“Oh? And how will you do that?”
His tears make him feel weak, which allows him to grip the knife harder and drive it into his thigh. A tremulous exhalation of pain pours from his throat as the knife sinks deep. He keeps as much of it in as he can. It is an offering of sorts, for he knows how much she enjoys it, him facing his pain bravely despite the suffering that lies ahead.
Her eyes brighten. She smiles a jackal smile, then leans close and runs her tongue along his thigh, lapping at the blood he’s shed. She kneels before him, a shiver running through her, then whispers, “Yes.” She grips his knees, spreads his legs further apart until her head is between his thighs. “Yes.” She licks again.
When he drives the knife into his other leg, her head arches back. “Yes!” She bares her neck to him, daring him to run the blade across her throat.
But he doesn’t. He can’t.
How could he?
The things she would do to him if he tried . . .
So he grits his teeth and goes on, stabbing deeper, offering more of his lifeblood to the demon licking his skin like a lustful wife. Stabbing again, he prays that when enough has been spilled, she’ll allow him to fall unconscious.
* * *
“Brama?”
Somewhere, not too far away, Brama heard soft scraping sounds. A chair over dirt. Shoes over stone.
It came nearer, louder, and then, “Dear gods, no! Brama!”
Someone gripped his shoulders and shook him. A sunrise of pain blossomed along the horizon of his mind. Then hands pressed against his cheeks, the fingers cradling his neck. “Please, Brama, wake!”
Brama forced his eyes open and found Jax kneeling over him. For some reason, her dirty face registered before her terrified expression. Her eyes were wide as teacups. For him, he assumed, though he couldn’t understand why.
He did a moment later, as Jax stood and shouted for help. Lighting the small cellar was the thin yellow light of a candle that sat halfway up the nearby stairwell. It lit the stain of muddy red that spread like a fan from where Brama lay. From his prone vantage it looked like a kicking mule.
My blood, Brama realized. That’s all my blood. A vision of Rümayesh laughing danced before his eyes.
“Brama!”
Gods, he’d fallen asleep again. How very difficult it was to remain awake. If only he might sleep awhile; forcing his eyes open was like lifting a ten-stone.
“Brama, please!” She was shaking him again. “Wake up!”
I’m well, he wanted to say, though he was anything but. He tried to speak, but all that came out was a strange, wet gurgle.
That, finally, was what spurred him to movement. He sounded like a bellows doused in yoghurt. He was going to die unless he got help.
Gingerly, he probed his neck. Like a beacon fire being lit, a terrible burning sensation rose up all along his throat. Pain he could handle. It was the depth of the cut that scared him. Would he lose his voice? Each time he probed further, his fingers came away sticky. The wound went all along the front of his neck, he realized, a cut that should have ended his life, but hadn’t.
“Listen to me.” Tears were streaming down Jax’s cheeks. “I’m here. We’re going to go home, the two of us. But I have to get help first.”
She began to rise, but Brama grabbed her wrist. He flicked his gaze meaningfully to the wall where the Qaimiri had been chained.
Jax looked back, her jaw jutting in anger or shock or both. “He’s gone.”
Of course he was. He’d slit Brama’s throat and left. Brama knew he should feel angry. But he didn’t. In truth he wasn’t sure how to feel. Grateful to be alive? Despondent over being kept once more from the farther fields? Filled with a desire for revenge on the Qaimiri for trying to kill him?
He stared at Jax, wondering why the Qaimiri hadn’t run a knife across her throat. There was a nasty bruise along her neck—a wound sustained as the Qaimiri tried to escape? He was grateful, he decided. Jax was still alive. She didn’t deserve death for his fool actions.
He tried sitting up, but Jax pushed him down. “You bloody fool, I’m going to get help. Just rest until I return.”
He held his hand up to forestall her, then felt for his necklace and the sapphire. The falcon’s egg gemstone had been his constant companion for years. It was the source of his power, the home of his enemy. He crawled over the floor, running his hands wildly over the packed earth. The emptiness inside him told him it was gone, but it didn’t feel possible.
