Amaryllis gagged him, then tied his hands and ankles together behind his back and bowed down close to his ear. “Quiet now, wouldn’t want you to lose your tongue.”
They stole down the stairs and headed for the front door, collecting Cicio and Vrago along the way. The four of them filed into they alleyway, where the sounds of the Shallows, muted in that boarded-up cave, lifted suddenly around them. Ramahd walked to the nearest of the men playing bones and sent a crushing punch across his face. Sweet Alu’s grace, it felt good. The man looked more surprised than angry as he tried to catch his balance. His arms windmilled, eyes blinked rapidly, and he thumped hard against the dirt.
Vrago, smiling, held the tip of his sword to the man’s throat to keep him where he was. The other two remained on their knees when Cicio motioned them down using his sword.
Ramahd addressed the shirtless one with a long row of earrings on each ear and tattoos along his temples and forehead. “What’s your name?”
“Pony.”
For a moment, the words died on Ramahd’s lips. “Why Pony?” he asked.
Cicio laughed and looked to Vrago. “Pony! Like a little boy, ah?”
Vrago’s smile widened, revealing a perfect set of teeth.
Pony’s eyes moved quickly between Ramahd and Cicio and Vrago. He was trying not to let his fear show, but he was young and it was plain to see. When his gaze landed on Amaryllis, his brow knitted for a moment. Recognition coming and going in the span of a heartbeat.
“Yesterday, Pony, the beautiful woman standing behind me came to find my brother, but you and your little lambs refused to let her take him. Why?”
The man licked his lips and gathered some small amount of courage. “None of your business.”
“Of all the answers you could have chosen,” Ramahd told him calmly, “that was likely the worst.”
Amaryllis was already striding forward, her fists raised. When Pony realized she wasn’t going to stop, he raised his fists as well. He managed to make it to his feet. He even managed a swing at her, but it was clumsy and oafish. Amaryllis ducked the blow and sent a left hook to his kidney. Pony grunted and tried to land an uppercut, but Amaryllis juked around it. Her next punch was a vicious right hook to his opposite kidney; it struck so hard, so perfectly, that a cringe-inducing slap rose above the din of the nearby crowds. Pain contorted his features as he fell to his knees. For long moments he simply groaned while his body curled around the punch.
Ramahd crouched until the two of them were eye to eye. “She’s in a good mood today, Pony. Do you know how I can tell?” Glancing up at Amaryllis, the man shook his head. “Because she let you off easy. But I wouldn’t test her again if I were you. Now why don’t you tell me why you refused to let her take Tiron?”
He coughed, but otherwise remained silent.
“Very well.” Ramahd stood, and Amaryllis strode forward again.
Pony’s hands were waving in the air before him. “It was the Widow!”
Ramahd put a hand on Amaryllis’s arm. “Come again?”
“The Widow told us to keep him here, make sure no one took him.”
“And who is the Widow?”
Pony stared at him as if he were an idiot. “She owns the place, and a dozen more just like it.”
Ramahd and Amaryllis shared a look. She nodded to Ramahd’s unspoken request, more than ready to find out more. Ramahd lifted the man up by one arm. “You’re coming with us. It’s time the Widow and I have a chat.”
* * *
Just past high sun, Ramahd stood with the others beneath a bridge that spanned the Haddah’s dry bed. He was studying a three-story mansion that the man called Pony had identified as the Widow’s home. Some passersby had spotted them, but none had taken much note, especially when Cicio had shown them the keen edge of his knife.
“She’s there now?” Ramahd asked.
Pony nodded from the safety of the deeper shadows. “She drinks wine on the top floor near midday.”
Unlike most of the nearby buildings the mansion was made of cut red stone, and was well kept, a ruby hemmed in by a fistful of common stones. “Even today?” It was Salahndi, a day of rest in the desert.
Pony shuffled his feet, kicking up dust from the dry riverbed. “Most like.”
He was nervous. He’d hardly looked at the Widow’s mansion. Ramahd knew little about her, but Pony had talked on the way there, impressing upon them that she was a woman who repaid betrayal with blood.
