A Veil of Spears

by Bradley P. Beaulieu

  I’m no lord, and we have little enough milk to go around. Not to mention a dwindling supply of money with which to buy more. “It will be enough to ease her pain.”

  The girl tried to smile. She’d brought her mother in yesterday, desperate to see her healed. She’d come with all the money she had, a sad collection of copper khet and a handful of six-pieces. It had broken Brama’s heart to tell her he couldn’t heal her, not as she’d hoped. It would take long, painful days. Days in which her mother would likely leave to find more reek rather than suffer.

  “I could find more.” Her eyes had been so hopeless, Brama had nearly wept.

  “It isn’t the money.”

  “I’ll find more,” she pressed, staring at his scar-torn face. “Just heal her and I promise we’ll return with twice this.”

  “I don’t know what you’ve heard—”

  “That you heal with but a kiss to the crown of the head.” Her eyes went wide, as though a brilliant idea had just occurred to her. “I know you choose carefully, my lord, but she’s pretty, is she not? She could stay with you, or others that come with more money.”

  “This is no brothel,” Brama had said, “and this isn’t about the money. We don’t do what you think. Not anymore. It’s beyond us. But we’ll give her a bed. We’ll help her through this.”

  A betrayed and lost look settling over her, she’d merely sat in the chair by her mother’s side and fed her water from the misshapen mug Jax had brought for them. Now the look of betrayal was gone, replaced by worry for her mother and fear for her own future.

  “Is it true what they say? That you’ve displeased the gods? That you’ve lost your power?”

  Brama stoppered the bottle as he stood. “We’ll take the restraints off tonight. You can sleep here if you like, or you can leave and return in the morning. Either way, she’ll have to leave tomorrow.”

  “But she needs more time, doesn’t she?”

  “We need the bed.” Being unable to heal as quickly meant the beds had filled up faster than they were used to. “I’ll give you a small vial of the poppy to take home.”

  “It was all a lie, wasn’t it?” she said to his back. “The Tattered Prince was a lie!”

  Yes, Brama thought as he walked away. He was always a lie.

  Nearby, a stocky woman was struggling to rise from her bed. “Heal me!” she screamed at him. Her eyes were manic, her lips pulled back in the pain of withdrawal. “I need it. Please, I’ll be good this time. I promise.”

  Brama had healed the woman three weeks earlier, and a few months before that. Neither had stuck. She’d returned yesterday, demanding to see Brama, and when he’d finally come and told her the truth she’d refused to believe it. Only when they’d given her an extra dose of milk of the poppy had she given up and gone to sleep.

  “I’ll give you more milk, but that’s all I can offer.”

  “No! You will heal me!”

  “This is all I can offer.” Brama nodded to two of the nearby men, who swooped in and guided her back to bed. She went, but she was shaking so badly Brama had to abandon the spoon, grip her jaw, and try to force some of the milk down her throat through her clenched teeth. Even then, she spat it out.

  “Stop it!” Brama shouted at her. “I’m trying to help you!”

  He wasted nearly a quarter bottle trying to feed her, but it wasn’t until she managed to lift a leg and kick Brama in the groin that he became enraged. He backed away, nursing his flaring balls, then released a pent-up roar and threw the bottle against the wall. The bottle smashed, shards and milk spraying everywhere.

  The men stared at the thick serum slipping down the wall. That half-bottle had been worth more than either man had ever owned. The woman seemed pleased somehow, but also worried over what Brama would do next.

  But Brama hardly knew she was there. His breath came heavy. His arms hung at his sides as if he were ready to fight. Gods, where was all this anger coming from? He was free of her.

  “Send her out,” Brama said.

  Now the woman seemed unsure of herself. “No, please,” she shouted at him. “I’ll be good! I won’t be a bother to anyone!”

  “Out!” Brama roared.

  The men complied, pulling her forcibly from the bed and dragging her screaming to the door, where they shoved her out into the street as she pleaded to remain. “I’ll take the milk!”

