“Take it,” Ahya said.
“But why?” Çeda asked.
Demal winked. “Because you seem so very sad.”
Had she? Had she seemed sad?
She reached out and took the fig, feeling the heat rise in her own cheeks. Çeda took a bite from the luscious fruit, the sugary taste and the crunch of the seeds filling her mouth. The crowd clapped and whooped, her mother as loud as any of them. Demal then roughed her hair and strode back to start the final movement of the dance.
The crowd grew intense now, watching closely. With this final cut, and the offering given, Demal’s crossing would be complete. Demal had acquitted himself well so far, but the highest blessings were bestowed upon those who cut all three figs cleanly, to those who caught all three, and to those who made wise choices with their offerings.
Demal spun and twisted, raised his hands high, then brought the sword low. He approached his father and lashed out with the sword with an uppercut to slice the fig free in a move that was so fierce, so swift, it made Çeda gasp. Demal caught the fig so calmly, so elegantly, she wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that he was Thaash reborn, for surely this was how gods looked like when they walked the earth.
Demal held the fruit in one hand, considering carefully who he would give it to, but Çeda could tell it was all an act. He knew exactly who he would be giving it to, and so did everyone else, for when he turned to Sarra, many of the gathering whistled in the way one did for young lovers.
Before he could take two steps, however, there came a disturbance from the far side of the gathering. Hefhi turned to see what was the matter, and that drew everyone’s attention to the riverbank, where a cadre of Silver Spears led by a Blade Maiden were navigating the rocky slope downward toward them. The Silver Spears wore conical steel helms with a curtain of mail hanging from sides and rear. Their bucklers and breastplates and vambraces were bright and polished, and bore the same royal designs as their leaf-shaped spearheads: a shield with twelve shamshirs fanned around it.
The lone Blade Maiden, though, seemed infinitely more dangerous than the city guardsmen. She wore a black thawb and a turban that covered all but her eyes. Her ebon blade hung sheathed at her side, her left hand resting loosely on its pommel. An intimate friend was that ebon blade, a thing she might have known for all her life. It was her bearing, however, that made her seem so deadly, like a cobra, raised and hooded, poised to strike.
The drumming ceased. A young boy gasped. Ahya’s hand took Çeda’s wrist in an iron grip, an echo of the constant care Ahya took to avoid the Kings and the Maidens in the light of day. Çeda and her mother’s eyes met. Ahya shook her head. The time had not yet come. They would draw too much attention to themselves if they tried to leave now. Çeda looked to the old men by the riverbank, looking for the man from the desert, but he wasn’t there. She couldn’t find him anywhere.
All attention was now focused on the Maiden, whose kohl-rimmed eyes were fixed uncharitably on the gathering. Men and women grabbed their children, shielded them with their own bodies as if the city guard was about to launch a volley of arrows into their ranks. Faces happy only moments ago had turned to stone.
The fig branch still held in his left hand, Hefhi raised his arms high in a gesture of peace and strode toward the Maiden. The crowd parted, and the Maiden came to a stop two paces in front of Hefhi. The Silver Spears spread out behind her in two ranks of ten, shields at the ready, the hafts of their spears leaning toward those who had peaceably gathered.
“I have come for Demal Hefhi’ava,” the Maiden said, staring past Hefhi toward his son, who stared back with a defiant look.
“For what reason?” Hefhi asked.
“The Kings’ business is none of yours,” was all she said as she stepped around him and made straight for Demal.
Hefhi ran past her and placed himself between the two of them, arms still raised. He backed up, placing himself ever in her path, as the Maiden veered this way then that. Then the Maiden stopped and regarded Hefhi. Gone was the look of sufferance she’d had when she’d reached the riverbed. Now there was malice in her dark eyes. “Remove yourself from my path ere I cut you like a river reed.”
“It is his day of crossing. Please. Let us finish, and I will bring Demal to you myself, wherever you say. We’ll stand before you and answer any questions you may have.”
“It is not for you to decide whom the Kings will question and whom they will not. If, as you say, this is the very threshold of Demal’s young life, then take care for his sake. Step aside before blood is drawn.”
