“The man I’ve been speaking to. The Sparrow. He’s promised to shelter us.”
“Shelter us or you?”
This time, Davud felt off-balance. “I’m sure he’ll keep you as well.”
Anila laughed. “A woman he’s never met, who he would have every reason to believe might tell Sukru what he’s about?” When he tried to speak again, she raised her hand. “Enough, Davud. I’m not going with you. I think you’re making a terrible mistake, but I’ll not stop you if you’re set on it.”
It was a silent plea for him to remain. He could see it in her eyes, the way she was holding her hands before her. Davud wanted to go to her. Wanted to take her in his arms and plead with her to join him, but he could tell it was a fool’s errand.
“Very well,” he finally said.
“Very well.” And with that she turned and strode stiffly away, moving faster as she neared the door.
The moment the door clicked shut behind her, a firefinch flew down and landed near Davud’s feet. It had a twig in its beak. After setting it down, it flew up and grabbed another. And another.
Ignoring his feelings of disappointment—in himself, in Anila, perhaps both—he ran to his room to retrieve a quill, ink, and his growing book of sigils.
Chapter 40
“WE DON’T NEED TO TRAVEL THIS WAY,” Ramahd told Meryam as he pushed her in her padded wheelchair along the halls of the embassy house. The wheels rattled over the terra-cotta tiles, then bumped over the threshold that led to a courtyard. A small, stone-lined pool sat at the courtyard’s center, and near it a lantern hung from a hook. The lantern swung easily in the crisp evening air, sending the shadows of the nearby bushes to swaying.
“Preserve your strength,” Ramahd went on. “Let me call for a coach to take us into the city. Then we can begin.”
Ramahd thought Meryam might be considering it, but then he realized she’d merely nodded off. She woke shivering as he was turning the wheelchair around.
“It must be done tonight, Ramahd.”
“Which is why you should save your strength for the stones.”
For the past week she’d been studying the sigils Ramahd had collected for her, the ones from the city walls. Tonight the plan was to return to certain ones and alter them, a process that would accomplish two things: lure the ehrekh, Guhldrathen, to the city, and weaken the protections the sigils provided so that the ehrekh could pass beyond them. She’d also been spending time mastering the sapphire, pushing herself at all hours, calling for blood from Amaryllis, Ramahd, even Cicio.
Both tasks required the utmost care. It was not only dangerous work, but mentally and physically draining as well. It had sapped Meryam of all the vitality she’d shown during the ritual on the sapphire, so much so that she was nearing the point of exhaustion. Ramahd hadn’t seen the like since Viaroza, when Meryam was trying to break Hamzakiir’s will.
Meryam motioned to the pool. “I must test Rümayesh’s strength before we reach the sigils.”
“You’ve tested her strength.”
“Not like this. And besides, this night of all nights, I wish for no one outside these walls to know of our comings and goings.” She reached over one shoulder and patted his hand, then motioned to the pool again. “Come.”
Knowing that to argue would only make her dig in, Ramahd spun her chair back around and pushed her onward. The night sky was moonless, the air brisk. The lantern by the pool shed pale light over the shrubs, the paved walkways, the lilies in the water. It would have been pleasant were it not for the business at hand.
Once Ramahd had wheeled the chair to the edge of the pool, he turned her to face him and held out his wrist. He felt the familiar prick of her blooding ring against his skin, felt the warmth of her lips as they pressed against the wound.
Weeks ago, Meryam’s posture would have straightened, as if a great weight had been lifted from her. Her eyes would have sharpened, fatigue vanishing before his eyes. Now, all she could manage was to lift her head a bit. She blinked as if clearing sleep from her eyes, and drank more.
When done, she gave him back his wrist and pushed herself unevenly to a stand. Rümayesh’s lead-lined amulet swung wildly from her neck. She looked as though she were ready to tip back into her chair, but she steadied herself, strictly avoiding Ramahd’s gaze. She’d always detested revealing weakness of any sort, but she’d become especially sensitive to it around Ramahd.
