The Pillars of Sand

by Mark T. Barnes

  Once inside they went their separate ways: Dhoury ambling down one of the torchlit corridors deeper into Tamerlan, while the two Savadai gestured for Mari to precede them down the glassed-in halls that led to the Dowager-Asrahn. Woolen rugs were strewn on the floor, islands of softness on a sea of grim stone. The four hearths in the room were lit, enough to take the edge off the cold but not enough to be comfortable. For a woman raised in the sun, every day in Tamerlan was a constant reminder of how mean the place was.

  Musicians played in one corner: lute, theorbo, deep-voiced pipes, and drum playing a mournful dirge perfectly suited to Tamerlan. At the far side of the room a colorful assembly of the Dowager-Asrahn’s nieces, nephews, and grandchildren chatted and laughed over bowls of steaming wine. A few of them looked at Mari disinterestedly. Others whispered, pointed, or giggled. Servants in thin tunics plied the Dowager-Asrahn and her guests with food from seashell trays and wine from rough crystal decanters.

  “Mari.” Nadir rose from his seat, listing slightly. Mari noted the jug of wine on the table and the empty bowl. Nadir gestured to a seat on the opposite side of the table from Jhem, Nadir, Eladdin, and the Dowager-Asrahn. The Emissary was a bruise with folded arms in the shadows between two windows. A squad of the Savadai stood guard nearby. Mari remained standing. One of the Savadai approached her, hand extended to put her in the seat, until Mari’s gaze stopped him in his tracks.

  The Dowager-Asrahn grinned, her filed teeth spotted with brown stains, her skin folding like a fan. The old shark speared strips of raw flesh from a glazed seashell, her bony fingers tipped with pointed nails painted a deep blue. She popped the food into her mouth and chewed with obvious pleasure.

  “What do you want?” Mari asked.

  “You need to learn some manners, cousin,” Eladdin the Sidewinder said from where he lounged nearby.

  “You can try to school her if you’d like,” Jhem lisped. He looked on Eladdin with dead eyes, a snake eyeing a rat. “But you know how well that’s worked out for people in the past, and it wouldn’t be much different for you.”

  “I’d just take my time, is all,” Mari said as she slowly settled into the chair.

  “Mother!” Eladdin whined. The Dowager-Asrahn’s eyelids twitched in irritation. When he spoke, the words tumbled over each other. “Let me show our cousin how things are done here in the South.”

  “Be still, Ela.” The Dowager-Asrahn waved her son down. “There will be time enough for demonstrations. The Emissary has asked to inspect Mariam and now is as good a time as any.”

  “Inspect?” Mari did not like the sound the word at all. “I don’t think so.”

  “You are in Tamerlan, girl. If I want to parade you like chattel in the Hearthall, then I will, and there is little you can do to prevent it.”

  “You’ll do no such thing,” Mari said. “My father would—”

  “Would what?” The Dowager-Asrahn rose from her chair and prowled toward Mari, her sea-colored over-robe flowing behind her. As she approached, her long nails clacked together like scissors. “Corajidin is a fool. Was he the man I tried to raise, a man who embraced the old ways, you would never have turned your back on your duty, or shame yourself in the bed of our enemy! You will do whatever you are told. Be thankful I do not give you to the sea!”

  Mari stood and looked down at the old woman. The Dowager-Asrahn bared her sharpened teeth and Mari winced at the reek. The old shark clawed at Mari, who slapped the woman’s sharpened nails away. With a snarl, the Dowager-Asrahn slashed at Mari again. Mari gripped her grandmother’s wrists and squeezed.

  The old woman screamed, “Help me, you idiots!”

  Movement in her periphery and Mari pushed her grandmother back. She fell across the table, limbs flailing. Eladdin and Nadir approached from the left, the Savadai from the right. Grabbing her chair by its leg, Mari spun and bashed it into the faces of the Savadai in a powerful stroke. The chair broke into kindling and the Savadai went down as Mari turned to face Eladdin and Nadir, the splintered end of the chair leg still in her hand.

