Amaryllis looked as nervous as Ramahd felt. Basilio, his gaze swinging between the two of them, noticed. “Will you not tell me what happened that night?”
It was a rare bit of vulnerability from Basilio, who was always trying to push Ramahd, to exert his authority and ensure that he was the queen’s most trusted servant. Were they back in Qaimir, Ramahd might have relented and told how he and Meryam had joined forces with the Moonless Host, how they’d stolen into Eventide, and destroyed the cache of glowing blue elixirs that gave the Kings their long life. But they weren’t in Qaimir, and the danger of gossip was simply too great.
“Take Cicio and Vrago with you,” Ramahd said to Amaryllis. “Get Tiron. Take him to the safe house near the pits. I’ll come when I’m able.”
Amaryllis nodded and left. Basilio, meanwhile, puffed himself up like a pompous peacock. “Keep your secrets then, but I deserve to know why King Kiral wishes to speak with Queen Meryam.”
“I don’t know, Basilio.” Ramahd sniffed, somewhat enjoying the affronted look on Basilio’s blotchy face. “But rest assured, the queen will tell you at the appropriate time.”
He turned toward Meryam’s apartments, but Basilio grabbed his elbow. Rather than do something rash, Ramahd slowed his pace, and when it became clear Basilio wouldn’t let him go, he stopped and turned.
When Basilio spoke, it was nearly a whisper. “You know how tenuous things have become in Almadan. I’m doing all I can to keep the hounds at bay. But if we are in danger because the two of you—”
“Our kingdom stands on the doorstep of the desert, Basilio. There is always danger.”
“You know very well what I mean.”
Ramahd stepped forward until the two of them were chest-to-chest. “And you know that to tell you more could endanger you, me, our queen, and the entire kingdom. So keep your bloody questions to yourself and be satisfied with what the queen gives you.”
If Basilio’s face had been blotchy before, it was a field of red now. To his credit, though, he didn’t back away.
He’s desperate, Ramahd thought. I really do need to focus on what’s happening back home, and so does Meryam. Soon, he promised himself, and left Basilio fuming in the hall.
He found Meryam in the coach yard behind the embassy house. He climbed inside the waiting coach and sat across from her as it lurched into motion. With the clop of the horses’ hooves mixing with the spray of gravel, Ramahd leaned back into the padded bench. Meryam was propped in the corner of the bench opposite him, wearing a queen’s raiment: a stunning copper dress that flared around her hips, hiding to some degree the fragility of her frame beneath.
“You’re shaking again,” Ramahd said.
Meryam licked her lips, pulling herself taller as a look of embarrassment flashed across her face. “I’ll master it ere we sit before the King of Kings.”
Ramahd raised his right hand, where he wore a ring with a sharp needle that could be used to draw blood. “Have you need?”
She shook her head, denying his offer even as her shivering became more pronounced. “It cannot be risked. Even after all this time, I’m still not sure how much Kiral can sense of the red ways.”
“Some brandy, then.” He’d made sure her carriage was always stocked with several bottles of spirits.
“I’d need to be drunk for it to have any effect.”
“Perhaps drunk would be better.”
“And perhaps a brawling mule would be better than the pestering jackdaw I find sitting before me.” She closed her eyes and tilted her head back until it rested on the bench. “I said I will control it.”
Her sharpness had everything to do with how tenuous her position was, but it made the sting no less easy to stomach, not after unrelenting weeks of it.
The coach wound its way higher along the mountainside. They passed palace after palace, and Ramahd wondered at it. Tauriyat had both the look and the feel of power, as if the mountain were made from it. These palaces had stood for well over five hundred years. Together they represented a concentration of power neither the desert nor the four kingdoms surrounding it had ever seen. The Kings were no fools. They used that power to their advantage, negotiating favorable trade agreements, controlling the flow of culture, food, and literature through those accords, allowing only what they’d expressly approved to move from place to place.
