With Blood Upon the Sand

by Bradley P. Beaulieu

  Instead of the tea, Ramahd grabbed a nearby bottle of brandy and tipped it to his lips. He took a healthy swallow, then set it down and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Why not?”

  As Meryam stood, her mouth became a grim line. “Don’t look so wretched”—she waved her hands over her form with a look like she couldn’t believe what had become of her—“if I had the chance to shed this skin for that of a younger woman like your White Wolf, don’t think for a moment I wouldn’t do it.”

  “You’d do no such thing.” As the alcohol burned its way to his stomach, Ramahd lay himself down on the couch, made himself as comfortable as he could. “You’re too driven, Meryam.”

  “Driven, yes, but what I wouldn’t give for a body that’s whole.”

  “And whose fault is that?”

  She replied without hesitation. “Macide’s.” And with that name all sense of playfulness vanished. She was once more the woman he’d known since Yasmine’s and Rehann’s deaths.

  “I’m ready,” he said.

  “Well enough.”And with that she bit her lip, enough that a bit of blood might flow. She leaned down and placed her lips slowly upon his. He felt her tongue parting his lips. And then she was pulling back, leaving a lingering warmth inside him, the taste of blood on his tongue, and the redolence of a woman he’d do well to stop thinking so much about.

  Every other time they’d done this, each day for the past ten days, she’d pricked a finger with a needle and fed him her blood by placing it on his tongue. Why the change, this sudden intimacy, he didn’t know, but the effects swept over him like a sandstorm over Sharakhai. Meryam’s presence roared through him. Through the bond he’d created with his own blood, she reached out and touched Tariq as well. Unlike with Ramahd, however, she was oh so subtle. Like a marionette being passed from one puppeteer to another, Tariq was blind to their presence. For days more that would remain the case, but with so many days having passed already, the effect of Ramahd’s blood was waning. It was becoming more and more difficult to maintain the bond, and soon it would be impossible without exerting more influence, a thing they couldn’t afford to do unless they wanted to reveal themselves to him.

  Ramahd felt his form change. It distorted, became more lithe. He felt an energy he hadn’t felt in years, even though Tariq had not yet fully awoken.

  Tariq rolled over and kissed the woman sharing his bed, the stunningly pretty daughter of a goldsmith. Curly hair. Bright eyes. She studied him for a moment, bleary eyed, her waking smile turning to a concerned pout. “Still have your headache?”

  Tariq nodded. “I’ll be fine.”

  “You should see my father’s apothecary. She’s brilliant.”

  Tariq gave her a playful shove. “I said I’ll be fine.”

  She frowned and rolled away, tucking the pillow beneath her head, leaving Tariq to gaze at her naked form. Tariq rubbed his temples, opened his mouth wide, trying in vain to drive away the pain. As he stood and began to dress, the woman said, “You could stay a while,” as she slipped one hand beneath the blanket, between her legs.

  “Can’t,” he said. A roll beneath the blanket was the last thing his pounding head needed. He took to the streets and immediately regretted his sharp tone, his dismissive ways. She deserved better. He’d make it up to her later. For now, he had to keep his wits about him. The Knot, where Brama kept himself these days, was no place to go with a dull mind.

  The streets were busy with traffic, but everyone was bundled up with a cold wind coming in from the north. Tariq felt the cold as well, but it felt good against his forehead, which so often lately felt hot too the touch. He reached the edge of the Shallows, and took it to a street where few dared go. The streets seemed to curve in on themselves here. The buildings leaned in, supported one another. Chary eyes watched from doorways, from windows. Hungry faces leered. He paid them no more mind than he would an urchin begging for coin, but he marked each and every one of them as he passed.

  He came to a dead-end street that was so narrow two people could hardly walk abreast without becoming intimately familiar with one another. After the dozens who’d seen him approach, the emptiness of this short street felt eerie, menacing in a way he couldn’t define.

  A piercing whistle broke the wintry air, sending a sharp stab of pain through Tariq’s skull. It was picked up farther down the street, and then again, somewhere inside one of the ramshackle buildings. A gaunt man stepped out from a doorway and barred his path. He wore rags, things you might find on a man who’d lost himself to black lotus, and yet this man’s eyes were sharp. And while his hands may have shook, it looked to be symptoms of long-term damage from the drug, not fresh withdrawal.

