The Kingdoms of Dust

by Amanda Downum

  “What happened?” She tried to keep her voice brisk, but her own heart filled her throat and choked her. His brow was cold beneath her hand.

  “Forgive me,” he whispered. “I tried to help.” He took her hand, turning his cheek against her palm. “I never meant for you to face them alone.”

  “It’s all right. It’s over now and I’m fine. Shirin will finish the work.”

  “Good. I’m glad you’re still strong. I have no strength left.”

  “Don’t be silly. You just need to rest.” The words were ashes in her mouth. She felt the weakness creeping through his limbs, the strain in his heart. Such injuries would never truly heal.

  “It’s over, Nerium.”

  “Not here it isn’t. Not like this. Captain”—she turned to Salah—“can you carry him?”

  “Of course, Lady.”

  “Let me rest,” Khalil said, reaching for her hand.

  “Yes.” She pressed dry lips against his fingers and wondered if her own heart was failing as well. “You can rest. You’ve earned it. But not here.”

  She couldn’t watch Salah carry him up the stairs, couldn’t bear to see a man once so tall and strong cradled like a child. She had understood, in a clinical way, that to extend her own life would be to outlast things she knew. That knowledge was a bitter balm now.

  When Khalil was laid in his own bed, Nerium sent Salah for willow bark and hot water. The captain didn’t hesitate, but she saw the resignation in his face.

  “You don’t have to fuss over me, Nerium,” Khalil said when Salah had come and gone again. He set the dregs of his tisane on the bedside table. It couldn’t undo the damage already done to the muscle, but at least it might ease the strain, and the pain.

  “Yes, I do,” Nerium replied, soothing his blankets.

  “Let me rest. Give me mercy.”

  She couldn’t hide her flinch. “Would you ask that of me? I’ve never known you to run from a fight.”

  “The fight is over. We’re losing the war. You’ve said so yourself.”

  “I’ll find a way. I’d hoped you’d be with me when I did.”

  He smiled. “Still a beautiful liar. But we’ve both always known you’d leave me behind.”

  Nerium closed her eyes. She was lying, though not in the way he thought. She needed the other Silent for her plan to work, but she’d known for some time that they wouldn’t be aware when it happened. Khalil and Shirin might make the sacrifice willingly, but Ahmar and Siavush never would. It didn’t matter—their vows were consent enough.

  “I’m sorry.” She hadn’t realized she meant to say it until the words fell from her lips. “I’m sorry I left you.”

  He waved the apology away. “You did what you had to. We’ve all made sacrifices for the order.” His bony fingers closed around hers. “I never stopped loving you, though. Even they couldn’t destroy that.”

  “I know.” Qais hadn’t withered her love, either. At least not at the beginning.

  She’d left on assignment nearly forty years ago, the last great absence she took from the empty city. Fear had prevented her from telling Khalil, her lover for many years, that she was pregnant. Her magic extended her life and her fertility, but she still worried that she wouldn’t carry the babe to term. And then she did, but despite her hopes for a successor, a mage to take her place on the Silent Council, her daughter had been born kamnur. No training had ever woken more than a spark of sensitivity. From that disappointment grew bitterness, and by the time she returned to Qais, she couldn’t bear to return Khalil’s love.

  She still couldn’t bear it, but she’d learned to push past the limits of her endurance. She bent to kiss him, tasting honey and bitter medicine and even bitterer mortality.

  “Sleep,” she whispered against his lips, filling the word with power. His eyes closed as she leaned back, his breath deepening. She held his hand for a long moment before folding it across his breast. The diamond winked in the dim light, a cold reminder of what she had to do.

  She’d always had a talent for healing, a rarity among Quietus. It kept her from becoming a skilled entropomancer, but that sacrifice was worth it. For decades she’d studied medicine and anatomy, taking bodies apart layer by layer to understand their function.

  No amount of skill would let her work miracles—Khalil was over eighty years old, and had spent much of his strength withstanding Al-Jodâ’im—but it let her find the weak place in his heart and wrap it in threads of magic fine as spider silk. Not true healing, but preservation, the sort of spells the necromancers of Selafai learned to keep corpses fresh.