Jax helped him search, but it was half-hearted. She knew as well as he that the Qaimiri had taken it. Jax stared at him with an expression of terror or worry, perhaps both. As painful as Brama’s life had been, the gem meant much to them both. They’d used it to forge a life here in Sharakhai. Likely she was already wondering what life would be like if they no longer had it.
There was a fury inside Brama for having the gem stolen from him, but a part of him, the part that had been subjected to months of torture at the hands of Rümayesh, felt relieved. No longer was it needling him every waking moment. No longer would he have to face the one who’d been so cruel to him, no matter that they’d come to an accord years ago, no matter that Brama was now the master and Rümayesh the prisoner.
His neck itched terribly. Instead of scratching it, he looked down and began dusting off his bloody clothes. Why he bothered he wasn’t sure—they were hopelessly soiled and caked in dried and still-drying blood. Not knowing what else to do, he headed for the stairs, and promptly fell over.
“Oh, gods!” Jax helped him back up, then wrapped his arm across her shoulders and helped him climb the stairs.
Under a cloak of starlight, they trudged along the dead-end street in the Knot the two of them called home. These were Brama’s buildings, all purchased as part of his growing empire, fueled by his use of the sapphire. Few of his chosen were up at this hour, but those who were stared at him in horror. There was an unmistakable note of wonder in their eyes as well. They’d thought Brama untouchable—he’d never wished for it, but he’d become their idol, and now the pillar upon which they’d placed him was beginning to crumble.
As they reached home, Jax and several others helped remove his filthy clothes. They cleaned him and stitched his wounds and gave him fresh robes. They guided him up to his room on the topmost floor, looking as though they were ready to die in his place, asking what they might do for him. But he had no answers. He was no hero, no savior. He was a thief who’d stumbled across a bauble that had granted him indescribable power. None of it had ever been his. Not really. It had always been ephemeral, ready to slip through his fingers like so much sand. And now that it had, he felt strangely free, as if it had always been a prison but it had taken this for him to realize it.
He waved away their questions, then took Jax’s hand and led her to their bed. As he held her, he pretended that he was some other man—a proper man with a proper wife, a man who got up and went about his day in the Amber City like any other. A locksmith, perhaps. He almost laughed at the thought.
“What?” Jax whispered.
As Brama shook his head, she looked at the bandages around his neck and laid her head back down. He stroked her hair, falling into that very dream. He and Jax, living a normal life.
Holding that dream to him like a talisman, he slept, blissfully free of the nightmares that so often plagued him.
* * *
When morning broke, Brama rose from bed, probing his neck to feel how well the cut had healed. It was coming along well. Only a dull pain remained. Another few days and it would be just another scar to add to the rest.
He went to the nearby window and stared down over the courtyard—which in truth was nothing more than a dead end in the most convoluted and densely packed section of the city. His acolytes were there, the servants of a false god, speaking to those who’d come for healing. They came with bread in hand, a
bit of watered wine. Some even had real money. They gave it over to Twarro, the rangy Kundhuni with the wild eyes, a man who’d remained here even after his brother had been killed in Brama’s service, or Shei, the young Mirean woman who’d arrived shaking so badly from the call of the lotus Brama had doubted he could save her.
A knock came at the door.
“Come,” he said in a harsh rasp. Speaking brought on a sharp burn along his throat, but it was manageable.
Jax entered and joined him by the window. She considered the courtyard, as Brama was doing, but given how troubled she looked, Brama very much doubted she was having the same thoughts.
“Already they come,” she said, jutting her chin toward the end of the street, where a young man wearing only threadbare trousers was walking toward Shei, shaking as bad as a newborn lamb.
“So we help him,” he whispered.
“And how will we do that?”
“A bed to sleep in. Lotus tea to ease the pain, a bit of food to help with the cramps.”
