With Blood Upon the Sand

by Bradley P. Beaulieu

  Dardzada weighed this, then reluctantly nodded. “After you returned from the House of Maidens the first time, we spoke of your mother and the night she left for the palaces. We didn’t speak of the night before.”

  She’d had just about enough of Dardzada’s hiding of information from her. She wanted to rail at him, but she stifled the urge and waited in silence until he went on.

  “That night, before she’d taken the hangman’s vine, we spoke. I asked her what had happened, but she would say little, only that she was convinced that the only way to keep you safe was to return to the House of Kings, as an assassin. Near the end, after she’d taken the vine, she confessed she’d gone to the top of the mount to find her treasure.” He had a faraway look to his eyes now. “She was drunk with the elixir at first, and I thought the confession a symptom of the vine. ‘What did you say?’ I asked her, and she said, ‘The silver trove, Zada. I went to find it in the whispers, but I found only a mirage.’”

  “I don’t understand,” Çeda said.

  His eyes snapped back to hers. “Neither did I. I thought it nonsense at first, but the day you came here and told me a King lay dead, it reminded me of her words. She and I spoke of those poems very little over the years, but she always said they were the greatest treasure in all the desert. The silver trove. I think that’s what she meant when she said those words, that she’d gone to find them. All of them.”

  “But she was drunk on the effects of the vine?”

  “Yes, but I don’t think it would have made her speak untruths. I think it merely gave her a candor that had earlier been missing.”

  Each word that spilled from Dardzada’s mouth felt like the tightening of some infernal device meant to crack her skull. “There is undoubtedly some point to this, Dardzada, but for the life of me I can’t figure out what it might be.”

  Dardzada frowned, the sort he’d given her when she was young and had forgotten some piece of a rote formula he’d been drilling into her. “I was never sure where she’d gone the night before she brought you to me. I’m still not completely sure, but I suspect now she made her way to Tauriyat, else why mention the mount? And I suspect she was convinced she’d found the poems.”

  Çeda thought about it. “All of them?”

  He nodded. “The silver trove, named for Tulathan, who spoke for the gathered gods atop Tauriyat.”

  “You think it’s true then? That it exists?”

  “I know very little about what your mother had been doing in the months leading up to that night. I saw her rarely those days. But clearly she’d been in and out of Tauriyat. It seems strange to me that the Kings would leave any evidence whatsoever of what truly happened the night of Beht Ihman, much less a trove like the one your mother hoped to find. But I wouldn’t put it past the Kings to leave false threads dangling for those who might come searching for them. It wouldn’t be the first time the Kings had unmasked their enemies by planting lies. There’s also the possibility that one of the Kings had sniffed her out and laid a trap for her, luring her to Tauriyat for his own purposes.”

  Çeda rubbed her temples. It was difficult to think with her head pounding as it was, but it seemed plausible enough. “But why lure her there only to let her go again?”

  “You’ll note that she returned the very next night.”

  “You’re saying they left her no choice.”

  “Or they tricked her. Or they used their god-given abilities on her. Ihsan isn’t known as the Honey-tongued King for no reason.”

  The very thought of it, her mother returning to Tauriyat on marionette strings, made Çeda’s stomach go sour. “A Maiden went missing the night Ahya returned.”

  “Nayyan?”

  “You know?”

  “Very little. Only what you’ve already said, that she was apparently taken that same night. The Maidens were out in force the following day asking for her.”

  Çeda nodded. “She was First Warden at the time.” Çeda told him what she knew, how Nayyan had apparently disappeared, that a search was waged under King Ihsan’s guidance but little, apparently, was discovered. “It’s a mystery that still plagues Sümeya. But it’s too much of a coincidence. Ihsan must know more than he’s telling.”

  “Perhaps Ahya killed her. The Kings might have wanted to cover it up.”

  “Then why lie about it to the Maidens?”

  “You’re sure Sümeya’s telling you the truth? Not some lie concocted by the Kings?”

  Çeda thought on it. “She seemed heartbroken by it. She loved Nayyan, who brought her up in the House of Maidens.”