  She cocooned him in stasis and sleep. The greater working was still to come; she would return with amber and honey and myrrh, and make of her friend and lover a vessel strong enough to withstand the void. This would serve for now, until she recovered her strength.

  A sound drew her from the fugue of magic and fatigue. Nerium turned, stiff neck crackling, to find Shirin standing in the doorway.

  “How is he?” the librarian asked, her voice low.

  “Resting.” Nerium rose with a wince and closed the shutters. The sky beyond was bruised with incipient dawn. The bed hangings stirred with the last breeze, ghostly in the gloom, then hung still.

  “It’s his heart,” she said softly, joining Shirin. “I did what I can, but—” She lifted her hands in a gesture of futility. “It’s best if he sleeps for now.”

  Shirin nodded slowly and let Nerium steer her out of the room. For an instant Nerium thought she read suspicion in the other woman’s eyes, but Shirin blinked and it was gone. A trick of the light. The pricking of her conscience.

  “Another stone failed—a smaller one beside the one we just replaced. I redid the bindings. Not as strong with only the two of us, of course, but they’ll hold.” For a while. Shirin didn’t need to speak the coda aloud—they both knew. “I’m sorry,” she added after a moment. “I was too slow in answering the alarm. I tried, but…”

  “I understand.” Nerium laid a hand on the woman’s shoulder, and wondered if the tension she felt there was a flinch or merely lingering strain. Blaming Shirin for Khalil’s collapse might have soothed her own guilty nerves, but it would be a lie. And anyway, Shirin would have the chance to redeem herself soon enough.

  Dawn broke across the desert and Qais and its prisoners returned to uneasy sleep. The wind that had escaped the oubliette, however, did not die. Instead it churned eastward, gathering strength as it spun.

  In the Fata, it drained color from the desert, leaving a grey trail behind. Little spirits fled its passing. In glass-walled Mazikeen the jinn felt it and shivered. Even in distant Carathis the ghuls hunkered deep in their tunnels and their queen shuddered on her bone chair. In the necropolis outside of Ta’ashlan, a veiled mortician pulled her robes tight around and whispered prayers to dead gods.

  In the lands of flesh, animals also fled, but not all were fast enough. The ghost wind stripped their flesh, leaving polished bone behind. An unlucky band of nomads lost their last camel to the wind’s kiss, stranding them deep in the erg. The nearest well collapsed and dried as the storm rolled past.

  The wind bore toward Ta’ashlan, as its last incarnation had, but as it neared the River Ash its attention shifted north. The main storm faltered and faded, spending the last of its momentum to birth a dozen smaller whirlwinds. Fish and river birds died as they sped past, and flooded fields fouled. Waterwheels broke their axles, leaving distant crops to wither in the heat.

  But even the power of destruction burned out in time. The small storms sputtered in turn, until only one remained. That one, driven by more than wind and sand, fueled by desperation and curiosity and slow-simmering inhuman anger, gyred north along the river, toward Sherazad and the sea.

  Part II

  The Conquering Sun

  CHAPTER 11

  The Marid sailed into Sherazad as the sun reached its zenith in a cloudless sky. Isyllt and Moth stood on the forecastle, passing a spyglass between them as the walls
and towers of the city drew closer. The heat was fierce and promised to worsen; the sun pressed a heavy hand against the back of Isyllt’s head and shattered like glass knives on the waves.

  “It’s so flat,” Moth said, frowning as she peered through the lens.

  They were both used to Erisín’s high walls, its cliffs and hills. Isyllt had faded memories of the mountains and towering pines of Vallorn, too. Sherazad was built around the delta of the River Ash, amid the sweep of flat beach and ochre desert. The rocky outcroppings flanking the city sprawl were much too small to hold up the vast blue dome of sky. Isyllt found herself longing for walls.

  The city obliged her. The Marid slowed, turning toward a channel of glittering buoys, and Isyllt lowered the glass from the distant sky as stone eclipsed her view. Waves broke and frothed around a rocky islet, and the tower seemed to spring straight from the sea.

  No, Isyllt realized, looking up. Not a tower.