  He looked keenly at Tariq, then motioned to Tariq’s belt, momentarily revealing the crisscross of scars on the palms of his hands, the sign of the Tattered Prince.

  “Do we really have to do this every time?” Tariq asked.

  The man merely stared, jaw jutted like a black laugher, his gaze as humorous as one, too. Rolling his eyes, Tariq pulled the sword from his belt and handed it to the man. He gave over his knife as well. “No fucking nicks in it this time.”

  The man took them and handed them to a woman half his age who had scars on the palms of her hands as well. The man stared, then flicked his fingers again.

  “Bloody gods, I’ve not come to murder him.”

  Another flick, and Tariq lifted his arms up, at which point the man patted his sleeves, his chest, his back, feeling for weapons. He finished with Tariq’s sirwal pants, then grunted and strode toward the far end of the street, bowlegged as a stork wading through the Haddah. In the doorway ahead, a young girl presented herself. She raised both hands, at which point the man did too.

  “Take him up,” the man said with a voice like a Kundhunese rattle, as if the gods had judged him unworthy and stolen his voice.

  “He’s asleep.”

  “He left orders, girl. Now bring him up.”

  The girl, a waif with no more meat on her than a mongrel dog, glared at Tariq. Tariq had never seen her before, so was surprised when she reached out and grabbed one of his hands. She looked at his palm, tossed his hand away in disgust and turned to walk deeper into the darkness of the building.

  Tariq followed. People watched from within darkened rooms, staring with nervous, angry eyes. Some even had the look of the lotus on them—eyes half lidded and fluttering as if they couldn’t stand the sight of the world.

  The girl led Tariq up a set of stairs at the back, some of it repaired with fresh wood. They went up four floors to the topmost, where it gave way to open sky. Much of the wood here was blackened, charred, lost to a fire that had nearly swept over the entire neighborhood. The sun shone down on them through the gaping hole in the roof, but was lost as they stepped up into a hallway that had gray swaths of smoke damage along its plaster. The smell of burned wood was still strong, as was the smell of mold.

  It was at this point that Ramahd felt a disjoint between Meryam and Tariq. Up until now he’d hardly noticed himself or Meryam, but now, as the girl knocked on the door, Tariq felt a familiar unease, and Meryam experienced a distinct fear. Their emotions were so powerful Ramahd felt like a piece of papyrus being torn between the two of them.

  The door opened soundlessly a moment later, and a young woman perhaps two years younger than Tariq stood there. “Balen told me to bring him up,” the girl said to her. The woman, Jax, nodded, then turned the girl around with a hand on her shoulder and gave her a shove.

  “Come,” Jax said in her Malasani accent, stepping back to allow Tariq entrance.

  Tariq did, and found the room more or less the same as the last time he’d been here, though as always, there were some knicknacks—tokens of appreciation from the lotus addicts he’d healed—stacked here and there. A rag doll. A brass ring. A leatherbound book, half-eaten by decay. There were several tables, a desk, a c
hest, and an opulent bed. A man lay on the bed, eyes half-lidded as they stared up at the elegant wooden beams running like the threads of a spider’s web over the ceiling. The air was laced heavily with the scent of black lotus.

  It was rare for memories to be transferred through this arrangement, but just then Tariq had one so strong it momentarily replaced the scene in the room. Tariq in a drug den near the center of Sharakhai, drawing lotus smoke from a shisha tube. The rush of euphoria in that single breath flared to life, igniting Ramahd’s memories of his own flirtation with the drug. The next moment the memory was gone, replaced by the man lying in an opulent bed in a slum.

  Jax glared at Tariq. “Brama said to leave you with him, but he’s not been well, so don’t be long.”

  Tariq nodded, and Jax left.

