The young wardens jumped like boys caught stealing honey-cakes, and turned toward the voice. One of the Mah’zula, an older woman with a grandmother’s round cheeks, rocked back on her heels and regarded them. She was flanked by two younger Mah’zula and, Ismai saw, two Ja’Akari, as well. Blood still seeped from wounds at all their throats, shining a warning in the dim torchlight.
Ruh’ayya growled low in her throat.
“Come,” she said in a tone that brooked no argument. “Ishtaset has had us looking for you all evening.”
“What?” A tremor ran down Ismai’s spine. “Why? What would she want with me?”
The Mah’zula stepped closer, and Ismai felt the heat of his companions as they pressed close. Like sheep, he thought.
“To protect you, of course.” The woman smiled at them, a grandmother’s smile, but it did not reach her eyes. Blood welled from the cut at her throat as she talked. It ran down her skin and disappeared beneath the wyvern-scale breastplate. “You are last of the line of Zula Din, and precious to us.”
Three more women joined them, two Mah’zula and a Ja’Akari Ismai knew only by sight. That one had unbraided her hair and chopped it short, so that it bristled like the manes of the Mah’zula.
“Come,” the grandmother-warrior urged, smile deepening even as her hand tightened on her shamsi. “Ishtaset is waiting.”
“Would you raise your hand against your sisters?” The words hung in the tunnels like cobwebs, like shadows.
I am with you, Kithren. Ruh’ayya pressed close. If we die, we die.
Ismai forced his hand away from his sword, and heard his companions’ sighs of relief.
Not tonight, he told her.
The Mah’zula nodded in satisfaction and turned, confident that Ismai would follow. He stared hard at the women’s backs as they led him from the tunnels. Fear, resentment, and anger simmered in his blood with every step, but he could not, would not raise a hand against his sisters.
Not yet, anyway.
THIRTY-SIX
“Again.” Hannei picked herself up and shook like a wet vash’ai, sending a rain of blood and sweat and sand in all directions.
Sand always seems so soft, she thought ruefully, until you land on it head-first. She turned to face the Rehaza, who stood in the center of the training arena, arms folded across her chest and smiling.
Of all the instructors at the fight school, Rehaza Entanye was Hannei’s absolute least favorite. On a good day, she reminded Hannei of Istaza Ani, if Ani’s heart had been torn out and replaced with a lump of bloody coal. On a bad day, she made Hafsa Azeina seem like a woman you might curl up next to for comfort.
Well, she admitted to herself, not the dreamshifter. Maybe a lionsnake. Even a kick to the head did not make Hafsa Azeina seem cuddly.
“I thought you were a great warrior, Dungball.” Rehaza Entanye shook her head. Her bare torso was as dry and dusty as her tone. Not so much as a trickle of sweat indicated that she had been kicking Hannei’s arse about the arena all morning. “Dungball, over there”—she pointed with her chin, indicating the other Zeerani girl, a Nisfi who had been stolen by slavers—“says you are some kind of champion. Your mistress thinks highly enough of you that she is paying good salt for your schooling.
“Personally, I think you would be more useful as serpent bait, but hey, if they want to pay me to beat your ass dawn to dusk, that is no water from my skin.” Even as she said the words, Rehaza Entanye raised a waterskin to her mouth and took a long swig, allowing some of it to spill down her front, wetting the red dust so that it looked like blood.
Hannei swallowed, and her stump of a tongue twitched reflexively as if to lick her dry lips. One swallow, she wished. Just one. But the dungballs—so their instructors named them all—were allowed to drink only when they had won a fight against an instructor. So far three girls had collapsed of thirst and been dragged from the arena in as many days. Only one of them had been returned to the barracks.
Rehaza Entanye smiled slowly at Hannei over the lip of the waterskin, held it out at arm’s length, and dropped it in the dirt at her feet. Hannei could not take her eyes from the skin. She imagined she could hear the water sloshing around inside.
“Tell you what, Dungball,” the drill instructor said in a bored voice, even as she unfastened the dagger at her belt and let it drop beside the waterskin. “If you can get past me and take the water, it is yours.”
Unable to spit properly, Hannei hissed blood from between her teeth, lowered her head, and charged.