Ramahd nodded to Amaryllis, who used her knife to cut his bonds. “Run back to your little friends,” she said, then kicked him away. He stumbled and fell, then got up and sprinted along the riverbed, keeping his head low.
With him gone, Ramahd, Amaryllis, Cicio, and Vrago climbed the bank and made for the entrance as fast as they could. They wanted to give the Widow as little time as possible to prepare. The front door was closed, but there were windows open, a breeze blowing soft white curtains inward. Ramahd was just about to start taking the stairs when the front door opened and out stepped three guards: two women, shamshirs already drawn, and a bull of a man holding a studded club easily in one hand. Behind them, Ramahd saw a boy he recognized: the one with the woolen cap who’d been whittling the wooden snake.
I should have bloody known, Ramahd thought, feeling foolish. He should have waited, watched the place more carefully, but he’d been too worried about Tiron to delay.
“I’m here to see the Widow,” Ramahd said, coming to a halt at the foot of the stairs.
“You can meet her,” the barrel of a man said in perfect Qaimiran, “but only you, and I’ll have your weapons before you go in.”
Ramahd stopped and took the man in anew. He had the copper skin of the desert, but a bit of the heavy brow that indicated Qaimiran blood. “What’s going on?”
Slinging the club over one shoulder, he held out his hand. “You’ll have to ask the lady.”
Ramahd considered, then pulled his sword and knife and handed them over.
“Take him,” the man called over his shoulder as he accepted the weapons.
The boy nodded, then waited as Ramahd stepped inside the house. The building was moderately impressive, especially in comparison to its neighbors, but on the inside . . . Mighty Alu, it looked as expensive as any of the homes in the Hanging Gardens in Sharakhai’s rich east end. Bronze statues on pedestals. Paintings on the walls. Frescoes on the ceilings and in grottos spaced throughout the blocky architecture. They reached a central stairwell and took it up two stories. From there the boy led him through a set of open doors onto a patio, where a woman sat wearing a dowdy dress and a black shawl over her head. She was old, Ramahd realized. Very old. With wrinkled skin and sunken cheeks that lent her a hound-like appearance. Her eyes were sharp, though, and her mouth downturned, as if she were angry and not concerned that it be known.
She waved toward the opposite chair.
Ramahd took it, a wicker chair, a thing found commonly in Qaimir, though rarely in the desert. “I must admit you have me at a disadvantage.”
He’d spoken in Sharakhan, but the Widow responded in perfect Qaimiran. “Seems to me I have both your balls in one hand. The question is whether I ought to squeeze.” Her eyes moved to the thick, flame-shaped bottle between them. “Pour us some, won’t you?”
Ramahd did, pouring what looked to be Qaimiri brandy into two heavy glasses. As he did, he noticed the maker’s mark on the bottom. This particular brandy from Qaimir’s southern coast was highly sought after here in Sharakhai, so it wasn’t so strange to see it, but when added with everything else it did feel odd. Ramahd had been brewing toward a battle with some local drug lord, but now it felt as if he were sharing cordials with a fellow noble along the shores of the Austral Sea. All that was missing was the cool breeze and the briny smell.
“Who are you?” Ramahd asked.
“Well, I am the Wido
w.” She motioned to the brandy, then picked up her own glass, which was shaped more like the wooden cups given to Qaimiri children than a glass meant for proper drinking. After tasting the apple-sweet liquor, she said, “The more pertinent question is who you are, and why you’re asking after Tiron.”
Ramahd sat back in the chair and drank. He savored the strong taste, the caramel notes, before speaking again. “Where is he?”
“You didn’t answer my question,” she said, her words more biting than a moment ago.
“I’m a man who cares about Tiron.”
She stared into his eyes, measuring him. “Tiron came to my home of his own free will.”
Ramahd laughed. “Is that what you call that rat-infested den? A home?”
“The shelter it provides, as you well know, is not of the material sort.”