  The milk . . . Brama walked to the wall where the plaster still glistened. He could smell it. Not the fragrance of the milk, but a burning smell. It was the smell of the brazier in Rümayesh’s tower in the desert. It was the smell of his own skin burning. And by the gods, he missed it.

  The rage that had been bubbling up inside him over the last week boiled over. He punched the wall in the center of the glistening stain. The plaster cracked and pieces of it fell away, pattering to the floor.

  He punched it again. And again. Over and over, his fists worked like the arms of a loom, driving with more speed and power, impelled by the rage and confusion warring within him.

  How can I miss her? How can I miss the torture?

  The plaster crumbled further, revealing the wooden slats beneath. The rain of rubble collected in piles and still he went on, releasing a primal scream. Only when the brick gave way behind the slats, creating a small hole in the wall to the building’s exterior, did he stop and stare at the ruin he’d made of his hands. They shook as the pain slowly registered. The backs of his hands were rough landscapes of blood and torn skin. He’d broken fingers. But what did that matter? They’d heal. He’d be whole in another day.

  The room had gone utterly silent. Everyone stared at him. Those who cared for the afflicted, those who knew him, watched him with a confusion and wariness he’d never seen in them before, but even that was merely a pale imitation of the sick, who stared with naked horror.

  “Brama?”

  He turned and saw Jax standing in the doorway, the cut of her newly shorn hair and her slight build making her look like a waif. Her eyes drifted not toward the hole Brama had made in the wall, nor to his bleeding hands; her gaze steadily held his, a calming influence over the storm raging inside him.

  “You’d better come with me.”

  At first he thought it was because of the way he was acting, a measure meant to protect everyone else, but he realized a moment later it wasn’t. Or at least, it wasn’t wholly because of that. By the gods who breathe, there was something new. He could tell from the way she’d said it, as though this was something the others shouldn’t hear, not yet.

  Dropping his hands to his side, he nodded and lumbered toward her. Blood tickled its way down his fingers, pattered against the weathered gray planks of the floor.

  After accepting two bandages from Shei, Jax wrapped his blood-soaked hands as she walked with him to the next building, where their most violent patients were taken. Inside the long, narrow room were ten beds. A small crowd of his followers dressed in simple linen thawbs and dresses were clustered around one bed. A woman named Arna was lying there, her face screwed up in pain.

  Arna had been one of his chosen. One of Rümayesh’s chosen. She’d been one of eight who had been given small sapphire chips embedded in the palms of their scarred hands, allowing Brama to see through them, to keep watch over his small empire. That sight had been robbed from him when the sapphire was taken. Brama felt small when he’d realized the truth of it after waking in the cellar, but that was nothing compared to what he felt as he stared at Arna’s hand.

  The center of Arna’s palm was red and puffy, infected. They might have to chop off her hand to save her. And the stone . . . It was missing. Twarro, who towered over Brama, held his own hand out flat so Brama could see the sapphire there. Bits of drying blood covered it, and spots of puss.

  “It just came out,” Arna told him.

  “How long has it been like this?”

 
“Three days.” Her blue eyes avoided his now.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  She swallowed, color flushing through her freckled cheeks. “You’ve had enough to deal with.”

  Brama took in the rest of the eight chosen, who were all there: kind Mualla, intense Rezan, patient Sabriye. Koro’kahn, Viah, and Ishalla. They all held their right hands out to him. All had reddened skin around the embedded sapphires.

  He looked to each of them in turn, and was struck by how unfair it was to all of them. They’d pinned their hopes on a charlatan, a man who could heal any wound, and they’d been infected by mere association with him. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  To a person, they remained silent, but more than one flicked their eyes toward Jax.

  “I told them not to,” Jax said.

  He turned to her. As he stared into her fair features, he found only defiance staring back at him. “Why?”

  “I came to see you were right. We have much still to do here.”

  There was no denying Jax’s words. There was much good they could do. He’d said as much himself only days ago. But things had changed since then. Still, Brama waited, knowing there was more to come. She was doing that thing she did, avoiding his gaze when she had something to hide.