  Eladdin drew his long-knives, blades glittering. Mari allowed him to stab with one, angling her body so the blade missed. He changed the angle of his attack. Mari felt the acid sting of the blade as it opened the skin over her ribs. The attack brought Eladdin close. She smashed the chair leg hard across his face, breaking his nose and splitting his lips. As his fingers flexed with the pain, Mari caught the falling knife. Eladdin dropped his knee into her leg, hammering her knee without breaking it. Mari swore at the pain. Guiding Eladdin’s weight, keeping him between her and Nadir, she punched Eladdin in the nose, sending him reeling as his hands went to his smashed face. He screamed a string of expletives as he fell.

  Jhem, as still as a snake, stood watch over the Dowager-Asrahn. Mari wondered how capable he was, given how close to death he had come from the blood poisoning. His son attacked Mari. Though drunk, Nadir managed to dodge the falling Eladdin. Mari danced away from Nadir’s cuts, making for the closest door. Nadir thrusted. Mari wrapped the chair leg down hard across his knuckles. He swore. Mari chuckled and blew an errant strand of hair from her eyes. She risked a glance around her, then skipped closer to the door.

  “There’s no escape, Mari.” Nadir matched her closely, the two of them exchanging blows with weapons, feet and shins, knees and elbows. Nadir had learned some new tricks during his time in Tanis. His style was founded in warrior-poetry, yet there was a subtle dishonesty to it that Mari found disconcerting. Feints within feints, constant misdirection, and obvious flaws in his technique she learned to ignore at the first bleeding wound. She was reminded of one of the tenets of the daishäri: When we fight, we reveal our souls.

  Nadir’s technique betrayed him as a prince of liars.

  Mari and Nadir left precise wounds upon the other, each one painful, blood streaking their bodies. The Savadai moved in, tridents stabbing at her, trying to catch her limbs in their tines. Mari was forced to dance for her life, becoming more fatigued by the moment. Eladdin had risen and stumbled in their direction.

  The Dowager-Asrahn leaned on her chair, rubbing her wrists, eyes intent on the fight. Jhem remained on guard, his expression hidden by his mask. Mari spun on her heel and dashed toward the doors only to pummel into the locked shields of the Savadai. She rained blows on them, trying to reach over the shields with her knife and the chair leg to no avail.

  With a cry of rage, Eladdin hurtled at Mari, his single knife held with more forethought this time. But his approach was reckless. His blows easy to anticipate. Mari bludgeoned him across the jaw with the chair leg so hard that Eladdin stood for a moment, drooling blood and a tooth, before he toppled to the floor. Nadir used the chance to leap in, landing a powerful kick to Mari’s stomach with the flat of his foot. Mari doubled over. Turned her fall into a roll. She avoided Nadir’s foot where he stamped at her hand.

  Mari came to her feet and backhanded Nadir’s knives away. She swung overhand with the jagged chair leg. It bit into the flesh of Nadir’s shoulder, then slid through and behind his collarbone. Nadir made the barest grunt. His eyes betrayed his agony as Mari wrenched on her weapon and snapped Nadir’s collarbone. She stood over him, her heaving breaths turning into a relieved laugh.

  The Savadai closed in, tridents raised as the Dowager-Asrahn cackled with glee—

  “Stop!” The Emissary’s voice cracked across the room. Mari felt the power of her, so like Indris, as the chains of sound wrapped themselves around her limbs. She crumpled to her knees, hands opening involuntarily to drop her weapons. The Savadai stopped dead in their tracks. The Emissary laid her hand in its moldy gauntlet on the hilt of her sword. “Mariam is not to be harmed.”

  “Did you not see what she did?” the Dowager-Asrahn cried in outrage. The crone came to where Eladdin lay, while Jhem went to his son. The Dowager-Asrahn spat on the floor and pointed a trembling finger at Mari. “You—”

  “I’ve got plenty more if you want a taste,” Mari shot back. I could kill her
now. She moved forward.

  “Be still.” The Emissary crossed the room. Mari stood her ground, though she wanted to recoil from the menace and chittering whispers radiating from the Emissary’s cloak. Mari swallowed her fear and stepped toward the Emissary, earning a dry chuckle in response.

  Mari peered into the shadows of the Emissary’s hood. Mottled skin, a square chin, and blackened teeth. Mari looked her up and down, refusing to be cowed.

  “She suits my needs,” the Emissary said. She swung back to the Dowager-Asrahn. “Do you understand me, crone? Mariam is not to be harmed.”

