With Blood Upon the Sand

by Bradley P. Beaulieu

  “The purse,” Tariq said in an exasperated tone. “Get the fucking purse.”

  Ramahd was already on his way. As the guardsmen lumbered after Luken and the stolen coin, Ramahd padded over the dusty earth toward Tariq.

  Give Tariq credit. Ramahd was quiet as could be, and still Tariq sensed him. He turned just in time, twisting away as Ramahd bulled into him. He caught one of Ramahd’s wrists and managed to throw Ramahd over one hip.

  But Ramahd was no newcomer to street tussles. With his free hand he grabbed a fistful of hair along the top of Tariq’s head. He used it, and the momentum of the throw, to pull Tariq down with him. Tariq landed hard. He tried to call for help, but Ramahd had slipped one arm around Tariq’s neck on the way down and was now tightening it like a noose. Tariq tried to slip free, to pull Ramahd’s arm away, but he had no leverage. All too soon he’d gone limp.

  Ramahd rolled him over and sat across his hips. The gutter wrens were no longer laughing.

  “If I were you,” Ramahd said, “I’d take my chance to leave.”

  They took the hint. Every one of them left, leaving Ramahd alone in the street with Tariq. Ramahd spun a bulky ring on his thumb and pressed its sharp point deep into his own wrist. It pierced between the other, older marks, drawing a thin stream of blood. He held the dripping wound over Tariq’s mouth, parting his lips with his free hand so that it pattered against his teeth and tongue.

  Tariq swallowed involuntarily, drinking Ramahd’s blood. Ramahd continued for a time, enough that it would give Meryam a few weeks with Tariq. If they didn’t find what they were looking for in that time, he would have to think of a new plan, but he and Meryam both felt that things were coming to a head in Sharakhai. The rumors flying after the abduction at the collegia spoke of something larger in motion. And make no mistake, Juvaan was involved in it or Ramahd was a goat herder’s daughter.

  When Tariq began coughing, Ramahd turned his head aside so that he wouldn’t be sprayed. Then he sent a sharp punch across Tariq’s mouth, enough to cut the inside of his lip against his teeth. Tariq wouldn’t remember getting hit, but with luck he’d think the blood his own. Who else’s would it be?

  Tariq began to moan, and Ramahd heard the men returning.

  “Hey!” one of them called, seeing Ramahd sitting atop their charge. “Hey! Off him now!” Ramahd stood and ran, back the way he’d come. “I’ll find you, thief! I’ll find you and gut you like a desert snake!

  Ramahd stopped at the mouth of an alley, and saw one of the guards helping Tariq to sit up, the other looked around as if he expected enemies to come charging through the twilight from all angles.

  Well, Ramahd thought, what a lively tune we’ve struck this night. After the past months, it felt good to be doing something again. But this was only the beginning. There was much more to come.

  Chapter 31

  ZAÏDE HAD NOT LIED.

  Çeda’s training shifted to languages more than anything else in the weeks following the first meeting with Amalos. She would drill Çeda for hours in the ways of unarmed combat, but would never do so in modern Sharakhan. One day, all she would speak was Kundhunese, the next Mirean, the following Malasani, and so on. Çeda knew a smattering of each language from all four kingdoms surrounding the Shangazi, but little more than that. She knew King’s script passing well. Her mother had owned a number of books written in it, and Çeda had read them all, but when she tried to speak it her tongue felt like lead, and when Zaïde used it she spoke so quickly Çeda had trouble keeping up.

  But the interesting thing was that Zaïde was drilling Çeda in the very same things from weeks past, things Çeda knew by heart, so that while she might not know every single word, she understood the context, and slowly, as they went over things again and again, she began to pick them up. From there, her knowledge bloomed. She learned the bridge phrases that allowed her to learn the core of each language, and from those central linguistic locales, her knowledge broadened, then spread further as terms and concepts overlapped one another and the gaps in her understanding filled. She saw stark contrasts between the languages. Mirean was smooth and quiet, where Malasani was harsh and Kundhunese more guttural. Qaimiran was the language most similar to Sharakhan, and she found herself advancing the fastest on the days Zaïde spoke it. For all their differences, she saw similarities as well. The four languages had each affected one another to some degree. Roots were shared even if their meanings and pronunciations had changed. Structure varied from language to language, but many words stood only one or two steps removed from one another.

