With Blood Upon the Sand

by Bradley P. Beaulieu

  The bolts pounded against the roof where Çeda, Sümeya, and Yndris were crossing. As each one struck, a cloud of red dust coughed into the air in a funnel-shaped spray that rushed toward them. In a blink, the air was thick with it. Çeda managed to take a hurried lungful of untainted air, but as the cloud swept over her, her eyes began to water. The very air burned. It scratched at her nose and throat so badly she coughed from it while trying to escape. She couldn’t escape, though. The powder was so fine it had spread over most of the roof.

  The wind was not strong this day, but Çeda reckoned it was strong enough to move the cloud, so she made for the cloud’s windward edge, and eventually the air began to clear. Eyes watering terribly, she scanned the opposite roof. She had only enough time to register one of them—the younger, kneeling, aiming something at her—before her instincts sent her twisting away. She dropped toward the roof as the lathe of the crossbow snapped and something flickered toward her. It ate up the distance almost too fast for the eye to follow. Something burned its way across her back, hardly more than a tug at first, but then bright pain blossomed in a line just below her shoulder blades.

  Her first thought was that the bolt had been poisoned, as hers had been for the Kings in Eventide, but she couldn’t worry about that now. Yndris and Sümeya reached her side while, on the far building, the two men were slipping down yet another rope they’d prepared.

  Sümeya tried to whistle again, but she was coughing so horribly she couldn’t manage it. Çeda whistled for her, then did so again as she stumbled to the edge of the roof, where a terra-cotta downspout ran from roof to ground. She began shimmy down it, but it was unsound. The clay fractured as she went, sections of the downspout crumbling as she tried to hold on. She leapt away from the building to avoid the debris, and rolled as she struck the brown lawn, but she still hit hard, and when she came to her feet, her right ankle was screaming from the pain. Sümeya was whistling again from the roof above. A reply came from somewhere beyond the building Çeda had just climbed down.

  Çeda looked up, unsure what Sümeya wished her to do, but when Sümeya pointed toward the escaping men, Çeda ran, powering through the flaring pain in her ankle. The petals were wondrous things, though. They numbed aches. They granted strength. And soon she was flying over the collegia grounds.

  After crossing the road that circled the collegia she headed down an alley, the most likely place for the men to have gone. Ahead, a woman and a little boy were walking toward Çeda. The woman looked at nothing in particular, her eyes distant as Çeda approached, but the boy kept glancing back, past a bend in the alley, until his mother tugged sharply on his arm and he stared stone-like, straight ahead.

  They’d gone this way then. Çeda continued, faster, and it was clear that they were headed toward the Shallows, the poorest section of the city and the one that most sympathized with the Moonless Host. She leapt through a break in the city’s old wall, little more than a crumbling arch, and continued down the narrow street until she saw them well ahead, running fast through a crowd.

  “Lai, lai, lai!” Çeda called, more a demand for all to stand aside than for the men to stop running.

  The men and women she passed obeyed, clearing a path, but few bowed their heads, and some seemed slow in their movements, perhaps hoping to delay Çeda in any way they could. Çeda wove between them and saw the men took different paths at the next intersection, a small square where five alleys split off like the spokes of a wagon wheel and ran along drunken, misaligned rows of houses.

  Çeda followed the elder, the taller one, if for no other reason than she thought he might have more information than the younger.

  “Hup, hup!” the man called as he ran. “Hup, hup!”

  They were into the Shallows proper now. Refuse and barrels and disused crates filled the streets, some freshly knocked over by the shadowed forms of men and women ducking into their homes.

  Çeda dodged what she could, leaping or somersaulting when she couldn’t. The rage was building inside her for those who were trying to keep her from reaching the man, and she realized only then just how badly her right hand was throbbing, worse than her ankle. She ignored the pain, knowing it was fueling her anger; a year ago she might have been the one throwing crates into a Maiden’s path to slow her down.

  Ahead, a cart lay without a mule. The man, who was beginning to flag, ran up along the inclined bed and angled himself over the eaves of the nearest, half-repaired roof. Çeda launched herself after him and chased him over the roofs of the ramshackle homes. Knowing he was caught, he turned to face her, knife in hand, his breath well on him now.