Jax nodded as if she agreed, but he could tell she was working up to something. He had a very good idea what it was.
“We may ease his pain,” she said. “We may provide succor to the others. But how long will they continue to come when they learn you’ve lost your power? How long can we afford to buy lotus tea when fewer come with coin? Or provide beds, for that matter, and those to attend them?”
“We have money set aside.”
“And how long will that last?”
They both knew it would last only a few months, less if their donations began to dwindle. He might have had more, but he’d been focused on buying all the buildings along this dead-end street, and it had become more expensive the closer he’d come to getting them all, the last few slumlords holding out for higher prices. Brama had hardly haggled with them. At the time it felt important to gain the whole street so he could better secure it.
Now he felt the fool, but he hadn’t expected to lose Rümayesh. He’d always thought he’d have trouble from the Silver Spears or the House of Kings—a question of diplomacy and graft, not blades—before he’d face a challenge from the streets.
“We’ll sell a few of the buildings. We’ll ration—” Brama swallowed reflexively, wincing from the pain it brought on. “We’ll ration the supplies, stretch them further.”
“That will only further the rumors that the Tattered Prince has lost his power. And you’re mad if you think you’ll get even a quarter of what you paid for these hovels, especially when those greedy bastards get wind of what’s happening in their old territory.”
She was right. About all of it. He swallowed again. “We’ll find a way, Jax.”
“You’re going to let him go, then? Let that Qaimiri worm take everything from us?”
Brama regarded her levelly as he took her by the shoulders. “You don’t understand. He’s freed me from her.”
“Brama, I know what you’ve been through with Rümayesh, but you must see it. The Qaimiri has set a plague of termites beneath our home. Mark my words, they will eat away at the foundation of all we’ve built, and sooner than you think.” She waved to the window. “They’re already talking about what happened.”
“Losing her was always a possibility.”
Jax’s mouth fell open. “That man tried to kill you.”
“And I was prepared to kill him to get what I wanted.”
“He must pay for it.”
She was right, of course. It was dangerous, especially here in the Shallows, to let challenges go unanswered. The sapphire had been stolen from him—taken forcibly, his throat slit for good measure. Part of him wanted to stave the Qaimiri’s head in for doing it. But another part of him felt free in a way that he hadn’t since having the misfortune of stumbling into Rümayesh’s path. He’d told himself nearly every day since that he was keeping the sapphire, keeping Rümayesh, for good reasons—to keep the ehrekh’s power from those who would use it for ill purposes, and so that he could use it to heal those who needed it most—but deep down he’d known that Rümayesh had been doing it only on a whim. She didn’t care about him. Not truly. Nor did she care about those they’d healed, those they’d helped in the Knot and beyond. For her, it was merely a way to satisfy her curiosity. What was this enslavement to her in any case? She had centuries to live. So why shouldn’t he, Brama, now live his life as he chose? Why should he care if some Qaimiri had stolen her away?
“Haven’t you had your fill of revenge?” Brama asked. “Have you forgotten where it leads?”
Jax had lost her brother to his thirst for revenge. He had been the rightful heir in Malasan and had his title stolen out from under him when a pair of conspiring lords had killed his mother and father. He and Jax had fled to Sharakhai, chased by assassins. Her brother hadn’t been able to relinquish his thirst for revenge, and had lost his life because of it. Jax had been different. She’d reconciled herself with her fate, and had stood by Brama’s side ever since.
“Don’t dredge up the past and lay it before me as if you remember it better than I do.” She threw her hands up in the air, indicating the house they stood in, the courtyard beyond, the buildings that surrounded it, all filled with those recovering from their addictions or those who had decided to stay after being healed. “We built this, Brama. It’s something to be proud of. I won’t just let it go.”
“Proud,” Brama scoffed. “It’s a haven for those with one foot in the grave.”
She stared at him aghast. “You don’t believe that.”
“Do you know how many return after we’ve healed them?”
Jax’s jaw was set grimly, her eyes flat.