  “Well, perhaps they lied to her as well, and they might for any number of reasons. They wouldn’t, of course, wish it known that an assassin had infiltrated their palaces. And the vaunted Nayyan being felled by a lone woman . . . Perhaps they wished to spare her family. Or perhaps Nayyan made enemies in the House of Kings. This might have been a way to quietly dim her flame.”

  Çeda shrugged. “Perhaps. Why are you telling me all this now?”

  “My thoughts have been half formed for a long while. In a way they still are.” He waved to the packages on the worktable. “But the city grows more dangerous every day. It may be more difficult to speak before long, and you are in the House of Maidens. Perhaps you could learn more.”

  There was something he wasn’t telling her, something he’d been building up to since they’d started talking. “But why now?”

  Even now that it had come to it, it took him long moments to utter the words. “Because I’m leaving Sharakhai, Çeda.”

  Like a crack forming in the earth, the revelation formed a divide between the two of them. It yawned wider and wider the more she thought about it. Suddenly there was a ringing in her ears, a trebling of the pain inside her skull. Even after everything, all Dardzada had done to her, she wanted him to stay. “Where are you going?”

  “I can’t tell you that.”

  Of course, Çeda thought. Of course he wouldn’t share a single thing with her.

  “Just remember what I told you.”

  “That I should sit among my enemies and wait for men like you to tell me what to do?”

  “Better that than to die for nothing.”

  “My mother didn’t die for nothing.”

  “No, you’re right, but she could have done so much more.”

  Çeda massaged her temples with thumb and forefinger, but it did little to quell the rapidly rising pain. It felt like a host of insects were trying to chew their way out of her. “Perhaps she might still be alive had she demanded more help. Or received it without having to beg.”

  “Ahya knew the kind of support she was likely to get when she came to Sharakhai.”

  Çeda’s hand lurched away from her temples. “What did you say?”

  “She knew the risks, Çeda.”

  “Not that. What kind of support? Who sent her?”

  “No one sent her.” Dardzada’s face was growing angry. “Do you not remember your mother at all? She insisted on coming. And by the time her decision had been made, no one would sway her from it.”

  “But someone gave her leave to go. She wanted to come to Sharakhai but was allowed to do so. Who allowed it, Dardzada?”

  “I can’t tell you that.”

  “I deserve to know!” She sounded a fool, but just then she couldn’t think straight.

  “Your mother died because she came too close to the Kings. She grew reckless, as you are growing now. Don’t think it hasn’t occurred to the Host how dangerous it is for you to be there.”

  Çeda stood there, stunned. He meant that if the Moonless Host thought she might compromise them in some way, they wouldn’t hesitate to kill her. “Have you thought that?”

  Dardzada seemed genuinely shocked. “Of course I haven’t, but don’t think you can constantly bull your way through life and not pay a price fo
r it.”

  Çeda had known the dangers when she’d entered the House of Maidens; certainly danger from the Kings, but she’d known she would be walking a rope, and that any misstep one way or the other could spell her doom. And not only that, the doom of others—her friends, those she loved, the only family she’d had since her mother died.

  But for some reason to have Dardzada state it so plainly made the anger inside her flare even worse than when she’d been stalking Yndris. The pain in her skull grew terrible, a storm of dizzying proportions. Pinpoints of light played across her vision. Darkness swept in. She felt herself pressed down into that darkness. And in that moment, the presence of the asir loomed large. This was nothing like what had happened with Yndris. Then, she had been fueled by the asir’s endless reserves of anger, but at least she had felt in control. Now it was as though she were being pressed beneath the surface of a dark, midnight lake, and the harder she tried to fight, the lower she sank.

  She saw herself draw her kenshar. Her poisoned hand throbbed so badly the knife quivered below Dardzada’s chin. “Who sent my mother here?” It was the asir, feeding off Çeda’s desires. Çeda was horrified to see the knife at Dardzada’s throat, and yet part of her hoped it would pry the truth from him.

