With Blood Upon the Sand

by Bradley P. Beaulieu

  More troubling by far was Brama himself, as well as the presence Ramahd had felt within that gem. It was deeply powerful. And Brama was somehow using that power for his own purposes. That feeling returned, the one he’d felt deep inside while staring into that depthless gem, the feeling so like Guhldrathen’s presence in the desert. Was it an ehrekh hidden there? He wasn’t sure, but it was fortunate Brama had been stupefied by the black lotus. Had he not been, he would have sensed their deception even sooner and found Ramahd and possibly even Meryam.

  As the days passed with nothing untoward happening on any front, Ramahd suspected, mighty Alu be praised, that he hadn’t. The gods shone on him again when, twelve days after their strange encounter, Meryam woke. Ramahd sat by her side as the servants cleared the room. It was nearly midday, but the room was dark, the heavy curtains drawn over the windows. The door to the veranda was opened a crack to allow for a little light, and it showed Meryam was terribly weak, quivering and confused. Hardly a surprise after what she’d been through.

  “Get me up,” she rasped.

  “You should eat first,” Ramahd replied, “regain a bit of strength.”

  “I’ll take food”—she struggled to sit up, grunting from the simple effort—“but if I don’t feel the sun on my face soon, I’m likely to order someone’s head off. Get me up Ramahd, or it might be yours.”

  He would never admit to it, but it felt good to hear her biting humor. He lifted her into a sitting position, then carried her to the far side of the room, using the toe of his boot to lever the door open. Sunlight crashed down onto the rich red carpet as he maneuvered her out and onto the veranda. He set her carefully in a padded chair beneath a trellis choked with white jasmine, then ordered food for them both. They sat for a while, drinking hard cider and nibbling on wine-cured olives and long mustard-seed breadsticks they dipped into saffron-laced honey. Meryam ate in silence, lost in thought. A thousand questions fought to find voice, but Ramahd was so glad to see her awake and with an appetite that he let her alone.

  Soon Meryam was looking better, and she finally spoke. “Bring me the vials, Ramahd.”

  He knew immediately what she meant. “You’re sure you should do this so soon?”

  She nodded, chewing noisily around an olive before spitting the stone out onto a waiting plate. “We must know more about this Brama.”

  He returned to Meryam’s apartments and retrieved an ornate wooden box from a bureau by her bed. When he delivered it to her, she set it on the table and tilted the hinged lid back. Within were three glass vials cradled in red velvet. She lifted the one on the right and pulled its stopper free. The red liquid within, wine mixed with blood, sloshed as she tipped it back and drank it.

  She barely had time to stopper the vial and set it back in the box before her eyelids began to flutter. The three vials were from three other blood magi in Sharakhai. The four of them—the three whose blood resided within those vials and Meryam—had decided long ago to trade their blood in order to protect one another from the Kings, from other magi, from anyone who might hinder them.

  Meryam was doing so now, speaking to one of the three. Their identity remained hidden to Ramahd. He’d asked their names many times, but Meryam had always denied him. “None of them are open about their nature, Ramahd. This is a secret I cannot share, even with you.”

  As the desert breeze tugged at Meryam’s dark hair, her lips moved. He heard the barest whisper from her, but he could discern no words, nor even the language she was speaking. She was conversing with the other mage about Brama, the threat he posed, he assumed. After nearly an hour, Meryam’s eyes sharpened again and she sat higher in her seat. She immediately took a glass of water and downed the lot, then stared at the horizon with a calculating look, all but ignoring Ramahd.

  “Come, Meryam. Out with it.”

  She glanced at him, nodding with a surprisingly contrite look. “I’d heard rumor of the Tattered Prince several years ago. A few magi had run afoul of him, apparently. At the time, I had no chances to look further—we had other things to occupy our minds—but I see now I should have looked deeper.” She motioned to the vials in the box. “When he first became known to the others, he simply appeared. At first they thought him a magi like any other. It happens often enough. Magi are drawn to this city from distant lands. They thought him likely to leave as quickly as he’d come, but when he remained, they grew concerned and attempted to track him down. They learned that he was young—very young, in fact, to be so powerful. They found nothing more than this, however, for those who tried to follow his scent through blood were found dead within days of reaching out to him. Those who attempted to track his physical whereabouts disappeared.”

