“The stone is there?”
“Along the south side of the keep lies a room with golden mirrors. It’s what the tattoo meant. In the room of golden reflections, beneath a heart of stone. The stone is hidden there.”
“Then the boys must know.”
“Not necessarily.”
“Why else would they have come here, to this place of all places?”
“Rümayesh may have convinced them to come. She has a way of making others do things without them even realizing it.”
“That’s madness. Why would she bring them anywhere near her sigil stone when it’s the very thing they want?”
Without taking his eyes from the keep, Kadir smiled wickedly. “Because she knows I’m searching for her, and that if I’m able, I will see her reborn.”
“Don’t take me for a fool, Kadir. The ehrekh are not reborn. Their names were given to them at the moment of their birth by Goezhen himself. If one finds such a name, the ehrekh will come to heel. I’ve read the stories. I’ve asked those who know.”
Some moments passed before Kadir responded. “Did you know that man is imbued with a trace of blood from the elder gods?”
Çeda shrugged, curious why he would mention it. “Everyone knows that.”
“Many know, yes. What most are blissfully unaware of is that it is the very presence of elder blood that makes the ehrekh hunger for us. Why many of them toy with us as they do.” He paused, eyeing the tower as the wind played at its foot, making the sand there twist and spin like a demon. “Most ehrekhs’ names were engraved upon stones on the day Goezhen first gave them breath, and I suspect the same was true for Rümayesh the day she was made. Most have one name and one name only. It is all they will ever have. But Rümayesh found a way around this. And all it takes is someone, anyone, with the will to give of their blood.”
“Who would do that? It would make them beholden to her.”
“You’re right in a way you will probably never comprehend, but it isn’t merely Rümayesh who gains in this arrangement. The man or woman gains as well. They are given much through this pact.” As he spoke these words there was a hunger in his eyes, as if he’d long thought on this.
“Your blood marks her stone, doesn’t it?” Çeda said.
“Mine?” Kadir laughed. “No. That is a power I do not wish for myself.”
“But you’ll do it now? To free her?”
“No, I will not.” He stared at her intently, with meaning.
And Çeda suddenly understood. “You want me to do it?”
Kadir nodded.
“I won’t.”
“There’s little choice left. You and Rümayesh are already bonded, a thing you’re well aware of. You are linked inextricably, your fates entwined until you untwine them. If she is taken to Kundhun, you must follow. You’ll be enslaved as she will be. Or if you somehow manage to resist the call and remain in Sharakhai, you’ll be driven mad with yearning.”
Çeda closed her eyes. Gods, what have I gotten myself into? She wanted to be anywhere but here. She resented what Rümayesh had done, resented the fact that she was now beholden to an ehrekh. But she was where she was. There was no sense hiding from it.
“What must I do?” she asked Kadir.
“You’ll need to find the stone within the room of mirrors. Find it, then use your blood to wipe away the mark you’ll find on the stone’s surface. I’ll find you a stone upon which you’ll write a new name, also in blood, the old blood mixing with the new. When you speak that name, Rümayesh will be reborn. She will be freed from the bonds the godling twins have placed on her.”
“And then?”
“And then, Rümayesh will return the favor to those boys.”
“I mean for me. What happens to me then?”
“You may find her distasteful, but you will not find her ungrateful. She will let you leave, of this I’m sure, likely with a boon of your own choosing.”
“I wish for no boon. I want only to be left alone.”
Kadir touched his hands to his forehead, as the servants of the wealthy did. “Without doubt, it will be as you say.”
Words, Çeda thought as they crept away from the cliff’s edge. Empty words. As useful to her as a third eye. “I’ll need money.”
They rose and began walking back toward the horses. “I didn’t take you for a mercenary.”
“It isn’t for me. It’s to buy the help I’ll need, and it won’t come cheap.”
Kadir paused, but then shrugged. “Whatever you need, I’ll supply.”
Çeda entered a shisha den along the Trough and found Brama sitting on the far side of the long front room. He was lounging on pillows, leaning over the table speaking with some Malasani harlot with a chain running between one of a dozen earrings and her nose ring. She was Brama’s age, sixteen, maybe seventeen years old. As Çeda wove between the piles of pillows and the few patrons drawing breath from snaking shisha tubes, the girl reached out and brushed one of Brama’s curly brown locks behind his ear.
They were not friends, Çeda and Brama, but through her haze of exhaustion she still felt poorly about what had happened between them after he’d stolen Osman’s purse from her. She also felt a pang of guilt for coming to him unannounced. This couldn’t wait, though. It had to be done tonight.
“Brama,” she called as she drew near.
Brama turned to her, clearly annoyed, but when he saw who it was, his expression hardened. “What do you want?”
“I need a favor, Brama.”
“A favor?”
Çeda’s eyes flicked toward the girl. “A favor.”
“I’m not inclined to grant favors, Çeda, least of all to you.”
“Consider it business, then.” She took the cinched leather purse from the pouch at her belt and tossed it through the air. She hoped it would be enough. She’d filled it with the last of her coin, plus a bit from Kadir, who hadn’t had much on him when she left him.
Brama caught the purse with a snap of his hand. “What’s this?”