  Near the bed was a table that could only be considered a piece of art, its grain rich and pure, the stain the color of fresh honey. Its top and legs and drawers were decorated with the intricate eastern designs of a master Malasani wood artisan. Warring with the beauty of that piece, however, were several things scattered across its top: an inkwell and pen, the ink splattered over the wood’s lustrous surface, an ivory smoking pipe, a clay bowl filled with ash, a box containing a black, tarry substance that was easily five years workman’s pay worth of the powerful drug.

  Tariq moved closer. Gods he hated coming here. He used to run the streets with Brama, but that Brama was long gone, somehow replaced by the travesty of a man Tariq saw before him. “Brama, can you hear me?”

  Brama’s head lolled toward the sound, his curly brown hair obscuring the scars on his face for a moment. The scars looked like a mis-made quilt, a landscape as terrible as the blasted lands found far out in the desert. Only once had Tariq asked him what had happened. Why, I’ve made my face anew. Don’t you like it? He’d said it nonchalantly, but there had been a look in his eyes. A devil’s grin. Even now it made Tariq shiver inside to think about it. Tariq had heard rumors, though. Of a creature Brama had run into in the dark corners of Sharakhai.

  Like a newborn child Brama’s eyes refused to focus, but soon his attention had been drawn to something over Tariq’s shoulder.

  Leave, Ramahd heard Meryam say, jolting him from Tariq’s mind. And yet she made no move to withdraw. Ramahd, we must leave. The terror in her was building, but they couldn’t leave yet. Tariq was close to something. He could feel it.

  Tariq came to the bedside. “Gods, Brama, you can’t save them all.”

  Brama blinked, turned his head vaguely in the direction of Tariq, but his eyes still swam.

  We must leave, Ramahd.

  “Osman’s worried about you,” Tariq said. “I am as well.”

  Brama eyes fluttered, took Tariq in, then fluttered once more. He reached one arm out, presumably to take Tariq’s hand, or his shirt, but he was well off the mark and grabbed only empty air. “Who’s come?”

  “It’s Tariq. Osman’s sent me. I’ve come for the caches.” When Brama didn’t respond, Tariq went on. “Have you found them yet?” Tariq felt a right shit for asking it so plainly.

  Brama rolled back and stared at the ceiling. “There’s another.”

  “Another what?” When Brama didn’t reply, Tariq began looking over the table, opening the small wooden boxes there, then the drawers. “Another what, Brama?”

  Brama’s eyes closed, his mouth agape. He went so still Tariq checked the pulse at his neck. Word was Brama used a gemstone to do what he did: to heal those lost to the lure of black lotus. Tariq pulled his shirt away from his chest and caught a glimpse of it, a bloody great sapphire wrapped in a leather cord. He immediately let the shirt drop back. He’d heard tell of people who had tried to steal that gem. Within a day or two the thieves returned glass-eyed and handed the gem right back to him, gutting themselves with their own knives afterward. “They’re hopeless addicts, Brama, and they’re going to be the death of you.”

  At this Brama laughed, a slow thing, as if he were made of clay. “You’ve profited enough from it.”

  “There are as many ways to turn profits as there are souls in the desert,” Tariq said. “You of all people know that. You’ve saved enough drug-addled children by now, haven’t you? At least enough to even the scales with the gods for whatever sins you committed when you were young. Leave them behind. Find your salvation by giving to those in need if you must. But mark my words. The dark path you tread leads only to the boneyard, and unless I’m mistaken, the lord of all things already walks by your side. The only question is whether you’re ready to take his hand or not.”

  Brama laughed again as his head rolled away. Frustration over the lack of answers thrummed inside Tariq like a rattlewing beetle. “At least tell me Lord Rasul’s came to you. The last thing either of us needs—that I need—is to go to Osman empty-handed again.” He rifled through the clothes piled on the floor beside the bed. “He’s like as not to send me back to running packages if I don’t come up with something soon, and I can’t say I’d blame him.” He stood and rubbed his temples for a moment before moving to the table inlaid with mother-of-pearl on the far side of the room and rummaged through that as well. “So please, tell me Rasul knew, and that you have the palaces.” No longer pretending at courtesy, Tariq opened the chest at the foot of the bed and tore through its contents as if they’d insulted him.

