Cahil took it in with a frown and a stare. He seemed unconvinced, but apparently wasn’t ready to outright deny Mesut’s conclusion, either.
“It has been a long while since the night of Beht Ihman,” Mesut went on, turning his attention back to Çeda. He waved to the asir, whose jaundiced eyes were staring at Mesut’s shadow on the ground. “Even the asirim, our holy avengers, can grow weary of their task. It is a heavy burden, and the weakest among them sometimes bend, while others break.”
Cahil pulled the asir’s head back, baring her neck. And now the asir was staring directly into Çeda’s eyes. Gods, the emotion. She displayed none of the hatred Çeda had felt from her so often. Instead her look was one of deep sorrow, a thing that struck like a spear into Çeda’s very soul.
Though she knew it might give the wrong impression, she knelt before the asir, giving her what courage she could. Blood of my blood. This is all my fault. I called to you.
You could not have denied me if you tried. A milky tear streaked down the asir’s blackened skin. Fear not for me. I go to see my children.
From his belt, Cahil drew an ornamental knife, a kenshar of unsurpassed beauty. Gleaming steel, ruby pommel, inlaid hilt. He lay it across the asir’s throat. The woman’s throat, Çeda corrected. She was no monster. Or at least, a monster was not all she was. Her soul, though chained, still lived. There were still hopes, if not for herself, then at least for those who would survive her, the people of her tribe and their offspring.
“You don’t have to do this,” Çeda said to neither King in particular.
“Ah, but we do,” replied Mesut. “For you see, if we allow her to continue, she will take your mind. It’s happened before, and may happen again. We cannot allow it.”
Çeda’s instinct was to look away, but instead she took the asir’s hand. Your name?
Havva, the asir said, grateful to be asked.
Havva, you are the brand that kindles my hatred.
Keep that. But find love as well, child. Havva’s hand tightened on Çeda’s. Use the dying fire of our lives to give birth to a new tribe.
From the ashes shall we rise, Çeda said.
From the ashes.
In one fluid motion, Cahil stood and drew the gleaming blade across her throat, leaving her to fall against the sand like an oryx slaughtered in sacrifice. Blood the color of Mesut’s jet stone poured from the wound. It stained the harbor sand a deep ochre, like the desert caught in the throes of dusk. Despite her wish to show her self-control before the Kings, tears slipped easily along Çeda’s cheeks. They fell to the sand to mingle beneath the surface with the blood of one of her tribe. Slowly, the asir’s grip lost all tension. Her eyes went soft. Çeda felt her presence fade like the time-washed memory of a loved one.
As Havva’s life dimmed and was lost altogether, Çeda forced herself not to stare at Mesut’s bracelet. She could feel the unrest there, could feel those other souls screaming from within their prison. Yerinde grants a golden band with eye of glittering jet. Should King divide from Love’s sweet pride, dark souls collect their debt. This was how Mesut had done what he’d done in Kiral’s palace. These were the dark souls, the souls of the dead, trapped within Mesut’s golden band. He’d chosen one of them, Havva, and given her new life so that she might be chained to the Kings anew.
Çeda had the sense Mesut could have harvested Havva’s soul once more; she could feel the yearning of the other asirim for him to do so. But he did not, knowing perhaps that Havva’s was a will too strong, a soul no longer useful to him. Indeed, she was powerful enough that Çeda suspected she might infect the others trapped within that gem, inspire them to rise against the Kings as she had.
“Stand,” Mesut said.
Çeda complied numbly, still staring into Havva’s lifeless eyes.
“Look at me.”
She turned to stare at Mesut’s stony face, tears still streaming down her cheeks. She wiped them away.
“Now listen to me well,” Mesut said. “Other asir may try the same, but you cannot allow it. You must exert your power over them, for only in this will our most treasured remain steadfast in their duty to protect us. Do you understand?”
Çeda nodded. Keep your gaze level. Do not stare at his wrist, not even once.
“Good. Understand that if this happens again, your blood will mingle with that of the unfortunate soul you’ve shown your weakness to.”