When she’d recovered, she looked up into Ramahd’s eyes. A rare, shy smile came to her lips. “I was certain you’d fight me harder.”
“I only wish there was more I could do.”
For a moment she looked at him as she had in the desert, when they’d traveled together after leaving her father’s dead body. “There are days when this wears on me so.” She looked at him as if he could fix it, make the pain and sorrow go away. And then, as soon as it had come, the look was gone. She swallowed hard and stared into the black depths of the pool, Qaimir’s queen once more. “Let’s begin.”
She took the amulet and opened its outer doors, revealing the sapphire within. It shone dull blue in the lantern’s light. Lifting it before her, she stared into the central facet, the one least covered by soot. Her expression was determined at first, but the more she stared into the sapphire, the more that look faded, replaced by a look of wonder, as if she were staring into another world.
“Meryam?” Ramahd asked, worried she’d been ensorcelled by Rümayesh, as he had been the first time. “Meryam!”
He was just about to reach for the amulet, to clasp the doors shut, when she shook her head. “I’m fine, Ramahd.” Without taking her eyes from the gemstone, she motioned to the water. “Step in. I’ll follow.”
He knew what was coming, and yet it still felt strange to step into a pool with water as high as his ankles and fall headlong into it. Water rushed up around him. Enveloped him. It pressed along his back, the sound of it suddenly raucous. He steadied himself in the current, for he was no longer in a pool, but a river: the Haddah, swelled with spring rains, its flow trying hard to bear him downstream.
The city’s stout outer wall was only a short distance away. Darkened homes greeted him all around. The river gurgled along its banks, but beyond this the night was silent, the city asleep. The only lanterns were those twinkling within the towers spaced along the curtain wall.
He turned to face the flow and swept his arms through the water, waiting for Meryam to appear. He felt her a moment later, and pulled her upright, steadied her as she began to cough.
“Breathe deep,” he said, rubbing her back.
She coughed harder, and he worried they might be spotted, but no one called out from the wall. No one seemed to be watching from the shoreline, either. As the current tried constantly to knock them off balance, Ramahd guided Meryam to the southern shore. To their left, barely visible, were the thick iron grates that ran beneath a wide arch built into the wall. Years ago the grates, just like the rest of the city entrances, were left open, allowing free traffic along the river in the short rainy season or passage along the riverbed in the dry months. But the troubles with the Moonless Host had forced the Kings to close them to control movement in and out of the city.
It was one of the reasons Meryam had felt it necessary to travel here in such a strange manner—they couldn’t risk the city guard learning what they were doing—which made Meryam’s terrible coughing fit all the more alarming.
As soon as Ramahd had led her out of the water, he took out a chunk of licorice root from the bag at his belt. It was wet but would still work well enough. “Quickly, Meryam, it’ll help with your cough.”
She waved him away. “They won’t hear us, Ramahd.”
Indeed, he looked up and saw two Silver Spears walking side by side with the sort of ease that came with boredom. Neither gave any sign that they’d heard Meryam’s coughing. Even so, he guided her quickly t
o the foot of the wall.
“Hold my neck,” he told her.
She did, and he carried her to the first of the stones, some two hundred paces away. He set her down gently and she dropped to her knees. Her right palm had already begun to glow with a dull orange light. She used it to reveal deep, chiseled lines in the stone’s surface—a sigil, one of dozens that protected the city from the desert’s more dangerous creatures. Using confident, practiced strokes, she brushed the stone with an outstretched finger. The stone melted where she touched, leaving behind a gouge that looked little different than the original. With waves of her hand, other places were filled in, masking the previous lines. Her movements reminded Ramahd of nothing so much as the Mirean women who painted calligraphy in confident, graceful strokes.