  “I rule here!” the Dowager-Asrahn snapped. “After what she has—”

  “Not to be harmed,” the Emissary repeated. She pointed to Eladdin. “He’s flawed and not suited to the Feigning. But Mariam will be more than satisfactory.”

  The Dowager-Asrahn clutched at the Emissary’s sleeve. She drew it back at the Emissary’s sharp hiss. The old crone drew herself up and wrapped her over-robe around herself like the folds of her dignity. “Mari does not need to be whole for the Feigning. And she does need to be punished.”

  “Don’t test me on this. My Masters have been kind to you and yours, and that can end with a word. Mariam will be whole, and unspoiled.”

  “Tamerlan is a dangerous place,” the Dowager-Asrahn murmured.

  “Then you’d best expend every possible resource to prevent her from harm. The Feigning will be punishment enough. Be content.”

  “But she is not fit!” The Dowager-Asrahn wrung her hands. “She is a disgrace!” She hawked and spat at Mari, though the phlegm caught on the old woman’s quivering lip and drooped to her chin. She wiped it away angrily.

  “Corajidin parented strong children, the best the Great House of Erebus has birthed in generations,” the Emissary said as she turned to the door. “It was planned this way, long and long ago. When war comes, you’ll see the strength of them. Should you live so long.”

  And with that the Emissary left a room gone silent. Mari felt eyes on her, but no expression was half so vicious as her grandmother’s.

  “What’s the Feigning?” Mari asked. No one answered.

  The crowd resumed their meal and the musicians began playing. She turned to Nadir, held up by Jhem, no doubt heading to the infirmary. Eladdin, carried by two of the Savadai, followed Nadir from the room. Mari went to follow them when a hand clutched her hair, pulling her head backward.

  Mari relaxed and dropped as she spun. She grabbed her grandmother’s bruised wrist and applied pressure until the old woman gasped, and let go. The Dowager-Asrahn swore as she massaged sensation back into her hand.

  “I’m not to be harmed, remember?” Mari looked down at her grandmother. “I should make you bow as sende demands, you disgusting hag, if from nothing other than spite.”

  “You are a stain in the eyes of every Erebus, living and dead.”

  “Which you’re not part of, are you?” Mari smiled at her grandmother’s twisted face. “You’re Savajiin—not Erebus. Family, not Great House. Yet you cling to a meaningless title, on this filthy rock in the middle of nowhere, as if it validates what you were. And you call me a disgrace, you wretched old leech.”

  “Empty words, girl. Everybody answers to the Shark of Tamerlan.”

  “Not anymore.”

  “Listen to you now! I may not be able to touch you, girl, but I can still do you harm. I do not need to lay a single hand on your pretty, sun-kissed skin to aggrieve you.”

  “And if you do, I’ll make such an end of you that people in a hundred years’ time will cringe when they learn of it.”

  Word spread throughout Tamerlan. By the afternoon, bound-caste servants, some of the warrior-caste guests, and even a handful of her cousins openly smiled at Mari as they passed her in the corridors.

  Mari lay in the hot water of the bath chamber long after her freshly cleaned skin had started to prune and scalp had prickled with sweat. The distant booming of the surf through the cavern wall and floor was relaxing. The vibrations reminded Mari of Indris’s voice against her skin, a resonance she felt as much as heard. Not for the first time she wondered where he was. She yearned for his touch, yet could not resent his absence. They both knew the consequences of the lives they had chosen for themselves. If Indris was not in Tamerlan, he was somewhere people needed him. Besides, Mari was capable of saving herself.

  The sooner she escaped the better. Doubtless this Feigning was something Mari wanted no part of.

  The light scuff of a boot on wet stone caught her attention. Mari opened her eyes to see Dhoury and Qesha-rē approaching through lantern-lit clouds of steam. Mari relaxed again, allowing herself to sink deeper into the milky waters of the bath.

  “Seems you’re the talk of Tamerlan, Mari,” Qesha-rē said. The surgeon carried her small wooden box of instruments and medicines, which she set down on a stone couch. Dhoury hovered close by, wringing his hands. Even had the baths not been steaming hot, Dhoury would have dripped sweat. Qesha-rē stood by the edge of the pool. “Do you think aggravating the old shark was the smartest thing in the world?”