  Çeda was ready for him. She dropped, spinning, and caught him around the ankles. He fell to the roof in a crashing heap. It was child’s play from there to take his knife from him. He was no fighter, this one, but a thief, a trickster sent to gather information for the Host. Why, she didn’t yet know. But she would.

  She stood him up, his arm locked behind him. He hardly struggled. In fact, the only reason he seemed to fight her at all was to look east, more or less toward the collegia.

  That was when Çeda saw the silhouette. The sun was in her face, so she didn’t at first realize a man was standing fifty paces away across a sea of brown and red roofs. But when he registered at last, she saw the bow he was holding, saw his right arm tugging back, as if he’d just loosed an arrow. In the split second that followed, his hand returned to the string, nocked another arrow, and released.

  The arrows she never saw, not until both of them were sprouting from the chest of the man she held in her arms. He groaned. His body went slack. Her first thought was to let him drop to the roof’s broken tiles, to chase after this newcomer, but she already knew she’d never catch him. He was too far away. So instead she held her prisoner up, using him as a shield should more arrows be launched her way.

  Slowly, she lowered the dying man, peering over his shoulder. Then she stared, mouth agape. The assassin’s bracers. The wide belt around his waist. By the gods who breathe . . .

  A whistle called her attention elsewhere. Yndris was climbing up to the roof, Kameyl just behind her. They took in the dead man at her feet, then turned to look in the direction Çeda had been watching. But the bowman was gone.

  “They shot him,” Çeda said simply.

  Kameyl kneeled and snapped the arrow shafts where they’d entered the man’s chest, then threw them aside. “I would’ve too, were I them.”

  “The other?” Çeda asked.

  Kameyl shrugged. “Melis and Sümeya went after him.”

  When Çeda stood there, unmoving, Yndris stepped over and looked the dead man over, then regarded Çeda. “What did you see?”

  Çeda shook her head. “A man with a bow.”

  Yndris accepted the answer, but Çeda could tell she was watching her whenever she thought Çeda wasn’t looking. And well she might have. Çeda would have done the same had Yndris been as visibly shaken as Çeda in the moment she’d recognized the man with the bow.

  The bracers. The wide belt. His stance and his way of moving. She’d recognize them until her dying day.

  It was Emre. And he’d just shot the man who had stolen secrets from the collegia.

  Chapter 11

  WHEN EMRE SAW THE TWO MEN climbing onto the four-story roof of the bursar’s office, he knew it had all gone wrong. He’d watched as Melekh and Iliam had traipsed across the collegia rooftops, watched as the Blade Maidens had survived the fire-dust, watched as one had caught a crossbow bolt across the back and had continued the chase.

  The gods are cruel to make the Maidens from iron while we are but flesh and blood.

  It had seemed like such a simple operation when Macide had laid it out for them. Get in, get the list of names from their agent in the bursar’s office, and get out.

  “Why spend so much effort on contingencies?” Emre had asked. “It’ll attract attention, tipping o
ur hand to the Kings when we should be holding our cards tight to our chest.”

  Macide had stroked his long beard and given Emre a look of sufferance. “It may seem foolish, or costly, but we know the right way to do things.”

  As it turned out, Macide had been right to be cautious, and all too soon, Emre found himself watching Iliam flying up to the rooftops, a Maiden nipping at his heels. Emre drew his arrow back to his cheek, ready to fire the arrow into the chest of the Maiden, but then Iliam drew his knife and the Maiden took him easily with a quick sweep of her leg. He released the tension on the string the moment the realization struck him. He knew her. The Maiden. By Tulathan’s bright smile, it was Çeda. He was certain of it.

  A nervous laugh nearly burst from his throat. He’d been set to take any Maiden chasing him. Of course he couldn’t now. But he also couldn’t let Iliam be taken either. Macide had made that clear over and over again. He was to protect them if he could, but if it came to it he was to take Iliam or Melekh rather than allow the Maidens or the Silver Spears to capture them.

