With Blood Upon the Sand

by Bradley P. Beaulieu

Çeda absorbed blows as well, but the rage within her was so strong she barely felt it. She hardly knew what she was angry about until a glimpse of her dream returned to her.

  Demal, collapsing on the bank of the Haddah.

  With that connection, the rage in her transformed. It had been so unfocused a moment ago, but now it homed in on one thing. One person. King Mesut.

  She continued to fight Kameyl, Melis, and Yndris, but in truth she was looking for a way she might sprint from the circle and take Mesut. If only she had River’s Daughter in her hands. It was just there, leaning against the tree. She might reach it in time. She might lop the King’s head off before anyone could do anything about it. The very notion of witnessing the death of a King—the blood, the look on his dying face—sent a rush of glee coursing through her veins. Oh, to dance on the grave of a King!

  Despite her intensity, she was becoming careless, her movements wilder, more erratic still. She tried to bring her focus back to the fight, as blows she had been blocking earlier rained in against her legs, her back, her arms and head, until finally, a sharp whistle came from behind her. She swung three more times at Kameyl, but Kameyl simply backed away, blocking Çeda’s inexpert swings with practiced ease.

  Her breath coming in ragged gasps, Çeda lowered her shinai. She felt no one’s heartbeat now, none but her own, pounding so heavily all she heard was its low-pitched thrum. She wasn’t even sure when she’d lost them.

  “She was like this?” King Mesut asked.

  “Yes,” Yndris replied immediately.

  “Not so bad as this,” Kameyl cut in, “but yes, my King. Like this.”

  Çeda stared at them, confused. What were they talking about?

  “And your training sessions?” Mesut said to Zaïde.

  “Yes,” Zaïde replied, “from time to time.”

  “Have they been more frequent of late?”

  Zaïde waggled her head, considering. “Yes, they seem to have been.”

  This clinical examination did more to bring Çeda back to herself than her own desire to stifle her rage. She looked between the Maidens and the King, feeling betrayed, but also worried over where the King’s line of inquiry might be headed.

  “Leave us,” King Mesut said.

  The Maidens bowed and left. Zaïde did as well, but not before giving Çeda a worried look, as if she too were unsure of Mesut’s purpose.

  “All of you,” Mesut shouted to the courtyard, clapping loudly, “leave us.”

  Immediately the other Maidens stopped what they were doing, bowed to their King, and left, leaving Çeda and Mesut to occupy this grand space on their own. Mesut held out his hand, flicking his fingers. “Your shinai.” She handed it over numbly. Mesut took it and leaned it against the tree just next to River’s Daughter. The anger was still there, but buried more deeply, like a creature retreating into its cave.

  With lithe steps, Mesut made his way across the sparring circle to the traditional starting position for unarmed combat. The sun angled in over the barracks roof, bathing him in golden light. He stared at her with a keenness that reminded her of a desert falcon—a look both regal and ruthless—then motioned to the space across from him. Çeda stepped into the ring as her confusion, not to mention the pain all over her body, grew in frightening increments. “Will we spar, my Lord King?”

  His only reply was to motion again. As she took her position, he said, “I felt you out in the desert, when you called to the asirim.”

  And suddenly Mesut’s presence here, his interest in her wound, became clear as sunlit rain. She’d felt him in the desert as well. She’d thought him unaware of her presence. But of course he hadn’t been. She’d been foolish to think it. What might he have learned while she was bonded to the asirim? And now that he was wary of her, would he dig deeper? Would he learn her secrets?

  “Zaïde is pleased with your progress, as is Sümeya.” He motioned to her wounded hand. “But you cannot continue as you have.”

  Çeda shook her head. “I don’t understand.”

  “Come,” he said, lowering himself into a fighting stance and raising his hands. His body was loose but poised to strike. She could see in his form, in his eyes. He was a supremely confident fighter. Hesitantly, Çeda complied, and then the King said exactly what she feared he would.

  “Now try to strike me.”

  “My King?”

  His face pinched in annoyance. “Attempt to strike me, as you would an enemy of Sharakhai.”

  “I cannot strike a King.”

