Yndris’s actions no longer made Çeda’s blood run cold. Now it ran hot. She moved faster, balling her hands into fists, building the pain in her right hand. As she wove her way through the crowd, her old wound ached, flared, spread beyond to her forearm, so that by the time she was nearing Yndris, her entire arm was on fire. It was deeply painful, but nothing she hadn’t experienced before. The pain was sweet, because it offered a release for something that had been bottled up inside her for so long.
Ahead, at a crossing, Yndris seemed to come to a decision. She turned left and started jogging back toward Roseridge. Knowing she was doubling back, Çeda sprinted down a short alley, at the end of which, piled like children’s blocks, lay stacks of old crates. She sprinted up the mound of crates, bounded from one wall, then from the opposite, and finally leapt up from an exposed piece of brick to latch on to the edge of a balcony on the third floor. Her right hand felt red-hot. Felt glorious. She realized only then that the brickwork was crumbling beneath her grip. She swung herself up to the balcony, releasing the stone before it gave way.
She leapt again, caught the edge of the roof, and pulled herself up with ease. The wind blew through her unfettered hair as she raced toward the building’s edge. She fairly flew across the mudbrick rooftops, climbing like a lizard when needed, sometimes dropping a floor or two and rolling. Soon she came to the edge of the building she’d been aiming for, where she peered carefully to the alley below.
Yndris was there, staring down the alley from the nearby street. The alley twisted its way toward another, larger street, a path she could take to return to the spice market if she felt she’d lost Çeda. After glancing back the way she’d come, she took to the alley with purpose. Çeda waited for Yndris to pass beneath her, glad of the song a woman and her children were singing somewhere nearby. It masked her descent down the old tenement house’s wall.
As soon as Çeda reached the ground, she padded toward Yndris, who turned just in time to see Çeda’s fist crashing into her jaw. Yndris rolled with it, but Çeda was already on top of her, punching her face over and over, the feeling of release so great she started laughing with it. Blood spattered over Yndris’s indigo keffiyeh.
And then Çeda connected with a blow so strong Yndris went limp. But Çeda kept pounding, with a glee she’d never felt before. An almighty release she hadn’t realized had been trapped inside her.
Mesut’s words drifted to her through the haze of hatred and anger. Control. You must learn control.
It made her laugh all the harder.
What was control when she could tap into the rage that sat like a vast underground lake along the borders of Sharakhai? What was control when she had this much power at her beck and call?
The veil of Yndris’s keffiyeh had slipped free. Çeda, her chest working like a bellows in a wartime smithy, held her fists at bay. Suddenly she saw not an impudent child of a King, but a young woman of noble birth. A woman with deep, bloody wounds marring the contours of her face.
Çeda stared around her. Several who’d been watching ducked their heads back inside their homes.
Still straddling Yndris, Çeda pulled her knife from her belt.
Things had just changed. Çeda felt it like a brewing storm. Until now, Çeda had only dreamed about stopping Yndris. She’d had it coming for a long while. But she didn’t deserve the knife. The urge to do it had been born of the hatred seething beneath the adichara, the asir with whom Çeda had bonded in the desert. As she stared at the fine edge of her kenshar, she realized how much she was being controlled, how often it had been happening.
“This isn’t right,” she said to no one in particular. She resisted the will of the asir, but she felt so very small before its righteous anger.
What care you for her, some whinging whelp, the get of the Confessor King?
Çeda didn’t know how to answer. She cared little for Yndris, it was true. But to kill her in cold blood like this? Wasn’t it what she had been railing against for so long? Wasn’t it why she despised the methods of the Moonless Host?
And where has that got you?
She’d found her way into the Maidens. She’d killed a King. But there were still eleven more. There were still all the Maidens.
At the edges of her mind, the asir’s anger worked, grinding her down like gristle between teeth. The anger felt so much like her own, but when she looked to Yndris’s ravaged face, she felt a coward. Yndris deserved to be put in her place, but she didn’t deserve this. And yet the anger within her refused to ebb. The bond with the asir was growing stronger.
You cannot leave her to be found, the asir said. Do so and the trail will lead to you.
The knife slipped closer to Yndris’s throat. The pain in her hand had grown so intense, her entire body shook from it. Tears streamed down her face. And still the blade crept closer.
The moment she touched it to Yndris’s neck, Yndris flinched. Perhaps involuntarily. No, from a dream. She could see the young Maiden’s eyes rolling beneath her closed lids. She moaned softly, and sounded in that moment like a little girl scared in the night.
“She is a child of Sharakhai,” Çeda said.
She is the foul afterbirth of Beht Ihman, an insect crawling forth from the putrid hive of Tauriyat.
“What fault is it of hers, to be born of a King?”
No sooner had she said the words than a searing white pain coursed through her. You would defend her?
Çeda watched Yndris’s blood pulse. How easy it would be to end her life. A movement so sweet she would remember it to the end of her days. But she knew this to be the asir’s feelings, not hers.
Not mine, she told herself, if only to ground herself in who she was. Not mine.