  A statue rose from the water, high and higher still, taller than any Isyllt had ever seen. A woman, her right arm outstretched and lifting a great glass-walled lantern, her left cradling a book to her chest. Her robes were carved of creamy stone, her face and hands cast in bronze. Time and salt had smoothed the folds of her gown and pitted her hem and hood, but her arching nose and amused smile remained, if green-tinged now with age. Her eyes seemed to follow the ship as it neared the harbor; Isyllt startled as they flashed in the sun. Lifting the spyglass, she saw that the statue’s dark metal irises were set with mirrors.

  Moth’s eyes widened; Isyllt whistled admiringly.

  “The Prophet Aaliyah,” Siddir said, the click of his cane announcing him. “Lightbringer, and first saint of the Unconquered Sun. It’s said her lantern shines on every corner of the empire. While I can’t vouch for the hyperbole of that, ships can see the light for miles at sea.” Despite the wry humor in the words, his gaze was unusually serious as he stared up at the Prophet’s face. Then he grinned. “Also, she distracts ships from more immediate concerns.”

  Following his pointing hand, Isyllt saw the towers along the seawall behind Aaliyah, battlements and narrow windows studded with cannon. Drops of red scattered against grey stone—soldiers manning the defenses.

  Isyllt chuckled appreciatively, but her stomach was heavy with anticipation as they sailed under the saint’s outstretched arm. The city resolved from a dusty blur into buildings: pale brick and plaster, painted domes and gilded spires; square shops and houses stacked like children’s blocks; the curve of a commemorative arch; green trees vivid against dusty stone. The wind gusted hot and salty, drawing a copper veil of sand along the coast. The sound of noontide bells drifted across the water.

  Siddir grinned and gestured grandly toward Sherazad and the land beyond. “Welcome to Assar.”

  “Where’s the river?” Moth asked as they followed the porters off the skiff.

  Isyllt had been wondering the same thing. The skiff had taken them from the Marid into a canal, one of a dozen neatly bricked waterways pouring into the harbor—nothing like what she’d expected of the Ash. The River Ash and its twin the Nilufer were described as the widest and longest in the known world.

  “The channels here are half of it,” Siddir said, offering the girl a hand up the stone steps. “The rest splits south of the city and flows west into the Lantern Marsh.” He gestured vaguely west. “The distributary was drained and channeled when Sherazad outgrew her first walls.”

  He answered lightly enough, but his eyes were restive and wary again. His happiness at landfall had been short-lived.

  “Keep your gloves on,” he told Isyllt as they waited for their carriage. “You’ll have to take the white veil eventually, but for now I don’t want the attention.”

  Isyllt flexed her hand in her pocket, the band of her ring pressing flesh. Erisín was built on bones, level after level of catacombs mazing beneath the streets, many of them ancient before the founding of Selafai. Without the necromancers of the Arcanost and the priests of Erishal to keep ghosts quiet, the dead would rule the living. In Assar death was proscribed; tombs stood outside the city walls, visited only on holy days, and anyone who touched a corpse performed ritual cleansing. Those who dealt with death for a living became untouchable. Hadath. Sivahra, though an imperial territory, had been distant enough to avoid such inconveniences—here she wouldn’t escape them.

  She glanced at Adam and met his narrowed gaze. He understood the situation—if he and Moth remained in her employ, they would become pariahs as well. A servant might make do with only a white armband and obsessive hand washing. A lover…

  The arrival of their carriage saved her from that thought. She drew her scarf over her head, blaming the sudden warmth in her cheeks on the sun.

  They settled in the Azure Lily, an expensive inn whose namesake flowers carpeted courtyard pools and floated in bowls in all the rooms. The motif continued to the tiles of the deep bathtub; at least the soap wasn’t lotus-scented.

  After a bath, they lingered over an afternoon meal. Isyllt and Moth wanted to explore the city, but Siddir kept them inside.

  “Only mad dogs and foreigners go out in this heat,” he said, sipping chilled wine.

  That point she had to concede. Shade and the breeze off the fountains cooled the courtyard where they took their meal, but she could still feel the relentless sun. The streets had been noisy when they arrived, but now the din of voices and wheels and animals died and a dusty stupor settled over the city. Behind a screen, an oud played sleepy songs. Potted ferns and carven screens granted them the illusion of privacy from the few other patrons lounging in the heat.