Four Kings were dead—Azad, Külaşan, Yusam, and Mesut. To anyone standing in the streets of Sharakhai, the House of Kings would appear as strong as it ever had, but Ramahd knew better. It was a house ready to crumble, now that they’d been robbed of their immortality. How long would the Kings last? Would they age like normal men? Or would they wither away until they looked like the asirim, their centuries of cheating the lord of all things catching up to them in a matter of weeks or months?
Up and up they went. From this vantage the city looked like a grand carpet, an impossibly complicated weave that brought together people from thousands of leagues distant. At last, the wagon rumbled over the drawbridge to Eventide and the city was lost. They pulled around the large circle before the palace doors, where servants in bright finery rushed to welcome them. He and Meryam were led into the palace and up several flights of stairs, an arduous task given how slowly Meryam climbed. She refused all offers of help, though, her face grim. To Ramahd’s growing awe, the quivering of her body, which had become so bad he’d nearly asked her to return to the embassy house and reschedule this for another day, had all but vanished.
Your will cannot overcome your failing body forever, Ramahd thought. He could already hear her biting reply. It can, Ramahd Amansir, for there is work yet to do.
They reached a grand audience hall, a space made up of blue-veined, marble pillars, of niches filled with stark, stiff-backed statues, of arched domes intricately sculpted. At the far end of the hall, across a sea of patterned, mosaic flooring, sat an empty throne on a daïs. An ancient woman with a sour face stood next to it. The woman was crooked with age. She moved with obvious difficulty as she took three steps down to stand below the throne but still above Ramahd and Meryam.
This was Esmirah, Kiral’s daughter and his vizira, a former Blade Maiden. She’d risen to warden, then first warden, then served as a Matron for nearly two decades before being summoned to stand by Kiral’s side as his most trusted servant.
“The King will see you shortly,” she said as Meryam and Ramahd came to a halt before her and bowed their heads.
She shuffled off toward the door in the corner of the room. As it clicked shut behind her, the sound echoed into the cavernous space, somehow making the space seem larger than it had moments ago. A long bout of waiting followed, and Meryam’s quivering returned. She was letting down her guard while they were unobserved, but it became so bad Ramahd took a step toward the line of chairs resting against the nearby wall, prepared to move one so that Meryam could rest.
“No,” Meryam said softly. “This is a test, and there will be more to come. Stay where you are, and be wary.”
Esmirah returned almost a half-turn later. Meryam’s shaking vanished as the imposing form of King Kiral, a man who stood nearly a head taller than Ramahd, entered the room behind his vizira. Standing before his throne, he looked like one of the first men; regal, imposing, even dangerous, with flinty eyes, tightly shorn hair, and a pockmarked face.
When Esmirah bowed and left, Kiral gave Meryam a gesture that could barely be called a nod. “Queen Meryam shan Aldouan, you are well met.” He stared at Ramahd as if he were little more than a nuisance. “As are you, Lord Amansir.”
“My Lord King,” Meryam replied.
Kiral’s crown glinted as he sat on his throne, then he spoke in a voice that filled the hall. “It has been some time since we’ve spoken. It’s past time we rectify that, don’t you agree?”
“Of that there can be no doubt.” Meryam smiled, giving him a pleasant nod. “But forgive me
, my Lord King, I don’t know that we’ve ever spoken.” Her voice was loud. Strong. No trace of her tremulous tone remained.
“I meant our two kingdoms,” Kiral replied easily.
“Ah, of course. But then I wonder, why haven’t more of the Kings been summoned? We’ve always dealt with Ihsan. I’m sure he’d prove invaluable now.”
“There will be time to involve Ihsan, after you and I have come to an understanding.”
The smile that stole over Meryam’s skeletal face was now tinged with a hint of mischief. “Well, now we’re getting somewhere. On what matter does the King of Kings wish to come to an understanding with the Queen of Qaimir?”
“Why don’t we begin with your father? How did he die?”
If Meryam was surprised by this, she didn’t show it. “You are blunt.”
“I’ve little enough time for many things in my life, let alone niceties. I’ve read the letter you sent us. I know you told Ihsan your father wished to sail the seas of the Great Shangazi. That you were waylaid by pirates. That your ship was taken and the two of you left for dead.” Kiral sat taller in his chair, as if he’d just been insulted. “I would like the true story.”