With one last glance at the dead body, Mesut picked up his clothes and walked away, leaving her before Cahil. The Confessor King strode up to her and his hand shot out, taking her by the throat, his grip so tight she couldn’t breathe.
She did nothing to prevent it.
Cahil stared into her eyes. Such a beautiful face, she reflected. Such haunting eyes. Did you torture my mother? Did you carve the symbols into her skin with that very knife?
The blade, still dark with blood, he raked roughly across the front of her dress—once, twice, a third time, the last nicking her neck. Blood welled from the wound, trickled down her neck to the ridge above her collarbone. Cahil thrust the knifepoint toward the body of the asir behind him. “Mesut would have me believe that creature urged you to attack my daughter. Yusam would have me come to him with any grievance over the Maidens he’s chosen as his own. But know this, Çedamihn Ahyanesh’ala, if you ever take your hand to my daughter again, none of that will save you. I’ll take you to the brightness atop my palace and see that you know the meaning of agony before I toss your body to the killing fields.”
He shoved her away so hard she tripped and fell, then he walked away, not in Mesut’s wake, but toward the towering harbor gates. Soon he had stepped back through the gap, into the desert, and Çeda was left alone with the body of the asir. The clanking of the gate’s inner mechanisms resumed, and a moment later it boomed shut.
Creature, he’d said of the asir, not hero, as the other Kings were careful to say. A subtle betrayal of the truth. No surprise from the King who took so much pleasure from others’ pain. One day, Çeda said to the great harbor doors, all that you’ve sown will return, hungry to even the scales.
She turned to face the dock. Mesut was climbing the ladder up to the pier. Verdaen was standing on the quay, waiting for him. The two of them spoke for only a short while, and then they climbed into the araba, which took them back toward the palaces.
Tomorrow, Çeda was bound for Ishmantep. She would go, she decided. With her sister Maidens she would go and see what she could find in the caravanserai. She would speak further with Emre.
Which one? Emre had asked her, meaning which of the Kings would she choose to kill. Her life was a shambles, stones sliding down a hill; the gods only knew where they would end up when the dust had finally settled. She knew one thing, though. She would take that band from the Jackal King. And then she would see what debt those souls might come to collect.
As the sounds of the harbor resumed—men working, the rattle of wagons—Çeda went to the asir. She will have a proper burial, by the gods. Cradling the too-light body in her arms, Çeda bore her toward the docks. That much she will have.
Chapter 42
DAVUD STOOD AT THE STERN OF THE BURNING SAND, the ketch he and Anila had been sailing since leaving Ishmantep. The dunes were alive with the wind as they headed westward. From the skin strapped across one shoulder, Davud dribbled a bit of the day’s ration of water onto the turban he wore, then more along the back of his neck. He glanced up, giving the sun a baleful stare, a thing he’d been doing so often the ship’s crew had taken to calling him Kingfisher, for the way the birds would crane their necks to down the fish they’d caught.
The ship’s name was particularly apt. They’d been sailing for nearly two weeks now, though not along a straight path as near as he could judge. They were nearing winter, but the days were some of the hottest he could remember. It grew so hot that the men of the Al’afwa Khadar, who’d bee
n ordered to keep both Davud and Anila locked in their cabin, hadn’t had the heart to keep them in a space that might roast them like a brace of desert hare.
A laugh came from the fore of the ship. Anila stood there talking with Tayyar, the red-haired brute who’d punched Davud in the stomach, the one who’d threatened to cut off a finger if he asked to escape the furnace-like heat of the ship’s belly again, the one who’d scoffed at Anila’s demands for some propriety. “You’ll eat like we do in the desert, sleep like we do in the desert, and damned if you won’t shit like we do in the desert.”
Anila had been overtaken by emotion the first few days out from Ishmantep, crying constantly. She’d pressed Davud again and again over what had happened between him and Hamzakiir, and when he hadn’t answered, she’d tried to bully him. “How dare you barter for my life like I’m a prized akhala. You probably think you own me now! Do you, Davud? Do you think you own me?”
