A coward’s thoughts, Çeda mused, the fears of a woman unwilling to die for her cause.
As the gate creaked open, Çeda marched inside and was met immediately by Kameyl, who wore her Maiden’s dress but no turban, no veil. “Why are you late?” Kameyl asked. Her face was tight, serious.
“I lost track of the day,” Çeda said, trying to keep her story as simple as possible. “It won’t happen again.”
She looked Çeda up and down. Çeda thought she was going to press, but instead she shot a look back toward the infirmary. “Yndris was attacked today.”
For a moment Çeda was speechless. They knew about Yndris, but if that was so, how was it they didn’t know about Çeda’s role in it? “Is she dead?”
“No,” Kameyl snapped, “but she was beaten badly.
“Is she awake?”
“She woke a short while ago.” Kameyl stared more deeply into her eyes. “Do you know something?”
“Gods, no!” The lie tasted bitter on her tongue, but by some strange miracle Kameyl didn’t seem angry with Çeda, which meant they hadn’t yet discovered the truth. “What happened?”
“Come,” Kameyl said. “Sümeya is with her now.”
They went to the infirmary, Çeda’s home for her first several weeks in the House of Maidens. It was strange to see it again from a wholly different vantage: as a Maiden. Even stranger to walk toward Yndris, who lay in a bed with Melis, Sümeya, and Zaïde standing over her. Yndris was awake and speaking to Sümeya, who had an expression of deep anger.
“Our lost little wren has flown home,” Kameyl said as she stepped to the foot of Yndris’s bed.
Çeda crossed her arms to hide the wounds on her knuckles—wounds received while punching Yndris’s face over and over—and stood by Kameyl’s side. She looked down upon Yndris, guilt roiling inside her. Bruises marked her lips and nose and cheeks. Small cuts were mingled within them like daubs of paint from a particularly cruel artist. Çeda nearly confessed. The words were on the tip of her tongue, ready to spill from her mouth like bitter wine, but it was Sümeya who spoke first. “Yndris was attacked in the western quarter today. Did you go there?”
Çeda nodded. There was no sense denying it. They all knew she’d been raised there, and enough might have noticed her presence that they could trace her to the spice market and the bazaar if they wished to.
“Did you hear news of an attack on a Maiden?” Sümeya asked, waving to Yndris.
And it struck Çeda then how altogether emotionless Yndris was. Çeda had been so wrapped up in her own thoughts she hadn’t noticed, but Yndris wasn’t staring at Çeda with enmity or hate, but rather with curiosity, as if she too wished to know the answer to Sümeya’s question.
Çeda shook her head. “I heard nothing of an attack.”
Sümeya held her gaze, then looked down upon Yndris. “Surely it was the Moonless Host, or an opportunist with a grudge against the House of Kings, though how they might have identified her, we’re not sure.”
“We should beware . . .” This had come from Yndris herself. Her words were horribly slurred. It pained her merely to speak, and little wonder with the surfeit of wounds marking her face like mountains on a map. “We should beware,” she began again, slower this time, “allowing Maidens out alone.”
“That’s nothing for you to worry about,” Sümeya said. “Rest and take to Zaïde’s ministrations. Listen to her, for I fear you’ll try to be up and about too soon, as you always do. Don’t this time. We’ll have need of you in the weeks ahead.”
Yndris nodded, a small frown on her face as though she were disappointed in not being allowed to return to the barracks that night.
Goezhen’s sweet kiss, why. Why would Yndris hide what had happened? “Do you remember nothing?” Çeda asked her.
Yndris gave a small shrug. “Little enough. I remember . . .” She swallowed several times. “I remember going to the bazaar. And when I arrived I thought of Hasenn talking about a small tea house near there, Alam’s Glade. I was headed there when someone struck me from behind.”
Well, at least Çeda knew she was hiding some portion of her story. She’d been heading for a tea house like Çeda was a highbrow Mirean whore. She had been following Çeda and, for whatever reason, wasn’t willing to admit it.