  The horrible scars over Brama’s face came back to Ramahd, the raw power within the sapphire he wore. “Is he dangerous to our cause?”

  She looked intense, as though she’d been struggling with that question since she woke. “Like the others, I thought it best to let a sleeping dog lie. He’s never harmed anyone who hasn’t come for him directly. Now that we have, though . . .”

  “He sensed us the moment Tariq arrived.”

  “Aye, Ramahd, he did.”

  Far out in the desert, beyond the cityscape of Sharakhai, a cloud of amber dust lifted as if shaped by the hands of the elder gods. Such clouds were often an indicator that a larger storm was brewing, but even as Ramahd watched, the dust began to settle. Ramahd poured himself more hard cider from the glazed pitcher, then offered it to Meryam. She declined with a raise of her hand. “Well,” he said after downing a healthy swallow, “I’d be insulted if he thought us too inconsequential to bother with. As addled as he was, he likely couldn’t tell who we were, or where.”

  She dipped one finger into the remains of her cider and ran it over the rim of her glass, drawing a note that sounded strangely pure in this uncertain world. “Did you feel it, Ramahd? The deeper presence in that gem?”

  “I did.” The memories came unbidden, made him dizzy all over again. The gem had seemed bottomless. Boundless. A well that led to another world.

  “And what did it remind you of?”

  “An ehrekh,” Ramahd immediately replied.

  “An ehrekh.” Meryam turned away from the desert to look at Ramahd, her sunken eyes as intense as he’d ever seen them. “Hiding, or trapped, perhaps ripe for harvest.”

  Her tone, and the implications of her words, rippled outward like the scent of war on the wind. “We’re lucky to be alive, Meryam, and you would have us go after Brama and his gem?”

  “Had he been more out of sorts, we might have taken it from him then.”

  “Taken it? Meryam, we barely escaped Guhldrathen. You would tempt fate in hope of controlling another?”

  “It is the very threat of Guhldrathen’s power that drives me. What better way to control it than with another of its kind?” For the first time in ages, he saw fear in her eyes, in the way her lips pinched, downturned at the edges.

  “You are a queen now, Meryam. You have more to think about than your thirst for revenge. We need to find out what’s happening here in Sharakhai and deal with it before it threatens Qaimir.”

  When Meryam didn’t respond, Ramahd thought he’d made a mistake by mentioning their homeland. She rarely responded well to pressure. All too often she fought him simply to fight, logic be damned, but this time there was no biting reply. “There is wisdom in what you say. We have much to worry about.”

  Relief flooded through him. “Three Kings,” he said, hoping to move away from the topic of ehrekh as quickly as possible. “Three Kings’ names were written on his palm.”

  Meryam’s eyes searched his. She hadn’t remembered, but as he watched recognition lit within her. “Ihsan. Zeheb . . .”

  “And Kiral,” Ramahd finished. “And Tariq mentioned caches, asking Brama where they could be found.”

  “Their palaces?” she asked
.

  “Most likely, yes. The question is, caches of what?”

  “Very good, Ramahd.” Her eyes were suddenly alive. “The answer to that question will tell us why the Host have been maneuvering so boldly in Sharakhai. It will tell us what Hamzakiir meant to do after he left us, for as sure as the sun shines brightly over the desert, he’s guiding Ishaq and his son, Macide, toward those caches.”

  Ramahd stood and began pacing beneath the shade of the trellis. “To risk so much, it would have to be something vitally important to the Kings. It won’t be money. And if they speak of caches, it isn’t something that will threaten the lives of the Kings. Not directly.”

  He realized how quiet Meryam was. When he turned to her, he saw that she’d changed. No longer did she slouch in her seat, nursing her ravaged body. She sat up straight, hands clasped in her lap, no daughter of a King, but the Queen of Qaimir. And she was staring at him with a look of such intensity Ramahd stopped his pacing and faced her.