* * *
“Not bad, for a first lesson.”
Hannei groaned and rolled over, groaning again as the movement sent splinters of white-hot pain pretty much everywhere. Strong hands helped her sit upright, and held her there as a waterskin was pressed to her mouth.
She drank greedily, for once not caring that much of the water dribbled and drooled from her mouth. She shuddered in relief as her body soaked up the water fast as dry linen, and rubbed both hands across her face, wiping away enough of the crusted dirt and blood that she could open her eyes a crack.
Both moons rose full and sassy, painting the empty arena with a silvery light.
“Nnngah,” she growled.
“Nnngah,” the stranger’s voice answered. “Does that mean ‘Shit, it is late?’ Or ‘Fuck, that hurts?’ Or do you simply mean ‘I would give much at this moment for a bowl of spiders’ eggs washed down with usca’?”
Hannei shrugged and nodded. All of those and more, she thought.
“Well, I have neither spiders’ eggs nor usca, but I saved you half a loaf and some dried fish, and a full skin of water.” The girl from Nisfi pressed these into Hannei’s hands, as she helped her to her feet. “It is finally paying off, all those years learning to sneak food from the kitchen-mothers. The hospitality of these outlanders leaves much to be desired.”
Hannei clutched the food and drink to her breast, wealth unlike she had known for a two-moon, averting her eyes from the other girl. She did not remember this warrior, but a warrior she was, obviously, with her braids and scars, whole and unruined.
“Eat,” the warrior urged her, “and do not be ashamed. I have watched you before. Did these… khafik… cut you?”
Hannei shook her head, and the Nisfi hissed air between her teeth.
“The people did this to you?”
Hannei nodded.
“In Nisfi, we only cut the tongue when a warrior has spoken a lie. Did you lie? Are you Kha’Akari?” Dark eyes bored into her own, demanding truth.
Hannei squeezed her eyes shut. The face of Sareta swam before her, smiling as she opened her mouth to condemn Hannei to a life of exile, a life worse than death. She shook her head so hard her neck cracked.
I did not lie, she thought, burning to scream the words. Under Akari, I did not.
“I believe you.” A mouth pressed against her forehead, gentle as a Mother’s, and tears unbidden prickled behind Hannei’s eyelids. She opened her eyes, blinked the tears away, and met the warrior’s gaze.
“We must stick together, you and I,” the other girl continued. “Sword sisters in a strange land. I am Noura—though you know me by another name, eh, Dungball?” She ruffled Hannei’s hair, which had grown to a finger’s length of curls and tended to mat.
Hannei grunted around a mouthful of bread.
“You are Hannei. I know who you are, I was there when they made you champion. That was some fight.” The warrior smiled. “These outlanders think they can fight, but they are dirty, ehuani. We fight with the heart of Akari, the light of truth in a dark land. We will show them the way. You will be my sword, and I your shield, and we will fight our way free.”
Hannei chewed a mouthful of salted fish, given to her by her new sword sister. It tasted true, and clean, as nothing had since the night Tammas died, and she washed it down with sweet water.
It was good.
* * *
Akari Sun Dragon had just leaned in to kiss the sky, making it blush, w
hen Rehaza Entanye came for her.
Hannei—Kishah, she reminded herself, I am Kishah—was not asleep. She sat, as she often did, perched in the low stone window with one leg dangling free, staring out over Min Yaarif and the jagged peaks of the Jehannim, without seeing much of either. She was tired, she was so tired, but sleep was shadows and silence and stolen blankets. To sleep was to dream of Tammas, and Hannei rejected it utterly.
As the pitmistress crossed the room, the keys at her waist rattled and sang, and the breath of more than one fighter hitched, stilled, quieted as women and girls woke only to feign sleep. Hannei ignored them all. Entanye would come for her, or she would not. She would drag her off for training, or for a beating, or to throw her to the serpents whose voices rose in homage to the blushing sky. In the end, it made no difference.
The pitmistress stopped, stooped, and unlocked the heavy chain that kept Hannei from leaping to her death. “Come,” she said in a low voice, then turned and left without waiting to see whether Hannei might follow. She shrugged and padded after the pitmistress, obedient as a good horse.