“I could argue it doesn’t offer shelter of any sort. But that’s beside the point. I care about Tiron. No more, no less. He may at first have come of his own free will, but not any longer. I doubt he knows who he is most of the time. I wish to take him home.”
“He is a paying customer, and he’ll be allowed to stay as long as he wishes.”
“Is it about money, then? If I pay you, you’ll give him to me?”
“Who is he to you?”
“Who is he to you?” Ramahd shot back. “What do you care as long as you get paid?” He pulled the leather purse from his belt and upended it. “Twenty rahl and twelve sylval. More than enough for a man to smoke of the lotus in a den like yours for weeks on end.” More than enough to kill a man, Ramahd thought.
“Tiron is a special guest.”
“Of yours?”
The Widow stared, her face set in stone.
“If not yours, then whose?”
“I would never share such things.” Her chin jutted as she tightened her hold on the brandy glass. “Now tell me who you are and your purpose with Tiron.”
“I am Ramahd Amansir, Lord of Viaroza, brother by marriage to Queen Meryam shan Aldouan.”
The Widow stared, her eyes turning uncertain. “Lord Amansir . . .” Her brows pinched in a look of confusion, as if her life depended on solving the puzzle that had just been set before her. “My Lord Amansir,” she finally said, “I’m afraid you’ll have to speak to the queen about Tiron.”
“Mighty Alu, why?” But he was already beginning to understand.
A moment later, as the widow set her glass down with a thump, his fears were confirmed. “It was the queen herself who asked me to keep Tiron.”
Chapter 10
THE PATIO OUTSIDE DAVUD’S apartments was an oddity created when a new wing had been added to King Sukru’s palace centuries ago. It was a triangular space surrounded by tall walls on all three sides, which prevented him from seeing any more of the palace than the top of a minaret and one rough shoulder-like projection, where Sukru’s apartments were situated. For many nights since his return to Sharakhai, Davud had enjoyed sitting on the patio, listening to the palace as it settled down to slumber. The night sky, the chittering insects, the cool breezes had all comforted him, but now they served only to mock, for they marked the end of another day of failures.
It was the day before Beht Zha’ir. He was sitting with a glass of the finest rice wine he’d ever tasted, hunched over the patio table while poring over Hamzakiir’s book of sigils, the one Sukru had embellished. Zahndr, his personal guard, had thankfully, finally, been given other duties. Davud still saw him from time to time, especially with Anila, but he’d given Davud time to work in peace.
Leaning back in his chair, Davud released a pent-up breath of frustration and took a much larger swallow of wine than he was accustomed to. The journey to the blooming fields was tomorrow, and he’d been trying unsuccessfully to master the sigils King Sukru had added. There was one particular sigil. He thought he’d missed something, but now he wasn’t so sure. He’d tried it dozens of times and had yet to feel any sort of spark from it. Hamzakiir’s sigils had all been flawless and worked for him almost immediately. Sukru’s were . . . less so. Perhaps they’d been copied imperfectly. Or perhaps the originals, whatever tome or scroll or table they’d been copied from, had been wrong.
Still, what could he do but try? Over and over he’d attempted to use the combined sigil on the nearby ornamental fig tree—the sigil that used flora as its base with decay and mastery layered upon it—and felt nothing. Would it be different out in the desert? Were the adichara so different from fig trees that the sigil would work there though it had failed miserably here?
He doubted it. That Sukru seemed outright vengeful wasn’t helping matters, but he resolved to keep trying until he’d run out of time. After piercing the skin of his hand with the blooding ring Sukru had given him, he drew the sigil on his palm while cradling the three related concepts together in his mind. Standing, he stretched his hand out toward the tree, hoping to sense its true nature, as Sukru seemed to want him to do with the adichara.
As before, he felt a vague sense that the tree existed, that it was bound to him as long as he concentrated on the sigil. But after long minutes of trying, he gave up, knowing he’d get no further this way. Golden Rhia climbed further in the sky, and he wondered how angry Sukru would be with him. Many in the city described him as an opportunist, a vulture among Kings. But to Davud he’d always seemed more like a wounded animal, a man as likely to attack his own as his enemies, perhaps for the mere spite of it.