It was a moment before Meryam spoke. It looked as if she was considering how much to share, and how to say it, but Ramahd could tell she was suffering from her condition. Lack of sustenance. Lack of aught but wine and blood. And yet for all his inside knowledge, he could hardly tell and was sure Kiral wouldn’t see what lay behind Meryam’s odd pause. But as he waited for Meryam to speak, he saw how irritated Kiral was becoming. “I will tell you, King of Kings,” Meryam finally said, “and then I will make a request. Something you will grant me without hesitation, I suspect.”
Kiral looked bored. “Go on.”
“You saw the state of my father’s body.” When Kiral nodded with a tiny movement, as if assent were some precious commodity, Meryam went on. “It was done by the ehrekh known as Guhldrathen. My father was an offering, a way to appease the beast and make it renounce its hunt for the man who had convinced it generations ago to bargain away its power. Do you know who that was?”
To Ramahd’s surprise, there was a hunger in Kiral’s deep voice as he gave Meryam the name she wanted to hear. “Hamzakiir.”
“Hamzakiir,” she echoed in satisfaction, “the man the Moonless Host hoped to use for their own benefit, the man we stole from them after they raised him from his grave.”
“You admit it, then.”
“To you, yes.” The implication was clear, that she didn’t wish for the story to go beyond these walls.
“Name your purpose, then. Why did you seize him?”
“He was about to become a tool of Macide Ishaq’ava and his father, men you and I both despise. It was something we couldn’t allow.”
“You could have come to us.”
She bowed her head, showing just the right amount of contrition. “In hindsight, I would certainly have done so, but Hamzakiir had much to answer for in Qaimir. Now he has even more.”
Kiral seemed pleased enough with that answer. “Go on.”
She did. She told Kiral how they’d wrested Hamzakiir from the Moonless Host, how they’d returned to Qaimir, how Hamzakiir had bested her and inveigled his way into her mind. The journey to Almadan and the desert beyond was filled with regret, but none stronger than having lost Dana’il, his most trusted man, taken by his own knife in Black Swan Tower after Hamzakiir had found him less than useful.
Then Meryam came to the part of the tale Kiral seemed most eager to hear: Hamzakiir leaving them in the desert for Guhldrathen to find. Hamzakiir had meant all three of them, King Aldouan, Meryam, and Ramahd, as offerings, but it was somewhat sated after devouring Aldouan’s heart, and they’d managed to strike a new bargain for their freedom: Çeda’s blood if they failed to deliver Hamzakiir.
Ramahd felt his cheeks redden at the memory. And I sealed the bargain with my own blood. How foolish it seemed now. The memory of Guhldrathen’s hot tongue lapping blood from his fingers made him wonder if the hunger inside him was from simple physical need or from the spell Guhldrathen had worked on him in those moments. He shook the thoughts away as Meryam concluded her tale.
“Desert voyages have not been kind to you and yours.” Kiral gave a knowing smile, which Ramahd wished he could strike from his face.
Meryam stared back, a fire in her eyes. “Nor have the scarabs been kind to Sharakhai.”
“The Moonless Host are dying like lambs in the desert.”
“Because you’ve had help,” Meryam said.
“Their days were always numbered.”
Meryam made a show of looking around the room. “Let us be blunt, my King. Sharakhai suffered greatly on the Night of Endless Swords, and we both know Hamzakiir’s betrayal is what has weakened the Host. With his power, influence, and charm, by showing how little Macide accomplished over the years, he has won many of them to his side. You have been hounding the remains of the old order since the battle in the harbor, taking what Hamzakiir is willingly giving. But things are about to change again, are they not?”
“That depends on a great many things.”
“Such as what happens on your eastern border with Malasan. And your northern with Mirea.” Meryam’s voice had grown stronger; she was a power to be reckoned with, every bit Kiral’s equal. “Such as what Hamzakiir has in store for you all when the Kings grow tired of picking at the bones of the old order.”