“She was raised in the Kings’ house.” Çeda spoke through clenched teeth, sweat pouring down her forehead and neck, her blade trembling against Yndris’s neck. “Raised beneath their dark shadow. She did not sacrifice you and your loved ones. That was the work of her father. The other Kings. The gods themselves. She should not be punished for it.”
The knife wavered. A line of red appeared beneath its edge.
Slowly, however, the tide turned. She was able to draw her arm away. She could feel the asir raging against her, but the feeling was not so strong as it once was. Finally, Çeda won her silent battle. She slipped the knife into its sheath, heedless of the blood on the blade, and stood at last. As the asir’s presence faded altogether, Çeda looked up at the windows. Not a single soul was watching, which was good. The fewer that saw her, the better.
“Help!” she cried. “A woman here needs help!”
She waited at the corner of a building for two women to step from a darkened doorway and approach Yndris. When they called up to an open window, Çeda left, whispering a quick prayer to Nalamae that Yndris would not die.
Chapter 33
THIRTEEN YEARS EARLIER . . .
“STOP BEING SO MEEK,” Çeda’s mother said. “I’ve given you a dozen openings.”
Çeda stood at the top of a dune far into the desert. She breathed heavily, the tip of her bamboo shinai lowering until it touched the sand. Ahya batted it, sending a spray of sand into the air. “You cannot always defend, Çeda. You have to learn when the time is right to attack.”
“But you always hit me when I do.”
“Because you’re too slow about it. Because you don’t disguise it well enough.”
Most of the morning had been spent on forms, a thing that always made Çeda feel club-footed, a condition that always grew worse as the sessions wore on. They’d taken a short break for food and water, and then had started sparring. They hadn’t stopped since. And for what? They were waiting here in the desert for something, but Çeda had no idea what, or when it might happen.
The uncertainty, her mother’s refusal to speak of it, this infernal practicing, all of it made her frustration boil over. “I’m
seven, memma.” She threw her sword down, a thing that infuriated her mother. “I’m not meant to be fast.”
“Well, how do you think you get that way, little one? By giving up? Now pick up that sword.”
“No.”
“Pick it up, Çeda.”
“I won’t.”
“You pick up that sword or mine will meet your backside.”
Jaw set, Çeda stared into her mother’s piercing eyes. She wanted to scream at her, demand to know what they were doing here, but she knew her mother wouldn’t answer, so instead she went to her sword, picked it up, and flung it away for all she was worth. It went spinning into the air, across the nearby trough, and splashed into the rise of the opposite dune.
In a flash, Ahya had her by the wrist and was squeezing it painfully. “You will get that sword and you will learn, little one.”
Çeda was just about to spit back a reply when she saw something moving smoothly over the shallow dunes in the distance. Sails. A ship, though not a very large one. It had two masts and lateen sails but the hull was shallow, the runners long and sleek. A yacht, she thought they were called.
Ahya stood and released Çeda’s arm. She went and picked up Çeda’s shinai and returned to their skiff, tossing both shinais inside the hull. In short order the yacht had come to a stop nearby and Ahya led her there. “Mind your manners, Çedamihn. Speak when spoken to. Remain silent otherwise. And stop fidgeting.”
Three women in loose thawbs were tying off the sails while another woman stood amidships. As Çeda and Ahya neared the ship, a gangplank was lowered into place and an old woman walked down with the help of one of the crew.
“Her name is Leorah,” Ahya said, “and you will address her as such.” She took the old woman’s hand and kissed the golden ring on her finger, which had clutched within its setting a brilliant amethyst that sparkled beneath the sun. Çeda came forward and did the same. Leorah watched her not with amusement, but critically, as if she’d been watching the sparring from afar and had come away unimpressed. “You are Çedamihn.”
“Yes, my Lady Leorah.”
Leorah chuckled. She was a bent woman with skin like broken stone. Tattoos of crescent moons and birds in flight marked the skin around her eyes and chin and cheeks. Not so different than those her mother had around her eyes, as if they’d been inked by the same hand. Leorah was more aged than anyone Çeda had ever seen, but her eyes were sharp. They pierced, making Çeda feel naked before them.
“Salsanna, take Çeda for a walk?”
“Of course,” said the woman who’d helped Leorah down the gangplank. She had dark eyes, a sharp nose and chin. She was Ahya’s age, perhaps a bit younger. She put an arm around Çeda’s shoulders and guided her toward their skiff. “I saw you sparring.”
Çeda didn’t know what to say to that. She looked over her shoulder. Ahya and Leorah were both watching her. It made the skin at the nape of her neck itch.
“I saw you throw your blade as well,” Salsanna went on as they came to the skiff’s side. She picked up the shinais and held one out for Çeda to take. “Why don’t you show me what you’ve learned?”
“I’ve learned nothing.”
“Take that tone with your mother if you wish.” She leaned down, spoke softer. “I just want to spar. To pass the time a bit while their mouths flap. Believe me, it can be interminable.”
“What’s interminable?”
Salsanna laughed. “The two of them could outtalk Bakhi, child. He’d kill them and send them to the farther fields if only to free himself of their incessant chatter.”