“Of course not.”
“Well you don’t,” she’d said, as if he hadn’t spoken at all. “Now tell me your part of the bargain. What could you possibly have that Hamzakiir would find so valuable?”
He hadn’t told her, and he never would. He was too ashamed of it. She’d tried to browbeat him, telling him she’d have his father hauled before the Silver Spears the moment they returned. She’d even tried to beg. But what could he do but answer her requests with steadfast silence?
On the morning of the third day, things changed. After heading up to deck to eat their breakfast of olives and bread and limes, Anila had taken to occupying those parts of the ship where Davud was not. If he went astern, she would walk aft. If he came down to the heat of their cabin, she would head up to deck. And she began talking more to the crew, mostly the men, but the women as well. Small things at first, asking how the ship was run. Asking how she might help. And she did, working to hoist the sails and lower them at the end of the day. Helping to prepare food, handing it out when it was ready, and cleaning up when they were done.
Most of the crew ignored her. Some would send sidelong glances her way with clear, if brief, mistrust. But Tayyar had taken a shining to her. They began to sit by one another while eating. The captain of the crew, a woman named Rasime, the very same captain who’d commanded the ship that had borne the imprisoned collegia graduates to the caravanserai, would frown from time to time, but beyond that no one seemed to care. Davud had the impression they found it amusing: a desert wolf romancing a groomed lynx from the palaces of Sharakhai.
One evening at dusk, the crew built a fire among a host of dark standing stones. There they sat and passed around araq and sang songs to the deepening veil of stars. It was a holy day for the crew, a day their tribe celebrated, they said. They hadn’t mentioned the name of their tribe, but the holy day itself was a clue. Davud was almost certain they hailed from Tribe Salmük, the Black Veils. Of all the twelve tribes only they had a holiday of significance on this particular day, a day celebrating the end of a three-year drought that had nearly destroyed their tribe. Adding to the evidence of their origin, their songs hailed from the eastern edges of the Shangazi, the center of which, due east of Sharakhai, was traditional Salmük territory.
“Ho, Kingfisher!” Tayyar called to Davud as he entered the circle. “Come have a drink!”
Davud tried to ignore the invitation, but it became all the more difficult with Anila laughing while leaning into the big dolt as though she thought him a sweetheart. Davud accepted the small cup and tried to drink more than he should have. He ended up coughing from the burn of it, which brought on peals of laughter, the loudest of which came from none other than Anila.
His face reddened as Tayyar said, “Minnows beware the snap of the fisher king!” But it was infinitely worse when Anila slapped Tayyar’s knee and told him to stop, the way an older sister might do to protect her bothersome little brother.
“Might we speak?” Davud asked her when they were done eating. This was going completely and perfectly wrong. It couldn’t go on, not if he wished to see her safely returned to Sharakhai, and that was exactly what he’d promised to do. But he worried now that she was turning her back on her city, being drawn into this life after the harrowing experience at the caravanserai. He needed to make her see that what she was doing was dangerous.
In answer, Anila stared dispassionately as Tayyar swung one meaty arm around her shoulders and the two of them leaned back against the smooth stone behind them. “What about?”
Davud didn’t know what to say to that. How could she treat him like this? How could she favor Tayyar over him? As she held out her cup, and Tayyar poured more araq, Davud merely bowed his head and left the circle. “It’s nothing.”
He heard her whispering as he headed into the darkness, and when he’d been swallowed by the night, they laughed like two drunkards along the Haddah on Beht Revahl. His face burning like a brand, Davud returned to his small forward cabin in the ship, a place Anila rarely spent any time in now. After striking a lantern, he pulled out the book Hamzakiir had given him and opened it to the first page. He no longer needed to reference the first several symbols, but he did anyway. It helped not only to cement them, but to expand on their meaning.
He used the short knife to cut into his palm, then dipped his finger into the welling blood and read Hamzakiir’s words. To enact the spell, the first and most important for all magi, you need but summon those memories that bring you meaning. It brings you nearer to your core, the center of your soul, and for this spell of sounding, that is sufficient.