In little time she was done, and a new sigil now graced the stone. Ramahd knew what he was looking for, and still it appeared as though the new sigil had been there from the very beginning. More importantly, he could feel its effect—an easing of the pressure that had been with him since his return from the desert.
“Help me up,” Meryam said.
Ramahd did, and they moved to the second sigil stone, then the third, Meryam altering each one just so.
“It’s working.” Ramahd felt nauseous. “I feel him coming closer.”
“Good.” She closed her fist, and the orange light was snuffed. “Now help me up.”
He did, and carried her back the way they’d come. He felt as though a race had just begun, and that for every stride they took, Guhldrathen was taking three. How soon before it catches us? Meryam had said the ceremony with Kiral was set for the morning. It seemed preposterous that Guhldrathen would wait that long.
When they reached the banks of the Haddah and began wading into the water, his feelings of helplessness intensified. The water was trying to press the life from him. The sounds of the gurgling flow were the ehrekh’s infernal laughs.
Mighty Alu, protect your servant.
But the laughs only grew stronger.
Chapter 41
BRAMA SAT AT THE EDGE of his bed holding a steel nail in one hand, ignoring the ever-present sense of unease that had been with him since he lost the sapphire. He pulled back the sleeve of his nightshirt and examined the small round wounds along his arm. There were seven, one for each day since that night in the cellar.
When your throat was slit.
The highest crime had not been the theft of the necklace, but the attempt on Brama’s life. That Brama had lived was inconsequential; the neck wound would have killed a normal man in moments. Jax’s words followed him like a hungry gutter wren—the Qaimiri must pay, the Qaimiri must pay—but he’d had enough violence in the past few years to last him lifetimes. What did he care if some Lord of Qaimir had stolen the ehrekh away?
Good riddance. I’m glad to be rid of her.
Still, he had no idea how long the effects she’d granted him would last.
He ran a finger over the line of puckered wounds like a harpist strumming notes. The oldest was a week old. He’d given it to himself the day after waking to find his own blood spilled across the cellar floor. He felt nothing from it now. Indeed, it looked like a ten-year-old wound. He felt nothing from the next either, or the next three after that. The sixth was different. He’d given it to himself two days ago. He felt only the smallest amount of pain from it, as if it were a fortnight old and nearly healed.
The seventh, though he’d driven the nail deep into the muscle only yesterday, felt merely sore. The ability was still with him, then, despite Rümayesh’s absence. Was it permanent, then, or would it be lost with Rümayesh’s death? He was embarrassed to admit he didn’t know. He’d only discovered it years ago after falling headfirst down the stairs after healing a lotus addict who was so obese Jax had advised him not to heal her. He’d done it anyway, taking both her addiction and the lotus into himself with the help of Rümayesh. Afterward, with his mind addled by so much of the reek, he’d tumbled headfirst down a flight of stairs. He’d managed a broken forearm, several cracked ribs, and a hit to the head that had knocked him out for hours. But by the next day, the breaks had partially healed and the bruises had vanished. By the day after that, his bones felt as good as they ever had.
He had stood before the beaten brass mirror in his room that night. For a long while he saw only his own ruined face, but as he continued to stare at the imperfect reflection, Rümayesh’s features slowly replaced his: skin black as night, eyes the color of a rusty blade, horns sweeping like sickles up from her forehead and back behind her ears. Long spikes replaced his mop of curly brown hair.
“What is it you wish, my master?” Rümayesh had said with an easy smile.
“You know what I wish,” he said, ignoring the way she’d addressed him. She only called him master when she wished to annoy him. “Why did you do it?”
“Why, whatever do you mean?” Rümayesh had replied with an easy smile.
“Why did you heal me?”
The face in the mirror had laughed. “Did you think I would leave you so vulnerable, to be taken down by yellow fever or dysentery or typhus or, my Lord Goezhen forbid, a fall down a bloody flight of stairs?”
“I didn’t ask you to do it!”