Her mother outtalk Bakhi? That wasn’t the woman she knew. Ahya was always short and direct. Except, perhaps, when she got a bit of wine in her. Or when she got to talking to Dardzada about philosophy. Then, Çeda admitted, she could certainly talk awhile, enough that Çeda got bored and would leave to do something else.
“What say you, Çedamihn?” Salsanna shook one of the shinai at her again. “Shall we while the day away?”
Çeda took the sword. She was still angry with her mother, but there was something about Salsanna. She was quick to smile in the way that made Çeda feel like a baby. But she had a hunger about her too. For what, Çeda wasn’t even sure. But she liked it. It made Çeda want to impress her. The two of them stood across from one another. They prepared, and then Salsanna nodded.
Çeda attacked immediately. Not a single one of her hurried swipes struck home. And there were plenty of openings for Salsanna, none of which she took, but Çeda didn’t care. She pushed, much harder than she’d pushed with her mother. In fact, not since their sparring in the days after Demal’s death, when Çeda had been so angry she could have broken stone with her teeth, did she release so much fury. All her anger at her mother, at her quiet ways when Çeda wanted to know so much more, at the way she always demanded more of Çeda, never smiling, never offering encouragement. It all came out in one violent rush.
Their swords clacked loudly. Salsanna gave ground, her golden desert dress flaring as she moved. What began as a surprised expression became one of amusement, and then she outright laughed at Çeda’s efforts.
“Stop laughing!” Çeda cried, swinging her sword like a useless wetlander.
Salsanna continued to block more of Çeda’s swings until Çeda was simply too tired to continue. Çeda stopped, her sword tip pointing at the ground, her breath coming in great, miserable gasps. She felt the fool, especially with Salsanna’s wry grin still on her face, but she hadn’t the energy to do anything about it.
“Well now. That was quite a display.” Çeda didn’t know what to say, so she remained silent. The wind picked up for a moment, the sand spinning off the dunes behind Salsanna. “Are you quite done?”
After a moment, Çeda nodded.
“Good. Now let’s really spar.”
Çeda nodded again, and the two of them went through a less heated session. Çeda could see how good Salsanna was. She moved like Çeda’s mother. Smooth. Graceful. With power to spare when she wished it.
When they finished, Salsanna took Çeda for a walk. They talked. They ate dates and pistachios and drank water laced with some desert herb that made Çeda feel fancy. They took the skiff for a short sail. Salsanna even let her steer. Çeda knew Salsanna was merely occupying her so that Ahya and Leorah could talk in peace, but she didn’t mind. She’d come to like Salsanna. Her stories of racing tall akhala horses in the desert, of how all the children of the tribe practiced at spear dancing, were brilliant. Çeda had always wanted to visit one of the tribes, and this made her want it even more.
“Do you know why I’ve been brought here?” Çeda asked when they seemed to have run out of things to talk about.
Salsanna eyed her for a time before speaking. “If your mother didn’t tell you I’m not sure that I should.”
“There must be something you can tell me.”
“Macide said you were direct.”
“Macide doesn’t know me from Nalamae.”
“He does. He saw you the day Demal Hefhi’ava died.”
Çeda thought back to that terrible day, to the man Ahya was speaking to with a smile on her face, the one who wore two swords. How had she not pieced it together? Macide, the famed leader of the Moonless Host, was said to wield two such swords. But the idea of her mother talking to him had never crossed her mind. Why would it?
“Is Leorah part of the Moonless Host? Are you?”
“I’m going to share a truth with you now, child. Everyone in the desert, in one way or another, is part of the Al’afwa Khadar.”
“They aren’t either.”
“They are, though some don’t realize it, or refuse to. And others do work for them in only the smallest of ways. But I tell you this. All, all, in the desert hate the Kings and will rejoice when the desert tastes their bones.”
“Then why don’t they fight them?”
Çeda shrugged. “But there are endless spears in the desert. Everyone says so.” She’d only heard it from Tariq and Emre, but surely others thought so as well.
Salsanna smiled sadly. “If only it were so, Çedamihn.”
When they returned, the sun had set and a fire had been built near the yacht. As they approached, Leorah, sitting by the fireside, stood with great effort and then held her hand to Çeda. When Ahya nodded, Çeda took it and Leorah led her away into the darkness.
“Will you tell me why we’ve come?”
Leorah took her toward a large rock, the only feature in the area that wasn’t endless sand. She stopped well short of it, sat down in the sand, and motioned Çeda to do the same.
“Will you tell me?” Çeda asked, refusing to sit.
“Enough, child. Stop being so impertinent. And by the gods, do so for your mother once in a while. You’ll be the death of her if you keep this up. She’s like to send you off to live in the desert with me. Would you like that?”
Çeda shook her head. She hated this, hated feeling like a prisoner to her mother’s whims. She wanted to know why they’d come and what they planned for her because surely they had something in mind. But what was there to do but go along with Leorah until they told her of their own accord? When she sat, Leorah pulled a locket from within her dress. It was shaped not so differently from the amethyst on her ring. She pried the halves open and took out a white petal that glowed softly in the dim moonlight.
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