Kiral had been indifferent, as if this were merely one more burden in his day. But now he leaned forward with the look of a falcon that had just spotted a viper slithering toward its nest across the sand. “You said you had a request.”
“I do, my King. Do Qaimir the honor of taking this burden from your shoulders. Allow Ramahd and me to hunt Hamzakiir, unfettered, in the city and the desert beyond, wherever his trail might lead us.”
Kiral’s eyes narrowed, as if this were the last thing he’d expected. “And in return?”
“You will give me Malasan.”
A pause. “What did you say?”
“Malasan gathers for war,” Meryam replied easily.
“And if they strike, Sharakhai will drive them back across the mountains.”
“But why stop there? Why not sweep well beyond the mountains? Only the threat from the other kingdoms holds you back.” Meryam clasped her hands tightly. “But were Sharakhai and Qaimir to combine efforts”—her voice dropped to a whisper, and it was all the more chilling for it—“not an army in the world could stand against us. That is what I propose, oh King of Kings. Let us bait those who stand on your doorstep, waiting for you to stumble. Let us draw Mirea and Malasan out. Let us run roughshod over them when they do. And then there will be more than enough to divide between our nations. I humbly request all lands of Malasan we might take, while Sharakhai takes Mirea.”
Kiral spent nearly as much time pondering this as Meryam had done. And then in a burst of movement he stood, staring down at Meryam and Ramahd with the look of a mad god. Ramahd was certain Meryam had made a terrible mistake, but when Kiral spoke, he said, “Begin your hunt.” He turned and strode toward the door in the corner. “When you’ve fed Hamzakiir’s body to the ehrekh, you shall have your union.”
The door boomed shut behind him, echoing into the room. No sooner had the sound faded than Meryam collapsed to the floor. Ramahd rushed forward, cringing as her cheek slapped against the marble.
“Meryam,” he whispered, shaking her.
She didn’t respond. Her eyes were heavy, her breath coming sharply as if she were in the throes of sickness. “Gods, Meryam.” Ramahd took the ring from his finger and used it to pierce his wrist. He held it before Meryam’s mouth, worried that Kiral would return at any moment. There was nothing for it, though. After a speech like that, there could be no showing weakness like this. And they certainly couldn’t flaunt her abili
ty to use blood magic before the King or anyone else in Eventide.
The blood trickled along Meryam’s lips, dripped down to the floor, creating bright red patterns on the polished white and marble tiles. He pressed the wound to her mouth. “Drink, damn you.”
Finally, she did. A swipe of her tongue at first, then a suck from the wound. And then she was holding Ramahd’s wrist, pressing her warm lips tight against his bleeding flesh. More and more she took, but he refused to let it go too far and ripped his arm away despite the strength that had already returned to her.
Meryam’s nostrils flared. Her eyes took in the throne room, as if she hadn’t truly seen it until now. “Clean it,” she said as she made it to her feet.
Ramahd used his dark sleeves to wipe up the blood, even the little that had slipped between the tiles. Meryam was licking her lips. Ramahd wiped blood away from her chin and cheek until they were both satisfied that they’d left no evidence.
Then, a lord of Qaimir, bloodied by his own choice, and his queen, giddy with the power he’d granted her, left Eventide.
Chapter 4
HIGH IN KING SUKRU’S PALACE, Davud stood before a tall shelf in the room that had been his since he escaped from the horrors of Ishmantep. Bandages, ointments, salves, and other medicinals were stacked along the shelves, all of the highest quality. Many an apothecary in Sharakhai would be proud of such an assortment. It would likely last months and provide care for dozens of patients. Here, it was intended for only one.
Davud took down a roll of bandages and a half-empty jar of thick salve and walked toward the bed at the center of the room, where a woman lay covered from the waist down in a light blanket. The late morning sun was slanting in through the open windows to his right. A gentle wind tugged at the long curtains, throwing shadows across the brilliant marble floor, the ivory blankets, and the still woman, who was wrapped in layers of tightly rolled bandages.
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