  “We need to know,” she said. “The very fate of Qaimir rests on it.”

  “I may be able to help. When Tariq was rummaging through Brama’s things, he mentioned Rasul. Do you remember?” Meryam nodded, keenly interested. “Kiral, King of Kings, has a grandson named Rasul. He is young, yet. He’s seen only eighteen summers, and yet Kiral favors him. He’s been seen in the courts since he was twelve, and Kiral has clearly been grooming him to stand by his side as his vizir.”

  “Ramahd, I’m impressed!”

  “Don’t be. I thought it wise to look into him while you were recovering. Rasul is smart. He’s ambitious. He’s extremely loyal to Kiral and Sharakhai.”

  “And yet,” Meryam said.

  “And yet, there have been whispers. Years ago, rumors surfaced that he visited some of the most exclusive drug dens in Sharakhai. No sooner had the rumors reached Sharakhai’s upper crust than his glaring absence from those drugs dens was noted. All seemed well for a year or more, until Rasul was taken ill. The official word was that he had been taken by the white plague that had, if you’ll recall, a small but contained outbreak that winter.”

  “I’m guessing our Rasul had a miraculous recovery.”

  Ramahd smiled. “Top marks to the queen. This last bit of information was difficult to get. One of the maids apparently reported bloody sheets being collected from Rasul’s rooms in Tauriyat. They were burned, a common enough thing when the taint of the white plague is about, but the blood was from vomit.”

  Meryam frowned—intrigued, he was sure, and perhaps vexed she hadn’t already solved the riddle. “And?” she said calmly.

  “Bloody vomit is not a symptom of the white plague. It is, however, a symptom of black lotus addiction. I’d consider the information suspect under normal circumstances, and it only partially supports our supposition that Rasul is a lotus addict, but when coupled with the earlier rumor and our visit to Brama’s keep, I’m willing to bet more than a few rahl that Rasul had fallen to the lure of the lotus then, and fell to it again only recently, when Brama, conveniently for Osman, came across his path.”

  “And what of it?” Meryam said, vexed now. “You’ve clearly formulated a plan, so out with it.”

  “You have yet to meet with the Kings in your new role. I reckon it would be proper for you to do so now.”

  Meryam caught on. “Kiral would likely not come. Not to a first meeting. Ihsan will represent the Kings. A few other Kings may come. But we might arrange for Rasul to attend.”

  Ramahd nodded. “I’ve begun formulating the list of stand-ins for all twelve Kings. I’ll stress how important it is to her highness that their seconds be present if the Kings are unavailable.”

  For the first time since they’d reached the veranda, Meryam seemed to relax a bit. “And if we find ourselves alone in a room with young Rasul? What then?”

  Ramahd smiled. “Why, we tell him the truth.”

  The scene in the Qaimiri embassy house’s ballroom was a grand one. As expected, King Ihsan, as Sharakhai’s chief of state, had come. It was little surprise that King Beşir, Sharakhai’s master of the city’s finances, had joined him. But strangely, King Sukru, the Reaping King, a man who rarely bothered with social functions of any sort, had accepted their invitation as well.

  The list of seconds Meryam and Ramahd had suggested to the Kings in their invitations had worked perfectly. The Kings had all sent replies and sent the men and women requested, except for Onur, who hadn’t bothered to reply to the invitation at all. Which is just as well, Ramahd thought, for there is a man who infects anything he touches.

  In the week since Meryam woke from her ordeal, she had transformed herself, at least as much as a woman could who was malnourished as she was. She had eaten properly. She had put on a few pounds, which, as emaciated as she’d been, had made her look merely gaunt instead of skeletal. Another woman might have appeared weak before the Kings, but Meryam stood tall, and she had an indomitable gleam in her eye, the one Ramahd knew all too well by now, the one that dared anyone to look upon her and call her easy prey.