  “Unless he wills it.”

  She made a half-hearted attempt, but the King blocked it with ease and drove his palm into her chest. It was a movement so compact, so perfect, she could see it traveling up from his legs to his hips to his shoulders to his palm. It sent her flying backward and onto her rump.

  He returned to the starting position. “I said, strike me.”

  She got up and dusted herself off, then returned and lowered into a ready stance, controlling her emotions as best she could. She wasn’t afraid of what the King might do to her. She was afraid of what she might do to the King were she to lose control again. She no more wanted to be controlled by the asirim than she did by the Kings.

  She tried again, a faster flurry of blows, but each time, the King somehow wrapped his wrists around hers, twisting like a snake. He gave no ground, always sending Çeda backward with a strike to her head or chest or shoulders. And he was constantly altering her strikes, blunting their momentum by twisting them outward or inward and curling around her defenses until he could counterstrike.

  Çeda tried to find her center, tried to touch Mesut’s heart, but in this she failed miserably.

  Until Mesut shot one hand in like a striking asp and grabbed her right hand. He twisted her arm painfully while pressing the tip of his thumb into her poisoned wound. Her world became pain once more. She felt as though she were at the top of a mountain with the world burning white all around her.

  Mesut loomed over her as she fell to her knees. “I told you to strike me, child!”

  He released her and kicked her in the chest, a blurring movement that was fluid as an autumn gale, powerful as a raging river. She fell hard across the sparring circle’s thick rope border, the back of her head thumping against the ground.

  She lifted her head, ears ringing, then returned to her feet. As before, the wounds across her body faded. She felt only the wild white fire burning in her hand. Her hatred—the asirim’s hatred—had returned, but it was focused now. On the Jackal King alone. She returned to her place in the circle, feeling his heartbeat. As she had in the desert, she felt . . . No, she knew she could smother him, that she could bury him beneath the desert if she so chose.

  But are these my thoughts or the asirim’s?

  Refusing to lower into her fighting stance, to submit, she struck at Mesut, giving herself to the pain and anger emanating from her thumb. She felt the world around her draw inward. Soon it was only the two of them, nothing else, arms powering forward, twisting as he twisted, waiting for the inevitable counterstrike. They continued, legs trading positions like dancers in the center of a vast, empty hall. His eyes taunted her, which only fueled her rage.

  The poison took her then. Her entire world went white. She felt but did not see her hand strike Mesut, but she had no idea where. Then she was falling, something struck the front of her body. She screamed in rage, struggling to free herself, but something had her pinned from behind.

  “Return to me, Çedamihn Ahyanesh’ala,” came a low, rasping voice. “Return to me now.” The pain continued to burn. “Return to me.”

  Like fog burning away, the courtyard resolved from the whiteness. She felt and heard her own harsh breathing. She sounded like a wounded dog, growling and mewling at the same time. She realized the King was on her back, pinning her right arm behind her. He was pressing his thumb against
her wound again, but this time it was gentle, as if he were holding a compress to a cut to staunch the bleeding. Instead of making the pain flare, his touch was having the opposite effect. Slowly the agony faded, as did the anger, leaving Çeda a wreck. When Mesut let her go at last, she collapsed against the ground, unable to understand the emotions roiling inside her. She felt like the trees standing sentinel about the courtyard, blowing this way then that with the wind.

  Mesut kneeled next to her, put his hand on her shoulder, then stroked her hair. “I blame myself for this. I feel the anger raging in you. The kiss of the adichara did so much more than poison your flesh. It poisoned your mind as well. It gave the asirim a pathway to you, and through you they have found a way to voice their rage.” For a long while, he simply ran his hand down her back. Gods curse her, it felt good, a solace in this very strange storm. “Can you sit?” he asked after a time.

  She nodded, and he helped her up to a sitting position. He sat cross-legged across from her, oblivious to the dirt soiling his fine clothes. It reminded her of Emre, the two of them sitting in their shared home before any of this had begun, the memories jarring when set against the experience of sitting here intimately before a King, as if the whole of Sharakhai had just been tilted on some unseen axis.