  Dardzada’s gaze wavered between the blade and Çeda’s rage-filled eyes. His lungs were working like a frightened rabbit’s. He swallowed, and then began to talk. “If you wish to kill me, go ahead. Gods know I’ve done enough to hurt you in the past. But I’ve always done so with an eye toward your safety, and the safety of all those with blood of the lost tribe running through their veins.”

  “I asked you who sent my mother here.”

  “And I’m telling you you’ll not get it from me.”

  The knife lifted.

  No! she cried.

  And a reedy voice replied. Bound by the law of the gods I may be, but that doesn’t protect this man from our anger.

  Harm him not!

  Why? The anger burns within you like a long-forgotten brand. What has he ever given you but grief and heartache?

  He is a harsh man, but we live in a harsh world.

  It felt strange to be defending Dardzada, a man who’d never needed anyone else’s protection, but she knew that to abandon him now would be to sacrifice him to her own blade.

  Dardzada’s nostrils flared as he stared into Çeda’s eyes, but then his attention was caught by something over Çeda’s shoulder, something beyond the nearby arch and into the front room.

  Çeda turned just as a man was entering the room. He wore a long green burnoose, cut in the style of Malasan, and a turban, also wrapped loosely as the men from the eastern kingdom wore them. His eyes were piercing and he wore his long, pepper-gray beard forked. She could see little more than his eyes, but she knew this was Macide. His eyes widened as he saw the knife she held.

  He said something to her, but Çeda couldn’t hear him. The ringing in her ears, the pounding in her chest, the unadulterated rage coursing through her was nearly too much to bear. In a flash he’d drawn one of the two shamshirs he wore at his belt. He spoke again, and when she didn’t comply, he strode across the front part of the shop toward her, brandishing the blade.

  And then Çeda was lifted up from the depths of the cold lake. She felt herself entwined with the asir, as if the gods themselves were braiding the two of them together until she could hardly tell herself apart from the creature. In that moment, she had a glimpse of twelve men standing on a mountaintop. Before the men were six numinous forms. They stood in an arc, though one was closer to the Kings than the others, a woman in a diaphanous white dress with flowing silver hair. Her skin glowed beneath the moons, both of which were full and bright, almost difficult to look upon. The goddess—for surely this was Tulathan—spoke to the silent, standing men, who could be no other than the Kings of Sharakhai. She gave words to them in turn, each bowing as she stood before him and as she stepped away.

  Her sister, golden Rhia, stood behind her. As did Thaash and Yerinde and Bakhi. And there was Goezhen, crouched on taurine legs, his crown of thorns bristling beneath the light of the moons. As surely as the gods lived and breathed this was Beht Ihman. What struck Çeda was how very many were present. They stood behind the Kings, well outside the inner circle. Men and women, some few children as well, had gathered to watch this event unfold, this dark pact between Kings and gods.

  The vision was there one moment, gone the next, and suddenly Çeda was returned to the pungent smells and enclosed space of Dardzada’s apothecary. She felt the asir turn her away from Dardzada to face Macide, who had just entered the open archway to the workroom. She caught his shamshir against the crossguard of her kenshar and drove forward, forcing the sword wide as its edge slid along her knife’s guard and then, using a move she’d honed over the past months, slid beneath his arm, grabbed his wrist, and twisted. She was surprised he let his sword go so easily, but realized a split-second later he’d done it to so that he could regain his distance and draw his other sword.

  His intense eyes studied her, much more wary than he’d been moments ago. He spoke again, and so did Dardzada, but their words were lost to the madness that had overtaken her. Macide had stepped into the tight workspace, and as she advanced, he retreated behind the table, forcing her to fight above it.

  Stop this! Çeda pleaded. He is not our enemy.

  And yet a vision came of a host of young girls strung along the battlements of a tower, a warning to the enemies of the Kings. One of them, a girl with eyes like jade, so innocent, had been caught between the schemes of the Kings and this man. Macide Ishaq’ava.

  She hardly knew what was happening. She felt like a whipsaw, being drawn this way, then that, as her memories mixed with those of the asir to create an unstoppable rage.