  Interestingly, Juvaan Xin-Lei was in attendance. The ambassadors from Malasan and the Thousand Territories of Kundhun had been invited, but the invitation to Mirea’s ambassador, Juvaan himself, had purposefully been lost. Most times, Juvaan would have used it as an insult to wield against Qaimir at some future date, but in this instance, when he’d learned of the reception for Meryam, a servant had been sent immediately to “request clarification.” Apologies had been made in abundance, owing to a servant who had taken ill and thereby lost the invitation that had been meant for Juvaan himself. Whether Juvaan believed it or not, it was telling that he thought it important that his presence, and that of his queen, be felt here.

  Meryam handled her meeting with the Kings deftly, speaking with them in turn, making it seem as though each were her sole concern. She spoke with the Kings’ seconds as well, talking of Qaimir and the long history of cooperation with Sharakhai, along with her most genuine hope that their prosperous past could continue well into the future. And why shouldn’t it? There was trouble in the desert, and there was trouble in Qaimir, but what could two kingdoms not do together if their rulers clasped hands?

  Largely, Ramahd let her be. She was handling herself well, and he didn’t wish to put his clumsy feet into a dance where they weren’t welcome. He relegated himself to wandering the crowd, offering a dance here and there, speaking with those in the Kings’ retinue and rarely venturing to exchange more than pleasantries with the Kings or their seconds.

  But he watched. Especially Rasul, who had come dressed in a brilliant silk khalat of forest green and aged ivory. He was jaunty, smiling broadly with everyone he met, talking loudly, with more than a passing resemblance to his grandfather, the King of Kings. His wife, a stunning young woman wearing a matching dress—ivory with tasteful accents of jade—was on his arm, every bit as adept at juggling a conversation as he was. They were, Ramahd had to admit, representing King Kiral admirably, but it was that very fact, his utter control over this situation, that convinced Ramahd he had a chance to pull this off; men who stood to lose the most were often the most malleable.

  Dinner was superb. Roast amberlark stuffed with celery, water chestnuts, and truffled rice. A salad of smoked palm hearts, candied dates, and a lemon sherry vinaigrette. Rosewater iced cream over a warmed tart of pickled ginger and pears. Twelve courses of the best Qaimiri cuisine to be had in the desert, with more than a few traditional Sharakhani dishes to honor those from the House of Kings.

  When the dinner was complete, Meryam made a short speech and a toast to Sharakhai of the sort any ruler new to the throne of Qaimir would make to the Kings of a powerful desert city state. Ramahd hardly listened. He was watching the reactions. Ihsan smiled politely, nodding at just the right moments. Beşir, a quiet man with a long face, seemed bored but sat through the speech well enough. Sukru, however, watched Meryam with bare
ly contained disgust. Why he’d accepted the invitation Ramahd had no earthly idea. He looked like he’d rather eat grubs than suffer through a social affair like this.

  When the dinner was finished and the food cleared away, Ramahd made his way through the crowd. “I’m afraid your wife may be a while,” Ramahd said to Rasul, whose wife was speaking to Meryam, the signal Ramahd and Meryam had agreed upon to approach the young lord.

  Rasul raised his glass and nodded. “Lord Amansir, I’m glad we could find some time to talk.”

  “As am I.” Ramahd raised his glass in return and motioned Rasul to a dark corner of the room. “Changes are afoot for Qaimir, it seems.”

  Rasul followed Ramahd to the corner, then raised his glass again. “Indeed. My condolences to you and yours.” They clinked their glasses and drank in honor of King Aldouan’s passing. “The life you and your queen have led these past months! I could scarcely believe it when I heard the tale.”

  The official story was that Aldouan had died of a poor heart on a voyage to the desert. He’d wanted to see it, had ordered it, in fact, but the heat had proved too much for him.

  “Well,” Ramahd said. “Time marches on, does it not? And while we in Qaimir have changes ahead, I trust it won’t be the same for Sharakhai.”

  “Gods willing,” Rasul said, again raising his glass and taking another swallow.

  Ramahd, however, did not return the gesture. “In truth, my good Lord, there is something I hoped to discuss with you this evening. It’s rather”—he glanced toward King Ihsan—“delicate.”