“You heard nothing?” Çeda pressed. “No clues about who might have attacked you?”
Yndris swallowed several times, wincing as she did so. “I remember being struck. The sound of it was like the sundering of the desert. The next thing I knew, a pair of Silver Spears were standing over me. A cart arrived and delivered me back to the House of Maidens.”
That look on her face. So innocent. So utterly fake. Could no one else see it? Of course they couldn’t. Neither Çeda nor Yndris were giving them the true story, so why would they think anything was amiss? “As you say, we’ll have to take care from now on.”
“We will,” Yndris agreed, revealing a momentary glimmer of hatred, emotion masked a moment later by pain.
“Come,” Zaïde said, making shooing motions with her hands. “Leave her in peace.”
They turned to find the doors being opened by two manservants and King Yusam sweeping into the room in a brilliant khalat of vermillion and gold, and a matching turban bejeweled with a massive white diamond. He eyed Zaïde and the approaching Maidens, coming to a stop so that they could approach him.
As one, the Maidens came to a stop two paces before him. Zaïde joined them and together they bowed their heads. “My Lord King,” Zaïde said, “what brings you to the Maiden’s infirmary?”
Yusam sent a nonplussed glance toward Yndris. He took in each of the five women standing before him with a look that bordered on curiosity, though Çeda had the impression he was trying to hide it. “I’ve come to speak to my hand of Maidens. There is work for us to do in Ishmantep.”
“Very good, my Lord King,” Sümeya said. “What is it you wish us to do?”
Çeda’s heart was already racing. She knew Yusam could see much. She’d seen it with her own eyes. So the mere fact that he knew something was happening in Ishmantep was no real surprise. What worried her was that he might have looked into his mere and seen Emre. She worried he’d bid them to take him, and if that happened, she knew there’d be no chance of saving him. Nalamae’s sweet tears, Emre, I wish you’d never said anything to Macide.
“We’ll speak in a moment,” Yusam replied. “Await me in my carriage outside. We’ll retire to my palace.” His green eyes glanced meaningfully at Yndris. “For now, I would speak with our wounded dove.”
“As you wish,” Sümeya replied.
They all made to leave, but as Çeda walked past, Yusam held his hand out to her. The rest continued as Çeda stopped and held her hand out for Yusam to take. Zaïde paused in the doorway until the King’s servants closed the twin doors, bowing their way out and sweeping Zaïde away with them.
Yusam held Çeda’s hand in a dancer’s grip. Then he turned her hand this way then that, a jeweler inspecting a stone. “You play rough.” He held out his other hand, and she was forced to give him that one as well. He inspected the cuts along her knuckles the same way he had her other hand. “And so fresh!”
“Only a bit of sparring, my Lord King. With a dirt dog today, near the pits.”
“Maidens do not spar with Bakhi’s chosen, Çedamihn.”
He said it not as an admonition, but as if he knew very well that she had not, in fact, sparred with anyone.
“Old habits die hard,” she replied.
“That may be true”—he released her hands—“but there comes a time to turn the page, and how can we do that if we keep rereading the last, hmm?”
“Lose sight of the past, my Lord King, and we lose our direction completely.”
A smile broke over Yusam’s fine features. “As you say, young Maiden. Now leave us.”
&nbs
p; And Çeda did, but not before seeing the look of naked loathing on Yndris’s face. As Çeda strode from the room, she wondered if she hadn’t made a terrible mistake by not killing Yndris there in the streets of Sharakhai.
The following morning, Çeda sat on a stone bench in the largest building in the House of Maidens. It housed most of the Maidens’ training rooms, where they learned the finer details of sword and spear and open-hand combat, but was also where Sümeya, as First Warden, kept her offices. Çeda sat in a hallway outside her door, wishing she could hear the conversation within, but since the moment Emre had stepped inside, she could hear little but the calls of the women as they fought one another in a nearby room. Had she taken an adichara petal she might have been able to hear Sümeya’s and Emre’s conversation, but she’d decided against it. The chances of Sümeya’s noticing the effects were simply too great.