With the blood he drew the sigil around the wound. It was meant to bring the mage in touch with their own blood, and so, their body, their soul. It was an anchor, Hamzakiir had said, a bridge to the first gods. It was the simplest of the sigils by far, a mother symbol, so to speak, one that needed very little concentration on the part of the mage. It was the only one Davud had been able to master. The rest had proven too difficult. He knew he had to visualize the sigils, but he wasn’t sure how. Everything he tried produced no feeling whatsoever. Which was perhaps why Hamzakiir had felt secure in sending Davud off with such a book. Giving him the sigil to light a blaze would have been unwise had he any inkling that Davud might actually master them on the journey back to Sharakhai.
Davud used a bit of water to wash the blood away, then tried the one for warmth again. The instructions told him to summon thoughts of burning and binding. Burning was simple enough. He’d burned his fingers on enough candles to summon any number of memories. Binding, however, was another matter entirely. It was a common thread through many of the spells: the marrying of a concept to a memory. Binding. Also turning. Rebuffing. Subsuming. Hamzakiir had explained each along with the sigils. A student who’d been properly introduced to the red ways might understand, but Davud did not.
His head was starting to pound with a terrible headache when he heard someone gain the deck of the ship. He placed the book beneath his pillow as footsteps came down the hatch stairs. He was just washing away the blood when the cabin door flew open.
Anila rushed in, heading for her bed, but stopped as she saw Davud trying to hide his right hand beneath his rough woolen blanket. “You don’t have to, Davud. I don’t give a copper khet anymore.” From the drawer beneath her bunk she grabbed a small leather bag—the type a collegia student would use to keep small mementos before graduation—then slammed the drawer shut and headed for the door as quickly as she’d come.
Davud sat up, heedless of the red still on his palm. “Anila, please, wait.”
She stopped in the doorway, her half-hidden expression making it clear just how little patience she had for him.
“I’m doing what I can. I’ll get us home as soon as possible and then we’ll see about sending help for the rest.”
The expression of sufferance on Anila’s face faded, leaving only the rage. “You know Rasime won’t bring us home until it’s too late.”
“Perhaps
not. But they’ll find out who did it. The Kings will make them pay.”
“They know very well who did it. Hamzakiir himself seems happy to flaunt it beneath the noses of the Kings every chance he gets.”
Suddenly all the looks from the crew, the laughs, the titters from Anila herself, all bubbled up inside him. “Well, why don’t you bed the rest of the crew? Maybe that will get us home even faster.”
“Do you know why I’m with him, Davud?”
“I’m sure I couldn’t say.”
“Because when I am, I can forget about those screams for a while. Can you help me forget them? No, because you left them all there to rot. You’re the reason I have those nightmares.”
Davud’s cheeks flushed like a summer rose. “I . . .”
“Or perhaps there’s some spell you might cast.” Before Davud knew what she was doing she’d shot her hand beneath his pillow and grabbed the book. She threw it onto his lap. “Perhaps something from this little book from your new master.”
Davud stared at it, held it tight though it sickened him. How long had she known? Probably since the beginning. She’d probably saved the knowledge for the moment she felt it would do the most damage, a skill at which she was particularly gifted.
“Nothing to say now?” Anila asked.
Davud could only stare. What was there to say?
“As I thought.” And with that she spun and left the cabin, leaving the door open.
Davud got up, closed the door, and returned to his bunk, where he stayed long into the night, wondering when the crew would return. His shame, and Anila’s words, haunted him, but instead of retreating from them, he absorbed it. He took it in, for he deserved it.
Pulling his solitude around him like a cloak, he opened Hamzakiir’s book, and began reading it again.
Judging from the positions of the stars and the crude sextant he’d fashioned, Davud was sure the caravanserai where they’d been holed up was in Ishmantep. It was confirmed when he heard Captain Rasime, who was handing the wheel over to her second. She’d been pointing ahead off the starboard bow, and Davud distinctly heard the words the handle of Breyu’s sickle. Rasime had noticed him watching and had immediately stopped.
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