  “The asirim are our heroes,” Mesut went on. “Our protectors. You know now the rage they feel.”

  “Why?”

  “Why what, dear child?”

  “Why rage?”

  Mesut reached out and brushed her cheek. She wanted to slap it away, but she couldn’t. “Can you blame them?” he asked. “They’ve shouldered a heavy burden for four hundred years. That’s a long time for anyone to shoulder anything, but the asirim in particular bear the brunt of securing our fortune in this city. They live. They see pain. They come for Sukru’s chosen ones to honor the gods and their own sacrifice, and they do so willingly, but they still feel. Their rage sometimes seeks a voice in the wrong places. Which is why you must exercise control, Çedamihn. You must exercise control with them, over yourself, over your wound, and over the poison that still lies within it, for only in this will you be allowed to live.”

  He let the words hang between them like a body on a gibbet.

  “Yes,” he said. “There have been others who have gone mad while fighting the same battle you fight now. Most were put to the sword when they proved they couldn’t contain themselves. I don’t wish that to happen to you, Çeda. You’re an asset to the Maidens, and I would not wish to see you tossed aside like a distasteful cut of meat, but you will be unless you can master the asirim. Do you understand?”

  She wanted to say yes. She knew she should, but something had struck her, a realization so painfully obvious she wondered how she had not seen it before. She knew as she knew the grip of her blade that it wasn’t a random occurrence that drove Maidens mad; it was blood. As sure as the dunes were dry, the women Mesut was referring to had been members of the thirteenth tribe, the blood of Çeda’s people sifting like sand from the corners of the Great Shangazi into the House of Kings. Like a map charting their terrible history, there they were, sprinkled throughout the centuries since Beht Ihman, evidence that the thirteenth tribe had survived, yet no one knew of them, their voices drowned before they’d truly lived.

  Mesut’s expression hardened, a King with his subject once more. “Do you understand, girl?”

  “I understand,” Çeda said, trying to put enough emotion in her voice to make him believe her.

  “Good.” The King patted her knee, then stood. “Now see that you put it into practice.”

  And with that he walked away, leaving her sitting there, alone. When he was gone, she stood and brushed the dirt from her black dress. She stepped over to the tree and took up River’s Daughter. After strapping the belt around her waist, she drew her ebon blade and began to flow through the movements of tahl selheshal. It had always calmed her and did so now.

  As she moved, as her body sang with her sword, she wondered over those other Maidens, the ones who’d gone mad. How many had there been? How many had died without knowing their heritage? Like a facet of a terrible, intricate jewel, this was yet another aspect of the curse the Kings had handed down to the thirteenth tribe on the night of Beht Ihman, a curse the gods themselves had granted.

  She closed the final movements of the dance, and came at last to the question that haunted her most. Will I die too?

  Control. Just as Mesut had said, she couldn’t allow the asirim to control her. She had to remain herself, or she would lose everything. And so it would be. She would learn control. She had to, or she was little more than a dead woman yet to find her grave.

  Control, she thought. Then began the dance anew.

  Chapter 21

  “WHY LET THEM BEAT YOU LIKE A DIRTY CARPET?” Hamid asked Emre.

  They were snaking their way through dark west end streets beneath a starry sky. Emre, walking by Hamid’s side, was still limping from the beating Serkan’s guards had given him. Behind them, towering a head and a half above them both, was Frail Lemi. A rope was slung over one broad shoulder, the three crates, one tied to the next, swung behind his back like a horsetail.

  “You needed time to get off the roof, didn’t you?” Emre had a bit of a slur. He’d chipped a tooth, but thankfully none were broken. He’d picked up a few cuts. A few bruises. On balance not bad considering the contents of the crates were far more valuable to Macide than the gold Emre had flashed to Serkan.

  “Might’ve just walked in the front door with knives to hand,” Frail Lemi said.