So she was forced to sit and fret, wondering what Sümeya was asking Emre, how he in turn would reply. Strangely, what she’d perceived last night as a clear disaster—King Yusam pointing them to the very place Emre wished them to go—was now a potential boon. If Yusam thought there were things to find in Ishmantep, why then wouldn’t Sümeya believe Emre’s story?
A chill went down her spine as Sümeya raised her voice. Emre was trying to paint himself as a sympathizer of the Kings, a potential agent for them in the Moonless Host. There were stories all over Sharakhai of traitors in the ranks of the Moonless Host, but Çeda wondered how many had come willingly and how many had been found out by Zeheb, the King of Whispers, and forced to give up their secrets, or work for the Kings under threat of violence to their family. She had to admit, though, that Emre could spin a good tale. She could only pray that things went well with Sümeya.
King Yusam was another matter entirely. Her strange mission out to the ship, the chase at the collegia, the battle in the forum . . . Like a man feeling his way in the dark, he was weaving his way toward a sound. That sound was something neither she nor Macide nor even Hamzakiir could easily shake. Where was his mere leading him? Macide’s plot? Çeda’s betrayal? Something else entirely? She didn’t know, but what she wouldn’t give to kneel by his mere and peer into its depths.
She stewed for an hour more before the door opened at last. Emre stepped into the hall, followed by Sümeya. She pointed to the bench where Çeda was sitting, and barked, “Sit there,” and motioned for Çeda to follow her. Çeda got up, noting the very serious look on Emre’s face. When Sümeya’s back was turned to him, however, Emre winked at her. She’d taken the bait, then. Or was inclined to. Now it was up to Çeda.
Çeda soon found herself alone with Sümeya inside a large room with a desk at its center and a map of the Shangazi hanging on the wall to her right. She’d seen smaller maps of the desert before, but it was interesting to see it writ large like this, with all the caravanserais marked along the great trail that ran north to south, along the eastern passes and the northwestern valley that led to the Territories of Kundhun.
Sümeya moved around to the far side of the desk. She noted Çeda’s interest in the map, but made no mention of it. “Sit.”
Çeda did, taking one of the two padded chairs. Sümeya remained standing. “Trouble follows you, little wren.”
“I’m not a wren.”
Sümeya sniffed. “You’re in the Maidens for less than six months and you lay an intricate plot at our feet.”
“Would you rather I hadn’t?”
“You must admit it’s a strange bit of luck.”
“As was the gods saving Sharakhai on the night of Beht Ihman.”
“Don’t blaspheme.”
Çeda couldn’t lie down for her—do that, and Sümeya would know. “I only meant that fortune shone down that night on the Kings and Sharakhai. And perhaps that’s what’s happened here.”
“Perhaps.” She began to pace slowly back and forth. “But before we get to Emre, let’s speak of Yndris.”
“What of her?”
“Watch that lip of yours.” She motioned to Çeda’s hands. “You leave here and return with cuts and bruises along your knuckles. I have little doubt that were I to press them against Yndris’s face, they’d match like the pieces of a broken urn.” Çeda started to speak, but Sümeya spoke over her. “I don’t care what happened. Yndris appears willing to let it pass, and so do you. But I tell you this: it ends here. From both of you.” Sümeya paused, perhaps waiting for a comment from Çeda, but Çeda could tell it wasn’t over. “Zaïde asked us not to take Yndris on our journey to Ishmantep, but I’ve denied her request. Yndris will come, and each day, the two of you will spar, and then you will tell one another stories.”
“Stories?”
“You will come to know your sister Maiden, and she will come to know you. You will understand one another if nothing else. And after that, there will be no more conflicts. You may not love her, and the gods know she has little love for you, but you will accept her. Is that understood?”
“Yes, First Warden.”
“Dear gods, Maiden, I asked if you understood.”
“Yes, First Warden!” Çeda repeated, more sharply this time.
“Good. Now”—Sümeya glanced over Çeda’s shoulder toward the door—“tell me about Emre. How did he find you?”