  Jax swallowed hard, as if words were getting caught in her throat. “I did it because I knew when you learned of it, you’d go after the Qaimiri.”

  He lifted his hands, stared at the blood-soaked bandages. As he flexed his fingers, it brought terrible pain. He could already feel the bones starting to knit, though. The skin starting to heal. Beyond the facade of that simple, bodily pain was an ache that was only going to get worse. Was it the promise of the sapphire calling to him? Or a spell Rümayesh had laid on him when she’d granted him the ability to heal? Or was it both?

  It doesn’t matter, he decided.

  “Stay,” he said to Jax, then took in the rest of them. “All of you, stay.” Then he turned and strode from the room.

  Jax caught up with him in the dusty street and tugged on his arm until he stopped and faced her. The people in the street gave them a wide berth.

  “You can’t do this,” she said.

  He gripped his hands, reveling in the memories the pain summoned. “Her hooks are inside me, Jax. They’re pulling at me even now, and it’s getting worse by the day.”

  “But surely it’s like the call of the lotus?” Jax looked so very desperate, so very small. Part of him wanted to take her into his arms, but his feet stayed firmly rooted. “It will pass,” she said in firmer tones. “You have to be strong enough until it does. Isn’t that what you tell those you’ve healed?”

  “But I don’t want to, Jax. Whether I like it or not, she is a part of me. Perhaps I’m part of her as well. I am not whole without her.”

  “You can’t let her do this to you. It’s a spell she cast to protect herself should her prison ever be stolen from you.”

  “I know! I know!” He stared at his body. “I hate her! She ruined me.” At the mere thought of voicing the deeper truth, his heart began to pound so quickly that fainting was a real possibility. He voiced it anyway. “I can’t live without her.”

  Jax swallowed. Tears welled in her eyes, but no words came, not until he began walking away. “Whether you find that gem or not, it’s going to kill you.”

  Good, Brama said to himself.

  “Brama!”

  He ignored her, and lost himself in the throngs of the city.

  Chapter 42

  WHEN THE GAOLER OPENED Çeda’s cell door, it wasn’t the Silver Spears who came to accompany her. It was her old hand—Sümeya, Melis, Kameyl, and Yndris in their black Maiden’s dresses, with ebon swords and fighting knives hanging from their belts. Sümeya and Kameyl’s eyes were hard. Melis had a blank expression Çeda couldn’t read. Yndris, however, studied her with naked glee.

  Çeda hadn’t eaten in two days. She’d been given little water. Her dark hair hung in ragged clumps. She smelled. “It takes four of you?” she asked, if only to wipe the looks from their faces.

  “Speak another word,” Sümeya said, “and I’ll have Yndris gag you, using whatever she cares to use.”

  Part of Çeda wanted to force her to do it, if only to get in a shot or two at Yndris, but she held her arms out, and the gaoler put her in irons. The cold metal bit into her wrists and ankles, and the chains clanked as she walked. With Kameyl and Yndris ahead, Melis and Sümeya behind, Çeda was led through the palace. She saw no servants as she walked along the halls, only Silver Spears, who stood at attention and eyed her nervously, as if she were about to break her chains and kill them all.

  She was thrown in a wagon. To the gallows? she wondered. To die like my mother?

  Not to the gallows, she soon learned, but to another palace—Sukru’s. She was led to a large room occupied by the Kings and some few of their most trusted advisors. She’d expected Husamettín and Sukru. She hadn’t expected the rest to be there as well.

  Çeda was led to a stout chair, positioned near Sukru’s. As Sümeya and Kameyl strapped her in, the Reaping King watched with a look of hunger that made her insides squirm. Husamettín sat across from him with a detached expression. Beyond them were Ihsan the Honey-tongued King, Zeheb the King of Whispers, Azad the King of Thorns, Beşir the King of Coin, and Cahil the Confessor King. Lastly, sitting at the head of the long table, was Kiral the King of Kings.