Hefhi could not argue further. He knew it, and so did everyone else. He raised his hands again and bowed placatingly to the Maiden, stepping aside but remaining close at hand. He realized, perhaps only then, that Demal was still holding the sword in his right hand. Demal was breathing hard, nostrils flaring, hand gripping and regripping the hilt of the sword.
“Demal,” Hefhi said carefully, “lower your sword.”
Demal merely stared into the Blade Maiden’s eyes. They were nearly of a height. Demal was tall for his age. And he was competent enough with a blade. But this was foolish. Even Çeda knew it. The Maidens trained day and night. They could see into a man’s soul. She would see Demal’s next move before he did.
“Demal, lower your sword.”
“Listen to your father, boy,” the Maiden said. “Talk is all we wish.”
Demal’s chest broadened and contracted, slower than before. His grip on the sword loosened and his shoulders relaxed. When he spoke, it was strangely calm. “We’ll have you in the end.”
“You?” the Maiden replied, drawing her sword from its scabbard with violence and fluidity. Her ebon blade shone dully under the noontime sun, glinting like a bitter, bloody smile. “You and your friends?” Her right foot shifted. She lowered herself into a fighting stance. “No. You’ll be crushed beneath the heel of the Kings, as were your brothers and sisters before you, as you all shall be while the Kings stand proud upon the mount.”
Hefhi waved his arms in the air, the fig branch tilting this way and that. “No! Please don’t do this!”
“He chose this,” the Maiden replied, “not I.”
And then several things happened at once.
Demal burst into motion, raising his sword high, the third of his figs forgotten on the riverbed behind him.
“No!” Hefhi cried as he charged the Maiden, wielding the fig branch like a sword. He spread his arms wide, perhaps hoping to tackle the Maiden and bring her to the ground, but before his arms could slip around her, she had stepped to one side, batting his left arm away and distancing herself from Demal at the same time.
The blade arced up, then across her body in a swift motion, slicing across poor Hefhi’s undefended neck. Blood gushed everywhere.
“Noooo!” Demal screamed.
His charge had stalled. His motions as he tried to renew it were uncontrolled, clumsy. He swung for the Maiden, who blocked it easily, and the second. When he came in for the third—a high strike, both hands gripping the hilt—the Maiden sidestepped the wild blow and sent a spinning back kick into his jaw. Everyone heard the crack of breaking bones.
Like a sack of sand, Demal crumpled to the riverbed.
For a moment, everyone stood, mutely staring.
Then all was madness. Men shouted and screamed. Women wailed. Some shook their fists in the air. Some picked up stones from the riverbed. Many closed in around the Maiden, but none approached her. She held her sword at the ready amidst them, low in her fighting stance, waiting to see if anyone dared approach. None did. But when the Silver Spears began making their way forward, the crowd formed a wall, hoping to prevent them from taking Hefhi’s remains or the unconscious Demal. The Spears shouted for them to back away, but compliance came only when an old woman was stabbed with a spear for coming too close.
Dozens had come to the riverb
ank to see what was happening. A few ran when they saw, but many rushed toward the conflict, their faces intent, the people of Sharakhai’s western quarter ever-ready to vent their anger against the Kings and their servants. All knew that if the Maiden were to die, many more would be killed in retribution—they were the Kings’ chosen, anointed by the gods themselves—but there was a limit to what the masses of Sharakhai’s poorest quarter could stomach.
Some began moving in behind the Silver Spears, others along their flanks. The crowd closed in around the Maiden, some raising their rocks high over their heads as they screamed at her.
The Maiden waited, ready. Then a stone flew. It struck her on the back of her head. She turned and charged, slicing from neck to stomach the man who’d thrown it, and cutting another who’d thrown and missed, and a third when he came in bearing a stone like a club, hoping to bash her skull in from behind.
“Now, girl,” Ahya said, still gripping Çeda’s wrist. “Come now.”
She pulled Çeda up and ran across the shallow river, splashing into it and across to the other side in three long strides.