  Isyllt had nearly succumbed to the wine and warmth and growing urge to nap when bells shattered the stillness. Not the temple bells they’d heard as they arrived, but a wild tintinnabulation. Siddir’s chair scraped back as he startled; around the courtyard, other patrons rose as well.

  “What is it?” Isyllt asked, hands braced on her own chair.

  “Weather bells. We would have seen a storm at sea. That means—” His throat worked as he swallowed, and his face greyed. “Not again.”

  A cry rose up from the street. Some guests hurried for shelter, but others—Moth and Isyllt among them—ran to see what was happening.

  “Get inside,” Siddir said, grabbing at her arm, but Isyllt twisted away. The bells continued and shouts carried from blocks away. People leaned out windows, and Isyllt wished for a higher vantage point.

  “What is it?” Adam asked.

  “Al-shebaraya,” Siddir said, brushing a warding gesture over his eyes.

  Isyllt had never heard the word before but she could parse the Assari roots: the ghost wind. A question rose on her lips, and died as the light dimmed.

  A cloud rose over the rooftops, darkening the sky. No, not a cloud—a sand pillar. A whirling tower of dust as tall as a cathedral spire, bearing down on Sherazad. It twisted through the streets, dodging buildings with a dancer’s grace, till it turned onto the broad avenue in front of the Azure Lily.

  The hollow rush drowned the shouts of onlookers. Hot wind streamed past Isyllt, ripping her hair free of its braid to blind her. Her scalp prickled at the wind’s touch and the hair on her arms stood on end. Her magic stirred, too—not the chill of death, but something deeper, darker. The space beneath her heart grew heavy, the hollow place that held her entropomancy. The sudden pressure forced the air from her lungs.

  She heard her name as if from a great distance, felt the weight of a hand on her shoulder, but she couldn’t tell who called her. The world receded, streaming away till she was alone with the roaring wind. It, too, was calling her, the sound of her name rising and falling on the hissing dust.

  What would happen if she answered?

  A blow to the side of her head settled the question. She staggered sideways and the siren call of the wind vanished under the ringing in her right ear. A weight bounced off her shoulder onto the ground. A fish.

  Another followed, then another, falling like sil
ver hail. Minnows and small perch and whiskered bottom-feeders, landing all around her a nauseous splat-splat-splat. Most were dead when they struck the ground, but some still writhed, gills gaping, rainbows sliding down their scales as they choked on air.

  She might have stood there dumbfounded, staring at fish till the dust storm swallowed her, but Adam grabbed her arm and pulled her into the shelter of the courtyard.

  The storm died before it reached the inn, disintegrating in a fine haze of dust and a last splatter of fish. They stood in breathless silence while the echo of the wind faded.

  “I think,” Siddir said at last, “I preferred it when explosions followed you.”

  Moth made a choked noise. Tears streaked her face. Isyllt reached for her, but the girl flinched away. She hugged her arms across her chest and wept, watching fish thrash and die in the dirt.

  They went to their rooms at sunset, exhausted from travel and the enervating touch of the storm. Isyllt paused beside Adam’s door as he turned the key. His green eyes were inscrutable as ever, but in his posture she read the same hesitance and curiosity that tugged at her. Her magic stirred as it always did when he was near; death loved a killer. It was a complication, though, and she had less love for those.

  A scuffing footstep broke the deepening silence. Down the hall, Moth lingered at the door of the room she and Isyllt shared. She tilted her head before vanishing inside. Not quite a summons, but eloquent all the same.

  Isyllt’s cheeks prickled. “I should—”

  Adam nodded. “Yes.” He smiled wryly. “Good night.”

  Isyllt sighed as the door shut behind him. Complications.

  “You wanted to talk to me?” she said as she latched her own door. Curtains fluttered in the breeze—a normal breeze now, cooling fast as night came on and fragrant with city smells. Dust lay in serpentine drifts beneath the casement. No one had kindled a lamp, and blue dusk filled the room.