  Only Cahil sat away from the table. He was leaning his chair against the wall in the far corner of the room, looking like he wanted to plunge his knife into Çeda’s chest. It was an unabashed desire that had, perhaps, earned him his distant position beyond the head of the table.

  As a group, the Kings seemed strangely tense. That, along with the fact that she hadn’t been passed directly to Cahil for interrogation, made her wonder. There had clearly been some sort of struggle over her, but which Kings were on which side she couldn’t tell.

  Servants poured wine for each of the Kings. Husamettín immediately pushed his away. “Where is our interrogator?” he asked brusquely.

  In answer, Sukru nodded to a man in the corner behind Çeda who looked more like a sell-sword than a King’s guard. He was stocky, with piercing blue eyes, and had seen the greater portion of forty summers, she guessed. He had the look of a man who could take care of himself, the sort Çeda always took more seriously when she’d fought in the pits. After an overly familiar bow to his King, the man left the room and returned a short while later with a handsome young man in tow.

  The newcomer was tall, with a narrow frame, wearing simple scholar’s robes. His dirty blond hair was kept from his eyes by way of a braided leather circlet.

  Çeda’s mouth fell open: it was Davud. She’d known the Kings would either monitor him, deciding when and how to use his newfound abilities, or kill him outright.

  “Might I sit, my good Kings?” Davud asked, motioning to the chair between Sukru and Çeda.

  When Sukru nodded sharply, Davud sat down with a strange sort of ease. This was not the impressionable young man she’d once known, nor the more confident version who’d graduated from the collegia. As strange as it was to admit, he had the air of a man who would be comfortable as the world fell apart around him.

  He had a rolled leather case, which he presently untied and unfurled across the tabletop before him. Within were a series of needles, glass vials, and instruments that looked rather like painter’s knives.

  Çeda watched, the worry in her growing as he took several of them out, preparing, apparently, to question Çeda through use of blood. He went about his business methodically, heedless of everyone in the room, be they King, prisoner, or Blade Maiden. When he finally lifted his gaze to look at her, he hardly seemed to recognize her.

  Like an insect he was readying to dissect. What happened to you, Davud?

  He took her hand, and
she felt a prick of pain as he pressed one of the needles into her palm. He did the same to his own hand. Blood welled in both, and he quickly used the two to draw a sign.

  Only then did Çeda understand what Davud was about to do. She’d heard the tales of Hamzakiir dominating others’ minds, finding their secrets. Davud was about to do the same to her for the Kings. She didn’t know what secrets he wanted, but she knew she couldn’t allow it.

  She gripped her hand tightly, smearing the design. Davud merely used the needle to make another wound on her forehead.

  “No!” Çeda said as he began drawing the design anew. “Davud, don’t!”

  As she struggled against her restraints he ignored her and turned calmly to King Sukru. “You or one of the others may wish to join me, to witness the questioning. I give you fair warning, however, it is disorienting and may be stressful to the body.”

  “I’ll do it,” Cahil immediately said, then seemed to catch himself and bowed his head to Sukru. “With my good King’s permission, of course.”

  As this was Sukru’s palace, it was his prerogative to deny. After a moment he flicked his fingers with an air that spoke of wanting to speed things along.

  “Very well,” Davud said, motioning Cahil to the empty chair across from him. “If you please, my Lord King.”

  After downing a healthy swallow of wine, Cahil sat and held his arm out to Davud. Davud used the blood in his palm, now mixed with Çeda’s, to draw a symbol on Cahil’s palm, though Çeda noticed it was subtly different to his own.

  “Now take my hand,” Davud said.

  Cahil stared at Davud as if he were about to bite him. He’d done this so that he might peer into Çeda’s mind, but that didn’t mean he trusted Davud. “Is it necessary?”

  “If you wish to see what I see, yes,” Davud replied easily. “It will be best if you grip my hand tightly.”

  Cahil did, but there was worry in his eyes.

  “Davud,” Çeda said softly. But what was there to say? “You can’t do this. This is bigger than you or me.”