  He’d said much the same these past few days, but this entire operation—not just their heist, but the other five that had been arranged for the coming attack on the collegia—was something they couldn’t leave to chance. If all went well, it might be a week or more before their thefts were discovered. And even if one or two were discovered, it would be days or weeks before the Silver Spears put it together. The one man they feared learning of it was Zeheb, but that was why they’d set up different sorts of capers for each heist. Keep the King of Whispers guessing with multiple tales, each contradicting the next. It was when too many men and women began speaking about the same subject that trouble came. It didn’t matter if it was the Moonless Host or the Silver Spears or the civilians in this war being fought in the shadows; pluck a particular harp string often enough and it would eventually reach the Whisper King’s ears.

  The soldiers in the Host, even captains like Hamid, were rarely told more than they needed to complete their missions. And what little they did know they were told to keep to themselves. Frail Lemi, however, was a bit off. Had been since he was ten. He’d fallen from a granary tower and broken the fall not with his arse but with his skull. He hadn’t woken for a month, and when he had regained consciousness he was . . . different. He fixated on things. He’d be quiet for long stretches, hours at a time, sometimes days, and then he’d work himself into a frothing rage at the smallest of things. Never at those he knew. Never at loved ones. Only those he disliked or didn’t know at all. Sometimes complete strangers would suffer his wrath, and it was left to Hamid or Emre or others to talk him down from it. Sometimes even that didn’t work. More than once Frail Lemi had left a body or two in his wake.

  Sometimes that same night, sometimes days later, he’d break down and cry over it. It hurt Emre to see him like that. Deep down he had a tender heart. If it were up to Emre he’d have Lemi tending to the grandmothers, fixing them tea and the like, but he couldn’t deny the man was good in a pinch. Hardly felt pain at all as far as Emre could tell. And he did what he was told, even if he groused about it now and again.

  “Don’t you think, Hamid?” Frail Lemi pressed. “Walk in the front door.” He paused, face screwing up in concentration. “Slip a knife between their ribs, nice and slow.”

  “Might’ve done,” was all Hamid said in reply, knowing that to engage or argue would on
ly cement Lemi’s line of thinking, or worse, touch a brand to the fuel and set his anger aflame. There was no telling what Frail Lemi might do if that happened. Might even turn around and do just what he’d said: walk back into that warehouse and leave it a bloody mess. And then where would they be?

  “That’s right we might’ve done,” Frail Lemi said. His neck muscles went taut, pulling his lower lip down to reveal his stained teeth. “Take them out in the time it took to take a sip from his fucking cup of flatland beer, eh, Emre?”

  “One sip,” Emre agreed.

  “One sip,” Frail Lemi echoed.

  Emre and Hamid continued on to the northwest corner of the city where the quarry lay. Several men stood at the ready at the top of the labor elevator, bowing their heads to Hamid after he gave them the callsign, at which point they stepped aside and allowed Hamid, Emre, and Frail Lemi into the cage.

  “Yip, yip!” one of them called, taking a switch to the back of a mule. As the mule walked, turning an old, grease-stained capstan, the cage was lowered steadily into the quarry. Once they’d reached the bottom, they headed out and into a tunnel, taking several turns in what Emre knew was a vast warren of them.

  A yellow light shone ahead. They arrived at a large room, more of a manmade cavern, really. The quarry master might have found a vein of something years ago and excavated the area to get as much of it as he could, but now the cavern lay unused, at least for mining purposes. In one corner, near where they’d entered, were a dozen men and women, soldiers of the Al’afwa Khadar. Several turned when they entered, among them Darius, who raised his left hand in a wave, drawing them closer.

  “Late once again,” he said, smiling even as he grimaced.

  “Late once again,” Frail Lemi said, smiling in that same strange way, as if he felt Darius’s pain.

  Darius had still not fully recovered from the assault on King Külaşan’s desert palace. The remains of the force sent in to retrieve Hamzakiir had exited the same tunnel they’d entered, only to be attacked by Ramahd Amansir and Princess Meryam, the daughter of King Aldouan himself. Darius had taken an arrow in the chest, very near his windpipe, very near his major arteries. He was lucky to be alive, but his shoulder had never quite healed and his arm was almost useless. It hung in a sling most days, but today he had chosen not to wear it, likely so he wouldn’t be seen as weak before so many of his brothers and sisters.