“I found him,” she said, as she and Emre had agreed on the way back last night. “He often goes to the spice market to find odd jobs. I didn’t think I’d have much chance of finding him, but there he was.”
“But not to haul spices.”
“No.”
“Do you believe him? That he’s joined the Moonless Host so that he can report back to us?”
Çeda knew she had to play this part perfectly. “He has never held great love for Macide and his ways, even less so when one of his friends was murdered last week for refusing to let a wounded rebel into his home.” It was true. Emre had told her about it. It was the perfect spice for this dish because it could be verified. And she could see how angry Emre was with the killer, but she could also see how loyal he was to Macide. “Truth be told, though, I’m not sure I believe him.”
Sümeya paused. “You think he’s lying?”
“Not lying, no. I merely think there’s another, greater truth behind all of this.”
“Which is?”
“That he cares for me. Perhaps too much.”
Sümeya stared more deeply into her eyes. “Are you trying to say he loves you?”
It wasn’t hard for Çeda to feign discomfort. “Yes.”
This was the part of the tale they hadn’t agreed on. She hadn’t even brought it up with him, because she knew he’d be uncomfortable with it, perhaps even wounded, and she couldn’t have him trying to talk her out of it. In fact, the less he knew about it, the better. He might have acted carefree yesterday after they’d kissed, but if he were confronted with this by Sümeya, his hurt would show, and that would be enough to convince her of the truth of it.
Sümeya stared into Çeda’s eyes, weighing her words. “Yes, I believe he does. Do you love him?”
“Of course I do.”
“No,” Sümeya replied easily. “Do you love him?”
“Yes. Once.”
“No longer?”
Çeda shrugged. “We’ve gone our separate ways. There is no place for love in the service of the Kings.”
Surprisingly, Sümeya softened at this. Sümeya, outside of Kameyl the most severe woman Çeda had met in the House of Maidens, looked sad in the way one does when remembering a cherished heart taken too soon. The look was there one moment, gone the next, yet still Sümeya said, “Love can be found in the strangest places, Çedamihn Ahyanesh’ala.”
“As you say,” Çeda replied, if only to fill the silence and get her to move off the subject.
“Emre tells me that there is a man, a master of one of the Kings’ own caravanserais, who has proof th
e Moonless Host plan to attack the aqueducts.”
“That’s what he told me.”
“And that further details might be found in Ishmantep.”
Çeda nodded. “He overheard Macide speaking to another.” It was the same story Emre had given her, and no matter how much she’d pressed, that was all he would say.
“It smells strange to me, I’ll admit.”
“To me as well,” Çeda said, staunchly refusing to mention Yusam’s directives. That was a thought Sümeya would need to arrive at on her own. “The Host are devious. But we have only to go there to determine if he’s right. I only ask that you leave Emre here.”
Another agreed-upon piece of their tale, but one Çeda desperately hoped Sümeya would heed. Çeda knew immediately from Sümeya’s stern look that she wouldn’t.
“We will go. We have no choice in the matter now. But so will your friend.”
“We don’t need him.”
“He’s too valuable to leave behind.”
She shook her head, picturing Emre strung up like her mother at the gates of Tauriyat.
Sümeya laughed silently. “I thought you would fight me harder, girl.”
“Emre is stubborn, and so are you. I know when a battle is lost, First Warden.”
And now Sümeya laughed out loud. “You? Know when a battle is lost? Sooner will Goezhen find forgiveness from Tulathan.”
A knock came at the door, forestalling Çeda’s words.
“Come,” Sümeya called.
The door opened and Zaïde stepped inside wearing a thawb of pure white. She looked worried. “I need her, now.”
Sümeya leaned back in her chair and nodded. “We’re done.” Çeda had just reached the door when Sümeya added, “And Çeda?” Sümeya’s eyes were flint and steel. “If I find that Emre’s been lying to us, I’m going to run my blade across his pretty little throat.” Without waiting for a response, she took up a quill and began writing. “That will be all.”
Chapter 41
With Blood Upon the Sand Page 47