She’d stared for a moment, her expression hovering somewhere between amusement and shock. “And why ever would you care?”
He paused. Men would kill for such a gift, had killed for it, so why did he care? The answer was uncomfortable, but he couldn’t lie to her; she would sense it before he even opened his mouth. “It makes me beholden to you. It makes you a permanent part of me.”
“The notion disgusts you?”
“How could it not?”
Rümayesh had given him the scars that riddled his skin. She’d tortured him for months, stopping only when Çeda had captured her soul within the gemstone.
“Do you wish me to take it away, then?” Rümayesh had asked. “Make it vanish as if it had never been?”
“Yes!”
She’d paused. “Surely you jest.”
“I do not.”
They both knew it was true, and her smile had turned sad. “Very well . . .”
He’d felt relieved, but even in those few moments afterward he’d begun to doubt his decision. What have I given up?
The thought had gnawed at him for months, until a scuffle had broken out. A man half crazed on reek had taken out a knife as they’d tried to help him. Brama had tackled him from behind, but took a nasty cut in the process. The slice along his forearm had healed by the time he’d made it to bed that night. Coward that he was, he’d never brought it up with Rümayesh. Despite all his bluster, he’d been relieved to find the power still in him.
Will I live forever? he’d wondered. Will I reach the end of days with Rümayesh still by my side? Now, as he sat in his room holding the nail, he asked himself the same question, unsure what he wanted the answer to be.
He took the nail and pressed it deep into the meat of his forearm. It punctured his skin, drove into the muscle. His body felt pain like any man’s, but his lessons at ignoring such things had been interminable, and he was no longer afraid to admit that he’d learned those lessons well. Driving a nail into his own flesh wasn’t a pleasant experience, but neither was it unpleasant. It simply was. Finished, he pulled it out quickly, the skin distending like a single-poled tent. And then it was free.
Blood welled. It ran in a warm trickle down his arm and dripped from his elbow onto the bandage he’d lain across his leg. He pressed the bandage to the wound, but could already see how well it was closing. He stared at it, a thousand thoughts plaguing his mind. Does it mean she yet lives? Are they torturing her? Do I care if they are? Do I want them to torture her?
He cleaned the wound and stood before the brass mirror, the same one he’d used to speak to Rümayesh so many times. He saw only the twisted features of
a tortured man. How he’d wished to die while in Rümayesh’s care. She’d kept him alive so she could bury him in pain and dig him up just to bury him all over again. He’d asked himself why in those early days, but it wasn’t so difficult a puzzle. Part of her enjoyed inflicting pain. Another part blamed him for losing Çeda, the woman she’d coveted. And part of her wanted to please Goezhen, her maker, a god who reveled in such things.
As the hum of life in the Shallows filtered in through the nearby window, a worm turned inside him. How could he feel so empty? He still had much. He could go on and continue what he and Jax had started.
But there was a constant feeling of . . .
He stifled the thought, pressed it deep down lest it take root within his mind.
He left the room in a rush, taking the stairs down and heading to the largest of the three houses that acted as their infirmaries. He threw himself into his work. Helping those who’d come for succor.
“Give it to me,” he said to Shei, who was preparing a bottle of poppy milk for a woman strapped to one of the beds.
Shei smiled her pleasant smile and nodded, bowing as she handed the bottle and spoon over. After three shuffling steps backward, she spun and left him in peace.
The afflicted woman’s daughter sat in a chair, watching him, staring at his scars. He did his best to ignore the scrutiny, concentrating on the patient instead. She might have been pretty once. Now she was gaunt, with sallow eyes and ashen skin. As her head lolled and her throat convulsed, Brama poured a spoonful of the thick white milk from the bottle. The woman had been tugging at the restraints as if caught in a terrible dream, but when the spoon touched her lips, she stopped and sipped.
Brama had taken care not to pour too much, but seeing how little he’d used, the daughter leaned forward. “Could you not give her more, my lord?”
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