“Perhaps you haven’t seen, or perhaps you haven’t cared to, but for every five that leave, four return. We deliver them back to their lives, but be it soon or late, the lotus resumes its siren song.”
“And the one that makes it out? I thought those were the ones you were fighting for, and the others, to give them a chance.”
He rubbed his temples absently. A terrible headache was coming on. “We still can.”
Jax shook her fists in the air. “Make up your mind, Brama Junayd’ava! Do you want to help them or have you given up?”
“I don’t know!”
“Well, you’d better sort it out before the decision is made for you.” She left, slamming the door behind her.
Brama’s headache raged throughout the morning, continued as a dull ache throughout the day, echoing the defeated looks of those who stared at him. Without fail, their eyes wandered to his neck, to the thick bandage, the place where his necklace and its massive sapphire had once rested. He nearly left that very day to procure another, a fake that could pass for the old one. But he knew it would deceive no one, least of all him. It would make him a fool, an idiot dancing on the back of a pony, calling himself a knight.
That night he heard the news. Two of his disciples had left, slipped away without saying a word to anyone, taking nearly all their black lotus tea with them when they left.
When he fell asleep at last, it was fitful. The dreams filled with torture and mirthful demon eyes had returned.
Chapter 29
ÇEDA LISTENED CAREFULLY, her ear pressed against the surface of a hidden door in the pitch-black tunnel. Hearing nothing, she pulled the handles she’d become familiar with while at the House of Maidens and slid the door aside. Beyond was the savaşam where Zaïde had trained her. It was empty, though she could hear voices beyond the rice paper doors on the far side of the room. Being careful to avoid the boards that creaked, she stepped onto the wooden floor, then slid the door shut behind her, cringing at the dull thud.
She moved to the doors opposite and listened. As the voices faded, she slid through the door, then glided along the hallway like a ghost. At the far side of the Matrons building, she heard the sound she remembered; that boom whenever the Hall of Records
’ entranceway was closed. She went up two stories to the rarely used office of Sayabim, her old sword mistress. Dust coated scrolls and papers that littered every flat space along the shelves and desk. For a woman so fastidious about swordplay, it was surprising how untidy Sayabim left her room. It was perfect for Çeda, though, as it overlooked the House of Maidens’ interior wall. Peering through the window, Çeda saw it, only a short leap down. Beyond, the whole of Tauriyat’s southeastern face was revealed. The sun had set, but the thin white clouds in the slate-colored sky were lit a brilliant orange. They made it look as if the sky were afire, ready to fall upon the palaces of the Kings above.
Çeda unwound the length of rope she’d tied around her waist, secured one end to the stout curtain hook above the window, then tested it for strength. The other end she coiled below the window with all the care of a boatswain with the rigging lines. Then, from one of the pouches at her belt, she pulled out a spool of dark gray thread with an already-threaded needle sticking out of it, which she used to string the thread through one end of the rope.
Then she sat and waited. As the brightness along the western horizon extinguished, she tugged her mother’s locket out. The locket was once again filled with petals: gifts from Leorah before she’d left. She left them hidden away—the asirim might sense her; it would be the height of foolishness to take them when all depended on her presence in the House of Kings remaining secret—but she did rub the locket while whispering to her mother.
“Guide me this night. Lead me to the answers I need.”
Silver Tulathan rose over the desert. Rhia’s golden disc was not far behind. She heard the first of the asirim soon after, a long, lonely wail that set her skin prickling. Another wail came shortly after, softer, more distant, then a third, this one closer. She might have heard the crack of Sukru’s whip, but it was so soft she couldn’t be sure.
She gripped her right hand, feeling the burn from the old wound. She’d become adept at recognizing when it was flaring, and she had started to master suppressing the pain and the anger that often came with it. They were reflections of the asirim, their anger, their sorrow. There was a time when it would have overwhelmed her. But she’d learned how to distance herself from them. She did so now, closing herself off to the asirim, especially to those nearing the city.
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