When all roads lead to death, one might as well step quickly.
She followed the pitmistress down stairs, stairs, and more stairs, across the trampled flat where the pit slaves would sit in neat rows to eat the morning meal, past the squat dark building where the pitmistresses and masters slept, and at last to one of the training arenas. Hannei stopped so quickly she almost tripped over her own feet. In the very middle of the arena, someone had drawn a perfect hoti in red chalk.
Entanye paid her no mind. She strode to the chalk circle, shedding knives and choke-wires and a myriad of other hidden weapons as she went, as if leaving a trail for Hannei to follow. She gave a slight bow to the warriors who had gone before, as was proper, before stepping over the edge and to the very center of the hoti. There, she turned and waited for Hannei, with all the impassive patience of the rising dawn.
Hannei stood in the dirt with her mouth hanging open. What? she wanted to ask. What? Entanye was not Ja’Akari—she had not the look of the Zeera about her, at all, and even if she had been a bought child, the sides of her scalp would have long since been shaven and oiled.
The pitmistress laughed to see her expression. “You do not need a tongue to speak, do you, Dungball? You are hardly the first warrior to enjoy my company in lovely Min Yaarif.” The pitmistress spread her arms wide and grinned. “I have learned much from your people. Come now, this time you can be my teacher. Test me and see how much I have yet to learn, Rehaza Dungball.” Then she turned her back to Hannei, crossed her arms over her chest, and whistled a tuneless little song, as if the challenge of a fighting circle was no more than a child’s prank.
Hannei found herself moving, anger growing in her breast with every step. How dare this… outsider pretend to the hoti? How dare she touch what was not hers to take? The ring was ancient, it was sacred and true. The sacred fight did not belong here in this stinking pit, ehuani. She stalked past the detritus of abandoned weapons to stand just outside of the circle. She drew a deep breath, stooped to erase a hand’s-width of chalk. Then she stepped into the circle and stamped her foot three times.
“Heh heh heh,” she demanded, for once not trying to mask the hideous sounds that came from her mouth. Anyone—even an outsider—who stepped into the hoti became a warrior, and no warrior could refuse a challenge.
Hannei breathed deep, ignoring the stink and noise of the waking city. She might be a ruined and wretched shadow of the warrior she was meant to be, but the wind that ruffled her hair was the same as it had always been, and the sun still poured down like warm mead, and the heart that beat in her chest was still the heart of a warrior, try as her enemies had to silence it.
I am not beaten yet, she thought for the first time. Not dead yet. I am a warrior, still. I am Ja’Akari, under the…
Entanye whirled, driving her hand as a wedge toward Hannei’s throat quick as a serpent’s strike. Hawk Takes Mouse. Hannei countered with Snake in the Rocks, coiling back, so that Entanye dropped her weight down and kicked up…
Again and again the two women met, exchanged flurries of blows, parted, and met again, inevitable and true as the ebb and flow of sand. Blue Goat Charges. For an outsider, Entanye was good—very good.
Hannei was better.
Moment by moment more blows connected than were deflected, leaving a cut here, a welt there. Hannei tasted blood, but so did her opponent. Step-by-step and Hannei forced the pitmistress back toward the edge of the hoti. At last, she landed a kick that sent the pitmistress down to one knee, fingers touching the red chalk.
She had won.
Akari Sun Dragon glowed with hot pride as Hannei Ja’Akari strode to her opponent, hand outstretched to help her up—
Rehaza Entanye lunged up, teeth bared in a feral grin. One arm snaked about Hannei’s throat. The other held a knife, and its blade sang a shallow cut across Hannei’s throat.
“You lose, Dungball,” the pitmistress hissed in her hear. “You are dead.”
And she threw Hannei to the ground.
* * *
The worst thing about not having a tongue, Hannei reflected, was not the pain, or the humiliation, or even the inability to speak. The worst part was not being able to spit properly, when she was so often forced to eat dirt. As it was, she sprayed sand and blood as well as she could, then took the pitmistress’s proffered hand and allowed herself to be hauled to her feet.
“You fought well,” the pitmistress said. “Well, and honorably. Do you know why you lost this fight?”