  By the end of each day she was swimming in words and phrases and concepts. Not drowning, she realized. Swimming. It was a good feeling; she hadn’t felt this sublime love of language since she and her mother had read books together in the homes they’d moved to all across Sharakhai. She had often been harsh, Ahya, but she loved words, and it seemed to Çeda that they were the closest in those moments when they shared stories with one another. Looking back now, it was, perhaps, because Ahya could set aside the troubles of the real world and simply enjoy life with her daughter for a time.

  “What’s wrong?” Zaïde asked in Malasani as they finished a grueling set of unarmed forms.

  Çeda replied in the same tongue, though more slowly than Zaïde. “I was thinking of my mother.”

  “Have you thought on the fourth poem? Where it might be?”

  Çeda had shared Ahya’s book of poems with Zaïde, who had looked through it for several days, returning it to Çeda after she’d examined the poems and looked for other clues. She’d found nothing, and had seemed vexed by it, as if the fourth poem had some special meaning for her. To come so close to it only to be rebuffed seemed particularly frustrating for her.

  “It must be to do with the key,” Çeda said.

  She’d shown Zaïde the key Dardzada had given her. It had felt particularly strange to do so. As if it were meant only for her, not to be shared. A foolish notion, which was why she had shown it to Zaïde, but it still felt like she’d committed a betrayal.

  “You’ve had no more thoughts on it? On where the lock might be?”

  Çeda shook her head, resting her hand on the purse at her belt that held the key, a thing that rarely left her side.

  “And Dardzada?”

  Çeda sneered. “He said he didn’t know.”

  “He can be a cuddly sort of beast, can he not?”

  Çeda laughed. “Cuddly, yes . . . Like a starving hyena. But in this I suspect he’s telling the truth, and if so, I’m not sure I’ll ever know the nature of the key.”

  Çeda continued to go to Amalos as well. Not every day, or even every week, but they met often enough. Enough for Çeda to read texts about the Kings that Amalos himself had chosen.

  At one point, she looked up from the vellum scroll she was reading and saw Amalos crying.

  “Whatever is the matter?” Çeda asked.

  He blinked tears away. “It’s only . . . Davud.” He waved the large bone he held in one hand—the thigh bone of a black laugher, Çeda guessed. It had words etched along its length. One read the text lengthwise, turning the bone as if it were on a spit, until it ended where the story had begun. “He was a wonderful storyteller,” Amalos said. “Did you ever hear him?”

  Çeda nodded. “May I see it?”

  He handed the bone to Çeda. As ancient as the bone was—with dirt and what looked like blood marked indelibly on its surface—the text was rather difficult to read, but she puzzled it out. It was a story of Bahri Al’sir, a traveling bard who wandered the twelve tribes for all his days, collecting stories and sharing them with the other tribes. Many of the tribes thought Bahri Al’sir to be one of the gods in disguise. Goezhen, some said, for he had a wicked sense of humor, and ran into trouble more than once when he played tricks on the wrong tribesmen. Thaash, others said, because his stories often spoke of vengeance and the settling o
f scores. Others said Bakhi, and Çeda agreed, for he often came at times of harvest and left when it was complete.

  There was one small note at the end that gave Çeda pause. The shaikh of Tribe Halarijan said the bard might be one of the old gods who’d remained behind when the others had left for the farther fields.

  “Do you think any of the first gods remain?”

  Amalos sniffed, wiping his eyes with a corner of his sleeve. “What?”

  “The first gods. Do any still remain in the world?”

  “Who can tell anymore?”

  “You’ve no guesses of your own?”

  “What do my guesses matter?”

  “Humor me, master scholar.”