Çeda kept up as best she could, climbing the far side until her chest was heavy with breath. Ahya led them through the city, not toward their home, but west. They passed beyond the city limits and came to a shallow crystal cave, which they reached by dropping to their stomachs and sidling in. Çeda could still hear the sound of the fighting. It had erupted and was spreading across the city. For a long while, Çeda couldn’t speak, and at some point during the long, fearful afternoon she fell asleep.
When she awoke, it was morning, and her mother was coming back into the cave bearing a skin of water. She handed it to Çeda, who took it and drank thirstily.
There were no sounds of fighting, no cries of lament, only the laugh of a jackal somewhere deeper in the desert.
“Is it over?” Çeda asked.
“For now,” Ahya replied, “though it will live well beyond today.”
“Why did she do it?”
Ahya’s face turned sour. “Kill Hefhi? You saw with your own eyes, Çeda.”
“No. Why did she come for Demal in the first place?”
Ahya considered for a time, perhaps deciding how much to tell her. “If you haven’t guessed, child, he was a scarab, a soldier of the Moonless Host, and he was foolish about it. He let it be known to one person too many.” As Çeda took another long drink, she heard her mother speak under her breath. “A mistake I will never make.”
Çeda wasn’t sure just what Ahya was saying. Was she part of the Moonless Host as well? Çeda didn’t dare ask. She was too afraid of the answer.
Later that day, they returned home to gather a few things, then moved in the night to another part of the city entirely.
Two days later, Demal was found at the gates, hung, along with eleven others.
Chapter 20
A SHARP WHISTLE WOKE ÇEDA FROM HER DREAM. Gods, she hadn’t thought of Demal in years. It still felt so vivid, as if this were the dream, not that terrible day on the banks of the Haddah. She stared up at the stone ceiling of her bedroom. She lay there on her bed—blankets tangling her legs, most of it tossed aside in the heat of the night—still hearing her mother’s words, a mistake I will never make.
She had, though. She had misstepped, and it had cost her her life. The Kings had found her the night after Beht Zha’ir and strung her up below the gates of Tauriyat with ancient words cut into her skin, a mystery that dogged Çeda still. Which King had her mother gone to see? Which King had found her? Which had carved those symbols into her mother’s skin and hung her at the gates of the House of Kings?
The whistle came again.
“I’m up!” Çeda said.
“Then hurry your hide,” Sümeya called. “A King is on his way to watch you perform.”
Çeda shot up in her bed. A King? She dressed hurriedly and buckled her sword belt, wondering which of them would come, and why. Likely it would be Husamettín. Perhaps he wanted to judge her progress, a thing he did with Maidens from time to time, particularly the newer ones.
She made her way quickly down to the barracks courtyard, where three dozen sparring circles were located. A handful were occupied, some with two or three Maidens sparring with bamboo shinai that blurred through the air and cracked when they struck, others fighting in tight quarters with vicious swipes from wooden daggers or powerful hand-to-hand blows that ended in a sharp kiai.
Kameyl, Melis, and Yndris were already standing at the edge of the largest sparring circle, the one at the center. “No steel, young wren,” Kameyl said, motioning to River’s Daughter.
Çeda removed it, leaned it against a nearby tree.
“What say you, oh Çedamihn, daughter of Ahyanesh?” Kameyl asked. “Are you ready to growl? To roll in the dirt like a dog?”
“Wolves have sharp teeth,” Çeda said, trying to hide her nerves. “They’ll draw blood if you’re not careful.”
Kameyl chuckled. “Nip at our heels, more like. Whine when they’re whipped.” She took one of the four shinai from beneath her arm, flipping it so that Çeda could grip the handle. “Perhaps I’ll take myself a pelt this day,” she said to Melis, “a white one to grace the floor of my room.”
“A pelt would look lovely, indeed,” Melis replied.
Çeda forced a smile as she accepted the bamboo practice sword from Kameyl, but her thoughts were too focused on Sümeya’s words—a King is on his way. She was just about to ask about it when three forms strode into the barracks courtyard. Zaïde and Sümeya were walking beside Mesut, the Jackal King. Zaïde wore her white Matron’s dress, Sümeya her Maiden’s black—both simple, utilitarian uniforms. Mesut, in contrast, looked like a shaikh of old in his fine, slate-blue khalat and his silver turban.