I did not lose, Hannei thought. She shrugged, wiping blood from her mouth with the back of her hand. Blood trickled down her chest from the shallow cut across her throat. I fought with honor.
“You lost,” Entanye emphasized, “because you fought with honor. Oh, I know the words you live by. You are not the first Ja’Akari to fall into my hands. ‘A warrior who fights with honor may die, but she will never lose’ or some such shit. Are these the words they fed you from the time you cut your first teeth? Oh, close your mouth, you look like an idiot.”
Hannei closed her gaping mouth.
“You have been fed lies, sweetened with honey to make them taste like truth,” Entanye went on. “To live is to win. To die is to lose. That is all—do you understand me? That is all.”
No. No. Hannei shook her head and took a step back.
“Yes,” the pitmistress insisted, “yes. Who fed you these lies? Your sword sisters? Your First Warrior? And where are they, Dungball? Who sold you into slavery? Who turned their backs and walked away when the slavemaster hauled you up onto the stage? That for their precious truth.” She spat. “Your whole world has been a lie, little one, but I will not lie to you now.
“Fighting with honor, as a Ja’Akari does, will not work down here in the pit,” Entanye continued. “If you are going to win, you have to give up ‘fighting under the sun and with honor’ and all that shit. The pit is not pretty, the pit is not fair, the pit does not care if you are so fucking honorable that the Sun Dragon himself shines out of your ass. The pit is bloody, and shitty, and gorgeous. The pit is guts in the sand and a knife in the back. The pit is life.”
She held out her hand, smeared with Hannei’s own blood. “You have been taught ehuani,” she said, “you have been taught that the only beauty lies in truth, but that was a lie, every word of it. Let me teach you a new way, the true way. Let me teach you khaani, and you may just survive this shit-pit.”
Khaani. Beauty in treachery.
Hannei took the hand of Rehaza Entanye, though she felt as if she might throw up. Akari Sun Dragon beat down upon her head.
But he is beating down on everyone else’s head just the same, she realized. Swordman, sorcerer, lover, liar, he shines down upon us all, and he sees nothing. Akari Sun Dragon does not care whether I live or die, whether I am honorable or dishonorable.
Akari Sun Dragon did not care about her murdered lover, her shattered dreams, her bro
ken heart. She met the pitmistress eye-to-eye, and clasped her forearm.
“Do we have an accord, Dungball?” Rehaza Entanye smiled, beautiful and treacherous as the rising sun. “Will you fight for me?”
Hannei nodded…
…and nothing happened. Akari Sun Dragon flew on, Sajani Earth Dragon slept on, and Tammas Ja’Sajani was still as dead as her warrior’s heart.
THIRTY-SEVEN
The door to his cell banged open and Leviathus flinched from the window, where he had been watching a spider build her web.
The woman who held the keys stared at him with wide eyes, and stepped back when he turned, as if he might carry a plague. More alarming yet was the sight of the warden, a small fellow who rather reminded Leviathus of Master Bernardus, wringing his hands and sweating through his yellow caftan. He was accompanied by a pair of guards.
“Bind his hands,” the warden instructed his mistress of keys. Then he turned to Leviathus. “You are to come with me. Make no move unless I tell you. Say nothing unless you are spoken to, or I will have you gagged.”
Leviathus might have protested, but the little man was so nervous that his guards were getting twitchy, and he did not want to die before his spidery friend had finished her web. So he held his wrists together in front of him and tried to look as nonthreatening as he could, though his heart pounded and his hands shook a little.
They are not going to kill me, he reminded himself with some force. I am much more valuable as a hostage to my father’s good will than I would be as a head on a spike. His recent experiences among the Mah’zula, however—and the Kha’Akari before them—had sapped his confidence, and the thought lacked conviction.
Hemmed in by the guards, he followed the warden down a long hallway. His prisoner’s sandals scuffed against the uneven stone floor, and the rough linen shift they had given him to wear scarcely covered his manly bits. He eyed the guards’ studded kilts with envy.
“See sommat you want?” one of them sneered.
“Your uniform, if you do not mind,” he replied affably. “Between this shift, and the wind that always blows down this hallway, I am concerned that one of you might mistake my loinsnake for a lionsnake and try to chop its head off.”
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