  Amalos took a deep breath, looking toward the ceiling as if it or the sky beyond might provide some inspiration. “There were forty-nine first gods. We know this. Seven by seven they came from the heavens. We know that after aeons spent walking the earth, they tired of our world and were driven to create another. It is said all the old gods worked together, and furthermore, that they forbade the young gods from attending them. It sowed worry among the young gods, but what were they to do? The old gods continued with their plan, and eventually, as we know, created the farther fields. And then, one by one, they left, but not without feeling some yearning, some wistfulness, for this one. Those were the days in which some few of the younger gods were given life, Nalamae among them. And those few had a hand in creating man. Or at least were there to witness it. Before they left, the elder gods gave man blood of their own blood, a thing they hadn’t seen fit to grant to the young gods. Who knows why? It was a treasure granted only to us, so that when we were done with our lives here, we would follow them and be reunited and tell them stories of the world they’d left behind.

  “It is unknown whether the old gods left in one large exodus, as is sometimes told, or whether they left one by one. Most tales say that all of them left, not one remaining, but I ask you, Çeda, what are the chances that forty and nine creatures of free will would agree upon something like this in all ways?”

  “It seems unlikely,” Çeda said.

  “It does, indeed. Surely there are one or two that still yearned for life here. I even like to think they come to Sharakhai from time to time. In the end, though, what does it matter? They haven’t made themselves known, and if they haven’t by now, I doubt they ever will. So put it from your mind. It’s little more than a fancy and has nothing to do with us.”

  “I suppose you’re right,” Çeda said.

  Unlike Amalos, though, she found it disturbing to think that the old gods might still be hidden in the world. If they were, and they held so much power, why wouldn’t they step in to put down an evil such as the Kings of Sharakhai?

  A short while later, Çeda came across another curious story, also etched into a bone. She read one particular section over again, then a third time, her fingers tingling as she rotated the bone. Her heart sank as she finished the tale.

  “What is it?” Amalos asked. She handed him the bone. He began reading, twisting it like a haunch of meat over a fire. He too slowed, in what Çeda judged was the very place where the story had caught her attention. “The Lord of Laughs . . .”

  “Yes,” Çeda said. That was the line that had made Çeda pause as well. “Keep reading.”

  He did so, then looked up at Çeda with that pinched look of his, the one that told her that sharp mind of his was fitting pieces of the puzzle together, discarding them, trying new ones. “Tribe Narazid is a clue, yes?”

  “It is.”

  He finished reading, and then he too frowned.

  The story, written by the shaikh himself, told of a Lord of Laughs, how he’d come to a meeting of several caravan families in the center of a set of oases, hidden and known only to their tribe. They were a people Çeda had come to learn much about while reading the stories on these bones. Tribe Narazid called the southern desert their home. It was a desolate place, but there were several sets of oases, dubbed the Verdant Isles, which they guarded jealously.

  In the poem that seemed to refer to Mesut, he’d been referred to as the King of Smiles, from verdant isles. Surely the Lord of Laughs referred to him, for the story told of how something precious had been stolen from him by a woman, called a scuttling thief in the story. It didn’t take much imagination to connect a thief who scuttles to the scarabs of the Moonless Host. It went on to say how the thief had tried to use the stolen device against the Lord by summoning the wailing horde. They had indeed come, the shaikh had written, but when they’d arrived, they’d set upon the one who’d stolen their Lord’s effects, killing her and all who stood by her side.

  The Lord punished the entire tribe, ordering the death of the shaikh’s eldest daughters—a just punishment, the shaikh had declared in the story, as he had five other daughters still.

  “It smacks of propaganda,” Amalos finally declared, handing the bone back to Çeda.

  Çeda took it and shook it at him. “That’s all you have to say?”

  Amalos frowned. “What did you expect me to say?”

  “I don’t know. I’d hoped we would only need to take the golden band from Mesut, that his curse would be fulfilled when we did.”

  At this, Amalos’s frown only deepened. “It seems you were wrong.”

  “Don’t make light of this.”

  “I’m quite serious. All this means is that you haven’t yet found the truth. But it’s here.” He motioned to the room, to the collegia hidden above them. “Somewhere.”