  “Probably not,” Mari admitted. “But for the time being, the crone isn’t able to lay a finger on me.”

  “Which gives you the freedom and time you need.”

  “I hope I’m not the only one to be leaving Tamerlan.” Mari splashed water at Dhoury, then smiled as he scampered away.

  “How do you plan on getting off the island?” Dhoury asked from a distance.

  Provided I am right, Morne Hawkwood and his crew came here to find me, Mari thought. But can you be trusted, Dhoury? “I’m working on the details.”

  “Oh, by the sacred dead,” Dhoury groaned into his hands. “You’re going to get us killed!”

  “Not if I can help it.” Mari looked up at Qesha-rē. “What about you? I can think of almost every place in the world you’d find more fulfilling than here.”

  Qesha-rē nodded briskly. “And there are others who we should take with us, people who’ll not survive on Tamerlan long after you, or I, are gone. Without a skilled surgeon, Tamerlan will soon become a charnel house unfit for anybody without a taste for blood.”

  “I’ll need weapons,” Mari said. My Sûnblade, my amenesqa, and anything else I can use. And armor. In fact, we’ll want any armor we can get our hands on. Vahineh in particular will need help.”

  “You’re going to need this.” Dhoury reached into the folds of his coat and pulled out a heavy, irregularly shaped key on an iron chain. It swung ponderously as he held it out. “This is a skeleton key to Tamerlan.” Dhoury placed it on her folded clothes.

  Now Mari was surprised. “Where did you get it?”

  “It was Nadir’s,” Dhoury said. Qesha-rē looked at Dhoury with some surprise and not a little admiration. “I stole it when Qesha was tending to his wounds.”

  “Very well, then,” Mari said. “It looks like we’re one step closer to leaving this cursed rock.”

  Dhoury and Qesha-rē smiled at each other, and Mari felt invigorated by a sense of purpose. This is what I was trained for. To protect the many. Mari gestured for Dhoury to turn around as she climbed out the bath, dried herself, and got dressed.

  Qesha saw to Mari’s wounds, chanting her canto over them so that they sealed under Mari’s eye, then became faint white lines on her skin. Mari murmured her thanks. As her friends prepared to leave, Mari stopped them with a question.

  “What can either of you tell me about the Feigning?”

  CHAPTER SIX

  “There are generally two reasons for doing anything: the reason one tells others, and the reason one keeps to themselves.”

  —from The Manifold Life, by Teren-karem, Sēq Magnate (991st Year of the Awakened Empire)

  Day 56 of the 496th Year of the Shrīanese Federation

  The wind was bitterly cold, Corajidin’s face close to numb. The muscles of his thighs, stomach, and lower back burned in protest. He wanted to laugh with joy: This was no effeminate hart he was r
iding, no venison with a saddle. This was how a person should ride, on the back of a warhorse, man and beast as one. Beneath him Asha maintained a steady pace, snow churning from his hooves.

  A morning mist had poured out of the Mar Jihara. It had pooled in the high plains, filled the valleys like watered milk, and flowed down to settle in the streets of Avānweh. Despite, or perhaps because of, the pressures of the past days, Corajidin had taken the opportunity to escape the city. At least for a little while. The Teshri went on without him as the political factions made and broke their alliances as a symptom of their indecision. Word had reached Corajidin that Ajo had petitioned the Arbiter-Marshall and the Kherife-Marshall to continue their investigation into the allegations against him. Those in the Teshri who had missing loved ones had agreed: once the abductees had been located and returned. For now the no-confidence motion was held in abeyance, though not for long.

  The time would come when a witness was found, or somebody was careless, and Corajidin would be implicated in the abductions. He needed to make use of his captives before then. How would they be most effective in pushing his plans for unification, and war against Pashrea, forward?

  It was a pure world through which he rode, with only the snow, trees, and mist for company. The surrounding wood was silent, stark against the gathered white. Corajidin risked a glance behind him. He had outdistanced his guard, who could be seen as ephemeral shapes racing behind him, outlines blurred, except for Wolfram, who flopped around in his saddle like a scarecrow.

  Corajidin reined Asha in and dismounted. He took a long draft of the Emissary’s potion, kept in a small flask in his over-robe. What had started as a few sips every other day had turned into a secret shame. He drank almost a liter of the potion each day just to function.