  Enough! she cried, but the demand was weak. Pitiful. Enough . . .

  She felt herself swipe her stolen sword in a wide arc, once, twice. When she parried and tried to riposte, he locked his crossguard against her blade and ran her sword high, its tip digging deeply into the plastered ceiling. Her sword thus caught, he rammed his shoulder into her chest, sending her flying backward. She struck the cabinets. A drawer above rattled open, sending bits of dried rose petals sprinkling down around her as she beat away two thrusts of Macide’s blade.

  Dardzada rushed up behind Macide and grabbed his sword arm. “It’s Çedamihn!” His chest pumped like a bellows while his eyes pleaded with Macide. “Please, this is Çedamihn!” Macide’s kohl-rimmed eyes widened. “It’s the adichara poison,” Dardzada went on. “You know she nearly died from it.”

  It was Dardzada’s obvious care for her that finally began to turn the tide. Like rain against a raging forest fire, the asir’s anger, and Çeda’s, began to ebb. With a feeling akin to regret the asir retreated, away from Çeda, away from Sharakhai, back toward the desert. And then it was gone, as simple as that, leaving Çeda feeling like a dried up husk.

  Macide’s grip relaxed. The tightness in him began to unwind. He looked down at her right hand, which still held his sword, and his look softened. With a deft movement he drove his shamshir back into its leather sheath, then held his hand out, nodding to the blade in her right hand. “Unless you still mean to slice my neck open.”

  Çeda looked down at it, then flipped it, caught it by the blade, and held it out for Macide to take. As he did, Dardzada said, “Çeda, go out back. Please. Let me speak with Macide alone.”

  She nearly laughed. When she’d come here to Dardzada’s apothecary in the years before her mother’s death, and in the years she’d spent here after she’d died, Dardzada had sent her into the garden or out front to sit along the street more times than she could remember. It felt as though she were twelve all over again, wishing she were older, angry and petulant when Dardzada gave her no leeway, even when she’d been good.

  But she was a child no longer. She’d crossed a boun
dary here today. She’d attacked the leader of the Moonless Host. Whether or not they had some distant connection through blood, he would not overlook such a thing easily. There was still a lot of anger bottled up inside her, but she had regained herself enough that she could tell it was misplaced—that some of it was misplaced, in any case.

  “Very well,” she said, and headed out through the rear door to wander through Dardzada’s garden.

  She picked some mint leaves and pinched them, breathing deeply of their scent before chewing leaf after leaf and swallowing them. She chose a stalk of lemongrass next, chewing on the fibrous end as she paced. Eventually she calmed down enough to sit on the bench on the far side of the garden and think. Setting her right arm on her thigh, she flexed her hand over and over, feeling the ache but little of the anger that had burned its way through her only minutes ago.

  Zaïde had told her she would be fighting the poison her whole life, but Çeda thought she’d meant the pain. Pain she could handle. To have such uncontrollable anger making decisions for her . . . It was the very thing Mesut had warned her about. You must exercise control, Çedamihn. For all her impatience, she knew Zaïde, Dardzada, and even Mesut were right. Boldness may have its place, but she needed to take care or all will have been for naught.

  And the asir . . . Tulathan’s bright eyes, how could it have dominated her so? That it had built and stored its anger over the centuries, leaving it with a nigh-unending supply, made sense, but if that were so, why wasn’t it trying to exert its influence over Çeda now? Why wasn’t it trying to do so in every waking hour? Perhaps it was her proximity to the Kings themselves, those the asirim both hated and were bound to defend.

  She pressed on the puckered wound where the adichara thorn had kissed her. Ever since she was young, after her mother had begun feeding her petals from the adichara blooms, she’d had the indefinable sense that the asirim were out there, lying in wait beneath the blooming fields. Surely her mother knew that. She had given Çeda petals in anticipation of using Çeda as a weapon against the Kings. But what the poison thorn had granted her was a hundredfold stronger than the petals. And when it flared, it created a conduit the asirim could use to voice their rage.