  Çeda stood Iliam up. She had him in an armlock. Any moment she’d drop him below the roofline and Emre would have lost his chance.

  The old feelings of fear returned, feelings born of his inaction when his brother, Rafa, had been murdered by that Malasani dog. But this wasn’t fear for himself, but for Çeda. The thought of killing her, of even harming her, made him go cold. But he blinked hard and shook his head. He was a cowering fool no longer. He was a man reborn.

  With reflexes he’d been honing day after day, he lifted the bow, aimed while drawing the string to his ear, and released. Faster than it took to draw breath, he lay a second arrow across the bow, drew, and released. He knew before the first arrow struck that there was no need for a third. Both arrows struck true, sinking deep into Iliam’s chest.

  Despite the shell he’d tried to build around himself, Emre felt the cold knife of regret driving through his chest. He’d known Iliam. Known him well. They’d traded stories over fires. They’d cooked for one another. Iliam had defended Emre several times to some of the other scarabs who hadn’t yet come to trust him. And now he’d sunk arrows into his chest. He’d killed him. Under orders, true, but that made it no easier. For a moment he felt no better than Rafa’s killer.

  Çeda—he was certain now it was her—stared at him for a moment. He stared back. How he wished he could walk across these roofs and speak to her. Hold her. Take her from the House of Maidens.

  But he couldn’t. No more than she could take him away from the Moonless Host.

  When a piercing whistle rose above the bustle of the city and Çeda looked down to the alley, Emre dropped from his perch and lost himself in the cramped byways of the Shallows.

  Arcing along the curve of Sharakhai’s great southern harbor were dozens of massive warehouses that stored goods delivered by incoming ships. Sometimes those goods remained for mere hours, moving after a quick sale to other merchants from the neighboring kingdoms or to middlemen in Sharakhai who would hold them and sell them to their own contacts over time. Other shipments would sit for days or weeks, the caravan’s agent in Sharakhai waiting for the right moment to sell if the price for their goods were volatile and presently low. There were several small auction blocks as well for trading among the many merchants who came to Sharakhai or called the city home. There were pens and paddocks for animals in and near the warehouses, the sounds and smells equally raucous. Stevedores entered and exited with all manner of carts from the dockside quays, sometimes choking the roadways as they headed to and from their assigned ships, merchants and their gangs of workers milling through the warehouses and among the cityside streets. Weaving among them all were day merchants who roamed with food carts, their own children threading through the crowd with samples on sticks, crying, “The best to be found in the Amber City!”

  It was a constant hive of activity, an ever-changing collection of sounds, smells, languages, and cultures, which in some ways made the harbor the perfect place for the Moonless Host to meet. It was difficult for the King of Whispers to hear their words when the sheer volume of conversation tended to drown them out. Even King Yusam and his mere, Emre suspected, might have trouble sifting through the threads that wove together here.

  And yet, however well it might suit their needs in some respects, the truth was that the lion’s share of money moving in and out of Sharakhai traveled through the southern harbor, so of course it attracted the Spears. Like bees to flowers in bloom, they swarmed about the harbor and its streets, its warehouses and ships, following the scents of currency and graft and crimes against the Kings. Like falcons through flocks of starlings they cut through the crowds in their white uniforms, many, though not all, looking for ways to line their own purses. Occasionally they even kept the peace.

  Even now near end of day, while Emre was heading toward the safe house and the roar of the harbor’s workday was starting to fade, he passed three pairs of Silver Spears. He recognized a few who had been bribed by the Host to avert their eyes from Emre and others like him, but Macide couldn’t bribe them all. Even if he had all the money in the world, too many Spears had been harmed, directly or indirectly, by the Host. They were the ones fiercely loyal to the Kings and to the Lord Commander of the Silver Spears. It made the selection of who to bribe tricky to say the least.