  Çeda nodded, if only to let Amalos get back to reading. She wondered what that girl had felt after she’d stolen Mesut’s golden bracelet. She must have thought herself close to killing him. How fearful she must have been when the asirim—the wailing horde—had come for her instead of him.

  The very same thing may happen to me.

  They read on, until Çeda had to leave.

  “Çeda,” Amalos said as she placed the last of the bones she’d read back into their cloth-lined trays. When she turned to him, he stared at her with a look of concern, perhaps worry. “There’s something I should have told you long ago.”

  “What?”

  “Your mother. Ahya. I knew her before you came to me those months ago.”

  “You told me.”

  “Yes, well, what I didn’t tell you was that I knew of her efforts. I knew she was searching for something.”

  “The bloody verses.”

  Amalos nodded. “I didn’t know what they were at the time, but yes, the bloody verses.”

  “She came here? As I’ve been doing?”

  “No. She had someone searching for her. A dowager named Eleanora who supported the collegia generously with her late husband’s fortune, and came here often. To read of the city’s great history, she would tell anyone who asked.”

  “And she was doing it for my mother?”

  “For Ahya. For herself. Making good on a vendetta. Who can tell anymore? Eleanora killed herself shortly before the Silver Spears, and then King Zeheb himself, came here to ask about her activities. They learned little. We didn’t need that sort of attention from the House of Kings. But some of us knew she was searching for the wrong sorts of secrets.”

  Killed herself. Of course she had. “Why are you telling me this now?”

  “Because it’s been eating at me. And you deserve to know.” He blinked at her a moment, but then went back to his reading. She’d never seen him look more uncomfortable.

  As Çeda left, part of her was glad to hear news of her mother. Any news. But another part recognized this as yet another dead end in her long search to know more about what her mother had been doing; that part wished he’d remained silent.

  On a fog-filled night that would start moonless and remain that way for several hours, Çeda finished her climb to the roof of a squat building within the Mirean emb
assy house’s compound. This was a domicile for many of the servants, who by custom were not allowed to sleep in the same house as their masters. The embassy proper, a seven-story tower of stone and clay-tile roofs, loomed above her. Paper-shrouded lanterns, dreamlike in the fog, hung from iron hooks along the paved walkway surrounding the tower’s base. Otherwise the tower was dark.

  After scanning the wall for any signs of the lone guard she’d spotted earlier, Çeda reached inside her black dress and pulled out a roll of paper. She tugged at the twine on each end, then flattened the papers to liberate the inkwell and pen Juvaan had given her. After setting them before her on the slate tiles of the gently sloped roof, she pulled out a small ceramic pot from another pocket in her dress. She set it next to the paper and twisted the top off. Inside was sand that cradled softly glowing embers. She blew on them, making them glow a dull red. Finally, she unwound the blanket she’d wrapped around her waist and set it across her shoulders. Putting all but one of the sheets of paper into her lap, she dipped the pen into the inkwell and wrote.

  I need to know the scarab’s whereabouts. Tell me what you’ve found.

  She could barely see the words as she wrote them. She knew it to be terribly sloppy. But that didn’t matter. She pulled the blanket over her head and let it drape down so that it covered the earthenware pot. And then, spreading her arms like a sheltering tree, she touched the edge of the paper to the embers. As soon as it took, she dropped the paper to the tiles, pulled her head out from under the blanket, and scanned the tower above. She’d been quick about it, but her eyes were still blinded for a moment by the blue light.

  The paper burned blue at the edges. The center was dark as coal. After a short pause, words began to appear.

  Nothing as yet. And by the grace of the desert gods, wait for the time we agreed upon before speaking again.

  Before the sheet could burst into flame, she brought the blanket lower to block its light and scanned the windows above her, but she saw nothing from the room she suspected was Juvaan’s. It was possible he had a room facing a different direction, but she doubted it. The lords of Mirea revered east, the direction of the rising son; those most powerful in a household always had their rooms facing that direction.