She bowed from the waist. “Enough money to gain me an audience with his Highness, I’ll wager.”
Brama weighed the purse in his hand, glanced to the Malasani girl, then to Çeda. “Order some tea, my lovely. I’ll be back presently.” The girl smiled like some moon-eyed calf—it was so forced it made Çeda want to gag—but as soon as Brama’s back was turned she stared daggers at Çeda. When they’d reached the alley behind the den, Brama spun to face her. “Now what do you want?”
“I need a lockslip. I figure after what happened between us you wouldn’t want to do it yourself, but you know others.” It wasn’t exactly what she was after, but she couldn’t very well go straight at him. “It’ll pay well, Brama.”
“Go to Osman if you need someone.”
“Osman doesn’t need to know anything about this.” She pointed at the purse he still held in his hand. “There’s more for the one who takes up the job. And gold to follow, assuming things end well.”
As Brama stared, his expression softened from naked distrust to calculated nonchalance. She hid the relief spreading through her. He was interested, and that was by far the toughest step.
He seemed to take more note of her—her eyes, her hair. “You don’t look well.” He hoisted the purse up. “Is it to do with this?”
“I haven’t been sleeping.”
Brama laughed wickedly. “Tell me another secret, Çeda. You look like a scrap of leather that’s been worried by the foulest hounds in all the desert.”
“This is dark business,” Çeda said, ignoring the insult. “Might get dangerous.”
He shrugged, a gesture that said I can take anything that you can as clearly as if he’d spoken the words. “Might cost you a bit more, then, but I’m not afraid of a bit of danger.”
“That’s why I came to you first.” She
paused as the wind in the alley swirled, kicking up sand and dust, making her turn her head until it passed. The air smelled of roasting meat. When she spoke again, she did so very softly. “Do you know what an ehrekh is, Brama?”
“Enough to say the price just went up.”
Çeda went on to explain what she needed to do. Not all of it, but enough for Brama to get the gist: a trip to the desert, steal into a keep, find the sigil stone, all as quickly as they could manage. They would do it late in the afternoon, the most likely time for the godling boys to be resting. She tried to avoid talking about the stone, what she meant to do with it, but Brama pressed, and she didn’t wish for him to become suspicious, so she told him about the blood ritual Kadir had described, erasing the old sigil with blood, the crafting of a new one on a second obsidian stone.
When Çeda had finished, Brama considered her for a time. “All of this to free an ehrekh?”
“To free myself.”
Brama shifted his weight on his hips, scratched at the brown fuzz along his jaw that might one day become a beard. “They grant wishes, you know.”
“The ehrekh? No, they don’t, Brama. They’re wicked, and they’ll kill you if you cross them.”
“The stories all tell of wishes, Çeda.”
As if Brama knew the first thing about them. “Those are tales that grew in the telling. We’re to get in, remake her stone, and leave. That’s all.”
“You’re going to use your blood on the stone, then? Put yourself in danger?”
“I’m already in danger, so why not?”
“What’s the payoff, then?”
“Two hundred rahl.”
Brama laughed. “You don’t have two gold coins to rub together, Çeda.”
“Kadir is the one who’ll be paying you, not me.”
“And why would he pay for you?”
“He’s paying for his mistress, Rümayesh. He would see her freed from these boys.”
Brama considered. “Two hundred?”
“In gold as bright as the sun, Brama.”
After a pause in which Brama looked her up and down, as if that might give him some sort of insight, he nodded. “How do we know when it’ll be safe to enter?”
“I dream,” Çeda said, her stomach already beginning to turn, “and then we wait for Makuo to come with his knife.”
Cold desert air falling across her skin.
The scent of wood coals burning.
A soft rattle, a sound she knows all too well—the blade of a knife being thrust beneath hot coals, the beginning of its short journey to a flaming brand. It brings with it a host of memories, a menagerie of endless, pain-filled nights spent with these trickster boys, the sons of Onondu.
They’ve placed bonds upon her, preventing her from slipping away from her keep, the place where she’d first taken breath. But even Onondu’s power cannot prevent her from retreating deep into her mind. Each time the boys have come with their wicked smiles and their glowing blades, she has hidden herself, but her place of refuge has been more difficult to reach of late, as if the episodes of pain are in fact bricks being stacked at its entrance. Soon, she knows, the bricks will stand too high, and she will be blocked from reaching its sheltering darkness altogether.
And then—no matter what she might wish—she will deliver to these boys the thing they’ve been searching for all along.
She lifts her head and peers about the room.
Only one of the boys is here, standing in the corner, his back to her, staring down at the brazier where the knife rests in the dull red coals. It is Hidi, she is sure. The one who enjoys this work too dearly to give the knife to his brother.
When Hidi turns to her, knife in hand, his face is lit by the glow of the blade. “I feel the cracks in you.” She can see his eyes, his lips, the river trail of the scar running from his temple and down one cheek. “The knife and the heat tearing down the walls. I know it. You know it, too, yes?”
He reaches her side. The chains clink as she tries to scramble back, but she is bound, not only by the black iron, but by the wards these boys have placed around her on the floor.