  Emre continued past the safe house. He wandered a bit, making sure he wasn’t being followed, then circled back and made his way to a small warehouse with a livestock pen near the harbor’s eastern edge. Seeing the way clear, he hopped over the fence, dodged a number of sows, as well as their piles of shit, and headed in through the pig’s entrance. The smell struck him hard. He’d come to hate it, not because it was foul, but from his days working in a shambles. Those had been dark days, days he’d tried and failed to work through his self-loathing after Rafa’s death, and the smell reminded him of his failures.

  Inside the warehouse, a space opened up with pens for animals. Several were filled with short Qaimiri workhorses. A man waited just inside, a rangy fellow using a rasp to file one of the horse’s hooves. He stood when Emre entered and stared.

  Emre looked back at the entrance. “One day the dunes will shift, yes?” A common refrain among the Host, referring to the day when the Kings would fall.

  The man grunted and pointed with the rasp toward the nearby cellar door, then returned to his work. Emre took the stairs down, and there found a room perhaps three paces by five, lit by a lone lantern in the center of the seven men and women. Half of those gathered had been assigned to key positions around the collegia in support of Melekh’s and Iliam’s joint mission. Melekh was already here. His worried look made Emre’s gut churn. He’d always been good at burying his emotions, but staring at Melekh, his regret came rushing back, stronger than when he’d sent the arrows into Iliam. He’d taken a life today—a friend’s life—and no amount of rationalizing was going to change that.

  His childhood friend Hamid squatted on the far side of the lantern, watching Emre’s approach with sleepy eyes. He motioned to a place across from him. Emre sat there, and the rest gathered round. “Tell us,” Hamid prompted.

  And Emre did, from the things he saw on the tower to the chase, to shooting the arrows into Iliam’s chest. As he said these words, he stared directly into Melekh’s eyes. He wouldn’t hide the truth from him. Iliam had been Melekh’s blood, and he deserved an honest telling. “My tears for your loss,” he said when he’d finished.

  Melekh swallowed hard, then nodded. He wiped tears away with the back of his hands. “The stubborn bastard would’ve demanded no less.”

  Perhaps, thought Emre, which only serves to deepen the ache.

  The others told stories as well, but Melekh was the only one with news of substance. He’d been successful. He pulled out a roll of papyrus he had stuffed inside his kaftan. He handed it to Hamid, who looked it over by the yellow light of the lante
rn.

  “Very good,” he said, then looked to all those gathered. “This is what we risked our lives for. Indeed, this is what Iliam gave his life for. Our hearts may be heavy, but that’s fitting, as I see it, for we’ve done the heavy work. Now go.” He motioned to the cellar steps. “No contact with your commanders for seven days,” Hamid told them. They nodded and left, but Emre stayed behind.

  Hamid stared at him, emotionless. “If you wish to know what Melekh found, I can’t tell you.”

  “It isn’t that,” Emre said, though he was more than curious about what Iliam’s blood had bought them. “It was the Maiden who caught Iliam, the one who held him as I shot the arrows.”

  Hamid stuffed the roll of papyrus into his own kaftan, eyeing Emre with a look of mild curiosity. “It was Çeda, wasn’t it?”

  Emre’s head jerked back. “How—”

  Hamid blew out the lantern and headed for the cellar stairs, tugging Emre’s sleeve for him to follow. Soon they were out and into the city streets. Dusk had fallen over the desert, the first stars piercing the gauze of a darkening slate-blue sky. “I could always tell when you were mooning over someone, Emre.”

  “I wasn’t mooning,” Emre said as they headed south, skirting the edge of the warehouse district. “I worry over her. That’s all.”

  “I know you two were close, but she’s chosen her path. What good will your worry do her now? It’ll only distract you. Misstep in this game we’re playing, Emre, and it isn’t a finger you’ll lose from the Spears, or even a hand. It’ll be your life, or worse, an intimate chat with the Confessor King. Stop worrying about Çeda and start worrying about us.”

  Emre snorted. “What are we doing? We hide. We run from the Kings.”

  Hamid shrugged. “Retreat is not defeat.”

  “But what we did in the desert, in Külaşan’s palace, it was all for nothing. Hamzakiir was taken from beneath our very noses. And the Kings have been hounding us ever since. More are taken every day.”