  As he did, Ramahd felt something in the room. He couldn’t quite define it. It was akin to the feelings of despair after waking to find yourself inexplicably alone when your dreams had been filled with loved ones and joy; or the beckoning feeling of death that came from staring into the depths of the sea long after land has been left behind. It was a dangerous thing, a pitiless thing, a hunger that could swallow Tariq whole. This was what Meryam had sensed, though he could put no name to it. It had no form save this room.

  As Tariq stood, Brama moaned, his head tossing from side to side, hands grasping for gods knew what. “There is another,” he moaned.

  “Fuck your mother, Brama, another what?”

  And then Tariq saw it.

  Ink marking the palm of Brama’s right hand. He moved quickly to Brama’s side, then pried his fingers back. It was so sloppy Ramahd could barely recognize it as writing, but after a moment he recognized them. The names of three Kings.

  Ihsan. Zeheb. Kiral.

  In that moment, as relief washed over Tariq like the Haddah’s clear spring waters, Brama’s hand shot out and clamped over Tariq’s wrist. He twisted Tariq’s arm, lifted his head until the two of them were eye to eye, the scars over Brama’s face and neck so close Tariq couldn’t help but wince. “There is another here”—he pressed his forehead to Tariq’s—“with you.”

  “No,” Tariq replied easily, as if he’d done this with Brama before. With deliberate force, he wrenched his wrist from Brama’s grasp. “I’ve come alone.”

  For a moment, the haze in Brama’s eyes vanished. He became as intense as Meryam when she was taken by the power of blood. He propped himself up on one shoulder, and as he did, something slipped along his hairy chest, the necklace with the sapphire wrapped in braided leather. Most of the gemstone’s facets were occluded with soot or dirt—all but the largest, the one staring outward. That facet was nearly but not completely clear, and it gave view to the space within, a blue hollow that for a moment felt larger than it had any right to, a sense that grew by the moment. It felt large as the room, then as this leaning building, then larger than the Shallows beyond. It felt as though that strange gem were a gateway to the farther fields themselves. And there was something within: the presence Ramahd had felt but could not yet define.

  Brama’s low voice filled the room. Tariq’s chest thrummed with the sound of it. “Someone watches you.”

  Tariq grunted, putting his hand to his head as a new wave of pain struck him. The headaches. It was to do with the headaches, he understood now.

  By the grace of mighty Al
u, Ramahd, we must leave now!

  Ramahd now shared her desperation. He had no idea what lay hidden within that sapphire, and he had no desire to find out. He scrabbled away, but something held him in place.

  Who are you?

  It came from nowhere, everywhere. A terrible voice. Brama. The beast within the gem. Ramahd wasn’t sure. But it had a note of familiarity to it. A feeling he couldn’t quite place, until he thought of the desert, of Meryam’s father, of the creature that had killed him. Guhldrathen. That’s what the presence in the gem felt like.

  He tried to scrabble away, to leave, to shed Tariq’s body like a cloak and return to his own. But he couldn’t. Dear gods, he couldn’t. And Meryam was transfixed. The beast was staring into her soul.

  Leave her alone! Ramahd tried to fight it, but what could he do? He was not gifted in the ways of blood. In this, he was little more than Meryam’s beast of burden.

  He felt Meryam’s defenses falling. Any moment the beast would have her, and then it would be his turn.

  “Brama?”

  A woman’s voice, filled with a strange concoction of confusion and concern. Brama turned, as did Tariq, to find Jax standing in the doorway.

  And then the vision was gone and Ramahd was in another room in another building in another part of Sharakhai entirely.

  Gasping for breath, drenched in sweat, heart pounding like the hooves of a prized akhala, he whispered to himself, “I’m in the embassy house. I’ve returned to the embassy house.” At first the mantra was merely a hope, the voice still echoing inside him, Who are you? But slowly his words became a reality, a confirmation that he had somehow, perhaps improbably, escaped.

  Meryam lay next to him, her entire body quivering as if she’d been taken by a terrible fit. Her eyes were rolled up into her head. Her head was arched back, her throat convulsing like a lizard trying to swallow a desert asp.

  “Meryam!” Ramahd called, shaking her, holding her head in his hands to try to calm her. “Meryam!”