of Almadan. However often she might insist that remaining in the Amber City would lead to better terms, dealing with the Kings face-to-face was an act of tempting fate, pure and simple.