Hidi circles the tip of the blade over her cheek, as if choosing where he might press first. “Will they fall tonight?” He leans in, smiling a smile that is anything but innocent. “Why fight, though? We find your secret sooner or later. So you give it, yes? And we go. We go to my father and you see. He be nice to you. In time you like the grasslands, forget about the endless sands in this hot, hot place.”
She has felt pain in her long life—Goezhen forged her to endure much—but the pain this boy is ready to deal, on top of what she’s already been through, is nearly too much.
Months ago she would laugh at the very notion of fearing these boys, but here, lying helpless before one who tears at her flesh and teases her with empty promises that seem real enough to grasp . . . It’s enough to make the foundation of her resolve crumble.
She tries to find that hidden place again, but the growing terror prevents her from leaving.
“It’s . . .”
“What?” Hidi asks, his eyes bright.
Goezhen save me, I nearly told him.
“Come, come. Tell Hidi, and it will all end. Tell me where your sigil hides.”
She could end it. Hidi might even be telling her the truth. She might go to Kundhun and live with Onondu’s yoke around her neck. She could bide her time and find a way to leave. She might even kill the God of the Endless Hills to teach all in the desert that no one trifles with Goezhen’s children, not even a god.
She swallows hard, knowing these thoughts for what they are: false hopes, one and all. Give herself to Onondu and she would die in that foreign place.
She swallows, tries to flee one last time, but it’s no use. That path has been closed.
“It’s gone,” she says at last. “Stolen from me centuries ago by a thief.” The lie she’s told him from the beginning. She can manage this much, at least, even if it only delays the inevitable.
Her answer displeases Hidi.
His eyes harden as the blade lowers.
And then the pain begins.
“Çeda!”
Çeda opened her eyes to darkness.
She lay in bed, in her home in Sharakhai. A man loomed over her, one hand clamped tightly over her mouth, the other shaking her violently.
Emre?
“Çeda, for the love of the gods, wake up!”
No. Not Emre at all.
Someone else. A boy with a wicked grin.
She looked about for the glowing knife. She fought. She struck the boy across the jaw, and when he recoiled from the blow she kicked him as hard as she could.
As he grunted and fell backward, it all came back in a rush. The trip to the desert. Falling asleep as the stars came out. Dreaming the dream of an ehrekh.
She wasn’t home in her bed; she was sleeping among the trees of the strange forest where Kadir had once taken her. And the man she’d just kicked was no godling boy, but Brama.
Brama reached his feet, then rubbed his jaw. His stance was wary, but when she made no move to attack, he stood tall and glared down at her while the silver light of Rhia shone down half-lidded from the heavens.
As memories of the pain Hidi had been inflicting faded at last, the wounds on her own face registered. Her lip was split, and the right side of her face felt as if she’d just finished a particularly nasty bout in the pits. “Well you didn’t have to beat me like a stubborn mule!”
“You were screaming! Do you think they’ll not hear us? You might wish to suffer the same fate as your ehrekh, but I certainly don’t. Now get up. It’s time to go.”
Brama rolled up his blanket, cinching it tightly.
Çeda began to do the same, but stopped when Brama went to tie the blanket behind the saddle of his horse. Çeda quickly o
pened the locket around her neck and took out one of the adichara petals hidden within. She placed it beneath her tongue, closed the locket, then helped tear down their makeshift camp. The petal’s flavor was strange, like sour ale, so unlike its normally bright taste, and it did little more than allow her aching body to move with something approaching normalcy. It would have to be enough, she decided. She’d been taking the petals so often she wasn’t surprised the effects weren’t as strong as usual.
She finished preparing the horses and then strapped her shamshir across her back, and pulled the veil of her turban into place. “Ready,” she said to Brama.
Brama had two lengths of rope wound crosswise around one shoulder and across his chest. Other implements like metal hooks and several small bags hung from his belt, the tools of his trade. “You don’t sound ready, and by the gods you don’t look ready, either.”
She shrugged. “I’m as ready as I’ll ever be.”
“You have the stone?”
Çeda placed her hand on the leather pouch at her belt. Within rested the obsidian disk Kadir had given to her. “I have it.” Kadir himself had refused to join them, saying there were other things that needed doing should they succeed in the keep. What those things might be, he had refused to say.
“Very well,” Brama said, and with that he set off at a brisk jog. “Keep up, Çeda. The run will do you good.”
She followed, and together they threaded their way through the stone tree trunks toward the drop-off where Kadir led her yesterday. They’d debated on whether to bring the horses nearer. Having them close might be handy in a pinch, but Brama had reasoned that if the twins were as dangerous as she said, then leaving them back a bit was the wiser course. She’d agreed, but now she regretted the decision. She was so exhausted she kept brushing up against the trees, and once a branch caught her hip and twisted her around as she ran. As she fell hard to the dry, packed earth, she could swear it sounded as though someone were laughing in the distance, but when she stood and glanced back along her path, she saw nothing. The trunks of all the trees were bare.
Brama came running back and immediately held his hand out, motioning for the pouch at her belt. “Çeda, I should do this alone. Give the stone to me and I’ll return as soon as it’s done.”
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