It was then that Davud realized he wasn’t alone. There was a small figure in the branches of the tree. The firefinch had returned. As before, it remained oddly still. “Why do you keep coming back, my little friend?” He thought of approaching it, but what would be the point? It would only fly away again. Besides, it was a wonderfully cool night. It smelled of early spring, of the Haddah beginning to swell. And the wine, of which he rarely partook and had probably drunk too much, was doing much to lift his mood.
To his amazement, the finch flew down and landed on the mosaic tabletop. Pinched in its beak was a small twig, which it set down on the table. “A present?” Davud asked, amused.
The finch returned to the tree, then came back with another twig, which it laid down beside the first so that they were more or less in line.
Davud laughed. “Two presents!”
By the time the third twig was laid, Davud was starting to understand what the finch was doing, but still couldn’t believe it. As he’d suspected, the finch returned with a fourth twig, then a fifth and sixth. It lay each beside the others, taking care to place it just so. Like this, flying into the tree, returning with a twig or leaf, or even a small stick, the firefinch was forming a shape.
A sigil, Davud realized with growing wonder, for it looked somewhat like the sigil he’d been studying these past many nights. It wasn’t the same, though; there were many similarities, but the new sigil was also different in notable ways. Slowly it became clear. Within it Davud saw flora. He saw mastery. But not decay. A new sigil had replaced it—easy to distinguish, for it was rendered using leaves instead of twigs or branches.
“And what is this?” Davud wondered.
He flipped to an empty page in Hamzakiir’s book. He drew the new sigil on its own first, then the combined sigil on the following page. He gave it no name, not knowing its nature, but he repeated the ritual he’d tried earlier, first wiping away the blood on his palm, then drawing the new sigil with a fresh tap of blood.
When he reached out to the fig tree again, he felt something different. Something more. Much more. He saw the tree’s seed as it was planted in a nursery, saw it grow until it was knee-high, saw it uprooted with intense discomfort, before being replanted here on the patio and surrounded by decorative stone coping. The tree grew. Days became weeks became seasons. The passage of time felt like waves of heat and cold, of darkness and light. Of the very breath of life, for he felt not only the tree itself, but also th
e living mites and beetles and caterpillars that crawled along its length, the birds nesting in its branches, the chicks hatching, the nestlings flying from the nest, far away from this lonely patio.
Time slowed, and Davud realized he was nearing the end of his journey. He woke, and took a deep breath so deep it felt as if he could inhale the entirety of the desert. Rhia, he realized, had spanned the night sky. It was preparing to set in the west.
He blinked away his disorientation. What in the name of the gods just happened?
Disorientation, he realized, not lethargy. He was more energized than he’d been since those moments in Ishmantep when he’d commanded the fire away from the burning ship.
Gods, Davud thought. I was that tree!
With his own thoughts and memories returning to him, he looked around for the firefinch and saw that it was gone. He looked up into the tree, but saw no birds of any kind. As he was heading back toward the table, he started. Two figures stood in the doorway leading into the apartments.
Anila with Bela, the granddaughter of Sukru’s head chef, who was himself a distant relative of Sukru’s. They were quite a pair: Bela young, inquisitive, and bright-eyed; Anila with her glistening black skin, the thread-of-gold head scarf she used to hide her baldness, and eyes that seemed to weigh everything they came across. Anila was peering into the branches, but then her attention swiveled to the table where the sigil was still formed by the branches, where the book was still open to the freshly inked pages.
Davud closed the book, then swept away the twigs and leaves. They tumbled to the patio stones. Holding the book, feeling his face burning red, Davud faced Anila. “How are you feeling?”
Anila’s eyes bored into his, unforgiving, questioning him more effectively than words ever could. Bela, sensing the tension, fidgeted, as if waiting for Anila to say something.
“Do you need anything?” Davud asked.
Anila stared a moment longer. Wincing, she turned and limped awkwardly away. After sharing a quizzical look with Davud, Bela followed her.
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