When Mesut spoke, it was with a reedy voice, as if its timbre had been stolen by a trickster god. “You may begin,” he said simply to Kameyl, his hands over his chest, as if he were ready to judge her in Husamettín’s place.
Kameyl handed one of the shinai to Melis, then another to Yndris, who each took up positions at the edge of the circle.
Çeda, so worried over Mesut she still didn’t understand what was happening, made to step into the circle, until Mesut raised his hand to forestall her. “A moment, Çedamihn.”
Mesut had an aquiline nose and piercing eyes beneath heavy eyebrows. His mustache and sculpted beard lent him a certain intensity, as if he meant to do her harm, but when Çeda stepped to his side, he gave her a disarming smile and held out one hand. She raised her left hand in response, as her right was holding her shinai, but he shook his head and pointed to her sword hand. “If you would be so kind.”
“Of course, my Lord King,” she said, switching her sword and allowing him to take her right hand. He lifted it to his mouth. She thought he was going to kiss it, but instead he twice ran his thumb over the puckered scar, the place where the adichara had poisoned her, then put his lips to it and sucked. The sting it produced was so immediate, so piercing, she gasped, to the annoyance of Sümeya. The King, however, kept his lips where they were, as if he were drawing blood from a poisoned wound. It was a wound no longer, though. It had long since healed to look at it, but it hurt terribly sometimes. Today she’d hardly noticed the pain, but as the King sucked at it, his warm, wet lips pressed tightly to her skin, the pain flared like a geyser, so much so that she tried to pull away. The King, however, held fast, his grip sure, his strength undeniable.
Çeda gritted her teeth against it, so acute had it become, and finally the King pulled her hand away from his mouth. He examined the wound, running his thumb over it as he had before. The pain now spread from that central point to the meat of her thumb to her wrist and hand. It felt as though she were being poisoned all over again.
“Now,” he said, waving to Kameyl, Melis, and Yndris, “spar with your sisters.”
Çeda had no idea
why he’d done this. Apparently she wasn’t supposed to know, for Mesut merely stepped back and waited, and Sümeya motioned to the ring with a subtle nod of her head. Çeda complied, stepping into the ring, moving to its center, as Melis, Yndris, and Kameyl had taken up positions around the edge of the circle.
“As we practiced,” Zaïde said to Çeda, with the nonchalance of a master who cared very much about how her student was about to perform.
Çeda nodded and prepared, stepping into the ready position. She began to feel for the heartbeats of the three Maidens surrounding her. Kameyl she felt immediately, a strong and powerful heartbeat. Melis’s came next. And finally Yndris’s, who, Çeda suspected, was trying to mask it to embarrass Çeda in front of the King. But hiding one’s heart was not an easy thing to do, and Çeda homed in on hers soon enough.
It was difficult to maintain the sense of three nearby heartbeats, but Çeda had been drilling with Zaïde and her sister Maidens to expand her awareness. She felt Yndris advance. Strangely, she felt it through her hand, not her mind, as if her wound was now attuned to the blood of her sisters.
Çeda spun, blocked high, then sidestepped a downward swing from Melis. Kameyl charged in. Çeda positioned herself so that, for a few precious moments, Kameyl blocked Melis and Yndris’s path to Çeda. They traded a flurry of blows, their shinais clacking loudly. She fell into a rhythm, blocking, striking, taking occasional blows that stung. And all the while the wound in her hand began to burn. It grew like a fire in a furnace, red hot, then orange, then white. And as it did, her movements became more erratic, wilder, but stronger as well.
Twice she saw Yndris cringe when Çeda’s swings came down hard against her raised defenses. She saw Melis grit her jaw when Çeda’s left leg shot into her midsection while simultaneously blocking a low swing from Kameyl. Even Kameyl grunted as Çeda ducked beneath a high strike and brought her sword hard into her left shin, then up to catch her wrist as she was trying to reestablish her line of defense.
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